Cognitive Dissonance

Why do I keep watching Smallville when the show has never risen above mediocrity? For the same reason I kept collecting every X-Men comic until more recently than I'd like to admit: I want to know what's going to happen. It's a mythology that I find easy to invest in unlike, say, Dollhouse - another mediocre show (albeit one with a much better cast, much more interesting themes, and much better writing). I can't give Dollhouse any more time because it has way too many serious narrative blind spots (and a central character and actress who don't much interest me) and yet I continue to watch Smallville every week. It's a lot easier to explain why I don't watch a show that I don't like than it is to explain why I refuse to stop watching a show I don't like. I tolerate Smallville in strange ways: I can laugh when the show is intentionally funny, when it's unintentionally funny, when it rips off Buffy for the thousandth time and botches the idea, when it nods to DCU continuity in clever ways, when it nods to DCU continuity in clumsy ways ("Some kind of Junior Lifeguard Association?" "I don't think I'm ready for the JLA just yet."), and its dogged insistence on dressing up all its super-heroes in pleather and hoods.

But, mostly, I just want to know what's going to happen. And I can't honestly tell you why.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night, and just felt the need to apologize to someone.

I'm sorry. It won't happen again.

Spoiler Alert

OK, I'm not trying to split hairs here, but something Dan DiDio said in his most recent interview column over at Newsarama gave me pause. Regarding the revelation that Nekron is the antagonist of Geoff Johns's Blackest Night event, DiDio explains his stance on spoilers:

We also put out information to drum up and excite readers, and to get people interested. And that Nekron issue is at the halfway mark of Blackest Night. So we wanted to get out there and show people there's a big change and something occurring within the series, and it's not just repeating the same beats over and over again. There is progression in the story. That's why you get information released like with Nekron.

In essence, DiDio is arguing that spoilers increase interest. Fair enough. That's why people read them: because they are interested. Cynically, one could add that one might seek out spoilers because the stories in question are not worth reading in themselves but a lifetime of continuity-fetishization has created an addiction to the minutiae of the ongoing adventures of certain characters or universes.

But then Mr. DiDio adds this:

This is part of an argument we had back when I had stated there were 52 multiverse worlds as part of the ending of 52. What did that mean? What did that give away? What did that spoil? Not really sure. But it did generate a lot of interest in the end of the book. And that's what we were hoping to do.

I think DiDio is playing some word games here. A little Clintonian "It depends on your what your definition of the word 'is' is." He's clearly playing coy because a spoiler, in his newfound sense of the word, is the story itself. If telling readers that one of the endings of 52 would involve the return of the multiverse isn't a spoiler in his mind, then what is? If I told him that Hamlet dies at the end of Hamlet, but not how or why, it's still a revelation that is housed within the plot. Whether or not it diminishes his/my/your enjoyment is secondary. Mr. DiDio didn't disclose the means by which the universes would be restored, or what alternate versions of DC characters they would house, but he told fans what the ending would be. That Hamlet would die.

It's clear why, though, from his earlier statement. "What did that spoil," he asks - disingenuously, I think. Mr. DiDio is a smart man. He knows that he gave away a significant plot point for the purpose of generating interest in the hopes that the interest would translate into sales. The battle between art and commerce once again. I agree with his implication that certain spoilers won't significantly affect one's enjoyment of their entertainment of choice. And I am also aware that he's dealing with a particular, and peculiar, niche market - if you're the type of person who reads interviews with Dan DiDio (guilty!), you probably were the type of person who figured out that the multiverse would be coming back at the end of 52. And if you're reading super-hero comics (guilty!), you're already in a pretty small niche. Revealing the Nekron is the baddie behind Blackest Night isn't actually a big deal. Some people probably really enjoy the hunt for his appearances back issues, or trying to piece together his current evil plot from previous evil plots. That would signify, certainly, some interest that wouldn't have been there otherwise. But it's also a spoiler. It spoiled the plot, so it's a spoiler. It would be nice to get some candor and not hair-splitting rationalizations of business decisions, but what can you do.

Demo - "Damaged"

I will confess upfront that I find "Damaged" to be one of less satisfying offerings in Demo. I'm not sure it entirely succeeds in what it sets out to do, but it's nice when someone swings for the fences - something Wood & Cloonan attempt pretty regularly in Demo.

Thomas Martin is young, rich, and - apparently - a creep. Or so we're told, anyway, because there really isn't any evidence of his being a creep in the story. A strange young girl of rather indeterminate age approaches him and claims to be able to "read" him. He offers her money - out of guilt or obligation at first, and then as a form of salary when she begins to act as his therapist. After two weeks of sessions and seemingly by chance, Thomas discovers that his unnamed counselor is living in the adjacent unit in his building and spying on him with all sorts of high tech equipment. Thomas chases her out into the street where he is hit by a car and killed. At his funeral, the girl gives the money Thomas had given her to his mother, and tells her that Thomas had been working hard to become a better person. The ambiguity of the girl's role in the plot is further emphasized when the final image of her shadow mirrors the blood splatter of Thomas's accident.

The question the story seems to beg comes from that very ambiguity: can you really know anyone? Thomas is alienated, as the spirit guide/con artist makes explicit. "If I had your money, your clothes, your job, your friends and your apartment, I'd feel empty inside too. And you still haven't figured out how to cope with it all." We're told more than once that Thomas has no friends. He certainly jumps at the opportunity to spend time with the mysterious girl who claims to know all about his life, a decision that no one outside of a piece of fiction would make. It all feels so very staged. During one of their sessions, she even helps Thomas with this old chestnut: why didn't that girl ever call me back? Answer: because you left too many messages, of course. The reason Thomas is lonely is that his failures are cliched pop-psychological hangups that were over-analyzed in small-budget films of the late 1990s. Obviously. When Thomas needs relationship advice, and gets a riff that could be from an early Kevin Smith movie or Swingers, the characters are not simply communicating in cliches: they're precisely not able to communicate because they can only understand their lives in cliches. Thomas is a flat character, and we will never know anything essential about him.

The story denies us an easy window into Thomas's life, and forces us to interpret it through exposition. Nor do we get an answer as to the unnamed spirit guide/scam artist's motivation. Her audio/video set-up seems to undermine her claim to magical knowledge, but she doesn't keep the money she draws from Thomas. The general lack of clarity in the plot is a reminder that these characters are essentially unknowable. The story is uninterested in whether or not the girl is a telepath or a con artist who undergoes a change of heart. The story isn't even interested in whether or not Thomas is likable. Questions of likability revolve around questions of essential identity, which none of the characters have.

There is an implication that the city is partially responsible for the characters' alienation. Thomas hasn't spoken to his mother in years, and their emotional distance is emphasized by the fact that she lives in Queens. But the urban disconnection remains an unexplored theme, lingering in the background of scenes. Thomas catches the girl out because she says she will walk, and then takes a cab (and then leaves her door open WHILE SHE'S IN THE SHOWER for some unknowable reason). Cloonan fills the issue with photocopied images of New York. They're degraded, fitting awkwardly into backgrounds and the manga-like characters who populate the story. Even the bills that Thomas uses to pay the girl, $100s, are photocopied. Cloonan helps create a world where object seem flatter, less tactile, at odds with each other. None of the characters look like they fit into this world. When the story closes on a splash page of the girl casting a shadow that looks like the blood that spilled from Thomas's head after he was hit by a car, it's a stark contrast to the images of city skylines that recur frequently in Demo. No city, no landscape in which to place the girl, no context to understand her.

