Utilitarian Review 4/2/16

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Craig Fischer on why Stitches is the worst comic ever.

Jimmy Johnson on borders, imperialism, and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.

Chris Gavaler on creating a comic book page for his novel (drawing by Sean Michael Robinson.)

Me on Jose Antonio Vargas’ Documented, about his experience as an undocumented immigrant.

Me on Daredevil’s blind male gaze.

Kate Skow on how all fiction is fan fiction.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about how superheroes don’t kill! in an excuse for killing.

At the Establishment I wrote about Superman vs. Batman, homoeroticism, and misogyny.

At the LA Times I wrote about hulk pooping, Kierkegaard, and fan fiction for all.

At Random Nerds I wrote about Superman 1978 and choosing supergood over superangst.

At the Week I wrote that everyone hates Congresspeople but still reelect their own Congresspeople.

At Splice Today I wrote about Steve Harvey’s dreadful dating advice book.

At the Chicago Reader I did a little review of the retro-retro-sixties band Quilt.

Other Links

CT May on Madonna and charges of sexism.

Kaleem Aftab on how BvS is an allegory of the Muslim experience.

All fiction is fan fiction. All art is imitation. God is dead.

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Kate Skow

This first appeared on Kiva’s blog.
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Fan fiction gets a really bad rap. It’s barely even acknowledged (even when everyone knows about it) and when it finally is, it’s dismissed as juvenile. Something teenage girls with terrible writing skills write, but no self-respecting author actually engages with. We are quick to judge fan fiction authors and readers, and we certainly don’t admit that we are these people.

I’m gonna right come out and say it because I would be that hypocrite if I didn’t: I read—and write—fan fiction.

It gives me a chance to flex my creative muscles without having to develop entire worlds, because someone’s already done the hard part. And as for reading it, well, sometimes, okay, most times, writers don’t see their characters entirely the way I do. The internet does. They fill in the blanks the way I want them to be filled. (I’d say “no pun intended” but with me, the pun is always intended.)

As a bisexual, I’m pretty much always tired of the complete lack of representation when it comes to LGBTQ+ characters. We don’t get many, and when we do, their storylines tend to revolve completely around being gay, as if we have no other interests. And good luck ever getting someone who’s into multiple genders to actually identify as bisexual. They’re always someone who “doesn’t like labels” which is so different to my experience. I love labels! Get me a label maker that exclusively churns out the word bisexual! Cause I wanna put that shit everywhere!

So yeah, we don’t get tons of characters to work with. However, we do get tons of characters who seem like they are expressing attraction to multiple genders or their same gender but it’s just…never addressed. In the end, they end up much more developed than their gay counterparts, but inevitably straight and we are disappointed. (By the way writers, that’s called queer baiting. You know you’re doing it and you’re all assholes.)

Sometimes I want to know more about That Thing The Writers Never Talk About. Obviously, the show’s never going to give me all of what I want. (Just enough of what I want to keep me watching forever in hope and denial.) But fan fiction does. That lingering moment that looks like it’s straight out of a regency costume drama in the new Star Wars? Fan fiction goes hard on that, and that’s the kind of content I wish I could get from the movies but know I never will. When Disney lets me down, the internet’s always there for me.

And okay, this kind of stuff may not be your cup of tea. I get it. Not everyone wants to read about two Presumed Straight dudes boning. That’s your prerogative. But you don’t get to shame people who do. Because everything you love is fan fiction too.

Renaissance paintings, often regarded as some of the finest art in the world, use the stories of The Bible and Classical mythology. That’s fan fiction.

The Aeneid, a piece of epic poetry read by every student of the Classics and then some, uses the stories of Homer. That’s fan fiction. (Of fan fiction, because Homer himself was working from oral traditions.)

House, M.D., an award-winning show about a crotchety doctor and his heterosexual life-partner, is a clear allusion to Sherlock Holmes. That’s fan fiction. (And, quite frankly, an “if Sherlock was a medical doctor” AU.)

