#its kinda four horsemen-esque

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Fantastic Four Vol 1 #195

Thur Aug 22 2019 [01:12 PM] Wack'd: Marv Wolfman: is he a wolf? Or is he a man? If he's a man, he's a wolf of a man [01:12 PM] Wack'd: Also he's our writer for the next, like, two years, give or take an annual [01:12 PM] Bocaj: Marv Wolfman of Teen Titans fame [01:13 PM] Bocaj: His fellow of Teen Titans fame George Perez was already here [01:14 PM] Wack'd: This is not his first Fantastic Four rodeo. He did the Giant-Size with the alien Horsemen of the Apocalypse whose weakness is literally any form of physical resistance [01:14 PM] Bocaj: huh [01:14 PM] Wack'd: And 190 which is the recap issue because Len Wein cannot do deadlines [01:15 PM] Wack'd: But now he gets the chance to do actual long-form Storytelling with the Fantastic Four. Let's see how he handles it, and also the fact that he's stuck with this dumb "end of the Four" plotline because Reed had a midlife crisis [01:19 PM] Wack'd: So that's confirmation that Imperial Pictures is a renamed Sado-Masochism Sub-Mariner SM Pictures

[01:20 PM] maxwellelvis: That crosshatching on Namor's chest makes it look like he's spontaneously grown chest hair [01:21 PM] Wack'd: Every swimmer's worst nightmare [01:21 PM] Wack'd: Impy interrupts Sue's moping basically just because he's bored and then gets irritated that she won't engage [01:22 PM] Wack'd:

Hollywood person: Good heavens! What was that? Sue: I can't possibly explain him. He's an experience all to himself.

[01:22 PM] Wack'd: I prefer Garnet, personally [01:23 PM] Wack'd: Back in NY, Reed is concerned he hasn't heard from Sue, which--yeah, fucking obviously, Namor's a dick who had his number blocked [01:24 PM] Wack'd: Reed is becoming suspicious that none of the folks at the lab he's at know the whole truth about the project they're working on, and Reed's mystery employer--who continues to just be a Mr. Claw-esque hand in a chair--cackles that it's Reed's paranoia is all part of the plan or whatever [01:26 PM] Wack'd: So in a shocking twist, Namor is not trying to win Sue back. He's trying to reconnect with his "only friend", because he has issues he can't talk to anyone else about [01:26 PM] maxwellelvis: Lady Dorma: Apparently chopped liver. [01:26 PM] Wack'd: Why hasn't he let her contact Reed? I dunno, ask Len Wein, I guess [01:28 PM] Wack'd: So basically, Namor's current issue is that, in other books, he's successfully rebuilt Atlantis, with himself on the throne [01:28 PM] Wack'd: The prooooooblem is that he's literally saved Atlantis from certain doom a lot. And literally every time he leaves or is dethroned, something awful happens to it. And this has put certain...ideas...in his subjects' heads [01:29 PM] maxwellelvis: Dear god, they've become self-aware! [01:29 PM] Wack'd: Basically they think he's a God. Like, capital-G, supernatural-powers, heal-the-sick, God. [01:29 PM] maxwellelvis: Oooohhhhhhh dear [01:30 PM] Wack'd: (Presumably why Dorma is off the table--for all we know, she's buying into it) [01:30 PM] Wack'd: So basically, after one too many times being swarmed by worshipers begging for help he cannot provide, he got fed up, fled Atlantis, and went looking for Sue [01:31 PM] Wack'd: And was informed by Willie Lumpkin that, by sheer coincidence, she'd signed a deal with the movie studio he's still financially on the hook for and which he'd frankly kinda forgotten about [01:31 PM] maxwellelvis: Namor should consider looking into a therapist. [01:31 PM] maxwellelvis: So, about as attentive as your typical studio head, then? [01:31 PM] Bocaj: Hahah [01:31 PM] Wack'd: Pfffft [01:33 PM] Wack'd: Back at NASA, Johnny flies in for a visit, and is immediately shot at by the military until Ben calls them off [01:33 PM] Wack'd: I swear, you can't take him anywhere [01:33 PM] Wack'd:

