Silence Isn't Always Golden

I've played a lot of video games over the course of my life, going all the way back to when I was around six or seven. So naturally I've seen the idea of game stories and the protagonists who star in them grow and evolve over time, going as far back as the Sega Master System. I like stories. I'm sure you've noticed, I've only been futzing around with this review blog on and off for sixteen years at this point. So when we reached a point where games could actually start telling stories, that's when they started sticking with me the most.

Naturally, what you can do with your lead character has gone through its own metamorphosis. Limitations had us starting with silent protagonists leaping through pipes or smacking weird flan monsters in dungeons. Sure, you got rudimentary RPG's back when I was a tiny person, but those weren't the norm unless you had a personal computer long before anyone else did and messed around with games like Ultima. Eventually hardware advanced and developers had more space to work with, so we were given grander stories of personal strife, love, loss and triumph. More recently, if we count recently as the last twelve years, there's been a sort of mix between the two, a half and half approach.

My early childhood was filled with characters that didn't talk much. I begged my mother for pretty much every Sonic game that came out, even the spinoffs like Spinball. I liked Mario to a lesser extent as well. Despite that, when games started having plots, I quickly preferred that. Oh, I still get any decent Sonic game that comes out, even story light ones like Sonic Superstars. That love has been lifelong. But there are few times in my life when I distinctly remember a shift in myself, in my way of thinking.

One of them is playing Final Fantasy II on SNES*.

I'd borrowed it from a cousin on my step-fathers side of the family. For as long as I'd had it, it was one of those almost transformative experiences. We didn't have a home computer until 1999, so in 1993 or 1994 I'd never experienced the sort of storytelling that PC players were more familiar with, but once I got a taste, I wanted more. I didn't finish it back then. I must have been seven or eight. The CPU in the Giant of Babil was a wall I couldn't get past. But I thought about the game long after I had to return it. I'm sure you're shocked it's still in my top three of the franchise, beyond even VI.

What can I say? Formative experiences have more weight in personal rankings. I'd wager that's part of why people revere VI the way they do. It was their first time experiencing a game like that.

Since then, silent protagonists fell a bit out of favor with me. I still play plenty of games with them, but if a game takes any sort of stab at having a story, I often wonder what the point is if the choice is made for the character to keep quiet. I'd like to hear them converse with other characters, share viewpoints, have opinions on things that are happening.

Maybe this is why I'm one of the five weirdos in the world who has never really fucked with Zelda. The only ones that ever grabbed me are the weird ones, like Majoras Mask, or ones that take a wild swing into something new mechanically like Breath of the Wild. Outside those games, a lot of the franchise is kind of samey. Same sub weapons, same styles of dungeon, same basic plot. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's Malibu Stacy with a new hat, but it's not lost on me that the only ones that ever grab me are the ones that do something wild in the game mechanics.

Hell, even Metroid, a series I actually do like, could probably do with having her talk every once in a while. Heresy, I know. Yes, I remember Other M. The problem with that game was that the writing was bad. It had nothing to do with Samus talking.

Which, yeah, the writing can make or break something like that in general. It's the difference between The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and every Bethesda game that came after. Morrowind, you're just a player avatar who chooses some questions so people can exposit in your direction, but Morrowind is such a richly detailed game that you don't need to have a character to be invested in the world. Thought went into every strange aspect of Vvardenfell and it shows. Even the main quest is interesting, which cannot be said about any other Bethesda game.

It's the difference between the Bethesda written Fallout 4 compared to the Obsidian written Fallout: New Vegas. One's a rich adventure populated with interesting characters, plots and locales. The other is Fallout 4**. Hey-o!

I get the base appeal. Hell, Todd Howard says it outright. It's a power fantasy. That's a concept that goes back a long way. Not all are like the games Bethesda puts out these days, where they go above and beyond trying to make you feel like the most special boy ever to walk the land, but the base idea is that they're supposed to be blankish slates you can see yourself in, that you can inhabit. Even Link. They don't talk so you don't break from that feeling because of a reminder they have thoughts of their own. There's some merit in that. But you can be a power fantasy and still be interesting. Hell, Captain Marvel had it figured out back in the forties; a kid who turned into a superpowered man when he spoke the phrase of power would would hang out with an upright tiger in a suit and fight a psychic worm.

Huh. Now that I think about it, going by that last example and Morrowind, maybe the trick is to get weird.

I actually felt somewhat vindicated recently. Did you play the Dead Space remake? If not, shame, you've got plenty of company. That's probably why we're not getting a remake of the second one. Regardless, that's a game that went from the protagonist, Issac Clarke, never saying a word in the original to actually interacting in the remake. The game was better for it. 

My friend had been worried in the lead-up that they'd make him too chatty, have him react to the horror elements too much and by extension undercut the tension, but it turned out he only spoke when other characters were involved. It improved things a lot. Along with the better writing and better voice acting, giving Hammond and Kendra a voiced Issac to interact with made the conversations feel more natural. In the original game, they're always talking at you. Now, they're talking with you. It alleviates some of the pressure since they no longer need to hold up everything themselves. Issac can pull some weight. I ended up more engrossed in the story and game, which I actually didn't expect.

Most of the memorable stories in games, the most unforgettable moments, involve characters. If Final Fantasy VII's Cloud is just a blank slate rather than the glorious mess we get, does it hurt as much when his love interest dies? Does him piecing his mind back together in the lifestream even work? Because it's all memories and backstory of that character, not anything the player got to choose. If V isn't given dialogue in Cyberpunk 2077, can it be a story about facing mortality and your own legacy in the same way? Does the sequence in Clouds hit the same? Does Johnny Silverhand hit the same if he's just monologueing to a proverbial wall the whole game? Would Red Dead Redemption 2 make me cry if Arthur Morgan isn't a fully realized character with his own history, thoughts, dreams and morality?

Fighting a big pig for some golden triangles is cool and all, but I'm not going to think about it long, long after I'm done the way I did some of the previous examples. After finishing Red Dead Redemption 2, I was talking about it with my Discord friends for weeks after. Had the soundtrack looping for almost a month, despite already hearing plenty of it. Steam tells me I'd put in five hundred hours by the time I was finished. For all the time I'd spent enjoying Mario games, nothing has stuck with me quite like the moment Aerith died and Cloud spent the rest of the game grieving.

Well, except the music. To this day I randomly hum Bob-omb Battlefield out of nowhere, to the annoyance of my friends. That shit's seared in my brain like the image into a projection TV that was left on a paused screen too long.

It wouldn't fit every game. I wouldn't suddenly want every game to have protagonist dialogue or fully voiced characters. I don't need my player avatar to spout things in the middle of a round of Peak. Your banter with your friends is the draw in co-op games. But for a majority of games, I don't know, if they bother to have a story I don't think they need to be mute all the time. The idea that I can't immerse myself if I'm not pretending the character I inhabit is me in the game world always seemed odd to me.

Even Final Fantasy XIV's Warrior of Light, ostensibly a player avatar themself, will at least give a stoic nod or two and let you choose some things to say to your friends.

Was there a point to all this? I don't know. I felt like writing and this was what was on my mind at the time. Word vomit everybody! The best part of having your own blog, audience or not, is you can write whatever the hell you want. You can say "it's my blog, I can write whatever the hell I want".

* If you're not in your late thirties like me you've probably only ever seen the game by its actual name, Final Fantasy IV. Short version is that for around fifteen years, Final Fantasy II and III never made it to American shores. Worried just putting out a game called Final Fantasy IV without the other two would confuse people, they just called it Final Fantasy II in America. V didn't make it over for roughly a decade either, so when VI came over it was just called III. Around Final Fantasy VII they just said fuck it and reverted to the regular number scheme, slowly filling in the gaps in the following years and re-titling II and III to their Japanese numbers for every re-release. 

**At the time of writing I still haven't finished that game. I think I put like five hours in it when it came out and just wasn't having it. Incredibly dumbed down and filled with dumb busywork like the settlement building, which modders had already done better. Maybe one day I'll finish a playthrough out of sheer spite. It's how I got through Final Fantasy XIII, a game that made me pretty damn mad at times.

Vaya Con Dios, Castle

Maybe it always had to end this way.

When I was a kid up until my late twenties, I actually really liked the Punisher. At his core, he's more or less a serial murderer, so that probably seems an odd statement. Of criminals, sure, and usually of the worst variety, not often some schmo who holds up the local 7-11, but still a wonton murderer whose general solution to problems is "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everyone is dead, double tap the bodies to be sure". But as a fictional character he offered a catharsis of sorts, a fantasy even to those who didn't much care for the idea of guns or violence in real life. Frank Castle was the guy who took out the untouchable, the corrupt. He spoke to a part of most of us that occasionally comes out deep in the recesses of our mind and soul, the part that wonders, just for a minute, what it would be like if the most rotten people in the world got what was coming to them.

Even today, well, take a look around and you might see how that could be appealing. Billionaires who flaunt their wealth and make life harder for all of us. Arrogant assholes who buy up the things we like and erode what made them special before our eyes because they don't have to listen to us. Businessmen who grind the working class to dust, leave everyone struggling to live, paying rent that's tripled over a long stretch of time while wages stayed flat. Shadowy figures who subvert truth, buy up forms of media for the sole purpose of controlling the narrative, controlling us. Politicians who actively subvert the will of the people and do everything in their power to stop us from sending them packing.

