Inky Horizons

I've gotten back into Green Lantern comics again. I go back and forth on this comic. I read it for awhile then drop it. But it's gotten good again lately. They're moving toward the Blackest Night arc. Basically, it's going to be a big shitstorm Light War and everyone is going to get splattered. I can get onboard with that.

Oh, and I hope Rage Kitty makes another appearance. He's worth the price of admission all by himself.

As good as it was, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead has done more to destroy the zombie genre than any other movie or book I can think of.

And that's not a good thing. Here's why.

Prior to this zombies were never about eating people. And they sure as hell were never about eating brains. God knows where that got started. But here's the problem with Romero's film. It took what was once a genre filled with mystique and made it into splatter-chomp. And now that it's splatter-chomp there was nowhere else for it go go except over-hyped splatter-chomp cum Apocalypse. Now served with brains on the side. And it wasn't long before the genre devolved (yes, devolved, imo) into slapstick and parody. Now we have zombies no one can take seriously. That's what faces us today.

It's too bad, really, because zombies had so much going for them prior to Romero's film. Take Bela Lugosi's White Zombie. That was an awesome film. So was Val Lewton's uber-supreme I Walked with a Zombie which used Jane Eyre as source material.


Val Lewton's take on Jane Eyre...with zombies, voodoo, pathos, and Gothic imagery

These movies and others like them portrayed zombies for what they were supposed to be: living people (and sometimes dead, you couldn't always tell) transformed into the unliving. Usually to serve as slaves or to make them pay for some horrible crime. But there was always something poignant about the zombie and its plight in these movies. There's nothing poignant about the modern flesh eating zombie. He's a cartoon.

Okay, he didn't start off that way. I concede that. Romero's film was both horrifying and artistic with a steady dose of nihilism. He was making a deeper statement about the world he saw and he just happened to use zombies to get his point across. But lesser filmmakers, and writers, only saw the cannibalism and ran with that single idea. And now we're left with zombies eating brains and there's nowhere else for them to go.

No pun intended, but, imo, that's a dead end, artistic-wise. Better to have examined the deep mystery, the Gothic imagery combined with Carribean mysticism of zombiedom, rather than turning zombies into fast food consumers.

Be truthful. Zombies as they are now portrayed are no longer frightening or horrific. They're gross. I'll give you that. But they're not scary.

So in my opinion the zombie genre is in bad straits. I hope someone comes along soon and reboots it with an eye toward reviving its mystical past. If they can reboot Star Trek and Spider-Man then they should be able to reboot this. Anyway, I hope so, 'cuz I kinda like zombies. The old time zombies. The cool zombies. The mystical zombies. The scary ones.

Until this happens, where can you go to read good, memorable zombie stories? Look no further than Marvel's Tales of the Zombie. This was a black and white comic published in the Seventies and it rocks. It's what zombies used to be about. It's sexy and violent and Simon Garth, the zombie in question, is cool. The only carp I have is it's written in second person, a forced literary affectation I have always despised because it calls too much attention to itself. But even so the artwork and characterization overcomes that limitation.

If, like me, you miss the old time zombies then check out this collection. I think you'll like it.

Man, this comic just gets better all the time. Amazing. Fantastic reveal, too, in which the plot takes a turn no one saw coming.

I'll be glad when this month is done. I've been busy but I've set down March as the month I begin to pay more attention to my writing and the business side and all that. Which is fine, but now I think I'm starting to come down with a cold. I guess it's the same thing everyone else has already caught.

Man, it's always something, isn't it?

That's okay, though. Like I said I'm looking forward to really treating this like more of a job than I do now. I feel it's the right thing to do.

Not much else has been happening on my radar. Has anyone been reading the current run by Gail Simone on Wonder Woman? I think she's doing a great job on the title. She really has Diana's character-voice down. I do this sometimes, jump from comic to comic to see what's happening on at particular title. I may stay with this one as long as Ms. Simone is writing it, though. I'm really impressed.

By the way, last week I happened upon an old issue of WW from like the 1980s or thereabouts. She was flying around in her invisible plane between alternate dimensions or something, and it was explained she could cross these barriers because her invisible plane vibrates.

*You are now free to insert your own joke*

Nothing else on the comic front has really captured my attention. Spider-Man still sucks and GD near everyone hates Joe Quesada who forced Mary Jane's disastrous retcon. And this coming from someone like me who never liked MJ to begin with. Daredevil and Fantastic Four are solid. Action and Superman has maintained my interest what with the recreation of New Krypton and all but I still can't get around a married Superman. I mean, seriously, who likes Lois Lane anyway? I mean as other than a comic foil. But she's iconic so what can you do? Hulk is a downright travesty and not worth reading. It's no wonder I've gravitated toward more DC titles lately. Marvel seems to be a mess right now. I might get back into Green Lantern and see what he's up to. I liked him when I was younger, but now that I actually write science fiction he doesn't come across as well to me.

In other breaking news, it's cold today. Yesterday it was hot. Today it's cold. Later it will be hot again. Welcome to Texas weather, haha. (It might also explain why I could be getting sick.)

Okay, I've wasted enough electrons for today. I'm gonna scrounge up some whiskey and plan my weekend...assuming I'm not really getting sick.  Hope not!

