Tag: review

An Interactive Music-Making Epic: TweakerRay’s Collector Chapter 02

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 1 Comment

Many posts ago, I set myself the challenge of writing something about Sarah Howell’s silent comic. Today I’m doing the exact opposite. I have been given the challenge of writing an article on a music CD: namely TweakerRay’s Collector Chapter 02.

This might be a little unusual for me, but I have always loved epic music and TweakerRay’s Collector definitely falls under that designation. But how do you write about music? For me, I’ve learned to do that in my own writing: describing the harmonics of certain songs that I like and trying to find words to approximate the sounds that I hear. Certainly I’m not completely familiar with music or music-mixing terminology enough to write about it under those terms. My friend who gave me the request to write this, however, requested that I write about what the music makes me feel and what story is revealed to me by listening to it. In some ways, looking at the soundtracks with that frame in mind makes it easier for me to talk about.

First, let me give you an outline of what you should expect to find on the CD itself.

There are thirteen tracks in Collector Chapter 02. In addition, there is a Demos and Instrumentals section where TweakerRay gives you different mixed versions of his songs, a PDF version of the booklet included with the CD which I will go into more detail about later, and an actual Commentaries section dedicated to many of Collector‘s tracks by TweakerRay himself. So if you want to know more about these soundtracks in a technical way or by music terminology, TweakerRay explores his tracks in that fashion far better than I could.

There actually is a narrative that TweakerRay himself creates in his CD. TweakerRay’s Extended Play Collector Chapter 01 (the second half of which was called “Digital Ghost” and can be found on this Youtube link here) sets up a very strange scenario. Essentially, you hear messages on what appears to be TweakerRay’s voice-mail: a few praising him, one woman asking him what he wants and a man threatening him. The voices all mix together until you hear a man come in, who meets a woman waiting for him there. Not long after, she shoots him and the man calls out TweakerRay’s name before he presumably dies. I always interpret this haunting but active rhythm of hard beats to be TweakerRay himself on the run.

My job, however, is to talk about the songs in Collector 02 … and the booklet. The “Introduction” starts off strong: with a grandiosity and booming power. Years after the events of Chapter o1 and TweakerRay’s disappearance, it heralds and complements the voice of a futuristic dictatorial power: the leader or representative of the R.A.S. (the Royal Audio Supremacy) that talks about how it has banned the dissonance of “old and corrupted” music–declaring it dangerous to people’s minds that is reminiscent of the way that Plato considered art and poetry deadly if not controlled by the morality of the city-state– and how rebels threaten to bring it back. This fascist transmission of censorship also sets the stage of just what kind of world this music exists in. It is a fun, but in other ways a very serious creative premise about freedom of expression and what it faces against a need for perceived safety over that liberty.

Thus begins the instrumentals of Collector Chapter 02: its hard raking beats and piano keys–playing soft like rain–becoming a stride through a fortress city of inhuman glass and metal ruled by this tyranny and one person’s journey in defying this status quo.” Toxic Wasteland’s” rough and wavering rhythms and rising harsh crescendo brings to my mind a panoramic shot of the rest of the world in a stagnant ruin away from the R.A.S. capitol and the passing of forbidden instruments and music between the peoples within it in order to spread this rebellious musical dissonance.

It is “Status Report Sgt. Q” that brings back–with an ominous bell-toll–the vocal to the music. The rhythm is still severe, but there is a realization of horror in it as the rebel Sergeant Q makes us aware of what the R.A.S. has truly done: using censorship and force to pretend to bring peace, but in reality subjugate all people, keep them from questioning and maintain the corruption of their corporations and minions on the Earth. He states that music–the last refuge of creative freedom on and offline–has been censored by the government and its allies. The hard percussive metal beats of the music set the stage for the rebellion that is about to come.

And this is where, as the track title states, some of the citizens of this world “Fight Back.” It starts off smooth and then rises with a reverberating power–with intermittent 8-Bit sounds reminiscent of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s synthesized tones–and the addition of TweakerRay’s voice singing: abjuring that “it’s time to fight back.” But then … something bad happens. In the song “The Shot,” there is one crack of a gunshot that echoes throughout the distance followed by the deep current of a sound almost in denial accompanied by the sad chiming and gradual un-damming of an even more sorrowful crescendo as if the gun-shot itself has become the tragedy. We never know who got shot–if it was a who and not a what … like the idea of expressive freedom itself–but as “The Shot” fades off like a dactyl or a sad lullaby, the listener knows that the stakes have changed.

Sometimes I’m inclined to think it is the death of Sergeant Q that brings on this music or maybe the figure of TweakerRay–the symbol of this rebellion–but those are just my interpretations. TweakerRay himself explains in his Commentary what event motivated him to create this track. As it is, the sound of it just tends to remind me of all the things I’ve lost and it is a powerful song that sings of loss itself.

The tone changes after this. “They Don’t Know” heralds a newer form of rhythmic aggression in a journey or a quest for battle as TweakerRay’s vocal makes its rising fiery resurgence decrying how no one under that government or censorship–that condoned that shot–know exactly what it is that they have done. Aside from the “Introduction” that I love due to its all too seductive fascist overtones and promises of ancient and imminent destruction, as well as the powerful reverberating sadness of “The Shot,” I feel that “They Don’t Know” is one of the most powerful songs of the track and one of my personal favourites. It is empowering in a different way than the trappings of power or deep human sorrow. It is justice and vengeance both synthesized into song.

By “The Hunting,” with its fast–very fast–rhythmic beats and clanking, I can almost see the R.A.S. stepping up its efforts to stamp out the rebels: now realizing that they have only created martyrs by their repressive actions. It’s almost like the conflicting noises symbolize fighting on the streets, in the buildings and in all arenas across the regime. It is the fight for a society’s heart: for a free humanity’s soul.

After this there is an “Interlude,” with even more evidence of winding 8-bit tracks. At this point, it sounds as though there is more subterfuge going on: as though the rebels are passing around more forbidden instruments and sound equipment to the citizens: as though encouraging them to fight for freedom as overt physical fighting happens overhead. Perhaps by “Electronic Beast,” TweakerRay himself, back in vocal form, is abjuring the citizens–who have so far been serving the R.A.S. regime with approved music and mainly silence to “come to him,” to create their own music. While this something of a social perspective, I feel it is a compelling interpretation: where Sgt. Q tells the listener that the Internet has been censored, TweakerRay tells you of “the electronic beast”: of the passion in the communal machine that must yet be released.

Then we go into the steady hard rhythms and rough guitar-string instrumental rhythms of “Collector I” (Collector II and I seem to be reversed order for some reason) which also seems to be something of an interlude as well: perhaps symbolizing the secret actions of citizens deciding what to do with the new furtive powers they’ve been given. Certainly, the synthesized hard-rock crescendos of the song are beautiful to hear in any case.

By “Broken Dreams,” I … seem to run out of words. There is something hard and elegant about this song. It is sad, as though someone–perhaps the figure of TweakerRay–is moving on from his task. It is as though he has done what he has had to. It is less a tragedy, and something more transitory and resolute with its echoing vocals and touching piano keys. He is not that person anymore: he is “broken dreams”: a refracted mirror of many other people now. Maybe at this point in the narrative, he decides to fade into legend, into myth and become not just one person but all people in the musical narrative that want freedom. Thus he sheds his persona to let everyone else free themselves without violence but through acceptance of “what is.” This is also a favourite track of mine, as it seems to symbolize a “moving on” to another life but leaving something important–a legacy–behind.

