Temporary Respite

September 9, 2023

I’ve been posting practically religiously since around February and it’s closing in on my favorite month of the year — October — and I’ve been meaning to take this respite since the beginning of July but kept wanting to write more, even though it’s resulted in emotional exhaustion, as you may have been able to tell by some of the recent posts. They have been, uh, a lot.

I’m sure I’ll pop in from time-to-time as I apparently can’t quit this site but, for all intents and purposes, I’ll be taking a time-out for a little while.

If you still use an RSS feed reader, you can always subscribe to automatically receive updates! I’m even playing with re-enabling automated email notifications (despite the fact that email is a nightmare for everyone, but — similarly — no one can quit it).

Enjoy the last gasp of summer and early days of fall!

THE FIRE NEVER GOES OUT (2020)

September 8, 2023

As I’ve been following ND Stevenson for years through his tumblr, I am very familiar with his yearly reports. At the end of each year he would lay himself bare before his audience, emotionally unfurling himself through his sequential art to his readers. Some entries were longer than others, some were more terse than others, while some were heartbreakingly earnest and honest.

While it’s one thing to read them in real-time — year after year with the distance of hundreds of days in-between — it’s another thing to read them one-after-another in a single collection. Said collection? THE FIRE NEVER GOES OUT: A MEMOIR IN PICTURES.

I won’t mince words here: I’m old. In all likelihood, I’ve already tripped over the halfway point of my life. However, this memoir covering the adventures of a late teen to twenty-something creator endlessly resonates more and more every time I read it.

With THE FIRE NEVER GOES OUT (FIRE from here on out), Stevenson details the trials, tribulations, and difficulties of discovering and reckoning with one’s self. We watch as he goes from girly churchgoer to an Eisner award-winner for a techno-fantasy about a shapeshifting gremlin of a girl, embracing their queerness, showing weakness and vulnerability, and ultimately finding their place in society and settling into willful tranquility.

It’s an epic graphic work, one that speaks just as much with panels as it does with the space left between them. (If you aren’t aware, that’s traditionally known as a ‘gutter’, but with Stevenson it’s more like troughs.) Nakedly honest and unflinching, it’s a memoir like no other; introspection peppered with grand achievements the likes of which he — or few of us — ever imagine.

Again, I’m far older than Stevenson, but his message of opening up to people, to finding your crowd, to reckon with who you are and what you want is ageless. Stevenson skirts the issue of therapy — he does briefly discuss being bipolar early on in the memoir, and he closes noting that he finally entered therapy and reluctantly embraced meds — but, as with Julia Wertz’s IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE, both come to the same conclusion that standing with others helps the most. That facet is something I’ve come to embrace over the past few years that I’ve been in therapy.

If you’ve previously read my words, it probably comes as no surprise that this blog — to use the outmoded term — is often my own sort of memoir. Several years ago I had a number of interactions where I realized the friends around me had no fucking clue who I really was. They had no idea of my past history, no clue about my inner life, no knowledge about any of the weird shit I’ve endured, and especially didn’t realize just how severely fucked up I am.

I realized I had buried most of my past. It was something not to be seen. Every once in a while I’d let loose with it — a piece I wrote for my now-defunct games criticism site that went viral was overtly self-reflective. Offhand remarks to friends that often resulted in shocked looks. However, those have been exceptions. This site has been a way to passively address that, to tell my own story, albeit in a way that I hope doesn’t feel like it’s an exercise in self-indulgence or nosedives into ‘too much information’.

There’s so much in FIRE that I can’t help but relate to. From an obsessive, myopic approach to work, to burnout, to feeling broken, to guilt and debilitating depression and wild upswings, to fully and completely reckon with one’s self; there’s a lot of harsh realities laid bare here. I am still somewhat shocked that publisher HarperCollins read his tumblr and thought: “Yes, this is a viable piece of entertainment content” because it feels so intimate. It is so very much of a certain over-sharing internet age that to put it into print almost feels sacrilegious, but I’m very happy they did so.

