Jumping off the bandwagon and current comic reading list

I'm quitting, or at the very least, taking a break from WOW.

Let's see how long I can go!

It's always been an on again-off again thing with me and WOW. There will be weeks if not about a month where I'm just burned out of grinding, raiding, and PVP'ing and just decide to take a break. Maybe WOW's just a habit for me and then again maybe it's one of the few games that I can play on my two-year-old laptop that I'm typing on today. Let me tell you: if I had a nicer rig, I'd be playing Arkham Asylum, Red Dead Redemption, and the upcoming LA Noire. Eh well, there's always League of Legends, TF2, and Puzzle Quest 2 to keep my gaming needs satisfied. On top of that, this'll be a great opportunity to refine my creative writing skills.

Speaking of which, my aspirations are aimed towards writing for comics. To that end, I'm starting to collect comics to get a feel of the audience and the style I'll be writing into. I've spent $30 so far (no impulse control whatsoever...), and here's the titles I've bought or collecting so far and my thoughts towards them:

• Batman: The title's decent, although it's a little to fantastic for my tastes. The recent story line (#707-704) involves an ancient, powerful Chinese relic. Not that I don't like a little fantasy now and then (why I play WOW), but I like my Batman hardboiled and noir...
  
  
• Detective Comics:...which is why this is my favorite title. This is Batman at his film noir best: investigating crimes, exposing the dark underbelly of Gotham, kicking ass and taking names. See my previous review of "The Black Mirror" storyline. Kudos to writer Scott Snyder, who's said in recent interviews that his goal is to depict Gotham as a dark mirror where the viewer's worst fears will be reflected back to them. To that end, It's interesting what horror elements Snyder will integrate along with the noir elements.
  
  
• American Vampire: Snyder's other series he's writing. My first issue and so far I like it: a short history of one vampire family from the nation's birth to the present. Currently our protagonist Lucius Sweet is stepping by a Wild West show in '19 and going in to enact vengeance. For what it's worth, the characters are engaging, the story flows, and the art matches Snyder's writing. Worth collecting.
  
  
• Vampirella: Buffy meets Blade in a Castlevania plot. Lots of asskicking, lots of blood, surprisingly low amount of T$A. Don't let the cover fool you: Vampirella's rocking a more sensible jeans, boots, and trench coat look. It works and the comic's good...but when I can get DC and Vertigo titles for a buck less, I'll pass. I will look into Dynamite's other mini series, Lone Ranger: the Death of Zorro.
  
  
• DMZ: An exceptionally engaging statement on the past and current administration's war policies, contractor lobbying and profiteering, and how there are only two sides in a war: combatants and non-combatants. Read it for the great action and the great big "Fuck You" to the Military Industrial Complex.
  
  
• Zatanna: I wish I would've known about this character earlier. She's a master magician who not only possesses real magical powers but is also an active member of the JLA. She also has an irrational fear of puppets? And is written by Paul Dini, writer for my favorite animated series Batman: the Animated Series? Sold!
  
  
• Power Girl: Color me imprised! I expected gratuitous T&A at the expense of story thanks to Power Girl's...talents, yeah, talents. I instead got a really deep and engaging look into how a superhero juggles both an alter ego and secret identity. Plus she's fighting dinosaurs. Awesome.
  
  
  
• Green Lantern: I'm a bit worried that the Lanterns might be overexposed in recent weeks thanks to the upcoming film. GL is everywhere. He's headlining C2E2, there's a couple of DC animated features out, there's a new "War of the Green Lanterns" storyline...I afraid DC might be bleeding him dry. In any case, I can say I'm interested in buying future issues after this one. The great thing about the internet is that any time I'm stuck on a continuity issue (who's that, why's he/she important, etc), a quick Google/Wikipedia/TV Tropes search will clear that up, and especially with a title like this that I'm not all too familiar with. I can list off a respectable amount of Batman characters, but I can only name a few Green Lantern ones.

Yeah, I know there's no Marvel titles up there, but one I'm not much of a Marvel fan and when DC is doing a more affordable promotion (Drawing the line at $2.99!), I'll pass. Most of Marvel's titles are about four bucks when I can spend ten and buy three DC/Vertigo comics.

I'd appreciate any recommendations as a first-time comics reader/collector. I'm focusing more on Noir/Cyberpunk/Mystery titles, but I'm also on the lookout for any titles that have a lighthearted meta spin on them like Power Girl.

RUMOR Joseph Gordon Levit to play "Holiday" in The Dark Night rises

Joseph-Gordon Levit AKA Arthur from Inception is rumored to play the Holiday Killer in Nolan's 3rd Batman film The Dark Knight Rises.

For those of you not in the know, the Holiday Killer was the main antagonist in the excellent Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Batman graphic novel The Long Halloween. "Holiday" was a serial killer hitting mob leaders and officers on holidays who left behind a corresponding novelty as a calling card. His actions instigate an all-out war between the Mob and Batman's Rouges Gallery.

So what's the implications for The Dark Knight Rises? Well for me, with the inclusion of both Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway as Bane and Catwoman, respectively tells me that Nolan is trying something especially unique for the new Batman film. Again, for those not in the know, Bane was a Genius Bruiser luchador-inspired hitman who, while brilliant in his normal form, became superhumanly strong once he took special steroids. He's also one of the very few to successfully incapacitate Batman by breaking his back in Knightfall. He's a relatively obscure character, outside of those of us who watched Batman: The Animated Series as kids, but Holiday is a much more obscure character in comparison.

