equalized9

[equalized9]

in 2016 I read the best comix at the publix libraxry

2016 was an idiot year for me because I started a local interest blog, and a bunch of local events happened and I didn’t go to none of them. 

And the ones I did go to, I couldn’t figure out how to use my camera (like at the violent trump rally started by milo vaginopolis. I saw the aftermath - there were cops at the Upper Sproul Plaza gett’n paid marching in circles and formations for a few news cameramen - it was weirdly reminiscent of the whole TV facade of Hunger Games), but i’m a writer so i guess just an appearance and some attention is worth something.

Anyways in 2016 I read some of the greatest comix of my life thanx to the Berkeley Pubic Library (sic lol i’m talking about the grimy bathroom on the 2nd floor Downtown - no fault of the janitorial staff, or even patrons, it just gets used a lot). the NEW LEAGUE was BOMB (all 3 installments in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century and the new Nemo Trilogy).

SPOILER ALERT

As a Purveyor of the Strange I appreciated Mina Murray’s astral drug trip gone wrong, one instance of Kevin O’Neil’s illustrations, normally contained by strict parallelograms, breaking free of their rigidly rectangular boxes in a colorful and metallic “technicolor” dreamscape (obvious remark). The story also looks at the problem of demonism and dark occultism in music and youth culture, which interests me as a new-agey music guy - I mean really, evil does damage people. Harry Potter as the antichrist, hilarious.

I can’t say enough good about these books because of the personal meaning they have for me. (Fer example, The Bonuzz Minions of the Moon sci-fi story features an actual illustration of a field of skulls, which interests me as someone named Skolfield.) But, I also realized, as a total send-up of old man books ca. the 1900s and earlier, they play on some pretty prejudiced cliches, like the brown-skinned pirate princess Nemo, my new favorite fictional mass murderer. She’s such a beautiful strong woman, but also a unhesitating preyer of innocents.

The Downtown Library had Volume 3 of the Nemo series (Roses of Berlin) hidden in the back, and I imagine the young black female library employee thinks I’m some kind of pervert after my personal request for the book - featuring a 2-page center spread of exploding nazi femme-bots - an illustration (and book) brimming with pseudo-swaztikas and fragmenting female body parts.

Which leads me to the amazing work of Warren Ellis - Desolation Jones (begins when the protagonist is hired to recover stolen Hitler porn, as in graphic, sexual movies featuring the actual Hitler - and that’s the least freaky / seedy / hardcore / underhanded / conspiratorial part of the story), Global Frequency (so gritty, so contemporary, so hi-tech, so much blurring of reality and Speculative fiction - better than movies or TV), and the cyberpunk masterpiece Transmetropolitan - I felt like such a kewl antisocial punky guy reading about Spider Jerusalem and listening to Drum n Bass on the bus - the book says “I HATE YOU” with a sardonically grinning white man on the cover. Transmetropolitan - strangely cartoonish, yet revoltingly real - is appropriate reading during any presidential election, but was especially so in this strangely cartoonish yet, revoltingly real era of the Trump vs. Hillary vs. Bernie campaign.

I am totally a wannabe Spider after reading this - xcept mo #natural and straightedge maybe even mo#smart. My assistants will be administered a very different compulsory cocktail of psychoactives. No ketamine, no tobacco, gross…

Grant Morrison Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo and Sebastian O - more connoisseur of the strange fare. Doom Patrol is DC’s surrealistic reject superhero team - theirs is a topsy-turvy story in an already topsy-turvy world. Topsy-turbo, you could say ;) thanks spell check. There’s a villain team (with a germaphobe member whose power is everything you didn't think of) who threatens to trap the world in a painting, and other spooky threats, like an impossible floating crystalline city made of shifting bones, powered by a riddle, infested with inter-dimensional marauders called scissormen, who speak in anagrams.

Flex Mentallo, features a villain who leaves dud cartoon bombs in hi-value locations, the tormented hero ripping through marble floors of banks and subway stations trying to catch the phantom. Reminds me of British government assassinating citizens during war on terror? 

Self reflexive comic where a rockstar - reminiscent of the author - is haunted by cartoon characters invented in his childhood. An existential meditation for a darker age where superheroes are in support groups instead of fighting crime.

Trump’s presidency is a lot like Lex Luthor taking the White House.

One wonders, where are the heroes?

Where's Spider-Man, for real.

Who has the balls or the power to save us?

One of my favorite comic book scenes of all time appears in Flex Mentallo, when, in a race to save the world, the hero stumbles into a superhero sex club, where the world's saviors are distracted having beautiful, impossible sex. And the sidekicks are relegated to roving gangs of boy wonders.

As a writer you're dealing with the basic building blocks of meaning, and at a certain point it's like you're hacking the genome, coding reality itself with language, like a computer coder guy writing a program.

The satisfyingly mind-bending questions of abstraction and metaphysicality I encountered in these comics reflected the Grant Morrison I knew from prose, in his history of comic books Supergods, which reaches into mythic realms, positing the superhero as an arbiter of history, and even a living force, almost like Jesus. But he's a storyteller at heart, and is only evangelizing comics themselves, and the human spirit, if anything. It's very nitty gritty and pragmatic pop prose - some of the best I've read.

I also knew Morrison from YouTube interviews, sometimes alongside the likes of the My Chemical Romance singer, discussing his daring or foolish forays into occultism. For example, ahile experimenting with sympathetic magic, Morrison afflicted his character Spider, modeled after himself, with a brain infection, and reportedly developed the same health problem.

