Drunk Comic Book Rants

I love drinking beer and talking about comics. So that's what I'm going to do.

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No one should trust me with eggs!!

🍳

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Who is your favorite serial killer?

mine is capitalism

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One of these days I’m just gonna get real into The Decemberists

and at that point there will be no turning back

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Sex Criminals

I sat down tonight to write a post about Sex Crimansl. But I just... can’t.

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my loneliness is killing me and I I must confess I still believe.

ancient proverb

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Reading your own writing is like smelling your own farts.

some idiot

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FAR CRY NEW DAWN

I’m not the dudeliest of bros out there. I don’t go in for MAdden or Call of Duty or whatever. I like games like Unfinished Swan and Flower and Everything. Gimme some bohemian art shit that ASKS QUESTIONS and forces you to decide What It All Means, yup I’m here for it.

So I’m as surprised as everybody else when FAR CRY IS MY SHIT, this is a videogame-ass videogame and it scratches an itch

I’ve played them since iunno like whatever one was on ps3 and they are TRULY GREAT. I think it’s because they leave SO MUCH up to the player, but it’s not so obnoxiously artsy open that you don’t know what to do. Your goal is to kill all those badguys in that fort, but HOW YOU DO THAT is up to YOU.

Want to play sneaky snakey?

Go ahead and play sneaky sneaky

Want to get a misslile launcher and a gat-ling gun and go al lin?

SURE BRO YOU DO YOU

Want to hire a fucking grandma with a sniper rile to do all the work fo you?

YES OF COURSE THIS IS AN OPTION

Want to BUTCHER A COW to BUILD SOME BAIT to LURE A BEAR to kill the bad guys for you?

AT THIS POINT NOTHING WOULD BE MORE REASONABLE

At this point in this blog (does anybody say blog anymore?) I’ve doxxed myself about 17 times, so by now all of you (all 4 of you) know that I am a software engineer by trade, and my favorite kind of code is the sandbox environment. Set up a bunch of initial states, let things interact how they will, and SEE WHAT HAPPENS

This is literally my favorite thing: EMERGENCE

the idea that a few small “rules” can lead to complex, and dare I say BEAUTY-FULL patterns and behaviores

You fool, do you think a snowflake knows how to form? No, it’s moleculres or whatever just DO THEIR THING. Do you think that the snowflake knows what it looks like in a blizzard? Do you think ants know what they look like from above, or that they’re building a colony? Do you think the neurons in our brain KNOW THEY ARE A BRAIN

swing it back bro

The reason I like the Far Cry series is because although it brands itself as a potato chip game, there’s actually a ton of creativity and freedom involved. And it’s just plain FUN. I will never get sick of standing on a hill and taking over a base using nothing but wild bears and grandmas.

SO WHATEVER I BUY FAR CRY NEW DAWN

and I’m ready for another Far Cry game, it’s gonna be some killing badguys in creative ways with wild animals and a nice completionist level-up system

INSTEAD I GET SADNESS

SPOILER ALERTS BELOW

Up until this point, each Far Cry game was its own thing. Maybe a tiny mention of Far Cry 3 in Far Cry 4, but if you didn’t play Far Cry 3 then you wouldn’t miss much, each one is its own thing.

Far Cry 5 ended with a nuclear bomb going off, and Far Cry New Dawn is a direct sequel to Far Cry 5.

Big fuckin oof.

As you play Far Cry 5, you spend 30-60-1000 hours in the WORLD they create. You learn the map, you learn the characters, what makes sense, what works, how it all interacts with who you are as a person

And that’s fun right, that’s the game. Haha lol I can make a bear eat these badguys, roflcopter I can start a forest fire that surrounds these badguys, yo look how good at a bow and arrow I am

But the trick is that it starts to feel like HOME. Your brains don’t know that this is just a vidyagame, so they’re scrambling to take in all this information. You get USED TO IT. You know who Hurk is, you know where the roads go, you know what’s safe and what’s dangerous

THIS IS BY DESIGN IT IS SOMEBODY’S JOB TO MAKE YOUR BRAIN FEEL THIS WAY

So the end of Far Cry 5 felt like a betrayal.

