Brian Michael Bendis Was My Gateway to Comics

Last week comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers.  While there he also made an Internet exclusive video that was released earlier this week on the Late Night YouTube channel.  The video was simply Bendis suggesting comics that could serve as a gateway to new readers.

Because comics are often seen as a difficult niche to break into this is a fairly common subject and one most comic book fans are ready and willing to offer advice on.  It's a little more rare coming from the massive web presence of a legendary comedy franchise, but what surprised me the most was that Brian Michael Bendis's recommendations didn't include the phrase "anything written by Brian Michael Bendis," which has always been my go-to suggestion.

It comes from personal experience.  When I was still a very green comic book fan of about thirteen, only obliquely aware that they even had writers, Bendis wrote several of my first books.  I bought them at the local grocery store because there wasn't a comic book shop for miles.  They were "Double Sized Flip Magazines," meaning that just by flipping over the X-Men I had a Fantastic Four on the other side.  The two with the most impact on me were New Avengers/Captain America by Bendis and Ed Brubaker respectively and Ultimate Spider-Man/Ultimate Spider-Man by Bendis and Bendis respectively.

It was the third ever issue of New Avengers and on the cover there was a guy named Sentry who played almost no role in that issue whatsoever and I'm still not entirely confident I know what his whole deal is, but I think I like it.  (By the way, "get used to not understanding things" is good advice for any new comic book reader.)  Before the series started The Avengers had broken up and New Avengers #3 was more or less about Captain America getting the band back together.  My favorite scenes were the inductions of Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Luke Cage.  The first two because I recognized them from their movies.  I liked Luke Cage for the opposite reason.  I had no idea who he was but I immediately became fascinated by him, his wife Jessica Jones, their child, and their vaguely tragic backstory with Zebediah Killgrave.  Bendis created Jones in his book Alias, which I very much plan to read one day, and is responsible for her marriage to Cage and all of her backstory.  In retrospect I can see that those two pages were dense with his intimacy with these characters, which is probably what caught my attention.  That and the scene earlier in the book when Luke Cage beat the snot out of the Purple Man.

Coming to Netflix in 2015.

As much as I love New Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man was targeted a little more towards my demographic at the time, what with Peter Parker being a relatable teenage protagonist or something like that.  Some time later I got a mail subscription to USM.  It was my first subscription and to this day it makes up a pretty significant chunk of my comics collection even thought I cancelled it after a few years.  For a while I was part of a dying breed of young people who were excited about getting mail.

A lot has changed in the Marvel Universe since Bendis ended his run on New Avengers but he's still going strong on Ultimate Spider-Man.  That's not to say that nothing has changed for Ultimate Peter Parker, unless you consider dying and being replaced by a black teenager named Miles Morales nothing, but Bendis has written every single issue of USM.  Bendis's New Avengers is still a good read but I wouldn't recommend it for someone trying to get into the modern Marvel Universe.  On the other hand, everything I know about Miles Morales indicates that Ultimate Spider-Man is still a great introduction to the Ultimate Universe (assuming Secret Wars doesn't ruin it but I'm ignoring that for now because it's one of those things I don't totally understand).

When Brian Michael Bendis finished with the Avenges he moved over to the X-Men.  For the past few years he's been writing All New and Uncanny X-Men.  You know those scene's in movies when someone says "It's a long story" then they sum everything up in a single sentence and proceed to say "Guess it wasn't that long"?  That's kind of how Bendis's X-Men is.  All New X-Men is about the original five X-Men who have been brought to the present and they can't get back.  Uncanny X-Men is about Cyclops, whom everyone hates, teaching a new team of mutants with help from his ex-girlfriend Emma Frost, his former enemy Magneto, and Magik, who's backstory isn't very important in this context, thank God.  Okay, that one is kind of a long story, but I still think either series would be a good introduction for new readers.

Bendis doesn't just write superhero stories for Marvel.  He also writes Guardians of the Galaxy, which, if you've seen the movie you know, is more space adventure than superhero.  It has more or less the same team as the movie, so it should be a pretty easy transition for people who enjoy the comedy stylings of Chris Pratt.  Bendis started his career writing crime comics, which is how Powers came to be.  It's a superhero noir that is technically published by Marvel but exists in its own universe. (which I haven't read but I hear is great.  I like the guy but if I read everything he wrote I wouldn't have the time or resources to read anything else and I need my Ms. Marvel.)

