Author Archives: Richard Cook

American Horror

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American Horror Story, Season 1, 2012-13

Produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk
Cast:    Dylan McDermott
Connie Britton
Jessica Lange
Evan Peters
Taissa Farmiga

“American Horror Story” begins with Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton) discovering her husband, Ben (Dylan McDermott), in bed with one of his patients. To keep the family together (and move the plot forward) Ben convinces his angry wife and sullen daughter (Taissa Farmiga) to move to California and start over. They manage to purchase an old mansion at a bargain price, but soon discover that the reason the mansion was such a steal is due to its unpleasant history – most of its former residents were murdered. Even worse, “murder house” is filled with so many ghosts that they’re practically tripping over each other – a mad doctor from the Jazz Age, student nurses from the 60’s, a sexy maid from the 80’s, a psychotic teenager (Evan Peters) from the 90’s, and the gay couple who owned the house prior to the Harmons. And there are freakier residents, including a monster baby and the show’s most recognizable figure, the “Rubber Man,” who dresses in a skin-tight bondage suit complete with gimp mask. Rubber Man is the show’s main trouble-maker, and in one of the early episodes he rapes Vivien and impregnates her with a demonic baby. If that weren’t bad enough, the Harmons’ next door neighbor is Constance (Jessica Lange), a schemer who knows far more about the ghosts than she initially lets on.

The horror genre on television does not have an illustrious history. There are many people who get nostalgic for “The Twilight Zone” or “Tales from the Dark Side,” though those people have terrible memories because 90% of their episodes were crap. And those shows preferred the “anthology” approach, where every episode was a discreet narrative. Serialized television (where every episode is part of a single, larger narrative) has an even worse track record. For every hit like “The X-Files” there are ten flops like “The River.” Unfortunately, “American Horror Story” continues the long trend of shitty television horror.

Which is not to say that it doesn’t have its charms. Unlike “The River,” “American Horror Story” is not an complete debacle. While hardly innovative, it is a polished and professional-looking TV series. The basic premise – troubled family moves into a haunted house – is a simple but effective setup for a horror story. The series is also deliberately campy, which helps offset its tendency towards soapy melodrama (more on that below). The cast is quite impressive for basic cable, and the acting is generally good. The one weak link is Connie Britton, who responds to every situation with a look of dim-witted confusion. But Jessica Lange more than makes up for any other actor’s poor performance. Recognizing the show’s campiness and its debt to Southern Gothic horror, she plays a character that combines two archetypes: the Faded Southern Belle and the Evil Bitch Mama. Constance is by far the most entertaining character in the series, motherly one minute and crazy, narcissistic, and cruel the next. And she’s completely unafraid of the ghosts, treating most of them with barely concealed contempt.

But the series has many failings. Some of the ghosts, like the mad doctor, are entertaining in a goofy way. Others, like the the Rubber Man, are genuinely creepy (at least at first). But most of the ghosts are forgettable or annoying. Another problem is that death doesn’t seem like a big deal, which removes much of the potential tension. Sure, the ghosts are trapped in the house (except on Halloween), but otherwise they’re free to continue their un-lives however they choose. Plus, they don’t age, they can’t be permanently injured, and they can even have sex with the living or each other. The show also has a bad habit of raising interesting issues, and then addressing with them in a glib manner. For example, the psychotic teenager, Tate, killed other kids in a school shooting before he died. It’s a big, important “hot button” issue … that just kind of sits there. I might be offended if I weren’t so bored. The show also bills itself as psychosexual horror (according to the description in Netflix), but while there is sex, the psychology is absent. Rubber Man is obviously a BDSM monster, but there’s very little actual BDSM in the series. So after his initial appearance, Rubber Man becomes just another mystery villain whose identity will be revealed … during sweeps!

For all its other problems, “American Horror Story” largely fails at being horror because it has to be a TV series. This means soapy sub-plots, because TV producers believe that every show must have them. The teenage daughter must fall in love with one of the ghosts, and there must be drama and tears because Ben is an adulterer. In a soap opera, these plots might be relevant, but in a show called “American HORROR Story” they’re distracting at best, mind-numbing at worst. And the critical flaw in the series is that it both wants and needs the viewers to care about the Harmons, who are the lead characters and the emotional core of the series. The problem is that the Harmons are a typical middle class family on television, which is another way of saying they’re obnoxious assholes. In any halfway-decent horror story, the audience would get to relish the horrific punishment meted out to the Harmons. But this is prime time television in America, so we’re supposed to root for the family to overcome all odds and live happily ever after. [Spoiler alert!] To its credit, the season did not end with the family walking off into the sunset. Instead, all three Harmons died in the house and continued on as a ghost family. A surprise twist, and a clever show might have turned that into a truly horrific ending. Imagine spending the rest of eternity with the most tedious and/or annoying members of your family, with no one ever able to grow, change, or move out. But in this series, were supposed to find it bittersweet and touching that the family will be together forever. In the end, they even decorate a Christmas tree! Or maybe it’s the ghost of a Christmas tree.

