The Writer’s Age of a Visual Medium

We Are In The Writer’s Age of Television.

Amy Adams in Sharp Objects ©HBO/Time Warner

A downside of the breadth and quality of television is that you can choose to watch only very good shows and never run out of material. For years I only had the energy to consume rather than consume and create. As I’ve stepped up my creative time, I have to be pickier about my consumer time, and that has led me to analyzing why I watch what I watch, why it’s important to me to watch it, and how I will choose what I watch in the future. I’ve decided to eliminate the not-so-good shows from my viewing, and raise the bar to the very good and the best.

Many people have noted that this era of expanded television production has been focused on writers. Not just the sheer number of scribes required to produce all this entertainment, but also that the writer is frequently the most known off-screen name from the credits. The stars from this era like Shonda Rhimes, Matt Weiner, Courtney Kemp, David Chase, Jenji Kohan, Vince Gilligan, and Joey Soloway are all known as writers even when they’ve also directed. In the movie world, writers like Sofia Coppola and Alfonso Cuaron are more often referred to as directors, even when they also wrote notable films.

There are tv shows driven by writer/directors and there are tv shows driven by writers. I find that, ironically, when they are not writer/directors, I think of the notable directors as visual poets and the notable writers are masters of narrative. I recognize that there are those directors who are considered auteurs, but in pop culture filmed media, there are few who didn’t use the exceptional collaborators.

Image from Rectify, created by Ray McKinnon © Sundance Channel

For my money, the very best television of this era is actually by those who excel at the visual when tied in with the verbal and structural and delivered through craft and performance. When it comes to visual media, it reaches its peak when the interplay between these is so closely tied together that to remove either would destruct the other. My first love, well known but not nearly as popular: comic books.

In comics that the best books are written and drawn by those who understand that art and script must work together to create the medium. I’m going to use comic strips to illustrate this simply: Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes contrasted with Scott Adams’ Dilbert. In most Dilbert strips, it is not essential to see the art in order to fully comprehend the joke being told, and there is rarely anything of substance beside the joke. The “acting” ability of Watterson’s characters far surpasses Adams’, and the former’s strips find far more poetry in the art form than the latter, which traffics primarily in verbal jokes.

Dilbert without pictures doesn’t impact the joke. ©United Features Syndicate/Scott Adams

Calvin and Hobbes without words is still beautiful, and the drawings have some humor in them. ©King Features Syndicate/Bill Watterson

Recently, between semesters of school, and while my kids took a vacation with their mom, I spent a little more time in front of the screen, and as I considered what was important to me, I realized that while I love great narrative tv, such as Breaking Bad or Mad Men (and really good narrative tv like some seasons of Last Man on Earth or most episodes of Sherlock), what I really want are the shows that are going to stick in my brain for the long term. I realized that those shows were exceptions, and exceptional, mostly for their ability to create visual poetry along with fantastic performance and compelling scripts.

To demonstrate what I mean by poetry, I’m going to focus on drama. Comedy is much more a writer’s medium, even when the writing is improvised (Curb Your Entertainment). There are surely good examples of great directors in comedy, but when the focus is, by necessity, on delivering the jokes, the poetry of directing less often comes into play. I’m sure there are many great exceptions. One that immediately comes to mind is the shot of Selina Meyer lying on the floor of the Oval Office in the fetal position at the end of Veep Season Five, a nice bit of visual artistry, which is not often this wonderful show’s forte.

The shows that really stick in my brain for the long term offer a few shared components.

One, they don’t require a huge episode commitment. I enjoyed chewing on the bubblegum of Lost while my kids were babies and toddlers and my mental facility was at its weakest while working 50–60 hours per week and spending every remaining waking hour chasing them down and cleaning them up. I recently thought of rewatching it with my now-tweens and the idea of 121 episodes was simply tedious. The worst examples of this bring peak drama late in the second or third season, and then simply can’t maintain find reasons to raise the stakes. I’m looking at you, Walking Dead or 24.

Two, they have something more to offer than a (mostly) compelling plot. Last year I was convalescing for a few months, and often spent 22–24 hours a day at home. During this time I watched many, many shows and movies. Among them, the first five seasons of Dexter. I then speed-watched the last two (skipping entire episodes and watching the pre-show recaps to catch up), but I can’t recommend it to anyone else. I loved The Wire, but seem to think it has more weak spots than most fans, and I enjoyed season two very much, thank you. I also enjoyed The Sopranos, but the acting far surpassed the writing for me, and a third of season one felt like drudgery. Breaking Bad chewed me up, but the memorable parts were less plot-driven and more emotion driven. For example, I loved the poetry of the cold opens, even though I could rarely anticipate how they tied into the narrative. They set a tone and feeling rather than a critical narrative step. They tied in to the plot, and usually in the same episode, but they were frequently non-essential to follow the narrative. What I really remember from Breaking Bad however, were the gruesome or shocking bits of visual exposition. The bathtub sequence in season two; Gus Fring’s exploded face; Walt’s tighty-whities; etc.

