Creationist Dinosaurs

Driving east on the 10 en route from the sublime emptiness of Joshua Tree National Park, back to the sea of metallic machines and smog so thick you can chew it, a party of dinosaurs rose up in the distance. To be precise, there were two, both with a pallor suggesting the aftermath of a disagreeable meal, frozen in place as if victims of the white witch. I was simultaneously gratified and disturbed by their presence. I had traversed this almost entirely vacant stretch of the 10 at least two dozen times and somehow managed to bypass the most arresting and curious element of the landscape. So it was fortunate that on this occasion I was riding shotgun with a partner at the wheel. Indeed, it was he who spotted the Jurassic giants. 

On spying them he let out an excited cry, which seemed a touch overenthusiastic, even for such an awesome and rare (unless you are driving through Colorado) sight. "Wizard!" was the single, breathless word he uttered. "Wizard!" Clearly missing the reference and a piece of childhood for people of my age I responded, not unkindly, "What?" In an even more ecstatic and breathless outpouring he rejoined, "Wizard!" (which I found a touch redundant and unhelpful). "The movie. They're in the movie! Man, but are the guys gonna be jealous. Let's pull over!"

Not one to turn down any eccentricity of architecture, I concurred. And so we were to be found, moments later, jacket clad, standing below the behemoths in what was apparently a wind tunnel (the windmills should have been a clue). As all tourists are obliged to do, we pulled out cameras, orchestrated ourselves in a multitude of interesting positions - underneath claws, on top of toes, beneath bellies, in mouths - and then attended the gift shop. It was there that I had the first inkling that something was not quite as it should be.

In an effort to make the lifeless cement gigantors worth more than a couple of snapshots, the dinosaurs' owner had located a shop in the belly of the beast, a.k.a. the bracheosaurus. The stairs, marching upward through the creature's tail, sported glass covered display cases on both sides. Inside were the usual - fossils, maps, plastic figurines, geodes. Having seen such displays upwards of 1,000 times in my 23 years I paid them scant attention and proceeded to the stomach and intestinal region. 

As per the usual, the shop was packed with plastic toys, shop encasing "fossilized" insects, shirts in colors only tourists go for, like moths to a flame, magnets, and then that array of toys which has nothing to do with the overall exhibit such as miniature men in medieval gear riding stallions with those legs that never seem to stay quite straight. While I am in many ways still a child and enamored of toys, I was not overly interested in the spread and was about to tune my surroundings out when, from the corner of my eye, I spotted a display of shirts sporting the catch phrase "By design, not by Chance" written beneath the feet of a T-Rex. This was a shirt suggesting either that natural selection is a little savvier than generally supposed or a billboard for intelligent design. My suspicions pointed to the latter. And if so this was something to get excited about, not because I am a creationist Christian or anything of the like, but because it was so wholly different, so wonderfully novel. This was a dinosaur gift shop like none I had previously encountered. My explorative impulse renewed I pressed on, pawing through everything in the store. Moments later I came upon a display of truly wonderful shoes, my particular favorite of which was fashioned after the face of a T-Rex, a piercing yellow eyeball on each side. While the graphics intrigued me, it was the quote on the box which really tickled my fancy, "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science." - Soren Lovtrup. My previous suspicions were now confirmed beyond doubt. These idols were not dedications to Darwin, but offerings to God, representations of his creative genius! On the verge of an almost hysterical giddiness I all but ran about the shop, turning over every box, peering under every product to read what was written there. Every passage was highly rewarding, consisting of quotes from Bible passages, information for a duped world. 

I simply had to know who the curators of such a bizarre anomaly were. Mustering my courage I approached the blond, middle aged, overly spunky lady behind the counter. "I'm curious, may I ask who owns this, uh, establishment?" Turning on a recording that she must be entreated to rehash a thousand times a day she answered. Apparently the creatures' initial creator and proprietor was a man who had aided in the design and construction of Knotts Berry Farm. Looking at the modern architectural landscape, where there's nothing that can be built which cannot be torn down, he wanted to find a place where he could build something that would last. Selecting a remote region in the Mohave desert he used left overs from the freeways being built at that time (rebar and cement primarily) and constructed his mammoths. A devoted darwinist he dedicated them to evolution and evolution was promoted in the gift shop. Upon his death his pets passed to his son who turned around and sold it to (this is my favorite part) a group of creationist Christians. Oh, but how the old man must be turning in his grave. Since then it has become a place for the promotion of not just intelligent design, but creationism. "We have evolutionary biologists come in from time to time," the women said as she came to the close of her tale, "and they try to argue with us, but you just can't really argue with the truth. That's what we're doing here, we're getting out the truth, dispelling the lies." Brilliant.

