I'm on a boat

As a fervent fan of Napoleonic era tales of adventures in the Royal Navy and beyond--via C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian--it was with fascination and horror that I discovered Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. Several of the promo blurbs describe the series as O'Brian meets Pern-Eragon-generic-dragon-buddy story and this is all too true; Temeraire is an Aubrey and Maturin series, except with one party replaced by a smarty-whiz talking dragon. (Which seems a little unfair, considering Maturin was always reptilian around the edges to begin with.) And yes, you're supposed to bond with dragons when they hatch. And if they bond, they only bond to one person. Because that's what fantasy dragons do best, hang out with people and stuff.

Back when I was in middle school and obsessed with dragons just like all the other girls, adding dragons to everything was an awesome idea. ("Clan of the Cavebear? Needs more dragons.") Now that I'm no longer 12, I'm not sure what Pern adds to the historic seafaring genre--there's still a Napoleonic war on, everyone is still sailing around on ships, hauling ropes and firing cannons at each other, they all clearly believe they're in the world of Hornblower or Jack Aubrey, and all Novik did was plug in a DRAGON BUDDY AERIAL CORPS expansion pack. If you are in fact a 12-year-old girl, Temeraire may appeal for this reason alone. If you aren't 12, try the real books first. Then see if you need this random mash-up (possibly soon to be a film from Peter Jackson--can't be hard, just retroactively CGI some dragons into the existing Master and Commander film).

With the zeal of the dedicated fangirl, Novik tries to capture the style of an O'Brian or even an Austen (though to be sure, Jane Austen understood to a greater degree that it is sometimes permitted, even desirable, to allow lines of dialogue to flow without interruption or exposition), by deploying every florid sentence in her arsenal; she also embraces, it must be said, a grave excess of punctuation: the semi-colon and the colon, or even the comma, all rightfully possessed of a place in higher society, should nevertheless not be used to distraction; of course, O'Brian himself was a great friend of the semi-colon and colon, even multiple times within the same sentence, and Novik is determined to knock off the best.

A paragraph from the first chapter of O'Brian's Master and Commander:

The heat had increased while he was in the house, and when he came out into the street the air was hot on his face, almost like another element; yet it was not at all choking, not at all sultry, and there was a brilliance in it that took away all oppression. After a couple of turns he reached the tree-lined street that carried the Ciudadela road down to the high-perched square, or rather terrace, that overlooked the quays. He crossed to the shady side, where English houses with sash windows, fanlights and cobbled forecourts stood on expectedly good terms with their neighbours, the baroque Jesuit church and the withdrawn Spanish mansions with great stone coats of arms over their doorways.

And a paragraph from the first chapter of Novik's Victory of Eagles (Temeraire excerpts are available at temeraire.org), with the added power of an adjective assault:

The breeding grounds were called Pen Y Fan, after the hard, jagged slash of the mountain at their heart, like an axe-blade, rimed with ice along its edge and rising barren over the moorlands: a cold, wet Welsh autumn already, coming on towards winter, and the other dragons sleepy and remote, uninterested in anything but their meals. There were a few hundred of them scattered throughout the grounds, mostly established in caves or on rocky ledges, wherever they could fit themselves; nothing of comfort or even order provided for them, except the feedings, and the mowed-bare strip of dirt around the borders, where torches were lit at night to mark the lines past which they might not go, with the town-lights glimmering in the distance, cheerful and forbidden.

Throughout the books, you can see Novik at work, diligently attempting to capture the wit and liveliness that made O'Brian's books so memorable. Unfortunately, this imitation is too self-conscious to do anything but remind you that Novik is not Patrick O'Brian and desperately lacks a style of her own. ("I also like Pern!" doesn't count.) Yes, Patrick O'Brian wrote some great historical fiction. Yes, it's fine to be inspired by Patrick O'Brian. No, it's not necessary to pretend to be Patrick O'Brian in order to do historical fiction in the same era. I could credit Novik if she established her own unique voice or at least her own punctuation style, but she didn't. Sure, an author could definitely crib the setting of the O'Brian novels but use his/her own writing style, or apply an O'Brian-esque writing style to a completely new setting, but wholesale copying of both O'Brian's writing style and the setting of his best-known series? That's just cheap. Why bother? Who reads or writes because they're driven to find or create inferior imitations of other, better books? After all, those better books already exist.

