Spam-A-Lot

I've had a huge increase in spam in the last month. So much so that it has caused my mailbox to sometimes register as full (to those who have had bounce back e-mails to me). I was forced to ask can spam be seasonal? I mean, it's December, I must REALLY want a larger penis now. And Russian women REALLY want to talk to me badly?

Speaking of spam, in case you missed it, last week’s Intake column is up. With a focus on The Dwelling Place. This week’s column relates to a play I recently went to see, “I have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda.�

Over on Blogging in Black, I have a new post up called “Be Professional�.

Also, I was interviewed by The Studio Upstairs podcast about the reviews I do for Hollywood Jesus. You can find the podcast here.



Oh, and the new Hollywood Jesus Reviews 2005-2006 is now available. ATL, Final Destination 3, Glory Road, Slither, Superman Returns, Take the Lead, X-Men: The Last Stand are my reviews that made it into that one.






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Thanksgiving Announcements

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m thankful for friends, family, my church, my job, my readers, and my health. I try to live my life being grateful every day, so this holiday offers me only the occasion to be thankful for a day off. So rather than do some holiday themed blog, I got a couple of announcements:

1) I got around to having my website updated. By “I� I mean Deena Warner stepped in and bailed out my “the Internet works by magic�, techno-oblivious self. Among the updates, I have finally posted the footage from Mo*Con I, which means you can now see Brian Keene’s sermon as well as a reading and Q&A time. It’s on the photos page of my site.

2) I was interviewed by Taylor Kent AKA the Snark Avenger as a guest for his podcast Snark Infested Waters to talk about ministry and horror and Christian horror and stuff. You can find my interview here. You might as well keep the site bookmarked: the following week it’s Angeline Hawkes and Christopher Fulbright.


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Astro City: The Dark Age

Written by: Kurt Busiek
Art by: Brent Anderson
Published by: DC/Wildstorm

Astro City is Kurt Busiek’s most impassioned work. After rising to prominence with the limited series, Marvels, he has enjoyed runs on The Avengers and Legion of Super Heroes. Obviously Astro City occupies a special place for him and is the most personal to him, one that allows him to explore the heart of what he loves about comics and super heroes. Not deconstructing them, not making them dark, relevant, or gritty in the name of reality, but making them feel real. Real heroes engaged in the ever real issues and implications of being a hero.

The Astro City universe parallels the Marvel Universe. Once a series of stand alone issues, it is now a series of arcs told through the eyes of heroes, villains, innocents (and not so innocents) caught up in their battles of good vs. evil. Still, he manages to capture the fun and hope of the comics that we grew up with, while still telling adult stories.

Which brings us to Astro City: The Dark Age.

Now, I was born in 1970, as such, I missed much of the tense times that the United States endured. The racial tensions, the Viet Nam war, the fall of the Nixon administration. I barely remember the trauma of disco. Kurt Busiek re-visits this time period as an opportunity to examine the darker undertones of the super-hero genre. In it’s way, Astro City: The Dark Age serves as a critique of the trend toward the joyless comics of the early 90s that have preoccupied the minds of writers and readers alike. This story is told through the eyes of two brothers, both shaped by the same circumstances and encounters of being caught up as collateral damage in the battles between super heroes and super villains, then walking divergent paths. One becomes a cop, the other a criminal.

“All he wanted was for the world to make sense. Me, I had simpler dreams.� –Royal Williams

The people have become distrusting of their heroes and governments. They’ve become angry at their circumstances. All of which comes to a head with the arrest of one of the country’s brightest lights, the Silver Agent (imagine Captain America in handcuffs, on trial for his life). Even Brent Anderson’s art seems more moody and shadowy.

“I could work hard, get me a nice apartment, go to church and pay my taxes on time. You figure that’d keep me safe?� –Royal

We look at the world around us and if humanity is basically good then our solutions aren’t working. Our progress and democracy, our education and technology, we’re still left with the problem of evil. We aren’t living up to our potential. Seeing all the darkness around us can turn us cynical as we sense a law of right and wrong that no one should be above, a justice we aren’t seeing lived out. We see bad things happening to good people with no explanation and it is easy to come to the conclusion why learn discipline, why put in the work to do/be good. We fancy ourselves to be strong, free, determiners of our own fate, so why not take justice into our own hands, have a measure of control?

The fear is something that has become a part of our lives. The fear of not being able to protect the ones we love, the fear of the feeling of not being in control. It’s like a part of our soul longs to have hope, trust, faith in something greater than ourselves. Our heroes, our institutions, some higher ideal. In addition to this, we want to feel safe and believe in things that make us feel safe. However, when all the things we want to believe in fail us–when our heroes fall, when our government lets us down or undermines our principles or flat out betrays us, or when the Church doesn’t live up to its mission–we enter a dark age. Losing faith leads to a dark night.