No one is at ease in this story. No one quite fits. No one's actions really make sense. The inscrutability - the girl's motivation going entirely unexplained, Thomas's sudden look of murderous rage when he finds her out - is the point. The girl's motivations are never made clear and the story ends with an image that implies a certain degree of culpability in Thomas's death, but it's never spelled out. Was she scamming him, and then driven to return the money out of guilt for his death? If so, why be so careless? If she really could read his mind, why set up the spy equipment? This essential disconnect between how characters act and how those actions are interpreted lies at the heart of the story. At the funeral, when his mother explains who Thomas is, the story rings false. Thomas, she tells us, that "he was always a mess." A miserable kid, she says he was "a bully, torturing the strays in our neighborhood, stealing from me, you name it. Bad grades, horrible attitude. It's a no wonder he never had any friends." This explains Thomas's one moment of rage, but it still doesn't seem as if it's a description of the character. Thomas is all of those things, but less. He's a cipher, a mess of contradictory motivations and emotions, and that's sort of the point. Thomas tries to change how people react to him more than he tries to change anything central in his character. He is more than the sum of his parts, and much less. Who is he doesn't really matter, because there is no essential Thomas. He only exists in his encounters with others.

"Damaged" is another attempt on the part of Wood & Cloonan to tell stories about how people interact that stumbles as it overreaches but it gets a little overwhelmed in its ambiguity. Just look at that cover - angel's wings and a laurel wreath? What the what? Still, it takes on an interesting set of themes and I'd rather read a story that tries to do something substantial and fails than one that is satisfied to have two characters punch each other for twenty two pages.

Next time: "Midnight to Six"

Demo - "Breaking Up"

Moving away from the grim and maudlin "Mixtape," Wood & Cloonan tell a somewhat similar story in "Breaking Up." It's about, quite surprisingly given the title, the end of Gabe and Angie's relationship. The plot skips achronologically about their time together, highlighting the pettiness and selfishness that ultimately lead to the parting. Though it seems to have at least a structural similarity to the recent Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Zooey Deschanel movie 500 Days of Summer, "Breaking Up" is a bit more Slaughterhouse 5. Gabe is, somewhat, unstuck in time. He has perfect recollection. The narrative skipping around has actually been Gabe's memories and it seems as if he lives in multiple moments simultaneously. Or, perhaps more accurately, he doesn't live in continuous moments. He's a bit like Dr. Manhatten, without the nudity and super-powers. Not a bad comparison because he often seems, well, dickish. This is partly because he's reacting to things Angie once said to him - his memories of her, her contradictions, her capacity for cruelty. Like a lot of the female characters in Demo, Angie doesn't come out looking too great. But neither does Gabe, who's a mess of insecurities, thoughtlessness, and little emotional infidelities. For all that, though, the ending of the story is quite poignant. After a highlight-reel of Angie's worst moments, Gabe recalls the good ones, the ones that brought them together, the selfless acts, the intimacy. He asks Angie if they'll still talk. It's both sad and pathetic and Wood & Cloonan hint at the remarkable grace of forgetting.

Grace is, for some odd reason, the word that keeps popping into my mind with this story. Whereas "Mixtape" seemed so concerned with making a point about forgiveness that it couldn't quite articulate, "Breaking Up" shows how horrible memories can be. Yet, they are often all we have of some people. Gabe, like most of us, is drawn to selfish memories when he's hurt, moments where he was slighted or wronged or, in hindsight, he was lied to. Angie is, of course, not a liar for having said one thing and then having changed her mind about it later, but Gabe can't distinguish the past from the present. At different moments in the story, he actually responds to a comment Angie made in the past as if she had just said it.

Wood & Cloonan use memory and image here to great effect. This story is permeated with questions about the power of the image over the failure of textual language. That old comicbook battle: are we art or are we literature? I don't think that Wood & Cloonan are drawing a line in the sand or anything - this story is just one long reflection on how important, but ultimately ambiguous, all representations (like art or memory) must be.

Cloonan doesn't illustrate Gabe's memories from his point of view: he's visible in most of them, for one thing. That helps add a layer of ambiguity to the story. Though Gabe professes to have something akin to photographic memory, he actually defines it as an aural skill. "Well, not really a photographic memory per se, but I do have this spooky ability to remember things people say, forever." He locates his memory not in image, but in language.

But this isn't prose; it's a comicbook. As such, we get something that doesn't quite feel like an approximation of Gabe's powers in visual form. There is an heightened sense of representation, or interpretation. These are images, and so cannot be Gabe's perfect recollections. This demands a lot from Cloonan, who does outstanding work in this issue. She chronicles changes in hair-styles, weight loss and gain, time, a vast range of emotions, and what might be Gabe's receding hairline. [Not sure about that last one, but I'd like to think that was a little flair she added to Wood's script.] These images, we are reminded, are not Gabe's memories. They are the images constructed around the conversations he recalls. They are unfixed. There is only one single moment when the picture is from Gabe's point of view. It's Angie, above him, while they're having sex. It comes immediately after an image of Angie being comforted by Gabe, tears running down her face. They're both dressed in black, and she's holding a picture frame - someone she loves has died. The wordless montage at the end, in which both these images are featured, comes in response to Angie asking Gabe if he really wants to stay together. Whereas the images of the fights and the damage done is mainly about the things that Angie said (the promise to love Gabe forever, the mocking laughter, the passive aggressive threats) the "silent" moments are of the enduring moments. The ones that he will miss. The ones Gabe cannot hold onto with such certainty because nothing was said.

Comics cannot capture sound, but can convert it into image. Wood & Cloonan are aware of that formal limitation and exploit it. Gabe's perfect memories must remain vague to us. Tone of voice, inflection, volume - these things can only be hinted at in text, just as they must remain ambiguous for the listener. Angie laughs at Gabe when he asks if she came during sex, and one presumes Gabe felt the laughter was mocking. When he remembers that Angie told him that he "should feel threatened by" her ex-boyfriends, or when she tells him to "start acting like a fucking man," they are moments out of time, out of context. Gabe can certainly remember the context, but he still divorces the hurt from the full complexity of its cause. The ambiguity of how to read those moments in the text highlights the visual interpretation that Wood & Cloonan create. Memory, we are reminded, is a similar interpretation. A similar piecing together of disparate moments to create a reality.

There's a film school adaptation of "Breaking Up." The film lacks Cloonan's subtlety and range, but it's worth watching nonetheless, for two reasons in particular. First, it's fun to see someone try and adapt a structurally dense story. Second, it can help to see someone else's interpretation to help define your own. I mean no slight to the filmmakers when I disagree quite strongly with their version of this story. They choose to make Angie a bit cutsier than I read her and Gabe a little more immature. I don't think that they achieve the weighty silence that Wood & Cloonan emphasize visually, but that's probably as much a difference of media as it is a stylistic choice.

What the adaptation really points out, though, is how much Wood & Cloonan's work uses comics in a way that film is unable. Film, as a medium, has a much different relationship with memory and ambiguity of perspective. This particular film doesn't seem interested in dwelling on the gaps and inconsistencies of memory and their relationship to images. Instead, it plays a slow song behind the series of good memories.

The story ends on a familiar image for Demo: a splash page of a city skyline buried under a looming sky. The difference with this image is the clouds and night sky, black and white never mixing. One can't tell if it's white clouds on a black sky or vice versa. A fitting way to end a story so concerned with how the limits of the image to transfer meaning.

"Breaking Up" is one of the more compelling issues of Demo. The conflict is more complex, better explored, and presented with nuance. It's no insult to say that this issue is no "Watchmaker" (Issue #4 of Watchmen), because what is.

Next Week: "Damaged"

Giffen vs Giffen

Variety magazine tells me that Joel Silver and Guy Ritchie are making a Lobo movie. This is their summary:

In the film, he is a seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who drives a pimped out motorcycle, and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc. Lobo teams with a small town teenaged girl to stop the creatures.

Lobo was co-created for DC by Keith Giffen, who also happened to write a 2006 mini-series for Marvel called Drax the Destroyer: Earth Fall (well, not really, but that's the title of the TPB). In that story, Drax crashes to Earth on a prison transport and has to hunt down four escaped prisoners (the Blood Brothers, Lunatik, and Paibok the Power Skrull) with the help of a young girl named Cammi [pictured below, with Drax and Phyla-Vell].