In any case, the first Temeraire novel, His Majesty's Dragon, is available as a free online PDF. Who knows, this could be start of a hot new trend: World War II... with talking dragon friends! The siege of Troy... with talking dragon friends! The Civil War... with talking dragon friends! The Russian Revolution... with talking dragon friends! The Armenian genocide... with talking dragon friends! Oh, somebody better get Weta on the line right now.

Ignorant Caucasian Appropriation Attack, Go Go 55!

Grant Morrison should probably sit on his hands the next time he has a "great" idea to create a team of "Asian" superheroes like Japan's Super Young Team or the Chinese Great Ten. That said, he does make a body grateful to belong to a minority group that flies below the radar; as much as it sucks to be invisible or interchangeable, it just might beat being reduced to another one of his cheap collections of attributes and stereotypes. For one thing, Asians of the world, you may speak perfect English, but you will never, ever get the hang of coming up with an English codename. And no, you can't use the name you use in your native language, because it was too much trouble to bother coming up with one. It's so much easier and more amusing to simply apply a white Anglo writer's "they do things fun-nee over there" filter. Enjoy, Shy Crazy Lolita Canary! Shiny Happy Aquazon! Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash! Socialist Red Guardsman! Accomplished Perfect Physician!

(Shy Crazy Lolita Canary, by the way, is a tiny winged girl in a schoolgirl uniform who fights with a voice that sounds like, and this is Morrison's vision here, "the shopgirls in every Tokyo store screaming SUMMMIIMMMMMASSENNNNN!! as loud as they can, at the highest pitch possible and en masse." Deep. The Super Young Team also blatantly emulates/borrows from established, "Anglo" DC superheroes like Superman and Green Lantern, right down to using their logos--and while you could argue that Japanese pop culture does incorporates a lot of cultural remixing, these Japanese characters are presented not as unique individuals with their own names and identities, but as people with wacky names who aspire to be lesser imitations of "Anglo" characters.)

Still, this may be Morrison at the mere cusp of his "creative" powers; he could yet top himself. Why, he could create the Cock Cracker Corps, a bunch of dentally-challenged heroes from the depths of Appalachia. This one gets her powers from meth! That one is a man-billy goat hybrid! Over there is a welfare queen who superpower-pops out another 5 children named Darlene on a weekly basis! Confederate Soldier will never give up the fight, or his 2nd Amendment rights! And as for the Burning White Hood of Purity and Righteousness, a.k.a. Earl, well, best you simply don't ask. Surely Morrison would agree that there's real potential in this one--I mean, if we're going to create racially or ethnically identified teams based on an outside observer's superficial exposure to representation of that racial or ethnic group in selected elements of a country's (pop) culture, then why the fuck not?

Anyway, Morrison's Super Young Team is getting their own, Joe Casey-penned, Final Crisis spin-off mini--Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance--and issue #1 just goes to show that whoever you are, wherever you may be, however dodgy your concept or your writer, no-one can resist the stylish look of the...


Photoshop star brush. Respect!

Colorists: They're Just Like Us

Uncanny X-Men #510: with the X-Men under attack, it's up to Pixie to save X-23 and Hisako with the power of...


The Photoshop star brush!

You the man, colorist Justin Ponsor. You... the man.

Brooklyn: We now have electricity and running water!

Which one of the following is a "real" Brooklynite, according to The L Magazine?

A. The 40-something Brooklyn-born Lincoln High School graduate that grew up in Coney Island but now owns a nice house in Marine Park purchased with the money he made by driving car service all over Brooklyn for the past twenty years. 

