The Daily Pugle

Religious Critique in Black Death

2012-01-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Black Death is probably the center-piece of my study. Not only does it portray characters questioning their faith and a church committing dubious actions, but the bulk of its religious critique occurs between the characters. And that it's an action/horror film means it lends itself well to these kinds of issues. But to get at the real issues, I should warn, there are major spoilers ahead!

Fair warning...

The story follows the young monk Osmund during the 14th century plague infecting most of Europe. No one, including the monks, are safe from it's reach, except some of the rural villages deep in the forest and marshes. Conflicted between his duties to God and his love for a young woman, Osmund sends her back to their home in the forest. Guilt-ridden over breaking his vows, Osmund prays to God for a sign of which path he should follow. In answer, Sir Ulric, a knight on a holy mission (played by Sean Bean), and his troop of soldiers (of questionable repute) arrive at the monastery. They've been charged by the bishop to investigate a far off, secluded village that has not only been unravaged by the plague but death entirely; they hunt a necromancer. Osmund volunteers to lead them through his forest home with secret intention of reuniting with his love.

Of course, things don't go so well. Osmund finds his love's horse and bloody cloak just before his troop of miscreants is attacked by some crazy barbarian dudes, and a member of their party (the first of many) is killed. And worst of all, when they do find the village, they discover that their church hasn't been used in ages. They pretend to just be seeking refuge as they investigate, and they're wounds are healed by a local woman and her "mysterious" herbs. But the final straw is when Ulric sees one of the young village girls wearing a pendant given only to his order, who sent another knight in search of this village before him. And then he's captured, tortured, and quartered...but not before revealing he has brought the plague to the remote village. Oh, Sean Bean...

The film does an interesting job of continually poking at the Church's ignorance over assuming the plague is wrought by God or witchcraft. The battle scenes are excessively gory; special attention is given to one of the soldiers pissing behind a tree; the city the film begins in is a cesspool. The message is obvious--disease is caused by germs! When our band of heroes arrive at the village, they are immediately given a place to wash up and have their wounds tended by the village leader (a woman no less!) with the use of medicinal herbs. Again, the message is clear: this village is simply so remote from the disease and so cleanly, that not only does no one get sick but no one's dying either. To the stalwart Sir Ulric and the devout, however, only black magic could be the cause!

...Because the plague has nothing to do with rats!

Of course, none of this is to say that the village isn't evil. The village leader and supposed necromancer is crazy! Upon arriving at the village, she tempts Osmund with the body of his beloved, who she brings "back to life." Osmund, wary of the blasphemous necromancy that must be at play, refuses his newly revived love (who is more akin to a zombie than a person) and kills her to mercifully send her soul to God. Meanwhile, the crazy chick proceeds to have the villagers torture and kill the remaining band by promising them their freedom if they renounce God (only to then kill the renounced) as she preaches to her villages about the evil of the Christian God and His followers. Osmund (who's supposed to be reveling in his reunion with his beloved), manages to sneak in and free the remaining soldiers before chasing after the evil woman. But her torture of Osmund isn't done. She confesses that she is no witch or necromancer, and only used her herbs to make his love appear dead and then alive again--her living stupor only a temporary side effect of the medicine--meaning Osmund murdered her.

The woman manages to escape, and a the film's epilogue shows and psychologically ruined Osmund, now a knight and witch-hunter in Ulric's order. He travels Europe looking for the woman who so wronged him, and every time he finds a suspected which, she appears to Osmund as the one who got away. The combination of his rage, faith, and guilt means he listens to no pleas for mercy or innocence, but instead has each tortured and murdered.