Given that Silver and Ritchie want a PG-13 for their Lobo movie, it makes sense to use Earth Fall rather than, say, the Last Czarnian, which is wildly violent (though, also, wildly entertaining).

Now, of course, it's far more likely that the similar-sounding summaries won't be reflected in the execution. Who knows if Silver and Ritchie have even read Drax. The Lobo movie has been in development for maybe ten years. Longer, anyway, than it has been since Giffen wrote Drax. It's just funny is all. The idea that they're using a Giffen story for a different Giffen property.

Demo - "Mixtape"

Trying to describe the events of "Mixtape" is like, and not at all accidentally, trying to describe a particularly vivid dream - criticism of the logic of the plot is beside the point. Nick wakes up to an empty bed and finds his girlfriend, Jess, lying dead in another room. On the floor beside her is a tape for Nick that he puts into his walkman. It's one half of a recorded conversation. The tape speaks to Nick, tells him to go outside, reminds him to bring a hat, responds to his comments and sometimes answers his questions. He is able to see Jess and tries to make this most of this last day together. Through the tape, Jess points out that Nick didn't ever really know her, that he only loved the idea of her, and that he needs to take more time to understand why she did what she did. Jess advises Nick to let go and to move on, but the story ends with Nick unsure about whether or not to throw the tape away.

Ugh. "Mixtape" doesn't flow with the thematic resonance of a dream-story, but without the character motivations to be discussed logically. The only way to take the story on its own terms is as an extended metaphor the distance between people, how that space can ultimately kill the relationship, and the paradoxical impossibility of wanting to be understood but remaining separate.

The problem with "Mixtape" is much like the problem with "What You Wish For." Wood & Cloonan want their characters' actions taken seriously in the context of the story, but it's difficult to do so when they are so obviously meant to stand in for something else. In "What You Wish For," Ken didn't just let his anger loose - he killed people. Although the text of "Mixtape" goes to great lengths to wear out the possible ways of saying that Jess killed herself without actually stating it, the fact remains that Jess commits suicide. There are no obvious wounds or vomit - though the cover shows blood none appears in the story itself. It's as peaceful a death as could be, almost as if it just happened on its own. I wonder about the ethics of portraying suicide in this way, but that's my hangup. In the story, Nick never seems upset, only slightly distraught at the conclusion when faced with the prospect of getting rid of the tape (which, of course, represents Jess). Given the muted reactions and emotions, and the dream-logic of the narrative, the suicide stands in for something else. This is a problem for me. The act of suicide is very difficult to deploy metaphorically. It has too many connotations to be controlled. It demands too affective a reaction. It is not an act that stands in for something else - it is an act that ends metaphoric possibilities rather than enabling them.

Jess is a more rounded character than Amy in "Stand Strong" or Kendra in "One Shot, Don't Miss" but she lacks definition. As readers, we know almost nothing about her other than she thinks she was a bit of a doormat for her boyfriend and feels as if he didn't understand her. That is it. That and the fact that she likes sundresses even in winter. The irony of the image of optimism contrasted with her suicide is only a gesture toward a personality, however. The potential contrast is never explored. She's a cipher.

Jess is a cipher quite deliberately - she is Nick's ideal. She contends that he doesn't know the emotions and desires that lie underneath the surface elements that attract him though his responses back her up somewhat, it may be that he just lacks the ability to articulate how he understands Jess as separate from him. Jess, for instance, asks Nick if he likes her because she wears cute sundresses or "becasue you can go to the bar with your friends and you know I'm home waiting for you." She asks if he likes the idea of Jess more than the "real" Jess. She demands an impossibility from Nick, illustrated to the reader by the utter denial of any information about Jess as a character. He, like the reader, has no access to the "real" Jess, if such a thing exists.

This is the emotional core of the story. She tells Nick that "in time, you'll understand, and appreciate what I'm saying. Take that time, remember me, and understand me." When, two pages later, she tells Nick to throw away the tape that stands in as a distillation of their relationship, Jess isn't being contradictory. Nick needs let go of Jess in order to mourn the loss of the relationship and understand why it ended. He can't do one without the other. However, it leaves Jess as an unknowable figure, one who Nick is asked to understand - a task for which the reader isn't equipped.

Again, though, the problem of Jess's suicide looms large. After she gently chides Nick for liking the idea of her more than her real self, Nick shows a bit of emotion. "So what, Jess, you think I don't like you so that's why you did what you did? Lame, Jess. That's like an afterschool special." The fact that Jess never reveals the reasons for which she took her life stands as evidence that Wood & Cloonan seem determined to keep this strange meditation on death and relationships from falling into the simple moral platitudes of an afterschool special. But, by using suicide metaphorically, they deny Jess's actions of any clear motivations. Did she kill herself or is that just a code for breaking up with Nick? Though the stereotype is that afterschool specials preach rather than try to understand, "Mixtape" doesn't seem interested in trying to understand suicide either. Jess is such a blank, and her act is so separated from consequence, that her death rings hollowly.

"Mixtape" seems to be, foremost, about the struggle for two people who love each other to understand each other. The ultimate impossibility of that, but the need to try. What is interesting, though, is how a relationship is constructed in "Mixtape" as precluding outside involvement. The tape and walkman insulate Nick from the world: he spends the whole issue wearing headphones. He speaks to a voice that no one else can hear, and no one notices. Other than Nick and Jess, there are only two faces that appear in the issue and they are both incidental background characters. No family is involved, no friends - though we hear that Nick apparently has some.

It's a bleak portrait of romance, though not without some poetic images. As Nick goes to throw out the cassette, the tape twines itself around him. The final two images are of Nick's hand holding the tape, unsure about letting it go, and Jess's legs as she rises above the city, the tape twisting up over her body. The connection is beautifully illustrated by Cloonan. This image of the tape coiling around Jess appears during her conversation with Nick at the point she asks if he likes her because of her dresses and her willingness to wait up for him. It could almost be blood streaming from her wrists, and it's one of the few links between her sadness and her death, though the dialogue one page later forecloses that possibility. The black tendrils are shown to emanate from the tape, further illustrating how it stands in for her. The dream-like quality of the story serves to allow these images to be considered outside of the rigid logic of plot dynamics. The images seem to suggest that the intangible connections, the ties that bind, are not so simply cut. Even after the end of a relationship, or a life. Though access to the "real" person may be forever denied, it is worth struggling to try to understand these bonds.

I'm sorry, but that is a crap use of suicide as a metaphor. The lack of emotional intensity in the issue, Nick's strange passivity, Jess's mournful pseudo-wisdom, grate on me in a way that no other story in Demo does. Jess, pardon my French, fucking kills herself and it's treated as a sad but ambiguously meaningful gesture. I'm not arguing that the story endorses Jess's decision to kill herself, but the story doesn't explore it at all. It's a means to enable Nick to listen to a tape and for Jess to ruminate on how he never understood the "real" her. There are limits to how far a metaphor will carry you, and the dream-like quality of "Mixtape" doesn't seem interested in exploring what those limits are. Rather, it seems content to make an obvious point dressed up in some shallow ambiguity.

In three weeks: "Breaking Up"

Demo - "One Shot, Don't Miss"

   The disquiet of "What You Wish For" gives way to the grim, disorienting landscapes of "One Shot, Don't Miss." In this story, PFC John Hatfield flies into Iraq with his reputation preceding him. He isn't just a crack shot - he never misses. Stationed on patrol, his colleagues explain to him how to spot a suicide bomber: they're the ones that don't stop their vehicles. Hatfield is instructed to shoot the driver of any vehicle that doesn't stop. When he's confronted by such a situation, he aims at the tires instead. He is, of course, reprimanded for the failure to follow protocol, but when Hatfield vaguely threatens his commanding officer he is able to negotiate his discharge. His girlfriend Kendra has just had their first child, and she's upset that Hatfield has revoked not only their insurance but also their only source of income. He returns home to face an unhappy Kendra and a deeply uncertain future.