Finally, there is “Transmission.” The CD could have ended by “Broken Dreams,” but some things transcend that. You see, from what I understand, the message or the medium–the music–has spread. Others are now adding their voices and interpretations and only then–at an ominous screeching echo–does the entire Collector 02 end: on a note feels like it is “to be continued.”

Most–though not all of this–was a creative interpretation brought on by listening to the music and if you expected this to be more of a traditional review of a musical score, I’m sorry to have disappointed you. But not really.

I think that I have said more than enough about how excellent I think this CD is, but before I wrap this up I want to talk about its one other feature.

That’s right: the booklet. The comic booklet.

The booklet was created by the artist and photographer Fotonixe. In fact, each included image in this article is actually the result of her work on this CD. Aside from some very professional stark illustrated green, black and grey backgrounds behind comics-style white font lyrics, Fotonixe actually creates sequential panels of figures to go along with some of the vocals within the CD track. For the most part, she seems to have a very fumetti-style of comics creation: using modified photographs and photo shopped images to illustrate a story. The style is also very reminiscent of the 1980s Slovenian FV Disco: a gritty collage-like yet dark and vibrant artistic style derived from the FV 112/15 Theater that used stills of digital footage, photographs and other images to make–among other things–visual art.

What’s also striking about this reminiscence is that FV Disco was described as crazed mixture of communist and capitalist punk made after the fall of communism in the former Yugoslavia. Even though this may not have been Fotonixe’s intent, it has a great resonance with the themes that TweakerRay has made inherent in his piece and as such is an excellent aesthetic complement to it.

There are two more things I would like to mention: both with regards to TweakerRay’s Chapter 01 and 02. The first is that the excellent audio dialogue of Chapter 02′s “Introduction” was written by the artist B.S. of D., while the artist Freshoil read the audio of Sgt. Q in his “Status Report.”

The other thing I’d like to talk about is that both Chapters 01 and 02 have a very interactive element in them. At some point, TweakerRay asked for vocals and audio from some of his listeners. These elements made their way into 01‘s “Introduction” and 02‘s “Transmission.” In addition to the fact that he wrote his artist persona into his musical narrative as a main protagonist, I’m impressed with how he encourages his fans to essentially collaborate with him in his works and even make remixes of their own. As someone fascinated with interactive storytelling processes I find to be an excellent idea and a good way to cultivate an audience of listeners.

If you are interested in buying Collector Chapter 02, you can get the Limited Deluxe CD here or an MP3 album here. Also, if you are interested in TweakerRay’s work and/or Fotonixe’s art, you can click on both of those links as well.

If you buy the CD or the MP3 album, the following are samples or previews of the tracks that you should expect.

I definitely give this musical work a five out of five. It reminds me of the days when I used to go downtown and dance to hard alternative rock and synthesized electric body music and how epic it all was: and how awesome it can be.

Film Review: The Batman Rises Once Again

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 3 Comments

I guess it’s about time to pay attention to the Bat Signal. It’s been pretty damned insistent. Cue in the dramatic musical score and …

So a few weeks ago I saw The Dark Knight Rises. What can I tell you. Well, first of all I’m going to make a Spoiler Alert. Then I’m going to say that I liked it. I really liked what Chris Nolan did and what he tried to do. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne becoming his “true self” after his tragedy and his training with Rais al Ghul and the League of Shadows: which I always thought was a really interesting and new approach to just how disciplined the man had become. In the second film, Dark Knight, we see Batman move away from dealing with fear and the Social Darwinist sense of justice that al Ghul attempted to unleash on Gotham in order to battle the forces of chaos and chance incarnate in the Joker and Harvey Dent-turned Two-Face.

By the third film, we see a very different Bruce Wayne. He’s become a reclusive and something of a broken man. Somehow, he has even sustained a permanent injury from his exploits eight years before. Batman has been blamed for the death of Harvey Dent: to make sure that the latter remains the symbol of justice that he rejected after his accident and has disappeared from the public eye.

Of course, Gotham is never safe ever. Someone always wants to either destroy its corruption or just watch it burn to the ground out of a sense of amusement. Bane seems to want both. Bane is a character from the Batman comics Knightfall story-arc that methodically and brutally breaks the Batman. Of course, everything is not as it seems and as Batman returns to save his city, he realizes that he must unlearn what he has learned: about having no fear.

This was a very intricate film. I really appreciated the details not only in the villains’ plot and the character of Batman himself, but also in the little things. The minor characters actually get a lot more expansion and you see that even as heroes can falter, not everyone has a happy ending and everyone receives a reckoning of some kind. Nolan tries to make everything in this third–and I think final–film come full circle: which is very hard to do considering the show-stealing manic power of Heath Ledger’s Joker from the previous film.

It was fun to figure out who some of the characters were before they were named or revealed. I also liked some of the social commentary that was going on in the film itself. Essentially, Bane creates the ultimate Social Darwinist experiment turned horrible joke where he tells everyone he has a fusion bomb with a counter in the city. Someone in the populace has the trigger and a way to turn it off. He keeps outside aid from coming into Gotham and uses his thugs with stolen Wayne Enterprises technology to help the common people–I guess the 99%–dispense “justice” to the 1% … and anyone else they don’t like. Of course, the joke is that Bane plans to detonate the bomb anyway, but he seems to enjoy watching the ad hoc show-trials–reminiscent of the French Revolutionary tribunals–condemning people to walk on thin ice anyway. Even Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle–who is blatantly hostile to the upper-class and steals from them constantly–begins to see just how sick Bane’s sense of “social justice” truly is.

You could read the social narrative under this movie in a variety of ways, but there was a lot of overall depth to the film’s plot and the way that Bane totally uses Commissioner Gordon’s own speech–a document of truth–to damage Gotham’s self-esteem further was genius. I don’t know if I quite agree on how the characters of Bane and Talia al Ghul were used–Talia in the comics would have respected Batman for being able to defeat her father multiple times and she carried his child as well–but for the movie they served their purpose well. Alfred and Lucius Fox were still in character too and I enjoyed seeing them again.

I did have a few other issues with the film. They might seem minor and hard to define, but I will try my best. The plot, while very intricate, seemed very spread out and if you didn’t pay attention to certain details you might have missed a lot. At times, it even seemed to drag on … a lot. Also, I admit that in the dialogue between Batman’s rough voice and Bane’s metallic one, sometimes I’d only get every other word.

Batman: *Rasp*Rasp*Justice. *Rasp*League of Shadows.*Rasp**Rasp*

Bane:*Rumble*Gotham*Rumble*You will be broken.*Rumble*

Maybe it was the theatre I was in or how the sound effects behind them in their fight might have interfered with acoustics, but I really wish I could have gotten everything that those two intelligent “bad asses” were saying.