Most videogames end with you saving the world, you killing the badguy, wahoo what a hero. Far Cry 5 ends with a giant fuck you Thanos snap. You lose, the bomb goes off, the world ends, and oh by the way the main badguy drags you into a bunker to survive the nuclear fallout, and you’ll live the rest of your life in a dungeon with the man who ended the world. THE END

FAR CRY NEW DAWN STARTS 20 YEARS LATER IN THE SAME TOWN

So the roads you travel on are the same, but they’ve been overgrown with a fucking tidal wave of flowers. The houses you visited in the last game are now empty, except for what you can scavenge to stay alive. The people you talk to in this game remember the people you talked to in the last game, but it’s not the same as the last time you visited. It’s colorful and beautiful and fun, but it’s also fucking SAD.

This game is still about klling badguys in creative ways and levelling up your bullshit because you’re a fucking completionist, but the frame around all of that is fucking heartbreaking

Far Cry New Dawn does a good job of playing with the almost-memory you have of Far Cry 5, which most people played a few years ago and don’t quite remember. I have vague recollections of Nick Rye, so when I meet his daughter I feel FUCKIN WEIRD AND SAD AND APOLOGETIC for no real reason other than brains are fuckin wild. When I see signs for the bear from Far Cry 5, BUT I DON’T SEE THE BEAR, part of me is ALARMED by this for some reason. You dig through the scraps left behind by the community you met in the previous game, and it feels voyeuristic and personal and uncomfortable. But you keep doing it anyway.

This game is the most accurate depiction of “coming back to your hometown after you’ve been gone a few years” that I’ve seen, its only rival is Night in the Woods

So even though from the outside this game looks like Call of Duty guns pew pew pew, in reality this is a fucking simulation of creativity and emergence framed by the sadness of coming home to a dying community, knowing that nothing you do matters

but the least you can do is have fun with it and appreciate the beauty along the way

Beer pairing: are you kidding me

This looks like a lite beer but when you drink it it’s actually really good, and after you drink it for 5 years you realize how, fucking, sad, you are

Of course this is a Miller Lite

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spoiler alert: no she doesn’t.

@cliffchiang

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Star Trek the Next Generation: Home Soil

You ugly bags of mostly water

The first season of Star Trek the Next Generatio nis mostly terrible. Let’s just uhh, this is an episode:

Most season ones of most shows are terrible. We’re still figuring out the characters, still figuring out how the off-stage crew works toeghether (lighting is HARD), still figuring out what works ina plot or doesn’t. (looking at you Buffy)

Star Trek TNG holds a special fuckin place in my heart. It was the first show that was MINE, and I’ve rewatched it a few times and I’m honestly, like, PROUD that this is the show that raised me. I honestly feel like I’m a better person because I stumbled upon reruns of this show after my bio family fell asleep when I was on summer breaks. Without getting too INTO IT this show is uhhh fuckin great

Also I could ramble incoherently for at least 45 minutes about the PLACE that TNG found itself in. It was 20 years after the original series aired, before hte internet was really a thing. Back when fucking 45 minutes of every star trek movie was spent on “THJE REVEAL” of the enterprise. Who was this new captain? TV Guide says he’s bald, what?????????? How is this going to cmpareafdafdsfasfd asOMGGDFAFFD so excited, let’s tune in. Also the cold war is a thing and we’re dealing with the beginnings of a technocracy in our IRL lives, and what does this mean for a show that is SOOO fucking good at criticizing us for our actual bullshit???? LET’S WATCH SEASON ONE TO FIND OUT

But season one, as the kids would say, is a big oof. We got your overt racism, we got your weird sexism but almost feminism, we got your wait are the ferengis supposed to be scary or funny or just back to overtly racist? 

When I rewatch this show with somebody, I always give them the choice of skipping over most of season 1. Let’s get to that season 2 hotness where Riker has a beard and the writers have figured out who the characters are and the actors have figured out how to use that to work with each other

But you lose something with that, so I’m always happy to  

Anyway we watch the first half of season 1 and it’s a little bit pretty YIKES

But then we get to EPISODE EIGHTEEN HOME SOIL

and this is the first Star Trek the Next Generation episode to really feel like a Star Trek the Next Generation episode. I mean that as a high compliment.

