New Comics (Comey + The Summit)

Some doodles to pass the time.

First, Comey commentary:

James Comey on George
Stephanopoulos's show

And second, since the "Summit" between North Korea and the corrupt chaotic gang running the US will supposedly take place at some point soon (June? never), here's a prediction (if they pull off a real peace deal, they'll earn my thanks):

The Summit

A Few Comics

From time to time to amuse myself I draw comics, I guess you could call them. They're really visual gags. I've posted a few in the past, and here are three new ones. My apologies if any of the text isn't clear, but my usual handwriting can veer between post-calligraphy and hieroglyphics.

Please click on the image to see a larger version, and enjoy!

Hail the Combover

The Mustache Reigns

Cheshire Tillerson

All copyright © John Keene, 2018.

Black Lightning, the Series

Cress Williams as Black Lightning

When I was a pre-teen, I read comics avidly, but by the time I reached junior high, I shifted mainly to books, alongside movies and records. This preference has continued into adulthood, though I enjoy reading graphic novels and comics for adults, especially if they're formally experimental, from time to time. But the comic book character families, networks and lore that so many nerds and blerds    hold dear to their hearts were not really part of my adolescence, which probably accounts for why now in adulthood, I tend to be mostly uninterested in movies and TV shows based on standard comic book heroes or teams. Netflix's Jessica Jones (2015) and the subsequent Luke Cage (2016) were rare exceptions. Certainly Hollywood's formulaic approach to most of the comic book franchises does not help things, in my opinion, though I have occasionally gone to see some of the Batman and Spider-Man films on occasion, and loved the Batman TV series as a very small chill. Non-comics derived TV shows involving characters with supernatural powers sometimes do draw me in: Charmed was a favorite during its early run, as was Heroes. But speculative narrative shows and comics are two different things.

Black Lightning, DC Comics version

Black Lightning, the new series on The CW channel, is based on a comic book series, but intrigued me. I knew only a little bit about its origins: writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor von Eeden issued the first Black Lightning comic book in 1977, and as it turns out, he was the first black superhero to have his own DC Comics book. A little more reading up on the forthcoming series let me know that the metahuman hero was middle-aged, as opposed to a youngster, which I found appealing, and it did not hurt that Cress Williams, an actor I remembered and enjoyed from many shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, including Living Single, Beverly Hills 90210 and Prison Break, and the film Doom Generation, was going to star in it. The basic storyline I could have predicted with my eyes closed; after a stint cleaning up his town, Black Lightning gave up his crime-fighting for a career as a principal and educator. More compelling was the fact that his superheroic efforts had destroyed his marriage and divided his family, leading him to retire in part to heal the frayed family ties. In addition, the show's creator, Salim Akhil, has a strong track record as a writer and producer. Husband of the prolific writer, showrunner and producer Mara Brock Akil, writer for Moesha and Sparkle, and creator of the popular show Girlfriends (2000-2008), the Akils co-developed the successful, provocative TV shows The Game (2006-2015) and Being Mary Jane (2013-). The show's alluring ads, I'll admit, did the rest of the work.

Jill Scott and Marvin "Krondon"
Jones III in a scene from Black Lightning

The Black Lightning series is set in an alternate universe (though filmed in Atlanta), and opens with the superhero, known in semi-conventional human form as Jefferson Pierce (Williams) serving as principal of Garfield High School. He lives with his two daughters, first-born Anissa (Nafessa Williams), who is in medical school and a part-time teacher at Garfield High School, and Jennifer Pierce (China Ann McClain), younger daughter, who is a student at Garfield and dating one of the school's track stars, Khalil (Jordan Calloway). Jefferson remains divorced from his wife, Lynn Stewart (Christine Adams), but they maintain a connection for the sake of their daughters. He seems eager to initiate a romantic rapprochement. As Jefferson, he attempts to guide his students on the proper path, but one result of his work as a principal and teacher is his acquaintance with many locals who have gone off the rails, including various thugs and dealers linked, directly or not, to the area's major criminal organization, The 100. Jefferson also stays in close contact with Peter Gambi (James Remar), his oldest friend and an inventor and tinkerer of Italian ancestry who serves as Jefferson's--and Black Lightning's "tailor"; Gambi creates the superhero's suits and devices, which he continues to improve as the series proceeds.

