I read Transformers vs. G.I. Joe without being a fan, loved it and it made me reflect on how I approach comics and media vs. how the general public does
This week, I did a binge read of The Transformers vs. G.I. Joe for the first time. I know a little bit about Transformers - I collect the toys to an extent, and have watched some of the shows and read the US Marvel comics, but most of my knowledge of the lore comes from browsing a wiki after finding a cool toy - and next to nothing about G.I. Joe, so my standpoint as the audience for this comic is limited because I wouldn't be getting all the internal references to these two franchises. I was aware of that going in, and still decided to give the full comic a read based on positive feedback I had seen (well, positive to my own personal tastes). Not only did I have a blast, but it made me think a lot about how most people generally approach popular comic books and big franchises as a whole vs. how I (and people who perceive art like I do) tend to get into those, as well as on the comic book medium as a whole.
A common criticism of big franchises, often aimed at American superhero comic books, is that there's so much continuity and internal references that it's hard to get into through a starting point. I think that's fair, if you're the kind of person who really wants to get through everything and know everything that's being referenced at all times from minute 1. But I grew up in the pre-full-Internet-access, library-and-used-bookstore-dwelling, back-issue-hunting and TV show rotation trenches - jumping in at the middle of a storyline and piecing together what's happening in a non-linear fashion is part of the fun for me. And Transformers vs. G.I. Joe provides that kind of experience, both internally and in a metalinguistic sense, while being a fully original self-contained work. That's why I loved it! So, let me explain…
Transformers vs. G.I. Joe was made by writer John Barber and writer-artist Tom Scioli, but it's clear that the main creative force behind this comic is Scioli, considering the rest of his body of work. Before reading this, I was familiar with Fantastic Four: Grand Design and Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, and last year also dove into his Go-Bots series (also with no prior knowledge at all about the source material), all of which take the approach of documenting the history of their subjects to pull inspiration from and provide an epic story of mythological proportions with retraux art (yes, even the biography about a real life guy). His art and writing style is in full display here, even with a collaborator. And I'll tell you, this is a comic's comic. Nearly every page deserves to be framed and put on a wall.
I think another thing that really turns people off comics is that they can sometimes be hard to follow if you're just looking for a quick read. You can skim through a regular modern issue of The Amazing Spider-Man and get the gist of it (poor you), but with some comics, you have to take your time to look at the art, read the dialogue, look at the art again, analyze what's in there, what's happening, what the concept is. And sometimes you're not going to fully understand it the first time around, sometimes you only get the full picture when you finish the comic and go back for a reread. I love that! It makes me want to read more times, the comic book lasts longer because of that. But not everyone is into that, and while that's okay, I think it's a disservice to dismiss a work of art because of that (a skill issue too, but I'm trying to be nice). You'd be missing out on a really cool and mind-provoking experience because you don't feel like putting too much thought into it.
And I think comic books can be an awesome medium for visual storytelling, and I don't mean "awesome" as slang for cool, I literally mean it as awe-inspiring. Tom Scioli has very noticeable Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko influences, and personally, this is the kind of comic art and storytelling that really blows my mind every time I look at it. It's full of information, which is why it can be hard to get into, but that's why I like it, personally. It makes your eyes move in more ways than just left to right, it feels more stimulating in a positive way. You can't do this exact kind of visual storytelling in a movie, show or video game - you can emulate the style with similar cues, but this marriage of images, words and creative layouting practically only works in comic books. Just take a look at this page, one of my favorites in all of Transformers vs. G.I. Joe:
The layouting, art and words work in perfect tandem tell a story and convey a feeling. This comic is full of that and I enjoyed every second I spent reading it. You can't really do this in another medium. Comic books are unique, but like any other medium, the best of them demand a lot from the audience to be fully understood. However, one major point of contention that is often cited as a detriment to comic books is that many of the mainstream franchises are overly dependent on continuity and internal references. I see that in a different way and Transformers vs. G.I. Joe made me reflect on it because I was indeed in the position of being a reader who wasn't familiar with the source material being referenced (unlike, for example, Scioli's Fantastic Four: Great Design, which I read as someone who knew everything it was referencing).
