Counterfictionals and the presidency

I had missed this because I only read DC comics these days, but Stephen Colbert's clever but knowingly doomed campaign for the presidency (in South Carolina) survived and thrived in the Marvel Universe. In fact, he won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College, because, according to Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, "the Marvel Universe reflects what happens in the real world."

Now there's a counterfictionally loaded assertion.

Didn't we have a discussion here about the "real life" locations of Gotham and Metropolis?

Which is irrelevant for Marvel Comics, because instead of creating fictional cities, the vast majority of the events of the Marvel Universe take place in New York City. Well, at least they take place in the Earth 616 version of New York City, and to try to bridge the reality and fiction, the comic industry fan mag Wizard has put together a map of important locations in the Marvel Universe New York City. Marvel themselves apparently did something similar a few years ago, and fans, of course, have done the leg work and taken photos of the real-life NYC equivalents.

Oddly enough, on the whole, I find Marvel's NYC far less interesting than Gotham or Metropolis. There's less room to play with, and while DC's fictional cities each have their own mythologies, Marvel very rarely makes use of the history of NYC in its storytelling. (It's worth noting that NYC actually exists in the DC Universe. Nightwing is hanging out there, at the moment.)

(Via Kottke, shared by J. Lavolette.)

Luke Is Dumb

The Five Reasons Luke Skywalker Is A Complete Idiot.

Batman & Politics: part II

Jonathan Lethem on The Dark Knight:

In its narrative gaps, its false depths leading nowhere in particular, its bogus grief over stakeless destruction and faked death, “The Dark Knight” echoes a civil discourse strained to helplessness by panic, overreaction and cultivated grievance. I began to feel this Batman wears his mask because he fears he’s a fake — and the story of his inauthenticity, the possibility of his unmasking, counts for more than any hope he offers of deliverance from evil. The Joker, on the other hand, exhibits his real face, his only face, and his origins are irrelevant, his presence as much a given as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or Fear Itself.

The Joker’s paradox, of course, is the same as that of 9/11 and its long aftermath: audacious transgression ought to call out of us an equal and adamant passion for love of truth and freedom, yet the fear he inspires instead drives us deep into passivity and silence.

A Massive Military Buildup

Where does the officers corps of the imperial army in Star Wars come from? In the prequels the Clone Wars are fought entirely by Jedi, drones, and the clone forebears of storm troopers. The clones even have separate names, ranks, responsibilities. But at the end of Sith Tarkin is overseeing construction of the Death Star, dudes have uniforms, rank, a whole bureaucratic substructure independent of the Senate, the Jedi, even Vader. And there's no sense at all of the storm troopers in the Original Trilogy having any kind of officer corps.

Part of the drama of the original trilogy is the tension between Vader and the uniformed non-clone military. Also, the fleet is composed along racist lines: no unhelmeted clones, no non-Caucasian aliens. (The Bounty Hunters are dismissed as "scum.") Where do these guys come from? Are they conscripts? The mobilized remains of a brownshirted imperial militia?

Along with the retarded faceless droid armies in Phantom Menace and after, not exploring the encroaching militarism of the Empire is a serious oversight. It's not just a political failure that produces the empire -- it's the seizure of the mechanisms of force and the elimination of the Jedi as a competitor on the legitimate use of violence. As someone interested in how armies work, and fictional representations of soldiers and officers, I love the intimations in the OT and feel that very large gap in that part of the story.

Armies I think have to be seen as an emerging theme of the comics as well, and in some sense superhero stories are inherently anti-military. Obviously the recent Iron Man film addresses this head-on, but you also have The Hulk, Captain America, Nick Fury and SHIELD, and so on.

There is a utopian imagination at work whereby we seem to dream of a world where right-minded, ultrapowerful civil servants (whether Supermen or Jedi) eliminate the need for standing armies, traditional manifestations of force, and hostile international/intergalactic relations.

The great counterexample might be the Green Lantern Corps, a kind of armed invisible UN that is designed to keep the peace but also act as a kind of nuclear deterrent against interplanetary (as opposed to merely global and local) aggression. The Green Lanterns effectively seem to recognize each planet/sector as sovereign and world wars as local affairs in which they need not interfere.

And so, as with Star Trek, international or interethnic conflicts get allegorized as conflicts between actual aliens, while Superman, Batman, and friends are available to deal with local petty crime.

Star Wars may be the only manifestation of an honest-to-goodness civil war where the conflict between superhuman beings (the Sith and Jedi) are played against the backdrop of a purely human conflict between two organized armies. The events intersect but they do not determine one another. Even the destruction of the second Death Star has nothing to do with the Jedi or the Force really; it's Ewoks and rebels killing storm troopers, and a non-Force wielding fleet whomping the Death Star and Imperial troops.

So: how do these armies get started? (The rebel army is even more of a mystery.)

Why Superheroes and Politics Don't Mix

John August, "Aquaman is a Pescepublican":

Recent articles about the political leanings of popular comic book characters got me thinking about the uncanny valley between fictional and real-world ideologies. We’re happy to have characters speak in broad terms — “With great power comes great responsibility” — but the minute they start referring to specific issues, we become very uncomfortable.

How does The Flash feel about immigration? Is Wolverine pro-choice? Does Black Canary support the First Amendment rights of hate groups? We don’t know, and really don’t want to know....

I’d argue that the thematic success of comic book characters, and comic book storylines, comes from how closely they can approach the line separating Real from Too Real, without crossing it.

Up in the sky! It's a band! No, it's a supergroup!

Carl Newman on guitar. Neko Case on vocals and tambourine. Dan Bejar on vocals and some weird gourd-like rhumba shaker. Yep, that's the makings of the Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers. They've produced some of the finest pop albums of the last decade and I can't imagine a modern musical landscape without them. But who in the world would have ever predicted that this precise collection of folks (including Blaine Thurier, Todd Fancey, Kurt Dahle, and Kathryn Calder) would get together and make such sweet noise?

Our earlier post on countermusicals attempted to open the door of our fictional musings to explorations of fiction and counterfiction in music. A question posed there, and a question that is posed daily amongst fervent music geeks, was, and is: If you could construct your own supergroup of existing musicians, alive or dead, who would you choose and how would you arrange them? Much like crossover comics where fans finally get to see Spiderman team up with Green Lantern (I honestly don't know if that ever actually happened) for a token adventure, imaginary supergroups are your chance to bring your favorite musical worlds (pop or otherwise) together to play in tandem and fulfill your fantasies. Take your favorite guitar player and place him/her in front of your favorite drummer, behind your favorite piano player, your favorite harpsichordist, next to your favorite avant-garde vocalist. There are no rules. Just be sure to specify Beatles or Wings-era McCartney if you choose to go down that path.

To start things off, let's see what kind of band I can piece together. On guitar I'm tempted to go left with Johnny Greenwood or right with Doug Martsch, but I think my best bet is with J Mascis. I want there to be some cohesion in my group (sonic cohesion, not play-well-with-others cohesion), so I'll forgo obvious vocalist choices like Björk or Mark Kozelek and just stick with Robert Pollard (circa 1992). (Hamilton Leithauser a close second there for vocals.) Drums are easy with Glenn Kotche. We'll place Kathy Foster on bass guitar for sheer hotness, but also for excessive radness. To round out the sound, I'll also put Spencer Krug on the keyboard, but we'll restrict him to his more straight-ahead playing of Wolf Parade as opposed to his explorative Sunset Rubdown work.

How's that? Now you try.