   "One Shot, Don't Miss" is most similar in theme to "Stand Strong." Kendra is as one-dimensional a character as Amy, and for most of the same reasons. Kendra wants Hatfield to support the family and is angry at him for failing to live up to that commitment. She shows no other desires or ideas. Like James McMurray, John Hatfield takes on a job he hates in hopes of upward mobility. He wants to go to college and the army is his only means of ever making enough money. Like McMurray, Hatfield’s ability is seen by others as a tool they can use. He is only valuable insofar as he uses that ability within the limits and directions set by others.

   Unlike James McMurray, John doesn’t have a sense of lineage. They are both cogs in a machine, but James's life is leavened by a sense of familial responsibility. The moving ambiguity of James's reaction to the course of life he chose by allying himself with his father is replaced with Hatfield's desire for a family unit that he will likely never have. He doesn't have parents or friends, only Kendra and their daughter. 

   “One Shot, Don’t Miss” is about the those left out of the shrinking middle class. The metaphor of the Iraq conflict, still so fresh when this issue came out in 2005, helps illustrate the struggle as Wood & Cloonan imagine it. Hatfield, like all the other soldiers, fights in an endless battle with no real opponents and a shifting landscape upon which he never quite knows his place. He doesn't know what the obstacles are, much less what will help him overcome them. He is adrift - the featureless white backgrounds of the Iraqi desert mirroring those of the homefront. Though Kendra is shallowly rendered, she asks important questions. Where will the money come from now? They had to borrow from her father to even get Hatfield to qualify for the GI fund and now face the prospect of telling him that Hatfield quit.

   Kendra thinks Hatfield couldn’t hack it, but the problem is much more complex (that the story so clearly illustrates the fact, while Kendra remains belligerently ignorant of it, is to Wood & Cloonan's discredit because it makes Kendra all the less likable and her point of view that much more difficult to integrate into the story's themes). Hatfield makes the distinction men in war are told not to make when he calls killing “murder.” For Hatfield, though, it’s an even more ethically charged proposition because he can kill so easily. He cannot miss when he fires a gun - if he wants to kill a man then that man will die. The dilemma is keenly portrayed in the scene with the suspected suicide bomber. There is enough ambiguity in the situation to offer the possibility that the truck isn’t loaded with explosives. We are never told if the truck, in fact, exploded and all Hatfield's commander intimates is that the PFC disobeyed orders. Hatfield does not see the conflict as the others do. For them, it’s a fight. They have to assume the worst because they cannot guarantee that they will survive otherwise. For Hatfield, he knows that he has the better of every gunfight he’s in.

  The matter at stake is competing virtues, and how economic conditions put people into such untenable binds. Hatfield has an ability that seems designed only for killing. Take the best sharpshooter in comics [Bullseye, left] for example. The ability to shoot things with unerring accuracy seems to be primarily suited for extermination. More particularly, in his historic moment, it makes Hatfield suited for military service. Hatfield is unremarkable in any other way, as Cloonan’s art so potently illustrates. When we first see Hatfield, his face is reflected in the window of his troop transport plane. His eyes are hooded and covered in shadow, his features undistinguishable from all the other soldiers. The only thing that singles Hatfield out from the crowd is his ability to shoot, and he refuses to use that ability. The only thing that makes him special is a thing he is not suited to do. He doesn’t want to fight, to kill, to be injured or maybe to die. Economic necessity forces him to do it. After returning home following his discharge, he finds Kendra sitting in a darkened kitchen smoking. Her eyes are also hooded. He hands her all the money he owns, a measly wad, and goes into the other room to see his daughter. The final splash page is of Kendra and Hatfield, their backs to each other and divided by their shadows. She is holding their money and Hatfield cradling their daughter. The competing claims on Hatfield's life, money or family, are starkly opposed.

   “One Shot, Don’t Miss” isn’t so much a story as it is a bleak portrait. It’s one of the most sophisticated issues of Demo, and one of the most emotionally affecting.

Next Week: “Mixtape” and biting off more than you can chew

Demo - "What You Wish For"

   "What You Wish For" is, quite frankly, more than a little problematic. Ken, a newly married and generally contented guy, brings his wife to visit the place where he grew up. Formerly a suburban neighborhood, it's now a ghost town, abandoned and overrun with weeds. Ken remembers being bullied for his mixed heritage (his father a white, American soldier married a woman of Japanese ancestry) by all the other townspeople except a gardener - the only other Asian in town. When Ken's puppy is killed by the racist father of a racist bully (also the gardener's employer), Ken loses it. All the rage he feels is released and he reanimates the town's dead animals. His zombie puppy kills the racist patriarch and the other animals begin killing anyone nearby. In the middle of the rampage, the gardener warns Ken that "hate will eat you too" and, just like that, Ken stops animating the animal corpses. The adult Ken recalls the gruesome event over an image of young Ken rubbing his puppy's ears while the bloody carcasses of the murdered townspeople lie sprawled all around. Ken remembers it as "the one day I lost control, the one day I got mad. The one day I let those feelings out." He doesn't tell his unnamed wife but he shares a look with his dog, the same dog he brought back to life now grown, and ponders the wisdom of the gardener's words. "That gardener was right, hate will eat you up, if you let it. I stopped in time, and yeah, life is good now. But I will never forget how close I came." The final image is of the town, in the fading light, peacefully nestled under a clear sky and gentle mountains.

   "What You Wish For" is, most earnestly, a cautionary tale against letting the hatred of others consume you. Racism creates a cycle of anger and retributive violence that will never solve anything. This is clear. However, the metaphor that Wood & Cloonan use to tell this story is more than a little extreme: Ken kills the racists who have made his life painful. It seems a rather disproportionate response to say the least. Wood & Cloonan seem to want to illustrate the destructive anger that the victims of racism feel and this would be all well and good if Ken didn't murder an entire town because he was bullied. This is terrifyingly close to many other incidents of violence in North America in the last decade and a half (Columbine being the most seared into the public imagination) and the resemblance, unacknowledged by the text, leaves this reader with a gnawing sense of disquiet.

 

  The weaknesses of Wood & Cloonan's extended metaphor in this story are multiple. The most uncomfortable is the fact that the text seems unaware of the irony of Ken's statement that he will never forget how close he came. How close to what? Murdering an entire town because he was angry? Oops. Ken's power seems to be that he is friendly with death [see cover, above right] and that he can bring back dead things. Perhaps he brought the dead townspeople back to life and they all ran away, thus leaving the town empty. There is no indication in the text that this happened, but one might imagine that if Ken did kill a whole town he would be somewhat less contented. The lack of acknowledgment for this incongruity is glaring. Furthermore, the seemingly well-adjusted and happy Ken stands at odds with the text's two moments of fleeting recognition of the disturbing magnitude of his actions. The first is the look of fear on Ken's parents' faces during his killing spree before they slam the door on him, potentially implying that they never spoke to him again. The second occurs in the panel where young Ken sits with his puppy, surrounded by the bodies of those he's killed. The caption reads "not mad anymore." Madness seems to be the realm to which young Ken fled when his puppy was killed and it's quite possible that the whole event was a macabre fantasy rather than an enacted massacre. Ken even admits his recollection isn't entirely reliable: "I remember that day well enough," he says. Yet the text on a later panel when Ken stops by his old house asks "did they deserve it?" implying that the racist townspeople did, in fact, die. The resurrected puppy would imply that Ken does, indeed, have the power to reanimate the dead and would give added credence to his recollected version of events.

   Regardless of whether or not Ken actually did go on a murderous rampage or if he merely wanted to, the metaphor for letting go of hatred being the solution to racism is underdeveloped. Ken is happily married "to the best girl in the world." He has a condo, "a good job and a killer record collection, too." He is haunted by the events - not the deaths of individuals but of those deaths as signifiers of the possible magnitude of his rage if he unleashes it. Rage, an entirely understandable and natural consequence of racism, is a matter of choice. The language of choice permeates this story. Though anger is an autonomous response, to let go to of hate is a conscious choice, illustrated by the sudden and complete change that Ken undergoes after the gardener imparts his wisdom. To let go of hate is an individual proposition.

