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demiurgent Whistling in the Dark -
wednesday eyecatch
So… I read this, and I looked through a lot of the comments connected to it….
Um….
Most of these aren’t misspellings. They’re homonyms or nearly so. Lose and loose aren’t misspelled — they’re being misused. Your and you’re. There, they’re and their, and so on and so forth. In fact, the only three spelling errors being corrected in the whole piece are weird, ‘a lot’ and definitely.
I wouldn’t normally care, but if you’re going to put out an entire strip being pedantic, try really hard to use words correctly.
(via itswallie)
(via demiurgent)
So, medication change has been changing… um… me. Which is a good thing. And means I can actually type something here. I’ll take that.
So… um….
Look, I hate — hate — the whole “I will never use math” thing. We learn math to be a well rounded individual. And I say this as someone who sucks at Math. But the above… um…
Well, it makes no sense. At all.
First off — people actually do cook. It is, in fact, a survival skill. Those folks who went to Home Ec (and I really wish I had) actually use home ec skills for the rest of their lives.
Second, I did play and learn music. And I haven’t actually played the tuba since my high school graduation—
What? Tuba was awesome.
Anyway — I’ve still used music for the rest of my life. The concepts I learned in music have recurred constantly. We’re surrounded by music. Knowledge of the baseline, the treble line, harmony and melody — these are all things that come up, time and again. You might not play music, but you bring your increased understanding of music to your everyday life.
And you know what? People bring arithmetic to their everyday lives too. And geometry — which at my school was learned after algebra. But the girl in the panel is right — she hasn’t in fact needed to factor equations in her life since school, barring working in a specialist field. So no, this is not an A=B=C situation. We’re taking generalist situations people do in fact use in their daily lives and comparing them to a specialist situation most people don’t use in their daily life.
As for learning a foreign language? Well, I could make an argument there, too — but it’s probably easier to point out that throughout my schooling, the recurring argument was “why do I have to learn French? I’m never going to use this.” So, um… yeah. People do in fact use that same argument with foreign languages. Often.
They also use that same argument with Shakespeare. And Western Civ. And Biology.
Point of fact, people are short sighted. They value the things they are interested in. They don’t value the things they aren’t interested in. That’s human nature, and it’s not limited to any one subject.
The thing is, Munroe values math, so he’s overly aware of it when it connects to math. But this doesn’t come across as a universal truth. It comes across as sour grapes. Heck, if I were going to caption this, I’d write “deep inside Janice, the miracle of life was busy factoring the next generation’s genetic code through algebraic expressions, but then she never used what she learned in Health Class either.”
Yes, genetics are mapped out using algebra. Startled me too.
Bear in mind, this could be the headaches, stress and brain damage talking?
But this may be the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
I’m not ‘back,’ whatever that means in this context. Illness beat me down and then the start of the school year with its glorious 90 hour weeks and no weekends off and…
Yeah.
Though we bought a grill. It’s still in the car, mind, but we bought it. But I digress.
I couldn’t let this strip go by without making an observation, though. In The Giving Tree, the tree gives of itself, time and again. At no point does the tree get its branches or tree trunk back.
Also, whether or not the tree has a USB port, I’m relatively certain it’s not Shel Silverstein. Since the giving tree gives of itself in sacrifice, time and again, for a child who quite honestly is on the selfish side, I’m not certain the metaphor works even a little. The tree doesn’t give up a thing it bought that someone else made. It gives of its own substance. And the tree certainly doesn’t lend it.
Look, I’m all for DRMless electronic books — especially since 95% of my book purchases are electronic now. (Honestly, it’s to the point that when I get a paper book, it seems needlessly inconvenient to me.) But… this just doesn’t work. That it feels like an anvil being hammered down on top of it all and the surrealist element isn’t executed well enough to break either the willing suspension of disbelief or absurdist thresholds (a USB port in a tree? The tree is… one big flash drive? Huh?) just makes it more jarring.