I was so taken with the surreal bizarro world that I had entered that I found no choice but to make two small purchases. The first was one of the afore mentioned shirts. I figured that it would come in handy as a conversation starter in bars and would give me a bearing on the number of creationist and anti-creationists out there by the number of people who applauded me or threw rocks at me. Part way through this initial purchase I saw on the edge of the counter a book entitled "Refuting Evolution: A response to the national academy of sciences' teaching about evolution and the nature of science". I mean, how could I refuse. Pleased with my booty my partner and I headed back down the stairs, this time peering into each display case. Therein were maps not of any real world, but of the Flood, the Garden of Eden, and other important but metaphorical locations. Exiting the tail and stepping back into reality, I found myself thoroughly pleased with the experience, reinvigorated, and pleased to live in a country where such things as creationist dinosaurs exist.

On Being A Kid

There is an issue which has been long weighing on my mind. Why is it that adults pick the one vegetable that a child does not like and then force them to eat it? Perhaps because I am not myself a parent, it is simply impossible for me to grasp the deep underpinnings of the parental psyche. But, really, why. Growing up I was more inclined towards vegetables than most of my peers. I happily devoured caesar salads, ate carrots, was one of the few individuals on earth to actually enjoy brussel sprouts (preferably raw), along with a slew of other little regarded veggies such as turnips. Indeed turnips were a staple snack which appeared consistently in lunches packed by my mother, that is, until I entered third grade when our lovely principal suggested that we should all be packing our own lunches ( I believe my mother may have been the only one to take her up on that suggestion, and quite gleefully). But no matter. There are quite a lot of advantages to packing your own lunch as a child. I never pulled from the depths of my pale any edible which I had not pre-approved. 

But I digress. Vegetables. I would have, and did, eat almost any vegetable delivered to my plate my the parental units, just thankful that I lived in a post frozen vegetable age when fresh produce had come back into vogue. Yet, despite my willingness to eat almost anything green, orange, or squash, my parents repeatedly pronged asparagus onto my unwilling plate. Again and again I would remind them that I not only did not like asparagus, but found that it motivated what was inside me, to come out. I even suggested that while they savored their green spears of death, I might dine upon a miniature tree, or perhaps some of those brussel sprouts. But to no avail. They seemed serenely, pathologically devoted to me eating those asparagus (or asparagi, I am a little hazy on the plural). 

Dutifully, for at that age I was obligingly dutiful, still holding the belief that though I might not understand the acts or motivations of my parents they must be right, privileged to some knowledge that I had not yet acquired, I would eat the asparagus, gulping a gallon of milk after each treacherous bite. Then, fatefully one night I was dining at a friend's house. My friend's parents seemed, like mine, to have the pathological desire to have their children eat asparagus. And so the little green spikes of grossness appeared on my plate. Now, I had been raised properly, in the fashion where it is rude to not eat something proffered to you by those who have willingly watered and fed you. And so I realized that not only would I have to consume that which was staring up at me, but I would have to do it gracefully. And then the revelation occurred. I watched as each member of the family spooned, from a pretty little dish on the table, a doblette of mayonnaise onto their plate. They then proceeded, in the case of the adults only lightly, and in the case of the kids with a clear desire to drown, to put the asparagus into the mayonnaise and only then lift it to their lips. Brilliant. Why had I not thought of this earlier? In my house we ate mayo with artichoke, but it had never occurred to me to transfer that practice to the deadly asparagus. Needless to sat I ate two times the weight of the asparagus before me in mayo. Quite happily in fact. In retrospect the amount of fat conveyed to my sleek intestinal system from the mayo far outweighed the benefits of the vegetable. But no matter. My upchuck reflex had been thwarted. From then on I masked every unsavory bite of asparagus with tubs of mayo, regardless of the fact that if a vegetable more to my taste had been proffered I would have had a much healthier meal. And so I reveled in my small victory in the endless skirmish between kids and parents. A small victory for kid world.