Suddenly, the idea of a guy who goes and takes out the people actively making life worse doesn't sound so bad, for fiction. It scratches an itch, one you know can never really be. Fantasy.

Unfortunately, it turns out he's also appealing to some of the worst people you can imagine, the kind who prefer it not be a fantasy, whose targets are quite different. You know the sort of people I'm talking about. Corrupt cops, neo nazis, far right wingers who think the best option to being outnumbered and fading in relevance is to shoot everyone they don't like and be done with it. Never mind the fact that the Punisher has, on numerous occasions, killed corrupt cops by the precinct full. Never mind he'd probably love to kill some Nazis. Co-option of figures and symbols doesn't rely on the truth. It relies on warping that until what you insist upon becomes the truth.

It's not super surprising the Punisher could have ended up a target for co-option by the right. He's a creation of the eighties, born out of a mold of vigilante hero with their own roots in political fallout of the time. Frank Castle has a lot in common with numerous protagonists played by Clint Eastwood, including but not limited to Dirty Harry. He comes from the same primordial ooze that spawned Paul Kersey, Charles Bronsons character from 1970's schlock film Death Wish. They come from a time period of right wing anxiety of the "softening" of police, that the cops just couldn't get the job done anymore so it was up to real men to take the law into their own hands and get some real killing done. All because cops got caught doing things they shouldn't and had to abide by some rules.

Middle America's easily scared and pretty easy to fool, history seems to show.

With all that in mind, suddenly it makes a lot more sense that the more violent of us might decide to take the symbol of the Punisher, the skull, and crowd around it. None of them have ever read a comic, I'm sure. The few that have probably aren't great at reading comprehension, or maybe they're willfully twisting it. But the character serves their purposes. Especially the cops. 

Little more than jack booted thugs these days, if the police were ever anything else, they struggle with a populace who has become increasingly aware of their crimes, of the human rights violations and abuses they used to get away with regularly. The times changes, technology caught up and we all became a bit more aware. So the people trained to react to any threat with lethal force growled back. The skull is a warning. Don't fuck with me because I'm the one with the power here and I'll take you out if need be. They do it, too. Take a look at the news headlines today, you'll probably find something about another black kid murdered for existing while black. It is, after all, a day ending in the letter y.

As this all happened, it was easy to see the Punisher losing any real relevance to any well adjusted person. I threw away my Punisher shirts around when the Fox News talking head of the time started wearing a Punisher skull pin. I didn't feel comfortable wearing them outside. Rather than a cool symbol from a comic I liked, it became tied up in things I didn't agree with, with death and murder and people who would prefer minorities stop existing. I still have my old Punisher comics in a box somewhere, but I'm not sure I'll ever read them again. It's hard to square away stories I enjoyed with the effect the character has had.

Disney, of course, noticed. This hadn't been as much of an issue back in 2009, when they purchased Marvel Comics. But you could tell they got incredibly nervous around when the skull started being associated with proto-facists, moreso when those same people dropped the proto. Merch for the character started dwindling, comics starring the character, once plentiful, started slowing to a trickle. Creative direction for the character visibly seemed to shift, showing a company increasingly uncomfortable with the character they owned.

If you hadn't noticed all that, the unease was made plain within the pages of the thirteenth issue of the then current volume of his ongoing, back in 2019. The character, accosted by adoring cops, came face to face with a representation of his real life influence and didn't like what he saw. A meta blend of reality and fiction, making what had happened in the real world part of said fiction in order to force him to deal with it in some way. The confrontation saw him tear the skull decal off their car, rip it to shreds, and blatantly threaten them in a way you'd expect from Frank Castle. "If you want a role model, Captain America would be happy to have you. If I catch you doing what I do, I'll come for you next."

A game attempt. But it didn't do a whole lot. How could it, really? Comics are, these days, a niche hobby. Certainly not one most of the cops proudly displaying the skull have ever been into, so they were unlikely to encounter the message. Even if they did, they'd likely refuse to absorb it.

So what to do? It's an issue for Disney, for sure. Famously considered a family friendly company, they never much like anything that could tarnish their brand. It's why they often don't do much with any R-rated properties they acquire when they decide to buy up the competition. They don't care about social issues so much as how much it affects their bottom line. It's the root of their current-as-of-writing spat with Floridas sentient turd of a Governor, Ron DeSantis. They make a lot of money off LGBTQ in numerous fashions while Ron is a fascist who would love to wipe them off the face of the Earth. If LGBTQ acceptance hadn't reached where it has socially, I guarantee you Disney would not have given two shits about all of the anti-gay bills that passed through Florida legislature.

Really, there were only two options. They could make like Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog, whose dismay at the far right co-opting his creation led him on a crusade against those types wherever possible. There's merit in the approach. After all, the Punisher made money and a corporation cares for little other than their bottom line. Disney's famously litigious as it is. But culturally, there's little chance of ever wrenching the character back from the mud the fascists had dragged him through.

So that leaves the second option. Tear it down and salt the Earth. Be done with it.

Marvel seemed to settle on the latter. It started with a trademark for a new symbol. The famous skull was going away. Then they hired Jason Aaron, a well known Punisher scribe, for a new direction. Suddenly, he was involved in the Hand and falling down a path he couldn't come back from. One where it seemed like death was probably the end game.

It wouldn't be the first time Jason Aaron had killed a version of the character. He'd once been the one chosen to follow Garth Ennis and close out the Punisher MAX version of the character. That series ended the only way the Punishers story ever really could, with him succumbing to his injuries, to the war, after a brutal confrontation with the Kingpin. If anyone was going to do it a second time, it would probably be him.

The run broke down the war, the modus operendi, in a very real way. The Punisher had, from the aughts on, occasionally played with the idea that the loss of Franks family was nothing but an excuse for his war. Maybe he did love them but he'd turned their memory into something terrible. This was the thesis statement of Ennis first arc of MAX, delivered by former comrade Microchip, and the series dabbled in it ever since. The most recent run just made it explicit, going so far as to resurrect Frank Castles wife just to have her come face to face with what her husband had done in her name.

In the 80's, the reaction would probably have been one of justification. Given the way Death Wish was written, the way it takes Paul Kerseys side, would it have been strange if his wife and daughter had approved of his actions? For a movie back then, written as it was, probably not. Probably the same for Frank Castle in the 80's. But times change, sensibilities change and the characters have to change with them. Marvel characters are, after all, forever un-aging. They use a sliding timescale to keep things current. When you slide the time, the context of a characters life will change with the new environment their past slid into. For example, Frank Castle, known for most of his history as a Vietnam veteran, is suddenly a veteran of the Gulf War.

In more modern times, when we look at things like the Punisher with a more critical eye, when those old low rent films are derided and picked apart, wouldn't it make sense for his wife to be horrified by the mass murder made in her name? Doesn't it make sense that the darkness was always in Franks heart, that she saw it and was about to ask for divorce before a freak happening saw her gunned down? What does it look like when someone finds that their family name is now associated with the most successful serial killer in human history?

So she shoots him.

He didn't die, in the end. Comic book shenanigans happen and Frank is saved from death. It wouldn't have guaranteed permanence if he had died anyway. Wouldn't have been the first time Frank Castle died in main continuity, after all, or even the second. Remember Angel Punisher? But it left him at the mercy of its coda, where his peers and his soon to be ex wife broke down his ethos, his way of life, his war. It feels like something of a breakdown of the very concept, intending to put a bow on it. He's shunted off to another dimension, far away from the main Marvel universe, where he's shown protecting a group of orphans in a weird land. Even if Frank Castle lives, the intent seems to be that maybe the concept of the Punisher cannot. Much like when the Samuel L Jackson version of Nick Fury became the mainline Nick Fury, with the old version shunted off into limbo. He doesn't have a place anymore.

Nothing stops them, of course, from reversing course later. This is fiction, after all, and if things died down enough that Disney and Marvel thought they could get some money out of bringing the character back to the old status quo without getting raked over the coals for it you can bet your last dime they'll do it. But for now, it feels like a sendoff, like a last look at a character, at a concept, that just doesn't work in the modern day, divorced from the era when it seemed less horrifying, when real life hadn't taken inspiration. The character outlived his usefulness and his relevance, becoming something pop culturally that he'd never been in the text of his stories. 

It makes sense that could happen. That's one of the tools of the fascist, one of their favorites even. Sometimes you can't stop them from co-opting things, you can only let go and move on.

Maybe it always had to end this way.

Naruto and the Great Disappointment: A Post Mortem (Op/Ed)

Aww shucks, we waited too long to put him down
and now 'Yellers gone rabid

[Note: This manga is long as hell and it's been a long time since I read the vast majority of it. If I get something wrong, it's a memory issue. This manga ran for something like fifteen years; you're bound to forget some things.]

Six years. That's how long I lasted before I gave up. I thought I'd mostly put it behind me and even laughed off the ending for a while when I'd heard about it. But the more time passed by, the more irritated I got. Eventually, all those old wounds re-opened and I had to write something about it.

I'm in a rare position where I really wish I could get the time I wasted following this mess back. When the hell do I ever feel that way? If you've read much of my site, you know I have a tendency to excuse a lot.

But Naruto, I find I can't really excuse, because...

