Let It Not Be Said That I Remained Silent

(feel free to pass this around anywhere, if you find it of value)

They say that if you're wondering what you would have done in World War II, or in the Civil War, or in relation to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, just look at what you're doing now. I'm looking, and I'm not satisfied. I'm not doing nothing, but I could be doing more, and I will try. But in the meantime, let me say what I believe, as starkly as possible, so as to leave no doubt about where I stand. Post your own somewhere! Your opinion is at least as noteworthy as mine.

Climate change will kill us all if we don't stop it. Lots of people are doing lots of things to help, and that's great. Governments and corporations are not doing enough, and many powerful individuals are using their considerable resources to prevent any efforts to save us. These individuals are the enemies of humanity.

Fossil fuels should be left in the ground. All of them. Starting now, or as close to now as possible. This will be tough for us, but this is an emergency and we'll figure out how to cope eventually.

Eat less beef. Ah, I miss it. But I'm told it makes a difference.

Most of our problems, we could eventually figure them out. The trouble is we're on the clock with climate change. We have to solve that now, and all this other stuff is getting in the way. So we have to fix everything now, urgently, and instead everything's getting worse. That's whatcha call "suboptimal".

Don't be mean. That's the main rule. If your beliefs work their way around to where you're telling yourself you have to be mean, they're wrong and you should change them. 

War may be the worst thing people can do, but you can't just let Putin have his way in Ukraine, because if you reward him for attacking Ukraine he'll understand correctly that he can just keep attacking countries.

We shouldn't have surrendered to Covid. We could have beaten it. Still, wear your masks, ventilate your rooms, and stay up to date on your vaccines, because it's still nasty and we can still save lives. Not to mention practice for the next pandemic!

A faction in Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza. I don't care if they're Jewish or what; they're guilty of genocide and are the enemies of humanity. Some people are taking this opportunity to express anti-Semitism, which is not only a type of bigotry as bad as any other, but is also a good sign that the anti-Semite is evil in other ways, and, again, is an enemy of humanity.

There are students and other protestors speaking up for the Palestinians. I think they're great and I support them. Leave them alone.

Fascism is rising around the world and needs to be fought harder, by more people, and by what remains of our institutions. Those who kind of agree with this but who respond by nodding soberly and saying, "yes, but you don't understand, and what about, and...," and do nothing, are part of the problem. The fascists, and those who intentionally support them and their variants, the racists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and Christian dominionists, are enemies of humanity.

The fascists aren't quite in charge yet everywhere. But they're having an effect: they're turning up the level of fascism in our society. If you've ever had the reaction of, "well, the only option left to us in this situation is to get a gun. Revolution," that's a sign of fascism. They want people thinking like that, like people have to work things out with guns and no other way.

"Both sides" are not the same. Maybe at one time they were, but now one side is normal, with all the benefits and problems that implies, and the other side is rolling downhill into fascism and nihilism, and gaining speed. You don't have to like it that this is the case, but it's a problem if you don't accept it.

If, for whatever reason, you're on the side of the fascists, and you happen to be reading this, this paragraph is for you. I won't take up my time by trying to refute your beliefs or talking points; you're smart enough to do that yourself, if you want to. The information's out there. I'll just say this: you don't have to live like this. You don't have to keep hating everybody, you don't have to view the world as a bloody power struggle, you can find meaning for yourself not in the degradation of others. It's much nicer for you if you change your ways.

Conservatism is fake. It's hatred, greed, and the lust for power, wearing one overcoat made of high-minded rhetoric that nobody actually believes.

Borders are fake. Let immigrants in. They're people! You know, people?

Abolish the police. I'm not being as "extreme" as I could be by saying that; there are harsher verbs than "abolish".

Trans people are basically harmless (know how I know? Because if one was harmful, we would never have heard the end of it) and just want to be left alone. But, currently, they also need protection from their self-appointed enemies. Do what you can to help.

There are things that can be said in favour of both socialism and capitalism. There are also ways in which both can be abused. I have doubts that we will ever find an economic system that works perfectly for humans, but I think any system will do which preserves the ability of ordinary people to have control over their lives, and no system will do that does not.

Institutions are weak these days. Nothing good will happen unless individuals team up to make it happen; nothing bad will be prevented unless individuals team up to prevent it.

You are more than your job. You are more than your economic role. Luminous beings are we. The most important thing is that you exist and you can do what you want with that fact. Create, think, play, love, eat, swim. It's your life.

This "enemies of humanity" stuff may make me sound intolerant, to some. To which I say: Oh, right, I'm the problem.

The people I've described as "enemies of humanity" have earned the very worst treatment we can conceive for them, right up to torment and execution. But just because they deserve it doesn't mean we should do it. We don't deserve to be torturers or murderers; nobody does. We need to find a way to beat them without killing them, and to find a way to persuade--or, even better, convince--them to join us. If we as humans have jobs that we are responsible for just because we live, these are them.

We, as humans, have been too tolerant of our own evil for too long. We need to stop accepting it, or listening to it, or compromising with it, and start fighting it harder, and to win. I think "civilization" is more of a goal to be achieved than an existing status to be defended. Are we civilized now? Are we civil? Maybe someday we will be.

Honestly, everybody, we can do this. We can. But the golden future won't build itself. Help somebody today.

If I Cannot Bring You Comfort

 It is the Christmas season, for those who observe, which signals the end of the year as measured by the Gregorian calendar, and as such it is time for us to take stock of our time which is ending, and our time which is about to begin. We can start with the Legion of Super-Heroes (remember the Legion? It's a blog about the Legion) and then move on to other matters.

We already knew that 2022 would see the Legion appear in... a miniseries? an arc?... called Justice League vs the Legion of Super-Heroes, which will, apparently, be about both Gold Lantern and the Great Darkness. I'm not super nuts about the only Legion series being a limited run like this, but it's more than we've got now, and, at least, it's part of Brian Michael Bendis's vision for the team.

Speaking of Bendis, in his newsletter (click here for the whole thing) he announced that he's working on developing an animated Legion of Super-Heroes series for HBO Max. The series will be aimed at grownups and will feature his fourboot Legion. Some points:

- this is, of course, very positive news

- the odds that this TV show actually gets made are not great. Not because of any failing of Bendis's or the Legion's or HBO Max's. Just basically because most TV shows don't make it to air

- the previous LSH TV show, the two-season cartoon on Fox Kids, was a respectable success, and its influence on its young viewers will someday be of tangible benefit to the Legion of Super-Heroes franchise; this TV show, if it makes it, could do similarly

- the process of taking comic-book stories and turning them into TV is likely to accentuate Bendis's strengths as a Legion writer and mitigate his weaknesses

- I've long been of the opinion that any successful translation of the Legion to TV must be animated, not live-action, so I think they've made the right decision here

My big takeaway from both of these impending Legion stories is that the LSH does have a future, and I'm aware that that sounds like a joke but in this case it isn't, and that I hope we can all be around to see it.