In some ways, I feel like for all the depth and such that the film had, it fell short as the concluding movie. I find myself wondering sometimes just what might have happened if Heath Ledger hadn’t died. I mean, the Joker wasn’t killed off in Dark Knight–when Nolan could have easily had him terminated–and if all had gone well, he could have made a comeback. Would The Dark Knight Rises have been different if that happened? It would have been really interesting to see the remnant of the League of Shadows deal with the Joker. The thing about the League is that they are trained to deal with logical or sensible enemy psychologies. Even Batman is just another form of idealist to them: just as they are. All of them deal with an understanding of basic human corruption.

But how would they have dealt with the Joker: an almost shamanic madman who cares nothing for money, or power, or even has a steady personality profile. He is literally a wild card that can read his enemies well while always shifting psychologies. Essentially, the Joker’s purpose is pure chaos. He would die just to make chaos. How would the League of Shadows deal with something so unpredictable. Would they see him as a psychological reaction to global corruption? Or as chaos incarnate itself? As an ally or enemy he would dangerous at best. It could have also been a nice dichotomy between villains: between an inhuman need for justice and a sense of pure madness. I guess we will never know that now, if there was ever such a plan or if this film was the thing Nolan was going to make no matter what.

I will give this film a four out of five. It is worth seeing and it ends the trilogy fairly well. Until next time Bat-fans.

Film Review: The Innkeepers

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

 

I’ve been meaning to make this particular review for a while now. I first saw Ti West’s The Innkeepers at the Toronto After-Dark last summer as the last film of the entire festival. It was also the best film to end it off.

I actually didn’t know what to expect from this film and I only got it because it was the last feature. The title of the thing itself along with the little bit of information provided didn’t really say anything. I will say that I knew it was a ghost story or a “ghost film”: about two employees at a hotel wanting to find evidence of a haunting before it closes.

It didn’t start the way that I thought it would. In fact, the film started off with Claire and Luke–the two employees–ribbing and scaring each other. Claire herself–the protagonist of the film–was energetic, positive and very likable. Luke himself had more of a weary, somewhat laconic personality but you could tell he loved what he did: which was managing his paranormal site online. In their spare time they were both ghost hunting enthusiasts. There is something really effective in a horror movie about making protagonists that are so relatable and likable people.

I like the fact that you look at both characters and how they are dealing with their lives. For me, I really felt invested in them and their relationship with each other and they were the kind of people I would like to be friends with. I especially liked Claire and every moment in which she would ring the bell on the front desk just to annoy Luke and just do … do it. Those little touches gave a lot of nuance to the film right there. They almost make you forget that this is a horror film. Almost.

The tone changes from light-hearted interactions and antics to something very creepy and disturbing and then … sad: ultimately so very sad. You see these very human characters pursue something in a very playful way and watch as this something seemingly becomes very serious, very dangerous and very real fast. And I am not just talking about the ghost-hunting either: but rather a divergence between these two characters that costs them. I find at the end that I really wish that didn’t happen to them. That was one of the strengths of Chernobyl Diaries–to have sympathetic characters–except unlike the stupidity in them, these two were really intelligent, if only somewhat more tragically curious and naive.

What the film lacks in blood and gore, it possesses in slow-mounting psychological terror and unexplained creepiness. The Innkeepers reminds me of the ambiance in Are You Afraid of the Dark? with finer tuning, three-dimensional characters and a plausible background made all the more terrifying by hints and moments of building paranormal activity: things made all the more disturbing in that you don’t know whether they exist outside the characters or in their minds. Either way, this film is both scary and tragic.

The Innkeepers gets a five out of five for an excellent story, pacing and brilliant character depictions and interactions. I could not recommend this film more highly than this.

Comics Review: Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum

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The first time I’d ever heard of this game was in reference to the video game that exists out there. But I’m not talking about that. No, I am talking about this.

https://matthewkirshenblatt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/arkham.jpg?w=194

I’m specifically talking about Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth the 15th Anniversary Edition. Considering that it has existed since 1989, the book has no doubt had many reviews at this point, but I feel that I have a few things to say about it: things that have been on my mind since I last read it.

What I find very unique about this comic is not what it is about, but who. You might think to yourself it is obviously about Batman, but while he is obviously a main protagonist in this work and it deals with him facing his own fears and psychological issues the story is not purely about him. The story is not about the villains that he has incarcerated there either: though they have lured him into the asylum to face said fears and the torments that they have waiting for him. It isn’t even about Amadeus Arkham: the tragic founder of the mental hospital that was supposed to save and repair criminally insane minds.

No, Arkham Asylum‘s main character is Arkham Asylum. Character as place is not a new idea. Certainly, I had to face something similar when I was writing part of my Master’s Thesis on Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire: where the protagonist of that work was actually Moore’s hometown of Northampton. But unlike Northampton that has many layers of different gritty and earthy human activity, Arkham Asylum is many nuances of madness.

Morrison doesn’t pull his punches here. He draws on Jungian psychology and archetypes, the Tarot and mysticism, and poetry and crazy itself as he depicts Batman’s essential descent into the underworld or the demented collective unconscious that Arkham has become. He also has an Alice and Wonderland reference or two. Morrison seemed to really like using those, just like Alan Moore in his Miracleman comics. Then there is the name Arkham itself to consider. From what I understand, it is derived from H.P. Lovecraft’s creation of the fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts: the seat of the strange and eldritch Miskatonic University. It has been used as a name for various fictional places, but it really has a nice and eerie parallel with Gotham’s most terrifying asylum.

The fact that it was once a house–a very Jungian archetype for the makeup of an individual’s consciousness–and the person who once lived in it failed to turn it into a place of healing and ended being locked away inside of it speaks some major volumes right there. The atmosphere of this comic is distorted and schizophrenic to the point of making even Batman seem disturbing and this is in no small part thanks to Dave McKean’s drawing style and painting.

https://i0.wp.com/www.dialbforblog.com/archives/500/arkham3.jpg

Do not misunderstand though. The piece has its weaknesses and, ironically enough, those weaknesses are can also be construed as its strengths. For instance, I really like the broken mirror-reality that Dave McKean has depicted with his twisted nightmarish images and the different kinds of dialogue font, but at the same time they are very distracting and it is hard to make out key details that may have actually made all the difference in understanding the plot. The reason I like the 15th Anniversary version of this book is because of the detailed comic book script at the end of it.

You know, in some ways I liked the script a lot more than I liked the comic that came from it. If Arkham Asylum is of any indication of how Morrison writes comics scripts, it represents something easy to follow and enjoyable to read. In the script the mythological and archetypal references and many more uncanny details are much more apparent. It is also an added bonus to be able to understand what it is going on and what the characters are saying. At the same time, I will be honest: I respect his interpretation for Batman in this story, but I don’t agree with it.

The fact has less to do with Morrison’s choices and more to do with the popular idea that Batman is as mentally-imbalanced as his enemies. Do I think he was influenced by a trauma into a cycle of behaviour? Obviously. Do I think he saves people’s lives just out of a compulsion? Not completely. Perhaps each time he does do it to save himself or to save the lost innocence of the child he once was. I also think he saves peoples’ lives and doesn’t use a gun because he has principles and he has a certain sense of honour influenced by his own experiences like anyone else.

