Well, as you may or may not have noticed, we’re still here. Hopefully we’ll shift over to TCJ early next week. In the meantime, here is your weekly wrap as usual.

On HU

I started the week off with a long discussion of the question Can Wonder Woman Be a Superdick?

Richard sneered at Image United.

I sneered at Carol Lay’s Big Skinny.

Vom Marlowe praised the stick figure art in xkcd.

Kinukitty pledged eternal devotion to Japanese cross-dressing reality shows.

And this week’s download features a bunch of things I learned about through the Factual Opinion’s year-end best of.

Utilitarians Everywhere

Bert Stabler and I have a long conversation about The Book of Job of all things. Here’s probably my best bit:

The second epilogue, perhaps, is the crucifixion. You can see the wheels turning in God’s head after Job 42, perhaps, maybe in a kind of Stan Lee or Star Trek vein — “How strange these humans are! So weak, and yet, parodoxically, so strong! I must study them more closely…and to do that I must become — One Of Them!”

Next: Comes a Man-God!

And keeping with the religious theme, I have an article about Anthony Heilbut’s gospel compilations over on Madeloud.

Anthony Heilbut is probably the most influential white atheist in African-American gospel music. His 1971 book, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, was the seminal study of the genre. In addition to being a scholar, he was also an influential producer and compiler, and the records he put together remain some of the best introductions to the music. Many of his compilations and projects were on vinyl and never made the leap to disc — but many more were done more recently and are still, blessedly, in print.

I have a review of Rihanna’s new album over at Metropulse.

And finally, for the new TCJ sight I’ve reviewed Junko Mizuno’s Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu and Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit. Of course, since the site is in beta, these links may be broken by the time you click on them…which is one reason that going live from Beta is maybe not the best of all possible ideas. Just sayin’.

Other Links

Jog has a massive, encyclopedic discussion of all things manga. I haven’t made it through yet, but it looks stunning.

Gary Morris has an interesting discussion of his new book of film interviews here.

And your Thai pop video of the week: Duangjun Suwannee with Mon Boo Doo.

It’s been a slowish week here with the holidays, but I did want to mention that i had a brief but (IMO) entertaining review of the very aptly named Horsemeat Disco comp over at Metropulse.

And I love this Por Parichart video.

On HU

I started this week off with a post on how superdickery has changed through the ages.

Richard wrote about mediocre French mainstream title Spin Angels.

Suat wrote about living with Walt Kelly original art.

Kinukitty wrote about the somewhat squicky yaoi title Two of Hearts.

Vom Marlowe discussed the mediocrity which is X-Men.

And this week’s music download features lots of gospel and thai music.

Last week’s droney mix can still be found at the link.

Utilitarians Elsewhere

Bill and Tom have moved off HU, of course, but I thought I’d mention that they both have great articles in the most recent, and last, Comics Journal, #300, available in a store near you hopefully.

Tom argues that Alan Moore has fallen prey to his own rampant geekery.

Alan Moore is a product of that time, maybe its best. If you want some recycled pop fantasy, I think you’re better off with “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” than you are with Star Wars. In fact I’d say his big titles of the 1980s, Watchmen most of all, are the only examples I’ve come across of really fine, substantial works devoted to recycling other-reality entertainment staples. But something went wrong. His Watchmen became Watchmen the movie, which is bad enough. What’s worse is that Moore wrote Lost Girls and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and — well, just about every comic he’s turned out since 1989 or so. If I had to think of reasons to say why Alan Moore was great, I’d have a hard time finding anything from his comics work of the past 20 years. There’s issue 12 of Promethea, but then there’s the rest of Promethea. There’s From Hell, but no, not really. He hasn’t stopped being a genius; only a genius could fail in the way he does, with such energy and ambition, such amazing fireworks. But when I put one of his comics down, I have to remind myself to pick it back up. I think his post-’89 comics are stunted. No matter how big he tries to be, he winds up being small.

Bill, meanwhile, argues for the uniqueness — and probable transience — of the anime/manga invasion of the U.S.

In 2000, you could name the people and companies working to bring manga to the West on one hand, maybe two. Now keeping up with just the English-language commentators has become a full-time job. A few of the writers, like Jason Thompson, Xavier Guilbert and the chaps at Same Hat! Same Hat!, deserve careful reading. Most of the rest barely need a skim. Which is not necessarily a criticism if you have 3,000 people writing about the same book, what are the odds most of them will say the same things?