And while we're all on that... I hope you can all be vaccinated up to your maximum available amount of protection, and can keep yourselves safe from the coronavirus in all the other ways. Ironically--which is the word we use when we don't want to say "ridiculously"--the coronavirus is the least, and most tractable, of the major problems facing the world in general and us in particular. It's no coincidence that all of these problems--I'll list "climate change" and "fascism" as the big two, but there are more--are exacerbated by being denied, promoted, defended, and/or sponsored by a loose but cooperative network of groups and entities whose interest is not in the future but in making the present as bad as possible.

I hope, in 2022, that we (I am definitely including myself in this hope) can do all we can to be part of the solutions and not part of the problems, and that we're wise enough to choose the right ways to do that.

I haven't been writing much on Legion Abstract recently. This is partly because there haven't been any Legion comics to write about. Maybe I'll chip in another article or two here or there. Certainly I'll review JLAvLSH when it comes out. I don't believe in permanent goodbyes on the internet, and this isn't even a temporary one, but if you need to see it in print: I'll never close down this blog as long as I'm alive (although it may sometimes be less active than other times). I have, however, started writing a couple of other projects, and I'll tell you more about them if and when they become something.

And I'll end this post with this, which strikes me as also to be appropriate for an end-of-the-year summary.

Over the last couple of years, I've started coming out to my friends and family and other people as agender. This isn't exactly a new thing. No need to share the specific details, but all my life I've had a very distant relationship with masculinity, and recently I've come to understand that it's because masculinity wasn't actually a thing that was for me at all.

Why am I telling you this? You don't really need to know it, and I don't really need you to know it. It doesn't make a difference to my Legion opinions that I'm neither dude nor chick. But I do have a couple of reasons.

First, I've always understood that the value of coming out is in its effect on other people: first, people who haven't come out themselves can see more people they can identify with and become comfortable with the idea that people like them belong in the world, which they do. Second, people hostile to LGBTQ+ people will increasingly get the (accurate) sense that they are outnumbered, and will be more likely to change their opinions or at least shut up about them if they don't change them. Both of which are worthwhile goals.

Plus... I'm white, and male-passing, and in a sense I've not been subject to transphobia my whole life. See, "agender" is a subcategory of "trans" in this sense: I was assigned the gender of "male" at birth, and have now said that that is not my gender. That's trans. It's true that the word "trans" has connotations that don't really resonate with my experience, but that's neither here nor there. So I don't reject the label.

But while I can look back on the considerable amount of bullying that I experienced much earlier in my life and say that, in retrospect, it was partly based on being a precocious agender kid, I didn't know that at the time. They called me "gay" (and other related terms), sure, but as far as I knew, they were just wrong about that. (Also, being gay and being agender are not at all the same thing, but that's a nuance that would have been lost on these kids.) So in my mind, I wasn't being picked on because of something that I was that wasn't hurting them, and therefore I didn't beat myself up for being it, and so was spared one specific kind of damage. In retrospect, they were clearly picking up on something about me, but since I had no idea, there's a level on which it doesn't count.

But there are any number of trans people out there for whom that's not true. They've had to deal with a lot of static while knowing what it was the whole time. So what I'm intending here is to stand with them.

(FAQ: Are you changing your pronouns? Nah; I've had about fifty years of getting used to he/him. But if you want to refer to me as she/her or they/them, that's okay too. I'd a lot rather be called "she" than "Matt".)

There's still a lot I don't know about this topic. There's still a lot I don't understand about myself. I'm no expert. (And a lot of the answers one finds boil down to, "it's different for everybody! You get to decide for yourself!" Great. Thanks. I'm sure that's right. But it's no help.) Having said that, if anyone is coping with something similar and thinks it would help to kick it around with me, please let me know; I'm happy to do what I can.

So my last thought here is, let's all be ourselves in 2022. And let's all get to work. Tired as we all are, there's a lot that needs to be done. The truth is somewhere here.

As Long as It Really Is a New Year

As we head into 2017, there's still no regular Legion of Super-Heroes comic being published. The 31st century has never seemed so far away.

2016 was a tough year. It wasn't any kind of entity that was at war with us, or anything; it was just an arbitrary period of time during which a lot of strange and regrettable things happened. A lot of famous people died, but then, a lot of famous people die every year. It was a little unusual that so many of the famous people who died in 2016 were particularly beloved, but I suspect that that was well within the boundaries of ordinary randomness.

Here's some stuff about 2016, other than celebrity deaths, that historians are advised to consider when summing up the year. Not in order:

- natural disasters, including a huge forest fire in northern Alberta
- Brexit
- attempted coup and subsequent crackdown in Turkey
- US election
- ongoing war and humanitarian disaster in Syria
- Ghostbusters
- Pokemon GO
- the Rio Olympics
- the Kardashian robbery
- the Ottawa sinkhole
- continued violence by police
- clowns
- Stranger Things
- terrorist attacks
- the Oregon militia standoff
- the High Park capybaras
- Harambe
- the triple tragedy in Orlando: Christina Grimmie, Pulse, and the alligator attack
- Beyonce's Lemonade
- Cubs win the World Series
- bathroom bills

Whether a given superhero comic is or isn't being published is pretty small potatoes. Then again, we're going to need some kind of roadmap to the future.

Always Repeating Itself

2016 seems like it's an ordeal. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we're going to make it to 2017, because who knows what might happen next? Any crazy terrible thing! Nothing is off the table.

Here's what I think is going on.

You may know from previous writings that I'm into the Strauss-Howe generational cycle theory. If you're not familiar with it, here's the upshot: every eighty years, give or take, society will go through a period of about twenty years, give or take, called a Crisis era. In a Crisis era, it will feel like everything is coming to an end, like things can't go on like this any longer, and like we have to solve all of our giant problems right now. It's a time in which crumbling institutions finally give up the ghost, and new ones are born, and a time in which children are overprotected to the point of feeling smothered. Previous Crisis eras in North America have featured the Depression+World War II, the Civil War+Canadian Confederation, and the American Revolution.