Every single superhero movie, the trendiest thing in film right now, takes established comic book characters and tells new stories with them. That is, almost literally, the definition of fan fiction.

A ridiculously popular Twitter account builds on the characterization of Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. THAT’S FUCKING FAN FICTION.

Denouncing fan fiction and avoiding it at all costs is stupid because, as my wise friend Renee once put it, “all fiction is fan fiction.”

“But those examples are different!” I hear you saying already.

Why? Why does something need to be either old or big budget or meme-worthy to not be considered insidiously fan fiction-y?

I’ll tell you why you immediately think your precious Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are somehow exceptions to Renee’s Law: Because when something’s old or big budget, there’s a 99% chance it was created by a man. And if it’s created by a man, it can’t in any way be akin to that stuff on the internet nobody talks about save for criticizing. But that’s classic sexism.

Stop vilifying teenage girls for what you praise men for doing. Internet fan fiction is a community largely comprised of women. That is the reason it is looked down on. That is the reason men will go through some serious cognitive dissonance to say that girls write fan fiction, but they don’t. And I simply do not have the patience for it anymore.

Male creators of the world: you write fan fiction. Admit it.

And furthermore, stop condemning those who read online fan fiction. Studies have shown that some women respond to erotica more than porn. And if you don’t believe the studies, believe the success of Nora Roberts. However, some of us, while responding to erotica, don’t respond to romance novels about boring, snooze-fest heterosexuals we have had no other interactions with. We respond to (yes, that) fan fiction.

Teenage girls have become more comfortable with their sexual identity and are empowered by their sexuality because of writing and reading fan fiction. They shouldn’t be shamed for their desire and they shouldn’t be shamed for how they discovered it. The disparagement of fan fiction, and the girls who engage with it, is ultimately a microcosm of patriarchal society at large.

Noah Berlatsky wrote a piece for the LA Times titled “‘Batman v Superman’ is fan fiction, and that’s OK”. I only amend it to be more inclusive:

Everything is fan fiction, and that’s OK.

Blind Gaze

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

In the Netflix Daredevil series, Matt Murdock first meets Elektra when he’s crashing a faculty party. He walks across a crowded floor in search of booze, as his progress is intercut with glimpses of Elektra: her expensive bracelets, her lips on a wineglass. The back and forth between his face and the bits of her suggests we are seeing her through him, his gaze creating an erotic, impressionistic, portrait: sex as vivisection.

The director of the episode, I believe, is Floria Sigismondi, but even though she’s a woman, the framing here is a perfect encapsulation of Laura Mulvey’s male gaze tropes. Mulvey argued that women onscreen are turned into individual body parts, which then freeze the narrative in fetishistic contemplation. Elektra, as body, interrupts Matt’s progress; she is framed through his gaze, even as she immobilizes that gaze.

The caveat here is that there is no gaze; Matt is blind; he can’t see Elektra.

You might think Matt’s blindness would undermine the male gaze. But instead it perfects it. His super-senses are more male gaze than the male gaze itself. His hearing, his smell, mean that he does not see her all at once, as a person, but rather as bits and pieces. Through his blindness, he knows her and possesses her more completely than if he were sighted—as he demonstrates at the scenes end, when he gets the better of her in a battle of wits, and leaves with her, future intercourse heavily telegraphed.

Ever Oedipus and/or Freud blindness has been associated with castration. Daredevil’s disability carries with it the threat of unmanliness. One could, perhaps, imagine a Daredevil series which thought through that stereotype, and which thought about the ways that disability questions the necessity, or the righteousness, or the centrality, of strength, competence, virility.

That’s not the Daredevil series we’ve got though. Instead, Elektra is aroused and excited when she learns that Matt isn’t really blind. She wants a man who can fight her, and whose disability is only a show. Matt, for his part, is thrilled that she has found out his secret; he babbles about how she really “knows” him, which means in part that she knows he’s not actually disabled. The two eventually fall out over whether Matt should murder (Elektra feels he should) but her obvious contempt for his disability is never an issue. As far as the show is concerned, it’s natural for Elektra to prefer a sighted man to a blind one, and Matt (who is blind) is pleased that she does.