It's kind of a depressing ending. But it drives home the message that religious fervor can be just as terrible as evil as atheistic fervor. And while this sort of strikes a balance between the two, the Church is still to blame for spreading the plague, murdering innocent women, and causing grief where none need be felt. From the time Osmund believes his love is dead, he firmly believes he is being punished, prompting him in one scene to confess to Ulric, "God has punished me for leaving His monastery." Ulric answers right back, "God has better things to think of." This idea that God has more to be occupied with than the petty sins of a lowly monk state that Osmund never need have hidden his love and sent her off alone in the first place. All of this compiled suggests that the film's message isn't that faith or the belief in God is bad, but that the Church itself is responsible for misrepresenting His word.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Comics Course Syllabus...Comic

2012-01-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally done it! I've created a syllabus for my Rhetoric of Comics course that IS a comic! It's something I've been working on for a couple of years, actually, but had given up on. But since I'm in pursuit of pursuing my doctoral degree, I realized that this semester may be last chance I get to teach a composition class on comics for awhile. And I'm teaching three sections this semester! So I thought that this Christmas Break would be the perfect chance to get back to drawing and finish it! And I have!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

My drawing skills aren't exactly up to snuff, and sure, the relevance of some of the images for the text is dubious, and yeah, if Scott McCloud ever sees my attempts at drawing him he may sue. I still think it's pretty cool, and hopefully, my students will too. If nothing else, after the first day of class, none of them will be able to say they've never read a comic before (which happens disturbingly often).

But I couldn't have done it without my wonderful wife Veronica. One of the reasons I gave up on it was that it seemed a little intimidating. But Veronica's amazing techno-prowess really helped. She digitally fixed the layout of some of the early pages, completely worked up the later ones, made the text fit, and even coached my drawing.

Lastly, I should point out that the images of Scott McCloud and the silhouette Batman and Superman are my attempts at artwork by Scott McCloud and Frank Miller. I really felt they needed to go in there (especially Scott McCloud's, as his work is a huge part of my class), but I didn't want to just scan pages of their work. Oh, and Dr. Lunsford, if you ever see my terrible caricature of you, I apologize profusely.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Religious Critique in Arn: The Knight Templar

2012-01-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

My wife calls him "Urn" to make fun :-/

Arn: The Knight Templar is a 2007/2008 Swedish adaptation of Jan Guillou's Crusades Trilogy of novels about Knight Templar Arn Magnusson. It's actually two films, but Netflix Streaming compiles it into one awesome movie. Arn is a war epic in the vain of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, and like Scott's film, it stresses the importance of diplomacy when two ideologies conflict while humanizing the Muslim people and faith and thereby showing the faults of medieval Christian ideology. And though its criticism of the Church is not overt, the Church instead serves as a kind of antagonist.

The story of Arn is pretty good and most closely resembles something like Braveheart. Arn is raised in a Christian monastery in Sweden at the bequest of his parents who prayed for a miracle following his nearly tragic birth. A restless youth, a French monk and former Knight Templar decides to teach the boy to ride, use a sword, and fire a bow and arrow. When he comes of age, he is sent back to his family, in the throws of a clan war with the Sverkers for the crown. With his cool Templar training he takes the Sverker leaders hand in a duel to defend his father's honour. To rub salt in the would, he gets involved with the man's fiancee Cecilia, not only managing to get her pregnant but caught. Under the threat of excommunication, both are sent to perform 20 years of penance, Cecilia in a convent run by the Sverkers, and Arn in the Holy Land. There, Arn quickly earns the reputation of a protector, regardless of race, creed, or religion; in fact, the film begins with Arn saving a pair of Muslim traders from bandits. He even speaks their language and respects their leader Saladin, who he unexpectedly meets at various points throughout the film.

This is sorta how I hoped he'd look in Thor :-/

Without giving too much more away, the film is really interesting, and is as much about Cecilia awaiting Arn's return from war as it is about Arn fighting in it. And her part in the story is as relevant as Arn's concerning religious criticism. As mentioned earlier, Cecilia is sent to a convent to do her penance under an abbess of the Sverker clan, and she is punished above and beyond her penance for slighting the family. Her son is taken from her immediately following it's birth, and she is never given any information about where he's sent or even if he's alive. Years later, she is able to learn from a new nun that not only is her son alive but that he is being raised by Arn's awesome, armoured, manly, and Swedish-speaking uncle, Stellan Skarsgård. In fact, on her deathbed, the abbess confesses to purposefully making Cecilia's life more difficult during her 20 years penance and asks her forgiveness so that she can get into heaven.