   The fact of individual choices being enough to overcome racism is hinted at as being insufficient early in the story when Ken defines the American Dream as getting "one up on everyone else." This prototypical individualist mantra (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) is briefly interrogated. But Ken is able to achieve those things after he leaves town and his condemnation of the American Dream is more a critique of suburban prejudice than anything else. He is not interested in how the American Dream functions except as a frame of reference to the bigots on his street. They are not even representatives of endemic or systematic racism. They are not the people who can pass Ken over for promotion or who will deny him a bank loan. They're just the dumb redneck racists, the easy ones to dismiss. 

   It isn't entirely fair to criticize "What You Wish For" for being a shallow examination of racism. The story is a shallow examination of racism but it doesn't set out to be much more. It is, foremost, a story about the need to let go of hate. What it does, though, is make me wonder about the limits of metaphor. Ken's unleashed rage is symbolic and, as such, engages in levels beyond the simple points of the plot. Ken's childhood town functions as little more than a reminder of the price of anger and a time he almost let rage consume him, not the site of a murderous rampage. It's not a real town; it's a nostalgic device. It has no function outside its limited mandate in the story. The fact that it is where Ken committed murder sits at odds with the tenor of the story. Ken's comment that he came "close" is entirely wrong because he didn't come close - he actually did let anger consume him for long enough to end lives. Just because those were the lives of poorly drawn characters for whom racism was their only defining quality and who didn't serve the text as actual characters, doesn't mean that he didn't cross a pretty clear moral line. The unsettling comparison to Columbine aside, "What You Wish For" seeks to actively engage in a metaphor for which it is entirely unprepared. The maneuvering of Ken from angry, possibly murderous, boy to well-adjusted member of society is probably the single biggest unresolved tension in the whole collection of stories. In the end, Ken's killing spree becomes a memory that makes him a better person - which makes "What You Wish For," quite possibly, the most disturbing story in all of Demo.

Next Week: "One Shot, Don't Miss"

Demo - "Girl You Want"

   "Girl You Want" seems to be an ironic but straightforward story about a girl who is physically transformed into what people want her to be. She's a shapeshifter with no agency - she is altered, against her will, by the people around her. Kate ("Katie, Kath, Kat. Is that short for Kartherine? With a 'k' or a 'c'? Even my name is what people want it to be.") is an angry teen. Understandably. We meet her at a house party where she is changing shape every time someone looks at her. She gets mad and storms out and we are left with the impression that most of her life is spent in a similar emotional state. However, at a Starbucks, Kate is treated kindly by a server [barista? I would much rather use "server"]. More importantly, Kate does not change when this server looks at her. Kate becomes mildly obsessed, believing that she has fallen in love with someone who sees her for who she truly is. Kate attempts to ask the server out on a date, but fails. She then follows the server home on the bus, downplaying the irony that she doesn't even know the girl's name. When they end up in a sketchy area of town, Kate is surprised. When the server picks up her daughter from the babysitter, Kate realizes that she, herself, has created an identity for this girl.

   Contrary to appearances (see what Wood & Cloonan did there?), this is not a story that explores the identity crises of a shapeshifter. Kate is not like Mystique from the X-Men or Chameleon (Boy) from the Legion of Super-Heroes. She doesn't change at will, nor use her powers for any purpose. She is changed. Because of this, Kate is deeply alienated. But not for the reasons she thinks. Other than the nameless server who sees Kate's "real" face, a transit worker and several people on a bus see Kate for who she is. She notices this and, instead of believing that either she has more control over her appearance then she imagined or that others are capable of seeing her real face, Kate chooses to believe it means that she's a screw-up. "Good job, Kate. You blew it. Stupid. Everyone thinks so." When she is denigrating herself for making the same mistake that others had made with her, though people on the bus are looking at her, she does not change. She looks in the mirror and sees her own face and, sorry for herself, claims that the fact she hasn't changed means that everyone sees her as a failure ("everyone thinks so"). Her interpretation of what they see is questionable at best. "Girl You Want," clearly, is not without the adolescent indulgence and self-pity that many of Demo's stories showcase so vividly. The climactic moment even happens in the rain.

   But Wood & Cloonan's story is more than a mash-up of teenage pity trips. "Girl You Want" is a sad story in the way that many teenagers think their lives are sad. The simple dramatic irony is foreshadowed consistently. Wood & Cloonan are not trying to surprise the reader with the ending, but are trying to get inside the head of a girl with alienation issues. Kate spends much of the story angry, but she seems to revel in it to a certain degree. There is no indication that she knows anyone at the house party, no sign that she was invited. Only one person seems to even know who she is and she is rude to him when he asks her out. This young guy sees her as the sexy librarian because she works in the stacks, and Kate lashes out at the cliche more than anything else. Ultimately, the story is about how we construct alienating images of ourselves and others out of cultural detritus and cliche.

   Kate only transforms into cliches. One guy sees an older woman, possibly his mother. Another sees her as a spiky-haired punk chick. Yet another sees her as Chun-Li from Street Fighter (and not the version recently portrayed on film by Smallville's Kristen Kreuk). Wood & Cloonan are not criticising cultural icons or cliches, at least not with any sustained attack. They are commenting on how these images get deployed in relationships. And, surprisingly, these relationships seem to be nothing but emotional. The forms Kate takes on are designed for emotional attachment, not sexual fantasy. None of the fantasy images of Kate, not a single one, are particularly sexualized. Even the horny librarian is demurely clothed. Given how highly sexualized most images of Mystique are [see left - seriously? That's where she puts the gun?], it's rather surprising that the fetishes on display in "Girl You Want" are so tame. It seems that what these boys want isn't to sexually objectify Kate. What Kate's can't see is that the desire isn't as predatory as she believes. They want companionship, as does Kate, but lack the ability to visualize that relationship outside their very limited fantasies.

   The limitations of these fantasies, most painfully for Kate, lead to alienation. Kate can't connect with anyone else, but neither can anyone really connect. The boy who just wants to date Chun-Li [right] is doomed to be disappointed. Only the nameless server seems well-adjusted (and she's a fan of indie music ... so there's that). The only time Kate feels a human connection is at a Starbucks, a formless ahistorical space if ever there was one - a clue that, perhaps, her feelings are less than authentic.

   Cloonan doesn't change up her artistic style within the issue when illustrating Kate's changes. Though the stylistic variations of the preceding chapters of Demo plainly establish that Cloonan could draw Chun-Li as a manga babe, or the pierced and spiky punk Kate in a different style, Cloonan's art portrays each transformation within the visual syntax of this story. All the metamorphoses occur within a consistent stylistic universe. The effect of this decision actually de-emphasizes Kate's transformations. This isn't a story about how reality is represented and the artifice of any such duplication. This is a story about how the limited grammar of desire leaves people feeling alone. 

   "Girl You Want" is actually a rather big-hearted story, dressed up as a self-pitying emo song. The story suggests that people can't really be blamed for their fantasies, and that, to some degree, this is because we are unable to separate cultural cliches from our lived experiences. Kate doesn't see herself any more than the nameless server or the video game fetishist see her. She wants a connection based on more than just superficialities, but is unable to imagine it.

Next Week: "What You Wish For" and the limits of metaphor.

Demo - "Stand Strong"

   If the angst-filled adolescent histrionics of the first three stories in Demo made you suspect Wood & Cloonan were going to hit the same note over and over, then "Stand Strong" will try to punch your face. It might not actually hit you, but it's going to swing.

