Cartoon: The Slavemaster’s Son

Go to: The Nib, by Sukjong Hong

For context, read Alex Tizon's article.

Flash #22

Story: Joshua Williamson
Art: Howard Porter
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letters: Steve Wands
Cover: Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson

Flash (Barry Allen) created by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino.
Jay Garrick created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert.
Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

The last instalments of “The Button” story arc felt like an exercise of running in place. Clues were teased and some moments were played out for their nostalgic value. But there was a dearth of actual revelations. The origins of the smiley face button are never discovered, and the powerful entity Reverse Flash refers to as “God” remains hidden. This last chapter doesn’t advance any of the main plot points. On the contrary, both Batman and Flash get to witness again the death of Eobard Thawne at the hands of his unseen God.

The comic’s primary attraction, as made clear from the cover, is in its teasing of a reunion with the original Flash Jay Garrick. As in the guy from the 1940s who used to live on Earth 2, not his New 52 counterpart. The character’s presence is of enormous symbolic importance. And his teammate Johnny Thunder has already put in an appearance. DC isn’t quite ready yet for the full restoration of the classic Golden Age milieu. So we only get a few pages of Barry and Jay interacting before the latter is pulled back into the chaotic timestream.

After four issues, Batman and Flash have little to show for their investigation. What they found out is pretty much what they already knew when DC Rebirth began. And they lost the button to Doctor Manhattan. Not that they know this yet, because DC is is still holding off on this revelation, even though this isn’t a surprise to anyone following their comics for the last several months. The reasons for the story’s lack of forward movement are revealed in its epilogue - essentially an advertisement for the upcoming event that will be the official coming out of the Watchmen characters, Doomsday Clock. And as if to show that things are finally getting serious, the panels revert back to the nine panel grid first used in Batman #21. Look out folks! It’s the battle of the Supermen.

More Nonsense: Kung fu Kenny Edition

Go to: DNA, by Kendrick Lamar

Marvel had to release a statement to reassure fans, due to the backlash over its latest event Secret Empire.

At Marvel, we want to assure all of our fans that we hear your concerns about aligning Captain America with Hydra and we politely ask you to allow the story to unfold before coming to any conclusion.

1978 documentary The World of Comic Books is now available online. It's an interesting time capsule of the Bronze Age comics industry, complete with onomatopoeia (pow, swoosh, boom!), canned sound effects, and accompanying bombastic narration that could have been written by Stan Lee himself. The documentary even gets to throw shade at the casual sexism of comics fandom. But the best part is seeing artists such as Neal Adams, Jim Steranko and Trevor Von Eeden in their prime.

Nicola Streeten reports on two comics exhibitions: Shoah et bande dessinée and The Inking Women.

Jia Tolentino profiles G. Willow Wilson.

Christopher Butcher talks TCAF.

Tom Spurgeon reports from this year's TCAF.

It's time for the Jedi to end. And it just took 40 years.

Shawn Setaro on the connection between kung fu cinema and hip hop culture.

Robert Foyle Hunwick on the rise of Chinese fight clubs.

Maren Williams on the sedition charges brought against Fahmi Reza for portraying Prime Minister Najib Razak as a clown.

Charles Pulliam-Moore on the death threats levelled against transgender webcomic creator Sophie Labelle.

It boggles the mind that there are racist Star Trek fans who reject the cast of the latest series Discovery. It's Star Trek!

R.I.P. Roger Moore (October 14, 1927 –  May 23, 2017). He was the James Bond of my generation.

Libby's Dad

By Eleanor Davis.

Libby’s Dad examines how children tackle what is for them one of life’s great mysteries, the grownups who control them. What exactly is it that drives their behaviour? Do they even share the same feelings we experience? The setting is a pool party attended by several prepubescent girls, held at the newly purchased house resided by Libby. The titular character is largely absent from the comic, but is the source of the girls’ attention once one of them passes along a piece of gossip regarding the recent divorce of Libby’s parents. They try to square this information with the hospitality they’ve experienced first hand. How could Libby’s dad be the bad guy when he allowed the girls to hold a pool party, eat cake, and even bought them delicious KFC? The vast gulf between perception and reality is only magnified by the immaturity and very limited outlook of children.

Eleanor Davis draws a brightly colored, but claustrophobic milieu. The girl’s own simplified world view represented by lineart rendered entirely in colored pencils, and figures drawn with flattened perspective. Backgrounds are minimal, with Davis eschewing conventional panel borders for strong color fields. The same visual elements which envelop the girls in comforting familiarity are flipped halfway through to become immediately terrifying when they begin to seriously reconsider the validity of the rumors. The broadly defined art’s lack of subtle gradations capturing the girls’ constant inability to comprehend the moral ambiguity of the surrounding adult world. Everything about that place just fades to white.