Play more

Risk. That's something that you don't see enough of. Fear squashes risk, or the ability to do take that step, that leap beyond your comfort zone. I've been thinking a lot lately about why we are so afraid. About how we create those zones. And then, as with most ideas, brilliant or not, it came to me in moment - it's the absence of play. 

As a child there are no barriers, no moral or social qualms that stop us. Walking down the street, a child who spies an awesome tree will climb it. Doesn't matter if people are oddly peering at them or if their parents, in fear for the child's life, are yelling at them to come down. It's a tree. It's cool. Climb it. Straight forward. When we get to adulthood that all changes. When I walk down the street and see an imminently climbable tree my first thought is, tree that I would like to climb. But then the clutter arrives, none of it, by the way, having to do with physical fear. First there is the worry that others walking down the street, or passers by in cars will think that I am crazy or deranged. Then the thought comes, well, I could combat that by seeming to be in pursuit of a cat caught in high branches (though this does not hold up for those close to me who can clearly see that no cat is present). Then I worry about the owner of the tree, which in and of itself is a bizarre concept - I mean, come on, it's a tree. But I worry that they will suddenly appear on the scene angry either because they are worried about their insurance or because they think that I might damage a branch or two in my ascent. By the time I have run through all of these scenarios the tree suddenly doesn't seem as freeing as it did a moment before. 

This is a shame and speaks to a larger issue. The death of play. Perhaps this issue is so prescient for me because for one wonderful, unforgettable year, between my 20th and 21st birthday all of the qualms, social impediments, and worries that I had acquired over my life until that time disappeared. And I owe it to one person who in this regard should be a role model to all of us. My friend Peter Parker (well, actually Brodhead, but Parker was a more suited name which he adopted for himself). He showed me what it was like to be a kid again. To go out and climb irregardless of rules, laws, the perceptions of others. They meant nothing to him. And in his presence I acquired that, not irreverence, for that has a negative connotation, but freedom. We climbed buildings, billboards, the Philadelphia Art Museum, playground structures (though in a more advanced way than most children). We rode our bikes around the city like kids biking around their neighborhoods. We danced at clubs like no one was watching or judging. It was the most freeing, exhilarating year of my life, and I miss it. I have found, subsequent to our knowing of each other, that I have a difficult time replicating that nonchalant heir on my own. 

Over the years that have followed I have tried to pinpoint what it was, what made us (and still does, I suspect, him) so free. So unperterbed by society. What it was that we were doing, exactly. And then, as I said, it hit me. We were playing. We were re-experiencing what it was to be children. To see something big and want to surmount it. This playfulness fed into other aspects of my life, making every moment more enjoyable and increasing my creativity. It changed the whole landscape of the world. Made everything amazing. The world was once again meant to be interacted with fully, not just passed by or observed. It was an interactive landscape and we were interacting. 

When you create a society so full of rules, legal, social, cultural, that you bind the creativity of its citizens you do them a great disservice. I do not mean to imply anarchy by any measure. All I mean is that we've boxed ourselves in. We've pushed ourselves to be too adult. To stiff. Yes, there are more strains and responsibilities as one gets older, but doesn't that just mean we need to play more, to counterbalance all of it, all the stress, the unhappiness with work? Indeed, there would be less unhappiness with work if there was more play going on there. It wouldn't even be a complete loss for the company (as some, fairly decent companies like Google have learned). Play spawns creativity. And how could it not? Put people on bean bags in a colorful space with toys, balls to squeeze, a trampoline to jump on, big sheets of paper to draw on and lots of markers and how can something creative not come of it? If I may say the worst design of all time if the cubicle. Not only does it shut individuals off from the world which would and should inspire them, but it shuts them off from other individuals. And I think we all know by now, the greatest creativity occurs when people come together. It may be chaotic, but as Bruce Moa says in his manifesto (and by the way if you haven't read it, please do), "Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential." In that space so much can occur, and play is best done with others. Have fun in all moments, and, again, as Bruce Moa (a genius in his own right) says, "Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves."  Fun breeds results.