B. The 20-something Iowa-born Oberlin graduate who moved to New York to pursue a literary career but couldn't afford an apartment in Manhattan so they got an overpriced apartment in Williamsburg because it's trendy and oh, that's where all their college friends moved too.

C. Jay-Z.

HINT: It's not A... or C.

As with almost anything "literary" and "hip" in New York, L Magazine once more forgets that there exists a Brooklyn below Prospect Park, filling up the quiz with in-crowd references like:

• How much time per month must members of the Park Slope Food Coop work? 
  
• Which bar is affectionately known as “The Dog Bar”?
  
• On which street in Williamsburg can you get arepas, bibimbap, burritos, prawn crisps, buffalo mozzarella, vegetarian chicken wings and a haircut? 
  

The piece can't seem to decide whether it wants to be taken seriously or is merely a lark. (A word of advice: If it's on the front cover, and you're not a humor magazine, you should probably take the piece seriously.)

Should they actually bother to have a question that a non-hipster Brooklyn resident would have a reasonable chance of answering correctly, they litter the choices with obviously wrong answers. 

36. To whom is Greenwood Cem-etery’s statue of Minerva waving?
A. The hopes and dreams of all who lay there.
B. The Statue of Liberty

C. Livia Soprano

Because having actual Brooklyn trivia would reveal the nasty truth about the rest of Brooklyn: It exists.

As an aid to future attempts to pin down that elusive Brooklynness, I have taken it upon myself to rewrite a few of the questions:

2. What was the last year the Dodgers played in Brooklyn?
A. 1963
B. 1957

C. Grandpa, the Dodgers have been out of Brooklyn longer than they ever were in Brooklyn, let it go already.

7. How many trains can get you to Coney Island?
A. 4
B. 7
C. Depends. Are they doing track work... again?

23. Where was the first Brooklyn Industries store opened?
A. Bedford Ave. and N. 8th St. 
B. Broadway and Bedford Ave.
C. Fuck you.

24. Which bar is affectionately known as “The Dog Bar”?
A. Iona
B. The Brooklyn Ale House
C. No, seriously, go fuck yourself.

44. What Williamsburg favorite used to be in the space now occupied by the Bedford Cheese Shop?
A. Clovis Press Bookstore
B. Ugly Luggage
C. Your mother

Who will pee on House's chair now?

When one of your stars decides to leave your show—and acting in general—to go work at the White House, what exactly do you do with his character, a happy-go-lucky doctor who just got the job of a lifetime and seems to enjoy his work very much?

Why, you kill him off. Or more precisely, you have him commit suicide. Because you see, they'll never see it coming! Just like in real life!

And after you've said goodbye to the character in the most artistic and heartfelt manner possible, and posted the requisite public service message advising suicidal people to seek help, what do you do with the rest of your traumatized audience?

Send them to Facebook, of course, where they can write comments and watch the tribute video and add the widget. 

Widgets: the tribute that keeps on tributing, at least until people stop watching House or decide to make room on their profile for a list of their favorite beers.

The one project they unwisely chose to not overachieve on?

Yale's Mixed Company a cappella group recently got a bit of flak for the "Single Asians" video--no longer available on YouTube, probably because of what happened when people actually, uh, started watching the video, but you're not missing much since (apart from everything else) the video was lovingly produced with all the care and attention you might put into a five-slide PowerPoint presentation--which features four young Asian women dancing and singing to the tune of "Single Ladies" by Beyonce. So it wasn't amazing. But was it... racist? (Dun dun dun.)

The lyrics, if you care, are listed below (via Ivygateblog.com). It's basically a recitation of Asian stereotypes; for the first thirty seconds the song bears some tenuous thematic connection to the original "Single Ladies" and it's still possible that this is in fact a satire of stereotypes about Asians, but then it's revealed as a list of increasingly random Asian stereotypes presented without commentary. Did a lot of people hate it? Sure. Does that make them humorless haters? Well, for those people to have "missed the joke," there at least has to be a joke in the first place.

