On HU

Caroline Small started the week off by talking abotu ethics in Dr. Who.

Richard Cook looked at the current state of crime comics.

Blogger and Atlantic pop culture writer Alyssa Rosenberg did a guest post on pop culture and criticism.

I sneered at R. Fiore’s take on the South Park imbroglio once, and then again.

Vom Marlowe reviewed Junjo Romantic.

And I reprinted an essay on how Torchwood presages the manporn future.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Madeloud I have an intro to death metal for beginners.

Death metal has to be one of the most inaccessible forms of structured noise ever to have passed itself off under the loose rubric of “popular music”. With vocals that are more growled than sung, drumming that sounds more like a jackhammer than a beat, a brutal insistence on lack of groove, and lyrics that embrace Satanism, decay, and being torn limb from limb — well, let’s just say that the genre isn’t everyone’s cup of steaming pus.

I have a death metal download here if the article inspires you.

At Splice Today I make fun of Walter Benjamin.

Yes, 80 years ago Benjamin was touting the newspaper, or at least the Stalinist newspaper, as a truly democratic voice. Newspapers were the bright new genre that would allow the people to take an active role in their culture and cease to be the stoned recipient drones of capitalist trash. The press (or “at any rate” as Benjamin says “the Soviet Russian press”) is changing everything; it “revises the distinction between author and reader.” The means of production are now in the hands of all, and the revolution is sure to follow.

And I have a brief review of an art opening over at the Chicago Reader.

Other Links

Sort of inspired by the R. Fiore dust up, Bert Stabler pointed me to this article arguing that Christians should dispense with questions of objective truth.

On HU

We started the week with some Mary Sue links by Vom Marlowe.

I had another Swamp Thing post about gender and hawk women.

Suat had a lovely tribute to one of Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey stories.

We highlighted some comments on the Swamp Thing roundtable from Andrei Molotiu, Charles Reece, and EricB.

I sneered at Kingyo Used Books.

We announced four (count ’em, four!) new columnists on HU.

And we’ve got some black and doom metal for download.

HU….Live!

You can hear audio of the C2E2 comics journalism panel in which I participated.

There’s also commentary on the panel by Matthew Brady; Johanna Draper Carlson, Michael May, and Heidi at the Beat.

Utilitarians Everywhere

I have an interview about copyright issues with songwriter Bill Ritchie over at Splice Today.

Bill: As it happens, there’s a silver lining to my problems with getting paid. I can always trump someone who’s ranting away about how downloading is stealing, it’s wrong, it’s immoral, all that stuff because I can always point out that even if downloading were theft (which it isn’t, it’s copyright infringement), it sure wouldn’t be me any downloaders were stealing from if they copied thus-and-such a song because I don’t get paid for the sales of the record it’s on anyway, somebody else has got the money. So, “Whom are you defending?” is a question that I’m happy to be able to raise in that sort of discussion, because I just want to put it out there to people that this isn’t all cut-and-dried. I’m a music rights holder and I’m fine with downloaders, and not okay with the hyper-righteous criticism of them, because, hey, I’m out actual dollars that were already paid for my work, so why are we sitting around debating whether or not someone who downloaded represents a potential lost sale for someone who’s not me anyway, right?

Also on Splice Today, I review the new Merle Haggard album.

Haggard had a lot of hits besides “Okie from Muskogee,” and as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter he remains hugely important, a major influence on everyone from George Strait to Alan Jackson. Still, “Okie” was a telling moment. Even though somewhat tongue in cheek (white lightnin’ is every bit as illegal as marijuana, after all) it was still a line in the sand. And though Haggard has recorded with Willie Nelson and was idolized by Gram Parsons, that line hasn’t ever really disappeared. Over the years, he’s added strings at various points, but he’s never put together a New Age album with Daniel Lanois, or written with Jack White, or recorded a cover version of a Trent Reznor song. His latest album title, I Am What I Am, pretty much sums it up. And what Haggard is, is country or bust. He doesn’t have an alternative career path.

I have a couple really mean-spirited short book reviews at the Chicago Reader (you need to scroll a bit to find them.)

And a review of death-doom band Hooded Menace at Madeloud.

Other Links

In response to our own Richard Cook’s question, Can Comics Be Scary?, Curt Purcell put together an all star panel, including Sean T. Collins and Richard Sala(!) Check it out.