What happens instead is that they say the same thing in different places. There is no one essential place to read about manga in English. Instead, the trickle of information from 30-plus years ago became a healthy flow. Then, as with everything in the current age, the forces behind it pool into isolated spots. Each one hosts a dialogue or a tribal area or even an intellectual prison; each speaks to a particular subjectivity. One could tip the pen to Postmodernism, were that movement not first passé and second ironic. Manga and its fans have favored bald emotions, putting them closer to New Sincerity, or the Reconstructivists, or whatever the movement after pomo ends up being called. It seems less like forward progress through the history of ideas than an atomization.

Meanwhile, on the Internets, I have an essay about the new Twilight movies over at Reason.

If Edward represents agelessness as a perfect fantasy, Jacob Black represents aging as a horror-film disaster. As you almost certainly know from advance publicity (and if you don’t, here comes the spoiler,) Jacob discovers partway through the film that he’s a werewolf. Lycanthropy, as it turns out, is adolescence on steroids. Jacob loses control of his emotions, grows hair where he shouldn’t, starts hanging out with the wrong crowd, and begins thinking so loudly that all his friends can hear him.

In choosing between Jacob and Edward, Bella is choosing between growing up, with all its dangers and messy unpredictability, and staying a faery child, forever young and lifeless. In the end (here’s another spoiler), without much of a fight, she opts for immortality. Thus, the Twilight series isn’t so much a coming-of-age story as a refusing-to-come-of-age story.

And finally I have a brief review of the new Leona Lewis album over at Metropulse.

Other Links

Matthew Brady pointed me to this unpublished black and white Wonder Woman story with art by Harry Peter and script possibly by William Marston. It’s a treat.

And your Thai luk thung/morlum video of the week, sung by Siriporn Umpaipong.

And what the hey, here’s another one by Ajareeya Bussaba. Adorable caterpillars.

On HU

This week started out with my review of Young Schulz, a collection of Charles Schulz’s comics featuring young adults at church.

Kinukitty reviewed Way to Heaven which is not as good as the rock band Angel.

I reviewed a handful of mahwa and manga, including Click, Bizenghast, and a collection of Hiroki Endo’s short stories.

Vom Marlowe reviewed the electronic art program Corel Painter and its official magazine.

I insisted that superheroes aren’t dead, despite the best efforts of Marvel and D.C.

And finally this week’s droney music mix is available for down load. Also, in case you missed it, you can still get the discoey mix from last week.

Utilitarians Elsewhere

A bunch of stuff this week, starting with:

Something completely different over at Splice Today, where I attempt to get in touch with my long denied genetic destiny as an NPR confessional essayist.

As a child, I was told that I mumbled. And, as kids will, I believed it—and went on believing it well after I had left home. In fact, I don’t think I fully realized this deception until well into adulthood. I was 28, I think; my parents had come into Chicago to visit and we were having dinner in a restaurant with a cousin and my wife-to-be. My cousin showed up late, bearing a relatively spectacular bit of news: My grandmother had caught her eye on a car door and was in the hospital. My mom sat up straighter in her chair, lifted her chin, and with that east-coast Jewish nasal edge that sounds like a jackhammer pulled across a blackboard, bellowed out, “Holy Fuck!”

Over at comixology I discuss ukiyo-e prints and Satoshi Kitamura’s children book “When Sheep Cannot Sleep.”

Kitamura’s book reads like a Japanese print series in a number of ways, from his off-center compositions, to his subtle use of blank space, to his lovely color palette, all the way to his clever, intentionally humorous use of visual puzzles. You’re always wondering from page to page what you’re supposed to be counting and where it is, just as in Yoshitoshi’s series you’re always looking for (and not always finding) the moon.

On Madeloud I discuss a number of unusual christian albums, including the Violent Femmes’ Hallowed Ground.

Anenoidal weirdo Gordan Gano played up his adolescent angst and played down his religious inclinations on most Violent Femmes releases — except for his second effort, 1984’s aggressively bizarre Hallowed Ground. Starting off with a plunking tale of child murder and ending with a joyful plea for watery apocalypse, the album recasts the fire and brimstone of old timey country as manic, off-kilter stagger: it’s Christianity as bi-polar disorder. Nowhere is this clearer than on “Black Girls,” a concupiscent vaudeville-meets-free-jazz paean to interracial affection, featuring a guest-spot from John Zorn’s Horns of Dilemma and the immortal lines “You know I love the lord of hosts/father son and the holy ghost/ I was so pleased to learn that he’s inside me/ In my time of trouble he will hide me….I dig the black girls!” Just like the squeaking saxophones and the bluegrass banjo, the cheerful lust and earnest faith exist side by side — angular, dissonant, incongruous, and perfect.