Before this we had some weird clonse of the original series episodes, some weired racist episodes. We get one episode with Lwaxana Troi where the only good thing about it is Lwaxana Troi. We get a holodeck episode. We get Datalore which is great but isn’t quite TNG yet.

But HOME SOIL is the first episode that has all of the characters doing the right thing. Captain Picard is fucking CAPTAIN PICARD. Bev has her theories, Data says “Uncertain. Possibility...” a few times. Geordi does more than literally look out the actual fucking window (honestly season one you are giving me a rash). Wes is around but not obviously a fucking audience plant. Worf is well okay not quite there yet but still okay. Tasha is competent and beliveable. It feels like a well oiled machine

You’ve also got yourself a MORAL CONUNDRUM where it’s not quite good-vs-evil, things are complicated, and it’s all a bit of a metaphor meant to be planted in the brains of the children watching (spoiler alert: it worked)

This is Star Trek the Next Generation at its fucking core, for the firs time. It’s not, like, the best episode of all time (hey I, Hugh), but it’s the first SOLID TNG episode in season 1.

There are other good episodes in season 1. I already mentioned the Lwaxana episode and Datalore. The binar episode was memorable even if a little weird if you think about it. And I’m looking forward to a few other episodes in season 1, even if they don’t end up going anywhere (fuckin, alien bugs have infiltrated the highest ranks of star fleet, fucking why wasn’t that a Star Trek movie???!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!!?!???!!!??!.)

But my point is, Home Soil is the first real TNG episode, and I don’t think it gets enough credit. It’s dismissed as a clone of Dvil in the Dark (the TOS episode with the rug monsters that Spock mind melds)

And I’ll admint that when I started watching this tonight, I thought it was Quality of Life (the one with the drill robots)

But this episode is the first time I felt like I was home again, and it has me looking forward to everything that I know is about to happen.

Beer paring:

This is a seasonal beer that you really like, but you don’t quite remember liking after it goes out of season. But when the season rolls back around, you’re always PLEASANTLY SURPRISED by it. Oh shit, I forgot how good this is!

This is a 21st Amendment Watermelon beer

In my brain I don’t love this beer, but hot damn if I’m not excited every time I see one on tap again. Not only is it a decent beer by itself, but it means that other summer berers, not to mention fucking summer itself, is on its way. It sorta makes you stop and think and question things a bit (wait beer can be watermelony??) but mostly you like it because it means even better stuff is on its way.

Excited for season 2.

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ROBERT KIRKMAN AND THE END OF AN ERA

Walking Dead was the first comic book I read.

Before that, I mostly knew comics from 90s cartoons I watched when I was a kid. 

I would read about comics on wikipedia and get excited, the fact that Spider-Man and the X-Men shared the same universe was REAL NEAT in a way that I couldn’t quite explain, the idea of Big Events like House of M and Secret Wars was REALLY COOL to me, but I didn’t actually know how to go about reading those. I bought a couple issues off ebay, I wanted to like comic books, but I didn’t have enough context to really get into it. I had no idea that comics came out every Wednesday, or that there were options outside of MArvel and DC.

I was in college, working a shitty retail job, with a manager who saw through the veil. Life is meaningless, we’re all gonna die, humans are caterpillars with wasp eggs in our brain.

(this was before zombies or superheroes were cool, yes I know how hipster that sounds, whatever it was the early oughties)

So when this coworker pitches WALKIND DEAD to me I am ALL EARS. He tells me to check out the first trade paperback. I didn’t know what that meant, but I went to BARNES AND NOBLE because that was still a thin. This was the description on the back:

(I just dug this out of my closet, feels weird man)

and yes I know how edgelordy it seems now, but back then THIS GOT ME, this tapped into a frustration or frascination or SOMETHING that nothing else ever had in the same way

SO YEAH I GO AHEAD AND BUY THOIS FOR NINE DOILLARS AND NINETY NINE SENCSE

I read that first trade, which in hindsidght collects the first 6 issues, and then I’m at a loss. How to read more?? I wait for the next trade, and the next trade. I would go into barnes and noble every couple months and check if the next book was there (again, this was before I knew what I was doing, before everything was shoved down your throats, back when Walking Dead was something that nobody else heard about, yes I know I sound like a grouchy old man)

At this point I’m living in the cornfields of Lancaster county. I’m like 19, not sure if I should drop out of college or not.