I first read FIRE as a collected work in 2020, right before I dove into some pretty intense therapy. (Fun fact: it’s only become more intense!) Upon rereading it three years later, I was shocked to read how many terms he used that mirrored my own, both with my partner as well as my mental health professionals. He uses terms that encompass feelings of guilt, of responsibility, of exhaustion, of frustration, of self-loathing.

FIRE isn’t a fictional work; it doesn’t wrap itself up into a nice, neat bow. It is a portrait of a life lived, a life learned, a life changed by experience and self-reflection and self-examination.

Upon my reread, I’ve found that his journey resonates louder than before. This isn’t a pandemic thing; it’s simply a matter of coming to terms with who the fuck you are and how you want to present yourself and endure the outside world.

I realize I’m privileged enough to live in a part of Chicago that doesn’t think twice about someone who paints themself up. No one here gives two shits about your gender identity or your pronouns; most folks just roll with it. I reside in a land of ostracized people; an area of living misfit toys.

In-between my initial read of FIRE and my reread I was diagnosed as bipolar, as well as suffering from acute anxiety and PTSD and dissociative disorder. Additionally, I came out as pansexual to a few folks. (I guess a few more folks now, if you’re reading this. Yes, I’m trying to come to terms with this.) Do I realize that pansexual is the lowest rung on the ladder of queerness? Yes, yes I do. Do I care? No, no I do not. (That is a lie. I actually do care, but I’m trying my damnedest to not.) Does it externally affect anything about me, considering I’m a white male-presenting monogamous person married to a woman? No, it does not. However, like with Stevenson, it does require a lot of internal re-centering and a lot of recalibration and reflection. As a consequence, I’ve physically leaned a lot into what makes me “me”.

We’re all just beings, living on the fumes of whatever societal and artistic and physical means we can. We want and want and want. We want to be heard, we want to be embraced, we want to be seen for who we are, but often settle for being seen for who we think others want us to be.

I’m happy that Stevenson figured that out earlier in their life than I did, but I’m also happy that I finally made some sort of peace with myself. The fire never goes out but, as Stevenson notes with hopefulness: You can “control your fire so that it warms instead of destroys.” I thank him for instilling that comfort.

You can — and should — get your own copy via Bookshop.

ADDENDUM

Stevenson currently has a Substack and officially labels himself as bigender and you should definitely subscribe to it.

I’d like to call your attention to The New Yorker review of FIRE, which I discovered after penning the final draft of this post. We’re very much on the same page, although Stephanie Burt is far more eloquent and exacting and less navel-gazing than myself.

Lastly, Tasha Robinson’s write-up for Polygon is well worth reading, as she dials in on a lot of what resonates about his work.

LUMBERJANES: BEWARE THE KITTEN HOLY (2015)

September 7, 2023

Out of the gate I’ll note that, of the ~20 volumes of LUMBERJANES, I’ve only read the first arc: BEWARE THE KITTEN HOLY, which solely collects the first four issues of the series. (Yeah, I know — I expected it to contain six issues too, instead of umpteen variant covers at the end.)

However, LUMBERJANES: BEWARE THE KITTEN HOLY (KITTEN HOLY from here on out because while it’s a great title, I am very tired of repeatedly typing out overly long titles) immediately knows what it wants to do, knows how to do it, and knows what you expect from it.

In short: it’s a series about a pack of teen-ish youths at a very rural summer camp. I’m old, so I’m not really sure if teens still go to summer camps, but I certainly did and KITTEN HOLY encapsulates the surreal nature of temporarily living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded mostly by water and trees and bug juice.

To extrapolate: it’s about five wildly different girls who manage to bond with each other, and the strange supernatural events they end up being entangled with. There’s Molly, the tomboy with the Davy Crockett headpiece; April, the sprite-like nerd who replaces all of what would normally be curse words with the names of feminist artists; Ripley, who is overly-active and overly-physical; Jo, the level-headed one who still stands up for herself; and Mal, who would rather fade into the background but is damn smart. Oh, there are also the camp heads, Jen and Rosie. Jen’s all about rules, while still being empathetic, while Rosie is all fun and games and unruliness.

