If you somehow were able to climb into my head, and dug with your hands (or a shovel, if you somehow managed to have the presence of mind to bring one), you would find layers of my mind that are pure sonic energy. I do not listen to a wide variety of music, so you'll find a lot of repetitive sounds, but you'll figure out very quickly that I use music the way anyone else uses a hammer and a nail. I'm lousy with hammers and nails, but use music like only a master carpenter ever could. Music is a tool, an instrument for building the mental landscape. If you kept going, lower and lower, you'd eventually find a point where there is no further to dig: all would be random chaos, the type of raw and powerful feelings that are impossible to communicate, possibly even feel directly.
The sonic foundation of every last thing I've ever come to believe is the Switchfoot album Nothing is Sound. There is very little before that point, and most of that's adrift in the chaos, waiting for reclamation. Everything after that rests upon the foundation that is Nothing is Sound.
Like all music that one loves, this came at a particular time in my life. I was a senior in highschool. My best friend had gone off the deep end due to his parent's nasty divorce. My own parents were in grave danger of having the same thing happening to them. Most of my other friends were a year older than I, and had graduated. And I'd relapsed into lyme's disease, which this time brought along extreme exhaustion and a brain fog so intense that I could barely think, nevermind see the oncoming car until it was honking right at me. My friend would show up at random hours of the night, awaken me from a sleep that did no good, and beg for help through the fog of pain and confusion. He'd then vanish back into the night, and I'd collapse back into a fugue state that had as much to do with sleep as a cat does with a dog. I literally didn't have the energy to fight or run from a mental breakdown so profound I am still putting the pieces back together, seventeen years later. I couldn't rationalize what was going on: it was Hell. Everywhere I looked, inside and out, was Hell.
And this is the album that I learned how to deal with it.
We Are One Tonight particularly struck me, although at the time I'd have no idea why. I wasn't in a relationship, and was missing my wife (although I didn't know it), and I had no reason to really feel so attached, at least from what I could tell. It's pretty easy to tell now that I was hoping my parents would make it (they did!), and that that hope came out in the song. I also wanted, somehow, to have hope for msyelf, that somehow the wreckage that was me could somehow be mended, somehow I'd make it, somehow I would not die. Against all hopes, against all reason, against everything I could comprehend, I wanted to live. So I'd just drive or put on headphones and just sing, at the top of my lungs. I'd scream to this song so loudly people outside the car would hear me. At some point it became an anthem, a declaration that I would not go down so easy, a stubborn defiance against the powers that had cut me out of a reality anyone would have recognized.
Even now, sixteen years later, I feel a fire in my gut as something I thought was dead roars to life, screaming "NO NOT YET, DON'T YOU COLLAPSE ON ME". It spits and fights and scratches and screeches its defiance of the gods, of reality, of every living creature, that I am still alive and you can take my life out of my cold dead fingers. It takes the lyrics and changes the feeling from "I'm dying" to a statement of faith: a creed that is roared at full blast.
More than a refusal.
More than a denial of death.
More than even "I wish to live": that's still too abstract.
It is a full and roaring primal fire, one that will consume all in its path, bursting open seeds of hope that could never have been cracked open otherwise. It becomes the loud anthem of a man who cannot return to what he was, and does not wish to. It becomes the battle cry of someone who wishes to reconcile the irreconcilable, to fight to mend, even at the cost mine own self. If you are going to live you must be okay with living killing you. Listening to this song reminds me of this fact. And so I grab the bitter cup and drain to the dregs in one gulp.
There's a lot of bandied words about "deconstruction' these days. "These aren't archetypes, they're people!" screams one camp.... as then Spider-Man sells his marriage to the Devil. Wait, back that up. That's a cartoonish thing to have Peter Parker do, right? Somehow people just sell their marriages? To the Devil? That's a thing? I've seen a lot of weird shit in my life, but I've never heard of that one. "They're supposed to be inspiring" screams the other camp, and hold up figures who they were confused about what that character was actually inspiring in the first place. I've put a lot of keystrokes towards the most egregious example of that hypocrisy on this blog.
So what happens when someone manages to do the virtuous thing and find the middle ground?