   James McMurray is up for promotion at the factory where he, his father, and his grandfather all work. He's not sure that he wants to settle into this life, and goes to see his friends. They look pissed. Flashback to thirty-six hours earlier. James and his girlfriend Amy are having a fight about his lack of initiative. Amy wants a better life than their parents, James objects to the implication that there is anything wrong with his parents, and they argue. Turns out that James just doesn't really want to break into the factory and steal the payroll, and resents the fact that his childhood friends only want his help because he is super-strong. He deliberately screws up the theft, which results in his friends getting fired. Back to the pissed-off friends, thirty-six hours later: James breaks up with Amy, ditches the gang, and joins his father and grandfather for a beer.

   

   Once again, Wood & Cloonan explore family dynamics (and, once again, priorize the conservative nuclear family unit). Which family does James want, the one he was born into or the one he chose? It is clear that James's crew, where they call him Jimmy, is not the family he will choose. When they first appear, they are all angry - sneering and growling at James. We find out later that he deliberately screwed up their heist and cost them their jobs. Amy, for all the important truths that she speaks, is never without a sour and hostile expression on her face. It seems reasonable of her to want more than "12-hour shifts waitressing" or sitting "home alone on nights and weekends while you pull extra shifts and then come home stinking and too exhausted to do anything but watch TV." What's wrong with wanting a life of more than mere subsistence, a life better than the one your parents' had? But it is hard to like her with that perpetual grimace on her face. This, somewhat problematically, only serves to reinforce James's choice to ditch her.

   The fact that Amy and the crew only want to exploit James's strength isn't a critique of ambition or an anti-elitist reaction to self-improvement, however. Amy and the crew do not respect the basic decency of a person who works long hours to provide for his or her family. Amy doesn't want to work hard to improve herself - she just wants more money. In many ways, "Stand Strong" is a very conservative paean to the working man.

   Super-strength is, maybe, the most common super-power. However, it usually comes as a subset of other powers, something thrown in to make the fights more interesting. Spider-Man is super-strong but can also stick to walls, sense danger, and date women way out of his league. No one would identify Spider-Man, primarily, by his strenth. Even Superman's strength is secondary to his flight, speed, vision powers, and invulnerability. Almost every team, heroes and villains, have a strongman. Even Emma Frost has super-strength now when she turns into a diamond. The more typical "strong guys," like the Thing or the Hulk, are also invulnerable. You could list dozens of characters who have super-strength accompanied with another power. Rarely do super-heroes only have strength. Generally, strong guys are not the leaders or the brains of a team. They can be the conscience of the team, like Colossus with the X-Men or Thing with the Fantastic Four, and their strength is often reflective of a strength of character. The Cartesian mind/body split being thematically central, they represent the heart of the team, not its brain. They are the blue-collar workers of super-hero comics.

   Picking up where "Bad Blood" left off, "Stand Strong" isn't as interested in the super-power as either "NYC" or "Emmy." In the earlier stories, the focus was on how the protagonist's power damaged her life. Beginning with "Bad Blood," but becoming more pronounced in "Stand Strong," the power is a background feature meant to help illustrate theme. For James, his strength isn't a metaphor for conviction or clarity of vision. The achronological narrative of "Stand Strong" only emphasizes the fact that James can't fully embrace either option presented to him. He doesn't want to work in the factory all his life, but refuses to see that choice as something upon which to be looked down. James thinks that his strength, at least in the eyes of his friends, makes him a tool. "Big Jimmy the Utensil," he calls himself ironically. But, as his sabotage of the robbery proves, he's not just a hammer to be swung. Though it's never stated, there is no indication that James inherited his strength from his father, the way Samantha and Sean Hurley inherited their father's invulnerability. In "Stand Strong," James's strength demonstrates the life he is made for.

   Wood & Cloonan, here more so than in any previous story, play up the ambiguities. In this case, it's James's choice to embrace his father's lifestyle - the life, he believes, that he is built for but the life he doesn't want. Wood & Cloonan show how James is trapped between the two worlds. The same clean, white rooms appear in the Vice-President's office where James is offered the promotion and the apartment he shares with Amy. James also seems to be resentful of his father's constant attempts to keep him at the factory. "This was just meant to be a short term thing, you know," he tells his dad. "I always figured I would do more, somehow. Travel maybe." As his father explains, though, "we're not made for things like travel and college or whatever else you had in mind. C'mon, we're working class people." The iconic cover image of James holding a hammer, and the repeated use of that image in the story itself, creates a sense of James as an exemplar of the proletariat. He is the working class man, write large. His strength is as much the product of his toil as it is a sign of his ability to endure toil.

   But, the story ends with James joining his father and grandfather for a beer. The bartender notes that he's "the spitting image of the both of ya." James, head shaved and covered in tattoos, looks very little like his father and grandfather. To Cloonan's immense credit, though, a reader can tell what the bartender means. The men have similar jaw lines and, in faces so simply rendered, James's features echo those of his dad. In a two panel sequence, James looks over to his progenitors. Sitting side-by-side, they look like a time lapse photo. The second panel is of James, his tattoos hidden and his shaved head out of frame, looking surprised. He sees the resemblance now, too. On the next page, he surveys the bar and the page ends with a close-up of James's face, his expression painfully unreadable as the weight of his choice sinks in. The final splash page is of the town and factory, a black silhouette in a white sky. The page is mostly black, the dark world underneath the factory, the future swallowed up by the forces that shape James's life. The men in the bar all look so similar not only because they are related, but also because the factory makes people this way. James, like his father and grandfather, will be shaped and remade by that industrial force. 

Next week: "Girl You Want"

Blackest Night

   This isn't a review. Not even close. This is more of a lament for the fact that I let DC convince me that this comic was something I would be interested in.

   So, my reaction to reading Blackest Night #1, was very similar to how I felt after reading Battle for the Cowl. Now, I'm confident that this series will turn out to be far less a series of random fight scenes and nonsensical motivations than Battle for the Cowl. But I really had the feeling that I already knew everything that was going to happen in this issue. As if the actual series starts next month. It's the same feeling I get when seeing a movie that has its entire premise and plot outlined by the preview - Tropic Thunder being a particularly recent example. Or like when DC ruined the ending Watchmen by releasing the graphic novel adaptation twenty some years before the movie came out. The whole issue was set-up: outlining the characters, defining the conflicts, catching readers up on the relevant history, and giving a sense of the stakes at hand. Though these are necessary to tell a story that tries to balance a self-contained narrative and a reliance on years of DC continuity, after the months of preview issues, "Road to Blackest Night" tie-ins, interviews, and promotional images, this issue seemed perfunctory. 

  

   My problems with Blackest Night are more than a complaint about the set-up. Every issue might be someone's first. And, for the purposes of a collected edition, it's nice to be able to read a story that has a beginning. I understand that my dissatisfaction is based on external factors rather than the issue itself (which I thought was efficient and well-structured, though only superficially interested in character and theme). The problem is that I know that I'm not really the target reader for this (I don't particularly care for Geoff Johns's comics and the list of dead characters who are going to come back as evil zombies in this series consist mainly of the DC characters for whom I have fondness, and therefore no desire to see as evil zombies!) and I know that my tepid reaction to this series will be more a matter of my own preferences than of a failure on the part of Johns and Reis. I also know that it isn't fair to the comic itself to judge it based on how the months of promotional bombardment made the entire issue (save the last gruesome pages) seem extraneous. But, sorry DC, I'm doing it anyway. Your PR machine made me interested in the series, despite all my concerns. You didn't lie or trick me. You just got me to ignore the simple fact that this series would not be my cup of tea.

Demo - "Bad Blood"

   Where "Emmy" played with silence, "Bad Blood" narrates your eyes off. Another of Demo's simple, direct metaphors, it's also one of the most histrionic (though not the most - that's "What You Wish For"), full of angst-filled young adults and monologues. Though much of Demo doesn't reach for subtlety, "Bad Blood" grabs a pool cue and starts swinging. 

