Sex: It's What People Do

Author's Note: It's been pointed out to me that this has a lot of, shall we say, unfinished sentences? While I appreciate the effort I am well aware of my lack of a copy-editor that isn't my cat. The following is a second go at this article.

As discussed in a previously post, I went on a bit of a comic book buying binge. I blame Christmas. And my poor impulse control. And a lot of things.

Speaking of which, one of the comics I bought is Sex.

I don't know that I've ever read a Joe Casey comic before. There was a time when I wanted to pick up Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker, but since that violently imploded, I think I'll take the long way around to checking out that book. From my understanding Mr. Casey is a man who takes superheroes and pits them against situations that are completely opposed to superheroics or situations that are the ultimate conclusion of the superheroing business. (Trade? Practice?)

That's a fine way to go about things. It's also as much a part of the comic landscape as the straight stories about people in capes. He seems far less pleased with his ideas than a guy like Mark Millar does and he also seems far more talented than the kind of "But what if Batman was in real life!?' type of nonsense that pours out of the Preview pages.

Sex's particular take on superheroes is "What if Batman quit being Batman? Also, what if everyone in Gotham City was a sexual maniac? Also, what if costumes were a poorly explored metaphor about sexual dysfunction?" And then it goes from there. Kind of. In its defense it doesn't feel cheap or exploitative. Maybe it's because I'm so jaded and cynical, but I never batted an eye at the sexual content of the book.

Then again maybe that's also a problem. If I'm not batting an eye at the contents of a book that was sold with the tagline "IMAGE WANTS YOU TO BUY SEX" then maybe something has gone wrong somewhere along the lines.

Though, the boners and the tits are there. My reaction is sort of tempered by the fact that they are there and they are sticking up at you. If that's the sort of book you were looking for-- and I thought I was-- then Sex will deliver.

The main problem with the book is that as good looking as it is, it is listless. Appropriately listless considering the theme. Or one of the themes. I'm not sure I care to parse them out. Our main character is primarily defined by the fact that he doesn't do anything. He has a thrilling past and one full of trauma and psychological conclusion, yet we're stuck in the present with this white goofus who seems to have the acting range of an opium addled Keanu Reeves.

Like scenes like this? Well, don't get used to them.

Ennui isn't an emotion that moves stories forward. That's a lesson we never quite learned from the French.

This lack of drive carries over to Sex's world building. In works like Watchmen or The Winter Men or any number of other books in this vein we have fully realized worlds that are as much a part of the story as the characters or the dialogue. Batman has had 70 years to throw a world together, but as readers we know what Gotham City is. It's a place that is alive and that has real weight. As a writer Joe Casey is making an analogue of Gotham City without any of the texture of that city. In Sex we're treated to a lot of men in suits and skyscrapers. Saturn City doesn't feel like a real place and that's important if your main characters aren't exactly leaping off of the page.

As far as Sex's supporting characters, we have the Alpha Brothers (the world's one and only Sebastian O cosplay gang), The Old Man, Keenan, and this world's Catwoman stand in, each weaving in and out of each others' lives, trying to make a living in a world without Batman the Armored Saint. Yet, by the end of the trade the only thing that's changed in any of their lives is that Not Catwoman had to get glasses. Which she thinks makes her look old. Considering that Lisa Ann is the world's most popular porn star and she's known for dressing up like another well known MILF, I can't help but feel that Not Catwoman can't see the forest for the trees. You know. Literally in this case.

Plus the main character has a goatee and what the fuck is that in 2014?

Overall, though, the book is rather humorless. I mean. It's called Sex. I'm not looking for Benny Hill here, but if you're going to have superheroes standing around not being superheroes, at least make me smile. I mean, Lord almighty nobody is having fun in this book. I'll go watch Shame if I wanted that. (I don't.)

All in all I'm excited that Hayao Miyazaki is making comics again. I want to read something nice.



WELCOME TO THE AD GAUNTLET--

I came out with a comic book myself. It's called  Old College Comics Presents and it's pretty fucking exciting. The cover looks great. The paper stock is solid. Some of the words and drawings together are pretty decent, too. If you're not interested in picking up the new comic, we also have an old one (It's called The Freshman Fifteen. Get it?). Either way, who are you to resist?

(It seems our website hasn't been updated. . . Huh. That'll have to be resolved rather soon. . .)