Similarly, Matt’s ability to sense Elektra, and to frame her in his gaze which is not a gaze, works as a deliberate assertion that he is not castrated. His disability is filmed in such a way that it makes him fit even more firmly into the tropes of manliness. The most striking thing about the Daredevil series is its utter disinterest in ever giving us a Daredevil-eye view of the world; we do not experience the world as Daredevil does. Instead, Daredevil’s vision is the traditional vision of film. Blind men, the film assures us eagerly, see with the same manly eyes as ever.

Documented

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

This first appeared on the Dissolve.
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Autobiography can be an intensely politicized genre. Jose Antonio Vargas’ new documentary Documented shows he’s learned the lesson well. Vargas’ grandparents brought him to the United States from the Philippines when he was 12. His immigration, he discovered some years later, was illegal. He eventually became a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Washington Post and other outlets, all while hiding his status. Finally, in 2011, he came out as an undocumented immigrant in an article in the New York Times Magazine, hoping to raise awareness and to show Americans that the people sometimes called “illegal” aren’t some alien other, but their friends, neighbors, classmates, and (in this case) journalists. The documentary is a continuation of that project, simultaneously combining memoir and political advocacy.

The autobiography and the politics don’t always fit together perfectly. Vargas has been extremely successful in his profession by any standard, and that success can tend to push him into the foreground to such an extent that the collective issues he’s talking about get erased. Vargas is aware of this, and works against it to some degree. Rather than putting himself alone on the cover of Time, as the editors originally planned, for instance, he works to include 30 other people who came to the United States as children like him, but have no path to citizenship. Yet though they appear on the cover, and say their names and countries of origin for the documentary, the film doesn’t actually interview any of them, or tell their stories. Instead, they’re background for Vargas (literally, on the Time cover)—and the film quickly drops them and goes back to showing clips of its hero on various television programs, or speaking to rapt audiences.

Part of the reason this is problematic is, again, because Vargas has done so well in America. Looking at him alone, it’s easy to read the moral as a plea for clemency for the most successful—a kind of, “This one can stay, but the rest…” argument. Vargas certainly doesn’t endorse that view himself, but it’s articulated uncomfortably by a drunk, angry white dude in a Southern bar—a man who seems ready to make exceptions for his general anti-immigrant stance once he hears about Vargas’ credentials.

Still, while other people’s stories would have been welcome, Vargas makes a compelling central character, not least in his impressive, courageous willingness to reveal his own vulnerability. This includes coming out of the closet about his undocumented status in the first place, which causes him to lose his driver’s license, and could realistically have resulted in his deportation. But it goes well beyond that. He shows himself, for example, being escorted from a Romney rally and practically begging the cop not to deport him, his low-key obsequiousness painfully emphasizing how completely he is at the mercy of the state and its minions.

Even more brutal is the depiction of Vargas’ relationship with his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he came to America 20 years ago. She hasn’t been able to get a travel visa to visit; he can’t return to the Philippines without risking exile. At first, as he was growing up, he wrote her long letters. But as he aged and realized he might well never see her again, his anger, confusion, and grief became overwhelming, and he ceased regular communication with her. The scene of her crying in her home in the Philippines because her son won’t accept her as a Facebook friend is humiliating and horribly sad, an object lesson in how the bland bureaucratic grinding of immigration policy is converted into misery, cruelty, and heartbreak.

By the end of the film, Vargas has managed to have a Skype session with his mother, and to tell her he loves her. But they still haven’t met in person, and can’t. Despite President Obama’s executive decision to allow a path to a modicum of security for some undocumented immigrants, Vargas was two years too old to be covered. His story can have no happy ending, absent from political change—which is why, whatever its faults, the documentary is so effective. Here’s hoping it’s distributed widely, not least within the walls of Congress.

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Jimmy Johnson

This essay first appeared on CiC03.