I decided to Google the author Robert Kirkman, and I found out he wrote a bunch of other books. He wrote Wolfman and Brit and Battle Pope, the list goes on. WAIT A SECOND YOU CAN JUST BUY COMIC BOOKS OFF THE INTERNET?

So down the rabbit hole I go. Of course I stumble upon INVINCIBLE which is THE BEST SUPERHERO COMIC IN THE UNIVERSE so I start picking up those trades. This leads me to other trades, I read through WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and ULTIMATES and NIGHTLY NEWS. It’s all fuckin really exciting because these are some of the first comics I’ve read, and I’m going in completely fucking blind. HERE HAVE A NEW ART FORM WHY NOT READ JUST THE BEST THINGS FROM HISTORY HERE THEY ALL ARE AT ONCE

At this point it’s like 2009 and I’ve graduated college, I live in Maryland now, and maybe I’m going through some shit and one day when I’m getting a California Tortilla burrito I decide to step into a comic shop

“uhhh I’ve been getting the Walking Dead trades and the Invincible collections, I’ve read up to this point, how do I start reading the single issues or whatever you call them?”

Fucking honestly great job @bigplanetcomics​ in Silver Spring MD. Super welcoming to a newbie, and honestly helped me through some shit

They point me to the single issues of Walking Dead and Invincible. For a while I go there monthly, pick up the single issues, get my hair cut at Floyds, and eat a burrito for lunch. I start picking up other issues, the habit is certainly forming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZfKOmygkr4

This doesn’t mean anything to you but that is a TIME IN MY LIFE that I guess I’m being nostalgic about now. This was how I discourved comic books, mixed in with learning how to be an adult in a city that didn’t feel like home

Eventually I move to Virginia, it’s 2012 now and at this point I’m going to Big Planet Comics Vienna every Wednesday (that’s when new comis books come out, WHO KNEW, honestly they don’t tell you that and THEY REALLY SHOULD). I’m still picking up WALKING DEAD and INVINCIBLE, but I’m also picking up pretty much any new #1 that comes out, for better and often for worse

if you hand me an old issue of WALKING DEAD or INVINCIBLE right now, I can tel you what was going on in my life when that issue came out. What girl was I dating, what was I doing at my job, where was I eating lunch on Saturdays. Again, not super interesting to other people, but for me each issue is a window into my life that month, it’s 22 pages of who I used to be

The point I want to make but haven’t yet is that these books lead me to OTHER BOOKS. Robert Kirkman was always very open about WAlking Dead being a GATEWAY DRUg: “The Walking Dead, although I love it, is far from the best comic being published today.” so without Walking Dead, I would not have read PRETTY DEADLY or ALEX + ADA or RESIDENT ALIEN or EAST OF WEST or SQUIRREL GIRL or MS MARVEL or LUMBERJANES

Fast forward a few years, through some fuckin chapters in my biography, it’s 2016 now and I’m about to move to California. This is going to sound dumb but I only cried twice when I was moving. Once when I said goodbye to the girl I thought I would marry, and once when I asked for my pull list from Big Planet Comics for the last time.

Before I move to California, one of the first things I do is look up the local comic shop. I find one that’s between my apartment and my job. I go there the first Wednesday after I move, and I’ve gone there every Wednesday since then.

Whatever else is going on in my life, picking up my books on Wednesday has been a part of the routine for the last 10 years or so. And for that entire time, WALKING DEAD and INVINCIBLE have been with me through it all.

SO FUCK ME RIGHT when Robert Kirkman stabs me through the heart and tells me that INVINCBLE is ending. THAT LAST ISSUE IS like jumping ahead 50 years and looking through a photo album of the best friends you made in college, living life, finding meaning, and moving on without you. RYAN OTTLEY’s art has been a part of my ACTUAL FUCKING LIFE for so long that MY EYES AREN’T SURE WHAT TO DO WITHOUT HIM (other than to buy Spider-Man).

But Walking Dead is still going strong, right? WRONG. Extremely recently, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn PULLED A FAST ONE ON US and ENDED WALKING DEAD without announcing it ahead of time.

I bought issue 193, thinking it was a regular issue. It was not. It was the end.

I had no idea this was coming. 