Ooh, that's a chef's kiss.
Enter T Bird, a superhero who has washed out. He hit hard times, and while he didn't give up he certainly faded. He's also powerless, which doesn't help. When the corporation who had formerly backed T Bird gives him a chance to redeem himself, he finds he has no choice but to go with this chance. Even if it's probably a lie.
Josh Howard mans the whole show here. And it is a cohesive job. This is what happens when you get a good writer/artist on a comic: you can't tell that either of the jobs was prioritized, and it happens to feel more coherent than two people working together. Howard puts it together really well, treating each part of the job with equal care. It's nice to see someone take the craft as a whole so seriously.
Now, what makes this story the golden mean is the absolute dedication of Howard to showing T Bird's strengths and weaknesses, equally. Mitch has a fantastic sense of duty... and is a terrible husband. He knows he's a terrible husband. He tries to not be. He fails. He's good at being a hero, but only if he's got powers, and only if he's got his family. And the first issue is about how he accidentally damages it almost beyond compare. It's a fantastically put together beginning.
It's not too often that I find something that gets how to legitimately treat heroes. None of the characters in this book are pathetic, but none of them feel like they belong in a preschooler's coloring book. The production is top-notch. And I felt like I was having a ton of fun the whole time. You don't usually get fun and introspection, so that's something.
The word hero gets thrown around a lot. In fact I’d venture it’s the center of the sham we call the culture war. From the left’s decrying of “hero worship” to the right’s senseless heroic lionization, the word is used a ton. In fact it’s used in so many contexts that the word barely has meaning.
So let’s back up.
What’s a hero?
A hero is a scapegoat. If it’s a nice story he does it willingly. If he doesn’t it’s a tragedy.
Yes, it’s that simple.
Oh, right, scapegoats. A scapegoat is a creature who carries the sins of its people. It acts out the greater drama of its setting, and pays the ultimate price of death. Without a scapegoat societies don’t function. The anger and rage has to go somewhere! Folks like Rene Girard have explored this concept of the scapegoat being the basis for all societies, and we're not going to get into it more here. It is my basis for how I think heroes work. I base my thoughts on this from reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Arthurian lore in general, nevermind sources like the Book of Judges in the Bible.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest myth we have; we don't have a complete copy, just extracts. The general arc of the myth appears to be about a Nephilim mass rapist king, Gilgamesh, learning humility by coping with the prophesied death of his best friend, Enkidu, a man specifically made to become friends with Gilgamesh and then die. Gilgamesh manages to find a way to possibly bring Enkidu back... and fails because he's an ass. He comes back and becomes the king his people need him to be, humbled by his sorrow. Just like the rest of his people.
The Iliad is 500 some odd pages of a bunch of cool people being killed Mortal Kombat style because Achilles is a whiny bitch, who accepts at the end that he will not be able to avoid his death and makes peace with his enemies. Just like the rest of his people. No seriously, that's the Iliad. Powerful book, but pretty easy to sum up.
The Odyssey is about Odysseus trying to make his way home, only to be hindered because of his honorable actions during The Iliad; Odysseus is explicitly paying for the Achaen's victory over the Trojans. Odysseus has to walk many paths to come back home, finally ending in him bedding his wife, Penelope. Given that orgasm is usually classed as a similar experience to death in most pre-modern thought I've encountered.... yeah. Still fits. Like a glove.
The Book of Judges is filled with people who do not fit the modern "Christian" ideal of a good person, at all. And yet, because of their position within the whole (generally outcasts) they are used to keep Israel going a bit longer. And each story ends with the hero dying and "becoming a part of their people". That's a different thing for a different point in this series of blog posts, but that verbiage is important. Put a pin in it for now.
Arthurian lore is filled with statements like "If you keep doing what you're doing it's all gonna collapse" and "I know, but this is what I am". Whether it be Arthur demanding to marry Guinevere, even if it ruins his kingdom, or Lancelot bedding Guinevere despite knowing it was to destroy everything, or any number of such warnings and disregardings thereof, there's a demand to remain what you are, even if it's disastrous. To be you is best, even if that's tragic.