My intention is not to try to sell anybody on the generational cycle theory. If you want to look into it and you think it makes sense, great; if not, great. My point is this: there have been tough times, tumultuous times, before, and they have been survived. The challenges all around us are serious, but we can, if we try, cope with them. We can, maybe, solve problems and make things better. We may be able to come out the other end of this with a better society than the one we have now.

It's not the end of the world and it's not a time to despair. It's a dangerous time, yes, but also an opportunity to do some good. It's a time to keep our hands on the wheel, in whatever way makes the most sense to you.

So don't let it get you down. If, as I suspect, the Crisis era began on September 11th, 2001, then we've still got a few more years of this kinda action to go, but... it's fine. This is the kind of thing that people deal with, and wouldn't we rather that we were those people, rather than some other bunch? This is history, and we're in it. We should act like it.

Notions Preconceived Can Lead to Utter Madness

I really don't know where the hell we are.

1. Once upon a time there was the comics blogosphere. Lots of smart and funny people who created blogs to write about comics. It was really cool. Now, though, it's... well, it's not over, because many of the titans of the field are still keeping on keeping on, just like always. But it's not the same. Was it ever as much of a community as I thought it was? Or maybe it was and I was just never in it? Maybe it still is and I'm still not in it. Which I can live with. But... I don't know.

2. Let's do this theoretically.

Here we have a comics company, So Cool Comics. Their flagship title is We Are Not Born, and it's a very good comic book. The primary creator on WANB is a person with the initials ZZ. ZZ is generally liked and respected and is strongly identified with both WANB and So Cool.

Here's the problem, though: it turns out that a little while ago ZZ did a very bad thing to a person with the initials QQ. QQ is also generally liked and respected, not that that matters, but just to set the scene. The thing ZZ did was very traumatic for QQ, and QQ is not doing so great in dealing with it. The facts of this event have all come out and there is no controversy as to the truth of them. ZZ has apologized and, so far as we know, taken lifestyle steps to ensure that this doesn't happen again; ZZ and So Cool have issued statements, legal avenues have been pursued to their conclusion, and QQ has gotten as much satisfaction out of the situation as there was available. The thing that happened has finished happening, and everybody's best understanding is that ZZ isn't going to do anything like that again. The only thing that hasn't been resolved is that QQ is still having problems and does not feel like things have ended well, but QQ is getting appropriate help and there's no way anything else is going to change.

As for WANB, ZZ is still in charge of it, and it's still as good as ever, although there's nobody else working on it who could be perceived as being on QQ's "side", to the extent that there can really be sides in this. And... looking back at some of the early issues of WANB... some of the stuff that a couple of the characters say... it seems a little creepy now if you read them in the context of what happened between ZZ and QQ. But that could be just us.

So where does all this leave us? Like, you and me us, the readers or potential readers of We Are Not Born.

Trick question! It doesn't matter where it leaves us, because the only really important thing here is QQ coping with the consequences of ZZ's mistreatment. Who the hell cares about us? Including us! This is the fate and health of a person we're talking about here, and everyone else can sit down and shut up.

Okay? We clear?

And that's it. That's the bottom line.

Except of course it's not. Oh, for QQ it is. But QQ's course of action is straightforward here: get better and find a way to move on. Easier said than done of course, but at least everyone understands that that's what the deal is, even if we don't fully grasp what goes into it.

But we, the fans, are in a much more comfortable but less well-defined position. It's not at all interesting or important, really, except that it's our position and we have to figure out what to do in it. Just because nobody gives a crap what we do doesn't mean that we know what to do.

Here are some of the questions facing us. Do we continue to read We Are Not Born? Or any comics published by So Cool? Can we continue to like ZZ? Do we forgive ZZ?

And my problem is I honestly don't know the answers.

Take the last question, 'do we forgive ZZ'.

On the one hand, forgiveness is generally regarded as a good thing. Not just a good thing, but a necessary thing: without forgiveness, we might as well have the death penalty for every crime. If the penalty box only has a one-way door on it, eventually we'll all be in there.

On the other hand. Where the hell do we get off forgiving ZZ? ZZ did a terrible thing! That QQ still isn't over! And that's okay with us? If we forgive ZZ, then that's a signal that we don't care about QQ, that ZZ might as well do the same thing again to somebody else, that anybody might as well do the same thing again to somebody else. It's also a signal to people similar to QQ that we are not going to be there for them if ZZ or whoever does something bad to them going forward. Forgiveness is... well, isn't it a lot like permission?

There are a lot of dead ends in this discussion. "Well, wouldn't you want someone to forgive you, if you were in that situation?" If I was in that situation? I wouldn't dare hope for forgiveness from anybody. I suspect I would not accept it if it were offered. But, again: easy for me to say. "You have to separate the artist from the art." Well, you can't. Or else, you have to. I don't know.

There's really only one thing I am confident of in this discussion, and that's that saying, "Well, screw it, everything's just terrible, I guess," is wrong, whether it leads you to rejecting everyone or disregarding any reason to reject anyone. That kind of cynicism is a privilege that's better not being exercised; not everyone is in a position to disengage and it's exactly the people who can who generally shouldn't. Let's stick with it, let's keep our hands on the wheels of our judgment, and if we get it wrong, then we'll know for next time. I guess. I don't know.

This Just In

I read tonight that comedian and actor Taylor Negron just died. He's been memorable in a lot of roles but the one I recall best, and the reason I'm posting this here, is his portrayal of Starfinger in the Legion cartoon a few years ago. Most fun version of Starfinger ever. RIP.

Let's Take a Look at the News Hostility Scoreboard

I have a few things I want to touch on and I'm not sure how to work them all in so let me start this way.

Gamergate.
1. I'm not a gamer. I don't know much about video games. Or care. However,
a) the important aspect of the discussion is not the games or the games journalism but the death threats, rape threats, harassment of women, and related misbehaviour by some carbon units who seem to have forgotten that they aren't melodrama villains, and
b) I don't need to know anything about video games to know that I'm against that. Plus
c) it's not like the same kind of thing isn't going on in the comic book world also.

2. Most intelligent things that there are to say about Gamergate have already been said by others, and more cleverly than I would have said it. So I won't drag you through all of that again. (Although here are some links if you want them: 1 2 3 4.)