Therein lies the problem. The song doesn't really push back on Asian stereotypes or offer any subversive commentary, it's too straightforward to be clearly identifiable as satire or parody, it doesn't attempt to empathize with the Asian/Asian-American experience (whether as the object of stereotyping or otherwise), it doesn't display any particular insider Asian or Asian-American knowledge or humor--more the opposite, in fact. In the end, it's perfectly content to rest on a bunch of Asian girls dancing as they happily reiterate that Chinese people can't tell the difference between "R" and "L". So, even if for no other reason than sheer ignorance and lack of effort in both conception and creation, in the final running this work could well place closer to a minstrel show than a work of satire or commentary. Laziness dooms all intentions, people. Don't let it happen to you.

(Mixed Company claims they're "known for having a great (and irreverent) sense of humor." Which, ironically, is probably the funniest thing about this toothless song.)

Anyway, the lyrics:

All the single Asians (x5)
Now put your hands up
Library and MCDB
Test comin' up next week.
You dropped a flask,
And now I've gotta ask
If you're enough to be in a lab with me.
I need this grade
I've never been laid,
Because I live my life for med school.
I do bio-chem
On the weekends
You ain't hardcore enough for me.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it,
An A-minus
Ain't the same as an A is it?
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
Let's make some noise
For all the boys
Who have yellow fever. [By the way, "yellow fever" is incredibly annoying.]
I'll be Lucy Liu [Seriously, the weird shit some strange dudes will tell you in public...]
Or Sailor Moon [...about how their Japanese girlfriend feared the size of their non-Asian cock...]
A geisha just for you. [...but learned it was not, in fact, too big for her to handle--yes, this really happened.]
At the restaurant
I'll taste your sauce
And you can slurp my sushi. [slurp a long cylindrical (and, it seems, inexplicably oozing) sushi roll? These girls are clearly packing a little something extra in their shorts... what the hell?]
I like it raw,
So bring it on,
And me love you long time. [I'm a Japanese dick-girl! Wait, now I'm a impoverished war prostitute! Oh, I'm so confused.]
[With faux-Chinese "accent"]
We from Beijing,
We dry cleaning, [Wait, unless we're back to discussing the Supreme Court holding in Yick Wo, that's not even the "right" stereotype--who wrote this? C'mon, folks, stereotypes are annoying enough without people blurring them all together to boot. If you're gonna hate, keep it straight: that's my new motto, as of two seconds ago right now.]
And practice viorin.
We visit Yale,
We bring peace there,
And take picture at the Beinecke.
I make the rice,
(She make it nice)
Cause I'm in charge of Dim Sum!!! [Yes, the song is really this emphatic about dim sum, even though rice isn't really, uh, the point of a dim sum spread]
I make chai tea [Don't recall if this lyric is accurate--I mean, chai tea isn't even East Asian to begin with]
I do tai chi
And bring honor to our family.
[Chorus reiterating Beyonce's lyrics in Korean]

Laughter is the best medicine (for brainwashing)

So, Dollhouse. The main premise appears to be that young women are raped, or pretend to be in danger of rape, or are implanted with memories of rape, or get assaulted by rapists, or stand around naked and oblivious in the shower while guys stare at them with hard-ons. (The latter is what passes for a love story in this show.) Sometimes young women do other things too, like get brainwashed into having sex with dudes for money. But this is all okay because, ladies, if you suffer long enough and hard enough, eventually you will get to punch a dude in the head, or ninja-kick him or something--mainly because your handlers gave you that ability, not because you have any real agency of your own--and the audience will cheer because that ninja-kick totally makes up for everything that just happened. And then you'll forget most of what did just happen. Until next week, at which point it's back to running around in a very short skirt to be imperiled and stuff. There're supposed to be some other themes to the show, too; as the opening credits make clear, one major theme is that Eliza Dushku's character could not be happier about putting on hooker stockings and wearing the aforementioned very short skirts while listening to outtakes from the Felicity soundtrack.