So if a Late Night intern pointed a camera at me and asked what I would recommend for new comic book readers I would say "the, uh, it, the, Bu, Bendis.  He, uh, he's good.  I guess.   I don't know" and what I would wish I had said is "Anything by Brian Michael Bendis.   He's the best.  Also, Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson."

How White People See The "I Have a Dream" Speech

ABC

"Free at last" he said.  The people were cheering, but it was quiet somehow.  As if all the sound and all other energy was being drawn towards Doctor King.

"Free at last."  The light surrounding the Lincoln Memorial dimmed while the minister himself shined brighter than ever.

"Thank God Almighty we are free at last."  With these words Martin looked to the sky as a beam of light fell upon him from the heavens.  He slowly rose off the stage floor and began to hover.  He spread out his arms and opened his hands wide.  Suddenly, pure energy burst from his mouth, eyes, and all ten fingers.  The beams went on for what seemed like miles until every single person present for the March on Washington was within their reach.  Then the beams grew in width, creating a dome, with everyone inside bathed in the glory of God.  A disembodied voice sang out a single note.  Soon the entire angelic choir joined in.  The song that followed would be compared to "Let's Groove," released almost twenty years later by Earth, Wind and Fire, a group no doubt possessing a divine influence.

The dome spread out rapidly, enveloping the continental United States within minutes.  As it reached each person, all of their race based hatred was purged out of them.  Klan members threw out their hoods for good.  The signs over water fountains disappeared without a trace.  Before long the entire planet basked in the warm glow of harmony and understanding.  Russian astronauts later bashfully admitted to enjoying the infectious disco rhythms from space.  The power of Dr. King's words wasn't confined even by the laws of time.  It reached to 1936, motivating Jesse Owens to win three more gold medals, to 1995 to make Aisha Tyler the seventh friend on Friends from season 2 through season 13, and causing millennials to know who Chuck Berry is without relying on Marty McFly as a point of reference.

Unfortunately, the miraculous event had an unfortunate side effect.  While it turned white people into perfect, race-blind angels, much of the black population was turned into a type of succubi who feed on the guilt of the innocent.  They insisted that racism was still a problem even fifty years after Martin Luther King erased all traces of it on that sacred day.  They denied white people of certain words even though they seemed really, really fun to say.  Inevitably, the wide eyed and cherubic white people would give in to the insurmountable temptation, at which point the black people would accuse them of using "slurs."

Obviously, these were simply ploys to draw strength from their good hearted prey.  Doing so increased the black people's supernatural abilities, making them excellent at sports, dancing, dodging bullets, and killing white people from several yards away.  For the most part the black people kept the latter two abilities hidden from naive and trusting white people, but once in a while one would throw caution to the wind and taunt a heroically armed caucasian.  If the white person got lucky enough to shoot the assailant, narrowly escaping his own death, he would of course be found innocent by a court of law.  However, other black people would use the whole event as an opportunity to bring up racism again and fuel white guilt, making themselves stronger.

Through it all only a few, exceptionally wise, white people thought to ask "why do you keep bringing up race?  We know we're all the same, but you claim to be treated differently.  Why are you different from us in that way?  Is it possible that racism truly does still exist?"  The answer is, of course, that it makes more sense that Martin Luther King, Jr. magically changed the course of history to help Aisha Tyler's career than that white people know less about racism than black people.

Questions from President Obama

Next Thursday three YouTubers will go to the White House to interview President Barack Obama.  I was not invited because I am not a vlogger, but a humble blogger.  However, my Internet fame is rapidly rising since last week so I can only assume that it is just a matter of time before I am given the same opportunity.  When that day comes I'm sure I will rack my brain to come up with the perfect questions but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  Right now I'm more interested in flipping the script.  I'm thinking outside the box.  I'm wondering what the POTUS would ask me, the POTER.  (President Of Thinking Empire Rules [after the second episode{of course, when I do interview the President my first question will be "why didn't you cut Hakeem some slack in the second episode of Empire?  You can't blame him for getting a little crazy when he was mourning Bunkie}])  Here is the President interviewing me as I imagine it.