I’d seen this letter before, but it remains a truly transcendent example of snark.

On HU

This week was mostly devoted to our Swamp Thing roundtable which isn’t done yet! Jog’s got another post and I’ve got another post. Swamp Thing — he shambles on.

Also, I suggested that comics journalists might maybe want to get over themselves a little bit..

Utilitarians Everywhere

As Splice Today I talk about Zen ink drawings and why art is corrupt:

As it is, the painting seems to be a deliberate effort to unenlighten. A viewer can’t help but turn the Bhodhidharma from nothing—abstract lines on paper— into something; the Bhodhidharma, who is not there and then, despite his own parable, is. When the emperor asks, “Who stands before me?” the response “I don’t know” is not a statement of ignorance, but the declaration of a name. Similarly, the calligraphic message here twists back on itself. You cannot read, “not know” without knowing; the words inevitably convey the message that the wrong message has been conveyed. And even the broken strokes; do they really suggest a presence that is more ghostly than real? On the contrary, the gaps in the line serve instead to emphasize the hand of the artist; looking at this image, Jiun’s brush seems like the stiffest, most solid thing in the universe—more solid by far than the centuries he’s dragged it across. More solid, too, than the person looking at the image, who, along with the emperor, is less an individual than a dumb, appreciative foil—a blank, sympathetic page upon which the seer inscribes his own outline.

I have a conversation about Kant and evil over at Bert Stabler’s blog:

Bert: According to Zizek, the sublime thing in Kant’s Law is that it makes the individual responsible for her own decisions, since the Law does not give specific instructions– which addresses your idea of the Law being in one’s heart. But paradoxically (surprise!), that’s what takes the responsibility out of the person’s hands, since they’re acting in the name of this nameless, faceless injunction, in which all desire and pleasure is pathological, and pleasure comes from and desire reaches toward humiliation (punishment).

At Madeloud I interview artist and musician Matt Steinke of the band Octant.

Steinke: I have been making drum robots since I graduated from college in 1997. They seem glamorous when you talk about them, and they are often more complex than they appear and sound, but technically speaking, they are mechanical drum machines – acoustic electronically-controlled musical instruments. I have a mechanical toy piano, a mechanical bass guitar-like instrument, and a mechanically bowed zither. I use guitars that I have modified or customized, a toy guitar, a toy accordion, a music box that has magnetic pickups, and my sampler theremin watch. I also now have a homemade harmonium.

And I’m still posting stealth downloads for a friend or two if anyone is interested. Death Metal is here. And a folksy/country one is here.

Other Links

Shaenon Garrity had a couple of good articles this week, including this essay wondering where all the porn comics went and this hysterical cartoon version of Ken Smith’s philosophy.

Russ Smith at Splice Today has an acid take on Hank Williams’ belated Pulitzer.

And posts like this are why I continue to really like Andrew Sullivan.

Utilitarian LIVE at C2E2

I’m going to be part of a panel on Old Media, New Media, Comics Media at C2E2 in Chicago, April 16, 7: 45:00 PM – 8:45:00 PM. Heidi McDonald is moderating, and other panelists are Brigid Alverson, Johanna Draper Carlson, Ron Richards and Lucas Siegel. It’s in Room E352.

This will not only be my first time on a con panel, it will be my first time at any sort of con ever, to the best of my recollection. So do come by if you’re not watching the simultaneous Dr. Who screening — or if you’re not seeing my cousin Ben Winters, author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters who is also, and improbably, on a different panel in the same con at the same time.

On HU

I didn’t like the Tintin adventure The Castafiore Emerald very much.

VM was confused by Song of the Hanging Sky vol. 2.

Richard wondered if comics can be scary.

Caro criticized Chris Ware for his poor handling of criticism, leading to a massive comments thread (some of it critical.)

And finally I killed off Music for Middle-Brow Snobs.

Utilitarians Everywhere

Kind of a ridiculous number of publications this week.