Once again, a horror series has let me down.

The 3-D Gave Me a Headache and Seven More Complaints about The Hobbit

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1. The movie spends over half an hour introducing the dwarves, yet doesn’t give a single reason to care about any of them. It’s hard to even keep them straight. I remember the king, the fat one, the old one, and the one with the stupid hat. Beyond that, I don’t remember them and don’t care. By any standard of characterization quality, this movie compares poorly with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. At least I knew what to think of Grumpy.

2. Somewhere in this great big world, there is a movie that successfully combines musical numbers, snot gags, and rampant violence. The Hobbit is not that movie. The plot retains the cutesy qualities of a children’s adventure, but with incongruous levels of violence. Though now that I think about it, this is familiar territory for a comics blogger.

3. PG-13 violence is remarkable, and not in a good way. The movie has decapitations, eviscerations, multiple stabbings, and a body count in the hundreds, yet there is very little on-screen blood and the camera never lingers on the gruesome consequences of violence. The Hobbit is too gory to be cartoonish yet too tame to be explicit. It’s the uncanny valley of violent entertainment.

4. The action scenes are not exciting. Several reviewers have noted the video gamey quality of the action, particularly the big battle/chase sequence with the goblins. There is shot after shot of indistinguishable dwarves killing indistinguishable orcs. Noah compared it to a “body count video game,” which sounds about right. While body count video games can’t be defended as good art, they can at least provide a base level of entertainment and a pleasurable empowerment fantasy. But watching The Hobbit is like watching someone else play a video game, which  is never fun.

5. Every scene is about 10 minutes longer than it needs to be. It’s bad enough that such a short book was split into a trilogy. But there’s no conceivable reason why each installment has to exceed 2 hours. Though now I can’t help but wonder what sort of scenes were cut from the theatrical release. And what will be included in the extend cut DVDs? No doubt there are many more thrilling scenes of characters sitting around tables and explaining the plot to each other.

6. The film is tragically lacking in hobbit feet close-ups. Why even make The Hobbit if you’re not going to showcase hobbit feet?

7. To harp on the 3-D again, it adds absolutely nothing to the movie experience. 3-D is just a silly gimick, so if you’re going to use 3-D you might as have some fun with the audience (for a great example, see Friday the 13th part 3, which is all rats and marijuana and eyeballs in the third dimension). The Hobbit doesn’t have any fun with the 3-D, so it feels suspiciously like an excuse for theaters to jack up the ticket price.

7.5. Speaking of ticket price, two tickets cost me $38. Thirty eight fucking dollars.

Jaegerless

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Back in July, Noah complained that the lead character of Finder, a man named Jaeger, was a “drearily familiar archetype — the tortured tough-but-tender loner with heart-of, whose masculine ability to withstand pain functions as an excuse to subject him to hyperbolic and repetitive sensual violence, just as his mysterious outsider status turns him into a perpetually sexy invader of the quiet homes.” Noah will be glad to hear that that Jaeger never actually appears in Finder: Voice. On the other hand, he’ll be less than thrilled to hear that Jaeger is the driving force behind the plot and the preoccupation of the lead character, Rachel Grosvenor.

Backing up a bit, Finder is a comic series set in a far-flung future where humanity survived a global calamity and built a new civilization that’s quite different from our own. Most of the action takes place in the domed city of Anvard. The city is populated by a dozen or so clans that maintain strict genetic purity, so strict that members of the same clan are often indistinguishable from one another. There is also a pseudo-Native American race called the Ascians, who occasionally settle in Anvard, where they’re treated as second-class residents. Early chapters in Finder focused on Jaeger, a half-Ascian and the titular character, who specialized in finding lost things or people. Jaeger is the typical tough guy who can’t commit – he maintains an on-again, off-again relationship with Emma Grosvenor. Emma’s daughter Rachel has an unrequited crush on him as well.

Emma and Rachel are members of the Llaverac Clan. Llaveracs are composed entirely of beautiful blondes, and even the men are genetically altered to appear as women. In Finder: Voice, we learn that social rank among the Llaveracs is determined in a clan-wide beauty pageant, and the young women who place high in the competition are guaranteed a title, a house, and great wealth. Rachel naturally wants to win the pageant, not just for herself but so she can provide a comfortable life for her mother and sisters.

But things quickly go south for Rachel when she’s mugged and loses a precious heirloom that’s necessary to compete in the pageant. Rachel spends much of the story looking for Jaeger, hoping that he can use his tracking skills to help her find the heirloom. But it’s also clear that Rachel still has a crush on Jaeger, and she dreams that the manly-man will sweep her off her feet and save her from her crappy life.