So I suppose that the point of all of this for those of you still reading is that we need to make a concerted effort (though don't strain yourself too much for that would defeat the point) to play more. To laugh more. To climb more trees despite the opinions of those on the periphery. 

Economic Event Horizon

America decries the labor shift to third world countries; worries that work-minded immigrants will impede our economy, cut down n jobs for "true" Americans. Based on our present structure these may be cause for concern. But the problem is not these changes, it's our inability to change, to adapt to a world where past models must be surpassed. Luckily we already posses all the faculties for forward movement. They're in us, literally. Intellect is our most viable economic good - it never dries up, the more of it [people] the better, "it offers not diminishing returns, but increasing returns." (Rise of the Creative Class; Richard Florida).

The concept of intellect as a central and essential element of economy falls under what is called the New Growth Theory. Intellectual property is here at the economic forefront. The shift towards this model has begun, as evidenced by the ever massive number of arguments and litigations regarding the ownership of ideas. While these are inarguably important (credit should be given where due), they create risk by impeding creativity. Lawrence Lessing, a Stanford University law professor has argued that, "our penchant for overprotecting and overlitigating intellectual property may well serve to constrain and limit the creative impulse." (Rise of the Creative Class; Richard Florida). Creativity seems best to flourish where ownership is not an issue, or less so one. Bloggers, youtube posters, factory workers all put forth creativity that may (or may not) be attributed to them, but, regardless, is not "owned" in a patent or copyright sense. These three categories may seem disjointed. They are not. Bloggers blog to put their ideas into the world. Most create not for money, but for the sake of creating, to generate ideas, or share ideas that could have an impact. To stimulate their own minds. People, whether individually or as a group, create pieces explicitly for Youtube with no expectancy of monetary return. It is about the act of creation and existence of a venue in which to share creativity's results, an important impetus for creativity. Financial feedback may not be forthcoming, but views and comments are. The factory similarly creates a venue for creativity. Filled with individuals with specific knowledge it is the perfect place for an outpouring of ideas. Rote production is a model of the past. Many factories now seek individuals who are apt problem solvers and are interested not only in a paycheck, but in a place to put forth their thoughts. When factory work becomes creative, you know that there is a shift in the winds. Marx was correct, though in a way he did not realize, when he said that workers would control the means of production. We are the means of production - our intellect - and it's all ours.

Elements of acceptance, of moving beyond our outmoded economic model are underway. Open source opens the boundaries of intellectual property, acknowledges and utilizes the notion that while one mind or a closed group is good, the many are better. A passive form of open source that has become familiar to most is Wikipedia. The idea involves multiple individuals building an informational database. Each person adds information of which they have special knowledge. No one person knows it all. It is the collection that creates the contents of a massive, multi-layered encyclopedia. Similarly there are design-oriented open-source sites. These function in various ways. A designer can post a finished design, with directions for construction, allowing any individual to use the design, no money down, or ever owed to the creator. To another end a designer can post a concept or partially planned product. Others can then help evolve the concept utilizing their specific expertise, be they an engineer, interior designer, house wife, garbage man, barista, and so it goes. No single person owns the design. It is the brainchild of all and better for it, created from multiple perspectives. Realizing the potential of such a model makes what we presently have seem crippled.

Despite the unlimited possibilities presented by this model and other like it, they bring forth many questions and unknowns. How are individuals compensated for their work? As we live in a world of corporations how do we begin such a massive shift? How are returns on products distributed? If government form follows economic model, how does such a shift affect the future political landscape? If democracy and capitalism are linked (and this is assuming that they are), does a model more closely linked to open source lead to ... socialism or an altered or more true form of democracy? These are big questions and they are the ones that we need to be asking, not  out of the fear that our present model isn't succeeding, but because of the positive possibilities for the future if we allow ourselves to evolve. To open up to new ways of working. To accept the fact that we have not hit our zenith, that this is not the only was to be, nor all that we can be.