   Samantha meets her half-brother Sean, after more than a decade of separation and sporadic contact, at their father's funeral. Her mother left their father when Samantha was very young, and she barely knew him. Her mother dead over a year, Samantha feels detached and angry. She fancies herself an outsider and a rebel - so much so that she tries to offend herself by pretending she wants to hook up with Sean (who else could she be trying to offend? It's an inner monologue). The issue is basically a conversation (or, rather, a series of speeches) in which Sean convinces Samantha that she shouldn't be so hard on the old man. Then Sean tries to kill Samantha by crashing his car into a tree. When she doesn't die, he reveals that the Hurley family is immortal and that their father isn't dead. Samantha now has the chance to build a relationship with her father, free to start again.

   Wood & Cloonan foreground the theme of death and rebirth that has been present in both "NYC" and "Emmy," and will continue to show up throughout the stories in Demo. Rebirth, for Samantha, is almost literal but serves primarily to indicate a paradigm shift. She is now willing to see her father as a man, not as a role model or the head of a "normal" family. She also has a large tree branch sticking out of her chest, but I'm not sure that's of thematic significance all on its own.

   "Bad Blood" is not the most metaphorically arresting of the pieces in Demo. Nearly the entire issue takes place in Sean's car and the only conflict in the issue is whether or not Samantha is going to be able to come to terms with her father. Well, not so much her father but the idea of him. The thrust of the story seems to be the conflict between family as a socially constructed arrangement or as a generative and formative series of relations. Samantha's oh-so-naughty attraction to Sean draws attention to this dynamic. "Sean Hurley. My half-brother. My hot fucking half-brother, who, if he wasn't my brother, I'd be all over in a heartbeat." But he is her brother, and so that thought goes unrepeated. Family means something to Samantha, something more than a legal and biological association. 

   As the story progresses, we see that family means to Samantha. She has fond memories of Sean helping her to ride a bike and Sean gives insight into the cycles of pain that the Hurleys have inflicted on one another. That so much of this story happens off-screen, as it were, allows for the unreliability of our characters to permeate their dialogue with enough ambiguity to dampen the otherwise overly sentimental image of a rebellious daughter willing to give her delinquent dad a second chance. There's also the bit about the tree branch sticking out of her chest.

   "Bad Blood" seems determined to uphold a pretty traditional version of the family, all things considered. A family is a collection of individuals related by blood (ooh, that's in the title!). The fact that Sean and Samantha have been apart for a dozen years but are able to reconnect and play the standard older/younger sibling roles seems to reinforce that. But ambiguity manages to invade the story. The world seems tiny in "Bad Blood." No one comes to the funeral. Samantha is jonesing for a cigarette, which conveniently leads to the particular convenience store where Sean wrote their names in wet concrete. Sean drives them past places that Samantha remembers - places to which the reader is not given access. All we can see is the occasional glimpse of forest. But this all fits into the difficulty of how we understand our families. Denying readers the source of Samantha's nostalgia (except for the convenience store, which is just a building and not at all able to withstand the anger Samantha directs at it) prevents access to the private world of history and anecdotes that exists between her and Sean. This removes Samantha's story from the realm of the "every-teenager" (Marie in "NYC") and, rather, reflects on how shared experiences may be part of the various social bonds that creates a family. Those locations mean something to Samantha because of the memories, the shared history, the emotional ties. To anyone else, they're just places. 

   The lack of demonstrated experience allows for readers to question those familial bonds. We get tiny glimpses of their childhood. Samantha's memory of riding her bike is a pretty standard idyll, but Cloonan complicates the image. In one panel, we see Samantha looking determinedly at her handlebars, her left forearm sporting a bandage and her cheeks flushed. This girl is ready to tear it up. Sean is holding her bike steady, squinting and sweating a little anxiously. There is a real intimacy to this panel, a sense of responsibility and reliance. Sean is there to take care of Samantha, nervous at her intensity, and she takes that for granted. The next panel, however, puts space between them. They both look blankly happy, devoid of personality and oddly distant. It's a touching counterpoint and a sign that the fond memories that cement their relationship might be the distorted recollections of a lonely girl. There's also the rather awkward loose thread of Sean's admission that not all of Old Man Hurley's kids are immortal, and there's really no way to know until you try to kill them. So, basically, he took a 50/50 shot that his sister would survive a fatal car crash.

   "Bad Blood" is another step in the increasing complexity of Demo. The story is far more playful than either "NYC" or "Emmy" while still managing to take up some of Wood's favorite themes (rebellious youth, the concept of family). It's not subtle, but it's a more open to ambiguity and alternate readings than the first two chapters. And, come on, we all know who Old Man Hurley really is.

Next week: "Stand Strong"

Demo - "Emmy"

   "Emmy" is really quite depressing. Reading it, I feel like Wood & Cloonan set themselves the challenge of taking an alluring super-power and stripping it of any glamour, excitement, and appeal. Emmy is a young teenager who has the ability to make anyone do what she tells them to (we don't actually know that Emmy is her name, because no one ever says it, but it's the title and one can assume). At some point, she lashed out and shut her mother's brain off. Emmy takes care of her mother (who can't even take herself to the bathroom), pumps gas to pay the bills, and tries not to speak for fear of what might happen. She loses control when a customer sexually harasses her - though there is no clear indication, the text leads us to believe that her boss has been casually harassing for a while but that this incident is the last straw - and tells him to drop dead. He dies, her boss calls the police, and Emmy decides to run away. She whispers something to her mother before leaving and the horrified reaction of the police suggests that it was euthanasia. "Emmy" sits comfortably beside "NYC" as another angsty teenage story about how it feels, sometimes, that the only power we have is to screw up our lives.

   Mind control is a pretty common super-power, most often presented as a part of a telepath's repertoire (think the X-Men's Professor X or Emma Frost). When mind control lacks the other dimensions of telepathy, it's often in the command of a villain (Mentallo, Mastermind and his daughters also called Mastermind, the Controller, Gorilla Grodd, and the Purple Man, to name a few). In the cases of the villains, mind control is often associated with an elitist attitude, and it represents the power of rhetoric - I'm thinking particularly of Glorious Godfrey and the Hatemonger here. The villains who can trick your senses, or distort your emotions, seem sleazier. In part, it's because they can't be defeated by repeated punching. They stir up the base emotions, the dark fantasies and desires that are already present in those they control or direct. In many ways, the super-hero is the anti-elitist response to those scary men (yes, they are almost always men) who can trick you with their words. What makes the Purple Man, in particular, so scary in Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos's Alias is not just the violation of having your will controlled by another. It's the lingering fear that you were really letting him control you, that some part of you really wanted to do those things. 

   What Bendis & Gaydos do with the Purple Man is probably the closest mainstream super-hero equivalent to what Wood & Cloonan are doing with "Emmy." Bendis & Gaydos, however, explore the ways in which language and art create reality - the Purple Man is aware that he's in a comic and sees himself as the author. With "Emmy," Wood & Cloonan engage with the power of words in a very different way. The effects of language in "Emmy" are multiple. Most obviously, they subvert a typical super-power. Emmy's power manifests through language, like the magic words of several other super-heroes (Shazam/Captain Marvel, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Johnny Thunder). However, Emmy's words are less stable than Billy Batson's. She does not have a single phrase that grants her power (Shazam!); rather, she makes her desires manifest through words. When she tells the stranger to drop dead, he does. The conceptual object of her thoughts is made real. Emmy has the power of creation: she speaks, therefore it is.

   "Emmy" contains text that represents spoken and written language - that is to say, both dialogue and an interpolated document. The first words, and the majority of the story's text, are from some sort of journal, presumably Emmy's, which states that "I'm writing all this down, for you to read." The story, however, is almost told entirely through Cloonan's art. The journal itself simply comments on the action, providing context and limited background on the illustrated events. The text also does not read consistently like a journal or a letter. The "you" to which everything is addressed seems to be a reader who knows nothing of Emmy because it provides expository information, and yet the text reacts to her immediate actions. When the police come, Emmy looks scared in one panel and then determined in the next. In that latter panel, the text reads "No. No more accidents. No more pain," as if in response to her decision to euthanize her mother.

