The Old White Skeleton Beneath
As I was finishing last week’s newsletter, the news came in, so overwhelming that even the Substack servers took a hit, that fascist freaks had invaded the halls of Congress in Washington, DC, looking to disrupt the transition of power from Trump to Biden with extreme prejudice. I don’t have the eloquence, the thoroughness or the first-hand experience with life in America to tell you anything of any depth beyond this layer of facts. You don’t want my hot take on that, and I don’t want to write a hot take on that.
There is, however, one discussion that keeps popping back up in the aftermath of these large-scale events of white supremacist violence. Many of the perpetrators, from your garden variety fascist dipshits to cops to soldiers, are carrying with them the overstretched skull iconography of Marvel Comics’ “The Punisher”. Which, in turn, forces the rest of us, the mostly thinking about cartoons public that’s opposed to white supremacy, to contend with the question of what we should do with The Punisher. And, generally, it’s about whether we should have a Punisher at all.
The argument against the Punisher, in way too short a summary, goes like this: the white supremacist violence we’ve seen expressed by so many across so many streets is honestly not that far removed from the kind of violence that regularly goes on in any given issue of the Punisher’s many comics. Sometimes it’s overt, like in the particularly noxious Edmondson and Gerads run. Most times, even in outwardly well-meaning runs like Kudranski and Rosenberg’s, it’s just the grim inevitability of making comics about one man taking justice into his own hands and giving himself the supreme authority to wage an always-lethal war on crime. The white supremacist mentality is baked into the premise. Like cancer, you can’t get rid of it without harming the host in some way.
The argument for the Punisher, also in way too short a summary, goes like this: fascism, by its very nature, is protean. It doesn’t care for context or meaning, because all it wants is to make its accomplices feel good about the violence they’re perpetrating. It doesn’t really matter that all the wacky frog did was taking a piss with its pants all the way down to its ankles. What matters is that claiming the frog makes you part of the in-group, and being part of the in-group means you can do violence on everyone else and get positive reinforcement from it. Fascism can do this with any symbol, for any reason, making it all the more important that we keep using the symbol to provide counter-narratives.
For the benefit of keeping an already pretty heavy column short, both on text and on negative feelings, I’m not gonna go in more detail. There is truth to both arguments, and you’re no less moral of a person for making one over the other. That said, I have an argument all my own that I’d like to make: I think that The Punisher is shit. I think that, as a character and as a premise, it’s outlived its usefulness several years ago. I think that all the “good” Punisher stories have been told, leaving only the bad and the worse out there. I think whatever good idea you would have for a Punisher story could be told just as well with another character. Kill the Punisher. Salt the earth. Enforce silencing the idea with any tool at your disposal, including trademark law. It’s done.
IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OF THE PREVIOUS ON THE GROUNDS THAT YOU THINK THE POLICE AND THE ARMY AREN’T ENFORCERS OF WHITE SUPREMACY: YOU’RE WRONG AND ALSO FUCK OFF.
Wow! Telling people to fuck off on week two! Ain’t that how it goes sometimes? You get real angry early in the week, and you want that anger forever sealed in digital amber, because, while the events are a week old at this point, it lets people know what’s what? Kind of a bummer right? Okay tell you what, next week, if all goes well, we’re gonna have some fun, and someone’s gonna get theirs. In the mean time, it’s BUSINESS TIME.
With the price of comics going through the fucking roof, giving your blind trust to any creator, on any project, for any reason, is almost always going to be a losing proposition. And yet, we do it, because, at the end of the day, we might get Commanders in Crisis #4. Steve Orlando and Davide Tinto’s hyperreferential superhero murder mystery never quite lived up to its high concept, or its gigantic multiversal stakes, because it felt bogged down by the shallow character drama of its deliberately archetypical cast.
This week’s issue changes that, as its big end-of-the-first-act confrontation leads to a game-changing twist that makes everything click into place. The gambit is, of course, drawn from familiar inspirations (Steve Orlando has made a career out of drawing from the Grant Morrison well with the thirst of someone who’s just discovered they need water to live), but it takes its opportunity to turn abstract ethics into something as concrete as a punch to the face with the earnest gusto of its most famous inspirations, which is what you wanted in the first place. As a fan of comics with hot people discussing the nature of being, with the occasional shot of a dude’s bare ass, this has fulfilled my needs.