[01:33 PM] Wack'd: Ben's been feeling kind of lonely since Alicia's work took her back to NY [01:35 PM] Wack'd: And after that brief interlude, back to Hollywood, where Sue has encouraged Namor to take a more active interest in his studio to clear his mind [01:35 PM] Wack'd: It...doesn't last

[01:36 PM] maxwellelvis: Why would they give their robots scales? [01:36 PM] Wack'd: Ladies and gentlemen, your 1978 Atlantis Hockey Club starting lineup! [01:36 PM] InbarFink: Aesthetic [01:36 PM] maxwellelvis: Good answer [01:37 PM] maxwellelvis: I have to say, these are some of the silliest-looking robots I've seen in a Marvel comic. [01:37 PM] maxwellelvis: And that's including the Living Brain [01:37 PM] Wack'd: Honestly those faces have big DC Reach energy [01:37 PM] maxwellelvis: In that they look like space wrestlemen? [01:38 PM] Wack'd: I guess? [01:38 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, Sue uses her force fields to force all the cast and crew off the set [01:39 PM] Wack'd: uuuugh

[01:41 PM] Bocaj: Is she going by Girl still at this point? [01:42 PM] Wack'd: Sue manages to dispatch two robots, one by flattening it with studio lights. Another tries to stretch around her force field so she just keeps making the field larger until it explodes [01:42 PM] Wack'd: Like putting too much air in a balloon, and then a thing happens [01:42 PM] maxwellelvis: Yeah. And in fact they've mocked the idea of her changing her name to "Invisible Woman" [01:42 PM] Wack'd: She switches to Invisible Woman in 1985 so we're still a few years off [01:43 PM] maxwellelvis: Yeah, that sounds like a Byrne-ism, iirc [01:45 PM] Wack'd: Anyway she gets a third to run into a wall that borders Namor's office fish tank [01:45 PM] Wack'd: Thus providing Namor enough water to get back to his feet since the robots earlier kicked his ass [01:46 PM] maxwellelvis: Popeye spinich theme [01:46 PM] Wack'd: IT'S 1978. DO. BETTER.

[01:47 PM] Bocaj: Its a bad trend in Fantastic Four sometimes that Sue needs to be told what to do with her powers [01:48 PM] Bocaj: Same thing with Hank Pym and the Wasp, even to the point where it makes the art make no damn sense [01:49 PM] Wack'd: Anyway Namor attacks the lead Retriever and then Sue turns him invisible so when the leader calls for help the robots attack the leader by accident [01:49 PM] Wack'd: And this destroys them all because no ontological inertia [01:49 PM] Bocaj: Of course. Don't you know anything about robotics? [01:50 PM] Bocaj: Its desirable to have everything explode when the lead unit does [01:50 PM] Bocaj: Its just tidier [01:50 PM] maxwellelvis: Like when the Master Mold was destroyed and that caused all the mk.I Sentinels to shut down. [01:50 PM] maxwellelvis: Or when that Droid Control Ship was destroyed and an entire planetary invasion force of Battle Droids just slumped over. [01:51 PM] Wack'd: Anyway Namor learned a thing. At some point. Because of robot fights? Possibly.

[01:51 PM] Bocaj: The droid control ship thing is particularly a weird example because the droids are self aware enough to have some personality and hopes and dreams and fear of death [01:52 PM] maxwellelvis: These droids aren't. The ones in Episode 1, I mean. [01:52 PM] maxwellelvis: They were basically drones. [01:52 PM] maxwellelvis: "Not like us! We're independent thinkers!" "Roger roger!" "Roger roger!"

[omegatheunknown]

...In which I thoroughly (yet naively) survey Metallica.

More than a month ago I finished reading Masters of Doom, which in addition to being an interesting history of PC Gaming’s pioneering id Software and stirring nostalgia about the halcyon days of 90s first-person shooters, made frequent and compelling reference to the influence of heavy metal on the aesthetic sensibilities of John Romero (though he’s ultimately more of a Dokken fan, which I can’t speak to.) Listening to the actual soundtracks of Doom, Doom II, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D led me straight into a curious survey of Megadeth, then Metallica, briefly Slayer, Anthrax, back to Metallica, Exodus, Sepultura, Suicidal Tendencies, Overkill, back to Megadeth and then back Metallica, over and over Metallica. I am listening to Metallica now. 

