Recently I read all the issues of The Defenders, Vol. 4, which kicked off at the end of 2011 and then was cancelled at the beginning of 2013 with issue #12. Matt Fraction authored the comic book throughout its run, and I'm sorry to say that for the most part -- and by this I mean something like three out of every four issues -- were tired, distracted, emotionless loops around the superhero comic carousel. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Matt Fraction. I loyally read his Hawkeye, Vol. 4, a brilliant, refreshing, cutting-edge book. And I said before on this page that his Invincible Iron Man will go down in the history books as synonymous with the period of hope and change (it turned out to be delusional) that Obama's 2008 campaign and first years in the White House ushered in. But what I have also noticed is that Fraction is willing to pimp himself out to the point of overextension. His work then tends to the overly sarcastic and thin. I'm thinking here of his run on The Mighty Thor.
The Defenders when it first appeared in the early 1970s was unique in spotlighting a team of outcasts. This was Marvel's answer to the recently spawned "One Nation Underground." The social upheaval of the late 1960s might have been checkmated politically by Nixonland, the "Silent Majority," but at the end of the day in the United States you still had an enormous counter culture, a massified bohemia that had its own newspapers, grocery stores, film and music -- and those tastes were coming to dominate the mainstream majority.
Roy Thomas, like so much that he did for Marvel in the early '70s, was just being a shrewd businessman when he stuck a Greenwich Village beatnik (Doctor Strange), with a Gamma-powered Frankstein monster (Hulk), a cosmically-juiced master of the spaceways (Silver Surfer) and last but not least, Marvel's founding anti-hero, the underwater Tecumseh, Namor the Sub-Mariner. This was a group that could speak to the Hippies.
Below you'll find five scans from Fraction's The Defenders #10. The cover, by Joe Quinones, is a wonderful homage to the early Bronze Age. The four stunning interior pages are by Jamie McKelvie with Mike Norton; Jordie Bellaire provides the color. The final page pictures Red She-Hulk wiping out a crow.
After finishing a 5K race last Sunday morning I indulged in an hour of relaxation on my mattress on the floor. Nestled in clean sheets with a cup of strong coffee in hand, I fully enjoyed the Moebius and Stan LeeSilver Surfer. The comic book is a reissue of the two-part Silver Surfer: Parable from 1988. It tells the story of Galactus returning to earth for payback. The resulting fear and chaos is exploited by a New Age Jimmy Swaggert. But the Silver Surfer, who is living incognito as a homeless person at the beginning of the narrative, saves the day. The message is a complicated one. After besting Galactus, the Surfer is feted at the United Nations and implored by the general assembly to assume the role of divine leader. In thought bubbles the Surfer muses:
It is madness!
They thirst for leadership as a child thirsts for mother's milk.
Surely this is why they so often fall prey to tyrants and despots.
Why cannot they realize that the truest faith is faith in oneself? What has made them so desperate to have others show them the way?
The Surfer sees that the only way to disabuse his audience of their lust to worship is to demand their total obeisance: "My every command has to be obeyed without question. My every whim gratified. My every desire fulfilled." This alienates the assembly. The people turn on the Surfer and reject him. The comic ends with the Silver Surfer on his board traveling the spaceways alone.
This is a beautiful comic book. In Moebius' comments contained in an afterword he explains how hard he worked on it, and it shows. The art is airy and spacious, and the pastel colors amplify this feeling of spaciousness; also, a sense of the late 1980s is conveyed: a post-war social compact is still vaguely intact but you can tell it's on its way out.
Below are scans of the first five pages of Silver Surfer to give you a taste of Moebius' mastery:
Django Unchained was my streaming selection last night. It had been available on Amazon for over a week but only in the HD format and only to purchase. But last night for $4.99 I was able to see what all the fuss was about.
Quentin Tarantino has been pilloried in the media for the movie's violence; his interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy went viral:
Tarantino also tangled with the media and Spike Lee over his abundant use of the word "nigger" throughout the film. Samuel L. Jackson's refusal to answer a reporter's question on the use of the word unless the reporter say it himself also went viral:
Before sharing my thoughts on Django Unchained I should say that I am Tarantino man. Reservoir Dogs (1992) was the Easy Rider(1969) of my generation. Prior to that I hadn't seen a movie that accurately portrayed the way young men really talk to and deal with each other. The way the film's narrative is radically scrambled between past and present captures the way we actually encounter the world; after Reservoir Dogs this becomes a common storytelling practice in mainstream movies. But most of all I identified with Tim Roth's character, Mr. Orange. Most of my buddies liked Mr. Blonde or Mr. White. Having just divorced my wife, I kept my wedding ring in a bowl of pennies; I had a picture of the Silver Surfer on my wall. So when I saw that Mr. Orange kept his wedding ring in a spare change container and had a picture of the Silver Surfer on his wall I was amazed. I knew exactly who he was. He was me.
For all the hubbub about the violence in Django Unchained, I found it less extreme than Inglourious Basterds. But as Thomas Frankpointed out, that movie was about Jews killing Nazis and therefore acceptable. The only thing distinctive about the violence in Django is the amount of blood which flows profusely like so many burst jars of spaghetti sauce.
The power of the movie is not in its pulpy gore but in its timely depiction of the slavocracy. We are all niggers now, governed by a Dixiecrat Congress at the behest of bankers and corporate captains of industry. That's why Django is a perfect accompaniment to Lincoln. The performances of Christoph Waltz and Leonardio DiCaprio are inspired, as is Samuel L. Jackson's. My only criticism of the movie is that at two hours and 45 minutes it's too long. Once Waltz and DiCaprio disappear from the screen in the last half hour, Django really starts to fall apart; that, and the film descends into outright farce.
But all in all it's rollicking entertainment which accomplishes the amazing feat of capturing the perverse brutality of slavery (in particular with the mandingo fighting sub-plot) while plucking an intuitive chord of connection with our contemporary social-political predicament (UFC entertainment for the underemployed masses; plantation-owner-type wealth for the 1%).
