Crushing Krisis

35-for-35: 2014 – “Unconditional Love” by Against Me!

November 29, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I’m not sure that I’m capable of unconditional love, because I don’t believe it really exists.

How can you even define what it means to love someone or something “no matter what?” The variable of “what” in that statement only includes the changes you can conceive of in the present day. It’s a statement that you could love something’s status quo forever, and maybe also anything within a few degrees of difference.

I know this is a silly measuring stick but I always try to define this sort of unwavering commitment via musical fandom. Sixteen years ago this week I lamented that Ani DiFranco websites were shutting down left and right, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would quit her. I was in my sixth year of listening to her, but some of those fans were in their twelfth. At the time, I said:

I don’t expect her to reproduce the same album over and over, and i don’t expect her to stay the same. The people shutting down their website’s now might not have expected her to do either of those things, but i suppose on some level they were hoping she would.

Now I’m in my twentieth year, and Ani’s new albums barely register with me and I no longer see her shows. She’s not too different and I’m not too different, but the two of us have each changed by enough degrees that love has turned into like. I Now I’m just loving the old her, and that’s not love. It’s nostaglia. The new her can’t change that, and I still have affection for her, but it’s not the same love I had before.

I think the same holds true for anything you love – not just always-changing things like musicians or family members, but static things like a song, a board game, or a statue. That’s because one side of that loving equation can change: you. So, even if you love something unconditionally now, you can’t predict all the future conditions.

That’s how Against Me!’s beautiful, rambling, three-chord “Unconditional Love” resonates with me. It’s off of Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the band’s first release since lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out as a transgender woman. That’s a pretty big change in conditions – one that most people don’t account for when they express their unconditional love. It’s a change that finds a lot of people reaching out for the unconditional love they were promised and finding a void in its place.

Laura knows that. She understands the fundamental lie of love. Unconditional love isn’t really about the future, it’s about the present.

35-for-35: 2013 – “Don’t Lie” by Vampire Weekend

November 29, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I’ll always associate our friends The Crutchleys with being pregnant with EV because of two reasons

vampire-weekend-modern-vampires-of-the-city The first reason, and the most obvious, is that they visited our house to play Catan (which we bought for the occasion!) just a few hours before E went into labor. I’ll never be able to think of EV’s birth without thinking at least a little bit about The Crutchleys, Catan, and eating an entire Domino’s pizza all by myself in installments between E’s contractions the next morning.

The other reason is Modern Vampires of the City.

Two months earlier, we were paying The Crutchleys a visit in May for an evening of chat and games in May just after the LP was released. When the discussion turned to music, P said, “Oh, have you heard the new Vampire Weekend?”

I might have shrugged my shoulders in response. I liked the band’s second effort Contra well enough, but I had never had a particular epiphany with them like many of my friends did. Yes, they had an awesome vocabulary and plenty of baroque flourishes, plus an obvious affinity for Paul Simon. It was just that none of their songs really stuck to me.

(Also, I do give a fuck about the Oxford Comma.)

There was something different about Modern Vampires of the City from the opening notes and typewriter percussion of “Obvious Bicycle.” Vampire Weekend transformed from crafting baroque confection with endless streams of melody rocketing in all directions like silly string to wringing emotion from subtle veins of countermelody marbled through each of their songs.

That night, “Don’t Lie” stuck to me. I couldn’t remember the last time I heard something so beautiful and tragic, from the initial sigh of organ like the slow exhalation of breath, to the clipped heartbeat of massive-sounding kick and snare, to the elegiac slow surf guitar out of the outro, but nothing more than the chorus:

I want to know, does it bother you?
The low click of a ticking clock
There’s a lifetime right in front of you
And everyone I know

I feel that chorus thrumming in my cells. I’ve always held a nearly visceral terror of the click of a ticking clock, time made tangible as sound as it slips away never to be grasped again. One of my primary concerns during our pregnancy was time. How was I going to get by with so much less time?