Sebastian O is some crazy Victorian alternate history shit with a prison break and practically nonstop mortal battle by a super-sexual, super-fashionable dandy superassassin with a clockwork house and perverted friends and some guy going nutso over virtual reality. Crasy shit! Connoisseur of the strange, appreciator of the weird.

(Ok I gotta explain this “connoisseur of the strange” phrase I keep repeating. I realized one of my specialties/interests has always been the “weird” or “different” - im a “risk taker” and a trendsetter and a contrarian, opt for bright colors and clashing patterns, always have loved sci-fi/fantasy, my shows circa 2002 were So Weird and Invader Zim, always especially appreciated the surrealistic or drug trip episodes, like when Homer goes through an interdimensional portal, or the Ed Ed n Eddy that's all dreamscape. This interest is part of my fascination with VR & cutting-edge science - I wrote a whole piece about it, so I'll leave it at that for now.)

I read summo but those were some of the ones I remember immediately. I read some of the best comix of my life in 2016. Thank you Public Library.

[equalized9]

debs so good 

[equalized9]

Private Eye is a story of intrigue and espionage set in a speculative fiction world where the internet has been SHUT DOWN, and only licensed members of the press report the news (in contrast to the free-for-all of the internet where everyone can report on current events). 

This comic was pretty sweet, but as an internet maven, and a sucker for happy endings, I found the ambiguous conclusion kind of a letdown. 

The colorful art and futuristic hipster fashion and general virtuousness of its people (everyone in this graphic novel, except for the murderous villains, seemed pretty much a “good person” - even the unconscionable villains had a sympathetic motive) echoed the optimism of Jetson’s era-futurism. As an art maven I was sort of aesthetically pleased by a depiction of a return to analog - books and vinyl records are so precious and deserve primacy and respect. 

Yet, I was horrified by the lack of internet, which made this story’s setting a true dystopia. True, everyone in 2017 America’s computer (including the highest echelon of government worker) is probably cracked out, and a sitting duck for hackers of all stripes, but the internet is so priceless. I was truly saddened seeing a depiction of the future where even the smart kids in the new generation think the internet amounts to some masturbatory, naval-gazing Facebook circle-jerk. 

[equalized9]

It was pretty good, but My Friend Dahmer Freaked me out because I look way too much like Dahmer in this book. There’s a scene where bro is pounding beers and his acquaintance (Dahmer was not exactly buddies with anyone) is like, “Wow, in that moment, I realized Jeff was really scary,” - I love pounding beers. 

He was like a lamo, and basically the only interaction his “best friend” (the author Derf Backderf) had with him was repeatedly getting Jeffrey to say some ridiculous catchphrase and laughing really hard. I had a couple relationships like this back in school. 

And there was this semi-prank this team of high school bros pulled where they made Jeffrey like their mascot (when he was just an overly-reserved nerd weirdo, before he was a famous gay cannibal killer) and snuck him into yearbook photos for a bunch of different clubs and stuff. 

I’m like totally a posterboy for like everything I’m involved with and pulled shit like that all the time - I was never in mariachi band and I’m right in the middle of the yearbook photo with a sombrero - I’m a trombonist so its plausible but that’s also why its funy. 

Anyways if you’re an inhibited lamo nerd alcoholic dork be prepared to face your shame with this one it’ll make you feel liek a suspected killer. 

I’m reading My Friend Dahmer, and I’m crying. It’s a beautiful sad book.

[equalized9]

the only games that ever mattered

[equalized9]

Clor - Clor, 2005

top 10, completely love this

Special thanks to Jeph Jacques (http://www.questionablecontent.net/) for recommending this on his circa tha augties blog.

[equalized9]

Adventures in Babysitting, 1987 

Very formative, one of my earliest images of teen life. So many memorable moments, a few verging on magical, from Elizabeth Shue’s character Chris lip-syncing to The Crystals in the opening scene, to her friend Brenda stranded at the bus station (”Get out of my house!” “Why would you hurt a poor, defenseless kitten?”, ha ha), to Sarah meeting “the real Thor”. 

There are a few jokes I didn’t get as a kid. Fun, suspenseful, sort of insane. Also love the sheer 80s-ness. 

[equalized9]

love this record - top 20 for sure, came out when i was 20

[equalized9]

A deep meditation on human challenges and the human experience, told in a magical world of elves, pixies, and trolls. The authors are my heroes! 

[equalized9]

randomly my fav movie

[equalized9]

this served me well over the years 

[equalized9]

Yoni Wolf and Andrew Broder of Hymie’s Basement “fame”.

[equalized9]

near the top of my top 10 fav albums, possibly #1

[equalized9]

Old-school Oakland problem child shit; do NOT fuck with Casidine because she will fuck your shit up. Artists like Kreayshawn are iterations of the mold Casidine embodied 20 years earlier. Songs about drinking, “fucking”, being a female pimp and playa, and basically not following the rules. "Fun” music about kicking ass and taking names. 

[equalized9]

Really beautiful trombone music. This guy has amazing tone. A model for brass players and trombonists. 

[equalized9]

one of my top 10 fav albums

[equalized9]

Animal Collective - Campfire Songs [Full Album]

very classic makeout record (makeout as in deep kisses and heavy petting)