Can’t say I’m sure why. Without meaning to sound condescending, I’d always assumed if thrash metal appealed to me, it might have happened when I was a teenager. Perhaps environmental factors were at play, but at my most susceptible and angst filled years, the garage rock revival was in full swing, as was something of a (perceived? I will never know if this was a widespread thing. I wasn’t nearly as online then) grunge renaissance. Grunge was locked in as tonal and aesthetic sensibility and my friends’ bands were grungy pop punk with a bit of emo sprinkled on top. As I said, the questionable excesses of youth, complete with pretension about what is good (The Stooges, The Pixies, The Strokes and NIRVANA) and what is silly and ridiculous (Nu-Metal’s relative strength and the silliness of bands like Korn and Slipknot did not help Metal’s esteem.) A respect but low level of enthusiasm for Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden didn’t manifest anything serious any time in the last fifteen years. Thrash’s underground roots put some doubt in the mind re: whatever vague supposition my teenaged peers and I had about the opposing forces of punk and metal (though I do remember actual arguments with a fan of what I described as ornate but soulless arpeggios who thought PJ Harvey’s oeuvre was unsophisticated and boring.) There’s a lot of grunge’s DNA in early Metallica. Which kind of makes it all the more bewildering that I haven’t been here before. All that wasted time listening to Mudhoney! Also, not to spoil the ending, how bewildering it is that Metallica absolutely fell to pieces in the 90s.    Kill ‘em All is a stupidly exciting record. Had I been around to hear it in the 80s, it would’ve melted my brain. I assume if I heard it in the 00s it would’ve done the same. I think part of the issue with Metallica is that when I was a precocious kid/tween they were not nearly at their best and the only second hand exposure you get to a well-established but no longer thriving band is their hits, and even post-survey I don’t particularly care for ‘One’ or ‘Enter Sandman.’ (Then again, at the height of Metallica v Napster you’d think young Zaq would’ve been a little more curious... and those mp3s would’ve be right there...) Anyway, Kill ‘em All: devastating and fun. Imagine if Mötley Crüe was ever any good (were they?) No, that’s insane. And gives a person very little to go on. High energy from the jump, utter shred. Reminiscent only of a slower, hopelessly outclassed version of the same thing, which is to say I think if you slowed a track like The Four Horsemen down you’d end up with a dreary sounding Sabbath number but why would you want that? (A different day perhaps.) Definitely the sexiest of the Metallica albums, just a little bit of the electricity of hair metal bleeding in at the edges, though the most wicked excesses are in flurries of virtuosity. “Bass solo, take one” -- much as I enjoy ‘Hit the Lights,’ ‘Jump in the Fire,’ ‘Seek & Destroy’ (and other imperative calls to action,) I think the bass solo ‘(Pulling Teeth)’ that splits the album is my favourite bit. Ride the Lightning -- actually, speaking of Cliff Burton, he of the improbable bass solos -- supposedly he planted the seeds of music theory/actually thinking about the music in his bandmates’ heads, leading to acoustic guitars, curious instrumentals and harmonies winding their way into the sophomore album. This probably also led them to getting way ahead of themselves and veering out of their lane, but in the meantime, Ride the Lightning is a lot more varied to listen to than their debut. Yes, it continues to wail, but it wails in new and exciting ways. ‘Creeping Death’ and ‘Trapped Under Ice’ are the choicest tracks. ‘Fade to Black’ is a pretty good song by the standards of a power ballad and is a nice dimension to add to the album but I’d point out that it portends Metallica’s inevitable doom.  