 Marvin "Krondon" Jones III in a
scene from Black Lightning

Black Lightning's and the town's major antagonists are Tobias Whale (Marvin "Krondon" Jones III), who heads up the 100, and, viewers learn in the second episode, Lady Eve (Jill Scott), a diabolical, platinum-tongued mortician who serves as a coordinating link for all of the major power interests in the city. In the third episode, she harangues Whale, who had previously claimed to have killed Black Lightning, to follow up and rid the town of the beloved superhero forever, threatening him with a dethroning, or worse. Krondon, a hiphop artist and actor in real life, is albino, a rarity on US TV, and one of the show's fascinating conceits is that he will only allow white or very light-skinned people to work for him. In other words, his malevolence is manifest in his colorism, yet surprisingly for TV, the series does not overtly state this, forcing the viewer to figure it out. Another of Black Lightning's antagonists is Inspector Billy Henderson (Damon Gupton), a police officer who also is friends with Pierce but has strongly opposed to the "vigilantism" of Black Lightning, blaming him for disruptions in the police force's ability to maintain order. As quickly becomes clear and perhaps as a subtle critique of the inadequacy of police, the citizenry hunger for Black Lightning's intervention because of the authorities' complacency and failures.

Cress Williams, in a scene from Black Lightning

I've given the background information about Black Lightning's world, but I have said little up to this point about his particular superhero powers. As his name suggests, his chief gift, beyond supernatural speed and the ability, it appears though it hasn't been stated outright, to pass through solid walls and leap onto roofs and ledges, is lightning-like electrical power, which can stun, disable or even kill his assailants. He also has the ability to create ionized fields, which can distribute the electricity in tiny zaps, and generate an electrical force-field, which can shield him from bullets, grenades, and even bombs. So far the series has not shown him creating a black thunder bolt, but when enraged, at least according to the comic strip, he can do so. Additionally, he is able to gather electrical force in his fists to create even stronger punches, perceive nearby electrical flows (and, in episode 3, with the help of new goggles by Gambi, all electrical currents in the area), and even absorb electricity or disappear into electrical wires or powerboxes, traveling like an electrical current. Given these powers, I have to wonder what could stop or at least blunt him; he does not wear a helmet, so he's vulnerable to anything happening behind him if he doesn't perceive it before it hits him. Viewers got a taste of this when during a peace march, despite Black Lightning's presence to protect his family, one of Whale's deputies shoots the march organizer, Reverend Holt, through the upper chest and paralyzes Jefferson's daughter's boyfriend, Khalil. My immediate thought was that had the gunman aimed a bit to the right, he might have struck the superhero dead on. I suppose we will see what measures Whale devises to bring him down.

Black Lightning stars Cress Williams, Christine Adams,
Nafessa Williams, and China Ann McClain

As in the original comic book, Black Lightning is not alone in his crime-fighting. At the end of the first episode, Anissa cracks off part of the bathroom sink, and then, in subsequent episodes, she comes to realize that she possesses unique metahuman powers, inherited from her father, though she is unaware, as far as the viewer knows, that he doubles as Black Lightning. So far she hasn't unleashed any lightning bolts or electrical sparks, but she can create soundwaves by stomping the ground, and can increase her body density to generate super-human strength, which she has used several times to fight off attackers, including a group of adult men selling drugs to teenage girls. We also learn that she is an out lesbian, which, as far as I can tell, makes her the first black lesbian superhero to appear on US TV. The show's approach to sexuality is refreshing and contemporary; when her parents discuss their concerns about her younger sister's Jennifer's announcement that she plans to lose her virginity, they acknowledge their earlier support, though not without tears and shock, for Anissa's coming out, and Akil and the show's writers have fully integrated her relationships into the fabric of the storyline. At a moment when an anti-LGBTQ backlash is underway, and a white supremacist occupies the White House and racism regularly appears in spectacular form, a show about a mature, middle-class superhero and his family, which includes a lesbian superhero daughter, fighting to save a predominantly black and brown town, makes a statement, without hammering anyone over the head.