At first glance, it is tempting to dismiss this as another retrograde fantasy where the young woman is saved by the dashing rogue. Except the dashing rogue never shows up. Rachel effectively saves herself and wins second place in the pageant without Jaeger’s help. And she does this through a distinctly female method: gossip, or more precisely the threat of gossip. Rachel learns a secret about a Llevarac clan elder and threatens to spill the beans unless she’s allowed to participate in the pageant.

So one could read Finder: Voice as a subversion of a male hero/female victim paradigm. But there are several complications to that interpretation. Rachel is stalked by one of Jaeger’s enemies for a good chunk of the story. And different men save her from physical harm on a couple of occasions. And there’s an unexpected plot development where Rachel participates in a drunken orgy with a group of Ascians (who subsequently move into her house).

Finder: Voice can be read as a story of female empowerment, but power is still envisioned as masculine (Jaeger). Rachel achieves great success in a girly way – a beauty pageant –  but she still has to be saved from death by a group of friendly Ascian men. In other words, Rachel is not Wonder Woman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the end of the story, she is still physically weak and uncertain about her future. And unlike the supernaturally tough Jaeger, Rachel is pathetically human.

 And that’s probably why I enjoyed Finder: Voice far more than the earlier stories with Jaeger. In those, the reader is expected to identify and sympathize with Jaeger. But he is not an interesting character, given that he’s a pile of hyper-masculine cliches. But Jaeger is interesting as a pile of hyper-masculine cliches. Rachel wants Jaeger as a lover, but she also wants to be like Jaeger. She wants to be amazingly strong, hyper-competent, and emotionally untouchable. She wants to be Jaeger/Batman/Wolverine. She wants to be all those things that men are supposed to be, and she fails, largely because Jaeger is a preposterous role model. No one is that tough, competent, or untouchable. Instead, Rachel has to settle for being a human and a woman. She has to play by the rules of the Llaverac Clan. She has to be pretty and elegant for the sake of her family’s financial well-being. And she has to rely on others, because she will never have the brute strength to deal with every threat. Rachel is a character who is keenly aware of her limitations and obligations, and her successes are less about overcoming all obstacles than about achieving as much as one can within her limits.

For me, that’s more compelling than another story about a tough loner with a heart of gold.

Confessions of a Yuppie

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Before I met my girlfriend, my definition of “cooking” was warming prepared meals in the microwave. If I was feeling fancy, I might warm them up in the toaster oven. Most of the time I was too lazy to even bother with that, so I ordered lots of pizzas and or went out to restaurants. I had never cracked open a cook book, or bought fresh vegetables (unless pestered to by my mother), or spent more than 15 minutes preparing a meal. I used to be an embarrassing stereotype, the single guy who lived on junk food.

Very early in our relationship, my girlfriend insisted that we cook meals together. And by “cook,” I mean actually creating meals from raw ingredients. I found myself washing, and cutting, and boiling, and mixing, and doing all sorts of things that took forever. Or at least it felt like forever. Instead of warming up a meal for 5 minutes in the microwave, I was spending anywhere from half-an-hour to an hour performing manual labor. I didn’t go to college for this! I was making good money and was more than happy to take her out to a restaurant, but she wanted to cook together, so I sucked it up and we cooked together.

My shopping habits also changed. Prior to our relationship, I had purchased all my groceries at the nearest Giant. And I was mostly buying frozen dinners, canned dinners, boxed dinners, and cold cuts. Certainly not a healthy diet, but it was cheap and quick to prepare. After we started dating, my girlfriend convinced me to shop at Whole Foods. I had never set foot in a Whole Foods during the first three decades of my life. My mental picture of a Whole Foods shopper was an effete yuppie who agonized over buying the right kind of smelly cheese. And now I was one of THEM, buying fresh veggies, organic this and organic that, and definitely spending more money on groceries.

It turned out to be money well spent. I was spending more on groceries but saving money overall because I ordered less take-out and ate at restaurants less often. I lost weight and generally felt healthier. And my mother stopped sending me those annoying emails about the risks of heart disease.

But the best part about cooking with my girlfriend was cooking with my girlfriend. Prior to our relationship, I had always viewed cooking as an unpleasant chore, akin to vacuuming or cleaning the toilet. But cooking with my girlfriend wasn’t a chore. It was something that we did together. It was fun just to spend time with her, chopping vegetables together, listening to her music playlist, and talking about nothing in particular. And the most rewarding part was when we sat down and ate a delicious meal that we created together. It’s all very sappy and bourgeois, but to hell with it. I like cooking real meals, I like the taste of organic milk, and I like debating over the right kind of smelly cheese.

Can Comics Critics Be As Vapidly Ignorant as Political Pundits?: Live-Blogging the Florida Debate

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NB: Hey folks. Noah Berlatsky here. Richard Cook and I are going to be live-blogging the third presidential debate not too long from now. As I understand it, the debate is going to be about the rest of the world, which reportedly includes the Middle East, China, and also the Middle East. The President wins if he can utter the name “Osama Bin Laden” more than 30 times in 90 minutes. Mitt Romney wins if can get through an hour and a half without gratuitously insulting Canada or one of those other lesser countries.