Three, the best shows allow their directors some visual space to tell a story without plot or narrative being pushed forward, building character and relationships by showing rather than telling. In television this is often dictated by budget, but whatever, an artist paints with the tools they have, not the tools they want. Take Breaking Bad again. “Fly” (s03e10) was notably filmed in one location for budgetary reasons, and while it definitely feels like it stretched out the season’s narrative, it offered amazing visuals and helped define the main characters and their relationship. I understood Walter and Jesse better after that episode and could easily reflect the rest of the season and much of the series through that lens. I think it’s no coincidence that this was directed by Rian Johnson, but I think that the writers had to allow room for direction. They had to let visuals and performance tell a story that could never be told exclusively through dialogue and scene direction. Close-ups and “fly’s-eye” view, security cameras and overhead shots, quick cuts and languorous takes combine to make visual poetry through the work of a visionary director, working on a limited budget and with less shooting time per minute of screen time than one would allow compared to most films.

To sum up this theory of the poetry of television I want to use two shows I just watched to contrast what I’m looking for when I decide to spend my time in a show’s world. HBO just finished up the first seasons of heavily-advertised and reasonably well regarded (70 and 77 on Metacritic, respectively) shows: Succession and Sharp Objects. I think these scores are reasonable, and I would rank Sharp Objects a bit higher, as it offers more of the poetry I seek.

Kieran Culkin, Brian Cox, and Jeremy Strong (Succession) ©Time Warner

As a narrative, I found Succession to be particularly exposition and plot-driven. These shows are realtively new, so I want to avoid spoilers, but there are three significant events in the first ten episodes. There are other major plot events that are necessary to drive character development, and with such a large cast, these are clearly essential to maintain engagement with each of the main members of this family. I would watch an hour of just Sarah Snook, and she rarely got to play protagonist in her scenes. What’s missing for me is the visual poetry.

Performances are great throughout the show. It’s a benefit of peak television that there are so many great roles for actors like J. Smith Cameron from my beloved Rectify, and the leads were all compelling, with Sarah Snook’s Shiv as a standout. Characterization through dialogue is solid in the series. In particular, the siblings are each given very clear voices that help you understand their shared and individual foibles, even if some on-the-nose therapy scenes are required to convince the viewer that our assumptions are true. By the way, I blame The Sopranos for cliched therapy scenes. That show frequently held a high regard for its audience with its therapy scenes, but gave writers a cheap form of exposition, with characters telling one the viewer, with analyst as proxy, precisely how they feel, rather than their actions and the camera showing us. I was left with the same feeling from Succession that I get from many other seasons of modern television, which is that it could have been half as long with the same result.

What poetry gives us that prose struggles with is the knowledge that how we feel about a character (or situation, or scenario) is just as important as what we know. Art as vessel for our perspectives is one its greatest values.

Sharp Objects gives me more visual poetry. The show uses both time-jumps and dream-state/reality shifts to show us how the main character is experiencing her world. Through these visual cues we get a view of what drives the protagonist, Amy Adams’ Camille, without telling us every detail at each step. Admittedly, some of these steps seem designed to simply delay plot reveals, but building tension can be critical in a story like this.

At the beginning of the show, I admit that the shifts between dream-state and reality was partly compelling because I was working to figure out where we stood. There is a scene where Camille as a teenager wakes Camille as an adult from sleep. It was not immediately clear functionally, but emotionally, I understood exactly what had happened. When these scenes became more abstract later in the series, I felt their importance more than I parsed it. This works to the series advantage. We identify with its flawed characters, and humanizing them through their internal struggles is what allows this to happen.

At the conclusion of the show, we realize that we have been swayed by identifying so strongly with Camille that parts of the narrative only become clear as she realizes them. This makes the series at once both very traditional, the procedural through first person perspective, and very poetic. The poetry comes as we realize that the things we have been feeling all along — her unease, her distrust of certain characters and protection of others, her own struggles to accept her reality — are both earned and misplaced. The feelings are very human, which poetry can achieve more quickly than narrative.

Every episode of Sharp Objects was directed by Jean-Marc Vallee. I believe that it is not just the vision of the director, but the cohesion of having a single director that allows the poetry to come through. The writing is solid, and I would argue that Gillian Flynn’s participation is a reason for its strength (who understands these characters better?), but the marriage of visual and script is what elevates this series. I expect that the story will stick with me, but more importantly, I expect that the visual poetry that Vallee used to tell it will embed itself deeper in my consciousness over time.

Some exceptional shows that use visual poetry better than others:

Better Call Saul / Rectify / The End of the Fucking World / Top of the Lake

Twin Peaks / True Detective

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in True Detective / © HBO

Some exceptional shows that are more heavily narrative and dialogue driven:

Succession / Breaking Bad / The Wire

Broadchurch / Justified / Mad Men / Big Little Lies

Halt and Catch Fire / The Sinner / Transparent

The Exception That Tests The Rule

Molly Parker in Deadwood ©Time Warner

The other common denominator in great narrative shows is the acting. I left my personal favorite all-time narrative drama off this list for the reason that its acting and script are so breathtaking that it overwhelmed me. Deadwood.

The Best Television Show of All Time (as voted on solely by me) was writer driven. It is missing the visual poetry that I love, but the acting and scripts were so amazing I am still in awe at its grimy beauty.