The popular CBS police procedural Criminal Minds has spawned a second spin-off, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. It takes the format of the original franchise with one major exception, the FBI profilers are operating around the globe. The FBI in this framework are an active policing institution with global carceral power, something like what the show Crossing Lines imagines Interpol to be. As such, CM:BB offers the opportunity to explore sovereign imperial violence.

The pilot episode, “The Harmful One”, opens with a voiceover: “Over 68 million Americans leave the safety of our borders every year. If danger strikes, the FBI’s International Response Team is called into action.” Implied is that the U.S. borders are something other than regimes of violence and that to be inside them offers security. This also illustrates a tension in the stories where the U.S. empire’s sovereign violence is carried, if not carried out, by U.S. citizens wherever they go, no matter who else has competing sovereignty.

The episode takes place in Thailand in and around Bangkok. Two white U.S. college students are on a volunteering trip at a cassava farm where they do good by displacing paid local labor. Influenced by a cute boy who is also displacing Thai labor, one girl falsely accuses the farmer of watching her shower and convinces the other girl to abandon their work. They leave the farm and are promptly kidnapped.

We first meet the new Criminal Minds team with the franchise’s lead character FBI profiler David Rossi (fundraiser for the Israeli military Joe Mantegna) in a shooting simulation alongside Jack Garret (noted Hollywood conservative Gary Sinise). Rossi kills the suspect in the simulation and is promptly chastised by Garret who says, “We could’ve talked him down.” Garret moves to review the shooting. Instead they both jokingly dismiss the idea and decide to get coffee. Garret gets a text that sends him to Thailand on the trail of the two girls.

The IRT finds that the boy had previously been convicted of rape but “a Romeo and Juliet” law that knocked his conviction down to a misdemeanor leads the group’s technical analyst ‘Monty’ Montgomery (Tyler James Williams) to say, “I’m not sure how serious it was.”

Upon landing they encounter Clare Seger (Alana de la Garza). She is called the groups “cultural expert” which turns out to be a colonial anthropology position unburdened by expertise. She tells fellow agent Mae Jarvis (Annie Funke), “Listen, this police force is a boy’s club so don’t take it personally.” She thus sets the stage for a recurring theme in the episode where the FBI will upend local patriarchy. Clearly ‘FBI’ stands for ‘Feminist Bureau of Investigation’ though it is never made clear which strand of “leaning in” it is: Clintonian or Thatcherite?

Despite zero evidence in any direction the IRT goes with the theory that the kidnapping is related to a human trafficking ring. Garret and Cultural Expert go to the farm they girls disappeared from to investigate whether the farmer was involved. Cultural Expert’s hot take absolving him: “Well he’s exhausted but willing to talk. He seems embarrassed about the conditions he provides here and he’s not surprised they left. They’re not the first kids to go. And I spotted a Buddha which means he believes in karma.” I’m not sure what followed immediately after this because I rolled my eyes so hard that I momentarily lost the ability to focus.

Taksin tells Jarvis “No!”

The IRT is hindered by local authorities through a combination of incompetence and sexism. The racism of native incompetence is an exposition tool; the show provides condescending explanations to Thair people, since that’s more palatable than admitting that the condescending explanations are for the viewing audience.Jarvis especially is repeatedly thwarted, especially by Taksin (Keong Sim), the local liaison. The local police do not properly preserve a murdered man’s body and thus it is up to Jarvis to get around restrictions put on her actions by Thai people. Taksin has never heard of a serial killer’s “comfort zone” despite being a high ranking Bangkok cop, thus Garret must explain it to him. Taksin stops Jarvis from photographing a dead body because of something to do with sexism.

Anyway, after stoking the fears of human trafficking, the team silently drops the theory because they find a piece of actual evidence after the IRT chases a Thai man through a crowded marketplace. Garret tackles the man, puts him in a choke hold, and demands answers which are immediately provided. Here the FBI can engage in wanton destruction in Thailand without even a frowning glance from local authorities.