3. In general I'm opposed to death threats, rape threats, harassment, murder, rape, and assault of all kinds.
a) Just so there's no confusion, I can also say that in specific I'm opposed to those things when directed against women who have some thoughts about pop culture.
b) Not that that's a particularly original idea, but
c) it may gain weight by repetition (which is most of the reason why we're going through this section of the discussion in the first place), so:

4. Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Janelle Asselin, Brianna Wu, and anyone else who has to deal with similar mistreatment have my complete support and encouragement and also my hope that all this is resolved in a satisfactory way.
a) (Where "satisfactory" is a catchall adjective that includes many possible outcomes including jail time for some of the troublemakers out there.)

(Note: the internet has acted as the primary medium for this trouble and harassment. I'm happy to say that, in all the time I've been operating this website, there has never been any of that kind of action here. I thank you all and here's to many more years of just that.)

I mean, like everything else isn't bad enough, now people want to reenact the Salem witch trials only with witchcraft subbed out for freaking video game criticism? You'd think that inequality, climate change, and Ferguson MO would keep us all sufficiently busy. What the hell is wrong with people?

It's very tempting, in these times, to just say, "Well, screw it, then! Everything's terrible, and I don't care anymore, and everything might as well fall apart." To resort to cynicism, in other words.

Stipulated that everything is terrible. I don't want to try to tell you that everything isn't terrible.

But not everyone has the option of giving up. (I mean, in some situations they do. If we're talking about--and I will be--giving up on DC Comics, then everyone has that option. There's nobody in the world so disadvantaged that they can't cut DC Comics out of their life, with the possible exception of DC Comics employees.) Giving up is a privilege.

Look at me: reasonably prosperous straight white male. It's easy for me to look south across the border and say, "Wow, that country is messed up. Cops pulling you over and taking your stuff, banks stealing people's houses, cops gunning people down in the street for the pure joy of it... I'm not going there." But, see, I can easily afford not to go to the U.S. For the people who live in Ferguson, it's not so simple. How would they go about giving up, assuming they wanted to? Move to another town? Hide in the basement 24/7?

The more options you have, the more giving up on the world is an option. The fewer options you have, the more you're forced to fight back. The irony here is that the people who can fight back the most effectively--the people I describe as having "more options"--are the people least likely to actually do so.

My next step is not to say that I know what I should do, or you should do, or anybody should do. (And for the most part that discussion doesn't belong on this blog.) But I do know that checking out on the world is not the way to go.

Which brings me back to DC Comics. (Remember comic books? This is a blog about comic books.)

A while ago I got so fed up with the various wretched things DC was doing that I stopped buying their comics (except for Legion of Super-Heroes, until there wasn't any more of that for me to buy either). And there were another couple of companies that did things I didn't care for either, and I stopped dealing with them too. But, you know, you do enough of that kind of thing, and you start to get a sense of the limitations of the tactic.

1. It frequently doesn't work. As in, whatever company you're boycotting may very well ignore you and keep on with what they were doing. And then where are you?
2. It's really another version of checking out of the world.
3. You can only do it once. Imagine this scenario. XYZ corporation says that they're going to do Plan A. You don't like Plan A, so you tell XYZ corporation so, and you tell them that if they stick with Plan A they'll lose you as a customer. XYZ corporation weighs these considerations and keeps going with Plan A. You take your business elsewhere. A few months later XYZ corporation announces that now that Plan A is going so well, they're also going to start in on Plan B. You like Plan B even less than Plan A. But now what are you going to say to XYZ corporation about it? You can't become even less of their customer!
4. You lose touch with what the people you're boycotting are up to.
5. If you keep doing it, you will eventually reach a point where you can't deal with anybody anymore (and you will reach that point, because, as stipulated above, everything is terrible) and you're basically a hermit in your house.

The problem is with exerting influence over powerful economic or political entities that are very good at not listening to anybody they don't have to. I don't have any secret trick for doing it, but my thinking now is that you can do it better by maintaining a relationship with them than by cutting off that relationship.

So I'm lifting my sanction from DC Comics. I mean, who knows what they'll get up to without me watching carefully, amirite? It's not because I think they deserve it; it's just that I'm starting to feel like all I've really done is leave myself out of the discussion. So I'm climbing back in. Slowly. I can't think of a whole lot of DC titles I really feel like reading these days, although there are assorted back issues and collections, and of course the Legion showing up in Justice League United, which I would have gotten anyway, and it's about time I bit the bullet on Astro City... We'll see.

I Am Interviewed

I'll put together some kind of full post in a little while, but in the meantime, you can head over to A Trout in the Milk where Plok interviews me on the subject of superhero fiction. You know, if you want to.

Apropos of Nothing

Trivia II

Remember when I did this? Here's another one. Following is a list of fictional generic American towns. The quiz is, for each one, identify the children's book series for which it is the setting. Answer in the comments. As far as the use of search engines to find the answers is concerned, I believe that we're all comfortable within the confines of the honour system. To commemorate the Victoria Day long weekend, there are 24 of them.

1. Deep Valley, MN
2. Midston, ?
3. Bayport, NY? NJ? MA?
4. Rocky Beach, CA
5. Mammoth Falls, NY
6. Lakeport, ?
7. Idaville, FL
8. Riverton, IN
9. River Heights, IL
10. Stoneybrook, CN
11. Grover’s Corner, NJ (Not Our Town!)
12. Sleepyside-on-Hudson, NY
13. Cranbury, CN
14. Adenville, UT
15. Shoreham, NJ
16. Carthage, NY
17. Cameron, MA
18. Shopton, NY
19. Sweet Valley, CA
20. Frog Creek, PA
21. Shadyside, ?
22. Greenfield, CN
23. Learning, VT
24. Walkerville, RI

I put one easy one in there for you.

I'm Telling You

Used bookstores are the best. You never know what kind of cool stuff you'll find there. I was at Starlight Books in Newmarket yesterday, and came away with

• a book about P.G. Wodehouse I hadn't even known existed 
• a copy of The High King by Lloyd Alexander to replace the one I have that's falling apart 
• the first trade of HeroSquared 
• the first two trades of Incorruptible 
• the two trades of After the Cape 
• the first two Project Superpowers collections 

 (Note: results not typical.)

Mark Waid

The more time passes, the more impressed I get with Mark Waid's comic books.

He keeps coming out with stuff I like. The first thing of his I read was Legion of Super-Heroes volume 5, of course, an interpretation of the Legion that I quite enjoyed. 52 was good. His run on The Incredibles was good. Haven't finished Irredeemable and Incorruptible yet, but they're both good. I'm not going to read Daredevil because, you know, because, but it's supposed to be good too, and I'm sure I'd enjoy it.