Ah, the halcyon days of last week’s newsletter, we were so young, so innocent. When we talked trash about that bad Venom comic, little did we expect that some day, the bad Venom comics would come for us. And come for us they have, since S.W.O.R.D. #2 is all about dealing with the fact that Knull has come all over planet Earth, which is now caked in his terrible goo. Still, Al Ewing and Valerio Schiti make the best out of the occasion, and use the terrible circumstances left to them by Donny Cates to do some always enjoyable character study work on Abigail Brand, and cramming the rest of the available space with deep cut callbacks and world-building in the greater Al Ewing Cosmic Alcove.
Unrelated, but maybe related: does anyone else think it odd that the theory of mutant tech laid out in S.W.O.R.D. #1 looks exactly like the theory of mutant magic laid all over the pages of Excalibur? Like they’re maybe the exact same thing seen under two different frameworks? Does that mean anything? Is it gonna come to a head some day? Am I even reading this right? Can I use this space in my newsletter to air my pet theories?
It’s really hard to talk about a comic that’s just content to be great, and Home Sick Pilots #2 is just that. It’s about being a teen and growing up adjacent to bands, which I can relate to, despite the book being a 90s period piece. It’s also about isolation, being in thrall to terrifying ghosts, and horrifying visions of pain as you see others become in circumstances beyond their control. Which I also relate to.
But also, it’s remarkably tight! You see an idea developed from beginning to end, framed by solid flashback work, and ending with a nice little cliffhanger that guarantees you’ll come back next month. It’s just really good! Caspar Wijngaard flexes his creative muscles hard, such that it’s one of the most stylish books available in stores! Love it to bits! Check it out!
That Dan Watters! Pretty good! They should give him more books! Ah, well,
Tying all our storylines together, the Future State Roundup begins with Dan Watters using the opportunity given to him by events across the Future State line to deliver on a line from DC One Million. There is plenty to love about Superman/Wonder Woman, a dynamic team-up book filled with the hope, hijinxes, and humor you want from a book starring Jon Kent and Yara Flor, but really, I’m just thrilled at the call-backs. Sometimes it’s that easy, folks!
Other times, you go and do something completely radical instead, and that’s even better. The highlight this week, to me, is Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage’s Kara Zor-El, Superwoman, a stunningly beautiful book that’s light on action and heavy on worldbuilding and solving problems through empathy and self-actualization. One would be ambitious enough, recalling as it does the kinda under-explored territory of a future society under the watch of the superheroic that Mark Buckingham and Neil Gaiman began sketching out in their Miracleman run. The other? Feels like an entirely new way of doing Big Two American superhero comics.
It shouldn’t be! Doing this Shojo manga stuff with the trappings and the aesthetics of superhero comics should be a no-brainer! It’s a really good idea! If it’s been done before, I haven’t heard of it. If it’s been done better, I’d love to see it, because what we have here is the kind of modern, forward-looking work that might just save this industry. It’s that good. It’s gorgeous. Please get it so I can get more of it.
The final book I want to highlight before going to the pithy quotes is Justice League, because it’s really cool. Both of its features (it comes with a Justice League Dark backup) are bursting to the seams with ideas and character. So as not to spoil the single best bit in the issue, I’ll spoil the second best bit in the issue, which is the first panel, because it has Starro taking control of Darkseid and firing Omega Beams from its single eye. The rest of the book is just as generous, and its ideas just as strange and beautiful. It’s a fun time, it’s a good time.
My “best of the rest” award goes to Teen Titans, a book that feels like it has too many things going on at once in the best way. It’s high stakes brutal plate-spinning, and it doesn’t let up, making you feel like you missed several years’ worth of storylines despite being a #1. Meanwhile, Green Lantern tries its best to make “how do the Green Lanterns handle not being able to use their rings???” seem like a never-before-seen, completely original idea, and kinda fails, despite some good action thrills.
The two books set in Gotham, however, are far too dud-adjacent to be worth recommending. Robin Eternal feels like a retread, with a cliffhanger that barely keeps things interesting. As for Dark Detective? The clear talent on display, whether in the main story or the Grifters backup, makes the fact that one story lacks a big meaty hook, and the other feels like Rosenberg is stuck in Hawkeye-mode, all the more disappointing. It looks great. The writing is fine. If I’m paying the price of two books for it, I’m expecting more.
I will say, however, that I appreciate Dan Mora clearly making his future Bruce Wayne take after Ben Affleck, AS IT SHOULD BE. Maybe the future isn’t so bad after all.
What a ride, gang! Started kinda angry, didn’t it? Sometimes that’s how it goes! Sometimes politic’s piss you off because the deadly combo of Brexit and the Double-Rona means you’re STILL missing out on Guardians of the Galaxy #10! These things happen! To me! But here we are! Week two! Still at it! Tell your friends! The name of the newsletter is HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!