And That's All I Have To Say About The City Of Toronto
We now rejoin HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS, already in progress:
That's all well and good, but, ultimately, what does the "Pink Cat at TCAF" fiasco teach us that we didn't already know? There is a complete and absolute bankruptcy of taste at the heart of the NFT project, but any look at the most sought-after tokens could have told you that. Art is wholly irrelevant to a scene that just wants to flog some speculative assets, but anyone who has lived under capitalism could tell you that. Putting it all together, and realizing that there is absolutely no way you can build a thriving scene, whether that's in comics or in the lesser arts, in that kind of hyper volatile milieu? It should have been the easiest thing in the world. Ah well, as we've seen, that's Toronto for you, and I don't expect I'll regret ANYTHING I've written in this week's news roundup.
And now, a message from our sponsor:
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Jeffy Fuck (TURBOCOP: ORIGINS; GIANT-SIZE HYBRID HOG; MIKE BETAMAX M.D.; "Secrets Of The Comic Book Industry THEY (you know who I'm taking about) Don't Want You To Know!!!" On YouTube)
Dan Szabinsko (THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ASS BLASTER; LADY SWORDGUNGUY; THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN; PLACELAND (Substack); FATHER CHAINSAW (Substack); PURGATORY IN YOUR EYES (Substack); PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I NEED MONEY (Substack))
NFT artist Duckburt (DUCKBURT; called "The Gen Z Mallard Fillmore" by The North-Wilshire Courier Times Courier)
and many more! (one more)
And here are some of the activities you can look forward to:
Amazing panels, like "The Luxury Comics Power Fourthmeal", "Women: What's Up With Them?", "The Future Of Digital Content Futures In The Digital Future Of Content In The Digital Future, And How You Can Embrace It (with cash, to me)"
HELICOPTER RIDES!
Basilio's Beach Boys Barbecue Blowout Bash Blast! (First-born children only; select participants may be forced to pay a life debt to Basilio mining gems in Basilio's Secret Mine; select participants may have to face Basilio's wrath; PLATINUM TIER attendees may purchase the help of the wizened old man, who knows the answers to several of Basilio's riddles; certain substances used in Basilio's ritual may alter your perception of the flow of linear time; all children left unattended at the end of the Beach Boys Barbecue Blowout Bash Blast will live a life of servitude in the network of caves where Basilio dwells; fries are cooked in peanut oil)
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HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS will now resume.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: MY DESIRES ARE UNCONVENTIONAL (AND FILTHY)
There is an interesting comic book proposition powering this week's Action Comics 2022 Annual, a side story to the currently ongoing Warworld Saga: it is, functionally, two stories, one about Superman, and one about the Mongul-That-Currently-Is, set parallel to one another, so as to draw out the similarities and the differences between the two characters, and it comes from two different writers, as Phillip Kennedy Johnson writes the Mongul story, while Si Spurrier writes the Superman story, which are then put together and shaped into a comic by Dale Eaglesham and Ian Churchill. Both stories are about boys and their mothers, in both a lesson is taught, and both end with our protagonists set on the course of their great destiny. It is an incredibly well-drawn comic, which is at its best when it makes itself more obvious, and gets its two stories laid out across two facing pages, so they reflect one another. But notice here that when I called this comic "interesting", I did not call it "good".
I did not like this comic, and that is down to the fact that one half of it is completely awful. Sadder still, to me, is the fact that the completely awful half of this comic is the Si Spurrier Superman story, which despite his strong sense of specificity in dialogue, fails to be anything more than everything I despise about young Superman stories. It is a maudlin piece of Aw-Shucks Americana, a simplistic morality play about power and responsibility, in which every problem can be solved if faced with enough solemn dignity, and no bully can resist the power of a strongly taken moral stance. It wants to be about the heavy issues, like cancer, alcoholism, and repeating patterns of violence (which is the thematic bridge that gets us to Mongul's story), but its take on those things is so trite and shallow that it feels entirely cynical. That, to me, is the worst thing a Superman story can be, and considering that it is half of the comic, that is a problem, made all the bigger by the fact that the rest of the comic is pretty decent! It is, admittedly, more of Johnson's Warworld worldbuilding, all in proper nouns and implied histories, that may or may not stand for anything that is happening on Earth right now, depending on how much time you have to devote to Twitter slapfights. I like it! This is a setup that keeps delivering on the cool visuals! I couldn't ask for more!
In the end, here's what really matters: it is written in such a way that you do not have to read it to understand the rest of Action Comics. I would suggest that you don't, but that's just me, and everyone knows I'm a sad freak who likes it when Superman is in anguish at the moral ambiguity of the world. Ah well!
Over the past few years, James Tynion IV has become King Shit of the proverbial Fuck Mountain that is the horror comic revival. On the whole, this has been a good thing; I mean, it did lead to The Nice House On The Lake, one of the most well-crafted comics of last year, and The Department of Truth, the best new comic of the year previous. The Closet #1 is not as good as either of those. In fact, it feels like a comic that was made on a dare, to test the limits of one's power. Where the two comics I named earlier are incredibly generous in terms of how many ideas they deal with, this one is a single-idea deal, and it's not a particularly complex idea. This is literally a comic about a monster in a closet. The whole of its thing is that there is a closet, in which there is a monster. That's it. It's just the monster, and the closet. If this stands for anything more, the comic is great at keeping that secret. If you picture a child, a monster, and a closet, you've got exactly the idea, except the monster is maybe more abstract. It's a vague idea of shadow and darkness with long and sharp teeth.
I am being highly uncharitable here. The bulk of the issue isn't even about the closet, or the monster. Instead it is about a man who is about to move to a new city, and who goes through a gauntlet of regular adult fears. It's about how his inadequacies as a husband and father are pulling him apart from his family, it is about growing older and watching as your own past accumulates around you. It is about your own children growing up and seeing you as something different that what you see yourself as. It is about fathers, and what that means exactly. Maybe. I'm trying to read into what's there, which is mostly about Gavin Fullerton's simple but powerfully expressive figures, and Chris O'Halloran's very moody colors. It's not a very scary comic, and it's not a very shocking comic, which maybe works at setting up characters for some horror to follow, but which surely makes for a pretty boring first impression.
And that's going to be it for this week! They can't all be as massive and epic as last week! Sorry! You know how it is! Anyway, next week should be a big one, so if you want some excitement, I'd suggest you subscribe to the newsletter, and tell your friends about it! In the mean time, I'll be on Twitter over here ready to hear your feedback. Sorry not sorry to the city of Toronto for what I said, and to everyone else: good night, and HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!