I’m not exactly sure why anyone would look to a comics blog for political commentary…but if you have done so, for whatever inscrutable or despicable reason, please feel free to leave us your thoughts, groans, and screams of agony in the comments.
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RC: We’re not a comics blog anymore. We’re an online magazine.

NB: Ahhh…yes, I’d forgotten. Well, in that case, we totally deserve to be the web’s gateway to democracy. Proceed!

NB: So the debate moderator is Bob Schieffer, it looks like. That’s a perfect four-for-four on the white-people-as-moderators, right?

Maybe the people who organize these things need some binders full of people of color foisted upon them….

9:01NB: Here we go….

NB 9:02: The Cuban Missile Crisis. No mention that Kennedy would have nuked us all if he’d had the chance, and that we were saved by Khruschev, a better man than either of these folks we’ve got to vote for….

NB: 9:03: Mitt Romney appears to be saying that the hope of the Arab Spring was entirely squandered. Our hearts and minds go to the people in Benghazi, because whenever Romney talks about foreign policy he thinks of Vietnam, for some bizarre reason?

NB: 9:06 Barack Obama sure sounds a lot more serious than Romney. Maybe I just have an unusually low tolerance for Mitt’s sanctimonious bullshit though, I dunno….

NB: 9:11 Mitt Romney sounds completely at sea. And Obama sneers at him for claiming Russia is a threat. “I know you haven’t been in a position to execute foreign policy.” Ouch.

NB 9:13 Obviously Romney’s decided that “tumult” is his word for the day.

NB: 9:16 Obama’s argument that Romney’s flip-flopping is a bad way to conduct foreign policy seems like a pretty good argument. Romney sounds completely lost.

Whoops; we’re having technical difficulties. Shocker. Here’s what Richard’s been trying to write:

9:03RC: The audience has sworn a vow of silence. Good thing I’m a pundit.

9:09RC: So Romney’s plan is: kill terrorists, give economic aid, and promote Westernization. Not exactly a radical break from the norm.

9:12RC: I’m fairly certain the Muslim world would be fine if they got less American “leadership,” good or bad.

9:16RC: First genuflection to Israel. Take a drink!

9:20RC: Romney on Syria: “Exactly what Obama says, but with more enthusiasm!”

9:24NB: I wonder if Presidents are allowed to have any regrets in foreign policy.

9:27NB: Obama really sounds convincing in talking about the aspirations of Egyptians. And the argument that we need to do less nation building overseas and more at home is something I believe, anyway. Which raises the question of why the fuck we’re still in Afghanistan. But I guess it would be impolite to ask him that.

Why doesn’t Romney ask him that? Oh right, because he wants to invade more places, only harder and with more stuttering….

9:29NB: Romney saying that we’ve weakened our economy. Who did that? Will we get through the whole debate without mentioning the “B” word?

There’s nowhere on earth that our influence is greater today? What about South Korea? Oh right; not Middle East, not China, therefore doesn’t exist….

9:32NB: Romney’s saying that Obama should have endorsed the Green Revolution…except that doing that would have harmed the Green Revolution, because there was nothing the regime wanted more than to link the rebels to the US. Does he actually not know that? Or is he just lying?

9:34NB: Romney sounds a lot more confident on economic issues, that’s for sure. He’s still full of shit, but he sounds like he believes the shit he’s full of.

He sounds like he memorized that statistic about Latin America being as big as China.

9:38RC: So it’s turned into a domestic policy debate, probably in recognition that they really have little to debate about in foreign policy.

9:41NB: Obama bragging that our military spending has gone up every year he’s been in office. Why is that okay? Why are we spending more and more on the military when we’re in the middle of a budget crisis and an enormous recession?

9:42NB: Our navy is smaller than any time in 1917? Where does he get this bullshit?

The highest calling of the President is to preserve the fucking Constitution, not to protect the safety of the American people. God damn it.

“Fewer bayonets.” That’ll leave a mark.

9:42RC: I’m glad Obama pointed out that counting ships and planes is pointless. A stealth fighter is worth 100 WWII era planes.

9:45NB: Holy crap. He wants them to declare that an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States? What the hell? Why not just make Bibi commander in chief? That’d scare Iran, huh?

I’m glad we’ve got a moderator more hawkish than either of the candidates. Maybe he’ll ask why we aren’t stepping up our drone strikes too.

9:46RC: Second genuflection to Israel. Take a drink!

9:48NB: He seems to have memorized the phrase “crippling sanctions” as well.

The glib cheerfulness with which they contemplate the horrible suffering caused by those sanctions is more than a little nauseating.