But there definitely were a lot of things I liked about this book: about reading the story of Arkham Asylum and the progression of the horrifying ritual and gathering of insanity over the decades that made it into the nexus of insanity that we all know and love. I also like how it makes you look at what precisely madness is and just where that fine line may–or may not–be. It was a psychological horror story and I loved it.

I do wish that I could have gotten more out of it without having to read the script, and I could be very mean and say that there is something wrong when you like a script more than the comic it is supposed to help create: but I do love McKean’s work here and the script is a nice complement with some scenes that didn’t make it into the finished artistic product. I’d definitely give this work a five out of five.

And that is it for now. Tune in next time, my friends. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.

ETA: It would be interesting to see someone compare and contrast Alan Moore and Grant Morrison’s use of Alice imagery as well as how they use the ideas of “reason” and “madness or intuition” or the “Dragon” and “the hero” in Miracleman, From Hell, Arkham Asylum and Red King Rising respectively.

Video Game Review: Terranigma

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Imagine a game where you play as a person who needs to create–or resurrect–an entire world. With each challenge you solve, you restore not only continents but the cycle of life and the souls of all living beings as well. Then you find yourself in a battle between good and evil over what you have brought back. You find yourself between two worlds. You find a world awakening in yourself. Things are definitely not what they seem to be and eventually you wonder just what it is that you are fighting for.

You’re not exactly what might be considered hero or saviour-material. In your village, you’re known as a bit of a trouble-maker and something of a brat. You cannot leave things alone and this is what ultimately precipitates your ultimate quest and the strange, terrifying and wonderful places you will find yourself in.

Your name is Ark and your game is Terranigma. Terranigma was an action role-playing game created for the Super Nintendo in the mid-90s. It was never released in America: which is a really great shame, but it was launched in Japan and Europe.

To say I like this game would be an understatement. What I wrote above is merely a summary of a very fun and poignant story. This game has a wide range of emotional depth and covers a whole lot of themes like death, reincarnation, and life itself. I keep thinking myself whenever I think of Terranigma that if there was ever a video game with a Buddhist paradigm, this would be it. I do not exaggerate when I say that you, as Ark, have to create or recreate the world. You also help civilization evolve while becoming a part of it as well.

The character of Ark is interesting because with his mischievous and good-hearted nature and his staff weapon he reminds me a lot of Monkey in Journey to the West: a reluctant god-trickster hero–with something of a magic staff weapon–who is impelled by forces in the outer world to help others. So in some of that sense, Ark does fit the hero archetype. And believe me, this game does not skimp on archetypes or the hero’s quest.

https://i0.wp.com/rpgcorner.pagesperso-orange.fr/Terranigma/Terranigma_art.jpg

This is also an action game. It is not turn-based and you don’t gain spells when you level up. Instead, you fight. You have to think on your feet and adapt to your enemy. Defeated enemies explode into a satisfying cloud and often leave some gold behind for you. There are puzzles as well and those can be challenging but not difficult. I confess that when I played the game, I looked up a lot of guides to help me through it because I wanted to see how the story unfolded more than getting stuck in places at times.

What else can I tell you? The areas that you visit are great … fond stereotypes of places that exist in our world but they are fun to interact with. I wouldn’t learn history from this game though, just to warn you, but just take it as it is meant to be: a game with its own logic.

All this said, I feel I should definitely mention that in addition to its lush 16-bit graphics and memorable characters, Terranigma has one other very great element: its music. In fact, its music does what any video game music should: it complements the story and the characters. It is integral to the emotional complexity inherent in the game. The music can be playful, grandiose and conflictive, and sad. Really sad.

But there is something about “Terranigma Sadness” that is different. It portrays this … transitory sorrow, this acceptance of loss and gain as a cycle of life. It–and really the entire game–has this resonance with the Japanese concept of mono no aware: an awareness or an empathy towards the impermanence of life. You can really hear it at towards the end of the main musical theme in the above link. It reminds me of an old man dying peacefully in his sleep under a sunny tree or an unnamed and unsung warrior resting after a long life of battle: leaving forgotten but satisfied by the depth of his life and accomplishment.

As I mentioned before, the spirit of the game has an almost Buddhist nature or a distinct link with some aspects of Far Eastern culture: a perceptual lens which has a very unique way of looking at the world.  Being able to combine these elements with fun gameplay is a mark of genius as far as I am concerned.

All and all, after a few years of not playing this game, I would still give it a five out of five. A friend sent it to me and it only reinforced the fact that I’m glad I got over my reluctance to play old games. No, this isn’t an old game. Games like Terranigma are never old games. No, this game is a classic, and this is what a classic truly is.

I’m going to leave you with this last video. I don’t know how long it or the above link will be on here. The following was a fan video created by one TheStarOcean. I thought it was lost forever years ago and while it doesn’t use the original track, it truly captures the heart of this game. Do not watch if you don’t want spoilers and you want to play this wonderful game for yourselves. If you have played it though, I hope you will enjoy it for what it is.

Film Review: Sucker … PUNCH!

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I’d almost like to say that Sucker Punch actually sucker punched me, but you can’t claim to be sucker punched when you can pretty much see it coming.

So I watched this film the other day and I almost feel like just giving you my rating right now. What I can I tell you? It could have worked. It could have. All the components were there. You had this girl who was wrongfully put into an insane asylum by her stepfather who wanted her family’s money: and had her unofficially scheduled to be lobotomized to keep her silent about his dealings.

You had different realities going on after this in which you have the protagonist retreating into the fantasy that she was sold to a brothel where she’d learn to dance for the patrons there. You also had a few realities where this same protagonist is a bad-ass warrior who has to fight things that symbolize her inner demons and even has something of a guide: a man who is respectively a sage and a military commander. He is known as the Wise Man and has some pretty crisp, elegant, and pragmatic things to say with a proviso at the end that always comes after him stating, “Oh and one more thing …”

You also had other female protagonists who were also in the asylum, in the brothel and were in her teammates in the combat worlds she found herself in under the guidance of the Wise Man. One of the worlds the girls found themselves in was apparently a steampunk (though I would say dieselpunk) WWI.

Here is essentially a movie where you can play with realities and have some nice transitions between worlds. Here is a romp through the collective unconsciousness: through the subconscious of a girl who is probably being drugged and trying to save herself from a lobotomy in five days’ time. This could have been a movie of character development along with some fitting musical tracks,  flashy special effects and fantasy sequences.

Instead, it was just the good soundtracks and the fantasy sequences. A few other critics have actually stated something to the effect of being amazed at how bored they were during the fight scenes and such and I have to agree with them. They could have been cool. If the girls had been developed a lot more, it would have been.

You know, I can almost see how it could have been: like a warped dieselpunk psychological-Alice and Wonderland fairytale. I could see there being very clear, if somewhat distorted, plays between the different realities: even the point where you as the viewer might not be sure where one begins and one ends. Keeping in mind that the initial setting was in an exaggerated 1960s asylum would have been–and I suppose even is–a good start. I also think it would be fascinating to consider that a lot of the music that the protagonist is forced to dance to in the brothel reality does not even exist yet in her actual time line: which makes you wonder if what is construed as madness is something that goes beyond space and time.