I do a podcast with my actor friend Cruz Flores. It's called White Guys, Square Glasses. It is a title that is 75% accurate. If you like the kind of nonsense I've written in the above article you might like the kind of nonsense that falls out of my mouth on our show. It's about media and pop culture and rambling on about whatever catches our fancy. In short: It's a podcast. But it's one from me.

Vanitas

Vanitas: 

Or why seeing this woman chopped up and eaten is the most fun I've had on TV in years.

 

There's just something about serial killers that gets me going. Unlike with a lot of things, I know that I'm not alone on this one, either. It's why we have The Killing, Dexter, The Following, and the Millennium Trilogy. It's why Seven is so well respected and copied or why we still make movies about the Zodiac Killer. . . Or why David Fincher has a career, really. Human beings are drawn to the morbid. With Hannibal we are shown the madness of serial killers without having to deal with its grotesque realities. It's gory fun from a distance.

Or, well, maybe not "fun" exactly. . .

Hannibal, as a show, strikes a particular nerve, one that is deep seated in our psyche. It combines our basic, human love of bizarre, incomprehensible violence with a basic, artistic skill. It is titillating without being exploitative and, whatever it is, at the end of the day it is a well shot, well written, and well acted work of art. There is madness, yet there is a method to it. These things combine into what I would like to call "good TV."

Despite the fact that Breaking Bad is  over, there's plenty of good TV out there. We have other FX and HBO shows and even Showtime have their own quality shows. Hannibal being good though, isn't what makes it exceptional. Neither is the gore. Or the half-nakedness. What makes it interesting is how it treats relationships in the midst of abject grotesqueness.

Episode 2: Living Diabetic Mushroom People.

Weird or unusual sexuality and gender identity has always been an integral part of Thomas Harris' mythology. Buffalo Bill was a hyper-cross-dresser, the Tooth Fairy was a  homophobe with mommy issues, and then there's the guy without a face in Hannibal who can't get off unless he's abusing somebody. Even Hannibal Lecter himself eventually became the lover of Clarice Starling (after a bit of brain-washing-cum-psychotherpay), which is a far weirder pairing than anything else on the Kinsey Scale.

I'll let you mull over that last development while I go out to get a glass of water.

Still there? Alright.

Psychosexuality is integral to Harris' work.These stories are about human extremes and if you look at many serial killers in reality, they have some very unsettleling corollaries.

Evil in his world still boils down to the baddies being some sort of crazed gay person. There isn't a straight male in the bunch. . . or any sort of female for that matter, now that I think about it. Harris' vision of sexuality and psychopathy is much richer and more complicated than the type of queer baddy that you get out of 1970's exploitation movies or, you know, some contemporary opinions of the community. Yet, at the end of the day, queer characters are ultimately still the people who need to be solved.

So damn pleased, aren't ya?

Hannibal, for better or for worse, moves around these problems, if not entirely beyond these problems. It's concern is not with sexuality or about how we see ourselves, but about the connections we have with one another.

The horror in Hannibal is about relationships. It is about relationships between fathers and daughters, between friends, between bosses and employees, between doctor and patient, and between men and women. It's about boiling human interactions to their most basic and then turning that into something extreme and upsetting. It's one thing to say that schzoid, gay crossdressing Nazis are weirdos, but the American atomic family? That's slightly more challenging. It is also something we can relate to without having to judge it. Watchng "Ceuf," I can see why NBC might have blanched at broadcasting it. There is something far more unsettling about people trying to love each other and failing than about somebody who just has a problem with tabloid journalists.

At the very least, we all understand that continuing to portray ax murderers as repressed homos with mommy issues is a played out trope. If that isn't good for society, it is good for the artform. Even though it doesn't feature any queer characters, as such, it doesn't feel the need to single them out as grotesques. Personally, I think that the Harvey Firestein school of thought which is that “Any exposure is good exposure.” If that's the test one applies to Hannibal, then it fails (though it does pass the Bechdal Test).

You'll never guess what the secret ingredient is! (It is people.)

Despite its heritage Hannibal pulls off the psychological procedural in a way that works and doesn't feel as though this is something that has done before. It's a great parlour trick and what's more is that however much it is a trick, it is one backed up with solid writing, carefully laid out camera work, and some excellent acting. It exists to show all of the other shows on TV, the ones indebted to Silence of the Lambs, how this sort of thing is done.

This program could have easily just been a re-hash of other programs in the past. It could have been a cash-in and it also could have leaned into the older, more troubling parts of this series' canon as a way to generate controversy or attention. Yet, despite the odds, somebody managed to make an intriguing program about one of the most parodied pop culture icons of all time. That's exciting. Hannibal isn't new, it just feels like it. Maybe that's because it's so well done.

