Peiratikos

So I’ve been following the news almost nonstop for a week—not good for one’s health. I can almost feel my blood pressure building every time I see Barbara Bush’s Marie Antoinette act, which I think is a good sign it’s time for a break. After all, there’s not much I can do that I haven’t already done; sadly, I don’t have a guillotine handy. Momentary distractions are good, and I might as well distract myself with a return to my old hobby of blogging about unimportant stuff.

Banana Sunday #2, Root Nibot and Colleen Coover: Oh dear, oh dear. Now, monkey can get ambiguous, because there are a few monkey species with “ape” in their common name, although such monkeys are not considered true apes. However, gorillas and orangutans are simply not monkeys. You know, now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever before seen gorillas or orangutans mistakenly called monkeys. Chimpanzees and gibbons, sure, they look sort of like monkeys. But gorillas? But the primates are so terribly cute and fun, especially Go-Go, that I can’t resist.

Also, Martin is a creep. I keep hoping Kirby will wise up and punch him right on the nose. But oh, those primates! I guess I’ll put up with anything for a little gorilla who loves butterflies.

Shining Knight #4, Grant Morrison, Simone Bianchi et al.: Jog is still worried about Seven Soldiers—actually, he’s more worried. Alas for him! Well, Shining Knight sure isn’t self-contained. After reading Jog’s post, I wondered, “What was Morrison thinking with his ‘modular storytelling’ hype, anyway?” And, actually, I bet I know what he was thinking: it was probably a joke at the expense of company-wide crossover “events.” Seven Soldiers, at least so far, has the virtue of being mostly self-contained—you don’t need to catch the allusions to other stories to follow the current story, although an understanding of the allusions can add entertaining nuances to your reading. Because he likes to take the piss, Morrison describes the self-containment hyperbolically: not only does a single issue in the Seven Soldiers series (I won’t call it an “event”) not cross over with other series, it doesn’t even cross over with Seven Soldiers! I doubt Morrison ever planned to make Seven Soldiers “modular.” (Or maybe he did—I haven’t spoken with him on the matter! But it doesn’t really matter if the story is satisfying, and I’ve been satisfied thus far.) I haven’t reread all four issues yet, but I think Shining Knight does work as a self-contained chapter in a larger story.

One promise Morrison has kept is that the chapters never quite intersect. Zatanna occasionally moves through Shining Knight’s wake, but no more than that (so far, so far). Which leads me to another of Jog’s complaints: Zatanna and Shining Knight don’t really match up; there are glaring continuity glitches. I admit that didn’t bother me—maybe I cut Morrison and his collaborators too much slack, but I expect Morrison’s narratives to be malleable, more metaphorical abstraction than concrete world-building. But even if the continuity glitches are simply mistakes, I find them more entertaining than bothersome. But I’m obsessed with cut-up aesthetic in all art forms, and there’s almost nothing I like more in a story than when it starts to fall apart, whether or not the author wanted it to. But this is Morrison, so I hesitate to say the inconsistencies are a result of carelessness. I guess we’ll see, though.

And, well, I think we’re meandering toward Jog’s final question: is Morrison getting in over his head? Actually, I hope so! I don’t trust an artist who doesn’t make an occasional graceful bellyflop into the deep end of the pool, and Morrison is one of my favorite writers because his entire artistic career has been one bellyflop after another—some more graceful than others, but all entertaining.

But what about the story? Well. So, Sir Justin is a girl. Unexpected but unsurprising. Like most of his stories, the building blocks of Shining Knight are slightly off-kilter clichés. Let’s see—in Seven Soldiers #0, Shelly Gaynor dresses up in a stupid fetish costume and stupidly goes to bed with an asshole. Zatanna causes no end of trouble by wishing for the man of her dreams. The Manhattan Guardian presents a variation on that immortal action-movie cliché, the obsessed man who neglects his wife and family because, damn it, he’s got a job to do. Gender, especially the feminine, is something to watch out for in Seven Soldiers; I’ll have to keep this in mind as I reread.