Off course, the comic is written from an adult’s viewpoint of children’s behaviour. Davis doesn’t bother to answer the questions raised by the girls about the true relationship between Libby’s parents. Only to show how the girls are easily misled by the different scraps of information they’re fed. They’re quickly swayed by the comforts of the house, an elegant example of sleek mid-20th century modern design. They have a child’s obsession with associating with the proper brand identity, hence the affection for the aforementioned KFC, or exemplified later in a cutting remark about the impropriety of crying into a box of fruit-themed cereal. The girls share the inability to sustain any kind of introspection, not atypical for children their age. And there’s a casual cruelty to their value judgements that reduces everything to a zero sum game, familiar to any kid caught in an argument about who has the coolest parents. It's a warped view mirrored in their grotesque features.

So there’s a lot about the comic that feels surprisingly complex and nuanced, not to mention true to life when regarding how children often fail to process much of the world around them. And it’s beautifully drawn with tools that rarely receive this level of prominence.  If there’s  one criticism I would level, it’s that Libby’s Dad ends with a bait and switch that can feel a little premature. Or maybe I’m disappointed that its young characters didn’t really acquire any real insight. I guess, every child needs their reassuring illusions.

Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice

Go to: Fusion, by Adam Bessie and Erik Thurman

Flash #21 & Batman #22

Flash #21
Story: Joshua Williamson
Art: Howard Porter
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letters: Steve Wands
Variant Covers: Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson, Mikel Janin

Flash (Barry Allen) created by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino.

At the end of the last installment, Barry Allen scurried over to the Batcave only to find a bloodied and unconscious Batman, and the burned corpse of Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse Flash. This issue of The Flash opens with another superhero joining the time-displaced Saturn Girl in knowing that something is terribly amiss with the DC Universe. An aged Johnny Thunder screams his magic word to the heavens, only to wait in vain for his faithful Thunderbolt. He clearly remembers the existence of the Justice Society of America. Not that it helps when a bunch of orderlies show up to drag him back to his room at the retirement home. Johnny is just the first sign of the returning pre-New 52 Universe. This issue then keeps tapping into fandom’s nostalgia for DC's past.

To begin with, Barry admits to the convalescing Batman about experiencing visions of the Helmet of Mercury. But Johnny’s returning memories would indicate that Barry is actually foretelling the return of his predecessor Jay Garrick. And if that’s not enough, Barry later shows up at a cavernous Justice League storage room filled with artifacts that should not exist in the New 52. What could the Flash want from this outlandish and never before seen collection? Oh right.

The Cosmic Treadmill is a familiar Flash plot device, but has been virtually absent since the New 52 era began. So its reappearance means that some weird sh#@ is about to go down. Barry plans to use the treadmill to trace Thawne back to wherever he came from. He’s joined by the still injured Batman, because no one really talks him out of an investigation even when his health is on the line. Where do they end up? A most impossible place.

Batman #22
Story: Joshua Williamson, Tom King
Art: Jason Fabok
Colors: Brad Anderson
Letters: Deron Bennett
Variant Covers: Tim Sale, Brennan Wagner

Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

According to Barry Allen, Flashpoint should not exist. Flashpoint isn’t an alternative reality, but a badly damaged DC Universe. Barry should know, since he was there when it was erased and then replaced by the New 52 timeline. Barry also sounds like every irate fan reading this comic. And that’s because he and Batman are somehow back at Flashpoint as if Barry never left. And they’re both facing this timeline's Batman, Thomas Wayne. Then they get to fight a bunch of Atlanteans and Amazons, because the issue needs some gratuitous violence to distract from dialogue that is basically a trio of superheroes arguing about their metafictional status. The big takeaway of their conversation is that only something immensely powerful could be messing with the DC Universe, since this mysterious entity can sustain an entire nonexistent timeline. At this point, I’ll be disappointed if no one less than Geoff Johns doesn’t show up at the end to explain his nefarious plan to control all reality by roofying Doctor Manhattan with the aid of Donald Trump.

Otherwise, this feels like an excuse to have Bruce Wayne meet his would-be father as an adult crimefighter. Batman has so far been pretty much a passenger on Barry's inter-dimensional chase. And it’s not as if Barry alone couldn’t have quickly mopped the floor with the bad guys while fixing his damaged treadmill. But at least fans get to witness just how awkward the imagined reunion would have been between these two emotionally stunted males who both like to cosplay as bats. The only weapon Thomas has left to fight the Atlantean and Amazon forces storming the gates is the gun that was used to kill his child. But fully-grown Bruce quickly swats it away. Did he forget just how severely injured he still is from fighting Thawne, or is Bruce just that much of a self-righteous prick? Still, Thomas gets the last word in when he tells his son that he doesn’t need to be Batman anymore.