Star Wars is filled with heroes of this older tradition, with the ones who knew they were playing a part in a much larger thing, and were willing to play that part to the max. The difficulty of Anakin, Luke, and Ben was not in being a part of something, but in figuring where they fit and why. The journey each of these characters goes on is not simply who they are, but to whom they belong and what price they're willing to pay to do so.
Anakin Skywalker's arc is the entirety of The Skywalker Saga. From hopeful child to failed hero to villain to ascended being, Anakin runs the gamut of possibilities in The Skywalker Saga. If there is one story that is tracked all the way through, its Anakin's. That may surprise more than a few of you, but the sequels are actually the key to what being the Chosen One really is. Anakin is the one who brings balance between the living and the dead; Anakin defeats death itself, by eliminating the loss of individuality in the dead. Anakin's journey is essentially a cosmic one: he takes all the paths that all could take, and is therefore capable of going to everyone on the other side of the Force.
Luke, Anakin's son, is the beating heart of Star Wars. It is he that convinces Anakin to return to righteousness, it is he that shows Rey the importance of serving the Force, and who gives the Resistance the hope they need to fight Ben and the First Order. Luke's arc is in deciding to being the beacon of hope. In battling his cynicism and doubt Luke helps the galaxy come to grips with their own doubts and fears in resisting the darkness of the galaxy.
Ben Solo, Luke's nephew and Anakin's grandson, struggles with how to inherit the legacy passed down to him by Anakin and Luke. Half of the Force Dyad with Rey, Ben initially he rejects his destiny, killing his way up the fascistic First Order. Thanks to Rey and his parents, Leia and Han, Ben is redeemed from Palpatine's lifetime corruption. He saves Rey from death, fulfilling Anakin's goals of saving a person from dying in the first place. And, in so doing, Ben conquers the real enemy of Star Wars: death. The closest character Ben is similar to is Gilgamesh, but we'll get back to that.
A lot of ink has been wasted on the modern conception of the hero. The idea of the hero as this nice, clean, doesn't kill people, has no historical reference at all. In fact, the further back I go the more I find heroes seem to resemble more of what we think of as anti-heroes of today: people who had their goals and were going to get them, come hell or highwater. The heroes of Star Wars more resemble this older archetype, not the modern demand that heroes be "good people".
Okay, to be fair, this concept isn’t a good one. Unit 44's first four issues are a complete story told in four parts. I put the mega issue down and genuinely did not want more, in the best way possible. So when I found out that that more Unit 44 had been released I was... cautious. Skeptical. How do you follow up something that I think is this close to objectively perfect? By the description it didn't sound like they were continuing the major storylines from the first four issues, but I could be wrong? So I bought, hoping that lightning would get into the bottle again.
It didn't.
But it's still damn good.
Issue Five follows our favorite numbnuts as they try to pick apart what's going on with what's obviously a cult. There's some great hijinks, a stubborn persistence in not spoiling exactly how the cult is being mind-controlled (no, it's not what they're saying in the book, and props to the writer and artist on showing that), and some of the funniest pie humor I'll ever read.
I mean, has anyone actually ever had a raisin pie? Let me know if you have.
First off, the art duties switched to a new guy. I don't hate him. I don't particularly love him, either. He's got a good sense of composition, some of his facial expressions are absolutely hilarious, and he's got a good sense of who and what the characters are. He manages to copy what made them so distinctive to begin with, and puts his own spin on it all. I respect that. I just don't think he's as good as Jimenez, the original artist.
Locher's script is where this all hinges on, and it just doesn't hit the same high notes as the original run. The story is funny, and there's some great gags thrown in there that definitely made me laugh, but it's just not as side-splittingly hilarious as the original run. I find that regrettable, but again, it's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. This was still a good comic, I still liked the story, but the downshift is really hard to ignore.
That being said, the last two to three pages of the main story is worth the price of the comic alone.
Will I get more Unit 44. Absolutely! This stuff still makes me laugh and it's nice to be able to do that. But it's simply not the same to me. The art, the writing, it's all competent, and gets the job done. But this isn't practically divinely inspired, like the first four issues. Still worth my money, but I'm not going to pretend that this is anywhere near the original run.
