I've talked before about my love for the Mission Log Podcast, and I'm going to say a bit more about it today. I just spent part of the day listening to their episode from January on the Deep Space 9 double episode from the second season, The Maquis.
I've been looking forward to it for a while. Since they started doing DS9, frankly. And all because of this scene:
I didn't see that scene when it first aired in the 90s, because I wasn't watching DS9 yet. But when I did see it on my first attempt at watching the whole series back in 2006 or thereabouts, I locked onto it because it articulated how I'd always felt about DS9 in comparison with other Star Trek shows.
Now, I grew up with Trek. Some of my earliest memories are of catching TOS reruns when I was three or four years old. Old videotapes my parents recorded for me of other TV shows had commercials for TNG, which at that time was airing in first-run. And in the 90s I was basically catching between 15 and 20 hours of Trek, new and in reruns, during the period when I'd discovered DS9 and Voyager and after TNG had ended.
I didn't expect to love DS9 so much, but it felt like a good corrective to the increasingly sterile and safe atmosphere of TNG and Voyager. Where Captain Picard and Captain Janeway were running around lecturing aliens and their crews on the Prime Directive and on Federation ideals more generally, Commander (and then Captain) Sisko was dealing one singular mess, week after week and year after year. He didn't have the luxury of flying away.
In part because whenever he tried, problems would come find him. In first run the episodes I remember that spoke to this were the two-parter of Homefront and Paradise Lost, where the suspicion of the Dominion infiltrating Earth causes the Federation to freak out and come close to imposing martial law. Maybe it says something weird about me, but I loved the show more for showing us that the Federation had feet of clay as well. And that's what I took along when I rewatched those episodes in 2006 and again in 2016.
Now Mission Log co-host Ken Ray doesn't love those aspects of DS9 as much as I do. He stressed in the episode recapping The Maquis that he's not bothered so much by the sentiments of Sisko's speech, as the fact that Sisko's the one delivering it. And when he puts it that way, I can't help but agree a little - it's disheartening that the captain, the freaking guy in charge of the Federation presence on Deep Space 9, is the one who's frustrated with the Federation and its high-minded ideals.
But on the other hand, what I love about the speech remains, at least in how I've always read it. If Star Trek maps onto Cold War-era views of the world, in which the Federation represents the United States, then the thing I loved about DS9 the most was that it questioned those aspects of Trek. Because America's role as a force for good in the world is always worth questioning... though not worth dismissing out of hand, because there are genuinely positive parts of it, even if US foreign policy kept many parts of the world under brutal dictatorships for decades because we were afraid of those countries falling to communism.
The way I read that scene, with Admiral Nechayev ordering Sisko to talk to the Maquis and make them see reason, fits into this ideal that America could go into a country, tell them what to do, and everything would be fine, because it's America saying it. Our interventions abroad have frequently followed this pattern, and we've gone awfully wrong in a lot of cases because of it - Iraq being only the most recent example.
When Captain Sisko says people on Earth look out the window and see paradise, the writers mean that people in America see paradise out their windows (remember this was the 90s, when things weren't as fucked up as they are now - and no, that's not a dig at the current occupant of the White House, but at the conditions that brought him to power). But seeing that paradise out their windows, the people of Earth think that all problems around the world can be solved the same way they did it themselves.
This isn't any sort of argument that democracy or freedom only works for certain types of people. Russia, China, the Middle East, and so forth, would be better off if they weren't being run by autocrats and gangsters. But equally it's not enough to tell them to just implement democratic and free-market reforms, and everything will be fine - that's exactly what Russia did in the early 90s, and we're paying the price for it now.
Worse, Homefront and Paradise Lost show how brittle that veneer of paradise is at home. But it's worth noting that in those episodes good prevails precisely because Sisko and his allies hold to their ideals, the ideals of the Federation and of Star Trek generally, and because the antagonists are just as devoted to the Federation's ideals (at least as they see it). Which is perhaps an instructive example for us now - that as we stick true to our proper ideals of respect, diversity and freedom, and don't compromise, we can still win out, even if it'll be difficult.
And that's a message that Trek has been giving us since the 60s, with the Original Series.