That language was totally uncalled for.

President Obama: So, tell me a little about yourself Brian.

Brian (that's me):  What?  No.  I'm not unemployed and living with my parents.  Your intel is off on that one Barry.  Looks like the NSA needs to step up their game.  Can I call you Barry?

Barry: No.

Brian: Alright, you got me.  But that "no job" thing is on you.  Gotta bring that unemployment up.

Barry: I think you mean down.

Brian:  Up, down, left, right.  Enough of all this party politics.

Barry: As a matter fact, unemployment has gone down dramatically since I took office.  Why don't you let me see your resume and I could punch it up for you.

Brian: Yeah, I actually brought it with me in case you wanted to hire me as your body man then we could form this "father-son Bartlett-Charlie in The West Wing" relationship.

Papa Obama: Right off the bat I can tell you that under "special skills" you should have put literally anything other than "making sweet pop culture references" and under experience a paperclipped playing card on which you wrote "killing a man with this".

Brian: Well, not that one exactly.  It was a 5 of hearts, and he had it coming.  He said Gambit was the worst X-Man.

Papa Obama:  Why don't we table the resume for now?  You're here so I can get to know a normal American citizen.  Tell me about yourself.  What do you do when you're not writing your excellent blog.  Do you go on dates?

Brian: Beyonce.

Papa Obama:  I'm sorry, you go on dates with Beyonce?  You know she's married right.

Brian:  Right, not that Beyonce.  Beyonce YonceBe.  You wouldn't know her.  She's the president of Canada.  We met when she undid the curse that made me eat people.

Papa Obama:  Whatever.  Let's talk about some of the issues young Americans like yourself are concerned about.  How do you feel about gay rights?

Brian:  I love gay dudes.  More women for me, am I right, Barack Attack?

Barack Attack: Don't call me that.

Brian: I wasn't crazy about that one either.

Brobama: Do you have any other thoughts on gay marriage besides that dumb joke?

Brian:  Don't you think that if women can marry women and men can marry men next thing you know people will be marrying chairs?

Brobama: That's definitely not going to happen.

Brian:  What about one of those domestic partnership things?

Brobama: Sure, why not.

Brian:  Excuse me, I have to make a call. Beyonce, I have good news.

Beyonce YonceBe: My friend Michelle can marry Chairack?

Brian:  No, the domestic partnership thing.

Beyonce YonceBe:  That's great.  Michelle, Chairack, it's good news.

Brian:  You just made a man and his chair very happy.  You know, people have been marrying their chairs for years in Canada.

Brobama: Let's just move on.  What do you think about abortion.

Brian: Pass.

Brobama: What?

Brian: I don't know how to make that funny.  Pass.

Babykiller:  You can try.

Brian:  You see?

Woman's Baright to Choose:  Try it the other way.

Brian:  The problem is we're both men.  We need a female voice on this issue.  If only women were funny.

Buzzkill Obama:  I think we can just skip feminism all together.  I've got a few more questions but maybe we should just call it a day.

Brian:  Wait, I have thoughts on foreign affairs.

Buzzkill Obama:  The Secret Service will escort you out.

Professor Brian J. SmartGuy:  We should go to war with Canada, Buz... I mean Mr. President.

Whew, That Was a Close One:  By "out" I mean "to Immigration so they can shave your head and send you to North Korea so you can be their problem."

Guy Who Looks Nothing Like Seth Rogen With or Without Gentile Fluff: Noooo, do you even read my blog?  Kim will tear me apart.

Bajerk Obummer:  No I don't, but my body man Bryan with a Y did and he said it sucks.  He's more son to me than you'll ever be.

Twenty Years Later

Brian YonceBe:  ... So I started a new career in North Korea as a Seth Rogen impersonator for people to throw things at.  After America went to war with Canada your mother fled here and we lived happily ever after.

Chairack YonceBe:  Come on Dad, we know you just told us this story so we'd give you permission to date Aunt Robin.

Brian YonceBe:  Don't be ridiculous Chairry, that would be an awful way to end the story.  Besides your mother is still alive.

My Favorite Son:  Your references really are sweet Dad.