And now do you hear what Waid's got in the pipeline? A Rocketeer miniseries and a "Steed & Mrs. Peel" series. There's obviously no way I can pass either of those up. Other thing that he's doing is this website, Thrillbent, where he and John Rogers and I guess some other people are Trying Stuff in the area of webcomics. It is an admirable pursuit and the first few installments have been very worthwhile and I recommend it to you*.

* I always like it when people Try Stuff.

Dissemble

I don't know if you've heard, but the Avengers movie is coming out this weekend. It seems like a lot of people want to see it and it's pretty good in its soulless blockbustery way.

As stated before, I'm not going to go see it.

You don't have to either, you know. You can, obviously you can, but you don't have to. If you're not crazy about how Marvel treated Jack Kirby (among other things), you can always say, "You know what? My life will be just as good if I don't see this movie as it is if I do." It is an option. You could even let Marvel know about your decision and why you made it.

Not the only option, of course; some people have decided to just not see it in the opening weekend, reasoning that this will deny Marvel and Disney the prestigious early numbers. I don't put a lot of weight on the early box office being that much more valuable than the overall take, but they must decide, and it's certainly another option. And then a lot of people have decided to see the movie, but also to donate to the Hero Initiative, and I can certainly see the logic of that, so there's one more option for you. Or you may just decide that this is not an area where you want to expend your protest energy, and see the movie or not strictly according to your particular tastes in leisure. It's all okay with me, not that you need my approval.

I do urge you, though, to do something to try to make the world a better place, as you understand it, in some way. It's a target-rich environment out there.

I wrote about this kind of thing before, you may recall, and earlier this week I finally let DC and Marvel in on my thinking. I sent this letter to Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada:

Dear Sir:

I'm writing to tell you I won't be buying your comic books any more.

To elaborate: I'm a longtime superhero comic-book fan and blogger. In February I got to the point where I wasn't comfortable buying DC and Marvel comics, or watching any of their spinoff movies and TV shows, and stopped. I suppose I should have written this letter then, but I don't think the timing makes any difference.

It's not because you're not publishing anything I like. For instance, I'm going to miss Fables so much it hurts, and I was really looking forward to trying Mark Waid's Daredevil series. (Although I should say that I plan on continuing to buy DC's Legion-of-Super-Heroes-related comics, because I don’t want to stop blogging about them.) But enjoying comics doesn't outweigh other considerations.

You can probably already guess my reasons for taking this step: your treatment of previous creators and their heirs, like Siegel and Kirby and Moore and Friedrich (and recent events surrounding Chris Roberson have certainly not changed my mind); your portrayals of female characters; your corporate owners' attempts to make copyright more and more restrictive.

DC and Marvel are the great pioneers of the superhero genre, and the discrepancy between your companies’ actions and the ideals represented by your characters is striking and unpleasant.

I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Please give me some reasons to revisit this decision; I'm willing--no, I'm eager--to do so.

Regards,

Matthew E

I don't expect it'll have any effect. Or not much. I figure I'll get a couple of form letters back, something like that. I suppose DC might decide to be hardasses about it and try to come after my blog legally; there wouldn't be much point to it but it's theoretically on the menu. The important thing is that I feel better, and that makes it worth doing, because certainly DC and Marvel weren't doing anything to make me feel better.

Vacate DC and Marvel

DC and Marvel are coming out with a lot of stuff in the next while that I really want to buy.

For DC, there's the new Earth 2 series, which I'm quite curious about. They're collecting Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld and All-Star Squadron in Showcase editions, both of which I could quite easily bite on. Justice League: Generation Lost is going to be out in trade one of these days; I'd like to get that. Also I can't help but feel like I'm going to want to start reading the regular Justice League comic once it gets going.

Marvel of course has a couple of series that I've been waiting for the trade on, Daredevil and Annihilators: Earthfall (I'm not so much on the Annihilators themselves, but Rocket Raccoon has become one of my favourites), in addition to New Mutants, which is on my pull list.

So it's a shame that I won't be buying any of it!

But it won't do.

Now let me go back to the beginning and explain why.

You don't have to be paying attention very closely to know that the world has got some problems these days, and you can list them as well as I can if not better. And it looks like it's getting worse, and more and more stuff to deal with keeps showing up. And you know what? I'm tired of not doing anything about it. What am I, just going to sit around and read Green Lantern Corps while the world goes to hell around us? I am not. I hate the feeling that I'm not helping, or not doing enough, and reading all these outrageous stories about evil bastards who get away with everything, and it's just no way to live.

I remember reading, in the last couple of years, about some protest somewhere. I forget what was being protested, but it was something that was certainly worthy of protest. Anyway, the powers that be sent the cops in, like they do, and the cops beat up a bunch of peaceful people and arrested some others for nothing in particular, like they sometimes do, and kept them locked up, and so on. And I thought to myself, wow, if something like that ever happened to me, they would have made an enemy of me for life. I would want nothing less than to destroy the entire country. Then I thought, well, that's messed up, isn't it? The only reason why I don't want to take a stand is because I haven't had anything brutal happen to me? Do I have to be pepper-sprayed before I'll get off the couch? That's no way to make a decision! So I'm not waiting, and I'm not letting it become an emotional decision.

I'm just going to start doing stuff. And you have to too! You have to. Because look. There are too many things going on for any person to pay attention to all of them. I can't fix everything--assuming I can fix anything--and neither can you. Division of labour is our friend here. I'll pick out some things that I care about, and you pick out some things that you care about, and that guy over there can pick out some stuff that he cares about, and between all of us we'll cover everything. I'm just one person, but there are a lot of one-persons out there, and you're another. I can't tell you what to do, but I know this: you can see something that you want to fix. It's in your mind right now. Go fix it!

(In some ways these blogs are a one-way conversation. See, for all I know, you're already doing what I'm talking about here, and I'm late to the party, and you're becoming very impatient with me. If so oops sorry.)

Going to be a slow process. You know; not like I don't have other stuff going on. And let's face it: I've got a job and a mortgage and small kids; I can't afford to hang out with the Occupy people for any length of time, or get sent to jail, or... So: what I can. Already I've given blood, for one thing; been a while since I've done that. I've made a list of worthwhile charities I want to give to. I've got letters brewing. Other ideas in the hopper. Maybe it's not a lot, but it'll be more than nothing and I'm not going to stop.

And one of the things I'm going to do is to stop buying DC and Marvel comics, and tell them that that's what I'm doing, and why. Not such a big sacrifice, maybe... I was looking forward to all the stuff listed in the first couple of paragraphs, and also I realized that I'm going to have to stop picking up Fables in TPB. That's gonna hurt. But there's no help for it.