Deadwood was exceptional for the fact that its impressive actors were given lines with incredible depth and passion. David Milch is a mad genius whose skill is specifically in giving his scripts a verbal poetry that overtakes the lack of visual variety. The storylines were a sexually- and violence-heightened version of familiar stock from 20th century drama, but the style of dialogue was anciently, sub-conciously familiar while being fresh and disorienting in the best way. Some dialogue was Shakespearean, some was more Mamet-ian, and all ranges in between, but it was all catered to the characters. William Sanderson’s E.G., for example, loved his verbal flourishes, which made him my favorite Shakespearean comic relief since the the Bard wrote one.

It didn’t hurt that the cast of Deadwood, while centered on a few stars whose roles gave them top billing (Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, and Molly Parker), was supported by maybe the best cast of any show ever. Look at this list of actors: Kim Dickens, Robin Weigert, John Hawkes, Paula Malcomson, Powers Boothe, Brad Dourif, Garrett Dillahunt, Jim Beaver, William Sanderson, Gerald McRaney, Sean Bridgers, W. Earl Brown, Titus Welliver, Leon Rippy, Jeffrey Jones, Keith Carradine, Brian Cox, Ricky Jay, Anna Gunn, Sarah Paulson, and many more. When it comes to acting, the casting may be as good as the writing. It is sad, if somewhat historically relevant and a standard of the time of production, that there is effectively no diversity in roles on the show, with the exception of Keone Young as Mr. Wu and Geri Jewell as Jewel.

Postscript

I couldn’t decide where Fargo falls on this list. It has some exceptional moments of visual skill, but also builds its plots like a clock, and relies heavily on the tone built by the Coen Brothers to pull off the visual tics.

I did not include formulaic, non-narrative shows, including personal favorites like House or NYPD Blues, because in my experience they are necessarily formulaic. They are, by definition, writer-focused, as a wide variety of ideas are required to fulfill the formula. There are also a handful of shows that I didn’t include or reference in this essay because I don’t have proper (or any) knowledge of where they fit. I’ll leave it up to you to decide where they belong in context.

Post-postscipt notes (deleted sentences)

Some of my favorite prose writers drive the story through character, dialogue, and narrative, such as Elmore Leonard, and some of them support the narrative with beautiful bits of poetic language, such as Dave Eggers or Haruki Murakami. I don’t believe in the superiority of one choice or another, as I believe each offer their own function and reward.

I take great pleasure in my kids’ enjoyment of the shows and films that I probably wouldn’t bother going to the theater for (half of the MCU) or would never even watch (Jurassic World or Pirates of the Caribbean) by myself, but too long CGI-fests are not my bag. I’d still be at Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious, though, so don’t think me dilettanteish.

Billions does a slightly better job with [the therapist role] by making Maggie Siff’s Wendy more crucial to plot and story.

Jokes vs. Stories: The Magic of Hannah Gadsby's Nanette

I have loved comedy and comedians for as long as I can remember. When I was five we didn’t have a tv at home, but we had Dr. Demento every Sunday. When I was around a tv, even my favorite action shows were loaded with comedy (“them Dukes, them Dukes"). I have been reading since before I was five, and my favorite daily read was the comics page. I have also always loved telling jokes. Five-year-old-Josh-favorite: “What do you do if you stub your toe? Call a toe truck.” When I was quite young, I began wishing I was a storyteller. Making a movie seemed impossible, writing a book was mysterious, but a three-panel-comic strip was something I could imagine doing. And it seemed to me that a three-panel-comic strip was a story. It must be a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I was watching Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby, and she said a few things so clear and obvious that I expect they will forever be linked with her in my head. She was explaining jokes as a release of tension and she said, “I have been learning the art of tension diffusion since I was a children [sic].” Right then, my identification with a queer woman from the other side of the world stuck hard. A bit later, she said, “In a comedy show, there’s no room for the best part, an ending.”

That’s why I prefer telling stories to telling jokes. (Or writing internet essays to writing jokes.) I want to be able to include an ending, even if the ending is just an ending to the story. I want the people in the story to live on. I want them to live on in the mind of the person reading the story and in imagination of the person writing the story.

She followed that up with a very effective story as metaphor. I don’t want to spoil it, other than to say I identified with it greatly because of my experience. The magic of the show is that she includes an ending that the audience and the author can appreciate and accept, yet we can continue the story in our imagination.

Court Day

May, 2003

The ceremony was casual and relaxed, outdoors, in the backyard of my grandparents’ house. My bride and I chatted with our seventy guests, dressed for the ceremony, before it started. My sister officiated and the simple ceremony lasted less than five minutes. It was just what we wanted.

Photo from unsplash.com

December, 2013

The hearing is scheduled for 9:00, and we’re both shivering from anxiety and chill. It’s one of those winter days that the sun rises and the temperature starts to fall. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for it, but it feels illogical. I got here at 8:40 and she was already standing out front. As we’ve waited the temperature has dropped ten degrees.

It’s now 9:15 and we are here, standing in front of the courthouse, waiting for her missing lawyer.

The divorce is no contest and I’m not required to attend. I didn’t even hire a lawyer, so only she has one. Yesterday she told me that I didn’t have to be here and that she may start crying in front of the judge if I’m here. I apologized, but told her that I couldn’t imagine not being there, it’s something I have to do. I need this memory.

We’ve each called the lawyer three times, and sent text messages as well. We’ve looked inside the court building, but no sign of him. The clerk directs us to the room in which our hearing is scheduled. We enter the room and there’s no sign of him, so we sit and wait, both anxiously holding our phones.