It reminds me of the strip he did about Facebook privacy issues. In that one, he conflated the open source community’s dislike of Microsoft Office in the early noughts with Facebook privacy issues, along with reductionist tendencies, claiming that folks who thought the Microsoft Word format thing was overblown were often idiots who accused Open Source advocates of autism were getting their just deserts on Facebook having questionable privacy policies. Which… just kind of laid there on the ground after he posted it, smelling somewhat strange and giving the reader the sense that Munroe just didn’t get something about all this. (For the record — most true word processing programs including various Open Source ones and a surprising number of straight text editors will open .doc format files without any trouble at all. Way more, it must be said, than those that can open ODF files.)
It’s not the causes, in other words. It’s his execution of his statement. There’s a vague feeling of smug prediction that’s coupled with a sense that he hasn’t quite connected with his material that just makes it all… odd.
Honestly, it’s days like this I miss Illiad from User Friendly. He didn’t always stick the landing on his jokes, but I never got the sense he was trying to play Quake with keyboard macros set up for The Sims.
It’s been too long. Hopefully, in the coming week we’ll be back up to speed. Sorry for the delay.
But though it is late at night, I need to check in.
You see, I wasn’t particularly interested in Batwoman.
Really. I really wasn’t. I was glad she existed — we need more strong female characters and many times more strong LGBT characters in the DC Universe, but something about her didn’t click for me. It felt too… I don’t know. Twee. Or like a cynical branding exercise, with a dose of tokenism thrown in.
Then, I read 52. And I was intrigued more than I expected. And I had heard good things alongside it. But… still. If Stephanie Brown as Batgirl was transformative, the concept of Batwoman seemed… less so.
But, Batwoman: Elegy was at our nearest Borders, and we were in looking at the deep discounted stuff, and I thought “well, I should see what the shouting is about.”
It is quarter to four in the morning. I have just finished this book.
Oh. My. God.
From this day forward, if something has the name ‘Batwoman’ and the name ‘Greg Rucka’ on it, I will read it. I will read all the Detective she was in. I will read the newer J. H. Williams III-penned and drawn series on the strength of his artwork for this collection alone.
Stephanie Brown is everything I want Batgirl to be, though I’m going to give the redux-Barbara Gordon series a chance, because it’s Gail Simone. But as far as I’m concerned, Gotham City’s signature defender is the one with the red logo. That dour guy with the abandonment issues should find some other place to glower in. He can just get in Batwoman’s way.
I’m posting the whole thing because it’s brilliant and I don’t care what the all mighty Miller thinks, that doesn’t change the facts. btw I personally credit Dini & Timm more with the modern version of Bats if only because they brought it to the masses and solidified his…
You should totally read the whole thing.
However, my comment is substantially different. Not because I disagree — I don’t. But because… well, let’s consider the source, here.
Frank Miller says that Batman and Superman would never be friends. And if one looks at The Dark Knight Returns et al and takes The Goddamned Batman as gospel, it’s clearly true. Why?
Because Frank Miller’s Batman isn’t friends with anyone.
He has some affection for Commissioner Gordon, except when Gordon gets in his way. The same with everyone else. But in the end, Miller Batman despises everyone from Dick Grayson to Ollie Queen. Sometimes people are useful. But they aren’t equals. There are no equals. And in the end, Batman only relies on himself.
There are only two basic exceptions. One is Alfred, who Batman relies on but disregards. I think he likes Alfred. I think he liked Ace the Bat Hound too, for similar reasons.
The other are young, alienated children.
Oh, he doesn’t like them enough to treat them well. That will just make them weak. But he sees himself in them. He liked Dick — his little monkey wrench — who he made fun of and who we later learned he tortured, as a child. But then Dick grew up, and so they stopped talking entirely, because an adult is a man, and Batman doesn’t trust men. Boys, maybe. Not men. Carrie he liked for the same reason. She’s a girl, she’s scrappy, she doesn’t take shit. And she’s young.
