Downloaded Worlds

I bought Promethea book 4 today, haven't read it yet, I'm going to wait until the last issue comes out in February and then do a really immersive read of the whole series. But, the book got me thinking about a certain type of story. Promethea feels perfect, like every single issue was carefully thought of, and came out exactly like the creators wanted it to. There were no mistakes, and you can't really criticize anything, becasue the book is so internally consistent. It is the type of work that feels like the creator tapped into some other universe, took the book, and brought it back here.

For me, the work that feels most like this is the original Star Wars trilogy. Despite having seen and read many many things on the creation of the trilogy, I still don't view it as a movie that was filmed, it really feels like you're looking in on a piece of another universe. I can't imagine cameras being there, or the places being sets. I know the movies aren't perfect, but I can see very few specific flaws, because it doesn't feel like Lucas made up the story, it felt like it was all there already, and he had no choice in how to tell it.

Another great example of this is Lord of the Rings. The movie feels this way, but the book is perhaps the best example of this anywhere. It's so detailed, it feels like Tolkien tapped into this alternate universe.

Which brings us back to Promethea. The entire book is about the power of thought, and a sort of shared universe of thought called the Immateria. This is where stories come from, and this book really seems to be downloaded from the Immateria. The art is so brilliant, it doesn't seem like a person could make it, particularly working on the deadlines imposed by monthly comics. I can't imagine JH Williams drawing anything else, becuase to me, he is the guy that channels Promethea.

While I think The Invisibles is a much stronger comic than Promethea overall, it doesn't have that downloaded from another realm feel all the time. The Jiminez issues, notably Entropy in the UK and Black Science I do, as does Weston's run at the end of Volume II, and most of all, Quitely's absolutely brilliant issue 3.1. However, there's also the dreadful art in The Invisible Kingdom storyline, which completely takes you out of the story, and the illusion that this is a real world.

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Ten Works that Changed My Life: Part II (5-1) (5/2/2005)

Was the Past Really Better? Part II

First, one thing about memory: everythings gets better as you become more distant from it. The bad things start to slip away, and you only remember the good things. That's why, even though I wasn't so much a fan of a lot of high school, I look back on it fondly now. We have a tendency to filter out the negative things. That's not to say that high school was bad, it's just that you tend to focus on the good things, and the boring moments slip off somewhere into the void of lost memories.

The same thing can happen with movies. If you haven't seen a movie for a while, you can build it up in your own mind, talking it up, remembering the great moments, and then when you go see it again, it's not as good as you remember it. Of course, you can be surprised by how good something is if you haven't seen it for awhile, but I'd say a slight disappointment occurs more often. Like, I saw Gladiator on Friday. Now, I hadn't seen it since 2000, and I remember it being a really great movie. However, watching it again, I was struck by how weak the dialogue was, to the point of really hurting the movie. And, the action scenes weren't as impressive either. I'm not really sure how that ended up winning the Oscar for best picture.

Anyway, you always hear people saying music wasn't as good as it used to be. Older people are more likely to say it's not as good as the 60s or 70s, sometimes you'll hear people my age talking about how the 90s were better. I'm going to go out on a limb here and concede that the popular music the 60s and 70s was better than what is popular now. Maybe it's just that I don't like most R 'n B type ballad songs that are so popular, nor do I like the noise-hard rock of bands like Korn, or even the angry rock of someone like Linkin Park. There are still some great popular songs, 'Hey Ya' was one of the absolute best pop songs of all time. However, I feel like in the 60s, bands that were breaking new ground were what was popular. That The Beatles, the most popular band in the world at the time, could put out an album as diverse and bizarre as The White Album, astonishes me. Each of their album somehow maintains a pop sound, while still goin really crazy with sonic experimentation. And it's not just The Beatles, all sorts of meaningful artists were putting out great songs that were also popular, and it was at this time that the full album length work came into vogue.

Today, music has changed a lot. It's not that it's gotten worse, it's just that the most popular bands are usually far from the best bands. The best thing about music today, as compared to the 60s, is the diversity of material available. Back then, it was mostly rock and jazz, now rock, trip hop, rap, etc. There's such a variety of stuff, and most notably, a new type of music, made by bands like Air and Massive Attack. These bands have no real stylistic equivalents in the 60s era, they're redefining music, and just because they're not popular, it doesn't mean there's not quality albums being put out. Almost all the stuff I listen to pre 1990 is rock, but I've got a huge variety of genres when it comes to recent stuff. You may have to look a little harder, but amazing albums are still being made. The Polyphonic Spree is one of my favorite bands of all time, and they didn't come about until a couple of years ago. When you look back, the crap songs slip away, and the best remains. That makes people inherently biased towards the past.

While I wouldn't say music is in a Golden Age today, comics definitely are, or if not now, have just finished one. The 1990s was the decade when the comic book became the graphic novel, and creators started to publish incredible finite series. Works like Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan and of course, The Invisibles, told some of the biggest stories ever told in any medium, and more so than even Alan Moore's 80s work constitute a bibliography that's the best in comics history. People talk about the 60s as the best era of comics, they had nothing comprable to what went on recently. With the end of Transmetropolitan, an era ended as well in a lot of ways, but I think it's more that we're in an era when a lot of new talent is emerging. This is the equivalent of the late 80s, when people like Ennis, Ellis and Morrison were proving themselves on corporate titles before starting their magnum opi. Comics have never been better than in recent years.

