The Horror Of The Dead Man's Knife: A Halloween Spooktacular
Usually when I miss a week of doing this newsletter, I start with some apologies, and then we go into setting up whatever dumb little bit I'm going to get into this week, for no one's enjoyment but my own. That has been the format, which is the product of a rock-solid process I absolutely do not come up with on the fly as wholly artificial deadlines loom over me. This week will be different, because the simple truth of the matter is this: I thought I had a good piece on that whole Gabe Eltaeb thing, and it turns out I didn't, because it turns out I aggressively didn't give a shit about whether or not he got blacklisted from working for DC Comics because he was an unprofessional bigot who ended up allegedly leaking stuff to the fascist grifters who keep trying to make comics worse. I'm not 100% certain of the details, because, as I said, I genuinely do not give a shit. Tom Taylor announced on twitter that Superman: Son of Kal-El #5 would be recolored, and showed Hi-Fi's take on its big newsworthy splash page, which is genuinely a better piece of artwork, and that's about all there is in that which is worth talking about.
There is something worth looking into, which is how actually hard it is for anyone to get fully blacklisted from big two mainstream comics. (Joe Bennett concluded a 50-issue run on The Immortal Hulk despite overt antisemitism! Peter David gets to write mediocre books at Marvel in perpetuity despite having made intensely racist comments about the rromani! It took SEVERAL deeply-researched investigative journalism pieces to oust Eddie Berganza from DC Comics! And of course, Marvel's current Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski passed himself off as a Japanese man in order to advance his career as a writer while being an editor!) That subject, however, is way outside the remit of a newsletter which has mostly been about bad jokes that are too hard to understand if you don't pay attention to twitter comics discourse and highly opinionated comic reviews that, because they aren't recaps, are basically impenetrable to anyone that hasn't read the books being discussed. By means of apology for that, here is this week's dumb idiot comedy bit.
THIS WEEK'S "IPHONES IN COMICS" REVIEW
The iPhone. It's one of the most popular phones in the world. It's also one of the best. Comics, being at the confluence of the world as it is now and the world as we wish it to be, will sometimes feature characters clearly using iPhones, because they are that dang good. But do they do it right? That's where I come in. See, I've been using iPhones for longer than I have been reading comics. I had a 3G in high school, both for the status symbol and because I needed to go from a bad phone to the best phone in the world, and I have not looked back since. They're just that dang good! The 4 was great, the 6 wowed me, the 8 I had for a while because I was not ready to let go of the home button, and now I have a 13 mini, which is exactly how much smartphone I need in my life. I know comics, and I know iPhones. There will not be anyone as qualified as me to review this week's comics from an iPhone owner standpoint, and therefore the task has fallen on me to do so. Let's do this.
First up, Moon Knight #4, which opens on a battle-damaged iPhone SE (and I'm assuming SE over 8 here because if Moon Knight had an iPhone 8 for as long as the iPhone 8 has been out, it would have been damaged even further) ringing its alarm. Obviously you will have noticed the critical error there: the charging animation in the first panel would play if the phone was charging over MagSafe, which it's not, first because you can clearly see the Lightning connector plugged in, and second because while the iPhone SE can charge wirelessly over any Qi compatible charger, it does not have MagSafe compatibility. This ruins what would otherwise be a wonderful character piece with strange twists and complex feelings.
Then, we have Detective Comics #1044; this issue makes a point of showing Mayor Nakamura has a very big iPhone, with a wide notch, which would identify it as either an 11 Pro Max or a 12 Pro Max, though the size of the side buttons would indicate, to me, an 11 Pro Max, which feels right for the period. It's also very damaged, which is a direct product of its current circumstances and therefore can't really be a comment on a normal use case for that character. However, Dan Mora makes a critical mistake in trying to reproduce the interface of the camera app. Even on an older model, this thing should be bursting with icons, hieroglyphs and modes, because that's just how the app is now. Just video and photo? What is this, 2009? Bad mistake, comic ruined.
Finally, we have Aquaman - Green Arrow: Deep Target #1. This is the most reliably identifiable iPhone in a comic this week, because on size alone, this can only be an iPhone 12 mini. It's a strange pick, the 12 mini being a historically unpopular model because of its undersized battery, but it is a very good phone if you lead a busy life of international evil conspiracy. There are no glaring mistakes there, no effect-ruining blunder that would break my suspension of disbelief. There is something entirely baffling, however, sitting on the third row of icons of this homepage. Do you see it as well? That little star-shaped icon? This is a comic released in 2021. Who the hell still has the iTunes store app? Hey pops, we have Apple Music now. Do you have it for films and TV shows? DO YOU WATCH FILMS ON AN IPHONE 12 MINI? This is too freaky for me. See you next week for more iPhones in comics.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: ALL COMICS ARE BRANDS; ALL BRANDS ARE COMICS
Yes, Inferno #2 has your daily recommended intake of intrigue, conspiracy, and politicking, played out at the highest possible stakes of life or death of a species. Yes, its twists and turns overload the mind with tantalizing possibilities, especially if you had the good taste of keeping up with recent developments in X-Force, a book that has always played nicer to Hickman's master plans than most in the X-Men line. Yes, Stefano Caselli delivers a supremely confident 40 pages, playing the pitch-perfect continuation of all that has come before, delivering on an emotional clarity that stands out against the general murkiness of the conflicting machinations. But I'll leave most of this to critics more interested in telling you exactly what happened in a comic you can go out and read for yourself right now.
What really interested me is a very peculiar turn of phrase, employed by Mystique in one data page. Describing the actions of Magneto and Professor X, she says "They control the means of resurrection". Borrowing the language from Marxist theory interests me, because of the way in which it reframes the dilemmas of the whole issue, and indeed of the Krakoa era as a whole, in terms of economics. This is an issue in which a lot of little transactions happen, and the question at the heart of each of those transactions is who benefits, and how they benefit. Near the end of this issue, it is about confronting a deep immorality underpinning the whole system. There is a revolution happening, there is a fire being lit, and the final visual we're being treated to is of the X-Men's most famous Russian. Need I say more? Even when you "solve" economics, as the nation of Krakoa has, economics still find their way in. There's something really interesting there, and I just can't wait to see what Hickman makes of in his last two issues.
We cannot escape the fact that Task Force Z #1 has the dumbest premise of any comic to be released in 2021. It's the Suicide Squad, except they're all zombies! Jason Todd is their leader! How is this happening? Why is this happening? Do they realize that some day, Halloween will end? I don't know. But some way, somehow, it works! Eddie Barrows uses the zombie protagonists to deliver very cool and very weird violence, Matthew Rosenberg pours some cool attitude over it, with the fun dialogue and the interesting bits of character study, and it just holds! It's a weird book about weird freaks and it is somehow in mainline DC continuity. It is a joyful rejoinder of the fact that sometimes comics are stupid, and it's okay. They got the whole premise out of the way, so I'll be here for the dumb slapstick. And that's why comics are the greatest.
They sure are! Thanks for bearing with us everyone, and thanks for the support! This newsletter would be a whole lot sadder without you, and so I'm glad you're here each and every week. Sorry if the title misled you! If you want to do me a solid, just do the usual, subscribe, tell your friends about it, and if you find the time, HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!