Garret chokes the truth out of a suspect while crushing someone’s vegetable crop – See more at: https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/?p=68591&preview_id=68591&preview_nonce=2a16a793ad&preview=true#sthash.Aj4zsRzB.dpuf

Turns out the killer is a random tribal man (Duoa Moua) who mostly grunts and growls and, for unexplained reasons, has pierced his cheeks and mouth with lengths of metal. The character would comfortably fit in Eli Roth’s racism concentrate The Green Inferno.

The kidnapper of innocent white women as we first meet him

But how will they stop him? Garret hunts for ideas asking, “Are there any cultural traditions for the last remaining member of a family?” Cultural Expert decides that the killer is celebrating Ullambana, which happens in August, and is sacrificing the white labor displacers to appease his ancestors. Wut? In the end the IRT saves the white women from the terrifying brown man, the killer offs himself and Jarvis conquers the patriarchy by getting a validating nod from Taksin.

The second episode, “Harvested”, opens with a bunch of white people at some expensive festival in Mumbai. Two American dude-bros pop some kind of drug while an Indian man watches predatorily from the shadows. One guy wakes up without a kidney in the middle of a slum nicknamed “Kidneyville.”

Upon arrival in India, Cultural Expert drops some knowledge on the team: “Some things to keep in mind: Politeness is politic. Never use someone’s first name without their consent. Never refuse hospitality and never initiate physical contact with someone of the opposite sex. Even something as innocuous as a handshake can be looked upon as a sexual advance.” How is the latter different from the United States where men take everything from a retweet to an axe kick to the forehead as a sexual invitation? Anywho…

The second episode isn’t worth describing at length though it briefly places the kidney and other organ thefts in the context casteism’s brutality and the colorist legacy of British colonialism, which is encouraging. Yet imperial intervention is somehow still heroic and the US police with zero local knowledge aside from Cultural Expert are the competent ones. This story too ends with the killer’s suicide and it too has opportunities for massive eye-rolling. For example Cultural Expert asks if Garret knows that the Mumbai slum they were in that had an open sewer and caste-based organ harvesting program is “completely green” because they recycle all the plastics they have and make them into little toys?

Sovereign Violence Without Borders

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders is pretty bad television. It has the very same shallow pop psychology premised on ableism as the original series, specifically pathologizing mental illness as a producer of violence, rather than a location upon which violence is enacted. The ensemble cast has little chemistry and the writing is bad both ethically and poetically. But it is interesting in a way.

In this story American sovereign violence follows citizens wherever they go regardless of the sovereign’s borders. The monopoly over legitimate violence that defines the state is deterritorialized in empire. In this read, how do “Over 68 million Americans leave the safety of our borders every year” when for first class imperial citizens those borders are biopolitical and not geopolitical? The answer is that they more or less don’t, except in North Korea perhaps. This is what Garret means when he says of the Thai police, “It’s not their job to worry about missing Americans. It’s ours.” Just as biopolitics govern US citizens, empire governs the episode’s othered populations with necropolitics. The first two episodes both end in death for the villain and in both instances that death is of someone already dispossessed (a Dalit man in Mumbai and a tribal man in Thailand). Necropolitics is already in play in the material world for these populations and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders reproduces it faithfully. The series will explore these ideas, however unintentionally, as it unjustifiably continues airing episodes.

Lastly, the first two episodes do not question empire’s right to police the world nor its competency to do so. Both exist as unstated facts and only the competency part is defined at all and then, only through positioning it alongside native incompetency. But this is expected. After all if the stories investigated whether or not the FBI should be active all over the globe they will find that it shouldn’t. And the series would have to end. Which it should.

Evolution of a Comic Book Page

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Chris Gavaler

Along with Spider-Man’s debut story, three other Ditko-Lee collaborations appeared in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, including the five-pager “The One and Only!” According to comics collector James Horvath, however, the story was really drawn by his grandmother, Lydia Horvath, a Golden Age artist who spent her career ghosting for bigger names.