Everyone else might — might — get Batman’s respect. But his friendship? There is no such thing. There is no reason for it. It doesn’t serve the War.
Now, Frank Miller is free to characterize Batman that way all he likes, but that doesn’t make it the accepted, Canonical Batman. Even Christian Bale’s Batman, in the end, owes as much to Jeff Loeb and Denny O’Neill as it does to Frank Miller. This is something Frank Miller lost sight of along the way. In his heart, he believes his is the One True Batman. And one thing about the One True Batman is he doesn’t like anyone.
The depressing thing about all of this is The Dark Knight Returns works much, much better if we take the World’s Finest image of Batman and Superman as canon in their youth, and extend it to their logical conclusions at the end. A Superman and Batman who did like each other but who in the end could only be enemies is a thousand times more interesting than a Batman who’s always been a dick because that’s way cool.
I’m sure at least three of you asked yourselves after Eric’s recent posts, “yes, but why hasn’t Wednesday posted about DC highlights from her favourite parallel universe?”
Having now imagined those three people, I’m delighted to tell you why: most of it just doesn’t grab me. That’s fine. I realize that, as a non-equine and an accursed meat-eater at that, they don’t really want my money. They didn’t want my money anyway, though, because it’s not made out of bread.
(Never get your locations messed up like that, by the way. The last time I brought bread down to the semi-local comics shop, they looked at me like I wasn’t rooted in consensus reality. Again. They also asked me to consider using a poolish.)
Anyhow. These are some of the titles which have been getting the most coverage.
Homicidal Lesbian Suicide Squad:
It’s a fascinating direction for Harley Quinn, but not completely unexpected.
Deitective Comics:
I understand DC’s impulse to resurrect and revisit the earliest forms of their heroes. Their desire to make manifest their in-house nostalgia is incredibly clear, even as they render groups like the Teen Titans unrecognizable. I also realize that we’ll be seeing more popular characters like Hathor later on, as titles die within two to four issues only to be replaced by new ones.
That said, they’ve done unfathomable damage by not giving this title to Grant Morrison. Only the devout are likely to recognize Bat.
Legion Lost:
Maybe it’s just that I’m not the target demographic and it’s not for me, but if I wanted to spend three bucks on scans of milk cartons every damned month, I’d be reading whatever upcoming title they haphazardly stuff Hathor into.
Which is probably Teen Titans. I told you it was unrecognizable.
Action Peanuts Comics:
“Here comes Clark Kent. Good ol’ Clark Kent. How I hate him.”
Titles about Superman/Clark Kent are great when you want something you never actually have to end, so they’ve nailed it here. The angst of being alien not only to this world, but everyone around him, means that Clark will never really fit in. Besides, when you hide your superpowers all the time, you definitely can’t win the baseball game. Or anything else. Ever.
Why the heck Clark gave his blanket to baby Jimmy van Olsen in 1952, we’ll never know, but Krypto is really good at stealing it. Fetch.
(Maybe it’s too nerdy of me, but I hope they revisit that arc from the Silver Age where Clark explores his desire to be called “Flash” Kent.)
Red Lantern:
Personally, I think this whole concept is just so played out.
hipster-ranger Asks:
Spider-man is one of Marvel's most iconic characters. Hell, he's probably their most recognizable, and one of the more realistic (behaviorally, not with regard to his powers or storylines) heroes in the Marvel line-up.
As I recall, you prefer DC to Marvel, and this isn't Marvel's mainstream continuity, but I'm curious for your perspective on how this move plays off. Genuinely interesting? Belated tokenism? Too soon to tell?
websnark Said:
I prefer DC to Marvel, but I’m not beholden to it. And my magical “read everything Marvel has on the web” subscription means I’m doing a lot of revisiting old loves. (Iron Man has never been better than when he had Eighties Hair, damn it!)