Did I mention that the camp is named Roanoke? I should have led with that.

Also, it does feature a quality amount of queerness, which I can’t help but appreciate in a YA work.

ND Stevenson provided a lot of the foundation of the series, both with character designs and themes, but it’s most certainly a collective effort. Brooke Ellis’ pencils and inks are so exuberant; Maarta Laiho’s colors pop like wildfire, and Aubrey Aisee’s lettering is singularly personal to the characters. This is a work that embraces the energy and wildness of youth, and of comics. It’s loads of fun and, well, if I had nieces, I would certainly gift them copies.

NIMONA (2023)

September 6, 2023

(Netflix) NIMONA, the illustrated comic series this film was adapted from, immediately opens with shapeshifter Nimona ingratiating herself on the super-villian Ballister Blackheart by simply knocking on his door and insisting that she becomes his sidekick.

She’s alone in the very first panel, spryly sidling up to his hideout.

The filmed adaptation of NIMONA doesn’t reveal her for 15 minutes.

Despite being the titular character, with NIMONA — the film — there’s a character imbalance. This feels more like it’s Ballister’s story (now named Ballister Boldheart instead of Blackheart), not Nimona’s, which is a goddamn shame. ND Stevenson’s original comic did an astounding job of balancing both Ballister and Nimona’s stories, how one needed the other, their push-and-pull, how they mirrored each other while also being completely separate individuals.

Sadly, what’s worse is that Ballister feels sanded away from the thornier, more morally ambiguous, more complicated character that resides in the books. Granted, while Nimona is the one who gets a richer back story later on in the film, it still feels like she’s often only there to bolster Ballister, to right his wrongs. In the comic, while Nimona constantly posits that she’s merely his sidekick, they’re more or less equals; they balance each other.

You got betrayed by someone you trusted.

I’ll note that these are disgruntled remarks from someone who expected a bit more fidelity from this adaptation. If you ignore the source material, it’s a progressive and entertaining film that is a breath of fresh air compared to many contemporary animated efforts. Nimona is brazen and fearless, with one hell of a sly grin, but still has her own insecurities and often feels like an aberration. Ballister and Goldenloin are still very gay. (Finally, a family animated feature that isn’t afraid to show two men kiss!)

The world kicks you around sometimes. But together, we can kick it back.

It’s also a visual marvel with a style all its own, even if it’s far denser than Stevenson’s evocatively simple thin line work. They capture Nimona’s wild expressions perfectly, and there’s a fluidity here that helps to recreate the kinetic nature of the original work. It feels like it’s a labor of love, encapsulated by the attention to detail paid to the end credits, of all things.

Hopefully this film will have legs, and will become the sort of work that is nostalgically discussed twenty years from now by those who stumbled upon it at a very young age. It traffics in characters that are seldom seen in family-friendly works; queer and monstrous characters who are just trying to be themselves, but are ostracized for being who they are.

Because once everyone sees you as a villain? That’s what you are.

Lastly, I’ll note that the trailer features a song from THE TING TINGS: That’s Not My Name, which I previously featured in a prior post!

NIMONA (2015)

September 5, 2023

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As ND Stevenson’s NIMONA film adaptation has finally made its way into the world — thanks for nothing, Disney — I thought I would revisit some of his prior works.

If you haven’t read NIMONA but have designs on watching the film, I highly suggest that you watch the film adaptation first and then circle back to the book. You’ll thank me later.

I was lucky enough to start reading ND Stevenson’s NIMONA as it was doled out online. It’s was a webcomic tale that takes place in a future-medieval-ish world focused around a young mercurial shapeshifter (the titular character Nimona, often defaulting to the appearance of a teen girl) who — right out of the gate — immediately imbues herself on the most prominent supervillain in the land: Ballister Blackheart. The two of them go up against the tyrannical Institute and Ballister’s “ex-bestie” Sir Goldenlion who — worth noting — cut off Ballister’s arm. Matters escalate in a brazen way.