Master of Puppets is considered (nearly anywhere I’ve looked) the undisputed champion of thrash metal albums. I would kinda love to have a dissenting opinion here, but it feels impossible to deny. It is stunningly heavy and loud and kinetic. It’s definitely a twin to its predecessor, they share a layout, right up to track 4 being a power ballad. As a set they’re the Pokemon Red/Blue of Thrash. Anything other than the subtle evolution in the playing and production would’ve been weird as hell -- album number three and they nearly perfect the genre. On the subject of Metallica’s power ballads, I’d make the point that ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ is the pinnacle of their efforts -- gorgeous and grotesque in equal measure. And like Ride the Lightning follows ‘Fade to Black’ with an extra-heavy track, ‘Sanitarium’ is followed by the vicious gatling gun of ‘Disposable Heroes,’ as emphatic an anti-war song as one could imagine. Again special mention to a Cliff Burton feature -- ‘Orion’ is an oddity in the Metallica canon, can’t imagine there’s anything else like it that I’ve missed. It’s the most appropriate space marine soundtrack I’ve ever heard, it previews a much nerdier version of Metallica that starts writing about horrors from outer space. My impression is that long after I’ve moved on to another passing phase I’ll retain a fondness for their instrumentals, all five of the main ones are excellent.   ...And Justice for All just isn’t as good as the previous two. This is becoming less about Metallica and more a tribute to Cliff Burton, but fact is -- his phenomenal bass lines are the secret sauce, and in the absence of Burton (and apparently due to Ulrich’s hearing loss?) the bass is often lost in the mix. It still wails, though relying more on arpeggios and prog-y tempo changes and layered arrangements -- with ‘loud’ as the governing principle in the mix, the instruments all have a bit of a unnatural synthetic quality, the effect is much more processed than the earlier albums and it occasionally sounds like a flat wall of sound... which is about to become a theme, oh boy. Though it does convincingly sound like a mutant off-shoot of the Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets aesthetic, just a shaggier and excessive cousin prone to wild mood swings. Seven of the nine tracks are at least six and a half minutes long. At 9:48, ‘To Live is to Die’ is the first song in the catalogue that I would consider straight tedious (Though the title track is about the same length and it’s quite good!) At the end of the album, ‘Dyers Eve’ appears as a great redeemer, probably the best expression of what they were trying to do here. Oh yeah -- ‘One.’ Honestly it gets there. It’s a very pretty song. I think what I don’t like about the ballads is Hetfield’s voice when he’s singing (as opposed to when he’s growling, yelling, barking) may as well be someone trying to do a Brad Roberts impression. Though maybe that’s not the issue, I always enjoy The Crash Test Dummies. Metallica/Black Album. I don’t like this. Or, I don’t like it very much but I recognize it’s pretty good. Definitely has its moments (’Of Wolf and Man,’ ‘Through the Never.’) Seems like an odd stumbling block. This was a massive hit. ‘Enter Sandman’ is a classic rock song. Of sorts. It ain’t thrash, though it’s definitely still a heavy metal album in the vein of Black Sabbath and the like. Reading about the composition I understand they were tired of what they had been doing, they felt like impostors and wanted to strip it back some, and in that sense it’s an accomplishment. It’s dark and heavy and somber and pretty sad in parts. I feel like if Metallica had collapsed into the sea and never been found afterward/gone their separate ways this would’ve been an interesting finale, but as it stands, through the lens of history I have to reckon with the fact that this is the first of four albums produced by Bob Rock and it’s easily the best of them. It’s going to get worse before it gets... less worse. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the orchestra and the cellos and a bit more variation in the compositions but... whither Thrash? ‘Holier Than Thou,’ silly as it is, captures a bit of the lost spirit, Maybe it’s exhausting to be that band for too long. It’s a perfectly natural thing to want to progress and not make the same album over and over again, but I can’t help but feel like they abandoned their perch atop a style where they were the greatest of all time to be (at first) a pretty good metal band and then a ‘hard rock’ band. This is Jordan switching to baseball and then for some reason trying ice hockey. I’m reasonably sure ‘Nothing Else Matters’ sucks pretty viciously, though Metallica writing a love song has a conceptual appeal and I could understand people liking it. Load. Gosh, what an appropriate title. I think if you asked Chad Kroeger what his favourite Metallica album is, he’d absolutely say Load. Metallica skipped over grunge and went straight to post-grunge. It’s also so long! There’s so much of this very mediocre album.  