My thoughts on Miles Morales are many and varied — and if there’s a better way for Marvel to distance themselves from the troubles DC had over SDCC, I can’t think of it off the top of my head — but honestly Janice Collier has already written about this at length, and her feelings pretty much reflect mine, so go ahead and read her thing. Plus, it has bonus New Universe nostalgia for one of the best things few people ever read from it.
Folks who know me know I have a certain… fragility… of health. It stems from me being made primarily out of meringue.
Be that as it may, the last several days I’ve barely been conscious. So, you know. I’ll be back when I’m back.
Also, I bought several ponies tonight. That has nothing to do with illness. Twilight Sparkle was wearing a safety helmet. With a hole cut out for her horn. I’m only human.
This was just posted to the DC website:
Over the past week we’ve heard from fans about a need for more women writers, artists and characters. We want you to know, first and foremost, that we hear you and take your concerns very seriously.
We’ve been very fortunate in recent years to have…
I don’t have much to add to dcwomenkickingass, save that she and others (like the Batgirl of San Diego) should feel good tonight… and we should all retain our perspective as we see how the next few months unfold.
The ball’s still in DC and Marvel’s court. This is heartening, but they haven’t returned serve yet.
I’ve had 12 hour layovers (that essentially went overnight) in the Newark Airport before. They were miserably uncomfortable affairs. I didn’t begin to plan them out as well as this.
My layovers weren’t anywhere near this adorable, either.
Short, but beautifully grounded, and basically good advice to most any beginning writer looking for a collaborator. My favourite part:
Over the last 11 years I’ve seen more times than I care to recall posts on Christian forums & blogs along the following lines: “Wow! I’ve got a great idea! Let’s do a comic book version of the Bible! I need a volunteer to write it, a volunteer to draw it, another volunteer to publish it, and then we’ll sell it and make a million bucks and we’ll give 10% to God and 75% to me ‘cuz after all it is my idea.”
I have never known anything of substance to come about thru that method.
Besides, someone already got to the mecha take. (Haven’t read it.)
You know, I promise at some point I’ll write about Marvel. I guess they’re just not that exciting right now.
In my last DC post I mentioned the comics I would definitely be interested in. However, that brings up another point to consider. Every DC comic costs $2.99, whether digital or physical. If in fact I like all of the comics that I have listed as ‘definitely checking out at release,’ that’s thirty bucks a month. Not a huge amount of money but also not insignificant. We have a household. A regular thirty bucks going to entertainment (more specifically, just my entertainment, as opposed to something that Weds and I enjoy in equal measure) is still something that needs to be budgeted.
If I ended up liking everything on my “maybe and maybe not” list, that’s another eighteen books. So, if I liked all my first list and all my second list, that would be twenty eight issues a month I’d buy, or $83.27 a month on comics. That’s significant. I’d have to drop a good number of other entertainment habits if that’s what I wanted to do, because there’s only so much money I have to blow on myself.
I have a good job, it’s worth noting, and I’m saying if I were looking to buy just over half the New 52, I’d have to shift funds around from somewhere else.
If someone decided to buy the entire new 52, and there are certainly people who will, they’re looking to spend $155.48, not counting the upcoming Huntress miniseries or Batman, Inc. when it returns. That’s a lot of money any way you look at it. If next month’s financial woes come in as badly as they could, how many folks do you imagine will be able to justify spending a hundred and fifty five dollars on comics. And, by the by, buying nothing from Marvel or Image or IDW or Dark Horse or Top Cow or, heck, Archie while they’re at it.
Some will, of course. Some do. Some people out there spend several hundred a month on comics. Or more. That’s always been the way of it. But the people who are spending several hundred a month on comics are the ones already buying a lot of comics. There will be few people who jump into the New 52 as new comics buyers and grab all 52. Or 28. Or even the ten that I’ve already mentioned I’m most interested in.