Then it was released as a colorized graphic novel, and it shot to the best-seller lists, and rightfully lit the world on fire.

NIMONA is grounded in a way that I feel is rare with most fantasy works. While the story takes place in a fantastical land, that land is mostly ancillary to the story; what really matters are the relationships in the story: Nimona’s push-and-pull with Ballister, trying to feed his worst impulses while also trying to understand why he pushes against them; Ballister, meanwhile, has no idea what to make of Nimona, doesn’t know whether he’s taken her under his wing, or whether she’s taken him under her wing (both literally and figuratively).

While NIMONA started off as a college art project, it is confident out of the gate. Does it have all of the trapping of an old-school webcomic? Yes: 1) It focuses on the type of characters eschewed from most mainstream comics 2) It immediately cuts to the chase and lays everything out swiftly instead of indulging in the sort of visual storytelling decompression that’s been all-too-popular as of late, 3) The character design is so exacting and memorable with its shapes and sizes, even though one of the characters is a shapeshifter, and 4) It is first-and-foremost an outlet for what the author is dealing with.

It’s very difficult to discuss NIMONA without noting that Stevenson has gone through quite a bit since he started working on it over a decade ago — he is trans — I am not the right person to discuss it, so I’ll let you read about his experiences revisiting his notes and sketches and process of creating the work instead.

Since NIMONA, Stevenson has gone on to a number of other projects — most of which also has him on art duties — but he’s become better known as a writer and show runner (see: Netflix’s SHE-RA) and rightly so. He has a very unique voice that manages to be glib and hilarious but also meaningfully contains so much subtext and pulls at your emotions.

However, I really miss his art. I love his scratchy thin line-work, his effortlessly energetic layouts — how he mapped out Nimona’s transformations across the page is seamlessly eye-popping — and simply how he captures so much emotion and agility and expression in the slightest, and largest, of character poses. I’ll also note that the original webcomics were in black-and-white, but he did such an amazing job imbuing his works with what may look like simple flat colors, but are so vivid and shine volumes. It’s comics at its finest.

If you didn’t take my advice and read this before watching the film: again, please watch the film again after reading the collection. I’ll have an addendum with my post about the film in which I’ll detail the ‘why’ but I’d rather save it for that as opposed to this work.

ND Stevenson

September 4, 2023

This (slightly short) week has been a long time coming. ND Stevenson is an astounding craftsman and creative artist and writer, and I’ve loved everything he has penned and willed into the world, even though I haven’t been able to read or watch all of their works.

The works I have imbibed have deeply affected me, hence this week.

If you aren’t familiar with his pieces, I hope this provides the impetus to do so. If you are? I hope you revisit them, as my revisiting cast a significantly different light.

Welcome to ND Stevenson week.

CATS (2019)

August 30, 2023

Let me get this out of the way first: Yes, Tom Hooper’s CATS is not considered a ‘good’ film or even an adequate adaptation, and that reputation is well-earned. It’s an absolute mess; there’s a lot of miscasting, the visual effects are wall-to-wall uncanny valley, and, well, let’s just say it feels like a cocaine-fueled revisiting of an already cocaine-fueled theatrical work. (Also: I am pretty sure T.S. Eliot would not approve of his cat poems being reworked in this way.) For a work that is so absolutely bonkers — we’re living in a musical feline-based underworld where everyone is vying for a spot to ascend to a higher plane that can only be deigned by what is essentially a Queen cat — it is surprisingly boring!

(That’s basically the entire story as I understand it, apart from some weird offshoots about ancillary cats and Idris Elba lapping it up as a villain who has some weird superpower that apparently puts folks in what I believe is his version of purgatory. Or he just transports them to a boat/harbor? Frankly, it doesn’t really matter.)

Now that I’ve addressed that: I still love Tom Hooper’s adaptation.

Again: this is not what one would consider a ‘good’ film. It’s a lot of noise and bluster and every facet of the film distracts from anything that would normally be considered merit-worthy.