One of my oldest friends is the survivor of a child rape gang. I didn't know until well after I'd grown up, and when I did I was incredibly surprised: he'd been married for years and, while being an incredible source of wisdom and empathy, was otherwise just... well.. a normal guy. He was not the person you'd imagine when you think "former child rape gang victim", at all. As a survivor of childhood rape myself I had the barest inkling of knowledge of what this poor person had been through. And I've not handled it half as well, I assure you! Go ahead, read this blog: there's some weird stuff on here. So when I asked him how he managed to not go crazy, my friend, using sadness to smile, told me "All of life is grieving."
I dedicate this entire thing to him. I don't know if he'll ever read it. I doubt it. But I hope he does.
Now, my friend didn't mean that you had to be sad all the time. That's not really what he meant by grieving. What he meant was more along the lines of "Life will always disappoint you, and if you don't accept the disappointments and tragedies as they are you'll not last long. You'll always live if you accept what is, pleasant or not." But All of Life is Grieving is a more poignant and poetic statement, don't you think?
What this has to do with Star Wars really should be obvious, but I'll spell it out: anyone who grew up with Star Wars has an image of it in their heads. I know I do. I was terrified of Vader as a child. That breathing creeped me out. Watching Luke process that the genocidal murderer he'd been fighting was actually his father and still had something in him worth saving was something I attached to. I just so happened to be living in the wake of my own tragedies and Luke's problem was my problem: someone was not who I thought they were, and I had to figure out what to do with it all. At six. Luke maintaining the humanity (and thus goodness) of his father helped me realize I had options in how to deal with my rapist. I did not have to hate her, I could control how I responded to the tragedy. A large part of my personality was formed in the experience of watching Luke pull the helmet off of Vader, to find an old, infirm, and pathetic man underneath. The monster was pathetic. To be a villain was to be pathetic.
I wish I could tell you that I've lived up to this ideal. I've tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And I have failed. The resentment was just too much for me to deal with. Over the years I have become known by family and friends as a fusion reactor of rage. That is not what I ever wanted. I wanted to live up to this:
And I have not. I can't. The older I get the more I have realized I was never going to. With the return of my childhood memories at twenty-six I've realized that time was never on my side: eventually, no matter how hard I tried, I would not forgive, I would resent, I would do the thing that everyone else did before that wretched mask came off. And then one day I realized that even if the mask had come off I'd still not have done what Luke had done.
The Last Jedi dropped not even a month after that realization.
If it had come any later I shudder to think what could have happened to me. Because there was Luke, failing himself. Folks:
Time.
Wears.
People.
Out.
It is an actively destructive force on us all, and nobody survives it. The forgiveness Luke had to show himself for being mortal became another model for me. No, I'd not done what Luke had done. But I could try again. I needed to try again. Time, that nice word for death, be damned, I had to try again. I could not change what I had failed to do, but I could change what I was doing... provided that I accepted (grieved!) what I had been up until that point. The story opened up what I thought were my options.
Hey look, the Star Wars fandom!
Everyone who has grown up with Star Wars has some version of that in their head. It may not be filled with as much darkness and angst, but they have it. That's what art does: it open us up and helps us understand the world and ourselves in a different way. That is a reason why art exists. So when someone adds to a story it produces whiplash! And it's going to be intense! And it's going to get ugly! Really ugly!
And for me, initially? It wasn't. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were exactly what I expected of an actually serious look at the world of Star Wars post-OT.
No, I never really considered the EU a serious look at it.
No, I'm not a Disney shill. Remember what I just wrote about Luke. If you think that's got the hint of someone who hasn't spent a great deal of time thinking about Star Wars and what it means to him then I genuinely don't know what to tell you. And I have no idea how to else to communicate what it does mean than the above vulnerabilities.
For everyone else, no, I didn't consider the EU serious. Lucas didn't, as the below clip discusses very frankly.
And, really, why should he?
And no, if Lucas sells his property to someone they're not obligated to do what he wants with it. That's how selling something works. If you don't like that, I'm sorry.