Bert Stabler has posted some more email conversations between the two of us, this time about Slavoj Zizek and God. Here’s me snarking at Zizek:

Aha! Just got to Zizek on the resurrection; it’s apparently a metaphor for the way an inspirational example lives on in a community of radical believers. “I may die, but what I stood for will inspire you…and so I live on!”

Which seems like really weak tea. Zizek goes to a lot of effort to read the death of God literally…and then we’re supposed to take the resurrection as not just a metaphor, but a cliched metaphor? Joan Baez on Joe Hill is the meaning of the resurrection? I mean, I like Joan Baez, and labor organizing is cool, but…why are we talking about Christ at all then if this is the point, exactly? And if this is indeed the point, why aren’t you out there organizing rather than having a debate about God?

Finally, over at the Knoxville MetropulseI review the recent release by Belgian psychedelic weirdos Sylvester Anfang.

Other Links

This is a great Wonder Woman cartoon by Kate Beaton.

Absolutely gorgeous Beardsley-like opium illustratons by Attila Sassy. I don’t say this enough, but thanks to Dirk for the link.

Ariel Schrag has a statement about a middle school pulling her anthology about middle school kids, Stuck in the Middle, off its shelves.

And your Thai pop video of the week, featuring Mangpor Chonticha:

On HU

Most Utilitarian energy this week was spent Black and White and Startlingly Offensive All Over our roundtable on race. Extra thanks to Steven Grant for his guest contribution.

Also of roundtable-related interest, Supergirl artist Jamal Igle stopped by in comments (he’s got a couple of comments, so scroll down.)

Almost buried in all the roundtable activity, I had a brief post explaining why Jeet Heer is wrong, wrong, wrong about what should be done with the Comics Journal.

And finally this week’s mix, featuring disco and Amerie and Thai pop is available for download.

Off HU

Bert Stabler has posted an email conversation between the two of us about Slavoj Zizek, self-identity, and the gender of god. If abstruse, confusingly formatted philosophical discourse is your cup of tea, this just might be your divine non-tea aporia/emporia. Here’s a bit from Bert:

You’e right, it’s definitely all about love– love cannot be easily dissociated from sin. It’s almost the only reason to keep a transcendent God– so that there’s some magic wall that keeps His fecundity and violence from being similar to our own. That magic wall became the death of Christ– it’s almost as if what died on the cross was not only the certainty of a transcendent dimension, but also the banal self-identiity of the tangible world. Take that, equivocal/univocal/paradoxical academic philosophers!

My review of John Ronson’s book Men Who Stare At Goats (now a major motion picture, as they say) is online at Splice Today.

But is evil less evil just because it’s ridiculous? One of the most diabolical scenes in the book doesn’t occur in a torture chamber or in a warzone, but in a friendly interview with Christopher Cerf, a longtime writer of Sesame Street songs like “Put Down the Ducky.” Some of Cerf’s jingles seem to have been used in interrogations, and he and music supervisor Danny Epstein joke and riff on the idiocy of the military (“Put Down the Ducky” could be used to interrogate members of the Ba’ath Party, they suggest) and the possibility of collecting royalties from the government. As Ronson notes, though, “The conversation seemed to be shifting uneasily between satire and a genuine desire to make some money.” Cerf and Epstein, in short, think the government is ridiculous and the war on terror a joke, but their humor has no moral edge. They don’t care that their songs, intended for children, are being used to torture human beings; on the contrary, they’d like to turn a profit on that torture. Their laughter is what James Baldwin called “the laughter of those who consider themselves at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of the living is not real.”

I have an interview with 33 1/3 series editor David Barker over at Madeloud.

My mixed review of Sokai Stilhed’s latest album is up on Madeloud as well.

A review of Amerie’s new album is at Metropulse.

And a brief review of Stephen Asma’s book On Monsters is at the Chicago Reader.

Other Links

Nina Stone’s review of Gotham Sirens, complete with sticky mess is pretty fabulous.

It was nice to see Robert Stanley Martin giving Lilli Carre some props. She should be more appreciated.

I kind of doubt I’d actually like this Captain America comic all that much, but Sean Collins’ enthusiastic review of it is entertaining.

Similarly I’m still not that big a fan of J.H. Williams, but Jog’s heartfelt appreciation of him is hard to deny as a labor of love.

Rich Watson begs for DC to take simple steps to make JLA suck less.

And finally, I’m sure no one cares and that it just shows my own poor fashion sense, but I think Rihanna looks great, damn it.