For Arn's part, understanding the Muslim people where his fellow brothers do not tends to make his life more difficult. Despite proving himself, his loyalty is questioned by the head of his order, who decides to blindly attack Saladin's larger, better fortified and provisioned army because his army has obtained "the True Cross," the holy artifact under which no Christian army has ever lost. Needless to say, the battle does not go well. But Saldin's portrayal is very interesting, and Arn's respect for him is well-earned.

"I don't always grant mercy, but when I do, I prefer to look like your Savior."

All in all, the major criticism against the Church here seems to be that no one and nothing is holy simply because of its name. Cecilia's abbess isn't good just because she's an abbess, Arn's brethren monks are peaceful just because they're monks, the True Cross doesn't guarantee victory just because it is the True Cross, and Muslims aren't evil just because they're not Christian. This last one is central to Arn's ongoing friendship with Saladin. They postulate on the nature of their beliefs and find common ground in forgiveness, mercy, and even the nature of their respective gods. The director really seems to be trying to drive this last point home in his representation of Saladin--great care has obviously been taken to make him resemble Christ in one key scene.

In the end, Arn: The Knight Templar is an epic war film, and if you haven't seen it, you should. There's more religious critique to the film than I'm discussing here, and it paints an interesting (and fairly accurate) picture of the period.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Religious Critique in Season of the Witch

2012-01-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

"The Last of the Templar"--Ominous much?

Next month I'll be presenting at an academic conference on Religious Critique in 21st Century Medieval Period Films. I'll be looking at the portrayal of the Church in films like Arn: The Knight Templar, Black Death, and of course, Season of the Witch. When undertaking a research project, I often tell my students to start by writing short summaries and their thoughts on the different sources they may use, and I thought I'd take my own advice by starting a new feature in which I do the same! Exciting, eh?

Most probably ignored Nicolas Cage's romp through medieval Europe to deliver a suspected witch for trial as the Crusades deserter Behmen with his tough partner Felson (played by the incomparable Ron Perlman). And you could be excused for that. It's not exactly what one might consider "high cinema." The historical accuracy's questionable at best, the acting (as with Cage, per usual) is pretty silly, and the characters are fairly cliche. But the story is what interests me here.

While the tale of a Crusades knight deserting for loss of faith isn't new (Behmen leaves the Holy Land when he realizes that the priests at the head of his army are having him strike down defenseless women and children, "In the name of God"), where the story goes from there is a little different. Behmen and Felson get arrested as deserters shortly after their return to plague stricken Europe, and of course, witchcraft is to blame. But the supposed witch has been caught for the telltale signs that she was 1) a woman, 2) wandering alone at night, and 3) speaking to herself--par for the course when the Church is looking for a witch to blame. Luckily, she gets a trial in a far off monastery responsible for copying the Book of Solomon, the holy book used to identify and kill witches, as well as perform exorcisms. Unfortunately, there aren't enough people to transport her there, what with everyone dying and all.

Ah, simpler times...

So Behmen and Felson take up the cause in exchange for their freedom along with a plucky band of adventurers who *Spoiler Alert* almost all die before they get there due to supernatural occurrences. And it's not much better when they do get there, since all the monks have also died from the plague, and (Surprise!) it turns out the girl isn't a witch but is possessed by a demon--and not the fun kind who pee on the floor and projectile vomit. This demon has used the girl's trial for witchcraft to be brought to the final copy of the Book of Solomon so that he can destroy it (never mind that he could have just flown there). In the end, Behmen dies, but not before exorcising the demon, saving the Book, and renewing his faith in the Almighty.

Still, Season of the Witch is different from many of the other films I'll be looking at. While the religious critique regarding motivation for the Crusades (at one point, Behmen yells at his captors, "No one has spilled more blood in God's name than I. A benevolent god would not ask such things of men.") and the identification of witches (discussed above) is obvious, the film takes an interesting turn in regards to the latter. The movie begins with the execution of three seemingly innocent women for witchcraft when (again, Surprise!) it turns out one probably was a witch and the another was the aforementioned demon who kills the priest performing the execution and destroys his copy of the Book of Solomon. And while the main girl is clearly innocent of witchcraft, she is possessed. So is the message that, 3 out of 4 times, the Church's methods work? Or does the demon just exploit how blindly the Church assigns blame in order to get close to the books? I'm inclined to go with the second option.