Anyway, all this clearly makes Dollhouse staff (AKA the British Nationality is a Substitute for Having a Character, the Seth Green Lite, the bad cop, the good cop) active and knowing members of a human experimentation-prostitution-slavery operation. But did you know they're also funny and lovable? It's true! Why, in the most recent episode, "Echoes," everybody starts tripping balls on secret drugs: drugs which could make you crazy and suicidal, or--if you're a member of the Dollhouse staff--spout charming Whedonesque dialogue and jump on trampolines. Comic scenes ensued, and the fans ate it all up; who knew pimp-slash-rape-enablers were so wacky and adorable? Those lovable rascals! Which one's your favorite? I like the one that says "inappropriate starches!"

There's no rule that says people can't have likable aspects and do awful things to people on a daily basis. But "Echoes" in particular is more invidious than the simple and honest premise that people are complex, that a doer of evil is not simply a walking evil tower of evil 24 evil hours a day. Instead, it gives the characters a gloss of Whedon-brand whimsy. People remember the catchy lines, not the whole rape-slave-oppression-as-a-day-job part. Then again, Dollhouse is a show where Boyd the handler gets a sympathetic edit because he cares about Echo. Really cares, deep down. That's why he helps pimp her out again and again, occasionally furrowing a brow to show the depth of his concern, and then at some point during a given episode he'll descend upon Eliza Dushku like a savior angel, taking her hand and leading her out of danger to--to another round of brainwashing and pimpery, mainly. But he furrowed his brow to signify a vague moral concern on which he can't be bothered to take action, so what more do you want; he's funny and plays the piano when he's tripping on drugs! And isn't that what's really important here?

Of course it is. And isn't that the Joss Whedon touch everyone has been waiting for?

The Nightwing Doctrine in what regard, Charlie?

So--Outsiders, yeah? Borrowed a couple of the trades and so far it's a mildly horrible book. Thoroughly approve of gorillas and the disembodied brains that love them, or vice versa, but the book conveys less of an edgy-superheroes-doing-edgy-things-that-regular-superheroes-can't-do-because-they're-not-edgy feel, more of a I-watch-Fox-TV-shows-while-high-on-Percocet feel. As amusing as it is to watch superheroes go 24 on, er, regular human beings. (See Judd Winick et al., Outsiders: The Good Fight 30-36 (2006).) But he knows where the nukes sarin canisters are, guys! And there's only five minutes an indeterminate amount of time left until they blow somebody maybe decides they should do something putting the plan into place to use them! Ooh, ooh! Can Metamorpho turn into a waterboard?

Here's the thing--say you have superpowers. Heck, say you have an entire team of superpower types, and a high tech flying ship that can do all kinds of neat computery things, and so on, and so forth--if your first and only answer to the question "Where would someone put a not-insignificant storage facility containing a crapload of sarin, somewhere in an African nation of modest size?" is "Let's grab an assistant in the office of political affairs, put on our best camo and gimp hoods, then systematically start breaking his hands and other assorted parts of his anatomy until he cracks," you are a) a fucking lazy moron, and b) in the wrong business entirely.

Let's rehash, shall we?
You: superpowers, magic soul-eating sword, giant flying ship full of fancy computers and stuff. Also, kryptonite in a box. Just in case.
Them: desktop PCs and paper. Snazzy berets.
Something about that match-up suggests that it is not, in fact, terribly hard to find out where the sarin is, as long as you don't mind having Metamorpho breeze in through a window or something and maybe pry open a file cabinet. Or, y'know, maybe you have to hack into some government files by punching in the president's birthday as a password. Maybe you might even try, um, scanning any large semi-demi-military-looking bases that happen to be sitting around in the open. Because that's where the sarin is, you know. Inside a large military-looking base. Which is sitting out in the open.

The best part is that Thunder is like, hey, um, isn't this kind of torture and kind of wrong? but Nightwing slaps her upside the head with his Jack Bauer logic (Big picture! It's all your fault! Big picture!) and then they find the sarin, sitting around, not being used, not being about to be used, and Thunder sadly admits Nightwing was right after all big picture. Terrible.