(Note: I will continue to buy, read, and review Legion-of-Super-Heroes-related comics from DC. Inconsistent? Hypocritical? Maybe so, but it's the way I'm going to do it. Be pretty silly of me to keep doing the blog without reading current LSH comics, for one thing, and for another, Legion Abstract is at least a small voice in the world of superhero comics, and I'd have a hard time finding another one. Plus I've become fond of it over the years. So I'm going to do what I have to do to keep the doors open. (Also note: Legion Lost is about to enter a big crossover thing with Superboy and I don't know what all. I'll get the LL issues and that's it. Let's see if DeFalco knows how to make his story self-contained enough.))

(My local comic shop will not suffer for my stance here. Most of what I buy from them is not DC or Marvel anyway. Princeless, Sergio Aragones' Funnies, the Captain Blood series from SLG if they decide to continue it after all this time, Dungeons & Dragons, the WordGirl digests from Kaboom!, Irredeemable... there's all kinds of good stuff out there from other companies, and I'm looking forward to it too.)

Here are some reasons why I'm Vacating DC and Marvel's comics. First, I'm unhappy with the way they've been treating their creators of the past: Kirby, Siegel, Friedrich, Moore, et al. Second, I am quite unhappy about how they and their corporate masters have been pushing for more restrictive copyright laws, laws that are designed to concentrate money and ownership of culture in large corporations, at the expense of the rest of us. Third, they certainly could be doing a better job with their non-white-straight-male characters.

These aren't my demands, you understand. I have no demands. I'm saying, I don't like that and so I'm not buying your comics anymore. I'm not saying, if you do A B and C I'll start buying them again. No: no promises. I'd like to start buying them again, but I'm not going to until I feel all right about it, and I don't know what can make that happen. That's DC and Marvel's problem.

Looking back over what I've just typed... I don't really think that my anger is coming across here. Because why should I have to type out all this stuff to tell it to you just because they are being jerks? Is it fair? These guys try to step on everybody and because of that I have to take the step of not reading what I really want to read? (Not reading does not come easily to me.) This is where it has gotten us: I don't care what I want anymore. I feel like reading Daredevil? To hell with me! Who cares what I want! These corporations want us to sit down and shut up and read comics and thank them for the privilege and I will not give them what they want. And if I don't like it then that's just too bad.

A natural question is, but Matthew, comic books? This is your big cause? Who cares about superhero comics?

Let me answer that this way. No, comic books aren't that important, but I like them, and it ticks me off that I can't even read a comic book without feeling like I'm being complicit with what's wrong with the world. I mean, I'd like it if they (you know, they) could get just one thing right. You guys get the superhero comics right while the rest of us take care of everything else. What would be wrong with that? But oh no. So now we have to take time out of our busy schedule and fix up the comics industry in addition to the economy and politics and the environment and all the rest of it. So instead of asking me that question, go ask some questions of those who created, or are perpetuating, the problem.

While we're at it. Does it make any sense that these two companies can tell stories about superheroes, can be in fact the two companies most associated with superheroes in the world, can hold the damn trademark on the word "superhero", and yet behave in this way? It does not. I mean, stay with me here, I know the difference between fiction and reality, but where do they get off thinking that nobody's going to call them on this dissonance? It's not like they never refer to it when it does line up. Right now DC's doing this charity thing, "We Can Be Heroes", helping to feed people in the Horn of Africa. Which is good. It is good! But it doesn't get them off the hook; I'm sure there were plenty of stories where Luthor had some kind of smokescreen charity himself, not that I'm accusing DC of being as bad as Luthor, and anyway my point is that they can't expect to use these symbols like that on the one hand and then not live up to them on the other.

Another natural question is, but Matthew, the comic book industry is famously fragile. What if people join you in this protest and it becomes successful enough to sink DC and/or Marvel? Don't want that, do you?

Let me answer that this way. I like to think of myself as a reasonable guy. In fact, I insist on being as reasonable as I can, in all situations, because I believe that that is the best way to do it. For everyone. It's no good resorting to violence or destruction; the only way is to talk it out and convince people to come around to your side by the strengths of your arguments. We're trying to have a civilization here. As such, no, I'm not looking to sink any companies, and I have to hope and think that it will not come to that.

With my mind, I think that. That's my mind's opinion. Which is fine, because that's the side of me that gets all the decision-making power, or so I like to think.

But there's another side of me that just wants to rip everything the fuck down.

I don't indulge that side of me. It exists, though, and since it exists, that means that there is a decently wide range of possible outcomes that are acceptable to me. DC and Marvel mend their ways, fine. Great, even. DC and Marvel collapse into chaos, leaving thousands in poverty, fine. Great, even. (I am neither proud nor ashamed of this attitude. What I am is angry; see above.)

Reasonable. To be reasonable. I don't know. I mean, as John Rogers points out, you have to know your swing. And mine certainly involves reason. Calm. Deliberateness, if you will. It's not my place to say that I'm actually any good at it, but I'm sure not good at any other approach. So I guess I'm stuck with that. And I'm glad! But in a sense it's a disadvantage, because the other "side" does not feel the same need to be reasonable. It doesn't seem, in fact, like they have any sense of restraint of any kind. Were SOPA and PIPA reasonable? Is C-11 or ACTA or the TPP? Is it reasonable that Toews is calling us child pornographers if we don't want all our internet activity recorded for the cops? Is it reasonable that Obama says he can legally have anybody in the world secretly assassinated if he feels like it? What kind of simpleton am I to even attempt reason in the face of all that?

Not that crazy always beats sane, or evil is more powerful than good, or any of the things that I've heard people say about situations like that. I don't think it's true at all. But I do think that there's no way for sane to compromise with crazy. And I don't think reason does any good if the people who need to hear it just won't listen.

So that's where I've gotten to with this article: Pick something you care about and fix it. Insist on sanity. Make them listen. Vacate DC and Marvel.

Lot of stuff going on

There's a lot of stuff going on these days; probably some of it has caught your attention. War, climate change, economic disasters, natural disasters, political upheaval, political repression. And I sit around saying, well, what am I doing about it. Not enough, is what I'm doing about it. No good reason why not, either. I mean, sure, I have hostages to fortune, but I can do something, right?

So let's start here: according to this website, today is American Censorship Day. Go read it, think about it, consider what to do next. Sure, my site here is in important respects a Canadian website... but the blogging service that runs it is American-based, so that's one thing. Plus, I don't know, one cannot do everything, but one has to start somewhere, and this is a good somewhere.