9:25 and the judge calls our name. We stand up and she says the lawyer isn’t here yet. He tells us to wait and moves onto the next name.

It’s 9:40. I offer to print the only document that we don’t already have printed out, in case the judge will continue without the lawyer being present. She agrees, and I’m out of the courthouse and in my car. I find a copy shop a mile away. The whole time we’re texting back and forth and calling the lawyer.

At the copy shop the lady behind the counter helps get my document prepped and asks if I’m having a good day. I say “No…but it’ll be okay.” I notice the smallest wedding solitaire I’ve ever seen on her left ring finger. I notice ring fingers a lot these days. It’s become a reflex.

She prints out the documents and charges me. As she does, she says “I hope your day gets better.” I say, “it’s ok, someday it’ll make a funny story.”

It’s 10:00 and I’m back in the courtroom. Still no sign of the lawyer, and I can see the anxiety in her darting eyes. I don’t want to be here, this whole thing wasn’t my idea, but at this point, I just want it to be over.

The judge calls our name again. I stand up and offer that I have all the documents and ask if we can proceed. The judge says, “Not without your lawyer.”

We both call the lawyer again.

---

I didn’t want the divorce.

When I finally gave in and agreed to this, I really thought I’d done all I could, but the feeling of failure was immense. I had spent years doing my best, succeeding occasionally, failing often. I had changed in the last decade, much more than I expected to.

Now I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to deal with my failure on my own terms and move forward. Dealing with the lawyer, the money, the court, it just became the business of it all, and I wanted the business done.

---

It’s 10:10. We both call the lawyer again.

It’s 10:15. The lawyer has sent her an email. It reads I’m so sorry…I will call the court and reschedule…

“No way,” I say. “Tell him he is supposed to be here and we’ll wait.”

I seethe about the fact that I called him five minutes ago and he is replying by email instead of answering the phone. She emails him back: We’re here now, we don’t want to reschedule.

A few minutes later he responds with I’ll be there when I can.

As she continues to wring her hands I say “Aren’t you glad I showed up today?”

She says “You’re always right,” which stings a bit under the circumstances.

We settle in to wait and watch a hearing before the judge. Dad is in a wool suit and tie, Mom is in a slinky knit dress and high-heeled boots. The hearing is about whether their court mandated divorce decree can be modified so that Wool Suit can send his teenaged daughter to a counselor even though High Heels doesn’t approve. He is quiet, but I sense control issues. She is loud and fidgety and I sense emotional distress. The judge is listening to the lawyers and snacking on chips, as if he he were watching a courtroom in a TV show instead of presiding over one.

The hearing devolves into something that would strain belief if I made it up. High Heels can’t stop interrupting the proceedings to chime in or by shaking her head or grunting. Wool suit can’t stop talking when asked a simple yes-or-no question, and doesn’t realize he sounds just as crazy as she does, yet in a much quieter way. Eventually the judge takes a minute to admonish both of them and the lawyers. He says, “I’m quickly losing patience. This should have only taken a few minutes.”

We are watching slack-jawed while giggling a bit. At one point my to-be-ex-wife looks at me, and says sincerely, “Thank you for making this easy.”

High Heels is being hushed loudly by both her attorneys. They are joining the judge in exasperation. They are saying things like “You need to stop.” and “Just walk away.” She keeps picking up a legal pad and scribbling furiously on it then pointing at it to her attorney. He keeps waving her off.

The judge says something, then stands up and walks out of the courtroom. He just leaves. Wool Suit walks quietly back to his seat. High Heels walks to hers and begins picking up her papers. Her attorney walks by and she starts saying something to him. The attorney says “You’re killing me…” and keeps walking out of the courtroom.

Our lawyer shows up. He looks in bad shape. His hands are shaking, he looks pale and feverish, his hair is not properly combed, and he has cut himself in several spots with his razor. His suit is pressed and buttoned nicely, but otherwise he looks like the caricature of the guy whose briefcase is crushing documents in the seams as he is darting up the courthouse steps, glasses askew on his face, tie hanging loose. My anger dissipates into relief that he’s here, and she looks at him and asks “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer, but apologizes and begins to collect the papers he will need for our hearing.

High Heels and Wool Suit have joined their attorneys back in front of the judge. He speaks plainly.

“You guys have good attorneys and you are making their work much harder. I don’t feel the need to make a decision today, seeing as you already have a hearing scheduled for two weeks from now. When you get back in the courtroom, I hope you can act better, because at this point, I can see why I should be worried about the health and well-being of your children.” Damn. Even our attorney looks a bit surprised at this.

They are dismissed and our names become the only names on the docket. The judge calls our name, and this time we are invited to approach the bench.

The attorney introduces the case and hands the judge the decree. As he reads it, making notes, I stare at the plaque with his name on it. I think about the fact that my wife and I are standing before a judge, asking him to end the marriage that started 10 years and six months earlier, standing before friends and family and officiated by my sister. I can feel the tears welling.

My tears are preempted by the judge asking the lawyer about a couple points in the document. He hands the Divorce Decree to the lawyer and the lawyer makes changes in pen, and she and I initial each change. The judge offers the floor to the attorney who asks her the questions she needs to answer to satisfy the judge. She is mostly facing away from me, but I can see her tears as she answers the questions, then she’s finished.

