Frezno's Comics Challenge: December 2024 (Danger Street)

 I must admit that there was a certain sense of trepidation when I realized exactly what this comic was. As we wind down near the end of the Comics Challenge (it should finish in January, unless Sean decides to alter the deal and make me pray it not be altered further) I reflect a little on how far I've come. There have been many stories and many ways to see those stories, and now armed with those tools I am unleashed once more upon... a Big Two Superhero Comic. There was a general sense of "oh no" considering how my brush with a DC superhero comic this summer went. Brimming with surface-level diversity but far more concerned with getting drunk off its ass on Lore and giving fascists a hug and saying that violence is not the way, it gave me uncomfortable flashbacks to the Chibnall era. Thankfully, Tom King's Danger Street is not that. Despite being a superhero book, Danger Street has quite a lot going on under the hood. It's too much to go into all at once, but I've found that leads to the type of broad strokes brevity which leads to my best writing. As such, let's plow on in.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 5 (Material)

Welcome back, once again, to the Comics Challenge. We are just a little bit late because I spent the last days of November on a weekend trip, and I did not get to do this before leaving because I was focused on finishing Non-Specific November Writing Month. I did indeed hit my word quota, and I still need to finish the story, but with 50k in the bag I can let that rest for one more day and get back to my comic book obligations... and fuck me, what a comic book we have here. Material Volume 1 (there sadly do not appear to be subsequent volumes) is a tight and poly-authored little thing that nevertheless contains lots and lots of depth. I'll go as deep as I can, but I only need scratch the surface long enough to wring some coherent words and analysis out of the book. Which I'm good at doing, and will do so now. There has been a running theme throughout the TV shows I've covered on the blog between 2022 and 2024, a concept which I coined a phrase for: The Dark Heart Of America. From the ugly historical microcosms of Quantum Leap, to the systemic rot lurking in the id of small-town America in Twin Peaks, to the battle against crime and the darkening of one's soul in Miami Vice, it's been there. Material is a comic about the dark heart of America, but the way in which it's told and the heady concepts it plays with are of definite interest.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: November 2024 (The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

(TW: Anti-semitism, the recent election.)

Sometimes, like as we saw with From Hell, comics can be a form of magic. At times it can create something wonderful and resonant with that power, but at other times there are some really dark synergies at play. Case in point, this book. It's not even the fault of the book, as it's a very important and powerful text that makes the world better for existing. No, it's just the timing of things. My esteemed comics critic and guide on this journey, Sean Dillon, selected this one for the month of November. They could have given it to me in March, or in May, or in any of the other months, but he picked this one for November. They informed me of this selection on October the 19th. Two and a half weeks later, in the United States Of America, the world plunged backwards into hell once again. We will deal with the horrific synchronicities at play in recent world events in a bit, but first as always we must define the book and its author.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 16 (Halloween II)

Boo.

Well, here we are at last. Halloween! I am banging this one out at just after 3 PM, having literally finished watching the film in question moments ago. I do this because I want to be closer to the front door to greet the children who are expecting sweet treats and/or tricks. So, let's sort this one out as quick as we can before I get interrupted by like 20 knocks on the door. October 31st, the end of the marathon, has traditionally been the slot for the Halloween franchise. Michael Myers and all that. I've covered pretty much every film, and my options are slim. It was either The Curse Of Michael Myers, Rob Zombie's take, or this film which slipped under my radar for so long. I chose to get this one out of the way, and the slip under the radar was deliberate. I do not care for Halloween II. I did not like this movie the first time I saw it. I might have seen it a second time, I don't know. What I do know is that I gave it another shot just now, and it also failed to connect. Maybe I wasn't fair to the thing, given that I started the morning with a rewatch of the original. As one is a direct sequel to the other, in fact picking up right where it left off, maybe I'm not being so unfair. If it wants to pair itself with the original so bad, then I'll judge it by those standards.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 4 (Mary Tyler Moorehawk)

Alright then, before Halloween comes, it's time to talk about another comic. Really, it's rather fortuitous that it's this comic in this month. Dave Baker's Mary Tyler Moorehawk, you see, is this curious little thing which feels like the House Of Leaves of comic books. No, I'm not doing the densely layered footnote joke again, it'd add another two hours to the post and cheapen the bit.¹ Right up front then, in declaring that this is the House Of Leaves of comic books, several questions present itself. Questions like "what does it even mean to be the House Of Leaves of comic books?" or "Can you adapt House Of Leaves into a visual medium such as the comic book?". Let's see if we can get to the bottom of this. Not to rehash everything I said on the book again, and if you've not read that go over here and do so, it's good, but House Of Leaves used the metaphor of the labyrinth to construct itself a labyrinth of words on the page. It did this in various ways, but the main two were arranging the words on the page to mirror what was happening in the story, and drowning everything in verbose footnotes as either a parody of pretentious academia, a digression into a nested narrative, a mirror of the labyrinth theme of the book, or all of the above. With that defined, let's try and answer that first question. Let's try and pin down Mary Tyler Moorehawk.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 15 (Longlegs)

Oh, we're really dwindling down to it now. Halloween approaches, and I can feel it in the air. Those last gasps of summer that you feel during the end of September and into the beginning of October are all gone now. The crisp cold of fall has arrived, and it's only going to get colder from here. There's an obvious tradition here on the spooky marathon for Halloween itself, and so in a sense this is our last exploration. Certainly, it's the last film I've never seen before that we're doing for this one. What do we have here today, then? Longlegs is a film I knew nothing about going in, save for one tiny bit of osmosis. Thanks to my pal Sean (you'll be getting your other comic book post tomorrow, friendo) I had it in my head that this resembled Twin Peaks in a fashion. It does, but it does it with its own flourish and style completely different from David Lynch and Mark Frost do it. That's not unwelcome, however, and I found this film growing on me.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (X)

Alright, time for the Jenna Ortega half of this thing. Which, she's actually only a supporting character in this, oops. Look, I wasn't going to watch the Beetlejuice legacy sequel for this. Probably could have done a little Wednesday for it. Oh well. Look, even if she's not the focus and it doesn't end too well for her in the motion picture, I didn't know that going in. In fact, I didn't know much of anything going in except that this was a Ti West picture. We've covered his work twice thus far, first with The House Of The Devil and then technically in the first V/H/S movie. His segment was one of the better ones, it had a particular scare that used the found footage format well and a wild twist. Still had a man be shitty to a woman though, so not helping that particular film's vibes. So, again, no idea of what I was getting into when going into the movie X. What I got certainly was interesting, so let's jam with it a little.