Military

Read more about the article Review: DEMO #1-12

Review: DEMO #1-12

[EDIT: Welcome, Larry Young fans! Be sure to also check out my response to what brought you here, here.]

I have to admit to having an extreme aversion to hype. I call it the American Beauty-syndrome, in reference to the inexplicable amount of praise that overrated retread of suburban dysfunction received. I saw it three weeks after it opened, simultaneously impressed and concerned by the amount of hype it was getting, and absolutely hated it. As the hype continued to grow, I hated it even more, nearly bursting a blood vessel when it won Best Picture honors.

DEMO is now my comic book equivalent of American Beauty.

Hailed as the “Indy of the Year” by Wizard, yet snubbed even an honorable mention by The Comics Journal, I can only believe that some people give extra credit to intent when actual content goes missing, because Brian Wood’s self-righteous attempt at “a whole new and different take on superpowers” is little more than an interesting concept crippled by half-assed execution. When you get bold and go promising “new and different,” you better deliver the goods and Wood just doesn’t do it.

Twelve individual stories, very loosely connected by the aforementioned “superpowers” theme, DEMO might best be described as the X-Men Professor Xavier doesn’t track down. Or, if you wanted to be snarky, NYX if it were more pretentious and had been published on a regular schedule.

That is, of course, only referring to the issues where Wood actually stuck to his self-proclaimed “new and different take on superpowers.”

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Continue ReadingReview: DEMO #1-12
Read more about the article Right-Wing Comics Conspiracy!

Right-Wing Comics Conspiracy!

For all those who scoff at anything that even remotely suggests so-called “conspiracy theories,” believing they’re all far-fetched fictions made up by paranoid whack-jobs, here’s a little something to chew on: right-wingers looking to inflitrate comic books!

At Bill Jemas’ zenith as President of Marvel Comics he commissioned “4/11,” also known as The White Album, an anthology series telling stories about world war, politics and terrorism with a slant towards fixing problems, finding new solutions and making the world a better place. Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s short story about Irish sectarianism was a highlight, but the project faltered after one invited writer had her work rejected and went AWOL, and the third issue and subsequent collection were both cancelled – seen as an initial sign that Jemas was on the skids. And he skidded out of the door to be replaced by a safer pair of hands.

We wonder what he’s make of Marvel’s upcoming “Combat Zone: True Tales from GI’s in Iraq.” Not only has this book been waiting for publication at Marvel for a while, but a number of artists have been approached, started on the book and then left when it’s true nature was revealed.

While a number of Marvel’s previous titles involving war and terrorism have tried to explore issues from different perspectives, reports I’ve had are that this is not the case here. America is the One True Hope, all who oppose her or disagree with her current thinking are evil scum, and the world would be better off without them. And thank the Lord we have these plucky brave soldiers to do her bidding.

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Continue ReadingRight-Wing Comics Conspiracy!
Read more about the article Cannibalism is nutritious

Cannibalism is nutritious

“War is good for the economy…like cannibalism is nutritious.”

In related news:

U.S. stocks rally as oil drops to two-week lows

Wednesday August 25, 1:35 pm ET

By Mark Cotton

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) — U.S. stocks gained ground in afternoon trading Wednesday, buoyed by fresh drop in oil prices to two-week lows.

Crude for October delivery fell as low as $44.08 per barrel intraday on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the latest industry data showed motor-fuel stocks either unchanged or higher on the previous week, confounding analyst estimates of a decline.

A two-week low is cause for investor enthusiasm? Cannibalism, indeed.

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Continue ReadingCannibalism is nutritious
Read more about the article Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

My issues with the Democratic Party Platform: Strong at Home, Respected in the World, aka Identity Crisis.

from the PREAMBLE

That is the America we believe in. That is the America we are fighting for. That is the America we will build together – one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Boilerplate, I know, but still annoying for it’s pandering to the south.

from A STRONG, RESPECTED AMERICA

Time and again, this Administration confuses leadership with going it alone and engagement with compromise of principle. They do not understand that real leadership means standing by your principles and rallying others to join you.

“Standing by your principles??!” How did that get in there when Prince Flip-Flop is at the top of the ticket?

Today, we face three great challenges above all others – first, to win the global war against terror; second, to stop the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; and third, to promote democracy and freedom around the world, starting with a peaceful and stable Iraq.