Nafessa Williams, in a scene
from Black Lightning

Black Lightning

In some ways, Black Lightning feels like a figure conceived during and in response to the previous, pre-Trump moment. A mid-40-something model of flawed respectability, well-spoken and highly educated, a dutiful though divorced father of two smart daughters, a negotiator rather than a hothead, he at first comes off like a Barack Obama with secret superpowers he's willing to use, almost in spite of himself. (His daughters mirror but complicate this template.) Even the stakes, at one level, feel lower than what we currently face as a country and globe. Instead of a supranational or external power, like a fictionalized version of Russia, or against the current hyper-neoliberal/libertarian, overtly racist, misogynistic, anti-liberal political and economic threat, embodied by the Trump administration, the villain he faces is a mostly local crime syndicate. As with Luke Cage, the villainry he's battling is not the result of larger structural and systemic forces, but corrupt and corrupted black people. I understand the desire to depict an enclosed black speculative world, and, more so than with Luke Cage, it feels well built out. But in some ways, it also feels a little inadequate; can this parallel world open out into something that more fully resembles our own? On the other hand, given the current moment of overt backlash, a flawed black superhero family feels appropriate, and, to some degree, emotionally comforting. But is it enough?

What I am waiting to find out is when Jefferson and Anissa will recognize not only that they both possess superhuman powers, but that Black Lightning has a potential partner, if he is willing to accept Anissa--Thunder's--participation in crime fighting. When will Jennifer's powers manifest themselves? Will Jefferson and Lynn get back together? Will the writers allow Anissa's relationship with her Asian American girlfriend, Grace Choi (Chantal Thuy), last the entire season? What is behind Gambi's seeming duplicity in deleting a video feed of Anissa's demonstration of her power, and, in a confusing move, his deletion of Whale's image on a camera feed after the shooting of Reverend Holt? Will the cops work with Black Lightning or continue to see him as a vigilante? I also want to know how Whale's scheme to take out Black Lightning will resolve itself. What other smart, unexpected elements in the series plot and characterization will the writers introduce? Will the show end on a cliffhanger? But let me not get ahead of myself, because there are nine more episodes to go in the thirteen-episode first series, meaning there will be more than enough time to learn how things are going to turn out.

Skye Marshall and Cress Williams,
in a scene from Black Lightning

RIP Taylor Siluwé + Armond White on Green Lantern & Stereotypes

Earlier today via Rod McCullom's (@RodMcCullom, Rod 2.0) Twitter feed, I learned of the passing of Taylor Siluwé, a fellow blogger, writer, NYU alum and Jersey City resident. A native of New Jersey's second city, he was 45. I think I met Taylor in person only once, a few years back, but I do have a copy of one of his erotic novels, Dancing with the Devil (SGL Café Press), had read his articles in publications like Out IN New Jersey and FlavaLIFE over the years, and I would periodically check in on his blog, SGL Café, which offered a lively mix of news, commentary, and celebration of black same-gender-loving/gay life.  I must admit that I haven't looked at it in a while, and so I was unaware that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in May and was dealing with it right up to this past Sunday. He had even begun to photoblog and write in detail about his struggle. Rod's summary of his cancer ordeal and of his work encapsulates so much. I'd only add that the signature "Taylor Siluwé," which I'd come across on many a blog, always underlined a passionate, thoughtful comment. William Johnson's obituary at Lambda Literary is here. You can read a snippet of his young adult work Something about Sin at Scribd here. Fare thee well, brother....

***

I haven't seen any of this summer's blockbusters, which would include the comics-to-films barrage that Hollywood has latched onto for some years now, but I do periodically read Armond White's reviews in The New York Press, and I have to say, I think I've spared myself nearly $40 (or whatever movies + a soda + popcorn, etc. cost these days) and my usual frustration and disgust at racist stereotypes by skipping Thor, X-Men: First Class, or Green Lantern.  My patience after 46 years has really grown thin. From what I gather from "Mean Green," a June 18, 2011 review of Green Lantern by Mr. White, a brilliant, incendiary critic who never stints on calling things what they are, or scanning through to their core, these portrayals (by Idris Elba, Edi Gathegi, and Michael Clarke Duncan respectively) are not as hideous as past depictions, but they remain locked in a stereotypical social and cultural logic that really should have disappeared with the last century.  I should note that Ta-Nehisi Coates had already and powerfully broken down Green Lantern's racial obtuseness in his New York Times opinion column debut several weeks ago. Since films are global nowadays, these tiresome, racist depictions don't just warp the minds of children in Chicago and Chattanooga, but like all the products of America travel here and there, doing their wretched work. Unfortunately so long as they're making money there's no way to stop them, and all the complaining in the world--my complaining, which I've done for years--isn't going to change anything, I now realize, not that I'm about to stop it. I guess I should be thankful that I'm not required to watch them, either because of a job (like White) or young ones (like Coates). Still, as White says at the end of his piece