But also of interest is Behmen's renewal of faith, which is rare in these films. Most of these kind of heroes are heroes because they defy the church. And while most of them don't witness their best friend burned alive by a demon, Behmen still stands out for ending the story as he began it--a soldier of God. This coupled with the Church's respectable batting average of .750 when identifying the damned suggests that the film, in the end, is pro-Church. Again, this is odd given the other films of this genre, but I guess someone has to stand out.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Personal History Statement OR How to Make a French-Speaking, Mexican, English Teacher

2012-01-04T17:01:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned, I'm currently in the throes of doctoral program applications in education. I'm currently working on the first application to ask for a Personal History Statement--"no more than two pages in length, about your personal history, family background, and other influences on your intellectual development" and addresses "educational, cultural, and economic opportunities and disadvantages that you have experienced, and ways those experiences have affected the development of your special interests, career plans, and future goals." It turned into a "Why I Became a Teacher" essay, and I thought I'd open it to floor for thoughts.

My dad worked every overtime shift he has able to get when I was little. Looking back, I realize a lot of that must have gone into my tuition at the only private elementary school in Del Rio, Texas. Education was very important to my parents. By the age of ten, I was tackling algebra at the same time as my cousin who attended an inner-city middle school in San Antonio. But even The Little Schoolhouse didn’t teach us to read or encourage our progression as soon as my father would have liked. He taught me to read using Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks before my classmates were Seeing Spot Run.

In 6th grade, my dad’s government job transferred us to the French-speaking province of Quebec. I was able to get into a prestigious, English-language, all-boys, private high school run by Jesuits, but my teachers were very honest. I was not likely to graduate on time because it was unrealistic to think that in 5 years I could pass the government-issued French language exam required of high school graduates who were mostly native speakers. The truth was meant to prepare me for 5 years of intense study, but it only made study seem pointless. What good would it do to study if I was going to fail the language exam and be held back? I dropped from all A’s to barely passing.

But my math teacher Mr. Sanders convinced my parents that I was too bright for basic math, so they tossed me in the deep end, and soon I was getting B’s in Honors pre-calculus. My Speech teacher Mr. Dubee encouraged me into public speaking as a lector at my local church. Mr. Hoefle showed me that I could understand and analyze literature in his Honors English class about Westerns and let me run with my own ideas. These teachers pushed me out of apathy, but Monsieur Brault helped me pass the language exam by never taking it easy on me.

In Quebec, high school ends after 11th grade, and I graduated before we were transferred back to the States. But American colleges wouldn’t accept my diploma since I wasn’t technically an international student, so it was back to school. All my hard work to avoid an extra year was for naught. But this time, my frustration didn’t have an adverse effect on my grades, the local school board did. At first, I wasn’t allowed to register for school because I technically already had a high school diploma. Eventually, however, I was able to finagle my way into school by not having some basic American college requirements: American History and Government, another science I had taken in eighth grade (high school in Quebec but middle school in America—so it didn’t count), and British literature. There were others (American Literature and World History), but I bent the truth about them in my interview with one of the school board members once I realized that not having them would mean also having to repeat the 11th grade.

Equally distressing was that any course from my Canadian high school that either was not offered at my American one or wouldn’t fit on my American transcript was discarded. Officially speaking, I lost two years of science, French, Spanish and English, four and a half years of Speech, five years of assorted religion courses (ethics, World Religions, etc.), half a year of Creative Writing, a year of Philosophy, three years of Physical Education, and my year of Honors English and Pre-Calculus, to the stroke of a pen. On top of that, the courses I was able to keep were not adjusted to reflect the grade breakdown used by my new school; in other words, most of my A’s became B’s, B’s became C’s, and so on. Surprisingly, all of this bothered me less than suddenly finding myself part if the 1% of Latino students who attended the upper-middle class, Bible Belt high school. I was often “complimented” on how well I spoke English (“without a accent or nuthin’”) and was excused from classes to attend lectures with the other 1% on encouraging us that being Latino didn’t have to hold us back from college and a successful career. Despite (or perhaps in spite of) all that, I finished with all A’s on bare minimum work at one of Newsweek’s “Best High Schools in America.” And more than anything, this struck me as odd.

