On Promethea, and our need for Her

They posted this over on Newsarama today.

To say that Promethea sets me off is an understatement. When I write, I try to clip the very lowest edges of that story with my reaching, out-stretched hand. It is a mountain, like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, or Blood Meridian, which I have set for myself to cross when I approach a story.

The asshole in me regards anyone who is not suitably impressed by Promethea as a story and an artifact worthy of awe in a very poor light, and the more enumerated renderings of those comments said asshole makes are sentiments I keep to myself.

I truly and utterly love this story, and I'm very happy with the comments I wrote, so I wanted to post them here as well.

To tell you that I nearly cry every time I read issue 17, at the image of Christ on the cross, would compel you to take up immediately and read the entire series (if you had ever actually met me, such would be the impression you had of what strokes of evocation it would take to induce such a reaction in a person such as myself).

I am many things, mostly yeti, but surely not what any reasonable person would consider a christian and sure as hell never cry, but that scene, the evocation of that image, is the most pronounced rendering of Jesus I have ever encountered, and does more to reconcile the nature of Christ’s value as a figure worthy of the highest regard than any words ever uttered by a pastor asking for a tithe.

It IS a long, drawn out essay on magic done as a comic book series. But name anything even remotely like that? “Everything is magic" is entirely the point and has never been made so completely and with such applomb.

The storytelling weaves together Moore's musings on magic and the nature of imagination, and J. H. William's pages, his layouts and paneling, and José Villarrubia's coloring follow in richness the examples set by Eisner or Steranko. They break out of any commonplace ideals set for modern comics storytelling to create something singular, something that holds up a mirror to ourselves to show we are, in fact, capable of much more than we have ever been lead to believe. I for one appreciate that sentiment.

Promethea incorporates nearly all of existence into the story. It is not a mistake that Moore uses a significant portion of the text to mirror the content and ancient role of the tarot and the kabbalah, because both of those systems served to provide a cosmological framework for a time when science was not capable of doing so. They were structured schema organizing observable phenomena into a coherence with the unexplainable chaos of life.

That Moore was able to realign these elements with our modern understanding of time, evolution, and nature I think is actual magic, because he is able to use such admittedly esoteric quanta to the effect of compelling the reader further into a story which illustrates, again and again, how the value of humanity MUST rest not in our derisive contempt of the mistakes we have made, but in how we move forward from failure, in inches by the decade at times, towards being worthy of the time we have on this world.

The christ scene, and countless others, strike at the base of what I believe, and by projection (because I have never met him but I argue he believes the same), Moore believes: that humanity has, and will continue to, attack, destroy, and punish the people who have found through their own awareness, talents, and abilities the means to make of us a better people and a better world, but that through the suffering of fools and tyrants and despots upon those who seek to remove chains and hatred we find the road from darkness up into light.

Moore exults, and I freely admit and support this, writers, as well as artists, poets, philosophers, and teachers. He exults those who would bring us light, which should be pretty obvious from the title, and I am thankful that he does, because there is not nearly enough of that in this world.

The Day of Attrition

I have no juice in my gonads of creativity at the moment. I am stealing everything. I'm robbing Warren Ellis blind. I just tackled Chabon, punched him in the back of the head, and ran off with his notebook. His wallet I tossed into the bushes where he’ll never find it, just the way we used to do it in high-school. If Robert McKee wants my blood he can come and fucking try.

In the meantime, I need a crutch, to hobble on my ill-fitting writing legs up these uneven hills with jutting rocks everywhere that don’t hide any secrets more interesting that telling of how a big fucking block of ice the size of Canada once raped the shit out of this place. Not exactly impressive.

That dog is wearing a foot-brace, or a wrap or something, and he still doesn’t look as ridiculous as the fat old man in a Montauk t-shirt and running shorts. Still need to get into the bathroom seeing as how I’m not actually competent enough to drink coffe without snorting it all over myself like an idiot, like this orange shirted dude here.

You could choke on the humidity out there and I don't even need to think about a jacket for another three weeks yet that dude has a parka on and moon-boots. He is also holding an open umbrella under a dry, overcast sky and carries a plastic bag filled with what looks like rotten weeds so there you have it.

The problem is still mine, because these people are offering me gold, more shit than I could ever want, and I can't mine a fucking thing out it.

Time just to throw away the shovel, shut down the drill, and just dig my fingers into the rocks until they are bloody. Someday it'll all be interesting again.

Worn, Torn, Yet to be Reborn

Kicked in the gut today, so try as I try, there was nothing for it. A moment maybe somewhere in there, when it looked like it might come out into the light, but really all for naught. Got run pretty deep into the ground yesterday, face-first into the muck, to suck and choke on blubbering sick pooled thickly in the gutter, and all that.

I've got egg on my face, a stone in the pit of my stomach, and a stake in my heart. So no more blathering.

Go listen here: Kalpana

And we got some new stuff up for Septermber: Postcard Fiction Collaborative

Jet Boy Meets the Angel of the Odd

Think the kinda place where no one cares
What your livin for
And Jet Boys so preoccupied
He don't care 'bout before

I do well to remember this, because I look back now, at folders and files and backed-up verbal ammunition, and it occurs to me that I've been going about all of this very, very poorly. I've kept too much space between all of the buckets, when they could be closer, the little slithery tentacles and pokers and things playing with one another. What do they say these days, you have to let kids get dirty, get em all covered up with germs building those 5th dimensional ecologies where size doesn't matter. Or maybe its sixth.