9:51NB: Obama’s professorial thing works for him when it’s coupled to thoroughgoing scorn.

9:52RC: Romney just can’t get any traction. Obama’s foreign policy is exactly what Romney would like to implement. Except with more competence.

9:54RC: Ah yes, the apology tour.

9:54NB: Weakness, strength, weakness, strength. I’m strong, he’s weak, and to prove it I will now deck the moderator, whip out my tumescent stuttering policy, and…destroy!

9:55NB: Romney now promising that when he is President he will not go to the Middle East.

9:55RC: Wait, how are we going to indict Ahmadinejad? Under the International Criminal Court, an institution that the U.S. doesn’t support?

9:58RC: Hey, I agree with Romney! I don’t want to run hypotheticals about how we should committing ourselves to more wars in the Middle East.

10:00 NB: Obama sneering at Romney for not wanting to break international law. Then dragging out the 9/11 victims. That’s fairly nauseating, but I would imagine devastating.

10:03RC: I’m surprised it took an hour for Obama to remind us that he killed Bin Laden.

10:04NB: And Romney doesn’t get a chance to respond and then whines about it.

10:04NB: Romney is now explaining and defending Obama’s policy in Afghanistan.

10:06NB: Can I vote for George McGovern?

10:06RC: Regarding the 2014 withdrawal: I can respect that Romney doesn’t want to play the hypothetical game. But then he answers by making big promises that he can’t possibly keep.

10:08NB: Pakistan is important basically because they have nuclear weapons. Why on earth would any other nation want to get nuclear weapons? It’s a mystery….

10:10:NB: Is Romney convincing anyone that he knows jack shit about this part of the world?

10:11NB: Hey, he asked about drones. So now Conor Friedersdorfer knows that Romney isn’t on his side. What a surprise….

10:12RC: Wow, Noah was right. Schieffer is an ultra-hawk who thinks we should kick Pakistan to the curb. Even Romney thinks that’s crazy.

10:13NB: Attitudes about Americans would change more if we weren’t bombing fucking wedding parties, you duplicitous shit.

That last was addressed to our President, alas.

10:14NB: And now the China bashing portion of your evening….

10:17NB: I think terrorism is a better answer than a nuclear Iran in fact, though maybe Romney’s will go over better because people want to be afraid of Iran now? I dunno.

Whoops, there goes the tumescent policy again.

10:19NB: The recession is all China’s fault, apparently. I bet that’s a popular position on Wall Street.

10:19RC: There responses about China are almost reasonable … I’m stunned.

10:20NB: You just needed to wait a minute there, Richard. Now we’re having a trade war.

10:21NB: Obama again with the shipping job overseas. That is such demagogic bullshit. He manages to sound so sincere when he’s shameless….

10:23NB: I don’t think Romney talking about his plan for the auto industry is helping him here.

Government investing in companies worked pretty well in South Korea.

10:23RC: Obama can never miss an opportunity to point out what a tough guy he is. China will stop stealing our IPs because I built a base in Australia!

10:27NB: Again, Romney’s much happier burbling his lines about the economy. The idea of him as commander in chief is terrifying.

He loves teachers like he loves Big Bird.

10:29NB: We’re going to stop wars, except for the wars we’re not going to stop, I guess.

10:31NB: Christ, just listening to Romney’s oleaginous phrasing is like an ice-pick to the eye. How can people vote for him?

10:32NB: Bipartisan bullshit. And then the greatest generation. Gag me.

10:33RC: So my choices are a continuation of the past four years, or a continuation of the past four years with more empty bravado and some tax cuts for the top 1%.

10:33NB: Yep. The moderator says voting will make you feel big and strong. It’s like he hasn’t been watching the debate at all (and who can blame him.)
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Give us a few minutes and we’ll have a wrap up….

NB: Well, that was pretty thoroughly depressing. I’d say the President won, though I don’t know if I’m entirely impartial because the timbre of Romney’s voice sets off my gag reflex. But be that as it may, he seems totally lost on foreign policy, stuttering and burbling and wandering off into irrelevancies. It doesn’t help that he’s got no real policy differences with the President, nor that his one-size-fits-all-plan (I worked in business, and so…magic!) sounds even stupider in foreign than in domestic policy. He did better when he could talk about the economy, where he’s got his nonsense down patter. But he sure didn’t sound like someone you want anywhere near the nuclear button.

Substantively, though, they’re both the same evil imperialists we’ve come to expect from America. Build a gigundus military, inflict hardship through sanctions, bluster and threaten, drop drones, bait China, repeat. I guess that’s what the people want. And perhaps therefore we deserve it, though it’s hard not to feel bad for the rest of the world.