My guess is it's Nolan's move to curry favor with the hardcore Bat-fans out there after he...ahem...underused Scarecrow in Batman Begins. By adding two obscure characters in the mix, it's his way of both further accommodating his realistic style and to appeal to the hardcore crowd.

A note on Nolan's "realistic" style: his style is much more of the subset hardboiled. Hardboiled, most commonly seen in the noir and cyberpunk subgenres, is characterized by having realistic grounding but enough wiggle room to accommodate stylization. It's why John Woo can do bullet time and those damn doves in his films or why Max Payne could use the heavy Norse analogies. While Nolan has consistently used the more conceivable villains and settings in his films, he still leaves enough room to allow his characters to beat the shit out of eachother and still bounce back for another go. This is why he's chosen Catwoman, Bane, and Holiday as opposed to the more fantastical/sci-fi villains such as Mr. Freeze or Poison Ivy.

My speculation is as follows: Holiday will be running around hitting mob targets in the first act. By the second act, we'll see Selena Kyle aka Catwoman lifting objects from the Falciones while they hire Bane to hit Holiday and /or Batman. Bane will sucessfuly break Batman's back (possibly early on in the seccond act), incapacitating Bats and leaving Gothom to the mercy of the mob. Now how it ends is contingent on where Nolan wants to go with the series:

• If this is his last film, Batman will rise to the occasion (hence the title) and defeat Bane and bring Holiday to justice, dying in the process. This will exhonerate him from taking the fall for Dent's murders and end the films on a bittersweet tone which, as seen in his previous films, is Nolan's style.
• If he's going for a fourth, Catwoman will take up the responsibility of being Gotham's de facto vigilante while Bats recuperates. See above how four will end.
  

In any case, I'm personally overjoyed of the implication of Holiday in the film, at the very least Levit will be cast. The Long Halloween is my personal favorite graphic novel: right above Watchmen on my list. I love Loeb's noir inspired style and influences and how Sale's art accommodates it perfectly. We'll see how Nolan plays this one, but in the meantime I'm looking even more forward to The Dark Knight Rises.

The Numbers Game

Disclaimer: The views I share are mine and mine alone. I apologize to those I may have hurt in my rash generalizations.

Sitting at my computer with two more take-home final essays to go, I'm thinking about this little discussion I had with my science friend Andrew. He's alright, but we got into a bit of an argument today on the merits of cutting arts out of school over maintaining math. It got me to thinking to why science and art persons can be so hostile towards eachother, then I remembered this little quote from Stalin or Remaque, depending on where you've heard it:

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

This in my opinion represents the worst in math and science; everything's a number to be filed; a formula to be solved; a statistic to be posted. No more, no less.

Numbers can lie; numbers can device; numbers can be for fools. When politicians such as the Governor of Wisconsin Walker say that they're taking away "bargaining rights", it's to make it look like a business deal. They hide the fact that "bargaining rights" are right to assemble, as promised under the First Amendment, next to freedom of expression and freedom of religion. When a chief of staff or a wartime reporter talks about "collateral damage", it's to make it look like numbers of destroyed properties instead of numbers of slain civilians. When you hear about the national death from Tea Party candidates and conservative pundits on Fox News, they throw around words like "trillion" and "billions" not because it's the truth, but if you throw big numbers around enough, you can scare people.

The fastest way to detach a people from their humanity is to take away their identity and slap on a number; more effective than giving them a label. It's why the nation of Eurasia refers to England as "Airstrip One" or why the Holy Empire of Britannia calls Japan "Area 11", or why the Brave New World catagorizes newborns into alphas and betas; it's easy to detach yourself from a living, human being or group of them if you just attach a number and not even bother with a label or a slur. Don't talk about "illegal aliens" in terms of names like Juan or Maria; just throw around words like "millions" and "thousands" and how they relate to the border. Don't talk about dissidents in the Middle East as "protesters"; use buzzwords like "Muslim Brotherhood" and "revolution" and add an inflated number to it.

You can also use numbers to misinform and confuse people. Throw a person in Room 101 and apply enough electroshock; you can convince the toughest man around you're holding up five fingers when you're holding two. It's not "hundreds" or even "a few" out of all the upstanding, peaceful Muslim individuals in the world, it's "millions" and "several" if you want to whip up enough fear into convincing individuals that one mosque that's only a "couple" blocks away from Ground Zero instead of "several" blocks away. You can convince thousands to vote Republican; to burn Korans; to breed discontent and irrational hatred against real people who don't fit in to the American WASP paradigm. You can falsely accuse a whole swath of upstanding Muslim individuals that they're in the league with terrorists successfully just like Representive King in his current Anti-Muslim Witch Hunt that's on a scale that would make McCarthy proud.

Maybe I'm just really frustrated since it's finals week; maybe I had too much tequila a couple nights ago and now my mind's a little off. Maybe I'm listening to too much Muse. And I know that words are just as dangerous, like how we waged conquest a century ago in the name of saving our "brown brothers" from themselves or how right after 9/11 we used terms like "Islamo-Fascism" to refer to the governments and mentality of the Middle East. But when it comes down to it, the mind has a hard time comprehending numbers on a large scale. When someone murders dozens, we have them executed or locked away for life; when someone kills hundreds or even thousands, we put them under house arrest or even leave them in power. When Bernie Maddof steals millions from charities and investors he's a thief and sent to prison, but when the banks take billion in "bailouts", we let them give huge bonuses and manipulate a large segment of the population to rally against any regulation to stop them from doing this again because it's "redistributing wealth" and "socialist".

It's a lot easier to think of a number instead of a person.