Reload. What the fuck is this. It starts off with the Soundgardenesque (well, Rusty Cage-esque) ‘Fuel’ with its fun but asinine chorus, it doesn’t do anything particularly interesting after. Just like its sibling, it’s almost eighty minutes long of sluggish, middle of the road 90s rock.  Garage, Inc is amazing by comparison to anything else put out by Metallica in the 90s. Two discs, the second compiling covers from as far back as 1984, 1987′s Garage Days EP and the b-side to some awful Load song that’s just four Mötörhead covers. ‘Whiskey in the Jar,’ of course, but also ‘Am I Evil?’ Sabbath’s ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ and an exuberant cover of Queen’s ‘Stone Cold Crazy.’ It’s not solid gold but there’s a lot of stuff to like. S&M (Symphony and Metallica, but... you know.) Definitely has it moments, particularly with the older stuff -- ‘Call of Ktulu,’ ‘Master of Puppets,’ ‘The Thing That Should Never Be’ with symphonic accompaniment is very cool.   St. Anger is the big ‘comeback’ album that came out when I was 15 and thus acutely aware of big music releases. I feel like I could’ve skipped the opening paragraphs of this essay and just written that as explanation of why I didn’t care about Metallica. I’m sure there was some good heavy metal happening around the turn of the century but at the time this was happening, Limp Bizkit, Saliva, Staind, Kid Rock, Godsmack, Sevendust, Slipknot, Drowning Pool, Korn, Trapt and Linkin Park (probably the best of the bunch? right?) were the biggest things in metal. Hence, in 2003 we are gifted... Nu Metallica. The title track is very bad. There are no guitar solos to be found. There aren’t any ballads to be found (that’s mostly fine.) I’ve done three tracks. I’m not listening to the rest of this. It’s just not worth it. Death Magnetic was a big surprise as a I soldiered on. Bob Rock is gone, Rick Rubin is in. Say what you will about Rubin (another time, perhaps) but for whatever reason, after a twenty year hiatus (1988-2008,) the thrash is back. I was beginning to grapple with the idea that Metallica had been past their prime my entire life, and while that’s still probably true, here they are at least dabbling with the style that made them such a big damned deal. Which is not to say this is an amazing album. It’s good though! But you can hear, even on the opening track, how exceedingly compressed the sound is. Everything is loud on this album! Without exception! All the time! It’s all peak! Consequently it’s a tiring thing to listen to all the way through. Apparently there are different versions available that turn down the mix a bit, but the Spotify version is evidently the original, as it is just a brutal onslaught of noise. It’s not a great album to sit through, but individual tracks are welcome. There’s even an instrumental for the first time since ...And Justice For All. Lulu (with Lou Reed) -- Laugh all you want, I don’t think this is as bad as Load and Reload. It’s really god damned weird, sure, and it’s not ‘good’ by any conception of (what is ‘the good,’ etc) but it’s at least interesting here and there.  Hardwired... to Self-Destruct suggests a certain inevitability to the path. With or without the play-acting in the 90s (Hetfield has speculated that Ulrich and Hammett were interested in being a U2-sized band complete with the frivolous and monolithic pretensions) they might have ended up here anyway, a bunch of dudes in their 50s making a heavy metal record that is doomed to be nowhere near as vital and electrifying as the groundbreaking stuff of their youth, but is practiced, professional and what the fans have come to expect. It’s pretty good, but there’s no chance it’s their best work. Read a review that called it their best work in 25 years, which is... damning with faint praise, but definitely true. Anyway they’re in the zone. ‘Moth Into Flame’ is a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with here -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, in this case, arriving at ‘generic Metallica.’ If there’s more Metallica on the way it’ll be pretty much like this, chugging along like Springsteen or the Rolling Stones. It seems super unlikely they’ll ever surpass their first five albums, but I think that’s true of just about every band ever.  In conclusion, I’m not doing this same process for Megadeth. :P