Or at least that’s the premise of my novel The Patron Saint of Superheroes. My agent suggested the manuscript include a sample comic book page, so I went in search of an artist who could pretend to be Lydia Horvath pretending to be Steve Ditko. Sean Michael Robinson swooped to my rescue.

And at the risk of revealing myself to be an Alan Moore-level control freak, I think our email correspondence reveals a few things about the collaborative process of writing and drawing comics.

SEAN: Your page from the script you shared looks great– just enough stage direction. My only practical concern with it– Ditko very rarely broke more than 9 panels a page. In fact, in my cursory Ditko flip-through this morning (“Essential Spider-man V 1”, “Steve Ditko Archives” V 1 + 2) I’m seeing the majority of the page breakdowns hovering around 6-7 panels, with a few outliers in the 8-9 range.

Was this actually drawn by Ditko? If not, are there any “tells,” or should it look as much like his work as possible?

CHRIS: It sounds like we were looking at Essential Spider-Man simultaneously this morning. And you’re absolutely right, the panel layout is nothing like Ditko’s—and that’s actually the one “tell” I want the page to have. I’m attaching the PAGE THREE script, which includes the layout. (The gutters form a St. James cross, which is the artist’s secret signature, and a big part of the novel.)

SEAN: Okay, here are two rough (very rough!) layouts. You’ll notice I make a few script suggestions in the margin for the sake of space. Also, I’m not sure how to approach visually the third panel on the 1st tier– substituted a far-off climbing Jim. Feel free to send a sketch my way. Are we seeing just the hand? The top of his head or pack? The view down the cliff face?

Also substituted a close-up for the 1st p 3rd tier– let me know how it strikes you.

CHRIS: Yes to trimming the first caption. So it would now read:

Before vanishing, Singulus told Little Jim that he had gained his powers from a guru in Tibet. Nothing left to lose, Little Jim splurges on a one-way ticket!

For panel 1.2, try a downward view from the very top of the cliff with mostly just Jim’s giant hand reaching up.

1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2 all look good–I especially like how the cave opening worked out. 2.3 and 2.4 look good too, but I’d like to move the talk balloons, so that 2.3’s “Singulus?” is at the bottom of the panel with the balloon arrow pointing to the left gutter (and so Jim in 2.2), and Onlyone’s bubble moves to the top of 2.4. I think that way it will be clearer to see that the flashlight is moving up from the discarded costume to Onlyone, because currently the balloons partly block the partial views of Onlyone’s legs and the costume.

For 3.1, I really like the first version, with Onlyone extending his arm with the ring–but try rotating the panel 180 degrees so Onlyone is at the top and Jim at the bottom. Their dialogue can be reversed so Onlyone speaks first and Jim responds with “Me?”

Yes about lowering the hand on 3.2, so we can see more of Onlyone’s face. Also Jim should slide the ring onto his left ring finger, as he would a wedding ring.

The close-up of Onlyone is good though, so could you place it in the final panel instead? There’s no need for Singulus to appear at all in 3.4. And Onlyone’s emphatic talk bubble can go at the the bottom of the panel, ending the page.

For the big Singulus! 3.3 panel, let his talk bubble punch through the top of the panel into the bottom of 2.3 (which could make a nice effect with the previous “Singulus?”) and let his elbows jut into 3.2 and 3.4. Also, if it’s not already, leave 3.3 unframed.

SEAN: Does this work?

Two versions of the 1.3 panel– pls let me know which one is closer.

CHRIS: Go with the alt for 1.2. The bigger the hand the better. It should overwhelm all of the other visual information, so 1.3 then is an answer to the implied questions: what’s going on? where are we?

Good talk bubble flip on 2.3. Flip 2.4 too.

3.1 looks good. Same for 3.2, though maybe make Onlyone a little smaller so 3.4 is more of a revelation.

Nice elbows on 3.3, but I think the “Singulus!” will work better at the top of the panel, especially since the 3.2 and 3.4 talk bubbles are at the bottoms.