Come Look at My New Website

I started a new website. It's at matthewe.com, and you're all invited over there to check it out.

Mostly what it'll be about is this novel I'm writing and will publish, but I expect to touch on other stuff as well. Particularly of interest to this crowd is the Superhero of the Day feature I'm planning.

I'm not abandoning Legion Abstract; I'm planning on giving it about the same level of attention I have been all along. Anything I write that's Legion-specific will still go here; anything that's about superheroes in general may go here or there.

Suprmetrics 2: What Do Superheroes Do?

Recently in this blog I've been keeping up with reviews okay but haven't been doing many other articles. Ideally I'd like to do one or two other articles every month. Not sure that I will, but I'd like to.

Also I'd like to mention that I may be shifting my review schedule a bit. It's been my policy to try to review every Legion comic on the day that it comes out. I have another writing project* I'd like to devote more time to, though, and one way to make that easy for me might be to shift the comic reviews to the first weekend after the comic comes out. I haven't entirely decided yet, and I'm probably not going to make a rule for myself, but if a Legion comic hits the streets and you don't see a review here that Wednesday evening, it may be because I've decided to do it Saturday instead.

Anyway, I was about to write another entry of The Legionnaires, and I figured out a way to introduce it, and then I realized that my introduction should be a post on its own. This is that post.

One of the things I like to pretend this blog is for is to break down superheroes and the superhero genre. I'm curious about that stuff. Not only do I have a lot of affection for superheroes, but they're about as odd a cultural artifact as you could ask for, and so I think that anything we can figure out about them is worth it.

I don't imagine that what I'm about to say is going to be revolutionary or insightful or anything. Actually I think it'll be elementary and obvious. But I'd still like to do it because I don't recall it having been said before, and it's the things that go without saying that should be said the most carefully.

One way we can look at superheroes is in terms of what they do. What do superheroes do?

We can break the job of "superhero" down into a list of other jobs. Not all of these will apply to all characters (which is part of what makes it interesting). In alphabetical order, with shorthand codes in brackets at the end:

-Bodyguard. Self-explanatory. Rare, but it does happen. (BG)
-Celebrity. Like Booster Gold used to try to be. Anytime a superhero shows up at a parade or cuts a ribbon at a mall opening or whatever, she's acting in the role of celebrity-superhero.(CL)
-Detective. Detective-superheroes investigate mundane or partially mundane crimes that have already happened. (DC)
-Diplomat. Includes first contact with alien races. (DP)
-Explorer. Self-explanatory. Includes outer-space exploration, undersea, lost worlds, other dimensions, microverses, time travel... (EX)
-Policeman. Not exactly the same as "detective"; a policeman-superhero is one who stops mundane crimes as they're happening. (PC)
-Rescue Worker. Rescues people from disasters, whether man-made or natural, and may help to fix the disaster itself. (RW)
-Role Model. This is a bit of a vague one, but I think it belongs. When a superhero makes a public appearance to inspire kids, or acts as a community leader, he's acting as a role-model-superhero. Examples: the Detroit-era Justice League, 'Mazing Man, Meteor Man. (RM)
-Scientist. Not that the science itself is that superheroic, but it often provides technology or discoveries helpful in the superhero's other roles. Also, there's often an overlap between "scientist" and "explorer". (SC)
-Soldier. Superheroics do occasionally overlap with military operations, as in the case of an alien invasion, or like with the Invaders or All-Star Squadron. (SO)
-Spy. Really this is just here to reflect that often superheroes have to be stealthy and sneaky and not so much fighty. They hardly ever work as actual spies. (SP)
-Warrior. Fighting monsters, giant robots, powerful supervillains, or other superheroes is the work of a warrior. (WA)

Here are some jobs that are specifically not part of being a superhero:

-Judge. Pronouncing a person guilty of a crime, sentencing him, and executing that sentence. (JG)
-Social Activist. Transforming society in potentially unwelcome ways. (SA)

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that I left some stuff off of these lists; if you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments and I'll work them into the article if I agree.

I think that when people don't like some particular take on a superhero, it's because of an issue with these roles. The threeboot Legion? SA is on the Don't list. Superman Returns? Not enough WA. I think Kingdom Come came about because of an industry-wide overemphasis on the WA role and an underemphasis on everything else.

In fact, Superman is a good touchstone for this idea. Anything that a superhero might do, we can ask the question, would Superman do this? If he would, it's an appropriate superheroic activity. If not, not. Look at the SA role: when Superman was first created, he did do some SA-type stuff, where he fought for the little guy and stuck it to the man and what have you. But somehow it was decided that that didn't really fit the idea of the character, and now the SA role is not part of superheroics. (Which is not to say that the threeboot Legion aren't superheroes! Of course they are. They're superheroes and social activists.

But we can see the Legion all over that list. They're always being dragged into jobs where they have to be DPs or RWs or BGs. (Maybe there should be an Animal Control entry on there.) And it's granular: Brainiac 5, for instance, is the best suited Legionnaire for the SC role, but you wouldn't want him as a WA. You'd want Timber Wolf or someone. Mon-El prefers EX, although he's pretty good at SC and RW and WA and even SP. And so on. If we chose, we could go through a comic book and pick it apart based on what superheroic activities are present: LSHv7 #10: page 1-7, RW; page 10-11 WA, page 17-20 PC. Collect enough data like that and we could get a pretty good idea of how different writers see their characters, or how they see superheroics in general.

Again, I don't pretend that any of this is profound. But I hope now that it's explicit and that we have a bit more of a vocabulary to talk about it, maybe that'll help us come up with something that's a little more profound later on.

--

* I don't want to give details on this writing project until I actually, you know, get something done. I've made a good start, but that's not enough. When I have something real to tell you, rest assured that you won't be able to shut me up about it.

Raining Soup

Do you ever borrow comic books from the library?

If you don't, you may want to look into it. It's a great way of trying out stuff you've always wanted to read but never did. I've gotten into all kinds of things thanks to the library, and some of it I've made a point of hunting down and buying my own copy later on. (Some of it, I read and said to myself, "Wow, I'm glad I didn't pay anything for that.")