- Narratively, this manga was all over the place

As far as stories go, I generally feel that you can pretty much do what you want as far as structure goes. To the surprise of no one who has read my blog more than three minutes, I'm heavy into superhero comics. Often, they are continuing universes that provide the opportunity to create a rich mythology around the characters and their world, which can be spun into many great self contained stories or runs. But I'm also a fan of manga to a lesser extent, which often attempts to create one over-arching storyline to rule them all, occasionally spinning off from there.

Both approaches are equally valid and have led to amazing things. You know what doesn't work? Throwing out said format halfway through. Take a wild guess what manga pulled that one.

The offending moment that unraveled the series happened past the halfway mark. It was also the first time red flags went up in my head. If you followed the series at all, I'm sure you remember it. After a long arc focused around Shikamaru we checked in on those wacky boys Orochimaru and Sasuke to see what shenanigans they were up to. It was at this point that, without warning, Sasuke decided he hated Orochimarus face and killed him so he could go do absolutely nothing of consequence for a while.

Keep in mind that Orochimaru wasn't exactly a third rate villain. Up to this point, he was very clearly The Big Bad. The Voldemort of Naruto with a dash of Ra's Al Ghul, if you want a comparison. He made his presence felt during the first ridiculously long plotline of the series, gave a sense of focus, made for a clear threat and was positioned to be a driving force for the rest of the manga. He had, by the end of Part One, convinced one of the principle characters that turning his back on everyone who loved him was totally rad (I mean, come on, give it a try, everybody's doing it), killed a Hokage and even had an entourage so powerful a bunch of the ninja kids came an eyelash away from death. In Part Two he'd taken a bit of a backseat while the Akatsuki established themselves as secondary antagonists, but he held his own against a furious, Nine Tails empowered Naruto at a point in time where he couldn't even use jutsu. At one point, Naruto survived against Sasuke only because Orochimaru felt he could still be useful. He was still the evil mastermind behind the scenes.

Keep in mind, the vast majority of this was happening at a time when his body was falling apart. Didn't matter. Even with a failing body, when Orochimaru rolled up to the party, shit went down. Or at least it did right up until he jobbed to Sasuke. So Akatsuki could take his place as a major antagonistic force, I guess? I don't know. The manga wouldn't be known for good decisions past this point.

At the time, I gave the author the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were going somewhere with it. The rest of the manga had, to that point, been tightly plotted and not a lot went to waste. This had to be deliberate, right? Orochimaru would return as a force to be reckoned with, he was just being taken out of sight for a while before he returned to piss in everyones cornflakes.

Spoiler alert: He didn't. Return as a force to be reckoned with. He came back eventually, sure - three billion chapters later - but he would never again be a driving force behind the manga. From what I understand, they never even bothered to wrap up the matter of his ass walking around again before the manga ended. He meant so little by the time they decided to call it a day on the entire series that they up and forgot about him.

From there, the manga didn't seem to know what it wanted to do. Akatsuki took over, but they never held the pure menace Orochimaru did; they started with about nine guys, but they literally could not go a single fight without someone getting their ass killed. I'm serious. I swear, if they so much as left the house someone died. Then Akatsuki Leader was the big bad for a bit while taking the name Pain, because why not, it's not like this fucking thing could get any more ridiculous, right? Then he jobbed out and fucking Tobi of all people ended up being the antagonist. For a while at least. It won't come as a shock to you that the ultimate bad guy turned out to be an Uchiha, because frankly the entire series was more about that family than the title character.

The rest just kind of fell like dominoes, with motivations getting murkier, characters acting like morons and the few gems buried under a mountain of bullshit. But it all started when Naruto threw out its main antagonist for no good reason and never recovered. Truly a life lesson for us all; ADD plotting does not make for a great series.

- The pairings the manga ended with made no sense

Clearly, Naruto mistook his mother for a black haired
woman with crippling social anxieties.
Naruto is, in fact, blind.

The manga ended with the titular character shacking up with Hinata, who you may remember as the character that did absolutely nothing of consequence, pretty much stalked the guy and had a total of maybe three conversations with him throughout the entire work. They even had a couple of kids. Said pairing, like all the others, was revealed in an epilogue so amazingly half-assed that even JK Rowling would have advised a second pass on the script.

Here's how developed that relationship is: They actually needed to focus the last movie of the Naruto anime on fleshing it out so it doesn't feel as fucking stupid as it actually is. It fails. Outside media doesn't matter; if you wanted to do it, you should have in the actual series during the fifteen some odd years you wrote this bloated monster, rather than building the title characters rapport with an entirely different female for the entire thing.

To make matters worse, the sequel story, starring Naruto's son Boruto - yeah, the author didn't even try here - shows a picture perfect portrait of a broken home life. Naruto is barely around. His son hates him for a while. Yeah, that optimistic kid who never gave up on anything or anyone and cares about others a great deal turned out to be a barely present, workaholic father you wouldn't wish on anyone. Just how we all imagined him, right?

Ridiculous relationship two is Sasuke and Sakura. At least this one had some connection early on. Trouble is, the manga - and characterization - marched on. Sakura started as a fangirl for Sasuke, but steadily matured after he left to the point where he was barely a factor in her life anymore. If anything, as the manga wore on it seemed like Naruto loved the guy more than she did, practically breaking apart at his every mention. For his part, he never genuinely liked her and tried to kill her and Naruto on more than one occasion. They weren't even on good terms near the end. So of course, when he came back, she reverted to who she was in part one and ended up marrying the guy. Good luck, I'm sure that will work out.

I remember there was a discussion on a forum I used to go to about all this, asking if the author was bad at writing female characters. There was this one older lady on there who strongly disagreed, saying that the author was a feministic writer and the way Sakura was built was proof. I kind of wonder if she's re-evaluated that stance in the time since. By the way, the answer is yes, the author is awful at writing female characters.

But hey, forget both of those pairings. They're not even the worst. Can someone explain to me where the hell Sai and Ino came from? Did they ever even speak to one another? This is a legitimate question. I guess if any pairing ever illustrated how awful this series is at romance, that would be it.

At least there's precedent for that one though. Remember Asuma and Kurenai? Of course you don't, they barely spoke to each other prior to Asumas death. Then suddenly we find out they hooked up offscreen and she was pregnant with his kid. All in service to the plotline of one of the ninja kids. Specifically, the ninja kid who barely did anything before or after that arc. So it's not like this kind of insane, out of nowhere horseshit never happened before.

Naruto: The Best at Romance.

- There are never any consequences

I admit never may be a bit too strong a word, but the statement is generally true.

The point where I flat out gave up on the manga came two thirds of the way in. Near the end of the Akatsuki shenanigans, the Leader decided to show everyone who was boss by wiping the village of Konoha - home of every character that mattered - right off the damn map. It was shocking, exciting and grabbed my attention at a point where I had more or less checked out. Could he even DO that? What does this mean? What is Naruto going to do? There's barely a village left. Does he take charge of the situation and help rebuild the village? Is there even enough LEFT to rebuild? The possibilities seemed endless and there didn't seem to be a way out of it.

Instead, true to form, the author had said villain make a last minute face turn and basically resurrect the entire village before dying. Because of course he did. Why would he do anything else? It was the last straw; I stopped reading in disgust and only checked in with the old online haunts every couple months to get the gist of what had happened, holding on to a small, laughable hope that maybe the series would turn itself around.

I said true to form, because the worst kept secret around is that the author of Naruto is the King of Cop-Outs. The Colonel of Cold Feet. On numerous occasions, he'd script something bold, then pull back at the absolute last possible minute, almost as if he were afraid of how it might change things. Nothing big ever really happened. No one important ever seemed to die, even if they'd been given the comic equivalent of a eulogy. On the one occasion that someone did, the impact was felt for maybe twenty chapters before it stopped being a thing. Whenever someone kicked the bucket, it was a non-entity like Asuma, who contributed a grand total of nothing to anyone, even in death. Everyone else almost always survived, including Hinata herself, who at one point decided she was going to buy Naruto some time, charged at the Big Bad of the week and was hilariously shut down before she even got a hit in. The villain stabbed her clean through the back. Of course she survived, because she was so important she went on to... uhh... marry the main character out of nowhere in the epilogue?

Now, I'm not saying you have to kill characters for drama or stakes, but if you're very clearly going in that direction either pull the trigger or don't bother building to it.

The earliest example I felt the pull back was the end of Part One. The fight where Neji almost died, in fact. That entire thing could not have screamed "this is goodbye" any harder if it tried, from the symbolism to the word choice to the tone. He's dead Jim. Only, oops, no he isn't. For the longest time, I thought I was just mistaken and he'd never been intended to actually die. I re-evaluated that when the manga made a suspicious number of reversals as it marched on. There may even be an earlier instance, but that was the first that stuck out.

For the record, Neji went on to do absolutely nothing of consequence from there before dying later in a ninja war. Frankly, he'd have been better off dying the first time. At least then, he'd have really made an impact; imagine that last arc of Part One if one of Narutos friends died in the midst of Sasukes abandonment of the village. It was tense as it was, but adding in the death of someone Naruto made a positive impact on would have only strengthened that. But to tell the truth, that's probably why he didn't go through with it; Sasuke was always meant for redemption, however half assed, and directly tying the death of someone Naruto befriended through sheer force of will throws a monkey wrench in that.