Instead, what we have here is a video game with a very flimsy premise and attempt at depicting female empowerment: which did not work and I feel did the exact opposite. But the sad thing is: it could have worked. It could have been done if it had been done a little differently. For instance, in the beginning of the film itself instead of trying to depict a bunch of silent black and white sequences ala Sin City style, the film-makers–in my opinion–should have basically developed some character even then with a few verbal exchanges or what-not. I mean, even the “silent treatment” they were attempting to give us–a “show and don’t tell us” situation, could have worked for me if the body language and facial expressions of the characters weren’t so … over-exaggerated and melodramatic. It seriously made me wince to see that and I hoped it would improve as time went on.

The thing is, in creating this film, they followed a formula and a cycle. They had a quest, they had antagonists, heroines, items that needed to be found, and even a moral: which is that you have all the tools to take care of yourself you just need the will to use them and do what must be done. But it didn’t work. It just didn’t work.

And seriously? Naming the girls Blondie, Rocket, Sweet Pea, Amber and the protagonist Baby Girl made me wince. A lot.  You could argue that they are just monikers given in the brothel reality to these girls by patriarchal chauvinist forces, or that they were plays on Charlie’s Angels, but it still makes me wince. Their overly-fetishized little girl costumes did not help matters either. In fact, the way they were depicted in general wasn’t something I could really relate to or sympathize with. That, again, could have been done but it wasn’t. Also, Blue–their “owner”–for all he is a misogynist piece of garbage, and despite his moments of intelligence, really wasn’t that intelligent at all or consistent in how I would think he’d operate: especially when he doles out punishments. He might be a sadistic criminal, but I imagine he is also a pragmatic businessman and would have dealt with things a little more differently.

I do like the idea that he knew that in the brothel reality or fantasy that they were trying to escape and he figured it out, but that twist was never followed through because I’d assume the girls would adapt to it as well somehow. I don’t know how to phrase it beyond that. It just felt like a whole lot of flatness with special effects with a very forced “meaning” or “moral” stapled on at the very end and music sequence in the credits that has nothing to do with anything.

It just felt like a video game and honestly–if I wanted to see Alice with a machine gun with a similar psychological element–I’d probably play a game like American McGee’s Alice or its sequel Alice: Madness Returns. If you want to make a dark and gritty Alice story, make a dark and gritty Alice story or play one of the above games. But I’ll be fair: as a video game this film might have actually been better. If Snyder had created Suck Punch as a video game script and worked with other developers to make the game and then made a film from it, it might have been a lot better.

I guess since I am trying to be fair, it was his first original movie script and you can see these different elements coming together: but they just don’t make it in the spectacle that follows. I could also have seen this as a comic book first: with more development and time. I don’t know if that would have improved a lot about it, but with writing and time stories could have been made and maybe some essence might have been established along with form. Perhaps something along the spirit of David Mack’s excellent and insanely innovative Kabuki comics series might have been something interesting to see.

You might ask why I bothered to review this film at all given what I’ve said about it. I guess if I had to summarize it all under two words, it would be: could have. Although not exactly the same, after mentioning Kabuki I remembered a Noboru Iguchi film I saw at the Toronto After Dark film festival called RoboGeisha: the story of two sisters abducted and termed into geisha-assassin cyborgs. What I find really ironic is how even though it somewhat parodied Bandai’s Power Rangers, a lot of gore, and was in a lot of ways incredibly ridiculous, it laughed at itself and made you laugh with it. But not only did it do that, it got me invested in the characters. And while it didn’t have all of Sucker Punch‘s special effects or mien of grandeur, it was a lot more fun.

Oh, and one more thing: while I do think that Sucker Punch‘s heart might have tried to be in the right place (I appreciated that Baby Girl actually went into a fighting world when she danced to the music: something that I’ve visualized doing when I used to go to dance clubs myself), there was something about that just didn’t sit well with me. I’m glad I didn’t see it in theatres, though it has its entertainment value at times and I’ll give it a two out of five.

In the Superheroes’ Playground: ItsJustSomeRandomGuy’s “I’m a Marvel, I’m a DC”

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 1 Comment

I don’t remember how exactly it was I found ItsJustSomeRandomGuy. It must have been me looking for material on YouTube with regards to Watchmen or some comics related thing. You know: when I was either researching for my paper or indulging in one of my favourite past-times.

You all probably know and remember the old “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials. Well, RandomGuy did a spoof of that: with superheroes. He created “I’m a Marvel, I’m a DC”: where he animated action figures of heroes from different franchises comparing and contrasting themselves as well as bantering and even sometimes finding common ground.

The sample below is the very first skit that I came across:

What I like the most about these skits–which are highly satirical pieces that often break the fourth wall–is how JustSomeRandomGuy captures the personalities, and the voices of the superheroes that he represents through his collection of action figures. ItsJustSomeRandomGuy himself is a voice actor and teacher and it shows. Yet it is more than that. The fact of the matter is that he is also extremely well-versed in DC and Marvel story-lines, the comics franchises, and the medium itself. He also brings an incredible wit and creativity all of his own to what he has made.

As he goes on, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy actually begins to build story-lines of his own from the simple skits he began with. The arc begins with After-Hours, followed by Happy Hour and then the Zero Hour that’s still in progress. It is really fascinating to watch this evolution happen: from the usual two figure-skits–partially stop-motioned or edited–to full on interactions between figures from the Marvel and DC Universes.

It’s what a lot of us geeks did when we were children. I mean, let’s face it, a lot of us played with our doll–action figures, making voices and then new story lines for them. But JustSomeRandomGuy takes this–this same love for the superhero and villain toy-box–and does something really wonderful with it that I’d not seen too much of. He essentially, like I said earlier, creates a satire of superheroes with these figures. Yet at the same time, he keeps them in character–with a few humourous exceptions that somehow mesh well anyway–and captures their essences.

Watching these characters interact reminds me of all the Saturday morning cartoons and comic books and actually makes me feel good about myself just by watching them. They are my old friends from childhood–on my cards, in my cartoons, movies, and comics–but at the same time they have kept up with the times and have their own changes. Yet they are for the most part still fundamentally the same: while being very aware that they are actually comic book characters. I like this kind of meta-fiction and the fact that, yeah, if anyone would be intelligent and experienced enough to know that they are characters it would be these guys. Just how many universes and realities have they already been in themselves within their own stories?

ItsJustSomeRandomGuy gives back the Saturday morning and afternoon wonder, but also it also let the heroes and villains grow up with us: the slapstick accompanied by a certain degree of seriousness and the meta-fiction and fourth-wall breaking always placed under Marvel’s much lauded sense of, “Continuity! Issue #Etc.”

ItsJustSomeRandom Guy recreates and creates a golden magic that I am glad I came across. It’s nostalgia without the bitter part of the sweet. It continues to evolve with more hilarious parodies and touching messages.

The fact is, in my opinion, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy is a genius. Through the posing of these toys, he manages to cover issues from inter-character relations, different universes, the nature of and the issues surrounding comics, the effectiveness of the films around the comics, and a whole lot of popular cultural references while never making these self-reflexive heroes anything other than what they are in a series that knows exactly what it is.