Film is also in a great era of films, but it's more comprable to what I was talking about in music. In the 80s, Spielberg and Lucas almost singlehandedly invented the great blockbuster. Stuff like Star Wars and Indiana Jones set a standard in terms of quality works with blockbuster appeal. Lately, I'll admit most blockbuster movies have been pretty awful, but recently, we've seen a ton of new directors coming up and producing amazing works. In the last 10 years, we've seen the emergence of PT Anderson, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Darren Aronofsky and a lot of other great directors. While there may not be as many good blockbusters, 2004 has produced some of my favorite movies of all time. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill II, Garden State, Before Sunset and Dogville were all brilliant movies, the sort of timeless works of art that will become immortal.

So, maybe popular culture is going down hill, but as long as great works are being produced, it doesn't really matter what's popular. In both comics and film, auteurs have been getting more respect, and that's a great thing. And the thing is, even if you think pop culture is crap today, we've got a backlog of thousands of movies and albums, so whatever era's to your fancy, you can enjoy as you please.

Oh, and I forgot to mention TV. Other than Twin Peaks, basically all the series I really loved were made within the last 10 years, most of them even more recently. Buffy, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Office, Spaced. The auteur driven finite TV series has emerged, just like it did in comics, and this is without a doubt, the golden age of television.

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Was the Past Really Better? Part I

Well, the short answer is no, but that doesn't explain why, and the real answer to every question that we face in life is not in the answer itself, but in why what the answer is, is in fact that answer. A bit complex, that. Even I'm not really sure what I was talking about.

Anyway, so much of what people talk about seems to be just about how good things in the past were, and this idea really bothers me. I think there's two levels of past fetishization. One is the idea that things really were better then. Like, in the 60s, music meant something, and movies were the work of auteurs, not just the tripe you see now. People will talk about Hollywood's Golden Age, or comics' silver age, and really feel that the works being done back then were better. You see it in videogames too. So many classic game compilations have come out and been embraced because people are enamored with the idea that older games were better.

I'll admit that I subscribe to this school sometimes. I would have loved to have been around when The Beatles set the tone of popular music, rather than generic hip hop song of the month, and I am sort of jealous of that era. I prefer the popular music of then to the popular music of now. Similarly, I will often wax poetic about the days of the 2D game, back when things were simpler. I'd much rather play Final Fantasy III than Final Fantasy VII, but I don't think that's just a nostalgia thing, it's more about the fact that when FFVII was made, 3D games were in their infancy.

But, I digress. There's this one strain of thought that things in the past actually were better. However, recently, another strain of thought has come up. This is one that holds that old things were better, but takes a sort of ironic approach. This is the school of thought that gives us people still constantly talking about shit like Saved by the Bell. This was an awful show, as was Full House or any number of other series people will discuss, but they still watch them, in a sort of semi-ironic way, at once reveling in the badness and actually enjoying the show, becuase they feel so above it. TV is probably where this is most prominent, people who you could never get to watch an episode of Twin Peaks or The Sopranos, and say that 144 episodes of Buffy is too big a commitment, will gladly spend hours watchin really awful sitcoms, and go on to claim that TV today is going downhill.

You see this a lot in comics too. People will either say that back in the 60s, books were so much more imaginative and fresh, or that the 80s were the Golden Age and stuff today isn't as good. Alan Moore's Supreme series is all about revisiting 60s comics, and showing love to them. Thing is, these comics weren't really that good, it's just nostalgia. That's not to say that Supreme is bad, it's a really great book, but in a lot of respects, I'd rather see Alan moving forward with original material than just rehashing old things. I think Grant Morrison has a much better approach to nostalgia, wherein he's not trying to capture the actual style of 60s comics, but rather the feeling of awe and majesty that they gave to the kids who read them. The best example of this is the brilliant Flex Mentallo.

So, ironic nostalgia bad. You can see this a lot in music too. An entire industry has grown up around specials about bad early 90s music. Rather than focusing on albums from that era that were actually good, like U2's Acthung Baby!, they spend all their time on the same approved set of novelty songs. People always thrown on stuff like 'Ice, Ice Baby' or 'Can't Touch This' as opposed to playing a song that's actually good. Those songs were bad then and they're still bad now.

Basically, it really bothers me that people spend so much time focusing on trash culture from the past, particularly the early to mid 90s. There was some great stuff back then, it was the time that gave birth to Twin Peaks and Sandman, but that's never what's mentioned, it's always the novelty rap songs and bad sitcoms. I can see enjoying something ironically once in a while, but for a lot of people it seems they never enjoy something sincerely and fully. There's so much good stuff out there, don't waste you time watching or listening to crap.

So, what is good now, and how can love of the past be better put to use? That'll be part II.

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Was the Past Really Better?: Part II (11/16/2004)