Oh, speaking of Sasuke and the utter lack of consequences. He turned his back on his home village to go hang out with the villain that had murdered its leader. He very nearly killed the guy who considered him a brother. He hung out with every one of the three million "Big Bads" of the manga at least once. He even joined Akatsuki at one point. Pretty sure he killed a bunch of people. Oh yeah, and he said on more than one occasion that he wanted to slaughter the entirety of Konoha for supposed crimes against his family of overpowered monsters.

Guest what his fate was. You'll never get it. Not in a million years. Would could possibly be fitting of such a treasonous, outright bastard? Ready?

He's pardoned for every one of his crimes, ends up marrying the closest thing the manga had to a heroine and ended up accomplishing every goal he set out to do.

Proof that it sure is handy being the authors pet if ever I saw it.

- This manga had a nasty habit of forgetting who the main character was supposed to be

Naruto always had a bad habit of meandering, even early on. But back then, those fanciful strolls through drawn out plots at least had the decency to feature the main character and did a good job of fleshing out the world. One also has to give some leeway here; it is a Japanese manga, after all, which are well known for being decompressed to their breaking point. I mean, a lot of these series have an eighteen or so page chapter put out a week, so a lot of it is going to be ponderous, if only to fill space. What do you expect?


Part Two, however, had a bad habit of letting the title character linger off screen for obscene lengths of time. The big Shikamaru arc didn't feature him at all or even accomplish anything, for that matter. It was about lazy genius boy and the death of his mentor.

Then there's the period of time right after Sasuke shivved Orochimaru. They might as well have renamed the manga "Sasuke and his Amazing Friends" at that point, because for a solid six months worth of weekly chapters, Not-The-Main-Character and his team of toadies wandered here and there, boring the audience to tears and making us all question the purpose of life.

Not helping is the fact that the entire arc was also a waste of time; it served the express purpose of giving Sasuke his own group to replace Team 7, whom he betrayed. Guess what they went on to do? Suck air. They contribute next to nothing. If this were an American cartoon from the 80's, I'd assume they were made for no other reason than to sell toys. Hell, they may have been for all I know; I'm not sure how much of that sort of lazy shilling they do in Japan.

These wouldn't be the only occasions either. None of the extended breaks accomplished anything. I'm going to go into ex-fan theory mode for a minute here, so what is to follow is rooted in nothing more than speculation. I've long wondered if the author of Naruto simply got tired of the story he was telling for whatever reason - hey, he'd been doing the same story for, what, eight years by this point and barely made it halfway through, so I could understand that feeling - and decided to throw whatever he could at the wall to rekindle his interest. It would explain a lot, like the long breaks from the main character, the nonsense additions to the world and even why he would simply discard the villain he'd been building for years without warning. I don't know. Maybe we'll never know.

What I do know is that a lot of this manga felt as though it were more about Sasuke Uchiha than the guy whose name was on the cover. Maybe that's why the manga drifted from Naruto a lot in Part Two. He didn't have the authors favorite character hanging around all the time anymore to ensure he'd always be in the thick of things.

- The Title Character accomplished about half his goals, but some were practically handed to him

Lets take a quick look at what Naruto wanted at the outset for a moment, shall we? He wanted to become Hokage. He wanted to win the heart of the girl he cared about. To earn the respect and admiration of the village that had shunned him. All simple goals. Easy to keep track of.


I'm not even going into number two, because that's a touchy subject. Women are not prizes to be "won" or anything of that sort. Obviously. Still, it's worth noting because one of the things the manga did right was build the friendship between he and Sakura from nothing. She hated him at the start, he cared deeply for her. Over time, she began to see him as a true friend and they became closer throughout the manga.

It was one of the most believable personal relationships in its growth over time and still might be a highlight of the whole thing if there were anything else to latch on to. That was thrown all away in the epilogue, for a pairing that lacked even a thousandth of the build or natural story flow. Even worse, what I've heard of the stuff that comes after the main series suggests they barely interact or even care about each others circumstances, which suggests, despite overwhelming evidence over seven hundred chapters, they weren't even real friends. Go figure.

Number one and number three I will get into, because those are tangible goals that don't rely on the feelings of another person. Number three he definitely accomplished on his own. Naruto had finally gained the respect and admiration of the village a good halfway through, just by his very nature and the things he'd done for them. I guess once NaRudolph got to be a semi-famous ninja who'd rescued a few important asses from death and ended up a trusted friend of the sitting Hokage the rest were ready to let him join in their reindeer games.

The Hokage thing I'm chalking up as a failure. I know, I can hear you now. "But he WAS Hokage at the very end". Yeah, because Kakashi - his ascension a convenient plot excuse for Sasukes pardon, because the author clearly felt there was no other way out of that mess - stepped down. The entire point of the characters journey was that he was going to earn the right to be Hokage and make everyone respect him. Instead, it happened years later in-universe in a denouement, after the actual story had wrapped. Just one more thing you can say essentially happened offscreen.

- The big theme of bonds never made a lot of sense

"Hey Sasuke, remember that time we
touched fingers? That meant we're brothers."
"Thanks for ruining the moment with
your creepy stalker shit. I'm going to
stab you now."

Before I really touch on this, I'm going to say up front that this could easily be a culture thing and therefore a difference I probably wouldn't get without explanation. I don't know. It happens. It doesn't escape me that manga, while well loved in America, isn't exactly made for our audience. I'm not belittling the idea of your work having a theme either. It isn't necessary, but theme is important, especially early on when a reader has little to latch on to yet beyond that.

That said, I never felt like the titular "brother bond" made a lick of sense.

For the vast majority of Part One, Naruto and Sasuke were rivals. They barely got along even on a basic level and there was never anything suggesting some deep bond between the two. They came off as rivals who kind of tolerated each others company. Maybe they had a bit of respect for the other guy and appreciated the idea that they were team-mates.

When Sasuke left, suddenly the manga decides to beat us over the head with the idea that these two have a bond of brothers. The proof? A quick scene of a time when, years ago, Sasuke briefly reached out to a lonely Naruto. Nothing more, nothing less. Past that they didn't have much more than the rivalry thing.

Look, I've had friends I considered as close as a brother. It takes a hell of a lot more than that. A hell of a lot more in common, at least. It also doesn't come out of nowhere. Same goes for small moments that have a big impact on us. I've had that happen with actual family. They're fond moments I look back on. I still don't excuse said family members bullshit and, to this day, hate their guts long after they died. Even family - we're talking genuine blood family - doesn't mean you excuse everything they do.

So, we're left with a theme that had zero buildup when it appeared. That left it on shaky ground. If your big bonding moment doesn't ring true, how can anyone buy into what you're selling? How can they look at a moment and think it flows naturally from what we've been shown?

From my own perspective, there came a point when Narutos desire to bring his "brother" back got a bit disturbing. Sasuke did a lot of bad things in the manga and was, for the most part, not the most mentally stable character around. None of this was reflected in Naruto. Rather than some character moments or reflection on why bringing Sasuke back was so important, he doubled down.

There were points where Naruto felt as though he were becoming obsessive. Maybe even as far as an obsessive, stalkerish ex-boyfriend. He cried, he couldn't talk about the guy without plummeting into depression, he even physically fought anyone who came to the fairly reasonable conclusion that "this guy is causing us some serious problems and we have to do something about it". Some of this is a natural exaggeration of emotions and expressions that can come with a visual medium, especially in a work that is mainly action. There's still a point where it becomes too much.

The main character became creepy in service to the theme, which may be a sign you've either taken it too far or you simply flubbed the execution and now the whole thing doesn't make any sense.

- With the series wrapped, it's now clear the emotional journeys of the characters meant nothing 

This may be the one that hurts the most out of any of them.


Take a look at the epilogue. Look at the situations they have found themselves in and the resolution to plotlines. Did anything that really happened in Part Two make a lick of difference?

I mean this in several ways. At the start of the manga, Naruto wants to be hokage and secretly kinda worships Sasuke. At the end of the manga, Naruto is Hokage and still kinda worships Sasuke. Sakura starts as a viciously immature girl who hates Naruto and has a straight up fangirl crush on Sasuke. At the end, she's a housewife to the guy she had a shallow crush on at fourteen. Sasuke started out as the coolest ninja in the room with his family bloodline granting him the best ninja power of all and his family name guaranteeing he had the respect of everyone. He ended the manga having accomplished all of his goals, marrying a girl he didn't even like - he magically accepted her two plus years past feelings for him in the last couple chapters, because good writing - and even got to have a kid to continue his doomed bloodline.

You notice what you don't see in there? Anything that happened in Part Two. Because the epilogue made it clear none of it mattered.

Much of the development of the characters ended up having little effect on where they ended up. Naruto learned so much in the meantime, skillwise and emotionally. He deepened his friendship with Sakura. He became one of the best ninja around. Didn't matter. He ends up Hokage only when his mentor steps down, well after the manga itself has basically ended. Sakura pushed herself, began to emotionally move herself past said crush, became a strong emotional pillar to her friends, became a fighter so strong she impressed a lot of people and became the best combat medic you could ask for. She reverts back when said crush comes back into her life and ends up a doting housewife.