Later in the song, that chorus transforms:

I want to know, does it bother you?
The low click of a ticking clock
There’s a headstone right in front of you
And everyone I know

Those are the dual truths of time, laid bare in a pair of chorus. Everyone you know has both a lifetime and tombstone in front of them, but the great Rorschach test of life is asking someone which one they see when they hear the ticking of a clock.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Gen13 (1995) #0-1

November 28, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]After the amazing Gen13 mini-series I (and many other comic fans!) were rabid for more, which arrived in the form of the team’s first ongoing series in March 1995.

gen13-1994-000 The series would go on to be WildStorm’s longest-running book, and it debuted in memorable fashion with thirteen variant covers, which might not sound impressive today in the world of 50-states covers from both Marvel and DC but at the time was unheard of. (Here’s the best recap of the covers I’ve ever seen!)

Gen13 #1 lacks the special magic that imbued each issue of the team’s mini-series – even the gratuitous cameo from Pitt. Yet, despite not enjoying it in 1995 or 21 years later in 2016, I can appreciate that Brandon Choi and J. Scott Campbell made a wise move in their pivot away from the tone of the mini-series.

There are a few key differences between this relaunch and the team’s mini-series., other than the obvious one of the team not being under pressure in life-or-death circumstances the entire time.

First, Fairchild is relegated to the background in favor of breakout stars Roxy and Grunge, with Burnout barely appearing and Rainmaker purely used for titilation. It’s nearly the reverse of the line-up of the mini-series, where Roxy and Grunge broke up the drama with occasional comic relief while the remaining trio handled all the heavy lifting.

Second, the plot. There’s no IO or government intrigue about the team’s origins in sight. Instead, we get a mismatched pair of interdimension assassins hunting down a ridiclous green alien rodent.

Less tangible than those developments is that newcomer J. Scott Campbell’s art has already begun to tip from comic book exaggeration to ridiculous deformity. His long-legged women are nothing different from his prior five issues, but his proportions here are not as consistent, as on Grunge’s once-massive chest. Faces suffer, in particular. This is exacerbated by a lack of backgrounds and a bright, almost-neon color pallette from Wendy Stouts, which strips characters of the muscular heft they had in the miniseries.

Also, what was a depiction of playful teen sexuality in the mini-series is now deliberate pandering, as with the nude Rainmaker (suddenly a sexbomb with long hair) and upskirt shots of Roxy’s underwear.

Those details quickly drove me away from the book back in the 90s, but in retrospect I can see the reason for all of them.

gen13-1995-001 Fairchild was intentionally the most generic character in the original series – a bookworm turned she-hulk – but fans responded more to the other four characters, each a familiar archetype. To force the young team’s new life to be seen exclusively through the eyes of Caitlin the all-night studier would stunt the growth of the book and the cast.

Every character needs her or his spotlight issues, and this is Roxy’s. We still get signs hints that Fairchild’s journey will be as a tactician and leader, and that’s not going to happen overnight.

To make Gen13 all about bashing heads with IO from the first issue would have been foolish. Jim Lee and Brandon Choi had already learned their lesson on WildCATs and Stormwatch, which were each so thick with continuity that they hardly seemed to be about anything other than re-connecting with long-lost enemies.

Also, without a youthful book in the mix at WildStorm they line was missing the chance to do these sorts of stories – stories with cartoonish extra-dimension villains and the annoying green space rats they’re hunting. Gen13 mining this territory is no different than Chris Claremont inserting Kitty Pryde into the X-Men and giving her a pet purple dragon.

As for Campbell? This is only his sixth full-length issue, and he was under enormous pressure. On the whole it has the same high-gloss look of his pencils on the mini-series, just with slightly more room for error in the looser constraints of real world California rather than the tech-festooned hallways of IO’s Death Valley base.

(I have no rationale to offer for the amped up sexuality of the art. I have a lot of affection for this cast based almost exlusively on the mini-series, and I’d hate to see them quickly devolve into a group of sex mannequins. I’ll have to read more to see what fate holds for them.)

