#i think we as a community focus TOO LITTLE on gordons dynamic with the OLD MEN

[py6oto]

for now before you're gone

i was originally gonna make another drawing like this from coomers view ... but its too late for that. and also i dont want to.

maaaybe i might make it tomorrow ... maybe !!!

2023.07.21

[theshitireadincomics-blog]

Comics in College.

After an amazing Christmas break, it is back to school time. I currently teach first-year composition at a university and community college in the St. Louis area and I am currently prepping my lesson plans and syllabi for the coming spring semester. In addition to the writing classes, I have what has become my “fun class.” This is a college reading class that is designed to bring student’s reading comprehension levels up to whatever the system calls “standards” this year. The reason this class is my most enjoyable is because it is a sixteen week semester in which I am allowed to plan the entire course reading list. Now, I try hard to fill the schedule with classics you traditionally find in college and readings with vital social and educational issues, but I save a couple of spots for the literature that made me who I am today—comics. 

Now, saying “made me who I am” is not some great claim. I am only been teaching college for five years and have yet to find my greatness and often question if it is even out there. But I know I would not be in front of a college classroom without finding comics as a child—hell, I would probably never made it into college as a student either, as I hated reading before figuring out that Batman and Spider-Man weren’t just cartoons. My goal with using comics as a learning tool is to try to show these students that there are other forms of literature and reading that are not in those intimidating old books with hundreds of pages. Not that these students can’t handle “regular” books. They can. Most of the students in my reading class kick ass, but struggle on their reading testing because they become easily distracted or just have always hated the idea of reading. Or, they are just bad test takers. I know how it is first-hand. I came from the same reading class when I started college and did not place well either. That is why I try to create a nice blend of traditional literature with comics, science fiction, memoirs, and other writings that will hopefully grab someone’s attention (that is a glossed over summary of the course, as there are other parameters and aspects of the class that are far too monotonous to mention here). 

When I say that comics are my favorite form of literature, it comes with a disclaimer. I understand that the groundbreaking works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and others have brought comic books and graphic novels into academia, but I am not necessarily talking about those stories that are commonly accepted as literature. I argue constantly that me sitting down and reading a random issue of Green Lantern can be as beneficial and literary as when I sit down to read Shakespeare (which should be soon, since it’s been ages). Granted, I may not be able to find as many perplexities in a fight between Hal Jordan and the Sinestro Corps that lie in King Lear, but there will usually be something that will enlighten me or someone else! 

This is where I am not a fan of the college graphic literature classes that I have seen. They are full of awesome books like Maus or Understanding Comics—and that is great! But the closest these classes usually get to superheroes is Watchmen. I love Watchmen and think it is a one of the greatest stories of all time, but I also have to count it as being overrated. How can one thing be praised that much without there being an alternate view or reaction? Kind of like the Beatles (which I personally hate). Even more vital to the discussion of Watchmen being the sole representation of superheroes in a class curriculum, is the notion that the story itself cannot be completely understood or appreciated without understanding the groundwork of traditional superheroes that inspired it. Sure you can read, enjoy, or digest the story, but without that super-hero dynamic in your consciousness you are missing out (this idea is also shared by Walter Hudsick in his essay “Reassembling the Components in the Correct Sequence: Why You Shouldn’t Read Watchmen First,” which can be found in the book Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen). I am not arguing that these college classes be stripped of their copies of Persepolis and replaced with dollar bin issues of Cloak and Dagger, but maybe that the superhero comic should get its own class and focus. There are many schools out there that do use these types of stories. I am just throwing out my two cents for more of that, as I was looked down on for reading those types comics in school as a kid, and told the comic stories I wrote in college were not “literary” enough. 

In the aforementioned class that I use comics in, last semester we tackled Batman the Killing Joke and the first volume of the Walking Dead. Both readings were well received and I had a few students that had never read a comic before. Both of these books have many different aspects and facets that we discussed throughout the sections. In Killing Joke, we discussed the parallels of the characters Batman and Joker and the complexities of their relationship. We looked at the stereotypical usage of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl and how she was impacted by the events in the story and we questioned what happened in the ambiguous ending (check out the Grant Morrison episodes on Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast for his awesome take). While we dissected these aspects in the same way we examined Poe’s “the Black Cat” a month earlier, we still stopped to look at how badass it was to see Batman leap out of the Batmobile to rescue Commissioner Gordon. We discussed the coolness of seeing that final slugfest between Batman and Joker—maybe for the final time. When looking at the Walking Dead, we discussed the people in the story and their constant need to recover their civilization and humanity, but we also made time to stop and talk about our fondness of flesh-eating zombies and those types of films! 

My point is that all of this can be done (and maybe should be done) together. You don’t have to read your comics with the purpose of analyzing Deadpool’s commentary on the human condition—but you can! I would like to see more comics (of any genre or type) used as educational tools. Just because something is fun, colorful, and relevant in pop culture does not eliminate it from being scholarly. That is a ridiculous idea, yet I would get frowns from college creative writing instructors when I mentioned writing a comic and I was once told that a play with zombies in it was not serious enough. I had an entire class laugh at me when I made the comment that I would be happy getting a job writing a Conan the Barbarian novel. I don’t even know enough about Conan to fill a novel, but who the hell wouldn’t take a job being paid to write about that shit?!? Maybe the fact that our summer theaters and television screens are flooded with superheroes can translate into a little academic love for our spandex wearing characters. You can find a lot about humanity, society, and yourself when reading about these godlike people who constantly fight between good and evil.

 I haven’t written one of these posts in a while, but I am feeling a little bit like giving it another go. Next, I intend on digging into some of the stuff that has inspired me to create this blog, exploring some of the greatness and garbage I have ran across during my days reading comics.