As I said, I have very limited knowledge about both Transformers and G.I. Joe. I know a bit more about Transformers, but I'm mostly a toy collector, and while I've watched the live-action movies, some of the different shows and read the original US Marvel comics (I started the UK run some time ago, but didn't finish it), I'm not all that locked into the lore - in fact, I often make stuff up myself with my "shelf canon" (the all-in-my-head lore for my personal collection). For G.I. Joe, I simply have never been a fan. Not that I particularly disliked the franchise or anything, I just never got into it. As I'm writing this, I haven't watched a single episode of the original cartoon show, haven't read a single issue of the comics aside from the brief crossovers with Transformers in their Marvel Comics continuity, and never had any major experience with the toys. I've seen the first live-action film on TV, but I barely remember it, and I'm pretty sure the fanbase doesn't consider that a good frame of reference (correct me if I'm wrong). So, I went into Transformers vs. G.I. Joe nearly completely blind to any G.I. Joe stuff. I knew some character names like Duke, Scarlett, Cobra Commander and Destro, and that the ninja guy was Snake Eyes, but that was it. Just parachuted into this wild universe, and they don't hold anything back when you start reading.
A lot of readers, in this situation, would give up early on when faced with all this information and finding it incomprehensible. There are a lot of named characters being introduced at once, all of them already have history with each other when the comic begins, and you, as the reader, are purposefully placed in the middle of the action to piece together what's happening as it goes along. It's the full comic book experience, but not because you picked up a random issue in the middle of a run - the story is just like this, by design. A lot of it seems incomprehensible at first and becomes clearer as you keep reading, and you just have to trust it and go along. It is a bit reliant on the reader knowing at least the basics of both franchises, and part of it is because the kind of audience that usually goes for this book is already familiar with them. There are a lot of references that are missed if you didn't watch one of the cartoons, or if you didn't read one of the old comic series, or even further: if you've never went out to look up behind-the-scenes trivia (which is something I usually have more interest in than the stories themselves, actually). There are also references to wider comic book classics outside of either Transformers or G.I. Joe, which I was actually able to identify more consistently myself. It's a lot to take in if this is your first dive!
A lot of people just give up, and they're not wrong for it. But my approach for this is different - the strength of the art (and by art, I am referring to the whole creative package: visuals, script, layouting, etc.) was enough to keep me invested in this wild ride. Barber and Scioli were apparently aware of the density of their work here, because each issue has a page-by-page commentary section where they talk about their creative decisions and references for them. I love this kind of thing because it points you at the right direction to learn more, and that's where I want to get at: while some look at comics like this and scoff at how dense and difficult they are, if the book gets me invested enough, it's an incentive for me to actually research what these obscure references mean. It's a pyramid scheme, sure, but when you have creators who are actually putting love and care into their work, it's a pyramid scheme about appreciating art, and not just consuming a product.
So, while my first read through Transformers vs. G.I. Joe felt confusing and psychedelic, I enjoyed it so much that it made me want to go back and read it again to fill in the gaps that were missing on my first read, and now I want to go after the source material that inspired this book. I never truly felt like reading or watching G.I. Joe before, but this comic made me interested in giving it a try. I think this is how long-running comic book series really work. Most people approach them like they would a singular series with a beginning, middle and end (like Japanese manga, which is often brought in for comparison) and get disappointed when they don't have a clear starting point that feeds you the story in an easy to digest way, or when there is just too much content and they want to go through everything. This is just my take, but I think you need a different mindset for comics like this. You have to approach them like a historian, piecing together what you can from what you get, and when you have that in mind, the research aspect of it becomes part of the experience and part of the fun. But this is just how I see it, and I know some people just don't like it, or are going to disagree with me.
And I really don't mean to say that I'm better than them for reading a comic book to the end - it really isn't a pleasant experience for everyone! But I really wish more people were willing to make an effort to engage with art like this, because this is how I see it: you have to make an effort to get into it and it feels very rewarding when you succeed at it. And I think this particular comic is very much the kind that you're supposed to make that effort and come back to it various times until you're fully understanding everything.
Barber and Scioli created a whole mythology spanning fictional centuries just from their imaginative ways of spinning the tales of Transformers and G.I. Joe. It's a really fascinating take on both franchises that builds on what had already been established in the past while doing its own thing. The metalinguistic and object-linguistic are both relevant. It reads like an ancient mythological epic with the wit of modern day writing - "quotable" works are sometimes made fun of, but I really like Scioli's way of making key dialogue stand out. I love this kind of storytelling art, I want more of this, and I want to see more appreciation for it. Again, not everyone likes that, simply put. I just wish more people tried to.