On Splice Today I have a long discussion of Terry Eagleton’s new book On Evil

Eagleton’s objection to the use of “evil” to describe Islamic fundamentalists or Mao or bank robbers seems, in the end, more pragmatic than theological. The word evil, he says “is generally a way of bringing argument to an end, like a fist to the solar plexus.” Eagleton, for reasons which aren’t entirely clear, (his Catholic upbringing? His own common sense?) doesn’t want to chuck the word entirely, but he does want to bracket it off. Evil does have “an intimate relation with everyday life,” he argues, but when it comes to defining what that relation is, he more or less punts, offering a laundry list in place of an actual mechanism. Envy, he says, is kind of like evil, schadenfreude is kind of like evil, Freud’s death drive is kind of like evil, and, hey, by the way, Adolf Eichmann looked like a bank clerk. Evil … it has something to do with us. But not much. Can we talk about something else please?

On Comixology I had an extremely snide review of Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin.

What Morrison understands, through a Jungian intuitiveness born of years of intensively soldering corporate slogans onto the sacred flesh of his unnameables, is that crazy throw-off moments from the past gain weight and profundity by being repeatedly embalmed and disinterred. Every time Bob Haney hawked up a loogie, Grant Morrison was there, mouth open like a baby bird, ready to ingest, digest, and re-emit it for the sole purpose of waddling his sublimely stained Bat underoos over to the nearest university English Department for professional sterilization and veneration.

At the Chicago Reader I review Diane Ravitch’s new book about school reform.

Everyone knows that teachers have class—but which class that is, exactly, isn’t clear. As educated people working with brains, pens, and paper clips, they look white collar. Those indicators are superficial, though. In most ways that matter, teachers are working class. Charged with controlling a potentially dangerous population, they toil through a regimented workday at the butt end of a faceless bureaucracy. A teacher is a prison guard disguised as a college professor—a combination that gives nearly everyone some reason to despise them.

Again on Splice Today I talk about the confused class politics of the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

The Big Bang Theory isn’t alone in pretending that brainworkers are evolutionarily disadvantaged beta-males. Everyone knows that Bill Gates is (a) happily married, and (b) the most powerful person on the planet, but no one seems to want to generalize from there even a little bit. The fact is, though, that scary-smart geeks are not just smarter than folks like Penny—they’re also in a higher social class.

I have an interview with mashup artist DJLobsterdust over at Madeloud.

Do the mashups have to be songs that are popular, or do you try to put together things that are less well known?

In the beginning I really didn’t care and I’d just use songs that I like. But since I find myself playing in front of crowds…I do mashups for myself, songs that I like, and at the same time every couple of weeks I put something out there that everybody knows just so people don’t forget about me. At the same time — I do this because I like pop music. So I have no problem mixing anything with anything.

I have a short review of the Numero Groups Good God: Born Again Funk compilation over at Metropulse.

And I have a review of the horror/fantasy manga Dorohedoro over at tcj.com.

We’re going to take a day off tomorrow for the holiday. We’ll be back on Monday.

On HU

This week I talked to artist and critic Bert Stabler about art, criticism, pragmatism, and materialism.

Suat explained why comics will never be as exciting as video games.

Caro explained why this thing she found is comics (and in comments folks speculate on whether or not it might be by William Steig.)

Suat discussed Chester Brown’s gospel adaptations.

And Caro interviewed novelist Jonathan Lethem.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Reader I discussed the black metal band Ludicra and women in extreme metal.

The fact that when the women in Ludicra sound like women they’re essentially being used to replace a synthesizer is emblematic of how gender works in extreme metal. Which is to say, it doesn’t work at all. Extreme metal doesn’t care about men and women. It barely cares about bodies. Johnny Rotten howls “I’m not an animal!” and extreme metal responds with a louder and even more hideous howl of indifference. Misanthropy, to say nothing of misogyny, is for the living. Extreme metal’s aggression may sound male on the surface, but a corpse isn’t masculine even if it has a penis. Extreme metal seeks a monstrous oblivion; it uses unrelenting noise to destroy not just the dying animal but also the angel fastened to it. “Teach me to mask the spirit . . . The farce of human bonds / Of dignity and respect,” Shanaman howls. “Let me be the clean white void / The slate . . . the unwritten.” You don’t have genitals when you’re a mask upon a void.

I gave a one-star review to Kath Bloom’s remarkably lame new album over at Madeloud.

I reviewed the new Twilight Graphic Novel on tcj.com.

Other Links
This is a fascinating article about the copyright difficulties of producing a documentary about sampling.

And I enjoyed Erica Friedman’s wrap up of her and her wife’s trip to Japan.