Sunday 17 February 2019
Sunday 10 February 2019
Re Collecting James Robinson's Starman
This is one I've been wanting to write for a while. After rereading my old Justice League and Legion of Superheroes books, I moved on to Starman, by James Robinson and Tony Harris (eventually Peter Snejbjerg), which was another big favorite when I was in high school and then again when I was finishing up college.
Unlike the Giffen/DeMatteis League or Giffen/Bierbaums Legion, I was there at the start for Starman, having picked up Issue 0 as part of the Zero Hour crossover that restructured the DC Universe (again) in 1994. It was one of the first books where I followed the writer from his previous work, because it was a followup to James Robinson's Elseworlds miniseries The Golden Age, though thinking back now I'm not sure what else exactly drew me to it.
Having just finished rereading the ten issues of Justice Society of America Vol. 2 by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck (et al), I seem to recall not knowing anything about the JSA before I picked up that series. Starman appears in maybe two issues, is mentioned in a third issue, and only has a speaking role in the final issue. If anything, the character I found most striking from that book was the Sandman (Wesley Dodds), who had an equally small role.
Regardless of what drew me to the book - and it may have just been Robinson, and an appreciation for the art and proposed storylines before it was released - I was hooked from the start. Everything about the book was different, from the design ethic based on Art Deco to the main character, Jack Knight, who was completely different from other superheroes. Even the letter column was different, with James Robinson answering the letters each month for the first year or so and insisting that he wanted people to tell him about what they were collecting - and not just comics.
Now, another thing that bolted me onto the book for years after was meeting Robinson (and inker Wade von Grawbadger) at Wonder-Con, back when it was still held in Oakland. I stuck to him all day, as I recall, asking him about all sorts of aspects about the book, and in the end he gave me his PO box address and told me to write. I did, but too late - when I saw him again two Wonder-Cons later he said he'd moved.
Anyway. Another neat thing was that he and von Grawbadger both drew little sketches of Starman for my autograph book, which still makes me quite happy (Golden Age Green Lantern creator Sheldon Moldoff and DC legend Dick Giordano are also in that little book of mine, btw).
I continued reading the book each month until I went to college, and then started up again a year or so later, so that I have most issues with just one large gap of about 11 issues, and a few smaller gaps after that. From there I kept up with it to the very end. And then I let it sit for almost twenty years without rereading it or even thinking very much about it.
Like anything that you revisit after so long, things look different when you come back. To get the big one out of the way first, I'm not sure it's aged as well as I'd like. Tony Harris's artwork is quite rough in the beginning, and there are some spots where his sense of proportion is off. Though I'll try and take the sting off this critique by noting that his compositions were always ambitious and kinetic, to a degree not always seen in books at the time, so the odd failure can be forgiven.
The writing doesn't always hold up completely, either. The big thing that struck me was the weird spots where Robinson puts emphasis in the dialogue: the words that he puts in bold break up the flow of how the characters would be speaking the sentences in real life, and it actually got really distracting. There were also parts that seemed a little self-indulgent, even back when I was 14. The one I've always remembered is a character beating another to death while talking about movie portrayals of Philip Marlowe; another I'd forgotten about was a sequence where a bunch of mobsters are talking about Sondheim musicals, before they all get gunned down.
But if there's a few things that don't hold up, there's lots that still does. I generally remembered big storylines from late in the series, like Stars My Destination and Grand Guignol, and so when Robinson alludes to them in the first few issues, I was left impressed at how intricately he plotted all 81 issues of the book, as well as the fact that he got to play out every one of those storylines he teased, even as early as issue #5.
He also does a great job of populating the setting, Opal City, with a fascinating supporting cast, starting with Golden Age villain the Shade (who becomes an amoral "good" guy here). Even the villains are fascinating, most importantly Nash, the daughter of the Golden Age Mist, who becomes Jack Knight's arch-nemesis (and the mother of his child) as a continuation of her father's feud with Jack's. She has an arc, just as surely as Jack or other characters, and at the end it's tragic but mostly satisfying.
Jack's another thing that doesn't entirely hold up, but that's more because of the passage of time than because of any flaw in his characterization. What I think I liked about him then was his approach to crimefighting, and how it was portrayed alongside his normal life. DC specialized in stories like that in the 80s, which I still think was their greatest period. Ironically, one of the examples I always held out about this approach in DC's storytelling was the previous Starman series featuring a different and unrelated character who Robinson nevertheless brings into the narrative stretching back to the 1940s.