I'm still trying to get around inside Ideaspace, with Alan Moore reeling up out of grain of wood and the patterns of sidewalk concrete and telling me things I can barely remember in the lower dimensions. Apparently he appears before Warren Ellis in a flying hoverchair that may or may not be capable of traveling through 7 dimensions.

Get to be my second favorite prime number today.

Shoe Shows, and We're Inside the Onion

We could pretend that everyone here wants peace, but where is the fun in that. If one person wants peace and the rest all want to swing socks full of pennies into each others kneecaps, that is less fun than many things, but more fun than everyone wanting peace, or if everyone wants peace but one person, then that can be greatly fun than a whole mess of things, like wombats (wombats being the most fun animal to occur to me as I am writing this).

The funnest example of having a room full of people who all want peace is to have a small group who doesn't want peace actually, and then one or two other people who through both guile and simple apathy pretend to want peace, but are totally willing for their own amusement to foment further and increasingly vehement non-peace in the argument between the peace-seekers and the non-peaceful.

I fall into this later category, and do so in the hope the peaceful will violently pursue their goal of peace, and the violent will prove cowardly and untoward in their attitudes towards upheaval. Yes, this is the kind of person I am.

Put that in your guitar and plunk it. I've been reading Fictionaut lately, and Warren Ellis' column at Bleeding Cool, Do Anything.

Ben McCool's mercenary ramblings strike somerthing we have attempted all so often, working at the dayjob. Becacuse they are two different things. A job is fuckall of the highest order, something we do to ourselves, inflict on ourselves, sometimes as he says, so that we can force ourselves to be a little more invested in the work we do. Work therefore is something we give a fuck about.

I'm on page 96 (including endnotes) of Infinite Jest. I made a new playlist for the working a couple nights back. I called it Floorshows. I'll make another today called Floorshoes. This is how I am. New York Dolls feature heavily.

I'm working on my novel, really, except for yesterday which was a fuck of a day. Worst Saturday in quite some time. I would have rather been at the dayjob.

MoCCa Grab Rundown and Linkage

It was all a blur. Not intentionally, or even metaphorically. Clinically, since I managed to spend some MoCCa time just at the onset of a preemptive con-cruding, clearly designed by my enemies to keep me from basking in comicdom's comforting glow.

On the upside, when I was sitting outside at one point, trying to muster enough consciousness to stay on my feet (which didn't last), I did see Bob Fingerman pass by eating some McD's, and I'll be treasuring that moment for some time to come. I made a once around pass of the place, had a few moments to talk with Brian Wood while I was hanging out with Salgood Sam, and then went on a time and pocket tightened spree.


-Kenan Rubenstein's artwork


The cream on top was:

Connor Willumsen's The Middle, which I picked up for a few skads. It's a clean, sparse surreality of a tale that doesn't waste any time explaining itself. I'll be re-reading this again and again, and looking out for more of his work.

Jon J Muth's Vanitas. I'm basically always looking for Muth work, since some of his mid-80s Marvel work I am lucky enough to call my first experiences in comics and has formed large sections of my brain. The drawings, paintings, and photographs in here are simply out of this world, and it always feels like I'm learning about how art works by looking at his stuff.

The Biographer, by Ada Price. I picked this up from the SVA student table because the cover had such a great design (she has a pic on her blog, which will hopefully continue to be updated). The story itself is lots of layers of who is telling what about who, and that works for me.

On the Beach by Kenan Rubenstein. Another skad pick-up, very nearly my last skad. I was given the choice between Hipsters in Brooklyn or naked folks. I went with the naked, and it turned out for the best (I've been among the hipsters, and while some are nice, they are still just yuppies that just happened to be born in the 80s).



Also good, for reasons I don't have the where-with-all to expound at present, were a couple more SVA products. Allison Strejlau's work, this time Kakapo, found its way into my bag once again, having earned a place there from the SVA student mini-comics show in 2008. Edwin Huang seems fast-tracking towards the big guns with his thick shadows and panel borders. This time around I picked up Yide'.

My biggest regret was not being able to now have the "Helper" statue sculptor Jesse Farrell had out there, but I enjoyed the hell out of talking with him about Venture Bros.

Since I feel I am inching ever closer to another nap, I'll have to pause here, but will come back for a rundown of the rest of the grabbage later on.

Cheers

Memorizing W.C. Williams

I've never been a great memorizer. Speeches were something of an exception to this, so the art was not lost to me, just hidden more often than not. Maybe I just never made the time to do it. I've spent the last three days committing this to memory. I have typed it here from memory, and I think it is right.

This is from W.C. Williams Paterson, speaking of the falls on the Passaic River:

"Jostled, as are the waters approaching
the brink ; his thoughts
interlace, repel, and cut under,

Rise rock-thwarted and turn back
but forever strain forward - or strike
an eddy and whirl ; marked by a
leaf or curdy spume ; seeming
to forget.

Retake later the advance and
are replaced by the succeeding hordes
pushing forward ; they coalesce now,
glass-smooth with their swiftness,
quiet, or seem to quiet as at the close
they leap to the conclusion and
fall! fall in air, as if
floating, relieved of their weight
split-apart, ribbons ; dazed, drunk
on the catastrophe of the descent
floating unsupported
to hit the rocks ; to a thunder,
as if lightning had struck"

Just something to make me use my mind in a different way.