“There are some rough times coming. But don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.� –Silver Agent

Creation is under siege by hostile, evil forces seeking to thwart God’s plan for the cosmos and we long for a rescue from the chaos. The claim of Christianity, the “foolishness� of the Christian story, is that through the life of Christ, evil can be conquered. The story works towards a climax of a Messiah, a suffering servant, somehow leading to redemption. Jesus took on the burden of evil, took on its full force and exhausted it, with the resurrection was the sign of evil and Death being defeated. He let the forces of evil and darkness do their worst to him and breaking their power over Him and humanity, transforming not only our lives, but our way of life. We live in the “already/not yet� tension, with evil having already been defeated, though it hasn’t yet reached its fruition.

Astro City: The Dark Age is about the loss of idealism and innocence, yet about having hope during the dark times. That one hero, dying an unjust death that was meant to happen and sacrificing himself can bring people out of their dark age. It’s about clinging to faith no matter how uneasy the circumstances and reminds us that there are heroes to help see us through. It is densely layered with action and also continues to flesh out the universe and history of Astro City. This arc is set to be a 16 issue one and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.


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Apocalypto

“The Jaguar of Judah�

What troubled me most about Apocalypto was that it seemed like a movie of false promises: a grand historical epic, the journey of the hero, the exploration of the pageantry of a power in its decline, man’s inhumanity to man, the hope within exile, the terror of conquest. What we get is a National Geographic spectacle with some nods to a deeper theme. Hinting at the portrayal of the Mayan civilization in decline, Apocalypto could be the story of any great power in its decline, from Rome to America: a people in exile, a civilization in decline; a powerful warring, arrogant people, building testimonials to its greatness, fascinated by its ideas of beauty, focused on its entertainment, with both the religious and political leaders playing to their people. We see a country that is decadent, lazy, rich, and strong - yet rotting and dying from within. None of this imagery had eluded the movie’s director, Mel Gibson, who should know a thing or two about being in exile by now.

“What do you want?� –Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood)

Apocalypto begins in a pre-Columbian Mayan village, with a tribe out on a hunting expedition, led by Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead) and his son, Jaguar Paw. Their village is invaded by Others who delight in tormenting them. The survivors are trotted back to the home of these others, where they are further degraded. Then Jaguar Paw escapes and has to elude his tormentors as he makes his way back to rescue his wife. The time period and the setting are pretty much a red herring. With such a grand historical backdrop, we have little grasp of the players and the story is reduced to little more than a “Rambo of the Forest,� with the hope that the audience will be satisfied with the story of a family man who wants to get home.

Still, there are several issues that the movie touches upon, since the story of a people being kidnaped by another group of people, suffering through the passage to their destination, only to be sold on auction blocks has a special resonance with me.

We could start with an examination of the process of colonization, the forced absorbing of one people’s story by another. Again, the clearest way I can relate this to people is by telling the biblical story of Daniel. Many people are familiar with the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, but the back-story is what I’m interested in. The story is set against the exile of Israel. The Israelites were taken to a foreign land, not all of them, but their best and brightest young men. In effect, the exile robbed Israel of its brain trust, its future. Those men were in turn re-enculturated: indoctrinated with new language, new customs, even new names, in Jaguar Paw’s case, he was renamed “Almost�.

Much of this stemming from fear.

“Fear is a sickness. It will crawl into the soul of anyone who engages it.� –Flint Sky

Fear stultifies the soul and manifests itself in a variety of many, many of which we see played out in our social landscape. We have a fear of “the other�. An aspect of colonialism is its conquest mentality that works by making other cultures less than human, debasing one while exalting the colonizer’s. Fear clouds our ability to see one another as Eikons, created in the image of God. Fear, this numbing of our souls, allows us to kill, torture, rape, and take one another into slavery. Slavery was not an institution new to America. The story of the human race is one of the strong oppressing the weak, cycles of violence that need to be broken.

“Behold him, reborn from mud and earth.� –prophetic little girl

If the story of the Bible is one of God slowly wooing humanity back to him, reaching us where we are dealing with us as we are, then that casts a new light on how we ought to view many of our Bible stories. Even in Apocalypto, there is a prophesy of a redeemer of sorts, signs and portents pointing to someone to bring an end to this old way of living.

God is the Great Emancipator, the freedom giver. Christ came as a Liberator; in Him there is neither slave nor free. The problem of evil is solved not in why does it exist, but in what God has done about it. God identifies with the poor and those in pain, liberating them from injustice. The promise of resurrection gives them hope and grounds to struggle for freedom. Christ’s mission was to free us from sin: individual sin and social sin. Suffering arising from the struggle for freedom is liberating, providing a vision of freedom. Our mission is to join with His and, as Jaguar Paw puts it, “seek a new beginning.�

Apocalypto’s tagline of “No one can outrun their destiny� promises much, but delivers little. Once again, history serves as Mel Gibson’s pallette allowing him to paint in his favorite colors, brutal violence inflicted on people, a tortured hero, thoroughly researched history and language, and a near-mythic hero. We see a continuation of Mel Gibson’s fascination with family men who become blood-soaked icons of righteousness by those who seek to oppress him and others. Braveheart. The Patriot. The Passion of the Christ. What we don’t get as clear a sense of is the “why?� As with The Passion of the Christ, none of the action is put into a context. What we have is a beautifully rendered action flick in the guise of an epic, and as such, disappoints.