Brandon Choi and company also broke up the wait for the big debut with a #0 issue (technically part of the 1994 mini-series) to explain the team’s separate road trips after Wizard #1/2. This issue hits all the great notes of Choi’s mini-series script, comprised of four stories, each with a different artist – Jim Lee on Caitlin Fairchild, Richard Johnson on Burnout and Rainmaker, J. Scott Campbell, and Travis Charest on Lynch. (It’s telling that of the four vignettes Campbell’s with Roxy and Grunge that is the weakest spot.)

Want a recap? Keep reading for a recap of both #0 and #1 Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we go back in time again with Team 7: Objective Hell #1-3, which act as a prologue to Wednesday’s WildStorm Rising – the line’s first multi-book crossover!

Need the issues? Early Gen13 is some of the most reprinted of WildStorm’s first three years of comics.

The 1998 Gen13 Archives (ISBN 978-1887279918) is a comprehensive collection that includes all of debut mini-series and pushes through #13 of their ongoing series; it isn’t too hard to track down (Amazon / eBay).
A Gen13: Complete Collection is due in spring of 2017 that covers both the mini-series and through #7 of this ongoing, plus the special Gen13: Rave issue not in Archives (Amazon pre-order).

Alternately, you can purchase single issues – try eBay (#0 & 1) or Amazon (#0 & 1 and alt search #0 & 1) [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Gen13 (1995) #0-1

35-for-35: 2012 – “Madness” by Muse

November 28, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]EV is a very musical child.

I know, shocking.

muse-the-2nd-law She not only pretends that she fronts a band, but actually writes songs for that band, rehearses them, and then sings them to us. She’s also got pretty solid pitch, can memorize most lyrics after two practice runs, and has started singing harmony to my originals when I play them for her.

She has a pair of musical parents, and has already sat in on dozens of rehearsals, but I like to think all of her musical interest and acumen is down to one song: “Madness” by Muse.

I’ve enjoyed Muse ever since I first heard an a cappella group sing “Time Is Running Out” back in college. There’s something about Matthew Bellamy’s rangy voice and the Queen-like bombast of their biggest songs that draws me in.

As with Kings of Leon, I continued to follow Muse’s releases oblivious to the fact that they were turning into the most popular band in the land. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law, came out on September 28th and I was already sure that I liked it when I heard “Madness” on the radio for the first time on Sunday, November 18th, on its way to being the longest-running Alternative Rock number one song of all time.

I remember the day, because that was the day we learned we were pregnant with EV. We were driving back home from seeing our friend Gina (not that one, the other one) in a play and the song came on the radio. We both sang along and traded the vocal percussion back and forth, smiled giddily at the “some kind of madness” that was about to take control of our lives.

After that car ride, Muse’s omnipresent “Madness” became the secret anthem of our pregnancy.

When we arrived at the hospital to deliver EV nine months later, we were met by one of the older midwives from the group of six we had been seeing. She was an authoritarian hippy, easy-going and new age-y but able and ready to command us at a moment’s notice. I know I wasn’t the pregnant one, but that’s pretty much everything I was looking for in a midwife.

Unfortunately, her hours of coverage were up midway through E’s labor. Just as we were getting comfortable with her, she was replaced with a young midwife who we’d only met once before. We were a bit bummed. How had we spent all these months forging relationships with a group of women who would deliver our child and missed getting to know the one who’d actually do the delivering.

The bummedness didn’t last long.

The midwife’s name was Erin, another E-name in a room with E and an nurse named Elizabeth and, potentially, a little E-named baby, if our baby turned out to be a girl.

Erin shared E’s birthday – not just the day, but the year as well.

Finally – and to this day, I find this last coincidental detail utterly insane – like E, Erin sang in a semi-professional a capella group.

Erin was meant to delivery EV. It was all part of the madness.

The first image of her I recorded somewhere other than in my gray matter. She is about 15 minutes old.