I'll be headed back out to ConDFW today which is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Dallas. There are several panels I definitely want to attend today. The dealer room looks good, too. One dealer will let you fill up a BIG plastic bag with about 25-30 comics for $10. Many of the comics are old Superman, Action, mostly DC from what I saw, some Marvel. Still.

So far the convention appears okay. I have only one carp. Why no con suite for drinks and snacks so attendees can refuel on sugar and carbs? At least I didn't see one. Gaming appears kind of peaked too. But there are lots of interesting literary panels I'd like to attend and everybody seems nice, but that's generally the rule at sf/f cons.

I'd like to take this time to thank everyone for making yesterday's launch of my new website such a big success. At least I thought it was a success. We had over 550 hits and frankly I'm amazed at that seeing as how I'm not that well known of a writer. I mean, sometimes I don't know myself...ya know? But I'd like to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all your support and getting the word out and stuff.

So get back out there and click on the website some more, lol.  And link me! Link me hard. (You know you want to. Don't pretend.)

In fact, yesterday was so great I completely forgot I was supposed to meet my writing buddy mjryan  at the coffee shop. I think I've got a ticked off writing buddy on my hands. It's never good to leave your writing buddy in the lurch like that. Sorry, writing buddy! I owe you a lunch. You know where.

Finally, I want to give a GREAT BIG SHOUT OUT to my friend xjenavivex for selling her poem "Beautiful Memory" to Goldfish Press yesterday. Drop by and give her an Attaboy. She deserves it!

Okay, that's likely gonna be it from me today. Early breakfast, a few things to do around here, then I'm headed back out to the convention site. If you behave I'll bring you back a comic book.

Thanks, guys. Love ya. See you soon.

I like comics. We know that. Today I read the latest issue of Superman. In one scene Supes and Lois are having breakfast and she's complaining about it being "that time" and she's feeling bloated and has a zit and that's why she's in such a foul mood. Supes says he loves her anyway and she jumps up from the table and gives him a big THANK YOU KISS.

Okay. We all know what that scene was about, right?  No problems.  (Oh, and for the record, there's an AWESOME reveal on the last splash page of a Superman character I can NEVER get enough of. LOVED. IT.)

( SPOILER ALERT! )

But, later, I happen to check out a message board and just happen to come across the Superman thread and it's filled with gripes and bitching about how Lois -- as she is being written in this issue -- makes no sense, particularly in light of the scene I just described.  "She's from one extreme to the next."  "It makes no sense."  "That's bad writing. "  "Her character is all over the place."  "There's no justification for the way she's acting." And on and on and on.

No, these aren't preteens on these message boards. These are adults.  Well...I'm using the term loosely, as you can see.

So I'm looking at this with my jaw down to my chest and I'm thinking, "Sweet Jesus H. Christ.  Move out of your mother's basement.  And kiss a girl."

Un. Be. Lievable.

DC's Showcase: Enemy Ace , written by Robert Kanigher and penciled by the legendary Joe Kubert, is the most unrelentingly nihilistic comic I've ever read.

It presents the face of war from the side of the enemy.  In this case it's Hans Von Hammer, a WWI fighter pilot modeled after Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, better known as the "Red Baron".  Like his namesake Von Hammer collects victory cups for each plane he shoots down and flies a red Fokker DR1, just like the Baron.  There are many other aspects of his life that parallel Richthofen's,  which makes the comic (for those who know something about WWI aces) a real joy to read.

The technology and fighting tactics are correct for the most part. But, these are comics and sometimes you get goofy characters the Enemy Ace has to go up against and defeat, or situations that stretch credulity.  But overall the stories themselves are top-notch and crushing in their nihilism and bleak outlook of men at war.

Von Hammer has no friends.  Death follows him.  The ground crew call him a killing machine and always remark on how cool he looks and how easily he kills.  He cannot connect in any emotional way with other human beings, and his only friend is a black wolf he meets in the forest -- another killer.  They develop a psychic connection.  They both know one day they will be killed.  Killers are always killed -- Nature demands it.  Von Hammer returns to the forest many times between missions.  He can find solace only at the side of this black wolf, his only true friend.  It is his only moment of peace.

But more than that it is the sky which endures in these comics.  The sky, as Von Hammer notes, is the "enemy of us all."  He is "a killing machine" but one day he knows the sky will kill him.  The sky itself is a main character in all these stories.  It is vast, uncaring, unmoving.  The sky strikes down friend and foe alike.  There are many panels where Von Hammer's plane is but a tiny speck in the vast space.  He is nothing compared to the infinite power of the sky, and he knows he can never be anything but a lonely speck waiting his turn to be killed.  As he kills.

About the only drawback to these stories is they are presented in black and white. These were originally four-color comics and we miss the red of his plane, the blue sky, the checkerboard green quilt of the land below.  Sometimes a comic can still work published in black and white even though it first appeared in color.  The Showcase: Jonah Hex collection is such an example.  But the absence of color hurts the overall appearance of these Enemy Ace stories, I think.  We want to see his red plane.  You can tell some of the panels were set up to enhance the color and make the action more alive.

Aside from that these stories are pretty darn good.  If you want to read a nihilistic comic and are interested in WWI flying aces, this collection is the one to read.

Give it a peek.