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Ghost Rider

“Road to Damnation�
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Clayton Crain
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Garth Ennis has been on quite a roll. I’ve forgiven him for that waste of perfectly good trees known as Goddess, as he has enjoyed phenomenal runs on Hitman, Preacher, Hellblazer, and Punisher. Quietly, he has established himself among the top echelon of comic book writers, alongside Ellis and Morrison, especially for writing redeemable bastards. Which makes him a perfect match for giving voice to the character of Ghost Rider.

Making his first leap into the spotlight in 1972, at the height of our fascination with daredevils, Ghost Rider has remained a perennial fan favorite. Like Aquaman and Black Panther, he is a B-list character that has been resurrected several times as different writers have tried to nail down him character definitively. But they keep trying because the image of a leather jacket wearing biker whose skull and cycle are on fire is just plain cool.

This also means that the years have brought a tangle of continuity issues that any new writer has to either cut through or ignore. His story, at its core, revolves around motorcycle stunt driver Johnny Blaze who has made a deal with the devil, Mephisto in the Marvel Universe, in order to save the life of his friend who was dying of cancer. Selling his soul for a boon in a fixed game, Johnny Blaze becomes bound to Zarathos while his friend, cured of the cancer, ends up dying in another motorcycle stunt. Blaze and Zarathos eventually battle for control of the body.

In Ennis’ hands, gone is any mention of Zarathos or Mephisto, and Ghost Rider becomes almost a mythological figure, a boogeyman of the spiritual realms. All Johnny Blaze, doomed to damnation after making his pact with Satan.

The digital art by Clayton Crain is gorgeous to look at (again, artists drool at the prospect of drawing Ghost Rider) and proves a great match for Ennis’ story. It’s the Ennis portion of the story that gave me pause. Having read the best of his work, familiarity bred ... familiarity. Ennis doesn’t quite phone this story in, but he uses many of his rhythms, characters, and flourishes in this story. Hell and Earth somehow connected in Texas. The gamesmanship of spiritual forces, with the angels and demons not being all that different from one another. All that was missing was his love of soldiers and war stories, though it was hinted at with his fallen reverend character.

However, it’s obvious that Ennis keeps returning to spiritual themes for a reason, a showcase for his various issues with the Church, religion, and how God is depicted. Christianity, for him, is seen through the lens of the KKK and the corrupt rich church, complete with corrupt/fallen leader. Though some will surely say that this is a relevant image, my biggest beef is that it has become such a tired trope that writing this is lazy. And for a writer as talented as Ennis, such cliches are actually beneath him. It’s kind of like writing the evil businessman, which sadly, Ennis also does in this run.

However, his depiction of heaven and hell, angels and demons, are straight out of Medieval times, treating the imagery of the Bible to establish a grand mythology, much the same way the movie Constantine did. Yet this does touch on the nearly universal intuition of a cosmic conflict. That there are gods, angels, demons, principalities and powers engaged in a cosmic battle of good vs. evil, wreaking havoc on creation, bringing ills on humanity as collateral damage. This sense of a spiritual conflict has found its way into various mythologies and religious practices, yet our modern, Western mind has dismissed it as ignorant, primitive, or superstition. People believe what makes them feel safe, but this intrusion of the supernatural into the ordinary is what gives horror much of its thrust.

In a way, myth anticipates reality. Our world is largely shaped by this war between good and evil, both on an individual level (with our personal struggles), on a communal level (as humanity relates to one another), and on a spiritual level (the behind the scenes conflicts of the spiritual realm). Yet, according to the Christian story of the Bible, the devil and his kingdom of powers and demons is defeated by Christ’s death and resurrection. Jesus, the God-man as warrior, defeating these forces in unexpected, even counter-intuitive, ways. Through Christ, Death and evil are overthrown.

Ghost Rider, with his flaming skull and motorcycle, was a chain wielding hellspawn long before Todd McFarlane’s Spawn made it cool. This is a great jump on book for new readers as everything is as new to this “recalled to duty� Ghost Rider as it is to us. However, as a fan of Ennis, it felt like he just threw in all the things he was known for–from violence to his crass humor and his stock badass characters–without stretching for anything new. All this to whet our appetites, bring Ghost Rider to the forefront, in order to prepare the way for the feature length movie from Sony Pictures due out February 2007 and starring Nicholas Cage.


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