However, it has a lot of charm, and most of that is due to the fact that this feels so earnest only in the way that a theatrical musical can get away with. Apart from the woeful casting of James Corden and Rebel Wilson — both very game and talented performers but they chew the scenery so much that Corden actually vomits later in the film — everyone is emoting like mad. Hell, even fucking Dame Judi Dench almost pulls off what can only be called uh, fully presenting her crouch in an absolutely ridiculous CGI leg pull.

(Yes, I will circle back to the utter horniness of the film. Please be patient.)

Putting aside the very creepy visuals and absolutely warped sense of physical scale of these cats living in what is supposed to be a real world, and Corden & Wilson, CATS feels like a very odd, very surreal, very singular labor of love. The production design is astounding, presenting like an under-populated Gotham City with its neons and rain and wrought iron as opposed to the London it’s supposed to be. Francesca Hayward — a Principal ballerina for The Royal Ballet — is astounding in the lead role of Victoria; she’s all wide eyes and hurt and wonder and dexterity. She whips and twirls and effortlessly hurls herself around and it’s visually majestic. Ian McKellen practically steals the show with his number and the melancholy and sadness he conveys. Oh, and Robbie Fairchild with his longing looks? Yes.

The choreography is exceptional and the soundtrack hits all of the right notes, if you’re into Webber. (I am not the biggest fan, as I still have nightmares about playing the endlessly dull cello part of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in high school, but there are a lot of great songs here as well as some smashing callbacks and refrains!)

I’ve seen this film more times than you would think and yes, I have seen a stage production. (I did not care for the stage production, but that’s not the focus here.) The most recent time I viewed it was at Chicago’s Music Box as a ‘Rated Q’ event.

I wrote about ‘Rated Q’ in my post about BOUND but to summarize: ‘Rated Q’ is a monthly film event curated by Ramona Slick that extolls queer and underground works, while also adding a theatrical drag performance prelude that always entertains and titillates.

When I heard that ‘Rated Q’ would be screening CATS, I knew I had to attend. I thought I’d either love the experience or hate it, as I wasn’t sure if the audience would treat it like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW which, for some, is thrilling but feels overly self-indulgent to me.

I loved it.

I cannot overstate how much fun this screening was. This may sound like hyperbole but typing this post is painful as my left hand provokes pangs because of how over-enthusiastic my clapping was and how much my wedding ring is inappropriate for long-lived clapping. (Yes, my wedding ring is on my right hand. Orthodoxy and all that foisted–upon jazz.) I had a beaming grin on my face for the entirety of the film. I’m sure my voice is a tad worn out by how much I laughed and how vocal I was, and everyone else there was just as enthusiastic. Hell, I even sang along with some of the songs and I am not that kind of person!

I have never seen people dance in their seats at the Music Box. I have never seen folks pull out lighters and phones to sway to a scene at the Music Box. I have never seen folks wildly throw their arms up in the air at the Music Box, pumping along to the beat of a song. Now I have. (I realize that if I would attend one of Music Box’s ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW sing-a-longs I’d probably see all of the above, but realistically that simply isn’t going to happen.)

This was all elicited by a film that has been considered a laughing stock, a joke, an absolute failure, but for most of those that filled the seats — and it was a very well-attended screening for a Thursday night — for two hours everyone shared a love for this very weird film that by all rights shouldn’t even exist.

I endlessly harp about the experience of communal cinematic viewing, of watching a film with like-minded individuals who revel in a film they know inside-out and I hate to do so again but I have to: there is absolutely nothing like it. Part of that’s because it is very singular — every ‘Rated Q’ screening I’ve attended has been solo — but even if you’re attending with friends, your eyes are focused on the screen and for two hours you are part of this strange world and surrounded by the glow of collective enthusiasm and appreciation and, if you’re lucky, it means everything to you. This one screening meant everything to everyone and it was glorious.