Hey, the story arc is finally rushing to its conclusion. Where will the dynamic duo end up next? Will Bruce heed his father's sensible advice to raise a family? Maybe we'll finally get some real answers? Hah. Just kidding.

Cartoon: I'm Not a Robot

Go to: The Nib, by Ashanti Fortson

The Circle (2017)

Director: James Ponsoldt
Writers: James Ponsoldt, Dave Eggers
Stars: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega

Based on the book by Dave Eggers.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is a young woman who lands a job at The Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company. Think of it as a mashup of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple. Its signature product is TruYou, an ill-defined piece of software that’s every social media platform and cloud service all rolled into one convenient online identity. The Circle’s company motto is “Sharing is caring”, and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) advocates for a form of radical transparency, which he intones with the words “Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better.” Eamon is first spotted at one of the company’s regularly held Friday meetings, run like a typical slick keynote staged within a large auditorium. Hanks applies his trademark charm when plying his character’s own version of a reality distortion field. So is he supposed to be another tech visionary freeing the world from its petty vices, or a rapacious business person who will end up destroying it? Or is he just failing to practice what he preaches? The film never comes to any answer. Its message becomes increasingly muddled until it arrives at an ending that apparently wants to play it more than one way.

This is seen in Mae’s journey through the film. At first she’s a little incredulous of The Circle’s corporate culture. This part of the film plays like a satire of contemporary Silicon Valley, which is presented as a hive mind passive-aggressively encouraging every employee to maintain an active online presence, then rates the quality of those interactions. Any dip in quality or drop in activity sends some other employee concernedly scurrying towards Mae to enquire if anything’s gone wrong with her life.

via cinema vine

But the story takes a half-hearted turn towards conspiracy thriller when Mae befriends Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), the creator of TruYou. The disillusioned co-founder has become suspicious of his company’s increased monopolistic presence. He seems intent on recruiting Mae for... something, while she still hasn’t fully drunk the kool aide. But nothing comes of it, and Ty is reduced to a scowling presence in the background. On the contrary, Mae turns into a full-blown evangelist for The Circle’s goals, even becoming a guinea pig for the company’s latest experiments in total transparency. A couple of plot twists later, and Mae has changed her mind again. Or has she? Mae is always looks very earnest, but also exists in a state of perpetual confusion. In the end, she doesn’t seem to know what she wants.

The Circle is the second Hollywood feature this year to explore similar themes. The first was the critically panned Ghost in the Shell. Both are stories about the hero's conflict with a powerful technology corporation peddling an attractive form of utopianism while hiding a more unsavory underbelly. The latter follows a much more formulaic route. It ends with the clear defeat of the bad guys and the validation of a triumphalist brand of individualism. The Circle aims for greater social relevance, but mostly succeeds at being broadly alarmist. It hints at philosophical introspection, but is a little too wedded to our present. I get the impression the filmmakers were made to write a more conventional ending instead of logically following the premise to arrive at a more interesting conclusion. Or maybe they suffered from a loss of nerve.

via cinema vine

Cartoon: ISIS And The Middle East’s Vanishing Religious Minorities

Go to: The Nib, by Andy Warner

Animation: Hate for Sale

Go to: Vimeo, by Anna Eijsbouts (via Cheryl Eddy)

Hate for Sale

Hate for sale. All the very best
Hate for sale. Vintage stuff.
Do my cries excite your interest?
Lovely hate. Your life is rough.

Buy my hate. You'll come right back for more.
Hate for sale. Enough to start a war.
Hate the rich, the brown, the black, the poor.
Hate is clean. And hate will make you sure.

Hate for sale. You'll feel superior.
Hate for sale. You'll make the news.
Hate the families who come here fleeing war.
Hate the gay. The trans. The new. The Jews.

Don't need to care who you detest
Hate makes you feel a whit less scared
To know that your group is the best
And burn to ashes all the rest
Who will not face the real test
But showed up naked, unprepared
To be sent back, or drowned, or hurled
back into the abyss. Your world
will be so safe, so clean, so great.
And all you needed was some hate.

Hate for sale. All the very best
Hate for sale. Vintage stuff.
Do my cries excite your interest?
Hate for sale. Never enough.

- Neil Gaiman