Oh, and Sasuke? Sasuke pulled every villain trick in the book, right down to declaring he was going to slaughter the entirety of the village he grew up in. Didn't matter. He was pardoned by his one time mentor, paid for nothing he did and didn't even really have to deal with personal consequences for his gross violations of trust, broken friendships and the aftereffects that would naturally occur after you try to murder a couple people.

My point is that the epilogue made no sense after everything that happened. The only way you can really draw a straight line between what we saw and what we ended up with is if the manga stopped at the Chunin Exams, skipped everything that happened after and went right to the epilogue. Which makes you wonder... why the hell did I even read this crap for so long?

- The series has a boatload of missed potential

You've been reading my blog a while, right? If not, one trait you'll probably find if you read more is that the works that make me the saddest are the ones that have all the potential in the world and end up squandering it. I find these projects fascinating - it can be fun to dissect them, figure out where they went wrong and what could have been changed - but they're equally depressing. Naruto is one of them. Look, I wouldn't have kept reading for a little over six years if I didn't think this manga could be something special. I still think that, for whatever flaws it had, Part One and the first quarter of Part Two had all the right stuff and could have led to something great. There were so many great moments, the series felt as though it had purpose, everything felt planned.

Now, it exists to me as a curiosity. Something I once enjoyed, but went so very wrong that the entire endeavor ended up a ruined mess. Did the author get burnt out? Was he forced to continue it longer than he wanted to? What was even the point? What was he trying to say with this? Was he trying to say anything? Was it ever intended to run this long? Would it have ended sooner - with a better overall ending - had it not become a global phenomenon for a time? Was there a point it could have been salvaged?

Those questions hang over Naruto. We'll probably never have the answers. It simply exists as it is, a series that could have been something but ultimately ended up a failure. More than anything, that makes me sad.

It also makes me want those six years back, but we can't have everything. The next time I read a shitty superhero comic, I can take heart. At least when the current writer leaves, there's a good chance the next will take the characters I love and do something amazing with them. You'll never see that with Naruto and his friends. I'm still deciding whether that's the saddest part of all.

Time Isn't Always On Our Side (Op/Ed)

Everyone has that one band that means more to them than any other, don't they? The one group that connected with you through their music, maybe even played a role in a wonderful memory. Iron Maiden has always been that band for me.

I got into them kind of late in the game, as you can guess. They've been around since the 80's, after all. Luckily, I skipped the 90's, which was when they were stuck in Replacement Singer Hell. It was around 2000, so I must have been thirteen or fourteen. Dad picked up their Somewhere in Time album to replace a copy he lost a long time prior. At first I didn't pay it much heed, but eventually I listened to it. I was hooked immediately. I rushed to devour every prior album all the way up to the 1990's.

Around this time, Maiden made their comeback. They reunited with their most popular singer and guitarist, made a new album and almost immediately set out on the road to tour. I bought that album of course- its title was Brave New World - and fell in love with it. After my parents bought me the Rock in Rio tape, one thought stuck with me. "I have to see these guys live".

It's funny how many old bands have made triumphant comebacks in the 2000's. Several of my old favorites have returned, putting out amazing new albums that earned a place in my CD collection. They practically defied conventional wisdom; it's usually said - and most of the time it's true - that eventually a band is going to taper off in quality before sinking into the depths of irrelevance.

Maybe it's just bias on my part, but no one bucked conventional wisdom more than Maiden. Of the four albums they've put out, only one was anything even remotely resembling a disappointment and that's only when compared to the other albums released during this comeback period. I'd go so far as to say their most recent - The Final Frontier - is as good as anything they've done in the past. Maiden didn't just age gracefully. Musically, they're far better than they've ever been.

I bought all four of those albums when they came out, of course. For some reason or another, I didn't get to see them live for the longest time. Tour after tour passed me by. It wasn't until last year that I finally managed to see them in concert. It wasn't until this year that I'd know what that night would mean to me.

My mother could never get around well. Hit by a drunk driver when she was seventeen, her knees slowly degenerated over the years, leaving her all but crippled. By last year, she could barely get around with a cane and my arm for support. Much of my life over the past several years has revolved around taking care of her.

I took pride in it. She was a wonderful lady who, despite her lot in life, loved her kids and would do anything for us. It felt like a small way to pay her back. Plus I got to spend a lot of time with her. She was, without question, my best friend and the person I looked up to most in life. I managed to get paid for taking care of her; it wasn't a ton, but it was enough. I'd always had plans for afterwards; she was going to get knee replacement surgery and as soon as I felt I could be away for a while without worry, I intended to go to a training school.

She, as I recall, was the one who convinced me we should go to the concert. She wasn't as excited as I was about it - she had, after all, seen Maiden in their prime and had her stories, which she loved to tell - but she wanted to go to keep me company. Not to mention the fact that Alice Cooper was the opening act; Cooper was one of the few rock bands she had never attended a concert for, even in her youth. So we bought our tickets and when the time came we made the journey down to Darien Lake.

We had a wonderful time. It was hard on her, of course - the simple act of walking was agony for her - but she managed. We took pictures, bought overpriced shirts to remember the occasion by and revelled in the experience. She was enthralled by Cooper, who put on a great show as always. For me, it was the main event that hooked me. You'd never guess the members of Iron Maiden were in their fifties judging by how effortlessly Bruce Dickinson raced across the stage. The energy he possesses is enough to be the envy of men half his age.

After the show, we ate at Denny's and holed up in a motel for the night. I was too exhausted from the show to safely make the drive home. It wasn't some big vacation, but we had a great time. We always figured there would be more to come; she'd get her knee surgery, I'd get a decent job and I'd take her with me to see all sorts of different places. It wasn't supposed to be the last time we got to do anything big together.

Turns out it was.

My mother died this year on the 13th of July around 11 AM*. I'll never forget it. Three days later and it would have been exactly a year from our trip. I still don't know what happened. I still don't understand why. She didn't deserve it. There was so much left for her to see and do. There's so much left we never got to do. So much left, stolen from us without warning. I miss her all the time, months later. The tears have dried, but everything's changed. What I wouldn't give to go back in time.

I'm two days away from my 27th birthday. I can't help but think of her and think of where my life is right now. I put so much into helping her and I can't help but ask myself what I have to show for it? Aside from my father and sister, I'm alone. I haven't had a girlfriend in years. I'm struggling to get everything in order so I can go on with the plans I made well before she passed. What do I really have?

She'll never see me get married. When I have kids, she'll never get to meet them. She'll never see me make it in anything I want to do. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I'm still struggling to figure my life out. To figure out where I go from here. It isn't easy.

One thing I do still have are memories. A big one is that concert. If Iron Maiden weren't around anymore, I wouldn't have that memory.

I guess when it comes down to it, that's part of the point of this. In some way, it made a band I already loved special to me in a different way. I guess I can never make fun of the Rolling Stones again for the fact that they're still around despite being half dead.

So keep on upping the irons, Maiden. Keep going until the six of you are a bunch of skeletons performing on stage if you want. I'll be there. I like to think Mom will be there with me in spirit.

* Yes, this is why the blog has been reduced to maybe a post a month.

Does the Mascot Era Hold What Gaming Has Been Missing? (op/ed)

Not the face I expected to think of when
considering the king of modern platformers*

So who called Rayman being the character to star in the two of the best side scrolling platformers ever made? If you raise your hand you're a goddamn liar. The Rabbids had more exposure than him.

Then, lo and behold, Rayman Origins released and suddenly Rayman was cool, possibly for the first time. Bright, clean, colorful graphics, responsive control, excellent co-op, tons of secrets, bitchin' level design, challenge factor, especially if you made it all the way to Land of the Livid Dead. The game had it all. Then Legends came along and somehow took it even further.

Rayman is kind of an anamoly these days. At some point early in the previous decade, the idea of the video game mascot just sort of died off. It wouldn't be a stretch to say the jump to 3D models and environments is what did it; even Sonic, a king of the 2D era, took years to finally get it right. Several saw their franchises die with a bad 3D entry.

Times change, of course. We finally got out heads out of our collective asses on the whole 3D thing. So isn't it about time for a comeback?

Seriously, gaming's missing something these days. Nowadays it's all about guns and war. Drab, dull soldiers running around drab, dull, brown landscapes shooting drab, dull enemies. I've never been against those type of games and have enjoyed my fair share but it makes for most of the industries modern output. Not helping matters is the fact that the shooter has become a safe bet; video game companies got the idea in their heads that anything that isn't a First Person Shooter is a tough sell and adjusted accordingly.

Lately, I find I've drifted away from that. What catches my eye these days is the colorful, the crazy, the out there idea, even in modern genres. It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of GTA IV, a game that, in its quest to tell a serious, heavy story about the nature of the American Dream, kind of forgot it was supposed to be fun. Then I discovered Saints Row the Third, an entry in a franchise I had previously dismissed. It was off the chain. Any and everything could happen. The laws of physics might not apply, zombies might show up, you might hang out with a luchador or a pimp that speaks in autotune. It was bombastic, crazy and unafraid to throw the rules out the window if it might make for a good time. But more than that, it was fun. It was everything Grand Theft Auto used to be.

It's not an isolated incident. I've retained my love for Sonic the Hedgehog, a franchise that's finally embraced what it used to be and stopped trying to be so damn serious. Rayman has obviously won my heart. I wasn't thrilled with how far back it threw, but Mega Man 9 was decent and 10 was godly. The Katamari games never innovate, but they're consistently wacky and always a good time. Bionic Commando: ReArmed was excellent. Then we have Ducktales and Castle of Illusion finding themselves remade for modern day.