ADDENDUM

You thought I forgot about the horniness? I did not! Every five minutes an audience member would shout out ‘Kiss!’ because this film feels like it’s on an Olympics-scale version of sweatiness and lust. While the cats never kiss, they are endlessly rubbing up against each other or throwing each other all sorts of wanting glances. I never thought I’d expect to feel such heat between a modern-day Judi Dench and a woman young enough to be her granddaughter, but yes, that definitely happens.

Also: most of these cats are essentially nude the entire time. However, Idris Elba wears a trenchcoat for most of the film but in the final act he throws it off and is finally naked and goddamn, the audience went wild, all sorts of gasps, and hooting and laughter and applause and it was all in the ‘Rated Q’ spirit.

Normally this is where I embed a trailer, but this is far more emblematic of the experience — for better or for worse — and is absolutely about trying recapture magic, so here you go:

If you’re in or around Chicago on September 14th 2023, the next ‘Rated Q’ screening is LEGALLY BLONDE. Join me, won’t you?

PERPETRATOR (2023)

August 26, 2023

CAVEAT

This was a while ago, but I did take video art classes from PERPETRATOR director/writer Jennifer Reeder back in my college days. She wouldn’t know me from Adam now — I’m simply noting it out of a sense of responsibility. She’s a great teacher who now teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and I will never forget screening my first extremely personal and intensely overworked short video piece in her class, which one fellow student exclaimed after viewing it: “That gave me a migraine.”

I also saw PERPETRATOR at the Chicago premiere, with a ton of the crew in the audience, as well as with a post-film Q&A between the always awesome Katie Rife and Reeder, so I can’t deny that the entire audience was completely on-board for what they were about to see.

I will try to keep this short and succinct for once, because this is one of those rare films that I feel requires a second viewing, but it’s rolling out on screens this week and I want to boost it!

Director/writer/auteur Jennifer Reeder loves genre conventions, but is also firmly ensconced in experimental works. Her prior feature — KNIVES AND SKIN — is very much about teen girls and high school and cliques and being pursued, but also embraces how these girls get to know their bodies and everything that entails, including how others view and abuse them, and she films all of this through a teen haze; events happen around and to you and they don’t often make sense, but you just roll with it because you don’t know any better. While it shares a lot of DNA from TWIN PEAKS, it is still its own thing.

PERPETRATOR follows in the same vein, but it’s far, far bloodier, far more disturbing, and features far more orifices than her prior film. It’s disturbing, certainly, but it does what I think horror does best: detailing the confusion of body and personality transformation but also how folks simply adjust and accept or reject it. While it is fundamentally a narrative genre feature, it is not afraid of diverging into more surreal and nebulous areas.

I know I’m not doing the film justice with this post. (I will circle back with a later post detailing the rest of the cast and crew!) Hell, I may even be misrepresenting it; it’s that kind of film. I’m a huge fan of her and still I went into this film knowing nothing about it and I’d suggest doing the same. It’s a shocking, provocative, singular film that feels like nothing else out there.

Nonetheless, here’s the trailer, and if you have a SHUDDER subscription, you can watch it there soon, or if you live in NYC or LA or Chicago, you can catch it on the big screen, which is really how you should see some of the puckering.

NINE INCH NAILS – FIXED (1992)

August 25, 2023

While NINE INCH NAILS is best known for the soulful teen electronic angst of PRETTY HATE MACHINE and the the metal-influenced BROKEN and then the very pop-industrial THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL — sadly, causing so many frat bros to play CLOSER at their parties — FIXED is my favorite from Oscar-winner Trent Reznor.

“Give it to me; I’ll throw it away…”

FIXED is ‘Halo 6’ — the sixth NINE INCH NAILS effort from Reznor — an labeling affectation I actually appreciate despite the fact that it means very little apart from noting the years that passed in my life.

“WISH THERE WAS SOMETHING REAL! IN THIS WORLD FULL OF YOU! THIS WORLD FULL OF YOU! THIS WORLD FULL OF YOU!” [DISHWASHER SOUNDS]

FIXED is a remix EP. A very long remix EP, comparatively given the length of some of the remixes, but a remix EP nonetheless. It is longer than BROKEN, the EP it is remixing.