I also wish it was easier to find physical editions of this comic. Physical media is my preferred way to read comics because I just have a harder time following along when reading from a screen, but the prices for the collected editions are higher than twice the minimum wage in my country. Damn! Can we get a reprint, Skybound?
Names from Elton John songs you can give your child
Elton John has a lot of songs with names of people for some reason, so I decided to compile them for fun... if you're out of ideas to name your child, you can try:
Gulliver
Samantha (from "Lady Samantha")
Amoreena
Levon
Susie
Amy
Hercules
Daniel
Roy Rogers
Dan Dare
Billy (from "Billy Bones and the White Bird")
Georgia
Jeannie (from "Little Jeannie")
Carla
Chloe
John (from "Dear John")
Crystal
Georgie (from "Slow Down Georgie")
Nikita
Angeline
Emily
Nina
This is only counting traditionally accepted names, of course. Check your local laws to see if you can name your child "Razor Face", "Skyline Pigeon", "Tiny Dancer", "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)" or something along those lines.
When a Mortal Kombat Elder God got too much into goth culture
The instruction manual for Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero provides additional lore and context about the Netherrealm (their version of Hell, spelled "Netherealm" in this game and Mortal Kombat 4) and how Shinnok came to rule it...
From these lore pages, you can understand that when Shinnok took over the Netherrealm from Lucifer, he reshaped it to look more like the Earth, which was what he actually wanted to rule over but failed to. This involved remodeling the physical world and transforming the demons into human-looking beings. That's why, in the game itself, the Netherrealm looks like an industrial city:
It's quite different from usual depictions of Hell, and in fact different from later depictions of the Netherrealm in Mortal Kombat games, especially the ones developed by - uh - Netherrealm Studios. There are possible explanations you can handwave for it, but I'm not going to yap about that now. In Deception, while it doesn't look as industrial as in Mythologies, the realm still has a town with houses and human-looking demon NPCs, some of which seem bitter about having been transformed into those forms.
But now, look at what these guys look like in Mythologies:
What was Shinnok using as reference when shaping the Netherrealm? Was he going on a marathon of Hellraiser, Terminator and Jurassic Park?
Wait... are these goth girls?
What does it say about Shinnok that this is the stuff he found so cool about Earth that he just had to replicate it in Hell?
When an old anime/manga had heroes kill their enemies for being assholes
As a kid I grew up with American superhero stories and Japanese shounen and always noticed the difference between how the two sources of media dealt with protagonists killing antagonists. Some of my favorite superheroes were Spider-Man, Superman and Batman (yeah, yeah, the standard choices) who had very strict and explicit no-kill codes that were discussed several times in their stories, yet in anime and manga it was way more common to see a heroic character obliterating their opponent off the face of the planet and smile about it.
Case in point... Saint Seiya (created by Masami Kurumada) was my favorite as a kid, and as I grew older, I came to think a lot about how a lot the villains/antagonists weren't exactly evil. A lot of them were jerks, but most weren't malicious. Yet, the main characters - all unambiguously portrayed as good guys - were very trigger happy about killing these guys.
So here's a rundown for those who are curious, or those who are familiar but never stopped to think about it...
In Saint Seiya, the story revolves around magical fighters who are part of armies that serve different Greek gods. The protagonists are part of the Saints, who form Athena's army, and there's armies for other gods too. It's like they're fighting over religion, basically. But then they don't even get along with each other!
Right around the beginning of the story, our protagonist Seiya is told by Athena's Pope, who runs her Sanctuary, that he is not to use the Pegasus constellation-themed mystically powerful armor (which they call Cloth) he earned for selfish purposes. That entails personal matters, frivolous quests and anything else that doesn't involve enforcing justice and peace on Earth. So what is the first thing Seiya does when leaving the Sanctuary back to Japan? He enters a televised martial arts tournament using his Cloth as part of a deal to find his missing sister. So yeah, the Pope is kinda justified to be pissed at him.
