The
Unfortunate Introduction of Nipple Clamps, A Review of The Goon #39
and Theories & Defenses Inspired by David Brothers
Batman
and the Unfortunate Introduction of Nipple Clamps
A few months ago, I
started to develop an idea for a writing project that I would call: My Scott Snyder Problem. Writing
'writing project' (now) makes me throw up in my mouth and cramp up a little at
my own pretension. My problem (so-called) was that every time I finished
reading Batman, I felt sated, but the
feeling didn't last. Something was off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The
Batman reviews I was reading were so
celebratory to a fault and so full of acclaim that I started to think that
Snyder could cure the common cold or master cold fusion with one well told tale
of the caped crusader. The fault, I thought, was with me … and then I
discovered Comics Journal and I read Tucker Stone.
Here's what Stone wrote about Batman #6, ''it turned out to be the hipster douchebag version of that old Batman
mini-series by Jim Starlin, The Cult.'' In regards to Batman's latest bête noire, Stone writes, ''Talon [is] a character who looks so much like Marvel's Nighthawk that it'll get
your dog pregnant.'' For all his snarky bravado, what makes Stone rise
above the ranks of the cafeteria-style contrarian is his honesty. He may be too
clever by half, but I believe he means what he says. So, embiggined by Stone's
screed, I made a plan to ape his iconoclast's voice and hoped that I would be
(could be) as nimble and as cutting. I would skewer Snyder, expose the flaws of
the Batman and then … and then, what?
Who am I kidding? I don't sound like Tucker Stone, I sound like somebody who's
mail-ordered the Unabomber home-starter kit. I'm not that guy.
I don't have a
problem with Scott Snyder. God bless, and I think it's silly to be angry at a
fictional character, Batman gotta' be Batman, as the kids say. If Batman was a TV show or a song, I would
skip it or change the channel. Mainstream superheroes aren't for me. I was
happy (for the last eight months) to go along to get along, but Batman #6 and #7 became the tipping
point for me to make up my mind to stop buying DC and Marvel. I wish I had a
better reason than it's my prerogative. I don't. It's been a progression, at
least, and if I were paranoid (who wants to know?) I would put it off to
conspiring forces. Bottom line, I'm an indie guy, a prodigal son who's come
home.
I wrote my own review
of Batman #6. I didn’t make any
references to Jim Starlin or the Cult because I didn't think writing about Ian
Astbury was germane to the discussion. I wrote that Snyder and Capullo were
attempting to pull off a ''long con,
altering what being Batman means to Batman himself.'' I admired how Snyder
was trying something new with Talon (Marvel's Nighthawk was beyond my ken)
instead of running out the rogue's gallery for safety's sake of or to satisfy
fan's expectations. For me, Batman
felt new, but this is from someone who's last run-in with the Dark Knight was The Dark Knight Returns. What bothered
me about Batman #6 was that
throughout the Talon v. Batman battle royal, Batman's shape (and species) keeps
changing. He goes from the jolly dark
giant with fangs and claws to a scrawny Edward Gorey-like wraith and then back
to hirsute brawler. I questioned whose perspective I was supposed to be seeing.
Who was watching this 'Stretch Armstrong-like' Batman morph from one thing to
the next? I'm all for suspending disbelief, but this was silly, pointless, and
worse, meaningless. Issue #6 ends on a great cliffhanger with Batman near death
and trapped under ice. For a moment I had that giddy thrill of wondering how
Batman was going to escape this time. I wasn't suspending disbelief, I was
lobotomized.
Batman #7 broke me. After being trapped, tortured and beaten to within
the proverbial inch of his life, Batman finds himself in the back of a panel
truck where he is brought back to life by a woman (Harper?) wielding a set of
jumper cables attached to a battery. We should all be so lucky. Back among the
living, Batman immediately flees the coziness of the van, runs out into the
snow and apparently heads for the nearest manhole cover because the next time
we see him, he's crawling out of the sewer-side entrance to the Batcave. After
all this, the torture, the fighting, the nipple clamps, what does Batman do? He
freaks out (for a second), and, of course, goes back to work. I could feel my
brain shift into full-on Annie Wilkes:
''Have you all got amnesia? They just cheated us! This isn't fair!''
Batman was trapped in the Court of Owls maze for at least eight days with only
water to drink -- drugged water, but at this point it doesn't really matter --
he has this epic fight with Talon, escapes, rides the lightning (that's two
Metallica references if you're scoring at home), finds his way back home and he's
right back to solving crimes and running DNA tests. What was the point of all
that Court of Owls crap?