Green Lantern should be better than it is but improvement would begin with sustained enlightened casting and characterization. What’s happened in comics movies this year has not improved on the casting in 1930s Hollywood serials. Actress Sanaa Lathan (star of Alien Vs. Predator) recently snapped “Nothing has changed!” when describing her role as an embittered 1930s black film actress in Lynn Nottage’s current play Meet Vera Stark. Lathan and Nottage’s collaboration is more meaningful and entertaining than all the comic-book franchises—or any other Hollywood movie—so far this year. Stereotyping has gotten so bad that smart viewers have come to expect the insult. They know beforehand that if it’s an action movie and there’s a black guy in it, his doom is certain—the ultimate spoiler.

In 2011, no less! That says it all.

GOP Trifecta Today + Super R-Type Event @ Green Lantern Gallery

The 2008 candidates' tax cut plans

Because of the high risk of incivility ("be civil" a friend sometimes reminds), I have refrained for some time from posting political commentary on here, saving that for short bursts on Twitter or other channels, but I must say, the GOP hit the foulest trifecta today: they killed a Senate vote to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, they defeated a Senate bill to provide funding for 9/11 first responders, and they forced the Senate Majority Leader to table the DREAM Act.

On top of this, I listened to "reasonable" Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee tell his NPR interlocutor that not only did the country need not worry about the huge deficit-increasing effects of the Bush-GOP tax cut gimmicry overall ($4 trillion to the Treasury over the next decade), which was going to magically create jobs after having not done so for ten years, nor worry about the effects just of the cuts for billionaires ($700 million), but in fact, any future attempt to reset the tax rates to Clinton levels (which were quite low) or any other higher level would amount to "the largest tax increase in history."

You heard that--"the largest tax increase in history"--it's going to be trotted out like a sick show pony over and over and over as soon as the time is right.

On top of this, the payroll tax cut will reset in a year, meaning it either will be kept low, starving Social Security's trust fund or raised and labeled a "tax increase." Mind you, they are going to use these both to bash the Democrats' heads in throughout 2012. I need not say who is going to suffer the worst as a result of this, but he currently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But what can you do, he's beyond listening or reasoning, it appears. I asked the question a while ago: when did this president become a self-identified "Blue Dog," and did anyone else realize we were putting a Republican in the White House?

***

Tonight I ventured out briefly into the cold and snow (it's on again) to catch the second (and last?) in the Super R-Type word-based art series, curated by a d jameson at the Green Lantern Gallery's The Corpse Performance Space, in Ukrainian Village. (Some Chicago neighborhoods have such vivid names.) The lineup included painter and graphic artist Keiler Roberts, School of the Art Institute student Hyojin An, and poets Amira Hanafi and (publisher) Rachel Araujo. Roberts narrated a tour through her witty and engaging autobiographically based graphic work, which she said she turned to after years as a more conventional painter, though she did say that she still painted and drew. Her husband (and daughter, then still on the way) made an appearance in the works, which I plan to check out. One aspect of her work that I particularly liked was her use of blogs as creative devices to enable kinds of word-text pairings that are not that possible otherwise, and it intrigued me to think about these projects (she has started 2-3 blogs, from what I can tell) in relation to her graphic work/comics.

Hyojin An, a native of Korea, devised pictograms as a means of dealing with her struggles with the English language and American signage. These were humorous but also underlined how even knowledge of a second language, in written form, can prove baffling given the complexities of idiomaticity, conventional and everyday usage, and so on. In the second project she displayed, she had created large quasi-ID statements saying on the top half, "I, ________, am [ ] a foreigner here in _____", and on the bottom half allowing the self-identifier to write whatever she or he wanted, especially in her or his native language. She mentioned that she took photos not only in Chicago, but overseas (I think she said Singapore, but perhaps also South Korea). Though I did think immediately of similar projects based on self-identification, both formal and more contingent and popular (the sorts of quickly drawn up IDs people have used, for example, on Chatroulette or other sites), I enjoyed hearing her talk through how she had come up with this project. She invited us to come create one, but I wasn't feeling so ready to do so. You can download them from her site, though. One other fun and funny project An created was a Facebook profile for "Foreign Er": do visit it to review it for yourself.