And some people who are buying lots of comics pre-New 52 won’t replace all their cancelled titles with new ones. Will everyone who bought Secret Six buy Suicide Squad? Will everyone who bought the Stephanie Brown Batgirl buy the Barbara Gordon Batgirl? Will people who bought Birds of Prey before stick with it into the post-Oracle era? If not, will they buy Batgirl instead? Will everyone who currently buys Superman and Action stick with them?
And what about the more interesting titles, sales wise? Will they get a lot of current buyers to grab Voodoo, Grifter, Sgt. Rock, All Star Western or Demon Knights? (Which, I should add, I somehow missed on my big list. Right now Demon Knights sits on the upper end of the ‘take or leave’ list for me.)
How long will they be able to afford to let a comic build an audience? If Frankenstein and the Agents of SHADE doesn’t do well out of the gate, how long can it run at <10,000 copies a month before they pull the plug? What if they don’t get immediate uptake on I, Vampire?
What if they get strong sales on the top tier books, but everything else has lower sales than their predecessors did? What happens if fewer people per month buy the Barbara Gordon Batgirl than did the Stephanie Brown Batgirl? What if the Barry Allen Flash tends lower than Wally did — or even pre-Flashpoint Barry Allen? What if they have three or four standout titles, five to ten titles that do about the same, and everything else represents a loss of readers? Do they pull the ripcord? Have a cosmic event in February that restores the pre-Flashpoint universe?
And what happens at the next Big Event? Flashpoint sales weren’t great, almost like people were getting sick of the Big Events. Now, large amounts of the Big Events suddenly don’t matter any more. And yeah, those comics didn’t disappear, but part of your hook for later sales is the idea that things matter, and if you miss it you’ll miss out on what happens. (Which was another contributor to low Flashpoint sales — given that we know the alternate Flashpoint stuff will mostly go away post-New 52, people aren’t feeling much need to follow the books.) Isn’t this just training people to decide that the mega crossovers don’t matter — all the stuff that might happen in them will just go away anyway?
What is the financial plan for all of this? What are their hopes? Who do they expect to bring in, and where do they come from? (Not an insignificant question — the idea of “we’re trying to get Males 18-35” isn’t a strategy, it’s a goal. They need to have proper, targeted marketing to those males. They have to have an area where their research says they can pick those guys up, whether digitally or convincing them to hit the comic book store. Since they’re not marketing to other populations, that’s all the more important now.)
It’s hard to see where the master plan is coming from or what their actual hopes are. All we do know is for this to be a success they need more people per month buying comics than are doing so right now.
Is this the way to do that?
I’ve been asked what I’m actually looking forward to from the New 52, since… well, it sounds like I am hating all of DC and everything they do! Which I’m not. DC has always been my favorite comic book company, and it is entirely likely they will continue to be my favorite comic book company after all of this. The diversity issues have me deeply concerned, and I still think their core plan is deeply flawed (I’m still a huge fan of them having set all of this in a brand new iteration. Say on Earth-1, leaving ‘New Earth’ exactly as it was but transitioning to an entirely new DC Universe). Assuming we get some kind of answer in regards to their issues of diversity, I’m going to be looking at quite a bit of DC.
Admittedly, things like Justice League aren’t among them, and a big reason are the ones we’ve been going through quite a lot. Lack of women. Lack of non-white men. A feeling like we’re regressing instead of ‘relaunching.’
So. It seems like I have three basic types of forthcoming New 52 books: ones I’m actively interested in pursuing and looking forward to, ones I can take or leave based on what they actually turn out to be, and ones I’m not going to pick up. After the break, I’ll go through the lists. Why? Because… well, because.
This is another strip from back in the sands of time. I wanted to see where Kurtz was going with the storyline, and it ended up being a good one. I could discuss the nature of product placement and its appropriateness, but honestly, I thought he did it pretty smoothly. It felt natural in the narrative, and that’s most of what I want in a comic strip. Besides, it lent a certain focus to the storyline that I think was beneficial.
However, I’m mostly posting this strip because it finally answers just what the Hell Francis does at PvP. I feel much better now.