Best of 2015 So Far

It's been 2015 for a whole week and two days now, which means 2016 is only fifty-oneish weeks away, which means best of the year lists are only forty-eightish weeks away and best of the first half of the year lists are twenty-fivish weeks away and I'm getting the jump on all of them.  Me.  Brian Brown.  I am making a list of the best things to happen this year long before anyone else.  My forward thinking is going to launch this blog into the stratosphere.  Of course with my new fame there will come hatred from anonymous jerks, investigation into my past and maybe even some hackings but I've got nothing to hide.  Bring it on.  My browser history is as clean as my wholesome vacation photo with a statue of Captain America wherein I am wearing a Captain America t-shirt.  I was born for fame and nothing is going to stand in my way.

Fuck you too MarketWatch.

Agent Carter

It took Agent Carter's sister show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the better part of its first season to get good so it's nice to see the adventures of Peggy Carter start off so strong.  Peggy as played by Hayley Atwell was one of the best parts of Captain America: The First Avenger, my favorite solo Marvel movie that isn't the far superior Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  The first two episodes of Agent Carter which aired this week made for a fantastic action packed Tuesday.  It was certainly better than Empire, which was good but not as good as the all black reproduction of The Spoils of Babylon that the advertisements led me to expect, and slightly better than Galavant  which was exactly as just fine as I expected.

The Balcony by Catfish and the Bottlemen

What better way to start off a new year than with the debut album of an up and coming musical group.  Catfish and the Bottlemen are a promising new band from Wales.  Admittedly they sound a little familiar, like another band that I can't put my finger on, but that's not so bad.  Maybe they're not reinventing the wheel but so what?  The Rolling Stones started out by straight up copying blues musicians.  I'm sure sooner or later they'll change the script.  The Script!  They sound like a more rock oriented version of The Script!  That's not bad.  I like the Script but I always thought they would be better if the guitars were a little louder.  Either way, The Balcony is a pretty good album to start things off.  Besides, what else is there this early in the year?  There's still a whole week before the new Sleater Kinney release.

My Copy of Saga Vol. 4 was delivered

I preordered the fourth Saga trade on Amazon about a month ago, since then it was released then delivered to my home last Friday and I finally got around to reading it on Sunday.  For those unfamiliar with comic book lingo (Hi Mom!)  a trade is about six issues of a comic book series collected into one book.  Saga is the story of a Romeo and Juliet type situation where the Montagues have horns and magic stuff and the Capulets have wings and science fiction stuff and Romeo and Juliet didn't die and they had a baby and they're in their early twenties I guess.  Saga has consistently been one of the most critically acclaimed comic book series since it started in 2012.  It's the only comic I read in trades, partially because my local comic book store (or lcs [are you still here Mom?]) doesn't keep it in stock but mostly because once I start reading it it's almost impossible to stop.

More like FartketWatch.

What's So Funny 'Bout Dicks, Butts, and Assassination

The movie theater nearest to me is over 20 miles away so I tend to be pretty selective about which films are worth making the trip.  There are really only two genres up for consideration: comedy and action/sci-fi, and most of those are about superheroes.  For every five superhero movies I see in theaters I might see one comedy.  It's not that I like comedy less, but that action movies lend themselves to the big screen better.  Also I'm more likely to see spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy on Tumblr than 22 Jump Street.  (By spoilers I mean extensive social justice rants that, while accurate and worth noting, are kind of a buzzkill.)  When I first heard about The Interview I thought, "that looks good, I wonder what premium cable network I'll be watching it on five years from now."  Then when it became a possibility that I might not be able to see it in theaters at all my suburban white guy punk instincts kicked in and I thought "I'm going to watch the fuck out of that movie to spite the fascists if the corporate drones at Sony let me although I'd understand if they don't because those fascists are dangerous, man.  They're crazy."

Sony's decision to release the movie online was obviously a win-win for me.  I got to see Seth Rogen and James Franco humorously take a person's life and didn't even need to leave my house.  I went on a trip without a lot of Internet the weekend before the movie was released on Christmas, and when I came back Tumblr was doing its spoiling thing.  They said it wasn't right to make light of such a serious topic.  Usually when I come across a differing opinion on Tumblr I wind up changing my mind, but I held on strong to The Interview.  I've seen Mel Brooks mock Hitler on at least two separate occasions.  I haven't seen Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator but I hear good things.  I really do like comedy as much, if not more than, comic book movies.  I'm something of a jokester myself and when comedy is as important to you as it is to me you don't miss the comedy movie that might start World War III.  You even try to enjoy it.  I did both of those.  I watched it, I tried to enjoy it, and then I enjoyed it.