Concluding the evening and event were Hanafi and Gontijo Araujo, who read together and in complementary fashion. Hanafi's project derived from culling Oxford English Dictionary entries related to "fucking," while Gontijo Araujo's selections were drawn from her interest in human anatomy and her conceptualization of what might happen if one's right brain somehow ended up in one's crotch.  They did create a dialogue that did raise the heat, especially Gontijo Araujo's pieces, though both were less graphic--in the sexual sense--than I thought they might be.  But then, had they were not allowed to project the old porno film clips, taken from the waiting rooms in Parisian brothels of an earlier era, that they had wanted onto the screen, but the gallery's picture glass front posed too much of a vice-squad risk. (Daley's Chicago is pretty liberal, but not that liberal, especially outside of certain neighborhoods.) Not even the falling snow provided enough cover. It did, however, make driving back north treacherous, and yet I'm here posting this, so I got my dose of mind food and it all worked out in the end.

Some Talks & Music (Garcia, Cadava, McGurl, the Drawers)

I'd actually forgotten that I'd posted a blog entry to start May off, so I was about to apologize for just now acknowledging the month had arrived, but it's been slamming me and beyond classes and my syllabi I barely can keep up with what day it is, let alone month. I thought this week was going to be slower, but it's been just as rough, but June is, thankfully, just around the corner....

Amidst all the reading, I have attended a few events at the university, all of which have been edifying in different ways. Starting backwards, tonight I went to hear the musician Paulinho Garcia present a short (1 1/2 hour) tour of Brazil.  Truthfully, as all who know me will readily acknowledge, anything having to do with Brazil gladdens me immensely, and this didn't fail in that regard. The interactive performance felt like the best way to end a busy week. Garcia, a native of Belo Horizonte and 3-decade long resident in the US, was introduced by my great colleage Ana Thomé-Williams (above at right, with Garcia) also from Brazil, who had also helpfully created a slideshow featuring not only a map of Brazil but featuring song authors, titles, and lyrics, to which we could all sing along with Garcia. And sing people did as Garcia walked us through the samba (giving us information on its origins in Bahia and before that the Congo region, and word's Bantu etymology), then several different sertanejo (from the sertão, the harsh scrubland interior or backlands of the northeast) forms, and then the choro and chorinho, then a caipira (another type of folk song--and the source of the word, on through bossa nova.  Tracing it via songs and musicians, he sang (beautifully, touchingly) Ari Barroso's "Aquarela do Brasil," Luiz Gonzaga's "Asa Branca," Tom Jobim's "Andança," Pixinguinha's "Lamento," Zequinho de Abreu's "Tico-Tico no Fubá" (one of the earliest Brazilian songs to achieve fame in the US, and which made Carmen Miranda famous), Pixinguinha's "Carinhoso" (so achingly moving), Renato Teixeira's "Romaria" (which Ana graciously led us through in chorus), Tom Jobim's and Vinícius de Moraes's "Eu sei que vou te amar," Jobim's and Vinícius's "Chega de Saudade" (from Marcel Ophuls's Orfeu negro/Black Orpheus), João Bosco's and Aldir Blanc's fairly contemporary "Coisa Feita" (with its strong Afro-Brazilian storyline), and finally, to end the event, Ana and Garcia sang the always stirring Carnaval melody, "Tristeza," a snippet of which I captured on camera. Afterwards I chatted briefly with Garcia, who was explaining the ins and outs of Brazil to some undergraduates and other attendees, and I ran into a former student, from my earliest days at the university, who was doing really well. I also spoke with a young math student from Belo Horizonte, who suggested I tell a friend now conducting research in Niterói, just across the Guanabara Bay from Rio, about the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics that sits between Rio's Botanical Garden and its Tijuca Forest. How on earth could you get any work done in such a remarkable setting? I'd like to find out.

The Amazing Spider-Man

So many stories, and comic book stores, in the naked (windy) city....

Three days and counting!