You'll notice a pattern here. Truth is, a lot of the things I love about these games were the norm back in the 90's. You know, back when family friendly mascots ruled the game systems.

Lest you think I'm just being nostalgic, I assure you I'm not viewing this with rose tinted glasses. I remember the duds. Seemed like everyone was in a rush to rip Sonic the Hedgehog off wholesale in the hopes of getting a fraction of his sales, leading to abominations like Bubsy. I don't forget the blatant advertising, either; people bitch about it in modern games, but back then they'd make entire games centered around the mascots for soda or cheese crunchies. Most of them sucked**.

But then... how often did we get a winner out of the deal? Guys like Sonic, Mario and Mega Man go without saying***. But what about Sparkster (or Rocket Knight if you prefer)? Or guys like Earthworm Jim, whose world had all the wacky hijinks and off the wall humor you could handle? He's fallen far since then, but everyone loves the first three Crash Bandicoot games. Spyro had a great trilogy, too. They've never been my thing, but many swore by the Banjo Kazooie games. Vectorman? Bomberman? The modern age had a few great ones too, with fare like Sly Cooper and Jak picking up the slack.

I recognize there's a sound argument to be made that if I got my way, we'd be trading one set of samey crap for another. But think about it. Even the duds rarely resembled each other in look, style or design. Take your modern shooters, on the other hand; at times, it's difficult to tell them apart. Do we really need another Tom Clancy? Call of Duty? Generic Shooter #476? Is there anything substantial enough to set each of them apart?

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a crapload of colorful mascots traversing diverse, out there world, even if half of them were crap, as opposed to a crapload of drab, boring shooters that look and play the exact same. Doesn't it get depressing, looking at all that brown? All those dark colors? I'm tired of depressing. I want fun.

* Yes, I'm going to far as to say Rayman's dethroned Mario, at least for the time being. Think about it. When's the last time a Mario game felt particularly inspired? Or even fresh? The first Galaxy? Maybe the second, which refined and polished everything that made the first one great. Since then, it's mostly been a revival of sub-brands like Land and World. Even Mario's recent return to 2D - New Super Mario Brothers - simply cannot hold a candle to Rayman's recent offerings. Nintendo needs to step it up.

** Cool Spot's one of the few exceptions, but his games are remembered better than they actually were. There's a difference between being a good game and a great one, a distinction few make when it comes to Cool Spot. But that's splitting hairs; they're better than you'd expect a blatant product advertisement to be, which we can probably thank David Perry and Tommy Tallarico for.

*** Even if Mega Man's all but dropped off the map thanks to a hissy fit Capcom threw when Keji Inafune left the company.

The Slow Breakdown of the Mutant Metaphor (Op/Ed)

Presenting: The early front-runner for the
most controversial comic of 2013

So, what a mess, right? This one almost flew past me, as I don't follow a lot of comic creators on Twitter. Even after I found out about it, I wasn't sure what was wrong about the scene - from the comic pictured to the left - until it was made pretty clear by other Twitter users. To make matters worse, the writer didn't react well, leading to a big mess.

I'm not really planning to talk about this issue. For one thing, Joe Hughes and Andrew Wheeler have already covered it definitively at Comic Alliance. For two, I'm a straight white male; I don't exactly have anything to add here. It's more about the fact that some seem to fear this damages the metaphor for mutants representing minority struggles.

The trouble is, I think Marvel broke that metaphor a while ago, with this just being the latest hit an already bleeding concept has had to endure.

Not too long after Grant Morrisons New X-Men - a personal favorite of mine - Marvel put out House of M. This, I think, was ground zero. Almost immediately after the "No More Mutants" proclamation, the X-Men shifted to a different mission statement. They were now the endangered species. Survival was the concept at the heart of the team. The X-Men began to resemble an army, not a group of people unfairly prosecuted for their differences.
Ed Brubaker sort of got the ball rolling when he disgraced Xavier in Deadly Genesis, which led to the character losing any influence on the team and losing his purpose. This is important because his entire deal was that he was for peace and acceptance. He was the figure offering a better way, even if it was harder. Now, he was off the team, with many mutants disillusioned regarding him and his message*. It didn't stop there, with most of the questionable moments centering around Cyclops.

The school was trashed again, only this time the X-Men left instead of rebuilding. Education is essentially the root of fixing the problems of the world, but now the X-Men weren't teaching much of anything beyond combat. When someone he doesn't like comes into power and causes problems, Cyclops packs his people up, herds them on an island made of Asteroid M just off the coast of San Francisco and declares them their own nation. The idea of the teenage X-Men being child soldiers is pretty apparent**. Cyclops puts a kill team together to take out the people who could cause mutants the most damage. After a split with half the X-Men, Cyclops named his group the Extinction Team and decides to send the world an ultimatum essentially saying they weren't going to put up with their BS and that they would retaliate if someone even looked at them cross.

Then there's that whole thing about Cyclops being willing to gamble with the planets life over whether a giant fire phoenix will revive the mutant population - even after they know it nuked a planet on its way to Earth - but, uh, that one might not have any implications beyond the fact that Cyclops is kind of a dick.

In fairness, it's not a straight one to one comparison to real life. The X-Men have never been a one to one comparison to any minority group. It's very easy to do great stories without using the racial metaphor at all. But it's a concept embedded in the franchise, meaning that when Marvel greenlit all this, they essentially had the stand-in for minority struggles engage in all of those very questionable acts.

You can see how this might be a problem.

Marvel obviously wants to go back to the well, now that the "endangered species" era is effectively over. Trouble is, how do you really come back from that? I mean, sure, you can do whatever you want in fiction, but how does it work after all that, save a continuity reboot?

But try they will, only trouble being that now we've got a real problem in the dynamic. Cyclops and his group have, to be frank, become a representation of extremists. Even if you think that, in light of Marvel continuity, enough is enough and agree with their position, they are definitely not the good guys here. That leaves Uncanny Avengers to be the other side of the coin. But that is now out the window as well.

So, where's the middle ground here? Cyclops is obviously wrong. People have made it clear Havok is wrong, intentions aside. Not a good situation to have.

Can it be salvaged? Sure. The right writer could theoretically put the house back in order. But the franchise has spent close to ten years slowly breaking the metaphor. It will take a lot of work and even then I'm not sure it can ever be completely fixed. I guess only time will tell.

* And now he's dead - killed by Cyclops - because Marvel couldn't find something to do with the guy who taught peace and understanding.

** Marvel was at least aware of this one; it was central to Schism, where the X-Men split into two groups over it.

Op/Ed: Who Deconstructs the Deconstructors?

About a week or two ago, I was doing the usual Twitter bullshit. You know, dicking around, not accomplishing anything of note. This is when I come across a discussion where one participant basically says "how does this horror film even work in a post-Cabin in the Woods world?" It brought back a question lingering in the back of my head for a while now.

What is with these people who think a deconstruction automatically destroys its target genre?

This is not to single this person or instance out. It's not unique. I've seen similar comments for years. I could swear I've even seen Alan Moore quotes from back in the day where he seemed convinced he'd just destroyed superhero comics with Watchmen, but don't quote me on that. It might have just been the journalists of the time. If you've been paying any attention at all, you're aware that prediction was exposed as bullshit a long time ago.

Cabin in the Woods, for the unaware, is a deconstruction of the horror genre. It's pretty distinctly a Joss Whedon thing, but it's also a fairly slick skewering of horror films. The basic gist is that every so often, a bunch of asshole scientists have to get together and kill off a group of teenagers in gruesome ways to appease some higher beings, or else the world is destroyed. Since it's a deconstruction, you've probably put two and two together and realized the higher beings are meant to be us as we partake in these displays of wonton murder. They manage to break the cycle and doom the world in the process just by virtue of surviving.

Like Watchmen, the effect on the long term health of the genre is going to be jack and shit. Slasher flicks already go in and out of vogue as it is; you'll get a period where there's a glut of them, then you don't see much for a few years and then suddenly ghosts are popping out of televisions and Rob Zombie is, for some reason, given the keys to a bunch of slasher icons. But they don't die out completely.

I wonder, what is it about a deconstruction that causes people to think the targeted genre or tropes are irreversibly broken? Everyone is different and that's probably true for some, but for the most part it's just another story looking at these things in a different way. It doesn't suddenly make the type of stories it positions under the microscope unenjoyable.

Watchmen is a classic, but if you think it ruined superhero comics, I've got a bridge to sell you. They've been trucking right along for twenty five plus years since that story came out. There have been bad times, but they've survived despite Moores magnum opus. There have been some amazing stories with superheros since then. That doesn't make Watchmen any less important a story. It just means that it's not a genre killer.

Cabin in the Woods will end up in the same boat. Maybe it will go down as a classic. Maybe it will even force slasher films to evolve*. But it won't destroy them, because there's a demand for those type of films.

Anyone else see the Nightmare on Elm Street remake from 2010? Every time some interesting twist is added to the plot, it's shot down ten minutes later. I've seen worse, but it was still a waste of time. Didn't matter. Even adding in a decent figure for advertising, it still made over twice its budget. Before you say anything, I get that it came out two years before Cabin. Doesn't make a difference. Freddy's a horror icon and people want to see him. Cabin was only a modest success anyways, so you have to wonder just how many people saw it.