The judge faces me, and asks me a few questions. I answer affirmatively and he announces that the marriage is over and signs the paper.

Photo ©2018 Joshua Leto

We are outside the courthouse. The wind has picked up and it’s even colder than before.

The hearing only took ten minutes after two hours of waiting. The lawyer is apologizing sincerely, and with a great deal of embarrassment. We both tell him not to worry, but it doesn’t seem to settle him.

She says “I’m just glad it’s over.”

He apologizes again.

I say, “I’ll admit that until you walked into the courtroom, I was pissed. But it’s okay, we forgive you.” We shake hands and he walks away.

She asks where I’m parked. I point north. She points south. She takes a step toward me and gives me a hug.

We walk away in opposite directions.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew

I don’t seem to have the nostalgia bug that many comics readers have. I don’t feel the need to reread the Herb-Trimpe-drawn Hulks that were my first purchases from 25-cent bins. There are books that I can reread many times — Paul Chadwick’s “Concrete” and “Jar of Fools” by Jason Lutes come to mind — but those are rare. I like to move forward.

Art by Sonny Liew

“The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” is a book from 2016 by Sonny Liew. The cartooning brings to mind a cliche of reviews: It is a bravura feat of artistry. In terms of the styles of art, the design of the various materials that the story presents through layout, and coloring and tones, Liew demonstrates such a facility with his goal of depicting the various layers and levels of a long-lived artist’s life that I had to study the book for several minutes to determine that it was the work of only one artist.

Art by Sonny Liew

The story, in the aspect of comics-making, may go too far in depicting the different styles of the titular artist. When I think of the people who made comics and art for more than 50 years such as Kirby, Davis, or Eisner, none of them changed their styles so drastically once they reached maturity. While I love 1940s Jack Kirby art, once he hit the 50s, his style had mostly coalesced and he only made incremental stylistic changes to his art, revising layout approaches and fine-tuning the mark making over time. Will Eisner’s brush seemed to loosen and gain emotion in the last 30 years of his life, but other than that, I don’t see a dramatic shift in style, he was already experimenting with his layouts in the 40s. Jack Davis got looser but was immediately identifiable to fans of his overwhelmingly detailed 50s EC work.

In service of making the book look like the work of another artist, one who had a long career with many various projects, Liew went a little too far in varying the styles. The transition from the rudimentary, early-career manga-style work to Kurtzmanesque 50s work, to Mort Drucker-style 60s to Walt Kelly to Frank Miller to Carl Barks storytelling designs seems an unlikely transition for a lifelong comics maker who is renowned. I can see the oil paintings as a reasonable change in style; the medium can change the message, of course.

Interestingly, this flaw actually highlights a great strength of the author. I hadn’t seen such adeptness in his comics work previously to suggest such an ability to ape styles and techniques from throughout comics history. The Tezuka-influenced early work of the fictional artist is obviously drawn by the same artist as the Pogo riff mid-book, or the 80s grim and gritty comics that appear later, but the change in styles is admirable. Even Mad Magazine would have different artists for most parodies, Wally Wood being a notable exception in the ability to ape fellow creators (“Never draw anything you can copy…”). Art seen in an early aughts Sonny Liew Marvel story intended to be in 60s style didn’t show a desire to copy the stylistic ephemera of Ditko or Kirby. It remained wholly identifiable as Liew.

Here I have to admit to being a poor reader for a major aspect of this book. I had honestly never thought twice about the history of Malaysia or Singapore. My entry into this story was comics, and being quite familiar with the history of them allowed me to not become overwhelmed by the density of the historical material. I fully admit that I finished the book with a nominal knowledge of the facts behind it, which is not a flaw of the author.

Art by Sonny Liew

Coming to the history and politics of Singapore so cold, I had a hard time evaluating whether the metaphors designed for the work of “Charlie Chan Hock Chye” were heavy-handed or adept. Liew is constantly providing context, but I am probably missing some subtleties that make these allegories more creative and engaging. For example, it was difficult to tell if the political message of the Harvey Kurtzman E.C. pastiche was broad and unsubtle because many of Kurtzman’s stories were the same, or if it had a subtext that I was missing as an ineffective reader. There is a Walt Kelly Pogo-style strip later that feels like it holds a little more nuance, but then a later story, with running commentary by “Sonny Liew” reads as though it is teenaged parody, akin to the worst of Mad Magazine.

I also wonder whether readers who don’t share my knowledge of comics so immediately recognize the forebears of the styles in the book, which gather the context of time and history they mean to entail. There are endnotes which define some of the comics creators whose styles are referenced, but others are left out. I took a Frank Miller Dark Knight reference late in the book to encompass meaning in both the context of the sociopolitical landscape in which it was created (80s leftist Western Culture feeling overwhelmed by Reagan and Thatcher and the Cold War) and the context of the comics and manga industry which had been referenced earlier in the book (American Pre- and Post Code comics, British and Japanese post-war, e.g.), reading it’s tone as both reflective of the time and the mood of the “author”. The endnotes don’t mention Miller at all.

Speaking of the mood of the title character, my favorite aspect of the book is the consistency of definition of his personality. I was completely engaged with the story of this man, and how he navigated his world, personal and political. He is so fully defined that late in the book, I found myself thinking of him as a real person. The conceit of this being a biography became realized and I was invested in his story to the point that I wondered what happened to him after the end.