The reason Jack doesn't necessarily hold up, or hasn't aged well, is that he's a character that made a lot of sense then, but doesn't seem to anymore. Maybe it's because I'm less fascinated by old things, or I'm fascinated by different old things, but the idea of a quirky antiques shop owner as a superhero just seems so far from the norm today, when characters like Deadpool approach naturalistic storytelling in a very different way. And it doesn't help that his clothing, his sideburns, his tattoos and goatee all look like they belong in the medium-term past.
But again, I really loved rereading this book. I caught a lot of things on this second pass because I've now experienced many of them. The main thing that made me sit up in holy-shittedness was the last page of the first issue, where he's bleeding out from a fight and a bunch of rarities are flitting through his head - and among them is "Scott Walker albums on vinyl". I'd never heard of Scott Walker before then, but I sure did afterwards - and probably the real thing that separates now from 1994 is that Walker wasn't held up as a godlike genius yet back then. He was a faded pop idol from the 60s who'd disappeared after doing some really weird, avant garde music in his later career.
Back then Scott Walker in any format would have been a rarity - I remember in 2005 a record shop employee telling me his CDs were hard to find in the US. Now he's available on Spotify and anyone can listen to him. Just like you can probably find all of Jack Knight's stock of old clothes, old toys, old posters on Amazon or Ebay.
This was an interesting thought that struck me as I read it in the past couple of months. The internet means you can find most things and have them dispatched to you in no time, regardless of where you are or how old it is. The best example is a letter from early on in the series, where a man wrote in asking for help locating his father. Idly I went and googled the old man's name, and found him still living in Florida - which raises questions about whether the letter writer ever found his dad in these past 25 years.
Anyway, if we need another illustration of how much a product of another time James Robinson and Tony Harris's Starman series was, you just need to look at the publication month of the final issue: August 2001.
Unlike the Giffen/DeMatteis League or Giffen/Bierbaums Legion, I was there at the start for Starman, having picked up Issue 0 as part of the Zero Hour crossover that restructured the DC Universe (again) in 1994. It was one of the first books where I followed the writer from his previous work, because it was a followup to James Robinson's Elseworlds miniseries The Golden Age, though thinking back now I'm not sure what else exactly drew me to it.
Having just finished rereading the ten issues of Justice Society of America Vol. 2 by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck (et al), I seem to recall not knowing anything about the JSA before I picked up that series. Starman appears in maybe two issues, is mentioned in a third issue, and only has a speaking role in the final issue. If anything, the character I found most striking from that book was the Sandman (Wesley Dodds), who had an equally small role.
Regardless of what drew me to the book - and it may have just been Robinson, and an appreciation for the art and proposed storylines before it was released - I was hooked from the start. Everything about the book was different, from the design ethic based on Art Deco to the main character, Jack Knight, who was completely different from other superheroes. Even the letter column was different, with James Robinson answering the letters each month for the first year or so and insisting that he wanted people to tell him about what they were collecting - and not just comics.
Now, another thing that bolted me onto the book for years after was meeting Robinson (and inker Wade von Grawbadger) at Wonder-Con, back when it was still held in Oakland. I stuck to him all day, as I recall, asking him about all sorts of aspects about the book, and in the end he gave me his PO box address and told me to write. I did, but too late - when I saw him again two Wonder-Cons later he said he'd moved.
Anyway. Another neat thing was that he and von Grawbadger both drew little sketches of Starman for my autograph book, which still makes me quite happy (Golden Age Green Lantern creator Sheldon Moldoff and DC legend Dick Giordano are also in that little book of mine, btw).
I continued reading the book each month until I went to college, and then started up again a year or so later, so that I have most issues with just one large gap of about 11 issues, and a few smaller gaps after that. From there I kept up with it to the very end. And then I let it sit for almost twenty years without rereading it or even thinking very much about it.
Like anything that you revisit after so long, things look different when you come back. To get the big one out of the way first, I'm not sure it's aged as well as I'd like. Tony Harris's artwork is quite rough in the beginning, and there are some spots where his sense of proportion is off. Though I'll try and take the sting off this critique by noting that his compositions were always ambitious and kinetic, to a degree not always seen in books at the time, so the odd failure can be forgiven.