If I had, say, two requests of ItsJustSomeRandomGuy–if it is in his power at all–and if you are reading this ItsJustSomeRandomGuy I’d say this. I would love to see an episode with the figurine of Animal Man in the Grant Morrison understanding of the character.

And I would love to see an exchange between Miracle/Marvelman and the rest of the Family–or even Shazam, Captain Marvel, and Superman–talking about the series that has not been published in forever. I would love to see your take on that if you have the figurines (of which I know the Miracle/Marvel Family are rare now and expensive and I do not know the legal elements involved, so I hesitate in asking this). But as a fan of yours, I simply can’t resist asking.

(And there is a custom-made action figure of Miracleman. I think only the Todd McFarlane statues were made, which is a pity)

For those of you who have never watched any of these YouTube videos and just want to surf through them, here is ItsJustSomeRandomGuy’s channel. They are worth every moment.

So to properly conclude this, I would just like to thank ItsJustSomeRandomGuy for his work, and leave you with this message.

So remember kids: the moral of today’s story is that continuity is important. Thank you, and Excelsior!

Creativity and Academia: The Glass-Bead Game That Never Ends

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 3 Comments

It’s amazing–to me–that I forgot to talk about this at all in my review of Hermann Hesse’s The Glass-Bead Game. I was originally going to write this as an addendum to the piece, but then I realized that the issue I want to address actually covers some much broader ground.

One that that is always stressed in Hesse’s novel by the Castalian Order that developed the Game is that it is not their role to create new things. Castalians are not supposed to be artists, but scholars of a spiritual bent and–according to them–anything that comes from the Game is simply to be contemplated and there is great discouragement against changing the rules that create and make up the Game proper. Basically, the Game itself seems to have been developed from pre-existing knowledge and there is usually great resistance from the Order itself in altering any of the rules or guidelines that were made to create it.

However, it is not only this. As I said before, creativity apparently is discouraged in Castalians in general: but that is simply not true. At one point in his studies, Joseph Knecht is encouraged–like other developing students in his Order–to write creative pieces about what they could have been in their lives. Also, he makes many changes to the rules of the Game even before he is Magister Ludi and they are accepted. Knecht could–of course–be the exception due to his gifted nature and not the rule–but it goes further than that.

To combine different disciplines together to create different patterns of expression is creation. There is analysis and study involved, but there is a synthesis of the parts into something new. Therefore, even during Knecht’s time before his reforms and his demise, the Glass-Bead Game–a contemplation exercise of intellectuals and academics–is a creative venture.

It reminds me of why I chose to pursue the Humanities at my University and why I pursued them in the way that I did. I learned about a great many things to do with literature, philosophy, history, social theory, and even to an extent art and expression. My program was by its nature very interdisciplinary and it looked not only at how certain philosophies and conventions work, but what forces make them and why.

Humanities also encourages scholars or humanists (as they are apparently called) to apply a plurality of “lenses” or “frames of reference” to a particular subject. For instance, when looking at a book we would look at the history of the culture that it was written in, the philosophical movements that existed then, the potential other sources that might have influenced its creation, the writer’s life, and how that book influenced other books and other cultures even and what the implications of what that book says might mean and how it might have meant different things to different people. So instead of looking at it from one view or lens, the theory was that we were to look at a thing with different mental tools or perspectives. We are even encouraged to look at how those tools and “lenses” were created: and why they exist the way they currently are.

All of that can be really difficult to articulate and sum up into a few sentences. Indeed, when people asked me what my Major was and I told them it was Humanities, more often than not they didn’t know what I was talking about: or they had a very different understanding as to what the Humanities actually is. For instance, the University of Toronto’s Humanities is different from York University’s: in that the former has certain divisions of Humanities, while the latter has an entire program that combines all those elements together: or tries to.

The fact is, for me, it often seemed like my Program–and maybe even Humanities as I know it–seeks to justify its existence by trying to be a discipline like Science or English. Sometimes even I feel it is just a “jack-of-all-trades while mastering none” perspective or that I personally just possess a whole lot of “party-cocktail trivia” and nothing more compared to the specialists of different fields. Personally, to make a gaming digression, I think of it as multi-classing and spreading certain dots or numbers of Experience Points out that–while it may take a while–will eventually pay off a very well-rounded character.

My role-playing game analogy and tangent aside, sometimes I felt like–just with the Glass-Bead Game of Castalia, the Humanities is very stringent on its guidelines of scholarship and what scholarship is because it is a “relatively young” discipline as we understand it and it wants legitimacy. The thing is I think both are already legitimate and allowing for flexibility in what scholarship and academia can be–by allowing for change–they distinguish themselves. I know sometimes I really wanted to say that I shouldn’t have felt like I had to apologize for my choice of Program and–more specifically–the Humanities shouldn’t have to apologize for what it is.

As an interesting side-note, apology originally was derived from the concept of defense: defending your perspective through logical debate known as argument. I also think there are many other ways to make your point instead of being defensive or not testing what your discipline–or your medium–can do. Film and comics were very similar to that regard in that both wanted to “fit in” and be accepted but they are different. I know I’m making a lot of very potentially bad analogies here in equating disciplines with media, but in my mind they are very similar if not one and the same.

What I love about the Humanities is that it let me put so many things together–it let me be analytic and synthetic–and I think I had more opportunity to do so in that discipline than anywhere else. I got to look at my favourite authors and writings. I got to analyze some of my own stories in a final paper. I even wrote a comic book script as a final assignment in another course: using my knowledge of the course material and comics media. I know York has an Interdisciplinary Studies Program as well where students are encouraged to do independent work and even create art as their final project.

As you can see, I feel very passionately about this. I think that gathering and critiquing knowledge is important, but that once you try to look at the why of something–to contemplate it and its application to yourself … to look at the human in it–creating something can be just as important. I like that my Program allowed me that freedom, for the most part, and it’s just amazing how The Glass-Bead Game applies to so many of these issues that I’d been thinking about for a very long time now.

I firmly believe that when you make a work of any kind, you create knowledge: and that viewpoint challenges not only what scholarship is, but what art is as well. There was a time in history when apparently there was no division between what was art and what was science. They were all apparently unified under Philosophy along with a whole other lot of disciplines we separate and specialize now. I’m obviously not saying that other disciplines are not as important or that their distinctions should be eliminated: specializations can be very important because they focus on a particular subject or task quite efficiently and with necessary detail.

But I like the differences in the discipline I chose and that potential for growth that I always felt there. It certainly feels like it fit my mindset: at least at the time. The best part is that even when school is out, you still keep learning about the Humanities. You can still keep making things. The Game doesn’t end after you graduate college or university. It doesn’t end when you leave Castalia for the unknown. You keep playing and, you know, I think that is a very good thing.

Book Review: Stephen Andrew Lee’s Tales from Sanctuary: The Vampire Sex Bar

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 17 Comments

I’m trying to figure out how to begin this. Originally, I was going to talk about this book on Amazon but–back in the day–it had no entry to make a review about. This book is out-of-print. Its publisher Spitfire Books doesn’t seem to exist anymore and the author didn’t seem to have written any other books after this one.