And as part of that issue, one of the characters made this speech:

PLEASE UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH OF A MOMENT THIS WAS FOR ME

this was the excerpt I read in barnes and noble when I was 19 living in Lancaster not sure if I should drop out of college, passing through the years of monthly comic shop trips by myself in Maryland, through Virginia and lending out books to anyone who would listen, to California where my comic shop now has palm trees and I now have gray hairs and eye crinkles

Since I started reading Walking Dead and Invincible, zombies became overdone, superheroes went from “Jessica AlbaFantatsic Four movie” to Avengers Endgame. I went from terrified 19 year old to crinkly-eyed 33 year old. It’s hard not to look back on that transition and not feel.... sad

Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard and Ryan Ottley you sons of a bitches. I know it’s basic to like zombies and superheroes now, but YOU GOT ME THROUGH SOME THINGS and I honestly feel... thankful for the time we spent together. I know you’re working on other stuff now, and I’m excited for it. I’m also excited about other books like GIDEON FALLS and EAST OF WEST and PAPER GIRLS and SAGA. But I’m going to mourn this end of an era.

tl;dr: Invincible and Walking Dead are over. So are my twenties.

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OA SEASON 2

, waI ranted about season 1 here: https://drunkcomicbookrants.tumblr.com/post/155235546126/the-oa

I just watched season 2, here are some random takeways:

BIG TWIST: JON HAMM IS NOT THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS HAP

OKAY I WAS VERY WRONG, sorry Jon Hamm, sorry Jason Isaacs, you’re both great actors but IN MY DEFENSE I was watching the OA and Kimmy Shmidt at the same time and C’MON

BIG TWIST NUMBER TWO turns out one of my most annoying questions (why was the creeper psychologist in Prairie’s house in the middle of the damn night) was mostly addressed in season 2, that was a pleasant surprise

As I watched season 2 I bet myself 10 dollars that the “twist” Was going to be some bullshit parallel universe, steampunk blimps in the sky bullshit (looking at you fringe, and most fanfiction). PLEASANT SURPRISE GREAT JOB BRIT MARLING AND ZAL BATMANGLIJ, way to skip over that and go straight to season 4 meta right away, honestly pumped

also now I want to live in a houseboat, great, just what I needed, another existential crisis

THANKS @netflix

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gues who’s back on their bullshit

it me

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How dare you?

WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT

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What's clear is that things below worsened very quickly, in a matter of years, not even decades. Worsened in the ways you'd expect, yes --in power failures and dwindling resources-- but even more so through a kind of continued, frantic retreat from one another... countries backing away. People backing away within those countries. A kind of entropic double spiraling... the collection of units breaking apart, spinning outward and farther from the center, while every single unit spun tighter into itself. It wasn't just that the center no longer held; it was the sense that the center was the problem, the enemy, the thing to escape. The center was a distraction from the real conflicts, happening in YOUR life, happening here at the edges, farther out. The heart, it pumped out bad blood, bad cells of information, was itself made of bad stuff...

Scott Snyder and @jefflemire and @stevewands

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ROMERO AND JULIET

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COMIC BOOKS AS METAPHORS FOR ISSUES FACED BY THE DISENFRANCHISED

People say that comic books are an escape, and I think that’s mostly true: we see a hero punching a bad guy in the face, and we’re like YEAH, I wanna punch bad guys in the face!!!

But I think comic books do something on a... different level than that.

Sure, we think it’s fucking awesome when Spider-Mans punches the Lizard in its face (snout? wtf is a lizard nose). but the reason we think it’s awesome is because WE HAVE ALSO BEEN DISAPPOINTED BY OUR IDOLS in the same way that Peter Parker is disappointed by Curt Connors (you fuckin nerds I am too lazy to google the spelling).