The writing doesn't always hold up completely, either. The big thing that struck me was the weird spots where Robinson puts emphasis in the dialogue: the words that he puts in bold break up the flow of how the characters would be speaking the sentences in real life, and it actually got really distracting. There were also parts that seemed a little self-indulgent, even back when I was 14. The one I've always remembered is a character beating another to death while talking about movie portrayals of Philip Marlowe; another I'd forgotten about was a sequence where a bunch of mobsters are talking about Sondheim musicals, before they all get gunned down.
But if there's a few things that don't hold up, there's lots that still does. I generally remembered big storylines from late in the series, like Stars My Destination and Grand Guignol, and so when Robinson alludes to them in the first few issues, I was left impressed at how intricately he plotted all 81 issues of the book, as well as the fact that he got to play out every one of those storylines he teased, even as early as issue #5.
He also does a great job of populating the setting, Opal City, with a fascinating supporting cast, starting with Golden Age villain the Shade (who becomes an amoral "good" guy here). Even the villains are fascinating, most importantly Nash, the daughter of the Golden Age Mist, who becomes Jack Knight's arch-nemesis (and the mother of his child) as a continuation of her father's feud with Jack's. She has an arc, just as surely as Jack or other characters, and at the end it's tragic but mostly satisfying.
Jack's another thing that doesn't entirely hold up, but that's more because of the passage of time than because of any flaw in his characterization. What I think I liked about him then was his approach to crimefighting, and how it was portrayed alongside his normal life. DC specialized in stories like that in the 80s, which I still think was their greatest period. Ironically, one of the examples I always held out about this approach in DC's storytelling was the previous Starman series featuring a different and unrelated character who Robinson nevertheless brings into the narrative stretching back to the 1940s.
The reason Jack doesn't necessarily hold up, or hasn't aged well, is that he's a character that made a lot of sense then, but doesn't seem to anymore. Maybe it's because I'm less fascinated by old things, or I'm fascinated by different old things, but the idea of a quirky antiques shop owner as a superhero just seems so far from the norm today, when characters like Deadpool approach naturalistic storytelling in a very different way. And it doesn't help that his clothing, his sideburns, his tattoos and goatee all look like they belong in the medium-term past.
But again, I really loved rereading this book. I caught a lot of things on this second pass because I've now experienced many of them. The main thing that made me sit up in holy-shittedness was the last page of the first issue, where he's bleeding out from a fight and a bunch of rarities are flitting through his head - and among them is "Scott Walker albums on vinyl". I'd never heard of Scott Walker before then, but I sure did afterwards - and probably the real thing that separates now from 1994 is that Walker wasn't held up as a godlike genius yet back then. He was a faded pop idol from the 60s who'd disappeared after doing some really weird, avant garde music in his later career.
Back then Scott Walker in any format would have been a rarity - I remember in 2005 a record shop employee telling me his CDs were hard to find in the US. Now he's available on Spotify and anyone can listen to him. Just like you can probably find all of Jack Knight's stock of old clothes, old toys, old posters on Amazon or Ebay.
This was an interesting thought that struck me as I read it in the past couple of months. The internet means you can find most things and have them dispatched to you in no time, regardless of where you are or how old it is. The best example is a letter from early on in the series, where a man wrote in asking for help locating his father. Idly I went and googled the old man's name, and found him still living in Florida - which raises questions about whether the letter writer ever found his dad in these past 25 years.
Anyway, if we need another illustration of how much a product of another time James Robinson and Tony Harris's Starman series was, you just need to look at the publication month of the final issue: August 2001.
Sunday 3 February 2019
The Long Strange Career of the Kinks
Just finished listening to basically every album by the Kinks a week or so ago. I get into these moods sometimes, where I go through an artist's entire discography, or through a Pitchfork top albums of whatever decade list, and a few weeks ago it occurred to me that what I needed in my life was to subject the Kinks to this treatment.
I'd say I have a healthy respect for them, borne of owning a couple of studio albums (including Village Green Preservation Society) and a greatest hits compilation. I may not hold them up quite as high as the Beatles in my ranking of British pop bands from the 60s, but they may have a more consistent oeuvre from that decade than The Who, which is another favorite and which is currently receiving the same whole-discography treatment.