So the tournament begins, and the contestants are all Bronze Saints, the lowest rank in the hierarchy just above regular foot soldiers. All of them were actually childhood companions in a Japanese orphanage and knew each other long before this tournament. All of them are perfectly willing to fucking kill each other in a televised martial arts contest. Not just perfectly willing as in "I'm fine if they end up injured" - some of them straight up go for killing blows and gloat about it on live TV. This is worse than WWE. It should come as no surprise that the Sanctuary eventually sends other Saints to deal with these guys who are very clearly going against a code of honor.
And now comes the part about a lot of the villains in this story not being really evil: when the Silver Saints (the rank above Bronze, of course) show up to punish our "heroes", they're actually justified. We follow along with the protagonists are led to sympathize with them and their building friendship with each other, but from the Silver Saints' point of view, they're following orders from Athena's Pope and for all they know, the main characters are criminals under Athena's code of honor. These guys aren't really evil at all.
But here's the thing: a lot of them are jerks. One of them is an arrogant and narcissistic sicko obsessed with his own beauty who talks down to his opponents and brags about not even knowing what pain is like (and he's genuinely startled when he's hurt for the first time in a fight - did this guy never even stub a toe as a kid?). Another one is not above torturing a hostage. Three of them attack Seiya when he's hospitalized and have a competition where they throw him (who, mind you, had been literally just pulled out of a hospital bed) in the air and bet on who lands the killing blow, just like when you're in school throwing pens at the ceiling fan with your classmates and betting on who's going to break it. Athena's Saints are insane.
Yeah, this series has a lot of pretty boys (wonky art parodying ancient Greek sculptures notwithstanding). No wonder I turned out the way I did...
But again, they're not evil. In fact, a few of them actually express loyalty to Athena's idea of justice, and some are portrayed as being friends with each other and are saddened when their comrades die in battle. Some are even graceful losers who congratulate their opponent for a good victory. They're trying to kill the protagonists, but they're doing so under the impression that the Bronze Saints are all traitors. Still, each and every one of them are fucking murdered by the main characters.
After the Silver Saints are eradicated, we are introduced to the Gold Saints, the highest ranking soldiers of Athena's army, 12 warriors themed after each of the Zodiac signs (you can imagine how fun it was to brag at the playground as a kid when the Gold Saint with your sign did something cool in the latest televised episode of the anime). Even moreso than the Silver Saints, these guys are mostly not evil at all and just doing their job of protecting Athena's alleged interests. But at this point Kurumada decided that killing off every character in the protagonists' path was limiting, so we start seeing some more nuance.
Still, a lot of Athena's Saints are sociopaths, despite being supposedly agents of justice and peace. One of the Gold Saints has a special power involving having beautiful long red nails (did I mention how this anime ended up part of many people's queer pipeline?) that he can use to shoot scorpion stings (he's a Scorpio, you see) that make his target slowly and painfully bleed to death, and he's very smugly proud of bragging about his torture fingernail superpower. Another one fucking calls himself Deathmask (!!!) and he's such a sick fuck that his house is full of disembodied faces that are manifestations of the spirits of those he murdered in the name of justice, some of whom are children, which he absolutely does not give a shit about and says so to the protagonists.
After the fights with the Gold Saints end and everyone who survived the bloodbath reconciles with Athena, we move on to arcs involving Poseidon and Hades (and Odin from Norse mythology if you're watching the anime, but I'm personally not a fan of the Asgard arc and usually follow the manga nowadays). Hades's soldiers are probably the closest we get to actual evil minions with ill intentions, but Poseidon's guys are mostly chill dudes who happen to religiously follow a god whose method of cleansing the Earth from evil is flooding it. One of them genuinely believes Poseidon's way is the right way to achieve peace, yet still praises the one who defeats him for winning their fight. But then there's some assholes, like the one who uses shapeshifting powers to impersonate his opponent's loved ones to emotionally manipulate them. Regardless, most of them are killed by our heroes.
So, to me, as a kid following both this and stuff like Spider-Man, it was very interesting to see the contrast! From the West, I saw superheroes jump through hoops to avoid taking lives even if their enemies were absolutely despicable. From the East, I followed warriors of peace and justice killing willy-nilly even if their enemy's worst sin was enjoying what they see in the mirror too much. I've mildly exaggerated the extent of it for comedic effect - and for those who have never read or watched Saint Seiya, I promise there's more nuance to it! - but I still think my observations are fun.
Thank you for reading my crazy ramblings. Come down in time for the next one, if you want to.