What sets Batman apart from all the other
superheroes is that he's human. Snyder does deserve some of the blame (he
wrote the damn thing). The more I thought about it I began to realize that Batman
is immortal, a wholly owned subsidiary, a property. Batman is an earner and Scott Snyder can no more bloody Batman (or teach him anything) than Batman
or Superman can, for that matter. Batman endures because Batman endures. So, my Scott Snyder problem is really my Batman
problem, my superhero problem. As much as I would have wanted Greg Capullo to
have drawn at least one panel (just one!) with Bruce having a snack or taking a
nap, maybe grabbing a quick bat-shower, it wouldn't have changed anything.
Batman's Batman. Oh, and after all
this belly-aching and soul searching, I still bought issue #8, yeah. It's that
old addict's saw, just one more. Well, here I am, I can go one more or I get
out. It's not life or death and it's not an addiction (right?). I'll stop
buying Batman, simple as that. Done
and done.
The
Goon #39 and the Default Setting
I loved reading the
Fred Hembeck cartoons in Marvel Age. If I learned anything from collecting
comic books in my misspent youth it was that superheroes make for good parody. I
once bought something called XMEN
Pronounced Zhmen One Syllable. I would like to think that something deemed
a 'comic book' would be open to a bit of lampoon, a spoof, perhaps, at least be
open to a couple of yuks at its own expense. Funny books (amiright?) are few
and far between. So when I read that The
Goon #39 was going to be a parody issue, I knew it was time to revisit
those days of yester-Hembeck.
I don't know The Goon or what he does (fights
zombies, monsters, maybe). Ditto Eric Powell. At first, I thought The Goon #39 was sour grapes on Powell's
part and that he was taking the piss out of Marvel and DC because he could. The
more I thought about it, the more I realized that, no, this is different, this
is passion; Powell's anger and frustration come from an honest place, he's
speaking truth to power and he's doing it with conviction. Reading The Goon #39 is like a long warm soak in
a favorite Monty Python sketch where all the sound effects are some iteration
of the word 'douche.' Cynicism for comics comes easy and jokes about
superheroes are a kind of default setting. Powell's ire isn't for the idea of
superheroes, he's angry about the execution. This ain't no Swift or Vonnegut style
satire. Powell gives Goon a hammer as
a weapon.
Get it, a hammer? Powell goes for the lowest hanging fruit first, codpieces and
thongs. There are more
subtle and less goofy ways to go about exposing the emperor for having no
clothes, but few also include signposts for ''Dramatic nonsensical panel design and arrangement'' or ''gratuitous, unnecessary ass shots also sell
really well on eBay!'' It's not all ass shots and douche jokes, Powell goes
after race, religion and sexuality too, an equal opportunity offender. The
jokes would fall flat – and for some they will, comedy is subjective after all
-- if Powell wasn't taking such direct aim at DC and Marvel. There isn't enough
racial diversity in comics and it is dubious why outside interest in comic
books only peaks when there's a press release about a gay character. As much as
one might question why we are still talking about race, religion or sexuality,
it's not going away, awareness never should. Parody and satire only work when
the audience is in on the joke, or better yet, culpable. Powell's point is that
while Marvel and DC are robbing the bank, the reader is waiting outside driving
the get-away car.
My sentence in
graduate school only served to deepen my love for essays especially things like
'Bullpen Bulletins' and letter columns in the back of comic books. So, for all
the business The Goon #39 takes care
of up front, the party (for me) was in the back. Powell's column, 'Correspondences
and Whatnot with Eric Powell' finishes what The
Goon starts and in some ways it's less subtle and a lot less funny. Powell
writes: ''Out of the top 1,000 comics sold in the US in 2011, 24 were not Marvel
or DC superhero titles. (Sales
figures found on ComiChron.com).'' That's a staggering statistic, but it begs
for a comparison to other print industries -- of the top 1,000 selling books, how
many were sold by corporate owned publishers?. I don't subscribe to Powell's
doom and gloom forecast that if Disney and Warner Brothers decided that comic
books weren't as profitable as licensed products (toys and bed sheets) than
comic books would cease to exist, but maybe he's right. Even the least robust
revenue stream still makes money, right? If movies and TV have taught me
anything, it's that corporations aren't above milking a trickle. I like to
think about comic books like the dinosaurs (no pun intended) in Jurassic Park. All the dinosaurs were bred to be female in
order to halt reproduction, but as Jeff Goldblum haltingly says, ''nature, uh, finds a way.'' The Goon #39 (and Powell) champion
creator-owned comics over corporate-ownership and that's fine, but it does make
me rhetorically (naïvely?) ask who doesn't support creator-rights? Oh, right,
us.
Theories
and Defenses
David Brothers wrote
an essay
for Comics Alliance that discusses the ethics of creator-rights in light of Before Watchmen and The Avengers movie. I do not have the encyclopedic knowledge of
comic book history nor have I done the research that an argument like this
requires of one. Thankfully, for me, Mr. Brothers has done all the heavy
lifting. The one thing I wish Brothers did address in his piece was the
importance of posterity. For comic book fans, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore and Siegel
and Schuster are legends who are (and will) be remembered longer than the suits (or gangsters) that drew up the
contracts that they signed. Status is not reason enough to forget or to dismiss
how these creators were treated. It's no different than having to bring up
inequalities of gender, sexuality, or race in comic books, one has to keep
telling the story like it or not.