RC: A few closing thoughts. People who complain about a lack of “bipartisanship” are clearly not paying attention to foreign policy. The two candidates were in agreement on every major issue, which obviously helped Obama. Romney came across as more cynical than usual largely because he couldn’t articulate a policy that differed from Obama’s in any meaningful way. So we hear more claptrap about the “apology tour,” or the lack of sufficient fealty to Israel, or the need to be strong, Strong, STRONG! Americans love chest-thumping jingo of course, but at a certain point it becomes transparently desperate.

More importantly, the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy is terrible. It celebrates an endless war on terror, shrill imperialist rants, and unchecked presidential power. What this debate needed was a voice that could attack Obama’s policies from the left. Gary Johnson or Jill Stein would have pointed out that Obama has assassinated American citizens (to say nothing of the foreigners who are designated as “militants” by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time), waged an unlawful war in Libya, and essentially trampled on the Constitution. But voting for a third party candidate is considered “throwing your vote away.” Allowing the presidency to transform into a rotating imperial title is what serious Americans accept.

Cloud Hackery

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Cloud Atlas
By David Mitchell

I approach contemporary science fiction with a certain wariness. Many of my friends are sci-fi/fantasy fans, and they are only too happy to recommend books. Invariably, whenever I read one of these books I’m left wondering, “Why did I waste my life reading that?” I’m not interested in reading another techno-military thriller, or a 20-volume “epic,” or a tedious story about a robot who contemplates the meaning of love. But after hearing multiple people praise Cloud Atlas, curiosity got the better of me. I’m glad to say that it wasn’t any where near as bad as I feared. I still didn’t like it , but I don’t feel like I’ve wasted hours of my life reading it. So that’s progress.

Cloud Atlas consists of six stories arranged in chronological order through the first half of the book, then the first five stories are revisited and concluded in reverse-chronological order in the second half. The stories are:

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing – circa 1850, a diary written by an American traveler who spends time on the Chatham Islands before sailing for home. Much of the story describes the impact of Western colonialism on Pacific islanders, particularly the Moriori, who were nearly destroyed by a combination of Maori invaders and European diseases. Ewing is a relatively decent man, but he unthinkingly embraces the prejudices of his era until he meets a Moriori stowaway named Autua. Ewing saves Autua’s life, and the latter returns the favor by saving Ewing from the villainous Dr. Goose who planned to rob and murder Ewing.

Letters from Zedelghem – a series of letters written in 1931 by Robert Frobisher, an aspiring composer who flees his debts in England and moves to rural Belgium. There, he finds a position as the understudy to a famous but ailing composer. Robert is a bit of a rake, and seems poised to exploit the composer and his lusty wife for all they are worth. But his fortunes turn for the worse after a falling out with his employer.

Half Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery – a crime story set in 1975 California. Luisa Rey is a journalist working for a trashy tabloid who stumbles upon a major scandal involving a dangerous nuclear power plant and a murdered whistle-blower.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish – a contemporary comedy about an aging publisher who flees his troubles and inadvertently ends up in a retirement community. The community is run like a prison and the aging residents are treated little better than criminals. Most of the story details Cavendish’s escape attempts.

An Orison of Sonmi-451 –  a dystopian sci-fi drama set sometime after a global nuclear war. Korea escaped destruction, but it is now ruled by a totalitarian-capitalist regime that relies on artificially-grown slave labor. Sonmi is one such slave, but she experiences an “ascension,” becoming fully self-aware and joining a rebellion. Sonmi is later captured and narrates the story to her interrogators prior to her execution (the orison is a recording device).

Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After – a memoir by Zachry, a Hawaiian tribesman who lived in a primitive farming community long after a nuclear war wiped out most of humanity. Zachry assists Meronym, one of the last remnants of a technologically advanced society, in gathering useful information. Zachry is eventually saved by Meronym after his village is wiped out by a more violent tribe.

The stories are interconnected in several ways. All the lead characters except Zachry possess the same comet-shaped birth mark, and Mitchell has acknowledged that they are a single reincarnated soul* (Meronym is the last reincarnation). Each story also acknowledges the existence of the chronologically earlier story. Frobisher reads Ewing’s journal, Luisa reads Frobisher’s letters, Cavendish reads a book starring Luisa, Sonmi reads a book about Cavendish, and Zachry encounters the orison that recorded Sonmi’s confession.

And there are themes common to all six stories, particularly the universality of violence, conquest, and exploitation. Ewing is a witness to Maori and European imperialism, and he is personally the victim of deception and violence. Frobisher is exploited by his employer. Luisa is nearly murdered by the corrupt owners of the nuclear plant. Cavendish is cruelly treated by the “caretakers” at the retirement community. Sonmi is enslaved, manipulated, and finally executed by an oppressive state. And Zachry’s entire world is destroyed by a predatory tribe. But Mitchell also acknowledges a gentler humanity that can triumph over our baser instincts. Autua saves Ewing, just as Meronym saves Zachry several centuries later.