I’d already decided that I wanted to be a teacher. The educators who pushed me out of disenchantment were inspiring. And my brief stint in what was some of the best that the American school system had to offer only strengthened that resolve. Throughout my undergraduate career, I threw myself into whatever teaching capacity I could: instructing swim lessons at the local Y, tutoring French for the university language lab, TA-ing the university horseback riding class, and training lifeguards.

I took lessons from each: it’s okay to toss students into the deep end if you’re there to help them stay afloat; the best advice is useless if you can’t make yourself understood; you can’t expect a student to want to jump straight into the saddle, but you shouldn’t assume they won’t want to gallop; letting a student by with sloppy technique doesn’t help anyone.

And I affirmed my desire to teach in graduate school where my real passion quickly became the composition classes I taught as part of my assistantship. I even requested extra contracts to tutor in the Writing Center. When the university offered me a full-time position, I jumped at the opportunity.

I’m still teaching, but I’m eager to learn more. I want to understand those curriculum differences I encountered in high school. I want to know what makes a strong university course and program. I want to be a much stronger teacher. And I want to work out solutions for those high school curriculums, or design better programs for serving the students who enter higher education, or just be able to pick out and push a kid who’s selling himself short.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Top 5 Games of 2011

2012-01-03T16:48:00.001-07:00

Another year of gaming has come and gone, and as usual, I'm looking back on what I enjoyed and what I didn't. Comparatively speaking, I didn't play much this year, and only some of it was new. It was a difficult year that left little room for either buying or playing much. While that means I generally enjoyed what I did play, it also means I completed very few games (many of which I'll be discussing here). So here they are, my Biggest Disappointment and Top 5 Video Games of 2011.

Biggest Disappointment: InFamous 2

Originally I was going to go with Uncharted 2, but I think I've already said all I can about that in my review over at Bitmob.com. Plus, I wasn't expecting that much to begin with. But the game I was looking forward to the most this year that fell short for me was InFamous 2.

Now, I actually loved InFamous. It was a classic superhero origin-story, in which the choices the hero makes ultimately make him. But superheroes, like any fictional characters, are only interesting so long as they continue to evolve and grow. In comics this is often counter to medium (check out Umberto Eco's "The Myth of Superman"--required reading for the comics course I teach--to have you mind blown), but I see no reason why it has to carry over to superhero video games. Cole doesn't evolve in InFamous 2. He just gets some new powers and has to stop a new supervillain; it's more of the same. That was a big part of the disappointment for me, but the story also left something to be desired.

It's Mardi Gras Cole!

When it was first announced that InFamous 2 would take place in the fictional New Marais, it was obvious the designers were trying to play off post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. That didn't sit right with me from the beginning, but it wasn't until a took a creative non-fiction course and read the memoir pieces of a New Orleans native that I realized how much this setting choice was in poor taste. The game glorifies the destruction of a real place by tantalizing the player with a chance to parkour his or her way around it. Not cool.

5) Dead Space: Extraction:

Several articles and blogs I read about Dead Space 2 this year made statements to the effect of it being to the original Dead Space what Aliens is to the original Alien. But I never quite felt that way. To me, Dead Space was just Aliens and Dead Space 2 was More Aliens. Dead Space: Extraction, however, was another story. I had really wanted to play this when it first came out on Wii, but simply never got the chance. Then, EA promised a free download of the PS3 port for preorder, and I jumped right on that. And it was excellent. I've written on Bitmob how the weakest link in this series is Isaac Clarke, and I hope future games in the franchise do away with him in favor of storytelling and characters like those found in Extraction, even if they have to change genres to do it.

4) Odin Sphere:

I love Muramasa: The Demon Blade. In fact, it was number 2 on my Top 5 of 2009. So when it's predecessor finally came out on PSN a couple of months ago, I downloaded it without delay. I still haven't beaten it, but I love what I've played. The art style that George Kamitani perfected in Muramasa still holds up beautifully here, and while it's easy to see where the sequel streamlined elements of the basic game design, it doesn't get in the way of enjoying this game. Additionally, one of the aspects I really enjoyed in Muramasa was the storytelling through stage-like dialogues, and while Odin Sphere uses a few cinematic-type set-pieces to progress the plot, the theatre element is still here.