Noir has been deconstructed. The femme fatale trope has been torn to hell and back. They're still here. So can we stop pretending deconstructions are all important? It's a valid avenue to explore, no question. But just because you can tear something down doesn't mean someone else can't build it back up.

* It sounds like this is what Whedon was shooting for. I guess it was meant to take a shot at torture porn too, judging by his comments. I can agree with that. I'm far from squeamish, but some of those films end up going too far.

Out of the Wheelchair and into the Flames: The Less Than Stellar Reaction to Barbara Gordons Return as Batgirl

You've probably heard of Batgirl before. If you're paying attention at all, you're probably aware that DC is in the midst of a linewide relaunch aimed at solidifying the companies comics into the digital sphere with day and date releases. You probably know Barbara Gordon is back as Batgirl, as well.

If you know all of that, you must know about the less than stellar reaction in some areas of fandom.

There are a lot of reasons why. One being the fact that Oracle's been a positive portrayal of disability in a medium sorely lacking in them for over twenty years now. Stephanie Browns dismissal as Batgirl is another that has some folks annoyed. They're all valid. But how often is a rational argument for the other side really given? So that's what I'm here to give, along with some perspective, if I can.

As you can guess, I'm actually okay with the return of Babs as Batgirl. I have my own reasons and I understand DC's. A fair amount of folks, predictably, are upset at the loss of Stephanie Brown as Batgirl; somewhat hypocritical, I might add, if you're at all aware of the sheer outrage that followed her original announcement as Batgirl. Of course, there's also the reality that the comic sold like shit despite massive amounts of critical acclaim, but that's always glossed over in situations like this. No one really wants to hear the "recognizability" argument, of course, but that's just what the company is going for by returning the "iconic" version. It's a bit different for me.

Am I the only one who was just completely bored with the Oracle identity? It's been around for twenty years and frankly, it got to the point where she was just there. I can't think of a lot of what was done with her outside of Birds of Prey and her being the "handler" for Steph Browns time as Batgirl. She was a strong handicapped character, but after twenty years, I honestly felt like the whole deal was well and truly spent.

Compared to Oracle, how many good, definitive stories do we have of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl? Three, max; and one of them, fun as it was, caused a bit of stir. Most of her time in the cowl is from the Silver Age, which was... well, a different time; and by different I mean she put on makeup in the midst of a fight, which is not exactly the definition of a positive portrayal of a female hero.

For all the talk of how it's "regressing" to have her go back, I never really got to experience Babs as Batgirl much in the comics. You may recall that on the scant occasions I did, I had a blast. I think this was compounded by my boredom with Oracle, which is the main role I've seen her in for as long as I've been reading. Now, part of this is on DC, as they could always put out more stories of Babs as Batgirl in the past. But then, they couldn't really ever show us the ongoing adventures.

Not to mention the stories set in the past always have those little allusions to her legs and future handicap when the writers feel like being cute. I hate that so much I could spew acid; I sit there thinking "ha ha, real funny writer, you're so clever with your allusion to The Killing Joke, I'm in awe". It kind of devalues her time as Batgirl, as it's though the injury is now her entire character and even her damn past now revolves around the fact that it's in her future. It's as though being Batgirl wasn't as important as being Oracle; and while there's definitely a case to be made that she became more important as an positive role model after the injury, it shouldn't necessarily devalue her previous role.

Then comes the reality that Oracle became a tool for storytellers not named Gail Simone and not much else. An easy one to use at that; for several years ninety percent of her appearances outside of Birds of Prey consisted of her being used as an info dump disguised as a character. She was a tool to point the hero in the right direction at a given time or explain a backstory with ease. It's not bad to have an information broker - and it can be made interesting - but she was used as a shortcut.

It kind of needed to stop. Remember how often Batman used her for info or direction on a case? Batman, the Worlds Greatest Detective. Instead of us seeing him do some, you know, detecting, some writers would use the shortcut. Even the Bat offices realized it, since they cut Batman off from her and the line in Under the Hood about how the Bat family had "come to rely on her too much".

Despite that, I feel kind of bad to have this opinion. I feel for the handicapped readers who are rather crushed by the loss of Oracle. The number of characters to take her place is a low one. I've read quite a few blogs or articles on the whole thing and it kind of makes me feel bad for them. At the same time, don't most characters mean something to somebody? Is that a reason to keep them locked in one position? Or is it a bit too much like those readers who want a regression to the Silver Age iterations for their own personal reasons? That's not an easy question to answer.

But what's done is done. There are good arguments to be made on both sides. It's tough to say any stance - such as my own - is better than the others. Ultimately, we'll have to see where it goes; Gail Simone's about as good a choice for this as anyone. How many years has she handled Barbara Gordon?

Hopefully it pans out, because man, how freaking embarrassing would it be for DC to cave and have Babs re-crippled in some contrived way? That's Professor X's gig over at Marvel; and as much as I like that character, that shit was ridiculous. Just stick with one already.

Op/Ed: Event After Event, Event After Event, We Stuck No Breath or Motion

Are we ever truly free from events? Sometimes, it really doesn't feel like it, especially right now. After Siege, Marvel said "we're not doing major events for a while, but you might see smaller scale events among families of titles". At the time, it sounded relatively appealing, as long as it wasn't a constant thing, but it quickly became apparent that things were actually the same as ever and arguably much worse.

At the moment, Shadowland currently has the street level heroes wrapped up in an event, one that I hear isn't exactly all that hot. Chaos War is on the way. Both have a plethora of tie-ins; and from the sound of it, more is on the way. No, we're not dealing with major scale events at the moment, but things are about as bad as ever and I'm starting to have the feeling that the folks at Marvel just don't get it.

It was asked what fans thought about the smaller scale events; surprise, surprise, the fans pretty much felt that things were worse than ever with several different events. Well, Marvel responded and pretty much went on the defensive, bringing up that they didn't feel that the smaller events equaled the large ones they used to do and so on. Also, it's again pointed out that you don't need to read all the tie-ins and that part of fans problem is that they feel like they have to get them all. Not only did said answers kind of make asking the fans their opinion seem pointless - as did the later to come "vote with your wallets instead of your mouths" bit elsewhere - but it felt like they didn't really grasp what they were doing or why it was as bad. Not to mention there seemed to be a disconnect with what exactly constitutes an "event"; they may be big stories, but I'm pretty sure the "Punishment" storyline with Punisher and Daken or "Three" in Fantastic Four aren't events. If anything, big stories in the ongoings is probably what they should be doing to start with.

Even if you look at it from a basic standpoint, the problems pretty obvious. Sure, it ain't one huge event, but two to three smaller ones will add up to that level. So here we have Shadowland, which has multiple tie-ins and has taken over more than a few events. That ends the same month Chaos War starts, which embroils a whole new sect of Marvel in a crossover. So on, so forth. It perpetuates an event mode for certain parts of the line; and honestly, there's a lot of potential for this to get out of hand. Besides which, I'm pretty sure neither needed to be a big crossover with eight or nine tie-ins. It just seems like it never ends.

But the big trouble, to me, is that it feels like it hurts otherwise excellent ideas in the long run.

Look, I'll level here. I don't do events, for the most part. Especially not Marvel events. I've felt like they've been terrible for the better part of this decade. Hell, the only event with a spot for the trade on my bookshelf is Infinity Gauntlet, an event from over twenty years ago. I've gotten excited for my fair share, sure, but one of the best parts about being a tradewaiter is that I'll have a pretty good idea way ahead of time as to whether something is a pile of crap or not. As you've likely guessed, with Marvel events, this is all the time, pretty much. So I end up not buying them; if I read them, it'll be because of the library on down in the city and nine times out of ten I find I made the right choice in skipping it.

So the events suck; so what, right? Well here's the problem. The tie-ins? Never gonna escape them. They've got the branding, they often have big references or ties to things in the event and - for better or worse - they're not going to escape it. If an event sucks, who the hell is really going to want to read the tie-ins, good or not? You see the problem; and no matter how good a tie-in story may be, it's in service to the larger story. If that larger story is a dud, it's screwed.

I can only speak for myself - I'm only one guy, after all, and not representative of the entire readership - but event branding can be an outright turn-off. Especially if the associated event is a pile of crap. For example, I've not read a lick of Incredible Hercules, at least not yet. It's gotten gobs of praise, the scans I've seen have made me want it and it sounds like a good time. But those goddamn tie-ins have kept me away; I'm only now considering sucking it up and just diving in. Literally every other story arc of Incredible Hercules is a tie-in to some larger event. The launch was a tie-in to World War Hulk, then after one story arc there was a Secret Invasion tie-in, then after one more it was Dark Reign, then after one more the series closed out with the Assault on New Olympus mini-event, before we had a story arc in mini form before the coming Chaos War event. Maybe it's just me, but that is not very attractive to me as a reader and it's a lot of why I've skipped Incredible Herc thus far; I want to read about Herc's adventures, but it seems like every other one is roped into some event.

Can you imagine if Walt Simonsons Thor run had an event tie-in every other story? That's another thing. I don't think it's coincidence that it's the great runs on ongoings that are remembered far into the future. Someone is probably going to talk about something like Peter David's Hulk down the road more than most events. Hell, can anyone even fondly remember most events? Say the 90's for example. Didn't think so. So in favor of runs that are like building blocks - like how Daredevil's had ten years solid of long runs by creators before Shadowland derailed him - we go to lots of events, only on a small scale. Great plan guys; I'll be over here reading something else.