Brothers point is not to remind readers of
the sins of the past, not entirely, at least. His essay contains an action step
and it's in the very first sentence: ''I made a conscious decision to stop supporting Marvel and
DC with my money a while back.'' It's the old vote with
your wallet argument that so often gets made and so often gets dismissed.
What I like about Brothers essay is his honesty and the genuine melancholy that
he knows he is going to feel because of all the comics that he will miss
that he otherwise would have enjoyed. Like Stone and Powell, Brothers has
conviction. I believe him when he says, ''I'm not even publicly proclaiming that I'm
quitting while secretly reading scans of their comics in the dark. I quit cold
turkey. I'm done putting money in their pockets. It bums me out, but that's
life.'' Statements don't get much bolder or straightforward as that;
Brothers is out. It's a 'scorched Earth' policy to be sure and I wonder (hope?)
that in a future essay Brothers will explain if his decision includes imprints
like Vertigo (DC) and MAX (Marvel) and licensed titles like Conan or G.I. Joe as well.
So what? I'm in
(down?) with Brothers, so I'm out too. [Insert sound of one hand clapping] I
read three DC titles (Swamp Thing, Batman and Wonder Woman) and I have bought a total of eight single issues of
two different Marvel titles since last September. So not buying comics from DC
or Marvel requires little effort on my part. I am not trying to ally myself
with Brothers. How could I? His decision is noble and it hurts. For me, not
buying Marvel and DC is, at best, a minor inconvenience. What I took from
Brothers's essay was a reminder about creator's rights and the corporations
that profit on the ideas of those creators without proper compensation and
representation. A blind man could see that and many do. The other reminder I
got from Brothers was that you can 'change the channel.' Why keep reading a
story when you are not enjoying it? Comic book buying can become so ritualized
that dropping a title is (for some) treasonous. Comic books are filled with consequences,
but which titles one chooses to buy is a consequence-free choice.
For me, getting back
into comic books after twenty years means an embarrassment of riches. There are
so many artists and writers that I've missed that I want to catch up on. There's
no 'sword of Damocles' hanging over my head when it comes to choosing to read
the Oni Press deluxe hardcover edition of Local over the next issue of Wolverine and The X-Men or Batman. I wish every decision were so
easy. I'm going to subscribe to The Goon
too, so, Powell's got me for at least the next issue (just one more?). I'm also
searching out and buying self-published mini-comics like Tiger Lawyer, Black
Church and The
Mire. Fledging blogger that I am, I want to emulate the confidence of
Brothers and Stone and I would be remiss if I didn't include Justin Giampaoli, Kelly Thompson, Colin Smith, Martin Gray, Daniel Elkin and Jason Sacks writers I read for
their unvarnished (but always polished) honest opinions. Lastly, I'm not doing
this for RTs (feel free, of course) or to kowtow or to gain favor with creators
or other bloggers. I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this because I've reached
my limit with DC and Marvel superheroes. I'm either apathetic or confused by
the few titles I read.
I have 20-plus years of comics to catch up on. Last, but not least, it's a good
time for independents and self-published work. What else can I say? I've gone
independent. Honest. Oh, and if someone would be so kind as to tell me how the
whole Court of Owls thing plays out, that would be great, thanks. I do worry
about that Batman.
The last 'official'
class I took in graduate school (per my 'unofficial' transcript) at the
University of Vermont was Studies in Rhetoric and Composition. Besides the fact
that the teacher cancelled the last class of the semester because it was too
hot[1]
(!!!) outside, I recall that I wrote about the first book that ever affected me, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I
read the book before I saw the movie and that 'has made all the difference' as a well-known Vermont poet once
wrote.
When I finished Local a couple of months ago, I had a
similar reaction -- I didn't throw it across the room, it's too heavy (I would
have killed one of the kids fer crissakes!) and that Oni Press edition is too
beautiful to mistreat. Except now, I had this blog and so I had to write about it. I knew I wasn't
going to be able to scale this Everest all at once, I would need to set up base
camps, work my way up; and I knew I would need a Tenzing Norgay. So when Daniel Elkin of Comics Bulletin
asked me to co-author a piece for Danny Djeljosevic's Fair Trade Comics Column,
I was humbled (a little intimidated), and 100% game. Local overwhelms. It's that simple. I don't know how
long I'll be reading comics this time 'round, but I'm a better man, a better
human for having the opportunity to have read Local and whatever I can do to get this book into the hands of more
people I will. That's a promise, my droogies. Elkin, I'm indebted. Djeljosvic
thanks for doing your thing my man. FYI set some time aside when you hit the
link, after all, it takes time to be a local. 