“AHHHHH HA HA HA!”

This EP is 100% chaotic staccato mind-bending propulsion. It is unrelenting, especially the efforts from COIL (R.I.P.) and J.G. Thirwell. It’s 40 minutes of wall-to-wall noise and aural abuse and I can’t get enough of it. It’s my absolute favorite of the Halos, and I do not care who knows it, and I’m saddened that it’s one of the most over-looked of his oeuvre. (Thirwell’s WISH is a very particularly protracted and exceptional work.)

“I am so dirty …on the inside. (I want you to throw me away.)”

Also, come on, Thirwell — almost certainly drunkenly — renamed one of the songs ‘Fist Fuck’. That’s one hell of a swing. (How many other Academy Award winners would even admit to a song labeled that?)

[An endless array of percussion, then…] “I’m drowning! Let me out of here!”

I know I’m flying my full teen goth flags here, but fuck it. This album holds up; it’s far more experimental now than then, which is a strange remark, but electro music has sadly become relatively regressive since then.

If you haven’t heard it before — of if you haven’t heard it in over twenty years — and you like really fucking noisy eccentric over-emotional works, you owe it to yourself to queue it up however way you can.

“$##!!#$!@#!!!!!!!!!%^!#$Q&!$%@&&&@#$^#@$~!” […then droning whines]

Yeah, it’s a masterpiece of a clusterfuck. Despite edging very close to MERZBOW levels of noise, it still manages to be hooky and emotional and goddamn fun while also encapsulating the perverse nature that is NINE INCH NAILS. In other words: the perfect remix EP which apparently is a lost art nowadays.

HARLEY QUINN: BLACK, WHITE AND RED ALL OVER VOL. 6 (2016)

August 24, 2023

As always, I’ll preface this by saying that I will never, ever shut up about Harley Fuckin’ Quinn.

That said, there’s so much Quinn content that I have no idea where I even am in her storyline now.

Apparently she’s hooking up with Ivy now, which yes — her one true love! — and that’s great! But somehow I missed that along the way of oh, say, the number of collections I’ve already read (except for NO GOOD DEED, which takes place far later and I still have no idea what happened there). I recently was under the impression that apart from the animated series (and the animated series comics) that they were never formally partners. Nonetheless, no complaints here!

I realize I brought this upon myself by willfully ignoring the numbers on the spines of the collections, but it used to be that comics followed a pretty straight-forward numbering system: #1, then increment that number until you’re cancelled. It’s how DETECTIVE COMICS (you know: exactly what DC’s acronym stands for?) has over 700 issues.

Nowadays, it’s reboot upon reboot and apart from creative teams and endlessly trawling comic book websites — which I do not have the time for — it’s very difficult to figure out exactly how to follow along with these storylines unless you’re buying them each-and-every-month.

(Also something I don’t have the patience or attention span for.)

Regardless, a book that features Harley Quinn doesn’t quite care about continuity. It’s reckless, prior actions are hand-waved away, and it’s simply chaotic fun. That said: while I’ve been digging into just how many Quinn collection I have left to read, it is daunting and confusing in a way that could be made far more simpler. I love comics, and every time I dive back into them I wonder why I ever stopped, but geez, I’m well-versed in this publishing world and if I’m confused, just wonder about those who are newbies.

With that rant out of the way, this is yet another banger from Conner & Palmiotti and artist John Timms. There are mobsters, corrupt mayors, surprisingly uncorrupt cops, a lot of a violence and dismemberment, and all of the puns and verbosity from Harley you’d expect. However, it also features an entire issue that — unless I’m wrong — owes a significant debt to the very memorable anime series MAZINGER G, even down to uh, bombs and missiles being launched from body parts you ordinarily wouldn’t expect to serve up loaded vehicles of gunpowder.

As always, it’s a joyful thrill ride, and exactly why I always look for Conner & Palmiotti’s names when trawling through my local comic book shop’s back-catalog.