Unlike the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I didn't grow up with the Kinks being played all the time around me. I don't think I heard of them for the first time until Weird Al's parody of "Lola" or until the Britpop thing was underway, and that was mainly in reference to how Damon Albarn's songwriting was clearly indebted to Ray Davies's slice-of-life style. And somewhere in those years I started hearing more about them, until I decided I should just get a greatest hits album to find out what the fuss was all about.
The first thing I discovered was that I actually did know some of their music, since I'd heard songs like "You Really Got Me" over the years. I'd just never known it was them. The next thing was the diversity of their body of work from those years, since those early singles were very different indeed from the likes of "Waterloo Sunset" or "Dedicated Follower of Fashion".
From there I had to get a handle on the idea that the compilation I owned wasn't particularly comprehensive. While it had "Lola" on it, I soon learned that other albums like Village Green Preservation Society weren't represented. After college I went through an initial "music archeologist" phase, as a friend once called it, and gathered Village Green and Face to Face on CD, because they'd been mentioned on a few top British album lists I'd read.
The next thing I did was check out their discography on Allmusic, and that's where I discovered that they hadn't actually broken up until 1996, and had indeed continued making albums of varying quality throughout the years that, it seemed, no one was actually paying attention to them. I remained intrigued by this lost period, and haunted by the statement (I can't remember by whom) that if they'd broken up at the same time as the Beatles they'd have been legends.
So when I listened to all their albums on YouTube the aim was to fill in these gaps and see for myself how good those albums were. I also wanted to get the foundation, from their earliest albums, so that I could hear how their sound evolved from proto-hard rock to English-influenced gentility, and what that turned into.
The main thing I took away from the Allmusic history of the band was that the early 70s, when Ray Davies was insisting on concept albums around celebrity and whatever else, were a pretty terrible period for them. And I can confirm that this is the case, even if the albums aren't completely unlistenable.
What did surprise me was learning how much they improved in the latter half of the decade. Sleepwalkers, their first straight-ahead rock album since the early ones, isn't necessarily a classic (and has a pretty crap cover) but was surprisingly enjoyable. It and its follow ups sounded like the work of a guy in his thirties figuring out again what he's good at and going with that. The other thing that surprised me was that they were all clearly Kinks songs, with Davies's voice and songwriting keeping a line of continuity with some of the best of the 60s, even as they turned into a sort of cut-price Rolling Stones (and I have to admit that I'm both looking forward to and dreading going through that discography) in the 80s.
It's true that by the time they released Phobia, their final album of all original songs, they were sounding pretty tired, though even that album has some high points. But it was so interesting as I listened to those albums to consider what was happening around them in music. While they went for a more traditional English pastoral sound, other British bands were getting louder and heavier.
Later on, Sleepwalkers and Misfits don't make much reference to what was happening in punk, while the albums of the 80s occupy a different universe than the post-punk and synth-pop that was coming out of that decade. And the greatest irony of all is that they broke up just as the British music scene was starting to rediscover them. Phobia came out the same year that Blur released Modern Life is Rubbish, their own foray into British iconography, and the Kinks broke up completely in 1996, the year that Britpop was at its height.
Throughout it all, I was most intrigued by what Ray Davies was thinking as he and the band wrote, recorded and released each of their albums after their heyday. Clearly people were still buying the albums, even if only out of deference to the band's history, but it must have been odd to be so firmly out of the musical zeitgeist. Though it's also fair to say that their music always went counter to the trends being set by the Beatles, Stones or Who in the 60s and 70s.
Thinking back to the idea that they'd have been legends if they'd broken up after Muswell Hillbillies, it's probably true. Albums like Preservation Acts 1 and 2, Everybody's in Showbiz, and Schoolboys in Disgrace are just silly and indulgent (and have some of the worst covers ever). But even if they never again hit the heights of Village Green Preservation Society, it was rewarding discovering those albums when they changed direction toward hard rock. They may not deserve to be in your iTunes collection, but they deserve a listen.