Like sure Spider-Mans swinging through the air is fuckin sweet, but you know why we identify with him? BNECAUSE THE THOUGHT BUBBLES ARE HIM WORRIED ABOUT HAVING A CRUSH ON A GIRL THAT GOES TO HIS SCHOOL

And it’s not, like, a THICK metaphor, but a metaphor nonetheless: here’s this kid DEALING WITH RESPONSIBILITY and pressure and expectations and SHIT WE ALL DEALT WITH IN HIGH SCHOOOL, and it’s all magnified or amplified or whatever, but it RINGS TRUE in a way that FEELS FAMILIAR, 

And we like comic books for lots of reasons, but THIS IS ONE OF THOSE REASONS. The struggles of the people we’re reading about ARE THE STRUGGLES WE GO THROUGH on a dialy basis, like on a fucking boring banal pathetic daly basis (the redhead in my class doesn’t like me), but fuckin MADE TO SEEM OKAY AND EVEN COOL and like THERE ARE OTHERS LIKE YOU and fuckin, isn’t that fucking awesome

Before it gets away from me: ENTER MODERN COMICS

HULK

Enter Jennifer Walters, a woman who just had some shit happen to her. There is death and violence and her life is like a fucked up slightly shittier version than what it’s supposed to be. You know what I mean? Like do you ever feel like your life is ALMOST correct, if it weren’t for these FEW HUGE SIGNIFICANT BUT POTENTIALLY AVOIDABLE THINGS, but now it’s just shitty and fuckin, less colorful and less meaningful than it’s supposed to be? Like maybe let’s just stay in bed and watch netflix all day and not think too much about it?

THAT IS EXACTLY HOW JENNIFER WALTERS FEELS

And like, sorry I’m lazy and don’t feel like hooking up my scanner so this is a blurry cell phone picture, but THIS IS MY FAVORITE SCENE OF ANY HULK COMIC I’VE READ IN MY ENTIRE LIFE:

THIS IS JENNIFER WALTERS IN HER OWN APARTMENT FINDING A MIRROR THAT UNTIL RIGHT NOW SHE HAS BEEN TALL ENOUGH TO SEE INTO BECAUSE SHE HAS BEEN SHE-HULK GIANT GREEN STRONG POWERFUL SUPER POWERED AND TODAY SHE IS NOT THAT SO SHE IS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO STAND ON SO SHE CAN WORK TOWARDS FUNCTIONING LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING

like holy fuck you have felt that way haven’t you

And this comic keeps on going with this, uhhh METAPHORICAL EVERYDAY STRIFE

like this comic is called HULK and has a green superhero on the cover, but it spends the first half of the book on LEAVING YOUR OWN APARTMENT on a day that you don’t feel like it, and fuckin, THE STRUGGLE IS REAL in a non-obnoxious way, like the whole point is that YOU read this and you IDENTIFY with this, not because like sweet punching bad guys is aweseom, but because you SEE YOURSELF in this IN THE SAME WAY THAT I SAW MYSELF IN SPIDER-MANS WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN

AND ISN’T THAT FUCKING AWESOME AND BEATUFIUL AND ALL THE GOOD THINGS

back to the book, fuckin, of course it doesn’t stop there, because does your day stop at leaving the fucking house? IT SURE DON’T

OH GREAT SOME ASSHOLES HAVE SOME OPINIONS ON YOUR PHYSICAL APPEARANCE AND YOU HAVE TO BE POLITE ABOUT IT

this post is already longer than I wanted it to be and I’m not even to the first like thing I wanted to say: this book (which is HULK #1 by MARIKO TAMAKI and NICO LEON and just released liek two weeks ago, go to your local comic shop and pick up a copy right now) does this whole SUPERHERO PROBLEMS AS METAPHORS FOR OUR PROBLEMS in such a new and fucking different word for refreshing way.

Like, we know how Bruce Banner gets angry and turns into the Hulk and is powerful and fights and is a superhero and stuff, right. And Jennifer Walters has basically those same powers. But because some shit went down (you don’t have to know about that shit before picking up this first issue), she no longer feels that way, she uhhhhh spoiler alert has PTSD (because fucking in a super powererd world, LOTSA PEOPLE WOULD JUST LIKE LOTSA PEOPLE DO IN REAL LIFE)

So now instead of getting angry and turning into the Hulk, TURNING INTO THE HULK FEELS LIKE A PANIC ATTACK

And I’m not trying to be an asshole. I don’t have an anxiety disorder, but I’ve heard it described. And this book describes it in exactly the same way. So I can’t help but think that people who are going through anxiety stuff would read this book and feel similar feelings to what I felt when I watched Spider-Mans in 8th grade.