This book is certainly the work of an artist who has matured in his storytelling to a point of being able to deliver an engaging, intelligent, cohesive narrative told across a man’s life and bring it all together through disparate styles into a compelling narrative of both man and country.

Blade Runner 2049

REPLICA OF EMOTION

This movie is beautiful. The sound design is intense and overwhelming, the music is immersive and subtle, the cinematography is lush and distinctive, and the visual effects are at once awe-inspiring and seamless. The performers are compelling.

I wish that it was in service of something deeper.

Looking at the run-time it seems forty-five minutes too long, but I would have a hard time cutting fifteen. It felt, in the best way, like a big budget tone poem. It evoked the isolation of life in a brutal metropolis with an appreciation of open spaces and interior escape zones. Each scene provides a feeling, as when Ryan Gosling visits San Diego and the oppression of his confusion while digging into the mystery connects to the oppression of the inhabitants connects to the oppression of memory. Other scenes provide a stark contrast, as when stepping from the antiseptic police station to the grimy streets of Los Angeles from the clear belief in purpose to the muddled reality of the real and unreal world.

I hadn’t watched Blade Runner in at least ten years, but I never felt lost or cheated. Its impact is probably greater with a stronger affinity for or knowledge of the first film, but only in a nostalgic sense, and nostalgia means little to me. I’m sure I’m supposed to feel something stronger when characters from the first film show up, but nostalgia does little for me.

Performances are strong throughout. Ryan Gosling shows how to do much with little, implying rather than emoting. Harrison Ford is sullen enough to join Gosling in being understated, not normally a strength of his. Sylvia Hoeks is fantastic as a definition of efficiency. Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, and Carla Juri bring much-needed humanity. Ana de Armas is charming and lively, both a defense and a critique of her character. Jared Leto, who has been previously great (in movies with “Club” in the title), and hammy (“Suicide Squad”), is too much the latter, but that also feels like a problem with a character defined by its tics rather than its emotions.

The time spent setting mood and defining tone were balanced with forward movement on plot, which kept it from dragging, but character motivation felt implied rather than defined. While watching the film, I was drawn into Joe’s story, Luv’s story, and even Joi’s story, but reflecting after, the character’s motivation disappeared in service of the mechanics of moving the story along. Only Joshi and Mariette had relatable motivations, and Mariette is a prostitute, hardly a character given deep thought. I could argue that Joe’s motivation is one of defining one’s place in the world and search for meaning, but I could just as easily point out that he is only driven, as an android, by what he was programmed to do, far from human. This appears to be inspired by the source material, but once answers are provided, it serves to make the questions less valuable.

The best art leaves room for many interpretations of the narrative, so that the viewer can imbue the film with a meaning that can be personal. The beauty and passion was simply in service of plot, wrapped up nicely at the end, leaving very little to chew on besides the visuals. A fireworks display in which power disappears as the colors fade to memory.

We Stand On Guard by Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce

They’re taking comic characters from my youth and making movies about them, and I don’t care. I love comics and I love movies. The types of movies that they make from comics are generally not my cup of tea.

Art by Steve Skroce

We Stand On Guard feels like a movie treatment. I could even see how it may have made it to the script stage as a screenplay. It had a solid three-act structure, it had character development, it had action set pieces, it had humor and drama and half-baked social critique. It had a semi-blockbuster ending that hinted at the sunnier outcome that producers and executives would have required, and probably would have come in around a hundred pages.

That’s not to say it is bad. It is solid escapist entertainment, delivered by master craftsmen, Steve Skroce and Brian K. Vaughan. 

Skroce excels at delivering character designs that are solid; you can see the personality in the rendering and you never confuse characters for one another. This story even has two characters portrayed as youth and adults, and you know immediately that you’re looking at the same character. (Credit to Vaughan as well as building the script—even if there were a lesser artist, context would provide the information.) The art has a fussy, obsessive line that seems influenced by co-conspirator Geof Darrow—they both worked on The Matrix movies. There is a skull-explosion that could have come straight from Hard Boiled or Shaolin Cowboy. (Skroce drew Marvel comics in the 90s and his art had a softer brush stroke and more open design.) His art supports the storytelling so that you never get lost in the fuzziness found when some artists take shortcuts.

The color, by Matt Hollingsworth, is consistently impressive. Never over-rendered, always highlighting key information, he is also a master craftsman. He avoids cliches in story points like flashbacks and technology (computer screens or science fiction weapons) and uses the palette to support the tone of the scenes.

The plot and ideas here seem right in the Vaughan wheelhouse. Science fiction influence that never feels so futurist that you’ve never imagined; big stakes seen through individuals rather than communicated by narrators or exposition; dark humor; and a strong sense of family, through both blood and circumstance. These are themes and techniques consistent with the books I’ve read by BKV and the ones that keep bringing me back to his work.

Brian K. Vaughan’s story is interesting and clean, and suffers only from comparison. It lacks the depth of character of his longer stories, and the inherited (read: unearned) gravity of the few Big Two superhero books of his I’ve followed. As a self-contained, one-and-done mini-series, it delivers. Seeds planted bear fruit later, characters are consistent if broadly drawn, lines that would be hokey delivered on the screen work fine when internalized, and the before and after story arcs that we are encouraged to imagine provide context for what we experience in the chapters presented.