Awaken Always Anew

To dance and sing in a rain of falling stars. Bear all heavenward, heavenly - heaven is spread among us. The all is now, a moment captured of eternity, eternally revolving, rotating radians rendering this beautiful immensity of existence. Extrapolating emotions emanating from with each - each of us a Buddha being, bearing the weight of the world, worries, worn, shorn dreams depressing transcendence. To transcend, ascend, amend broken hearts spread thin, thirsty for love. Bastardly bombardments, brandishing hate. Mates murdering each other's joy. Remorseful rumors ruminate, creep out of lips clenched, entrenched behaviors burdening change, championed by habitual habits. Open your eyes. Awaken out of sorrow-filled sleep, where sheep with fangs devour souls. Awaken always anew.

Homage to DP

This moral majority for morbidity espousing, captivating capitalistic impulse. Obsessors of oppression creating, captivating ... no one - the derivation of the problem. Circling cyclone of catastrophe down. Up. Uppers. High. Caffeinated consumers consuming, consummating the sacred marriage of capitalistic morality. Flouters. Flouting modernity, the child of traditionalism. Traditionalistic trespassers traipsing, eliminating the past. A past. Who's past? Mine? Yours? Theirs. The they that are. Are leading a culture so morally mandated, castrated by a yesteryear of non-existence. Norman Rockwell weeps for a world he never knew, yet made. Man made facade, a wad of gum, stuck under a desk, a pest, but reality. Children are not perfect. But imperfection drives creation -ism, isn't mandated by the government, but church, all caught in a lurch. Morality 101. But do you dare compare some liberal replacement. Defacement of religion? Do we prey on those who pray to God. Who's God. Under this star strangled banner of conformity. We trust in God. god. God the almighty who smites like Zeus' thunder bolts. A colt. A country. 200 years. A mere blip, a snip of the cosmos coming cosmically to some clueless Cambrian explosion. A paradigm paradoxically occurring peripherally. The mainstream monotony marching mundanely towards ... the mundane. Counter culture coerced, perverted purposely. Perplexed creators standing by their morals, running contrary to culture - counter culture becomes the norm. Abstract abstractions lining walls pervert the call of poverty and indignation. Become the markers of the wealthy. Sixty dollar shoes shamelessly lining walls of malls. Artistic aspirations apprehended. Extended beyond the gutter to displace the commonplace. The race begins. No one wins. No mistake, what is at stake, your soul. Religion 101. Consuming consumers - correlating expenditure with loyalty - the royalty live on where morals go to die.

A Little Bit of Awe

I have always enjoyed the argument by anti-evolutionists that the fact that we are gentetically very similar to apes is proof of nothing. At a DNA level, we're close relatives of daisies as well. They're right of course. But, lost in the attempt to win the argument on either side we're all missing the point - how truly astounding it is that all life on Earth is so similar! Genetically all living beings (things depending on how you like to categorize various forms of life) are almost exactly the same! Wow!

Now, whether that is because a God created everything (because hey, if you've got a formula that works, why not use it for everything?), or because DNA is really an alien entity that came to Earth and has disguised itself inside all living things doesn't really matter. The matter is what matters. How can you help but feel magnificently connected to a world that shares your genetic structure? I think some awe is in order, just a little.

Humanity may forever question how we got here. And why not - it makes the world more interesting. But the truth is, we'll never know. That is not the province of the living. Our quest is the proverbial game of the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. I have my theories, you have yours. So let's just all place nice and jointly appreciate the majesty of it all.

Contemporary Comics Communicate

With a massive majority of mainstream media over taken by a select group of vested interests who is left to challenge society's tenets? To pose the tough question? Expose unattractive realities? Shine light on the bigger issues, when the direct approach has been thwarted by a degenerate political and media landscape? An entity cannot correct itself. That's what a teacher once told me. To solve a problem you must step back, out of the arena. Look from the outside in. Adopt shoes outside the fray.

Who or what better to assume the role of commentator on this, our modern state of affairs, than a medium that those who need to be challenged have historically attempted to thwart. To discredit. To condemn for perversity, a dearth of morals, triteness. To call out as having a negative impact on society. To embody all that they (politicians and media pundits alike) now do. I speak, of course, of comic books.