 - Stephyn.

[troytlepower]

You know what I just watched? The Orville

My wife and I just finished up watching the first season of The Orville, and overall… it’s pretty good! Unlike Star Trek: Discovery, Seth MacFarlane’s love letter to Next Gen era Trek doesn’t try to push the formula into brave new worlds, but it is consistently fun, intermittently funny, and occasionally poignant throughout it’s initial run. To wrap up my thoughts on the first season, here are three sentence reviews of each of it’s 12 episodes, without going back and watching them at all, because that’s how I roll… apparently.

1. Old Wounds

The Orville ships out with MacFarlane’s Captain Ed Mercer in command and XO/Ex-Wife Kelly, portrayed fantastically by Adrianne Palicki, at his side. The ship, aliens, and costumes all look fantastic from the jump, and the crew introductions provide some genuine laughs (and a few groans). Everything seems to work okay, except for the love/hate dynamic between the Captain and First Officer.

2. Command Performance

Oh look, a whole episode about the love/hate dynamic between Ed and Kelly! It seems like if this is going to be focus, we need to see them handle this like adults, instead of making jokes about workplace harassment. Ed’s interaction with his parents about his prostate is everything that is wrong with the comedy in this show, but seeing a crew member from an all male species hatch a daughter brings a lot of heart and is super intriguing.

3. About a Girl

The crew wrestles with how to deal with Second-Officer Bortus’ (Peter Macon) daughter, in an interesting parallel to current conversations about gender politics. It’s nice to see the court room drama trope come in to play, since that’s such a staple of Trek, but the surprise arrival of another female Moclan is dampened by having her exhibit stereotypically feminine physical qualities. The ending judgement has the society standing up for their societal norms, and enforcing a male gender on the female-born baby, reflecting the grossness of allowing a state’s rights to override an individual’s.

4. If the Stars Should Appear

An awesome exploration of the trope of a society that doesn’t realize that they are living on a spacecraft, and not a planet. The reveals throughout are cool, and Liam Neeson’s cameo is pretty fun. The B-Story about Bortus trying to figure out how to deal with his duties and a newly grown family is an interesting exploration of life on a starship, but portraying his partner as a bit of a nag felt cheap.

5. Pria

playing on the con-man as time traveler trope seen in “A Matter of Time”, Charlize Theron flips the script by actually being both. Seeing the captain fall so quickly and completely under her spell made me miss the more reserved commanding officers of the Federation. Watching Ed’s best friend and helmsman Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) try to teach the robotic Data-stand-in, Isaac (Mark Jackson), the art of the practical joke was phenomenal.

6. Krill

What if some of our crew members had to go undercover as members of our greatest enemies? It’s another pretty on the nose trope, but the comedy seems to be really hitting a stride here, especially with Malloy. The mass-murder ending took me by surprise, considering how much time was spent letting us get to know the Krill.

7. Majority Rule

Another attempt at true, Trek-style social commentary, this time looking at the value placed in social media’s social currency, especially Reddit’s up and down votes. It’s great to see Lamar get to step in to the spotlight, but a shame that he behaves so obliviously all the time. Ultimately, this episode makes a pretty compelling argument against the idea of the popular vote, which is a weird stance for a fairly liberal show to take with the current POTUS in office.

8. Into the Fold

Penny Johnson Jerald’s Dr. Claire Finn and Isaac, get to take the spotlight in this weeks episode, when a shuttle crashes on a planet with a diseased and cannibalistic populous, leaving Finn’s children in Isaac’s care while she is abducted by an overprotective “savior”. The children and Dr Finn both end up taking up arms against hostiles, giving us an exploration of the morality of self defense. Mostly, though, both watching Finn murder someone and seeing a kid take up a fire arm was just uncomfortable.

9. Cupid’s Dagger

Oh hey, another episode all about the relationship between Kelly and Ed, this time based on the man she had an affair with coming aboard and causing everyone to fall in love. Rob Lowe does a great job filling the Lwaxana Troi role in this romance romp, and is charming to the viewer, even without secreting phermones everywhere. Unfortunately, a lot of the humor and even the resolution for this episode is based way too heavily in date-rape analogies and a complete ignorance of consent, which means nothing really works.

10. Firestorm

It’s a holodeck-gone-wrong epsisode, except it turns out that it’s done intentionally. I get that we’re having Alara (Halston Sage) literally face her fears, but it seems like this goes well past confrontation to intentional psychological torture. Also, why clowns?

11. New Dimensions

This one started off pretty awesome, with a look at a two dimensional civilization living in a two dimensional reality, but then the Orville ended up being able to just fly through it as a three dimensional ship, for some reason? I feel like letting them slide through without really being impacted limited any interesting explorations. Unless it was trying to be a metaphor for Lamar’s (J. Lee) character development where, I guess, he’s not a dummy anymore and is going to be our Engineer, because Geordi?

12. Mad Idolatry

This is an episode of Voyager, from the main plot conceit, to the timeline not really making sense at all, but it was still super fun. Kelly is a great character, so it was awesome for her to really steal the spotlight, and I liked that the ultimate message wasn’t “Religion is bad because it’s fake”, but was instead “Belief and community are essential, regardless of their origin. Also, it looks like they are finally going to drop the will-they-won’t-they through-line for season two!

And that’s it! Looking back on these episodes, I had more complaints than I expected to, but overall I really did enjoy the series. My big hope for the future is that they’ll spend more time thinking of the impact of the scenarios they set up, a little bit less time on dick and fart jokes (not 100%, but a little), and a lot less time harassing Kelly.

It’s incredible to me that we have both this and Discovery on TV at the same time, and I like what they are both doing for the Sci-Fi genre. Orville, I’ll see you in Season 2!

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