And like, if you’ve read this far, then maybe you’ve felt that way. And I drunkenly urge you to zoom into these blurry pictures and read these words. And if they seem familiar, then maybe go out to your local comic shop and pick this issue up, or check it out on comixology or whatever internet thing the kids are using these days

ENTER HAWKEYE

I didn’t intend for this post to be all about Hulk. Because a bunch of books are doing similar things. Hawkeye is one of them.

Hawkeye is Kate Bishop who is out in the world trying to make it and SPOILER ALERT PEOPLE ARE CREEPS

Again, I hope you read those words, but basically this is Kate Bishop (who is a superhero sorta) apprehending a boy who has been stalking a girl and she asks why, and his answer is that he loves her. AND YOU HAVE PROBABLY HEARD OR HAD SIMILIAR CONVERSATIONS HAVEN’T YOU

And then, the conversation continues and it turns out that the boy says he feels like it wasn’t even him, and again, fuckin, you’ve had similar conversations

And in true comic book fashion it goes up to twelve and shit turns ridiculous, but at its core these conflicts and conversations and worries and whatevers ARE THINGS FROM YOUR REAL FUCKING LIFE

AND THEN SHE GETS OUT SOME ARROWS AND IT FEELS AWESOME

BUT THE REASON IT FEELS AWEOMSE IS BECAUSE WE HAVE SO MUCH INVESTED IN THE FUCKIN METAPHOR OF IT ALL RIGHT

(not to mention that the action in this book captures the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye in such a perfect way but that’s neither here nor there)

btw this is Hawkeye by Kelly Thompson (@1979semifinalist) and Leonardo Romero (@leonardoromero11) and Jordi Bellaire and it’s currently on issue 2, pick it (and its first issue) up while you’re getting the Hulk issue

None of this is new. This goes back to the first comic book, probably before that. Superman is an alien in a new world trying to make the best of a bad situation, written by a bunch of jews right before WW2. Read into that however you want, but the point is that comic books have been doing this for a long time.

But in the last few years, that, uh, idea has spread beyond the typical “I’m a white dude who’s awkward around girls and high school is hard” metaphor. And I’m saying that as a white dude who is awkward around girls, and yes high school was hard, and yes comic book characters “helped me through” that shit. But like, Captain Marvel is a woman taking (pick a better word) a man’s job and wondering about WHAT THAT MEANS FOR HER IDENTITY and what other people think. Kamala Khan’s original most powerful superpower was to BECOME WHITE AND HIDE HER BROWN-NESS FROM HER FRIENDS, and I dunno man, I’m not great at metaphorical thinking or whatever, but it doesn’t take a ton of abstract thought to go from that to a real life Pakistani Jersey girl feeling like she doesn’t fit in, identifying with that when she reads it.

IN THE EXACT SAME WAY THAT I FELT ABOUT SPIDER-MANS WHEN I WAS DISENFRANCHISED

and maybe this is why the manbabies with their belly buttons popping out of their sci-fi logo tshirts take such offense to this. This is THEIR METAPHOR, you know what I mean? They (we?? oh god...) grew up identifying with these characters, this universe, and not to get too weird about it, a lot of the weirdness we felt was because girls thought we weren’t cool... which sounds (and is) pathetic, but I dunno, do you want to point a magnifying glass at your teenage insecurities and how you dealt with them?

Anyway, fast forward fifteen years and now this universe is filling up with metaphors that we don’t immediately identify with, in fact these metaphors are geared more towards the girls who didn’t pay attention to us in high school (who our metaphors were about?!), and I dunno, I don’t agree with it and don’t identify with it, but I UNDERDAND IT A LITTLE BETTER if that makes any sense?

The point is, comic books act as a metaphor for shit we deal with on a daily basis, and even (especially?) if you don’t think comic books are for you, CHANCES ARE THEY PROBABLY ARE so go check em out. 

And if you’re feeling pushed out of your metaphor by these newcomers, I dunno man, maybe go up to them (make sure your belly button isn’t sticking out first) and say (in a non-creepy and expecting nothing way) “hey, you like comics? me too! let’s be friends!”

[drunkcomicbookrants]

THE OA

SPOILERS FOR THE OA FORTHCOMING

SRSLY if you’re goign to watch The Oa on Netflix don’t keep reading.