These are my friends. I can't say "Good-Bye."

3) Chrono Trigger:

So many outlets have been discussing this game this year that it feels like a new release. And as one of the many who never got to play it when it first came out, I was glad to finally see it on the Virtual Console. I instantly fell in love with it. Perhaps it's the quirky characters, the bizarre story, or just that it reminds me of Final Fantasy VII (my first, true JRPG). I haven't yet beaten it, and part of me doesn't want to--like when you've read half-way through a great book, and though you enjoy it, you don't want it to end.

2) Pokemon Black:

I got back into Pokemon last year during a particularly stressful semester. Something about the pick-up-and-play design coupled with the number-crunching has a very meditation-like effect on me when I start to feel overwhelmed. Finding it odd that I had suddenly taken up a game series I'd essentially ignored for a decade (when my brother and I decided we'd grown out of it) my wife took a sudden interest. What were these Pokemon? What was the object of the game? Could we play together? That settled it; we decided we'd get each other Black and White as anniversary gifts. And while my wife is a much more casual Pokemon trainer, it was nice to once again have someone to play the series with. Combine that with it simply being the best Pokemon game since maybe the originals, and placing this in my number 2 spot was a no brainer.

Exactly how I feel after playing for a couple of hours.

1) Dark Souls:

This one shouldn't strike anyone as a surprise. My love for Demon's Souls is so great that the reason I didn't write a Top 5 Games of 2010 was because it would have taken the number 1 spot two years in a row. I even lectured on the game at an academic conference this past spring. So I was counting the days for Dark Souls, and so far, it hasn't disappointed. It has an epic story that's subtly told, an excellent combat system, a multiplayer component unlike any other save its predecessor, brilliant level design, and challenging gameplay--so challenging that I still haven't beaten it, though I'm pretty sure I'm close. And while, no, it's not exactly a game I can play when I want to sit down and relax after a hard day, I love that about it too. Like meals, some games need to be savoured, and Dark Souls is one I plan to continue sampling well into 2012. And really, a great game shouldn't only be enjoyed the year it releases. A great game can be enjoyed for years to come. And I think my Top 5 this year shows that.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Semester in Review

2011-12-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

Well, another semester is finally over. It was a long one...so long, it took me two weeks of rest and recuperation before I could put any real thought into this post.. Things kicked off with a bang...of students! We had a surprise jump in enrollment this year, so a lot of instructors (myself included) taught overloads. I've never taught an overload before, and I haven't taught more than three courses a semester since I received my course reduction for the work I do with Academic Enrichment. To top it off, it meant I had three different preps. Three of my classes were also learning communities, which required extra preparations for subject specific activities and field trips--so I also spent a lot of time on a bus with my students on the weekends.

But it really wasn't that bad. I got to know my students in a way I don't normally. My Movies in the Classroom students know movies! It's a simple concept, I know, but I'd gotten used to my students not getting my Star Wars references, giving me blank stares when I mention The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being my favorite film, and vehemently arguing that The Hangover was the best movie of 2009. And they have their own ideas about film, books, and art! My Teachers for Tomorrow are ready to teach! They can't wait to get into the classroom, and seeing other teachers at schools around the state only strengthens that resolve. And my class of native students are proud of their heritage, their homes, and their culture. But they want to learn more; they're here to learn, and that's not always the case with Freshmen.

That's not to say that it was all peaches and gravy. I also had several student issues. From the students who never turn in a single assignment, never show up to class, and are still surprised to discover they're failing at the end of the semester; to the full-time workers, trying to balance enough overtime to pay for school with free time to do homework; to my first ever student who began and ended a semester of Freshman Composition as an English major and whose essays were literally a joy to read. Unfortunately, I had a lot of the first kind in two sections in particular. Shortly after midterm, I stumbled across this short video that reminded me I couldn't reach those in the same way I could the full-time workers and English majors.

A SoTL story for the holidays. from Jay Hosler on Vimeo.

While I like to think I'm not like The Grinch in most respects, it was a nice reminder as my students went into their final essays.

But this semester wasn't all about school. My most anticipated video game of the year, came out just in time for my birthday!