For Mitchell, the triumph of good over evil is dependent on story-telling. This is particularly evident in Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After.  As they lynchpin story, it binds the chronological narrative to the motifs that reoccur in the other five stories. It largely succeeds in highlighting Mitchell’s themes about human predation versus the “ascension” of the human spirit. Much of the story involves Zachry and Meronym fighting or evading the barbaric Kona tribe. Also, while Zachry’s tribe is more peaceful, he himself repeatedly struggles with violent impulses. At one point, Zachry actually has a conversation with the Devil (Old Georgie) and barely resists the temptation to murder Meronym. And Zachry’s tale suggests the moral value of story-telling. Zachry is the only survivor of a brutal attack on his tribe, and he eventually re-settles with Meronym’s people, who record his memories. His spiritual struggles and moral triumph serve as a inspiration to the surviving humans.

This theme re-emerges at the end of the second half of the Adam Ewing story (which is also the end of the entire novel). Ewing narrowly escapes murder at the hands of a (white) doctor who embraces a nihilistic, predatory philosophy. Ewing is saved by Autua, a dark-skinned ex-slave. These events cause Ewing to rethink his entire worldview, and he decides to become an abolitionist. In his words, “If we believe humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share the world … such a world will come to pass.”

So there are plenty of ideas bouncing around the book, and its division into six stories allows Mitchell to explore those ideas in six different genres. In each story, Mitchell demonstrates basic skill as a genre writer, whether he’s writing faux-memoir, mystery, or science fiction. In theory, Cloud Atlas should be an exciting and challenging book. In practice, the book fails to live up to its pretensions, largely because Mitchell’s ideas are not as profound as he seems to think they are. To summarize the main points of the book: if people choose to be good, then the world will be a better place. And story-telling is an effective way to convey moral lessons. The obvious response to these points is “No shit!” People have been well aware of these insights for at least the past two thousand years.

A more interesting observation might involve asking why people continue to do immoral things despite the countless stories intended to teach a moral lesson. If Cloud Atlas is any indication, Mitchell’s answer would be that humans are naturally predatory (they have an inner Old Georgie) and so there will always be at least some people who are violent, cruel, and selfish. That’s partly true, but it elides the fact that many violent, cruel, and selfish people nevertheless consider themselves moral, and they may even behave with kindness in a different context (for example, in the treatment of their own family). A sophisticated view of morality would have to look beyond a simplistic predator/victim relationship.

I don’t see much moral complexity in Cloud Atlas. The “good guys” are always likable, POV characters. They may be flawed, but their flaws are surmountable or at least forgivable. Ewing starts off as a racist, but he has an epiphany and embraces racial egalitarianism. Luisa Rey pursues journalistic truth and saves lives. Sonmi achieves greater self-awareness and defies a totalitarian state. Zachry resists temptation. Even the self-absorbed Frobisher isn’t that bad a guy, and he ends up being rather sympathetic in his final days.

The “bad guys,” on the other hand, are a uniformly reprehensible lot with no redeeming qualities. Dr. Goose is a psychopathic murderer. The businessmen in Half-Lives are almost comically villainous. The “caretakers” encountered by Cavendish are petty tyrants. And of course there is an oppressive state and the violent Kona tribe in the last two stories. Because Mitchell leans toward a simplistic, good vs. evil dichotomy, he can’t offer deeper insights about human morality. And without these insights the stories can only be described as forgettable genre works.

For example, Half Lives was a crime thriller, so Mitchell could draw ideas from an enormous collection of works. But while Mitchell replicates the basic formula and rhythm of a crime thriller, he doesn’t create a particularly compelling or memorable story. It’s an “airport novel” with a few liberal biases: corporations are evil, nuclear power is bad, journalists are noble heroes, etc., etc. All that righteousness becomes rather tedious, and it weighs down what would otherwise be a decent plot. Nor does it help that Luisa Rey is a dull heroine who stumbles through her own narrative while side characters perform all the heavy lifting.

An Orison of Sonmi-451 had far greater potential, as it borrows concepts from Huxley, Orwell, and the other great writers of dystopian fiction. In one sense, it’s an extremely derivative story, and Mitchell openly acknowledged his inspirations (primarily Brave New World and 1984). Being derivative doesn’t necessarily have to be a mark against it, as writers are constantly stealing ideas from each other. But Mitchell only steals the surface of ideas, and he adds nothing new to the genre. Huxley was interested in the relationship between eugenics and class (mostly because he belonged to a a family of eugenicists), while Orwell was interested in propaganda, particularly the manipulation of language. Mitchell touches a little on eugenics and propaganda, but he does little more than regurgitate older ideas. He’s far more interested in writing a story about a heroic slave who triumphs over her oppressors, even from beyond the grave. Though she was executed, the novel suggests that Sonmi’s confession become public knowledge and inspire a slave rebellion. She even comes to be worshiped as a goddess in Zachry’s time. It’s so predictably uplifting I wanted to puke.  I’m not suggesting that the triumph of good over evil is objectionable per se, but it seems absurd to take the ideas of dystopian futurists and tack on a happy ending straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Though the happy ending approach may explain why Cloud Atlas will soon be in a theater near you.