Did anybody proofread this thing?  How did George Bush’s platform sneak in here?!?!

To meet these challenges, we need a new national security policy guided by four new imperatives:… Second, we must modernize the world’s most powerful military to meet the new threats.

That’s not a new imperative.  That’s business as usual!

from DEFEATING TERRORISM

With John Kerry as Commander-in-Chief, we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake, but we must enlist those whose support we need for ultimate victory… Democracy will not blossom overnight, but America should speed its growth by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments that work toward this end.

And this is different from Bush’s stance how?

We will attack the exploding opium trade ignored by the Bush Administration by doubling our counter-narcotics assistance to the Karzai Government and reinvigorating the regional drug control program.

Ah, the return of the war on drugs! What next? “Just say no!”

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Continue ReadingDemocratic Party’s Identity Crisis
Read more about the article Dubya is no Reagan

Dubya is no Reagan

The front page of today’s Daily News proclaims: TEAR DOWN THAT PRISON, inferring a ridiculous comparison of Bush’s speech last night and Reagan’s infamous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech at the Berlin Wall.

I wondered last night whether or not the US had continued to use any of the German concentration camps once they had been liberated to house German civilians? enemy combatants? insurgents prisoners of war at the end of World War II, but everything I’ve come across suggests that conditions were so horrible at most of them that they had to be burned to the ground.

Interestingly, Abu Ghraib during Saddam’s reign was [still is] often referred to as a concentration camp, where numerous Iraqis were sent and never seen again. And yet, knowing its reputation, we thought it was a good idea for us to set up camp there and use it to detain Iraqis ourselves, many of whom were dragged from their homes in the middle of the night by their supposed liberators, the US military.

Families live in fear of midnight call by US patrols

by Daniel McGrory, The Times Online, 9 July 2003

NEVER again did families in Baghdad imagine that they need fear the midnight knock at the door. But in recent weeks there have been increasing reports of Iraqi men, women and even children being dragged from their homes at night by American patrols, or snatched off the streets and taken, hooded and manacled, to prison camps around the capital.

Children as young as 11 are claimed to be among those locked up for 24 hours a day in rooms with no light, or held in overcrowded tents in temperatures approaching 50C (122F).

On the edge of Baghdad International Airport, US military commanders have built a tent city that human rights groups are comparing to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Remarkably, the Americans have also set up another detention camp in the grounds of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. Many thousands of Iraqis were taken there during the Saddam years and never seen again.

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Continue ReadingDubya is no Reagan
Read more about the article No such thing as a just war

No such thing as a just war

Another hopeful sign…

Soldier who refused to return to Iraq to surrender in North Miami

By Erik Schelzig, Associated Press

NORTH MIAMI, Fla. (AP) Shaken by a gunfight in Iraq that killed innocent civilians, a 28-year-old U.S. soldier declared the invasion ”an oil-driven war” and said he won’t return to the Middle East and fight.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, of Miami Beach, surrendered Monday at an air force base in Massachusetts, where he was ordered to report to his unit Tuesday at the North Miami Armory in suburban Miami.

His attorney, Louis Font, said he believes Mejia is the first soldier to turn himself in after refusing to return to Iraq. Mejia said he would seek conscientious objector status.

Mejia was in Iraq for about five months last year until October, when he returned home on leave. He did not return to duty.

”This is an oil-driven war, and I don’t think any soldier signs up to fight for oil,” Mejia said Monday after arriving at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Mejia said he was particularly upset over an incident in which he and others were ambushed and innocent civilians were hit in the ensuing gunfire.

”That’s one of the things that tells me there’s no such thing as a fair war, no such thing as a just war,” he said.

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Continue ReadingNo such thing as a just war
Read more about the article A sense of naked helplessness

A sense of naked helplessness

I rarely give a conscious thought to the possibility of being caught up in a terrorist attack, fully accepting the likelihood that NYC remains a target and at some point in the future, another attack will come. Other than crawling under a rock or moving to North Dakota, there's really no other option and, to be honest, I don't even see much difference between the two. Every now and then, though, something random happens that forces me to acknowledge that I live and work smack in the middle of one of the largest bullseyes around, and it can be a…

Continue ReadingA sense of naked helplessness

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