E and I had joked for a long time that she wanted the rocking soundtrack to Supernatural Season One playing throughout the entirety of her labor, but as the evening progressed I noticed she simply wasn’t getting into a good zone listening to all that classic rock.

The first time “Madness” came on she went into a sort of trance. I played it again and reflexively began singing the “mm-mm-mm-ma madness” part under my breath. Then, Erin began to sing along in harmony. Then, to our surprise, E began to sing too, quietly, between her contractions.

Almost every other moment of the labor process is a blur of details to me until EV emerged, but that moment remains frozen in time in that way all of my most significant memories are – where I can see it happen as an omniscient 3rd-person narrator looking in on the scene over my own shoulder.

Music. “Madness.” EV incubated in it for nine months, us singing along to it in the kitchen, trading the vocal percussion back and forth, and it summoned her into this world.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Union (1995) #1-3

November 28, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Union is back with an ongoing series after a terrific and surprisingly human mini-series by co-creator Michael Heisler and artist Mark Texeira.

union_v2_001 Will this inter-dimensional alien be as interesting without his introductory mystery and with the much more polished art of Ryan Benjamin?

To answer the latter half of that question, I’ll direct you at the cover over there to the left.

That is a glorious superhero cover, and it’s not too different from the quality of the interiors of these three issues. Ryan Benjamin was okay on 1994’s Union #0, but that issue was so packed with plot there wasn’t much room for Benjamin to stretch out and tell a story with his pencils.

He’s fantastic here with more space in the narrative and a bright, primary color superhero color palette from Steve Buccellato and Wendy Fouts. His Ohmen is large and well-muscled, but not so much that Benjamin can’t make an extreme caricature out of his foil Crusade in the opening issue.

With less exposition about Ohmen’s background to work through, Michael Heisler delivers three strong issues of WildStorm’s most straight forward superhero tale yet. It’s puzzling that he hasn’t been tapped by Lee and Choi to script any other series. Ohmen comes off as a very serious puppy dog, obsessed with doing right so much that he cannot help but get involved in every conflict in earshot.

Heisler continues to impress with his grounded take on Ohmen’s companion Jill Munroe, a regular women unintentionally wrapped up in superhero drama. Despite feeling faithful to Ohmen, she’s conflicted about repeatedly putting her life on hold for him.

But why should she be putting her life on hold? Ohmen moves them to New York and has some designs on adventuring with Stormwatch inspired by Battalion’s recent hero’s death, but that’s not a solid goal (nor is it a business plan).

Heisler does a clever thing in issue #1, confronting Ohmen with another stranger-from-a-strange-world in the Liefeld-esque Jim Lee creation Crusade. Ohmen is like an adolescent that grows up fast when they have to take care of a younger sibling in trying to wrangle the holy space knight, seeming to sheepishly realize how much of a handful he was just a few months before.

union_v2_002-0203 They briefly tangle with the egg-headed Mnemo from the mini-series, but the villain is less the focus than Ohmen’s interaction with Crusade and old friend Serren. He just as easily flips back to puppy mode beside a veteran hero like Savage Dragon in issue #3.

There are two stories you can read to get ready for this run – Union’s tangle with an insane Supreme in Supreme #14, and Crusade’s brief introduction from WildStorm Rarities.

Want a recap? Read on for the details of Union’s first ongoing adventures. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Later today, I’ll take a quick jaunt through Gen13 #0-1, then we’ll read Team 7: Objective Hell tomorrow before wrapping up with WildStorm Rising on Wednesday.

Need the issues? These issues have never before been collected! For single issues – try eBay (#1-3) or Amazon (#1, 2, 3). Since the prior Union series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post. You can also pick up Supreme #14 (eBay / Amazon). The Crusade story originally appeared in the Killer Instinct Tourbook and is reprinted in WildStorm Rarities (eBay / Amazon), a perfect-bound book with a spine. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Union (1995) #1-3