For a book I didn’t even know existed up until four summers ago, it impacted me a lot and carries more resonance than I think most people in Toronto realize. First, before I go on let me give you some background. Sanctuary The Vampire Sex Bar is, as the name of an old Goth nightclub, a misnomer. From what I could tell, no sex happened in the club at all: though it was one of the first Goth nightclubs in Toronto. It was opened by Lance Goth in 1992 and it closed in 2000. The Club itself divided into the Bar above and the Catacombs, fittingly and sensibly enough, in the basement where it was apparently an all-ages space.

This was a time when Goth Nights and indeed the whole subculture was at its peak in Toronto: specifically in the Queen Street West area. There was a very interesting Goth fashion store in that area called Siren and a whole other series of clubs, but Sanctuary lasted for a very long time until its last location became a Starbucks. Sanctuary’s time was also a time of Buffy, the Toronto-based Forever Night series and the old World of Darkness’ Vampire the Masquerade: which I mention to create a little more ambiance before I go on.

Now, as for Tales From Sanctuary: The Vampire Sex Bar the book, it was created in 1997 by Lance Goth: also known as Stephen Andrew Lee. Like I said, I had no idea who he even was or what this book was up until four years ago. I only periodically went downtown in my teen years–to places like the Vatikan or Velvet Underground, even the Bovine Sex Club (another aptly named place, I wonder if anyone will or has written a book on that)–and when I moved out to live on York residence I went to the Neutral Lounge about once a week every Friday for their Goth Night.

So I came into all of this at the remnants of the tail-end of this whole time. Then one day a friend let me read her copy of this book. Apparently, during the late 90s when it came out it was easy to get copies of the thing but now it has become very difficult to do so. So here is my challenge: I want to talk about this book and not give away spoilers on the off-chance that someone can access a copy, yet I also want to give people enough information as to what I’m actually talking about and I feel kind of foolish reviewing a book that people most likely haven’t–or will never–read. But I will do my best.

Tales from Sanctuary is a collection of stories. Each story starts off with a quote of some kind that fits its tone. There is no Table of Contents so you just have to read through them really. I read most of the first story, “The Wind-Walkers” at my friend’s place before I actually ordered my own copy of the book from Alibris.

“Wind-Walkers” is the story of two last remaining members of a long-lived winged humanoid race that fed off of human blood and flesh. They once ruled a kingdom of human worshipers which was betrayed to the Roman Empire by someone they trusted. After being violated, and one of them also mutilated, the two hide for millennia until one day they find Sanctuary and learn to trust again. This story dominates a good seventy-eight pages of the book and it is not without its flaws. The grammar is atrocious. I recall there even being a few spelling mistakes as well. In addition–in the long scene where you see a flashback into the Wind Walkers’ past–they speak far too anachronistically. At the very least, some attempt to make the speech sound more formal or archaic could have gone a long way to suspend that portion of the necessary disbelief I needed to think I was looking at ancient vampiric rulers of Nabatea.

Yet we begin to see here an interesting concept: that beings with monstrous appetites can be sympathetic, even pitied, or emphasized with. Lee actually makes thinking and feeling characters of these Wind-Walkers and I know I wanted to be happy for them. It made me think that they weren’t human and it was not completely fair to hold them to human standards, but at the same time it showed that there was some pain and some compassion and understanding that transcended all of that. It was a bit awkward even there, but through them you begin to experience the club of Sanctuary: that strange dark place of mysteries and humanity where you feel with them as they actually feel like they fit in somewhere in human society after millennia on the run.

At the very back of the book, Lee explains all of his inspirations and some of his methods in crafting these stories. What is fascinating for me is how he crafts a mythological Sanctuary. It is obviously based off of his Club–under his persona of Lance Goth–and perhaps even people he knew or knew of. He plays with the idea of someone from the Goth subculture not feeling like they belong and that Sanctuary is not only a place for them, but also a place for supernatural beings–sometimes understated ones–that feel the exact same way. Lee mentions that when crafting the scenes that lead up to each character going to Sanctuary in each story, he actually amalgamates places from other cities into the background: adding to Toronto’s geography in that way. I don’t know how I feel about that because I hadn’t lived in Toronto city that long and I was–and am–still discovering a lot about it. But he does begin to capture a certain kind of spirit, if you will in that first story and in how he writes this.

So then I got my own copy of the book and proceeded to read through the rest at a relentless pace. In “The Cold Ones,” we see a story about another vampiric group: specifically three sisters that seem to frequent a dark corner of the club and come from a mysterious place with a cab fare of $14.95. Now, this story is from the point of a view of an ordinary person and apparent-staff member of the Bar who gets drawn into the world of these sisters’ and actually is called upon to help them. Again, there was something awkward about this story and while I know that revealing all of “the monster’s” background might be considered “info-dumping,” there were references made such as “the Weir” that in retrospect I kind of get (a thing that traps something) but I wasn’t sure at the time. Also, I’m not a geographical expert but I would assume that Mount Pleasant Cemetery is much farther from Queen Street West than the book portrayed. Still, there was something very compelling in this story in how something can be horrifying, and beautiful, and relatable while still very much a mystery.

I really liked the story “Lillith” which actually has references and a list to various kinds of plants … some of them potentially poisonous. It is about a young woman living downtown who feels awkward in her skin and is terrified of physical and emotional danger. Then something really bad happens to her and she eventually finds she has a problem: a very real and human problem. It’s only at Sanctuary: at a place of seemingly strange people and monsters that she finds a place where she actually feels like she actually belongs and feels safe. There is a bit of a crossover here with characters from an earlier story too and I was glad she got to meet them under those circumstances: and that it let me know what happened to those characters in the meantime.

I related to “The Elixir of Love” in a somewhat different way. It actually comes after “Pins and Needles,” but I wanted to mention it because it was a nice contrast to “Lillith.” It was a story about a young man who thinks he finds love and gets introduced to an eerie and then rather heart-breaking reality: where even if you support the idea that there are different rules for different beings, it isn’t just humans that can be shallow “douchey” people. The last is rather banal, but makes it no less painful for it. In this story, Sanctuary is less of a place where he belongs, and more the site of a humiliation and that sense of cognitive dissonance where you think you have found happiness but it is really the loneliness of a gritty past 4 am downtown night. It was somewhat unsettling, but captured what a friend of mine calls “moments of painful clarity” rather well. Both Lillith and Jayson are very self-conscious characters full of real fear and desire–that do not feel like they fit in–and when they find Sanctuary they meet two entirely different ends.

“Pins and Needles” was a disturbing story, but the build-up of the main character’s development into a self-proclaimed “doctor of bad blood,” is well done and is a nice study into morbidity and “a certain point of view.” Finally, there is “Ricky Las Vegas”: a story about a talented musician that only vaguely wonders why his bands keep disbanding, his friends disappearing, and why Lance won’t let him sing at his Club. It is only towards the end of this really short story that Ricky realizes what he is and what he will do from there. I really liked this story in particular because it deals with psychic vampirism and creativity and how they can be related.

Throughout all of these stories is the presence of a fictional Lance Goth who seems to have some mysteries abilities to sense people in his Club and even come on them without being detected. He is usually the catalyst for the characters wanting to tell their stories or find some information that is integral to us for the plot in some of the stories. He usually takes some small mementos from each person he tells things to, or has told to him. It took me a while to realize that Lance actually existed, and that he was actually Stephen Andrew Lee because I can be dim like that.

