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Doom Patrol by Rachel Pollack: They Liked My Powers But Couldn’t Handle Me

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“The ones who return are the ones who suffer. Live as if you’ve never lived before.” – Niles Caulder receiving a message from his subconscious. Doom Patrol #73. “The Dream Patrol: Return of the Windowmen,” written by Rachel Pollack.

In his introduction to The Vertigo Tarot, Sandman creator Neil Gaiman mentions the surreal experience of accompanying author Rachel Pollack on a visit to an esoteric shop in Camden to pick up a Tarot deck. This resulted in Gaiman, “feeling like I’d just gone into a record show with someone who, to my surprise, turned out to be one of the Beatles, as Rachel modestly admitted her identity to the lady behind the counter, and signed autographs.”

Last month, Gaiman wrote again about Pollack, but this time under heavier circumstances. “I am writing this at the request of her wife Zoe,” he wrote on his Mastodon account, “to let her friends know that the end is soon, and to let the obituarists know too.” [Read more…] about Doom Patrol by Rachel Pollack: They Liked My Powers But Couldn’t Handle Me

Who Watched the Watchmen? Alan Moore’s “What We Can Know About Thunderman”

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Alan Moore’s relationship with superheroes in the wake of Watchmen has been… contentious, to say the least. This is due in no small part to Alan’s relationship with DC Comics. To be perfectly blunt, DC Comics’ attitude to Alan Moore can be best compared to an abusive ex-boyfriend who has never gotten over being dumped. So he (DC) routinely calls his former girlfriend (Alan) at the dead of night, engineering schemes to get her back, all the while badmouthing the poor woman to anyone he can pull into listening to him ramble like an incoherent drunk at a third rate bar that doesn’t even have any decent rats. All the while the woman is just trying to move on with her life, but everyone from old friends to complete strangers to new co-workers simply won’t stop asking her about the ex.

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At one point, she’s working in the same office as her ex (because the son of a bitch bought out the whole building without her knowledge), and she makes it perfectly clear that she wants nothing to do with her ex. And, for a short while, the guy acquiesces. But when she begins to work on something personal and difficult, something that could get the ex into trouble with the sort of people you should make life more miserable for (and one thing that was so arbitrary, you have to assume he knew it’d piss her off but did it anyways), the ex decides to butt in and make it impossible for her to do the gig. So, naturally, she quits.

Then, one day, the son of a bitch sends one of her old friends—a term used loosely given what’s about to happen—to ask her to help with something they did together a few years back. She says that she wants absolutely nothing to do with it, but won’t say anything negative about it. Offhandedly, the friend notes, “that’s good, he said you would be quietly compliant.” At this, she explodes at the world, cuts off most of her friends who stood by the abusive ex while he did unconscionable things to her, and badmouths the sons of bitches who weren’t there but think nothing truly unconscionable happened (or, rather, profit off the unconscionable). In response, the ex decides to hurt her best friend, whose brother is in hospital at the time with something that looks fatal.

So yeah, Alan Moore and DC have a rocky relationship, to say the least.

[Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Alan Moore’s “What We Can Know About Thunderman”

Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums

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It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

Rebirth hadn’t yet happened.

Doomsday Clock was not a thing.

Rorschach and the Watchmen TV show didn’t exist.

Only Before Watchmen did.

DC had only made one serious attempt to milk Watchmen and cash-in on it before. And it had bombed, big time. Nobody liked it or cared for it. It was over. They knew it. Everybody did.

And so there was that brief period of time- the quiet calm, the gap between the first big attempt and the next big attempt-wherein it felt like we could perhaps move forward from Watchmen nostalgia. Wherein we could get past it all. And if we were to engage with it, it wouldn’t be literally, by sequelizing it or using characters from it, but rather through the challenges it offered via its formal daring and political critique.

And so let us journey backwards, into that frozen moment, that small gap of time, where the prospect of creators reckoning with Watchmen held a spark of real intrigue.

Welcome to The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1.

A one-shot story utilizing the original Charlton characters upon whom the Watchmen characters were based, constructed for an all new post-Watchmen, post-9/11 world and climate.

Brought to us by the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Nathan Fairbairn, and Rob Leigh.
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The Dark Knight Trilogy 15 Years Later: Film & Comic Influences!

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The films of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy – Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – are often cited among some of the most influential films in recent memory, certainly responsible for revitalizing the superhero genre in the public consciousness, but perhaps also changing the landscape of big-budget blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking. Nolan’s grounded approach to superhero films, seeped with realism, has influenced every franchise since, for better or worse.

It is easy to note and cite the influences these films have had since their release, but art is not born out of a vacuum. And while I do think “everything is a remix” can be a rather pessimistic way to look at things – if nothing is truly “original,” what is even the point, right? – it is important to look back, not just to gain a deeper understanding of a work, but also to acquire a new outlook with which to look forward.

So, what are the influences of The Dark Knight Trilogy? It is, of course, a marriage of two mediums, taking a character predominantly associated with comic books and bringing him onto the big screen, so it must have had influences from both films and comic books. What films informed the cinematography of this trilogy? And what stories from the character’s rich publication history were mined to tell the tale Nolan et al. were trying to tell with their films?

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Who Watched the Watchmen? Watchmen and The Darkness Within

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There is a great lie about Watchmen.

They repeat the lie over and over again, pretending it says a lot, when it says very little. It is not a lie of malice, but a lie of ignorance. It is a lie predicated on omission of truth. It is a lie that only emerges when one understands history. It is a meaningless statement presented as meaningful to those who don’t know better.

It is the first lie of American comics that every new reader is confronted with, when surveying the scene of the superhero.

And it is a lie that holds, despite everything else.

The lie is this: [Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Watchmen and The Darkness Within