All that out of the way I'll be frank: The Rise of Skywalker threw me for a loop. I like what it did, and we'll get to that as we go, but for the first time I felt that sting: it wasn't how I understood Star Wars. The lessons I'd learned from everything up till that point, the things they'd helped me process, were moved around and recontextualized. And that hurt. I didn't like (and still don't like) that feeling. The Rise of Skywalker changed things. For me, it really changed things. And for the first time I felt the whiplash, the burning resentment. The more I think on it the hotter it burns. There's nothing rational about it, at all. I could use rationality to justify it, but that's hardly the same thing as something being coherent in and of itself.
I do not know if that's what all the people hating on the sequels feel. In the final reckoning I doubt people will be found to be so different from each other, once all the shadows are stripped away. So, I have to assume on some level that what I have always perceived as fan-boi "You took my childhood" rage I encounter in all (yes, all, please own up to it) sequel haters has at least a passing similarity to what I feel.
But you what helps that?
Facts.
And introspection.
Let's try that out, shall we?
I guess I'll take a look at what TROS has actually turned the Skywalker Saga into. We'll go full Death of the Author, take a look at this thing as a totality, and see what happened.
There's probably a subsection of anyone reading this who will go "But why? It's a show about space wizards and lazer swords". To those people I say the following:
1. It is the silly things that are the most important and broadest ranging: utterly hilarious concepts such as love are much more important than gravity, which is much sillier than serious things like politics. I mean, really, standing on a ball that's spinning so fast that I'm effectively glued to its surface, unless I get far away enough? Don't tell me that doesn't sound absurd.
2. The exercise of a mind is more important than what it is the mind is focusing upon, by and large. I've frequently found that the skills developed in understanding and integrating fictional and recreative elements bring a measurable and obvious increase to my own ability to see the world as it is. I am more important than your idea of what is a serious matter.
3. At the end of the day the urge to understand is objectively better than the decision to be angry.
4. Criminy's sake, if it makes you mad then it obviously means a great deal to you, and if you think I'm not going to call out that obvious bad-faith argument then you've not been paying attention.
I thought long and hard about backing this project while it was on Kickstarter.It looked interesting, sure, and I liked the fact that they had gone back to Tome of Battle over giving everyone their own powers (a move I'll get back to later). But the books were expensive, and they'd gone with the three book model, and I just didn't want to shell out a bunch of money for something I didn't know I'd be using or not. So I wished them well in their development of a game system and moved on.
Six months passed and I forgot about Level Up.
And then one day Marty contacted me completely out of the blue. "CHECK OUT THIS GAME SYSTEM, IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD."
Three guesses as to what the game was.
Now, Marty is stupidly picky with his games. Like, really really picky. He has the one thing he wants a game to do, and will GM the hell out of that one thing. And he really GMs the hell out of it. Marty could pick a bad game and I'd play in that campaign, because he'd do such amazing things with that game that I'd not care otherwise. But that doesn't mean I don't have to call the system good, right?
Spoiler: this is a really good game.
Now, let's get this out of the way: this is not a "light" game. It's quite crunchy. There's bits and bobs and crazy things in here. You could pull 5e characters into this campaign in the same way you could attach a tricycle to a car and go on the freeway with your child. Sure, you could do it, and sure the child may be able to hang on and maybe even have a good time... but you know where it's going, at the end. On this count I think Level Up fails: while you technically can bring in 5e stuff, I don't think you should.
But what Level Up does I’ve not really seen another game do: the modern combat system known as DnD WELL. There is nary an original idea in this whole game. I can find the progenitors for all these ideas in not just DnD but several systems. So Level Up isn’t an original game by a very long stretch. You won’t find any flashy new ideas in here. What you will find is that each and every idea adapted to perfection and integrated into a holistic engine. It all flows. It works. My herald (paladin) feels just right: part spellcaster, warrior, Charisma skill monster… and none of it feels like anything got shafted to do it. I’m not super specialized but I didn’t want to be, that’s why I picked herald! Instead I can flit betwixt the tricks in my bag with ease. Taking a look at the rest of the book the same level of care is everywhere. Everything is tweaked just on this side of right. Even the fighter (my least favorite class) has been made into something with care and love in it. Heck, I’d venture that you’d find more love and care in the first level of a level one Level Up fighter than the entirety of 5e’s Player’s Handbook.