All and all, Tales from Sanctuary was not the best-written book or series of stories I’ve ever read. I had immense trouble suspending disbelief for “Wind-Walkers,” no matter how fascinating an idea it was. However, this book did something to me. It is hard to explain, but if I had to put it in writing I would say that it showed me the spirit of the Toronto Goth Nights that once existed or wanted to exist: a night that once flourished until morning came yet still existing somewhere in the city’s cracks. It showed me magic in an urban place that I lived in and in that way it did change me.

For one thing, it made me begin to write about Toronto. I confess I actually wrote three stories based on Tales from Sanctuary–The Wrong Club, To the New Millennium, and Another Time–and I wish I could locate Lee to thank him for making these. I bought a copy of the book for a friend that lost her own years before and it was worth it too to share even some of that understanding. If you are keen on reading a copy and you don’t have a friend with access to it, there are some that were being sold as Used on Alibris and Abebooks. Amazon itself is even advertising a seller that will sell a copy for $998.00, but personally I would check those other Used Book Places first or wait.

For all of its idiosyncrasies, I think that Tales from Sanctuary is an important part of Toronto’s subcultural history that now lost place where as the back cover tells you, “You can hunt, but you cannot feed.”

I give this strange book a three out of five.

Comics Review: Miracleman: The Making of and the Human in a Superhero Utopia

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

There have been a lot of articles and discussion on this matter. J.C. Maçek III gives a very in-depth background into the history of the creative and legal controversies behind Marvel/Miracleman and his comics, while Julian Darius talks about why Miracleman Matters and how it is a prime example of the Comics Revisionism happening in the 80s. I kid neither myself nor you in that there is a lot more out there: more than the actual comic itself.

I find it amazing how much one superhero and his comic can complicate things. I personally think it is ridiculous and a crime against humanity that the Miracleman series has not been published in ages. In fact, it is patently ridiculous that it still isn’t out yet and it’s been this way for decades. The only way you can even get hard-copies nowadays is to find the single issues at certain comic book stories, or ebay, and be prepared to spend a lot of your hard-earned money: anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I really wish I was making this up. It is a bloody crime and I hope that any legal bullshit that still exists is rectified at least in my lifetime.

But I’m not here to rant about creative legalities. Rather, I want to talk about this series because I read it and I have a few thoughts on the matter that I really want to get out there. They will probably not be as detailed as those in the above links, but I will do my best as always.

Essentially, without giving much away, Miracleman is about a superhero that finds out–after years of forgetfulness caused by trauma–that he is a lot more than he appears to be: and I don’t mean that he realizes he is a superhero. That last is the least of it. Alan Moore revised this character from the hero’s comics Golden Age days when he was Marvelman and part of the Marvel Family: the latter of which he also revised too.

What can I really say without spoiling it on the off-chance that you might read it one day: or at least not spoiling it too much? Alan Moore takes the archetypal building blocks of this super-hero and to say he revises him and his world is an understatement. It is more like Moore rips into the spine and gives us a “behind the scenes” look at a two-dimensional plane to reveal a gritty, grandiose third-dimensional reality that blows your mind. The comics of Marvelman become a mask for a much larger world.

It is a story about a man who finds himself and does not realize what he has found. It is about a relationship that changes. It is about how a human being would really deal with super-heroism and what that is. It is about a former ally becoming your worst enemy, and showing the world just how horrifying a madman with super-powers truly is. It is about finding out that your old arch-nemesis is your creator and needing to surpass that. It is about Project Zarathustra, the Spookshow, comic books as mythology, and saving people’s lives for “their own good,” and the potential consequences thereof.

To say that Miracleman is a critique of the superhero is another awful understatement. All I can say is imagine Watchmen and what it does to the masked hero and his or her superhero successor, and then imagine a series that is somewhat “broken” (in the sense of it sometimes having gaps but also being insanely powerful) and goes an entirely different route from apocalypse and dystopia.

I was first re-introduced to Miracleman through an article I found in my own Master’s researches into mythic world-building called “What if the Apocalypse Never Happens: Evolutionary Narratives in Contemporary Comics” by Abraham Kawa in a volume entitled Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Aside from it also talking about Alan Moore’s proposed “Twilight of the Heroes” which is a very fascinating concept in itself, it deals with how humanity would handle the world being saved after becoming so reconciled to its ending.

That is the challenge that Alan Moore leaves Neil Gaiman as he finished his run of the Miracleman series. Some people apparently this was really cruel of Moore. I mean: where do you go from such a seemingly close-ended conclusion? Where do you go from up? How does humanity deal with a utopia on Earth crafted with the best of intentions? Just how does humanity survive perceived perfection?

And that was Neil’s creative challenge to answer. Darius, along with a few others, says that Neil Gaiman’s writing and concepts in his Miracleman run were not on par with Alan Moore’s. However, I disagree. I think that Neil was given an incredible challenge, but one that his mind worked with. Think about it: Alan Moore created a background and a world. He crafted and borrowed and mythologically re-adapted the main players. He set certain events in motion.

But what I think Neil did was that then he looked at the other half of the equation as it were. In his Miracleman: Golden Age run, Neil looks at how ordinary people like you or I would interact with this utopia that Moore left in his wake. They are still human beings and still have their strengths, their weaknesses, and their differences. It is still a physical world. Yet Neil also taps into that great mythological well and he plays with the form of the comic to an awesome degree. Miracleman # 20 was by far one of my favourite stories: reminiscent of Stardust and yet so different. It crafted to look like a children’s story, but it is a children’s story about a very different kind of child and a very different reality where the stars are dangerous but also wonderful. He tells a grown-up and a child’s story. I think it was one of his best works and it is a damned shame that it is not accessible. As far as I am considered, that comic alone demonstrated what great mastery truly is.

Also, Issue 22–with the Carnival celebrating life and death, and the balloons in the sky– actually made me cry because it was that fucking beautiful, and I use my profanity here for tremendous emphasis. Some of the earlier issues were a little awkward, but they definitely hit their stride and there is a lot of innovation but always that human element. Even Darius mentions in the above article that there is some considerable nuance in Neil’s Miracleman stories. Alan Moore can obviously utilize the human element, but he tends to be more grandiose and ideological I find: while Neil always finds the mystery and the human and he shows you that the story never ends where you think it will.

And he could have ended Miracleman after The Golden Age, but he went on to a Silver Age that … never ended because it was unfortunately never continued. Miracleman is almost a lost, and incomplete masterpiece made by two mythopoeic genii. It makes me sad to think about it, but I’m glad I did manage to read this and I feel so much better as a reader and writer for it.

I would give Miracleman five out of five. It may be broken. It may have its issues and some plot gaps, and some copyright issues by having visual references to both Marvel and DC in it, but it was well worth reading and its worth as a story far outweighs its legend as the unfinished, ligated product that people still talk about and wait for. As for me, I earnestly look forward to the day when I can link to it here, and when I can buy copies for myself to hold in my own two hands.

Kimota, ladies and gentlemen.