A solid entertainment that felt worthy of the time spent with it, which is exactly what I hope for from a blockbuster.

Empire State by Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga is a singular artist that I have to admit I’ve slept on. I had purchased several of his self-published mini-comics (I would confirm this if my “archives” were in order), but I never really engaged with one of his books until Demon. As I eagerly await the next volume, I found some previous books to catch up on.

Art by Jason Shiga

I tend to enjoy comics that are playful in narrative technique such as Matt Fraction and David Aja on Hawkeye, or clever in structure such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons with panel structure in Watchmen, or self-aware such as Grant Morrison in Animal Man. At the same time, I occasionally become overwhelmed by relentless changes in narrative structure, such as the book-length “Here” by Richard McGuire or the more diagrammatic Chris Ware pages, which pull me right out of the narrative.

Jason Shiga’s “Meanwhile” fell too far into play for me to engage with the story, and in retrospect, while reading the short comics I didn’t value his patience and playfulness with the narrative. If I were to tell you the plot of “Empire State” I could do so in about three lines. That is because the plot is the least important part of the narrative Shiga has built here.

The art is simple and straightforward and the figures are so simple that at first read I undervalued his art for its weight and authority. There are a few clunky panels or figures, but these are rare and only standout amongst so many pages of figures, backgrounds, and layouts which put the characters front and center in a world that feels absolutely real in a way that the best comics artists can do using such abstract designs.

Art by Jason Shiga

Detailed backgrounds and flat limited palette colors serve to highlight the story flow and help the reader focus on crucial information. Shiga plays with timelines to accentuate the character’s progress through their arc in the story. At one point I thought I had found an error in balloon tail placement, but then realized quickly that I was being given key information about a time jump instead. Once I absorbed that I needed these context clues, the characters became an even greater focus, which is crucial when the rendering is so clean and unburdened by detail.

I don’t care to discuss spoilers in plot and character development, so that will admittedly make this essay light. Just believe me when I tell you that Shiga does not waste pages, panels, or words in delivering his story. I found the main character’s arc incredibly affecting, even though it has a gentle touch. A complex and compelling story told in a direct style.

Art by Jason Shiga

Taking Dinosaur Jr. Camping

I put on Green Mind today, playing it on my phone while driving. Listening to it transports me back to 1991. I could feel the cheap foam headphone covers sitting on my ears as I fold and unfold the tiny liner notes from the cassette. I would stare at the cover photo during the solos and guitar noodling, and read and reread the text inside. I am sitting at a campsite in Yosemite, massive evergreens providing shade from the blue sky summer heat. J Mascis’s raspy yelp providing  voice to my teenage insecurities. I can hear the cl-clack of the Walkman reversing to play side two and when I take the headphones off, there are serene whispers from the river and wind and squirrels and birds.  Listening to the album over and over again, as only a teenager is capable, it feels as peaceful to me as the woods I am witnessing.

Yosemite, 2014

This Yosemite campsite has been a part of my life as few other places have. I was first brought here as a baby before my memories even began, and now bring my own children here. It is one of the few places on the earth that I don’t need a media distraction to survive. I can sit on the bank of the river, or better yet, float in it, and be enveloped by nature. I have never meditated in my house for more than a few minutes, but I can settle into a relaxed reverie among the leaves and needles and sounds and let the world outside disappear. I couldn’t tell you what was on the walls of my bedroom until I was twelve, but I can visualize for my kids the fourteen-foot-round boulder that was destroyed in the high waters and rolling rocks after 1998’s monstrous snowfall melt pushed coercive forces downstream. 

J Mascis seems like an artist I can relate to, even if the irony was that if I have the chance to meet him, I may not bother him and he would likely be happy about that. I liked that he didn’t bother putting his picture on record covers. I enjoy singers who don’t seem beholden to vocal consistency. I love the ragged nature of of the voices of Tom Petty, Laura Jane Grace and Kathleen Hanna. It’s partly because I can relate to how they made those sounds. I could maybe, on a good day, create a warble that could sound like that, whereas I could never make a sound like Roy Orbison or Aretha Franklin or Mariah Carey. I can’t identify instruments in an orchestra, but guitar, bass, and drums are within my mental grasp. J Mascis has a voice that I love singing along with.

This was my first Dinosaur Jr. album and I could see the control issues. "Guitar, J Mascis. Bass, J Mascis. Most drums, J Mascis. Produced by J Mascis". DIY with a boldfaced capitalized underlined Yourself. When you’re a teenager that can find few to relate to, that solitude is welcoming.

I’ve always been happiest when asking questions. Answers leave little mystery to uncover and seldom satisfy, but questions are eternal. Any answer can be followed with a question. The first chorus on Green Mind is a question, and goddammit if that didn’t resonate with me. 

We’re all nuts, so who helps who?

Some help when no one’s got a clue

Baby, why don’t we?

Chris Cornell, 1964-2017

   My mom was a suburban baby-boomer hippie who felt like she had become a television addict when she started staying home with me, her first child, so, she threw it out. Like many kids of divorce, I spent every weekend with my grandparents who were of the mind that television would destroy intelligence, so watching was restricted. Reading books, magazines, and comics, and listening to comedy and music became the refuge of this odd little introvert.