The comic books I speak of are not just  penny pamphlets meant to entertain. They provide a venue for vocalizing concerns. Since the 1950s, the so called "golden age" of comics, the medium has evolved. Perhaps duress forced it to mature. After all, moralistic politicians have never really been comic book enthusiasts. They have been the opposite. In an effort to cut the sudden abundance of comics in the early 1950s the Senate Subcommitee on Juvenile Delinquency (yes, there really is a group of mostly white haired men who haven't been young in more than half a century who sit around deliberating on why kids are loud, annoying, and seemingly crazy) called an investigation into the comic book industry. Remember, teenagers were still a new phenomenon (and this a frightening force ... wait, they still are, but I guess we'll just have to find solace in the fact that one day they will become one of us) as the term had only been generated in the 1940s. Old people were scared. Society was changing. Comic books were the scapegoat. And they had not even yet become all that they would be.

Leading the charge was Senator Estes Kefauver, who began his career as a lawyer and gained publicity via senate hearings on juvenile delinquency in relation to sex and violence in the mass media. On the back of his notoriety he twice attempted to attain the Democratic Presidential nomination, and twice failed. In his quest for the root of delinquency (which we are sill looking for today), he turned his attention to the comic book industry. I mean, why not? To begin his mission he sent a seven question survey to the judges of juvenile and family courts. Had juvenile delinquency increased between 1945 and 1950? Who or what was the instigator? About half of the questions followed this general format. The others, well ... In a court of law the others would, I believe, fall into the category of "leading questions"; (5) Do you believe that there is any relationship between reading crime comic books and juvenile delinquency? (6) Please specifically give statistics and if possible, state specific cases of juvenile crime which you believe can be traced to reading crime comic books (7) Do you believe that juvenile delinquency would decrease if crime comic books were not readily available to children? Will someone please reread me the definition of subjective?

So that was the beginning. The beginning of the temporal end. A beginning with no foundation in reality. But, then. politicians have never much needed that. Approximately "sixty percent felt there was no relationship between comic books and juvenile delinquency, and almost seventy percent felt that banning crime comics would have little effect on delinquency." (www.crimeboss.com/history03-1.html; excerpt from Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code) And so, comics became the enemy. Special committees were formed, witnesses were called. Even the Post Office was brought in (I mean, who knew that they did anything but make you wait in long lines, treat you like an idiot when you ask how many stamps should go on an extra large envelope, and send priority mail vis Macedonia?). To the Post Office was given a list of comic book titles, not to mention publishers, authors, and artists (I must say for a country that claims to hoist up the individual we do a great job of cutting down our creatives via blacklists). The goal in all of this was a circuitous method of censorship. It was nothing new, "Postal regulations were sometimes used as a censorship tool by the federal government." (www.crimeboss.com/history-1.html; excerpt from Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code) It failed. So the hearings began. Witnesses - PHDed men marinating in their own morality exhibiting slides. pulling from them the minutest of the miniscule. In the shadow of one character's face was found, when turned upside down and squinted at, a representation of a female's unmentionable part (I must say that such observation seem to tell more about the type of person who might find such representations than the artist who made a randomly shaped shadow - depending on who's eyes you peer through, everything is sexual and evil).  I suppose the shadow was somewhat suspect, but then again, anything remotely cylindrical or shaft-like can appear phallic - thanks to Freud's influence. This is what I term paranoia of the privates. They're everywhere!!!

Anyways, without further lingering on the issue (you can read more detailed reports on the hearings in your spare time, which I highly recommend if you are desirous of a good giggle) I will tell you that the upshot of all this pressure caused the industry to fall into a latent period of "self-regulation". There was a sudden dissipation of violent crime comics and an influx of Dinsney-esque, cute furry animal -filled ones, along with comicized (I here invoke the right to create new words that sound more pertinent than any in existence) versions of literary masterpieces. With all resolved and the spotlight shifted to more important matters, like communism, the comic book fell from its golden thrown, fell away from mainstream notice.

But not forever. The day would come when comics would reassert themselves. When they would become a modern mythology. The true golden age of comics. And this time, they would truly deserve their thrown.