I'd say I have a healthy respect for them, borne of owning a couple of studio albums (including Village Green Preservation Society) and a greatest hits compilation. I may not hold them up quite as high as the Beatles in my ranking of British pop bands from the 60s, but they may have a more consistent oeuvre from that decade than The Who, which is another favorite and which is currently receiving the same whole-discography treatment.
Unlike the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I didn't grow up with the Kinks being played all the time around me. I don't think I heard of them for the first time until Weird Al's parody of "Lola" or until the Britpop thing was underway, and that was mainly in reference to how Damon Albarn's songwriting was clearly indebted to Ray Davies's slice-of-life style. And somewhere in those years I started hearing more about them, until I decided I should just get a greatest hits album to find out what the fuss was all about.
The first thing I discovered was that I actually did know some of their music, since I'd heard songs like "You Really Got Me" over the years. I'd just never known it was them. The next thing was the diversity of their body of work from those years, since those early singles were very different indeed from the likes of "Waterloo Sunset" or "Dedicated Follower of Fashion".
From there I had to get a handle on the idea that the compilation I owned wasn't particularly comprehensive. While it had "Lola" on it, I soon learned that other albums like Village Green Preservation Society weren't represented. After college I went through an initial "music archeologist" phase, as a friend once called it, and gathered Village Green and Face to Face on CD, because they'd been mentioned on a few top British album lists I'd read.
The next thing I did was check out their discography on Allmusic, and that's where I discovered that they hadn't actually broken up until 1996, and had indeed continued making albums of varying quality throughout the years that, it seemed, no one was actually paying attention to them. I remained intrigued by this lost period, and haunted by the statement (I can't remember by whom) that if they'd broken up at the same time as the Beatles they'd have been legends.
So when I listened to all their albums on YouTube the aim was to fill in these gaps and see for myself how good those albums were. I also wanted to get the foundation, from their earliest albums, so that I could hear how their sound evolved from proto-hard rock to English-influenced gentility, and what that turned into.
The main thing I took away from the Allmusic history of the band was that the early 70s, when Ray Davies was insisting on concept albums around celebrity and whatever else, were a pretty terrible period for them. And I can confirm that this is the case, even if the albums aren't completely unlistenable.
What did surprise me was learning how much they improved in the latter half of the decade. Sleepwalkers, their first straight-ahead rock album since the early ones, isn't necessarily a classic (and has a pretty crap cover) but was surprisingly enjoyable. It and its follow ups sounded like the work of a guy in his thirties figuring out again what he's good at and going with that. The other thing that surprised me was that they were all clearly Kinks songs, with Davies's voice and songwriting keeping a line of continuity with some of the best of the 60s, even as they turned into a sort of cut-price Rolling Stones (and I have to admit that I'm both looking forward to and dreading going through that discography) in the 80s.
It's true that by the time they released Phobia, their final album of all original songs, they were sounding pretty tired, though even that album has some high points. But it was so interesting as I listened to those albums to consider what was happening around them in music. While they went for a more traditional English pastoral sound, other British bands were getting louder and heavier.
Later on, Sleepwalkers and Misfits don't make much reference to what was happening in punk, while the albums of the 80s occupy a different universe than the post-punk and synth-pop that was coming out of that decade. And the greatest irony of all is that they broke up just as the British music scene was starting to rediscover them. Phobia came out the same year that Blur released Modern Life is Rubbish, their own foray into British iconography, and the Kinks broke up completely in 1996, the year that Britpop was at its height.
Throughout it all, I was most intrigued by what Ray Davies was thinking as he and the band wrote, recorded and released each of their albums after their heyday. Clearly people were still buying the albums, even if only out of deference to the band's history, but it must have been odd to be so firmly out of the musical zeitgeist. Though it's also fair to say that their music always went counter to the trends being set by the Beatles, Stones or Who in the 60s and 70s.
Thinking back to the idea that they'd have been legends if they'd broken up after Muswell Hillbillies, it's probably true. Albums like Preservation Acts 1 and 2, Everybody's in Showbiz, and Schoolboys in Disgrace are just silly and indulgent (and have some of the worst covers ever). But even if they never again hit the heights of Village Green Preservation Society, it was rewarding discovering those albums when they changed direction toward hard rock. They may not deserve to be in your iTunes collection, but they deserve a listen.
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