    Once I wrangled a little spending money, those things combined and overlapped. I love reading, and I love music, so I loved reading about music. I subscribe to the theory that an older sibling can help develop a more advanced taste in pop culture, but I didn’t have one, so the magazines I read became the voice to which my curiosity would listen. I started with the normal things a ten-year old in 1984 would absorb, Prince and M.J, Bruce and Madonna, but a subscription to Rolling Stone and a desire to find voices I could relate to as a semi-misanthropic tween started to encourage me to dig deeper.

    The magazines Spin and Rip had a tone that resonated, and both played a role in helping drive my curiosity toward thrash metal, punk, and hip-hop. I am now very aware, by the way, that those two magazines were published by two titans of American pornography, Rip even being the very first non-pornographic magazine published by Larry Flynt. I will leave it to the Freudian analysts figure out exactly what that means. Don’t get me wrong, I would read any piece of trash that would recycle press releases about bands (I’m looking at you Circus and Hit Parader), but my skepticism lead me to drop those when I found the more self-aware alternatives.

    So it was, that at age fifteen, the power of major label music press and a Warehouse gift certificate lead me to scoop up a copy of Loud Love. The sound was earnest, and a bit self-important when I look at it now, but imagine how earnest and self-important play at fifteen. And, saving grace to a kid who loved stand-up comedy, it had some childish humor on board, including a Spinal Tap-style song about fucking. It remains my least favorite musically of those first five Soundgarden records, but at the time I listened to the shit out of it. I went back to UltraMega OK and Screaming Life, and by the time Badmotorfinger was released, I was a committed fan.

    A couple years later, when music obsession and disposable income combined to encourage me to comb the record stores with an undiscerning mind, buying up imported CD singles and promo compilations, Soundgarden became the flag that signified my commitment to collecting records. A Sub Pop Records singles release forced me to find a record player, and the encouragement of an ill-chosen paragon turned me into a completionist. At one point I owned something like sixty different records, tapes, and CDs of music, later sold to a cokehead friend who had even more disposable income than I.

    Chris Cornell’s structurally poetic but vague lyrics resonated with hidden depth to me. To date, the meaning is usually still hidden well enough that I’m not sure if it’s obfuscated or absent, but they resonated. I always hated the leather-and-hairspray costumes of 80s metal, and hated more the costume-costumes of Alice Cooper and KISS, but a costume of Doc Marten’s and flannel shirts seemed everyman enough to accept.

    Soundgarden helped me find Mudhoney, The Descendents. and Sonic Youth, and those lead me to find all my favorites in each little niche and subgenre of the rock and roll that ties it all together. Chris Cornell was the face of a band that ties into finding Sleater-Kinney and Sage Francis and Secret Chiefs 3 and Steve Earle and Slug and Sleep and Slobberbone and Sigur Ros, and many other bands I love outside the “S” section of my collection.

    I did grow apart from Soundgarden at some point after selling the collection, and only dabbled in Audioslave and the solo records, but reading about Chris Cornell’s passing hit me hard in nostalgia circuits. I will always appreciate Cornell and Soundgarden in helping to open the gateway to so much music that still thrills me to this day. Many bands that were my favorites then don’t hold up when I listen today, but I can still listen with great pleasure to dozens of songs he helped create in the 80s and 90s.

    Rest in peace.

Manchester By The Sea by Kenneth Lonergan

I believe that not only is pain relative amongst us, but also relative within us.

For example, just because I have broken my collarbone and you have broken your collarbone, there can be no way to identify whose pain was worse. Your broken collarbone may hurt worse than mine, or it may not. There is literally no way for us to know, and may never be.

Additionally, I believe that breaking my collarbone today will find a level of pain that I attribute to it that may be adjusted in the future should my appendix explode. Today’s pain can only be measured in terms of the known pain of previous existence, not any future pain.

Personally, I’ve never broken a bone, and I’ve lead a charmed life of such relatively low pain that the worst pain I’ve ever endured was a sinus infection. I doubt this pain can even be close on the same (impossibly) objective scale of pain as say, childbirth or a heart attack.

It is impossible to recognize where individual emotional pain would fall compared to the pain endured by the character of Lee Chandler in this film. One can imagine that most viewers can clearly identify the source of their own peak emotional pain. Thanks to Casey Affleck’s subtle performance, demonstrated through clear body language, we can see how he deals with the pain, and doesn’t. The narrative constantly flows in and around his perception. Nearly every single scene is afforded his perspective, past and present setting the tone for the future. The handful that don’t are offered up to deepen our understanding of the second lead, Patrick Chandler, played by Lucas Hedges. Their pain is their own, as is how they deal with it.

I believe that without sadness we cannot appreciate joy, because joy is as relative as pain. I have a hard time remembering the times of greatest joy in the same method as I can single out the greatest pain. Perhaps because happiness is so intertwined with sadness. When the movie ends, it provides cathartic relief, a balance to the sadness in knowing that you get to decide how happy the stories of the characters can become. The movie certainly prepares you for the idea that nothing is easy, including the lives as they continue offscreen, but it gives you just enough hope that the characters will find happiness.

I find happiness in realizing that I get to decide how a respond to the sad times. I find, that at my age, I can understand that the sadness and pain is only relative, and that I only know it in terms of the joy I’ve known.