That day has come. There is a contingency of comic book authors who speak to us in allegory, in metaphor. Who create worlds that are our own, and yet not. Worlds where the politicians and media are as we know them to be. Where people react realistically. To these worlds they add superheroes, as in Marvel's Civil War series, or J. Michael Straczynski's (creator of Babylon 5) Rising Stars. Or they create conflicts as allegories to those in which we are now entrenched, such as Brian Wood's Channel Zero, Jenny One, and DMZ, or Jonathan Hickman's The Nightly News. Nowhere have I seen more literate, poignant, realistic (and yes, I respect the irony of the usage of this word in relation to comics) exploration of our modern political, media, and social situation. They are not pretty. Not fantasy worlds to escape into. If you are looking for an out in the brilliantly illustrated pages of these books none will be found.

For those of you unfamiliar with the depth and complexity of many modern comics I will let you in on how they are all the things that I say they are (and remember, this is not all comics, yes there are still zombie comics that do not transcend their genre, but then who doesn't like a good zombie riot, and action comics, etc that are just meant to be fun ... these are not bad, but they are not what I am talking about - after all every genre has its kings). Civil War surrounds a conflict over a registration act for superheroes, by which all are charged to reveal their identities and, in essence, become government agents. Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, represents the superheroes for the act, and metaphorically the military industrial complex. Captain America, dear to all of our hearts, leads the opposition. He represents freedom. True freedom. Not some twisted definition of freedom warped by rhetoric. The two clash. Cicilians are injured. Friends kill friends. Both sides are told. The series, initiated by an overview story that reveals to the reader the general story of the war, is then explored in depth in the personal story of each individual involved. There is an X-men civil war, and Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, The Punisher, Young Avengers, and so the list goes on and on, versions of Civil War. Each reveals a different perspective. Allows empathy. Blurs the line between right and wrong as in real life. Rising Stars arises from a similar premise. Due to a strange anomaly 113 children are born with super powers. The government seeks to regulate them. To test them. To treat them not as children, but as lab rats. They are normal kids psychologically speaking, prone to the same disturbances, moral weaknesses. They grow up in a world that fears them and that they fear. As in civil war a conflict is generated which leads them to fight one another. Who the good guys are, or are not, becomes vague. To amend for their wrongs the remaining "specials" as they are called, begin a quest to make the world a better place. And they do. They're actions are the actions that would lead to a better world. But they do not make the corporations, military, or government happy. None of these entities really wish peace - where's the money in peace? So these entities seek to destroy man's salvation. And so the story goes on - I wouldn't want to spoil it!

To the non-super comics of relevance I will turn first to Brian Wood, my first love in the comic book realm. DMZ, his most successful and still running series, depicts a landscape after another civil war in America. New York (where our story takes place) has become a demilitarized zone (hence the comic's name). Matty Roth, the primary character, is an undercover journalist who has gone in to tell the true story. Of course he cannot remain above the fray and becomes more involved than he meant to be. It is an illustration of modern warfare, of distinctions between civilian and criminal blurred, of the real story never getting out, of cover-ups, and lies. Jonathan Hickman's The Nightly News is an even more direct assault on the modern media establishment, literally. A cult sets out to assassinate media pundits - and does. As a graphic designer, Hickman is very attached to charts and graphs, and inserts real statistics into his stories, breakdowns of the conglomeratization of  media, the use of ritalin and anti-depressants in America. These enhance the reality of his story. He too, like any good storyteller, looks in from both vantages, does not glorify either side. 

These are the stories that need to be told today. They confront serious issues in a serious time. Beginning with the publication of the Watchmen in the 1980s, a not so positive look at the psychology of the superhero which made the New York Times best seller list, the face of comics changed. They are not here to simply entertain us. Comics are a medium to be respected in their own right. If you are older, and past your comic book years, dispense with the mental image of comics you carry from your childhood. Pick up one of those books here referenced and take a gander. Don't trust my opinion, form your own. To those my age who think that comic books live in the realm f geeks take note, they do not. They are for everyone, and there is nothing embarrassing about reading a comic book - you have no idea how many dates I've gotten from reading a comic in a bar, how many friends I've made from reading them. Comic books are no longer a joke. They broach relevant issues and deserve the renewal of interest that they have gained due to the surge in comic books films due to better CGI. But don't stop at the movies, which I grant you are fun. They but scratch the surface of the depth that exists in many modern comics. But don't believe me. Run, don't walk to your nearest comic book establishment and read! "The world will read again!" (Vanilla Sky; Tom Cruise)