(And the less said about the Outsiders' concept of regime change, the better:
Step 1: put the current president on a desert island.
Step 2: tell the deputy minister he's in charge and he should be really nice to people. Because generally, that's all it ever takes to assert control of a destabilized nation dominated by the military and plagued by an army of rogue child soldiers.)

9 out of 10 fanboys love the smooth taste of rape! I mean, grape. Well, no, actually, rape.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MNEMOSYNE RELEASES NEW SODA, TENTACLE GRAPE

NEW YORK, NY - December 29, 2008 -Mnemosyne LLC has teamed up with the people who brought you the Anime After Dark Film Festival to bring you a new taste sensation!

This new beverage, inspired by the genre of adult Japanese animation called Hentai, is a perfect caffeine rush for gamers, cosplayers, and comic book fans.

"Obviously I don't take the brand very seriously. we can't. The best I can do is develop products that I'd want to buy myself and frankly this is the right combination of ridiculous and delicious." Says brand creator, Dekker Dreyer.

Proofreading: another thing he doesn't take very seriously. So, uh, Tentacle... Gr--


As the website copy says, "WATCH OUT! You gonna get GRAPED!" (Her lips say "いや!" but her tastebuds say "おいしい!")

The only reason this soda exists is to point out that "rape" sounds a lot like "grape," and wouldn't it be funny if you constantly replaced the word "rape" with "grape"? "[S]tart graping your friends!" Uh, no thanks. But please note that this beverage is "crafted with care... [by a "skilled team of grapists," no less] and a slight feeling of breathless anticipation." Because what's more appetizing than the thought of a bunch of geeks hunched over a soda production line, "breathlessly anticipating" (there's a new euphemism for you) the forcible pseudopod rape of screaming, baby-faced Japanese schoolgirls all over it? Woo. Plus, once you've seen a criminal case where a man suggests he molested his prepubescent daughter in part because he was influenced by his anime porn habit, thinking about a "skilled grapist" is just not thirst-making. Still, if it weren't prohibited by jail regulations, the guy would probably really appreciate someone pre-ordering him a case of Tentacle Grape. You gotta laugh at it all, right?

(According to the press release, "[a]dditional flavors and label designs are slated for the third quarter of 2009." How about Shouta-Cola? You can put a cringing 6-year old anime boy on the label and surround him with molesty adult hands. The fizzy taste of imminent pedo-rape is just the right combination of ridiculous and delicious to appeal to Mr. Dreyer's purchasing sensibilities.)

Keep on keepin' it classy, male fandom! And I'll keep avoiding you at conventions. And comic book stores. And GameStop. And...

Peter David's remake of The Blob

Is it petty to drop one issue of a comic? Well, maybe. But $3 for X-Factor #36--I could be persuaded to part with $1, probably, but a whole $3 feels like giving Marvel an unearned reward when I could buy a hot chocolate and a bagel instead and actually receive joy from my purchase (except that bagels in this part of the world are uniformly horrible, but that's another story). It's a pretty low day when the ad pages are more attractive than the actual comic content, yet here we are. How many times can it be said? Comics. Are. A. Visual. Medium. So even though Peter David's scripting might be the same as ever, it can't save the issue when Larry Stroman's art continues just this side of horrific, a nightmare world where objects, background, physiques all shift, puddle, move and mutate from one panel to the next; even if he does try to lighten it up by drawing random kitty cats and birds and bunnies instead of proportions and perspectives and anatomy, the color palette is dourly unappealing as well.

Although the comic is still intended as noir, it now has the same noir feel as, say, feeding the entire script to The Maltese Falcon through Babelfish--English to Finnish to English--and then re-enacting the end product with Quizno's puppets. Though it looks like next month, people go back to vaguely resembling people instead of a head I once tried to sculpt out of hamburger meat. So, who knows. Hopefully the magic will come back.