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*BBC audio interview

Onslaught of the 90’s

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A common stereotype of superhero fans is that they love the comics they read as children. Apparently, superhero comics were so much better during the Golden/Silver/Bronze/Iron/Tin Age. But rosy nostalgia is difficult if you grew up reading superhero comics in the 1990’s. With a tiny number of exceptions, those comics were terrible. That’s not meant as a defense of the current crop of superhero comics, which are generally unreadable. But the comics I read as a kid weren’t much better. In fact, many of the problems in the 2012 superhero market – amateurish art, continuity porn, title crossovers designed to push you into buying a dozen extra comics – were firmly in place by the mid-90’s. And yet I was buying this crap.

I’ve mentioned before that I was an X-Men fan. And out of all superhero fandom, X-Men fans were the biggest suckers. Marvel editors figured out that we cared so much about our spandex soap opera that we’d be willing to buy not just one, or even four, but upwards of six or more titles each month. In any given month, I was buying X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur, Cable, X-Man, Wolverine, and probably around 2-3 mini-series. I was even willing to shop outside the X-Men ghetto if a crossover required it. Crossover with Ghost Rider? Sure, I’ll buy that. Avengers? Not a fan, but I would get it. I was even willing to buy Fantastic Four if necessary (and if you want to experience superhero comics at their nadir, read some FF in the 90’s).

So I was part of the target audience for the “Onslaught Saga,” the big crossover of 1996. For those of you who had social lives that year, Onslaught was a psychic energy being inadvertently created by Prof. Xavier after he psychically lobotomized his arch-enemy, Magneto. They had some weird mind-meld, and their bastard offspring was out to conquer the world, enslave humanity, etc., etc.

Onslaught was not much of a character, being one-dimensional and completely devoid of personality. But he wasn’t even much of a plot device, because the Onslaught Saga barely had anything resembling a plot. Instead, it meandered from one irrelevant beat to another before finally lurching to a “climax.” More accurately, Onslaught should be described as a corporate re-tooling device: most of the Marvel titles that weren’t part of the X-Men line were selling so badly that Marvel decided to reboot most of the characters and hand creative control over to the big names of the decade, like Rob Liefeld.

Eat gooch and die, Japo-Nazi!

 Onslaught existed for only one purpose: to “kill” all the heroes (excepting the X-Men) so they could be reborn in another universe. In other words, the point of the Onslaught Saga was not to tell a story but to restart a few brands. I had purchased plenty of bad crossovers before the Onslaught Saga, and I had seen plenty of transparent attempts to reboot an unpopular superhero. But the Onslaught Saga actually offended me in a way that’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s because the X-Men franchise was hi-jacked to reboot another group of heroes, characters that I had never cared about and would never care about. Or maybe I was offended by the blatantly transparent “corporateness” of it all.

Technically, this roundtable is supposed to be about the worst comic I ever read, not the worst crossover. It’s hard to pick a single “worst” comic in the Onslaught storyline, because all of them were rubbish. But if I had to pick, I’d go with Uncanny X-Men #336. It isn’t the worst on most “technical” levels. Scott Lobdell’s script is about as passable as one could be for a comic of this nature. And Joe Madureira’s art doesn’t make me want to poke out my eyes most of the time, though there are plenty of shitty panels.

I’m not even sure where to begin: the lazy use of coloring instead of drawing a background, the balloon boobs, or the fact that her hands are turning into rocks.

But what makes this the “worst” comic was that this particular issue was the moment when I stopped caring about the X-Men. I know this because it’s the last issue of Uncanny X-Men in my collection (I read the Grant Morrison comics years later, but I downloaded those). It’s hard to look back and remember what was passing through my mind, but at some point I decided that I was getting nothing out of this hobby: no laughs, no excitement, not even the fannish pleasure of seeing certain couples hook up. I just wasn’t interested. When I quit X-Men, I actually stopped reading all comics for the most part, and it wasn’t until several years later that a college friend introduced me to comics for older readers.

My decision to quit X-Men comics was at least partially dictated by other developments in my life. Around the same time I gave up comics I also got my first car and I was starting to notice girls. I was spending more time with my circle of friends and less time reading the funny books. And none of my friends were into comics, so there was no one to reinforce my bad habit. And back then the Internet was only partially developed – and dial-up connections SUCKED – so there were few opportunities to participate in comic blogs or web forums. So, despite being an X-Men fan for years, it proved surprisingly easy to quit.

In a way, I supposed I should be grateful to the writers of the Onslaught Saga. Had they actually put together a halfway decent story, I might of continued reading superhero comics indefinitely. And instead of blogging about the worst comic I ever read, I’d be writing a panegyric for Geoff Johns.

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.