The sames likely to go for other projects. There's a Power Man mini tying into Shadowland. Whereas I might otherwise be interested in it, if only because of the creative team, I doubt I'm going to try it. Jeff Parkers Thunderbolts sounds like a good read, but come trade time, I'm going to be wary, because it seems like it's always either crossing over with something or tying into an event (hello, Shadowland tie-in). Probably going to pass on Dead Avengers (Chaos War). This is just what I can think of. It's even more ridiculous when you see Thanos Imperitive has the right idea and is running alongside these events.

Street signs read anywhere, anytime. Can you stop the bus? This is where I wanna get off.

To tell the truth, this is also part of why I don't read much Marvel. Seems like whenever I see something interesting to me over there, it's tied into something. Pretty annoying. Though it's not like DC doesn't do it; I'm convinced the overt ties to Infinite Crisis in the latter half of Batman: Under the Hood are why it's not a modern classic of a Batman story.

I think another problem with it is that the readership in general starts to become ever more reliant on events. After all, they're these big blockbuster storylines designed to at least try and thrill. When you've got big hyped events left, right and center, it's kind of hard to see that the regular titles might have a story just as big and probably even better, only with a difference in scope. Then comes the question of "what's next". After all, if you do big, then you need to do bigger and bigger. Eventually, going back to just stories in ongoings without the huge stakes seems less exciting.

Unfortunately, you can probably argue that this has already happened. Imagine my dismay when IGN's Comics crew made it pretty clear they wanted major events back. Something they mentioned that was damn near depressing was apathy for things that were going on, which mirrored a lack of a huge event. Of course, they then went on to argue their case, but that was the point that stuck with me. Despite quality books left, right and center, the lack of a huge event hit their enthusiasm for comics. Granted, when done well, an event comic is a beautiful thing, but how often does that happen?

Is that what we've come to now? Is that what comics have come to? If there isn't a huge event, it feels slow and nothing is exciting? Jesus Christ guys. How absolutely friggin' depressing. It's like comics have become the movie industry; if there isn't a huge, blockbuster event at the center of the summer, no one cares and everything's a failure.

This is what event comics have slowly done to the market and the higher ups just don't get it. So it's probably a matter of time before they come back; and really, the only change will be it going back to one big one instead of a couple smaller ones. Sales have slipped and as Tom Breevort points out, fans are idiots who talk a good game but get roped into the events every time while ignoring most of the other stuff unless it has a nifty banner. He's right to point it out; fans, after all, often have little sense come time to cash out but big mouths. Meantime, come trade time a lot of interesting series are saddled with tie-ins that lose relevance over time.

What a god damn shame.

Op/Ed: Batman the Urban Legend

Lets face it. Some ideas are dumb as hell. No amount of explaining will really fix it. But every so often one of those ideas comes along and the people in charge absolutely insist on forcing it down our throats. You see it every so often in television, wrestling and even comic books. Eventually they may well learn their lesson and move on, but their folly has still become part of history and they may even be convinced that they had the right idea regardless.

I really view the dead end concept of Batman as an Urban Legend in Gotham City as one of them.

To start off, I should say that it's not without merit in some situations. In the early years of Batmans career, it makes sense that it would be an image he'd cultivate for a while to scare the crooks. So it works for stories usually set in the "Year One" era. Also, using it in alternate universe stories isn't exactly a bad thing either. There are a couple that work pretty good.

It's when they've tried applying it to the main Batman comics that there's been a problem.

And try they did. Back in the 90's - when Grim and Gritty was all the rage - the Bat offices were really pushing to keep Batman out of the greater goings-on of the DC Universe. After Frank Millers stories saw great success, the Bat offices wanted him pretty much on his own. They campaigned to have his entire Justice League tenure removed and even went so far as to directly retcon him as an Urban Legend to Gothamites during Zero Hour. Needless to say, they were pretty intent on shoving this concept straight down our throats without so much as a glass of water.

It's not hard to see why. They weren't stupid. In an age when dark heroes were vogue, Batman had become their lynchpin for this. But having him hang with colorful dudes in tights doesn't really work for the image they were cultivating. Same for him being involved in every world crisis. So they wanted to remove it on that short sighted basis.

I've known quite a few people who would probably embrace such an approach. The concept of "the grimmer the Batman the better" is all to prevalent with some folks. So making him an urban legend in Gotham that scares the wits out of crooks and growls at any hero who dares even think of setting foot in his city? Works for them.

I honestly feel they're wrong.

Let's face it, the urban crime fighter approach is limiting. Batman has done it all in the long years the character has been around; and while the alien fighting campy days aren't something I'm anxious to see return, keeping him a dark urban commando is something I want to see just as little. What's great about Batman is that he's a character that can withstand many different interpretations; an aspect that should be embraced, not shunned.

But moreover, it's just a flawed concept. The notion of Batman being an urban legend is laughable because the character honestly never stopped being put in grander situations. Oh sure, in the Batman titles they played lip service to the urban legend deal, but meanwhile Batman was chillin' with the other heroes fighting to keep the sun from going out or whupping some White Martians. These are world altering threats that affect everyone with great visability. So the rest of the DCU knows about Batman, but Gotham doesn't until a good while after Batmans participated in many world altering events. See the problem?

On top of this, said concept forces you to take huge leaps of logic. I mean, we've got colorful guys running around like clowns, scarecrows and Alice in Wonderland characters. So who fights them, often in the open? Batman. Those guys are big news and they expected you to believe that every time one of them popped up, made a stink and were caught, no one saw or acknowledge the big dude dressed like a Bat. So who did they think caught those dudes? The police? And how could the two bit hoods and mob bosses not hear about this Batman and take it seriously? News would travel through the underworld and while you could believe they'd cop to the urban legend bit for a while, eventually they'd get wise. Especially with all the guys Joker, Two-Face and so on employ who are routinely beat up by Batman and thusly know he exists.

"Gosh golly gee! Jokers tried to poison the Gotham Reservoir again! What? He's in Arkham now? Who stopped him? The Batman? Naw, he's just an urban legend! Despite the eight times this has happened in the past, I know Batman has to be an urban legend because... umm... well... well of course he's an urban legend!"

Even if you somehow manage to buy into the concept for Batman - and I honestly don't see how - it's kind of hard to miss the kid in red, yellow and green who frequently traipses around with the dude.

Also of note is the fact that when they tried to do this, major crap went down in Gotham. At least two major viruses and an earthquake happened in the intervening years that Batman combated. So, during all that, which Batman struggled to find a cure for and worked with the police, he was just an urban legend. Not to mention that Batman was in the main JLA during the time. But he's an urban legend. Right.

On top of all this, it's impossible to do without a complete continuity wipe. Obviously, that's not an attractive option, because it wipes out a lot of classic Batman adventures from the timeline not to mention screws with DC history even more. So they just cold altered it in Zero Hour to make him considered an urban legend.

As you can guess, this causes major timeline issues. People always considered him an urban legend, but this can't be possible. After all, what about the time when the Joker tried to murder the entire UN and Batman was there to stop him? What about when Batmans back was straight up broken and he was laid out in the street in front of numerous bystanders as Bane shouted his triumph? The replacement Batman? Hell, the entire Knightfall saga that had wrapped literally months prior? I mean, Bane showed up during the urban legend era, so... yeah. Or hell, how about the story that happened only a couple of years prior where Batman saves the president from the KGBeast? The Killing Joke? The Cult?

It's really insulting to the intelligence, all for a concept that did absolutely nothing for Batman comics. Who can name a great story from that era that required the urban legend deal? There weren't any. It was arbitrary and pointless. At least when Spider-Mans marriage was straight up erased, it brought back loads of potential that led to great stories. The Batman urban legend gimmick was just a useless attempt at trying to keep Batman as much the impossibly, insultingly dark urban commando that had become popular. Nothing more than a vanity gimmick that served little purpose and just made things troublesome.

Also important is the fact that by this point in his life, Batman didn't need to be an urban legend. He was the ultimate hero of Gotham who was the best of the best. While early in his career, you can make the case that he may have needed to cultivate an urban legend gimmick to strike fear into people, that late it's unnecesary. The crooks are frightened because they know when Batman arrives on the scene, they're done. He will beat them senseless and they will go to jail. That's worse an any urban legend; after all, can you imagine the tension a crook would feel, knowing that Batman could drop down at any moment and if he did show up they were definitely going back to jail with a concussion? You can't buy a reputation like that.

Eventually, they finally decided to drop the idiotic plot point. I believe it was at some point during the course of the epic 1999 Batman saga No Mans Land. It wasn't soon enough.

Beyond that though, why would someone want Batman pigeonholed so heavily into that dark, mythic aspect? As we've seen over the course of the last decade, there are so many things you can do with Batman that it seems idiotic to limit him so. Which makes it so baffling that they honestly tried; it really is one of the dumbest ideas put forward in Batmans long history, in my opinion.

Batman can be the urban commando, he can be the swashbuckling hero, he can be the ultimate survivor and he can be the time traveling man-god, but I honestly believe he should never be one of those exclusively.