I also attached images for combining into the Singulus costume: Superman’s original boots, Amazing Man’s waist and chest belts, Wonderman’s collar and v-neck, plus standard briefs, long sleeves, no gloves, no cape. (I’m not sure about the Ultraman helmet.)

SEAN: Here’s the promised costume rough (emphasis on rough). Feedback? I have the v-neck and the collar turning into the shoulder of the cape, if it’s not clear. Also added some horizontal stripes in the speedo area. Not sure about that helmet, and the only pics I can find of the character don’t really help in terms of how it’s put together :)

Anyway, all thoughts welcome.

CHRIS: This looks great, Sean. Some possible fine-tunings:

Gloves or wrist bands that match the boots.

And maybe simplify the lines in the chest by having the v of the shirt merge into the v of the criss-crossing belts?

I’m also debating whether the helmet is too much. Maybe instead add a lone ranger mask?

CHRIS: I really love your face, which is lost with the mask, so let’s not have a mask, and you tell me whether you think the helmet works or not.

The wrist bands, briefs and collar all look good.

Should the wrist bands cover the forearms the way the boots cover the calves?

CHRIS: Yes, I can see Ditko coming through in that.

If Singulus’ face is unmasked, young, good-looking, with a full set of hair, Jim should be a bit chubby with a receding hairline.

And keep Onlyone’s body as boney as possible, with almost skeletal arms, definitely a bald head, and a face of ancient raisin-like wrinkles–underneath which is Stan Lee’s face.

SEAN: Three versions here. Thoughts? I’m hoping the rendering will take it into firmer Ditko territory…

CHRIS: Go with Singulus facing left away from the last panel, and with Onlyone’s head larger. Final fine-tunings:

Make Onlyone completely bald and super wrinkly.

Give Jim even more of a gut.

Let the words “Singulus!” burst out of the panel frames in 3.3. His right elbow protrudes into 3.2 well, and so let his left elbow protrude into 3.4 too, maybe slipping slightly behind Onlyone’s head?

To clarify the spatial relationship between 1.3 and 2.1, can you lower the bottom of the cave opening so this becomes the moment that Jim enters the cave? Also, can the same mountain that’s in the background of 1.3 be in the slightly more distant background of 2.1?

SEAN: Okay, here are two versions. I have a strong preference for B, but either one is fine with me!

Things that can be done to make it a bit more “Marvel”:

1. Re-letter this using a font close in style to that decade’s Marvel letters. I can’t get close to that look myself (being left-handed is a big impediment to that, believe it or not :) ) I can look around on some sites if you want me to find a 60’s Marvel copycat font.

2. appropriate artwork stamps on top

3. color “old page” tint to the page (depending on your needs).

CHRIS: I agree that B, with the elbow cut off by the panel frame, looks better, so let’s go with that. And yes also to “old” tint and the artwork stamps. Oh, and can Onlyone be more wrinkled in that final panel close-up? And if you think refonting would look good, go with that too.

SEAN: Here is the finished color file. Thanks again for working with me on this! It was a lot of fun and quite the challenge :)

Utilitarian Review 3/26/16

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Osvaldo Oyola on Dan Slott’s She-Hulk and meta-comics.

Donovan Grant on O.J. Simpson, Miles Morales, and authentic blackness.

Ben Saunders with a eulogy for Keith Emerson.

Chris Gavaler on superhero tropes and a real life Mexian vigilante.

Me on the internetsploitaton crap Uwantmetokillhim?

Me on Psycho, transmisogyny, and violence in the bathroom.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Chicago Magazine I wrote about the Chicago activist Mariame Kaba, who is leaving Chicago after 20 years.

At the Guardian I wrote about the fact that there are no good films in the Marvel Cinematic Univese.

At The Week I argued that there should be compulsory voting.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—George Strait’s best album.

—Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona and superwomen shapeshifting out of tropes.

Other Links

Melissa Gira Grant on how feminists have contributed to anti-trans panic.

Why Taye Diggs follows everybody on twitter.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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