Not that that’s a terribly high bar.
Running the game is easy: if you need to set up a fight there’s a chart that literally tells you exactly how it all breaks down. That… technically makes it easier to run than 4e? I feel grumpy about admitting that. But I mean, there’s the chart folks! What else am I going to do? Lie and pretend they didn’t make the system the simplest it’s ever been???
I wish.
Oh well.
Look folks, I don’t particularly care if Level Up is compatible to one of the most underwhelming games ever made. The game itself is amazing. Character creation and options are legion. Setting up encounters is literally not going to get easier. Yeah it’s crunchy but that really works in its favor here. I’ve been having fun since I opened the PDF.
Red Koi’s concept is very simple: a woman realizes her family is evil and runs away to find a new way of life. It’s a concept that’s simple, hard to get right, and heartbreakingly hard to get wrong. This is the sort of story that has to be sharpened just right.
Red Koi is more than sharp enough.
A good writer/artist in comics is a rare treat. Most of the time the writer has to communicate to the artist what he sees in his head when he looks at the imaginary page, and the artist then has to imagine that page in his head and then has to be good enough to produce the page as a single unit; comic books are really hard work! A good writer and artist learn how to communicate what they want and need to each other over time, and usually once that pairing has been established it's absolute magic. Now, in theory if the writer and artist are the same person this problem would go away, right? You'd think. Actually the opposite is usually true, because most people are not actually writer/artists, they're a writer who can draw or an artist who can plot. That means that such works usually become overindulgent one way or another, because there's nobody to check the writer/artist from screwing up; a writer can't tell the artist that the page simply isn't what he had in mind, nor can an artist tell the writer that a page simply isn't feasible. So they usually err on one side or the other. And, to make things worse, there isn't a guarantee that the writer/artist will stay perfectly balanced all the time! Like I said before, rare treat.
Tyler Wentland almost perfect lands the balance. Almost. The thing that jumps out at me is the atmosphere. The air is charged. Potent. The writing is slow in the best way possible, letting you stew in the forlorn atmosphere just long enough before dropping you into a whirlwind of violence and regret. Most of the non-action pages are jaw-droppingly good. It's moody and hand painted,; the colors more than make up for some of the seeming limitations of the art’s line work. And let's not beat about the bush on that point: the line work is middling. But the atmosphere Wentland achieves despite this failing is masterful. It's like looking into someone else's dream. I used the word charged before, and I'll reiterate: holy crap the atmosphere is charged! One of the ending scenes you can practically feel the wind on your face and in your hair. Well, if you have hair.
The problem starts whenever action is required. The storytelling of the art, at best, becomes serviceable. While I didn't really lose the plot throughout it always took me at least a glance or two to really get what was going on in the panel, action-wise. Remember, folks: the page, not the panel, is the standard unit of measurement in a comic book. Panels have to add up to readable pages. And a lot of the action scenes suffer from not adding up to more. There's good motion and if I only focus on the panel I can figure out what's going on, but that then breaks the flow and I have to get my bearings. But keep in mind that this is a relatively small gripe, considering just how amazing the rest of the art really can be.
So the writing itself is masterfully done, and this is where Wentland really shines. The writing feels like a landscape: characters are presented as they are Not a single character in here is wholly good or bad, but a heartbreaking combination of both, leading to conversations entirely human. There's a sympathy for the characters that I pretty much live and breathe off of in stories, and it hangs in the air with the already-powerful artistic atmosphere. The feelings are so powerful that they practically merge with the colors. It's in these conversations where the distinction between writer and artist vanishes. The story is the art. The art is the story. That it happens at all is special. That it happens as often as it does in this book is really cool.
Red Koi is the sorta premise I’d run for a Burning Wheel campaign, and I mean that as an absolute compliment. Its darkness and emotion meld really well with its dreamy art. Some of the pages just stick in my brain, and they won’t leave. There's a beauty and mysticism to A Samurai Reborn that's only really absorbed by looking at the page.
Which, like I said before, is now stuck in my brain.
It’s certainly not the worst problem in the world to have.