Season 2 should be a real blast. Or, well, not a "blast" exactly. . .

HERE COMES THE AD ZONE:

(My friend Cruz and I did an episode of our podcast about the show. There might be some crossover between here and there. Give it a listen, won't you?)

(Some other friends and I are making a comic book anthology. If you can't give on our Kickstarter, tell a friend, or better yet, buy a copy of our previous anthology. Or even better yet give to our Kickstarter, tell a friend, and then a buy a copy. Everybody wins!)

SIDE NOTES:

A) Goooooooddamn is this show gory. How the fuck did anyone ever get away with this stuff? And on network TV!

B) Years and years ago I wrote a top ten list of serial killers. It is not as good as I remember it being.

C) Lance Henrikson appears in an episode as, you guessed it, a psychopath. Considering the story arc Will is going through, and considering that Henrikson played Frank Black, an FBI profiler on Millennium, this means that the series is smart enough to get post-modern without calling attention to it. Good for them.

This is the Avengers Entry

I just got out of Marvel's The Avengers (or if you're from Europe Marvel's Avengers Assemble) and I will get to my opinion of the film, but in light of the things that

Here are the facts:
I went to beverages and more and ran into my friend Simon Estrada. He is a talented artist. I then bought a Tsing Tao and a bottle of Cutty Sark.

I got a burrito, ate that burrito, filled my flask up, and watched half of Community (sorry, I will check it out on Hulu).

I went and watched Marvel's The Avengers (because I refuse to not spell out its stupid, stupid title).

Afterwards I went to the adjacent Yard House and got a Guinness.I thought about getting two, but then again I drained that Sark flask and had to get home to a dog and a cat and hell.

I chatted with a couple.

That is always precious. Talk to people. That is why I hate clubs and trendy bars. It casts off basic humanity. Nobody should or would or could talk to anybody there. That is why I talked to this couple.

Damnit. We are none of us misanthropes.

Side note: Is friendship necessarily a thing? Must it be?

We move on.

After befriending said couple and chatting about sports (they agree that the Yankees are Hitler youth and the Red Soxes are from Boston) the bar hit last call and I gave them a tour of Old Town Pasadena and ended up at Barney's Beanery. We talked. We touched hands. He went to the bathroom.

And that is when I was informed that I was leading him on. Suddenly one or two stray comments made sense. As it turned out we were due for a threeway. I was the catalyst for the threeway. Alright. I let the lady know that, sorry, that was not my scene, hon. I was, unfortunately, straight. The fellow returned. Then I went to the bathroom.

Holy crap, dude, I am in a bathroom. I do the bathroom thing and finish up and walk back up the stairs. There is a local looking dude. I appraise him. "Hey, man, I don't know. That sounds like a situation." I know, right. "Yeah!" Yup.

I am in a situation. It is official.

I rejoin with said couple.The guy pays the bill and we head out and I decide to guide them to their hotel, them being out-of-towners to varying degrees. There is no way I'm letting people tell their neighbors that LA (Pasadena) is full of assholes. Never that. Also, hey, if Israel can find peace so can we. I am no ideologue.

We part ways.

I call up my friend Alex and talk to him about this. We do. Then we talk about other things. That goes on for some time.

I decide to write about this.

And here we are. Afterwards, I write about this and then decide to write a worthwhile version of this story in addition to a short story based on this experience because, man, what the fuck vibe is it I am giving off?

Apparently not a vibe, but A Vibe. The Vibe, even, something that makes Chaos Theory a doctorate.

It's weird.I don't even get carded anymore. And that preclude the Ralph's on Colorado. They know my ass by now, shamefully. They know me for my dad too. But bars I have never been to don't even card me> The hell? And first of all, what hell?

I realize this comes hot on the heels of a woman my mom's age (but not looking like it) propositioning a situation where she might teach me things that younger women do not know. This happened at the Rancho. This is a fact. There is more to this. I'd tell you what but it'd get in the way.

My life amounts to something 19 year old me would have begged for. It is madness and I am grateful that he never ran into these things.I could never make up this shit and as I get older and less creative the only things I can truly put to paper are the mistakes that I remember not making, because, seriously, this might as well be the Gomorrah that killed Lot's wife. And she had not tales to tell.

It'd be a curse if it wasn't so silly.