   For a story about the power of words, "Emmy" is almost purely visual and the language that does appear is often contradicted by the images. At one point, Emmy explains that "most people leave me alone now. They're afraid." The text overlays images of Emmy walking home from the gas station and encountering three boys building a bike ramp. Contrary to what we are told, they do not look afraid of Emmy. Their expressions are actually quite blank - confused and a little curious. Earlier, when Emmy says that her boss leaves her alone "mostly," it seems to dismiss his request for a blow job. Though language organizes her world, it often conceals its conceptual objects. The world that Cloonan illustrates for Emmy is barren and claustrophobic at once, a reflection of the limited options Emmy sees for herself. It's not a world of objects, or one densely populated with symbolic tapestries. It's slight, and it's grimy, and it doesn't always act as described. 

   Cloonan's work realizing this is quite fantastic. The opening panel is of a desolate road - the road down which those passersby who frequent Emmy's gas station enter and exit her life. It's the only access to a better world, and it looks like it isn't going anywhere. Emmy lives with her mother in a trailer park and any signs of the small town Emmy says she lives in are invisible. When she slips out of her trailer to escape the police, the final image evokes the opening panel of "NYC." There is no glorious splash of New York, like the one that closed "NYC." Emmy is not on the road out of town that we saw earlier, the road down which she was staring at the story's opening. Instead, she's running across a narrow vertical panel bordered by the white of the page and the words "the end" printed to the left of the image. The spatial positioning of the words, based on the way we read comics, puts them before the illustration of Emmy's escape - she is coming from nowhere with nowhere to go. If any two words impart meaning that shapes reality, it's "the end." 

   Language, ultimately, is only how Emmy conceives her world, just like any of us - almost all the words are hers. The story Wood & Cloonan are telling is a pretty slight one about how a teenager says something so horrible that it destroys her relationship with her mother. She has a more direct manifestation of a power that, Wood & Cloonan's story suggests, we all have. We can all make our desires real if we choose to act on them. We can all burn our bridges and hurt people we care about if we let ourselves. Emmy kills the stranger with her words after he propositions her, but she might as well have sprayed him with gas and set him on fire. It would have been easy for her because, in that moment, she snaps. She is aware of what she can do, but for the smallest fraction of time she no longer cares. Though Emmy has the power of language, she is unable to significantly alter her circumstances - if only because she doesn't the world she creates in language is such a terrible one. She has so completely internalized her own self-conception that she cannot see that she has foreclosed her ability to change her world. Language is how we organize our self-images and by denying herself language, Emmy allows herself to disappear.

Next week: "Bad Blood"

Demo - "NYC"

   The cover to Demo #1, without much subtlety, tells you what this particular issue - and the series as a whole to some extent - is about. The two teenagers on the cover stand out, both in garb and color, in an expanse of nearly identical figures. This isn't just an iconic representation of how teenagers feel, or want to feel, but the mission statement for Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's whole series. They want to tell stories of super-powered teenagers that aren't super-heroes, that aren't just the same Marvel/DC tights & fights. They want theirs to be a book about kids with strange abilities that stands out from all the rest.

   "NYC" lays that out pretty clearly on the first page. Marie - a good super-hero name, shared with the power-draining X-Woman Rogue - asks her boyfriend if he feels different. "You know, like that you have something special, an ability or physical trait of some kind that sets you apart from everyone else? But, like, you don't wanna tell anyone, in case your family and the rest of society gets freaked out and treats you weird, all prejudiced and shit? You know what I'm talking about? You know that feeling?" Her boyfriend, Mike, armed with the kind of spiky punk-rock hair that requires a near toxic combination of glue and eggs, tells her that he does. "Isn't it fucking great?" he adds, smiling like the cat that ate the bird.

   Wood and Cloonan open Demo with this reclamation of the potent metaphor of super-powers as the physical manifestation of an adolescent's emotional state. The scene doesn't make sense given the series of events that the story then tells us in flashback, but its primary function here isn't to provide an ending to a particular story but to prime the reader for what Demo will be about. These aren't teenagers who dress up in spandex and punch the similarly garbed embodiment of their anxieties or obstacles. Oh no. These are teenagers whose powers as often as not are the problem, but are also the thing that define them in opposition to the society against which they wish to stand. It's more like Wood and Cloonan are trying to continue what Marvel's creators did in the early sixties rather than write the next Image super-hero book with a twist on the Marvel formula (hero with a power that is also a curse, misunderstood by the world he/she has sworn to protect).

   The biggest problem I have with "NYC" is that is feels a bit too much like a project. Marie has powers that her bitchy, one-note mother forces her to suppress. Her powers are representative of how she feels: "I'm a freak," she tells Mike, and that's all we're really given. But, for the purpose of this story, we don't really need to know more. She's an everygirl, the likeness of anyone who has ever felt as if she's been forced to deny herself. Marie and Mike run away from home (we are not given an indication if Mike has a home to run away from, but one can assume), from metaphorical wasteland known as "The Suburbs," to New York. Marie's powers are dangerous and, when she stops taking the drugs that inhibit them and finally lets them out, she demolishes their car and puts a crater in a parking lot. Teenagers, clearly, will explode if they are forced to live in the suburbs and not be themselves.

   The whole issue is dripping with the kind of self-righteous individuality that teenagers feel, and as such it works. But Marie's powers are far too vague a metaphor and she has no personality beyond them. The "self" that she suppress amounts exclusively to the exploding brain waves her mother fears. The script leans heavily on the art to really convey that this is more than just a whiny teen: when she unleashes herself, Cloonan illustrates the scene as if it were a mirror shattered by a punch. It' s violent and scary and it more than justifies the various expressions that Cloonon draws passing across Mike's face as Marie sleeps beside him, spent by her outburst. However, Marie, and Mike to a greater extent, remain types - typical teenagers who feel suffocated by their parents and their suburban world, who feel dangerous because they have no desire to fit in to that world. They represent feelings but take on no feelings of their own. It's too big a metaphor with too little to support it. The issue boils down to "teenagers feel like they don't fit in." 

   Though difficult to differentiate between Wood and Cloonan's contributions to the script, Cloonan's artwork gives the story the ambiguity necessary to undercut the sometimes reductive metaphors. The establishing shot of the first page, before Marie asks Mike if he's ever felt different (why would she ask him this when he already knows she ran away because her parents' didn't like that she can blow up a car with her brain?), is of the pair, huddled together in a cramped panel heading toward the subway. Their heads are down, Marie's arm is across her chest as if she's clutching her stomach, in hunger or in pain, with their features barely sketched in. These two teenagers are having a rough time of it. They might have found themselves in the big city - Marie can blow things up with her brain waves to her heart's content, and Mike can finally grow his hair like Polar Boy from the Legion of Superheroes - but life didn't get easier. They sacrificed something to find themselves. The final panel, by contrast, is a full page splash of New York City. The city skyline rests at the bottom of the page while the clouds rise into an empty sky. The juxtaposition between this and the cramped opening panel only heightens the impact. Sure, this might be freedom, but the opportunities possible will quickly be foreclosed and all that Marie and Mike will be left with is their sense of identity, their rebellious posture, and each other.

   Throughout the series, Cloonan changes up her style, sometimes drawing in thick lines, sometimes delicately thin, but she leaves fingerprints floating in panels every once in a while. The tactility of her work is quite remarkable and, in the case of "NYC" manages to add layers to an otherwise unremarkable story. As the series progresses, Wood's scripts seem to rise to the challenge of her art, her use of empty space and her ability to capture haunting vulnerability. And the lack of color only pulls the best out of her. Whereas a subsequent book like American Virgin featured a lot of her fabulous figure work and expressivity, Demo really gives her the chance to make the art the showcase feature of the comics.

   Next week: "Emmy."