To give you some idea, here's a partial list of some compilations and collections and serieses I first read thanks to the library:

New Frontier
All-Star Superman
Tom Strong
Marvel: 1602
Marvels
JSA: Golden Age
Transmetropolitan
Top Ten
Naruto
One Piece
Planetes
Bleach
Jack Staff
Shutterbug Follies
Invincible
Love and Rockets
Fables
Jack of Fables
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Kingdom Come
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken
Wimbledon Green
Robinson's Starman
Kirby's Fourth World
the recentish Shazam! and the Monster Society of Evil miniseries
Identity Crisis
JLA: Earth 2
JLA/Avengers
Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
Pride of Baghdad
Louis Riel
Nexus
Agents of Atlas
Batman: the Dark Knight Returns

The library can be a waterfall of comics! Go stick a bucket underneath!

Don't Really Do This

My attention has been drawn to this short film. It is of some interest.

Anne Steelyard: The Garden of Emptiness

I don't usually deal with non-superhero stuff on this blog, but I'm making an exception. See, this comic book is written by Barbara Hambly, and I'm a huge fan of Barbara Hambly. So I wouldn't call this post a review, specifically; it's about half review and half plug.

First, the details. It’s called Anne Steelyard: The Garden of Emptiness, Act 1: An Honorary Man. It's published by Penny-Farthing Press. You can order a copy right from them; that's how I got mine. Not sure about its availability in comic-book shops, although I imagine it'll get there eventually if it isn't there now.

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Anne Steelyard is a young, aspiring archeologist in the Middle East in 1908. She wants to find the lost city of Miyah and so win her fortune, but is being held back by politics and by the sexism of the times.

Also something weird happened with an earlier expedition: they were seeking the Garden of Eden and thought they found it, but suffered some kind of mysterious fate and never made it back. It seems that this candidate for Eden is probably the same place as Miyah, although Anne is unaware of this angle.

There is swashbuckling adventure.

Review: So it was kind of strange reading a comic book written by Barbara Hambly. All I had read by her up to now was prose, and I've become quite used to her prose style. Here are Hambly's virtues as an author, as I see them:
- she has a strong knowledge of, and sense of, history
- she has a facility for extensive and rich descriptions that aren't boring
- she has a sneaky, understated sense of humour
- she keeps the magical/fantastic elements of the story strictly under control
- she can write believable female and male characters (I don't say that this is a rare gift for an author, but it's certainly not a universal one)
- when it comes to the solutions to the plot-problems in her stories, she absolutely refuses to pull any rabbits out of any hats; the key to the plot is always an inevitable product of the setup, and always a surprise anyway

Now, this is only the first volume, so the last one of those isn't in play yet. Certainly the first one is there. The fourth one seems to be in effect. But in a comic book, she needs the help of the artist to get all the rest across, and her descriptive ability is out the window entirely. It's quite an odd experience. It's sort of like the skeleton of a Hambly novel with some new weird kind of flesh on it. Anyway, the question is, is the artist's work a satisfying substitute for Hambly's ability as a writer, and the answer is, I guess so.

The art is handled by Alex Kosakowski and Ron Randall, and basically they're pretty good. Quite a lot of the pages look really pretty and you always know where you are and who's who and all that. But it's not very kinetic. The panels look like a series of still lifes. It makes the book feel like a slower read, like you have to put more effort in to keep yourself moving through it. Same kind of thing people say about Barry Kitson, now that I think about it. Oh well. I like Kitson, and I like this, but I can imagine liking it better.

Anne is a reasonably typical Hambly heroine: bookish and more sensible than everyone around her, although Hambly doesn't usually give her protagonists this much all-around competence, physical prowess and taste for derring-do. The name "Steelyard" is interesting: it means "scale" and I believe it's supposed to connote the measuring of truth (as implied by its use in Neal Stephenson’s recent novel Anathem).

Hambly always does right by her female characters, but AS:TGoE:A1:AHM strikes me as a particularly feminist work, perhaps profoundly so. I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to see how it’s superficially feminist; Anne’s basic struggle to live her life on her own terms is actually pretty standard. Makes a good read and all, but we’ve seen it before.

What’s not quite so standard is how this is echoed in the rest of the plot. Look how Anne is trying to achieve her goals, after all: she’s searching for this place which we’re pretty sure is the Garden of Eden. When she finds it she will gain some important knowledge that she can parlay into a research fellowship from some university, and then she’ll have enough money that she’ll be free to live and marry as she wishes, and not have to live in her father’s house.

Compare Anne to Eve. Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, and when she ate the fruit she gained important knowledge that eventually led to her freedom not to live in her father’s garden anymore. Which is kind of interesting, isn’t it? Because this casts Eden not as a paradise but as a prison, knowledge as the key to the door, and a woman as the ringleader of the escape committee.

(I’m trying to become a more perceptive reader. I didn’t pick up on this aspect of the story until after my third reading of it. You know what the trick was that lit it up for me? I thought about the title, The Garden of Emptiness. Titles help a lot. You ever want to know what a book or something is about, consider the title. Sounds obvious, but it’s easy to overlook.)

Eve has taken a lot of grief over the centuries, blamed as she was for the “downfall” of humanity, but I prefer the take on her in this book. Which view of humanity do you prefer: the one where we know things, can learn more of them, and are free to live in the world the best way we can manage, or the one where we’re happy innocents in a garden, free to do anything except eat from that tree, go outside, or think? Eve didn’t cause the downfall of humanity; she caused its birth.

It’s also worth noting the role that knowledge plays. Eve (okay, and Adam) can’t stay in the Garden once they’ve learned about good and evil. Anne is considered unfeminine because of all the things she knows, because she has a mind. (The character design sketches in the back of the book contrast Anne with Lady Hester’s servant Prawle, whose only line in the story seems to be, “Yes, Lady Hester,” repeated mechanically again and again.) Knowledge is the prime motivation for just about everyone in the book, knowledge and learning and information. Even such classic and powerful motivators as love and money are forced into secondary roles in the face of people’s need to know more. Seriously, when you read this comic, look for examples: they’re on almost every page.

I’m curious to see just what role Lady Hester (sister of the guy leading the ill-fated Eden expedition, now starting an expedition herself to go look for him) is going to play in this story. At first I thought she was just there for background, or something, but then I noticed that she was the one female character in the story who does have freedom. She’s as socially respectable as Anne is not (and also something of a Tartar, as they used to say), but there she is, traveling through Constantinople and Damascus however she likes without a word of criticism attaching to her. This is, I say, significant.

It goes without saying that I’m going to hunt up the second and third volumes of this series when they’re ready. I think I prefer prose-Hambly to comics-Hambly, but not by all that much. And there’s stuff going on in Anne Steelyard that I want to see how it gets resolved. Recommended.