Honestly I mostly loved this show, my second least favorite thing was that I knew TWO TINY THINGS going in (that one episode was particularly crazy and the last 10 minutes of another episode was particularly crazy), so I beg of you to stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet

ANYWAY HERE GOES

Here’s my entire post: At the end of episode 5, the one guy reveals, to us and his fellow prisoners, that the technology / communication is through MOVEMENTS, and it only works WITH ALL OF THEM working together. “The first two movements are XYZ. We need Five movements to escape. I have the third movement.”

AND I BELIEVED HIM

Not in the, like, angels are real in real life way. But in the, I buy this fiction, my disbelief has been suspended, I am on board with this show way.

AND THAT ONLY WORKED BECAUSE ALL OF THE ACTORS WERE WORKING TOGETHER. They were DOING MOVEMENTS in a, uh, synergistic way that fucking BOUNCED OFF EACH OTHER and COMBINED and was TRANSMITTED to, uh, the viewer, to me, in that moment, to fuckin uh ENHANCE IF NOT TRANSCEND my preexisting reality

And laright that sound a little more high falootin than I mean it. The point is a question: was that moment a metaphor for art, specifically for acting, for the TEAMWORK and MOVEMENTS that happen between writing, uh producing, acting, fuckin sounding, to communicate with you while you sit on your couch and eat tofurkey and watch netflix?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but thinking about it honestly made me lose sleep that night. I think that’s abot the highest compliment you can pay a work of art.

THE CONS

That being said, of course the last episode made me a little bit meh. The big finale “felt” a little, uh, forced? And leading up to that as you realize that of course they aren’t going to give you a real concrete answer to any of this and you aren’t goign to be sure about anything, and mostly that’s fine, but on the other hand... fuckin, there’s a line between artistic and lazy right... or not lazy, but uh, I’m a writer and I don’t know how it should end so i make it ABSTRACT and say IT’S REALLY UP TO THE READER, there’s something frustrating about that right.

But other than that, even buying into it all, there are questions in the bad way, not in the “I’m a giant nerd and I’ve obsessed over this and have one of those maps with red threads pinned to it to reveral the real truth” way, but in the THIS CONTRADICTS ITSELF way

Why did she have her fiddle in new york? Like, I’m running away and not even taking a suitcase. But I better take my fiddle!

How long was she in New York? Like did she have an apartment? Where did she sleep?

In one scene in the present, we see her closet. And there’s a fiddle in it. Didn’t she bring that to new york? I guess I can buy that she had multiple fiddles. And yeah I know that it wasn’t a fiddle. And yeah I also know that technically they’re the same thing.

Why was the psychologist guy in her house in the middle of the night?

Why did she have a box with exactly and only the books that made her look guilty? Like presumably she read more than those FOUR BOOKS AND ONLY THOSE FOUR BOOKS. For fucks sake at least make it a bookshelf with other books on it right

And I guess maybe there’s a question, is the psychologist a bad guy and he planted the books, but I dunno man, that feels like a forced twist, fuckin, I liked that the psychologist was a good guy, that’s a good fucking message innit, don’t cheapen that!!!

Most of the shit we see is SUBJECTIVE and MAYBE SHE’S LYING ABOUT, it’s untestable right, it’s like “did this happen or didn’t it” and that leaves it up to us as the view er right

BUT THE FIRST TWO MOVEMENTS HEAL

So like, the fuckin fantastic 5 can’t be sure about what she’s saying, they can’t google to confirm or deny her story, some books in a box make them doubt it completely

BUT THEY HAVE THE FIRST TWO MOVEMENTS

so like go find a sick kid and fuckin dance your heart out, right, that’ll prove it one way or the other

also the oa standing for what it does was simultaneously such a badass and such a eye rolley moment

ANYWAY

I fucking loved this show. Part of enjoying something is recognizing what you don’t like about it, so don’t get it twisted. My fundamental point is that the actors (and writers and caterers and_) did such a fucking great job that I bought into the universe and maybe that MEANS SOMETHING or maybe it doesn’t, but it made me fuckin THINK

Also I wonder if Jon Hamm is afraid of being typecast as a creepy guy who keeps people locked in a basement

Or maybe Jon Hamm enjoys beign typecast as a creepy guy who keeps people locked in teh basement

BEER PAIRING

I DUNNO YOU DECIDE