A few of the comments opposing The Interview before and after I watched it almost got to me though.  A couple of times I almost conceded that maybe it was possibly not the best idea to mock one of the world's worst tyrants and to belittle his victims.  Then I realized that the problem people have with The Interview isn't that it isn't serious enough, but that it's too serious.  Every late night talk show host has taken shots at Kim Jong-un without the Internet blinking an eye.  But a monologue joke is small potatoes compared to a major motion picture.  However, Saturday Night Live's Bobby Moynihan has impersonated Kim Jong-un dozens of times on "Weekend Update," the most beloved segment of one of the most iconic comedy franchises of all time.

SNL and the talk shows paint Kim as a giggling weirdo.  The dorky half of a goofy bromance with Dennis Rodman.  That Kim is funny, no doubt, but it's not the Kim Jong-un in The Interview.  That Kim is deceitful and malicious.  At times he's hilariously sentimental, but mostly he's one dangerous nutjob.  He's someone who's worthy to be targeted for assassination by the world's governments.

In all the late night talk shows I've seen I don't recall a single mention of Kim Jong-un's concentration camps or his country's widespread starvations, but they were mentioned several times in The Interview.  I never saw them mentioned at all, even from my fellow extremely worldly 20-somethings on Tumblr.  Then The Interview was released and suddenly Kim's victims were all over the place, starving and suffering at the hands of a madman and I was expected to be upset at Seth Rogen for belittling their strife.

There's a flaw in this idea that any joke about a controversial topic is immediately belittling.  Comedy isn't the antithesis of seriousness, even if it is the two don't cancel each other out.  Laughing at the Soup Nazi has never stopped anyone from crying during Schindler's List.  The implication of that idea comes from the belief that comedy is inferior to drama, which couldn't be further from the truth.  Every comedian worth anything takes the business of laughter seriously or they don't make it in the business.  The hard truth is that your funniest co-worker probably couldn't cut it as a stand-up.

I can't help but wonder why no one was angry about The Interview long before December.  It wasn't part of the surprise album drop trend.  It was announced almost two years ago with all kinds of trailers and promotions in between, but no one seemed that angry about it until a few weeks before the release, after the Sony hacks when things got real in a dangerous way.  I suppose it's possible that the late reaction was due to a lack of immediacy until that point, but I think it's more likely that people got scared.  It's a perfectly reasonable response.  I felt afraid a few times myself at the thought of going to the theater, but ultimately Rogen isn't responsible for the actions of a tyrant, nor is Evan Goldberg, his co-director is, nor is the movie's writer Dan Sterling.

Strangely, it was only a month or so ago that a comedian was being praised for his jokes about a monstrous man with a dorky wardrobe.  It hasn't been long since all these think pieces were about Hannibal Buress bringing attention to Bill Cosby's secret life as a serial rapist.  No one was more upset about that revelation than me.  On many occasions I've addressed my difficulty to accept it as the truth and my subsequent feelings of betrayal, but I never blamed Hannibal.  He brought awareness to a bad person's acts of cruelty and he was funny doing it.  I don't expect many people will read this but I imagine if they do they'll think there's a difference between the two situations.  If there is feel free to let me know because I'm pretty good at comparing and contrasting things but the only difference I see here is a matter of scale.  Kim Jong-Un has an army to do his bidding while Bill Cosby only has an apparently not great publicist.

It may not be the best idea for Seth Rogen to antagonize the guy with the nukes but the villain of this story is not the guy who mocked the guy who would go to war because he was mocked.  In fact, I think Seth Rogen is a great guy and everyone should just laugh this whole thing off and not seek revenge on him in any way.  And not just because I might look like him to, say, a deranged dictator who hasn't spent enough time around white people to realize the distinction between Jewfro and Gentile fluff.

More like Seth Rogen than Captain America at least.