Religious Critique in 21st Century Medieval Period Films

2011-11-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of year again: Pop Culture Conference Proposals! I'm a little ahead of the game this year, as I'm working on this conference abstract a full four days before the deadline! As usual, I thought I'd post my proposal here to get some general feedback before sending it off. In a semi-continuation of the subject I researched last year, religious critique in video games, this year I'm looking at religious critique in 21st century medieval period films like Black Death, Arn: The Knight Templar, and Season of the Witch:

Even four years after the September 11th attacks, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven took as much criticism for inciting anti-Muslim fervor and championing Muslim fundamentalists as praise for promoting diplomacy over war in religious and cultural conflicts. But in the time since, medieval period films have begun to side against not only the Church's Holy War but the Church itself.

While foreign films like Valhalla Rising and Arn: The Knight Templar show the Christian Crusaders as ignorant racists, others such as The Black Death and Season of the Witch demonstrate the Church's zealotry in hunting witches. Further, the heroes of many of these movies are those who sympathize with the Church's enemies or even turn away from the Church altogether.

Films suggesting god and religion as a threat to mankind are not new; one has only to look at some of the previous years' blockbusters: The Book of Eli, Legion, even The Clash of the Titans. But it's rare for a slew of films to deliver similar messages about religion in a similar manner unless there's a greater cultural undertone at work, such as the pro-America atmosphere that produced The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur during the Cold War. And that these 21st century medieval period films have been made all around the world suggests an even deeper connection.

At this point, my research has been minimal, so I'm open to any suggestions, critiques, a more interesting title (haha!), or other films I should be watching. I'm also still on the fence about which area I should submit this to, Religion and Pop Culture or Film and History, so any thoughts there would also be appreciated.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Blogging in the Classroom 101

2011-09-19T12:03:00.000-06:00

This week, I was asked to give a short presentation during at my department's next composition meeting on ways I teach writing. And since student blogging is one of my favorite ways, I put together this short presentation on class blogs.

I first got the idea of student blogs while lamenting over grading student response papers to class readings. Many students where making the same or similar mistakes, in addition to ignoring their audience (the fictional "don't-know-anythings" we often use just for this purpose), and I felt if they could only see what they were doing and were writing in a situation that forced them to consider their audience, they might get more on track. That same semester, at an academic conference, I sat in on a composition panel in which one speaker presented pedagogical reasons for using blogs in the classroom, and the solution was in front of me! She suggested some books, which I read and have since forgotten the titles of. But I experimented with blogs on my summer Freshman Composition II that year.

Since, I have slowly expanded to using blogs in all my composition courses, and below are some things I've learned in the past two years.

Rationales:

Interesting replacement for weekly responses/journal entries
Forces students to consider broader audience as well as giving them more feedback
Generates class discussion of course texts outside of class
Acquaints students with the internet as producers of content
Easy to quickly share information with students
Snow days don’t stop them from turning in their work
Better than Blackboard

How I Use Them:

The most basic reason for having students blog is to get them writing, reading each other’s writing, and discussing it
Students’ blog posts take the form of responses to course texts, feeders for essays, and sometimes the essays themselves

Students are sometimes given specific ways to respond to texts, but in general, I ask students to summarize the text and respond by agreeing, disagreeing, relating personal experience, and/or tying it to another project they’re working on--depending on what levels I want them reading
Students must also comment on at least one peer’s blog before class
Comments must be constructive and/or continue the discussion

Post on the class blog, as well:

Comments on student blogs
Links that are related to class work or that are just of interest
Clarification on assignments
Information about Learning Community activities

And encourage students to do the same
Promote the best blogs so students can receive additional feedback

Things to Consider:

Privacy: not all students are keen on sharing their writing with the world, so give students the option to create usernames that only you and they know
It’s probably not a good idea to post student blog grades on the class blog

Allow students to get their grades from you directly

You may need to spend a day teaching students how to use a blog (account creation, login-in, posting instructions, etc.)
Before beginning class blogs, you probably want to have already given feedback on a non-blogged writing assignment to set-up your expectations for student writing

Often, students view blogs the same way they view text messages and e-mails

Student comments should be part of the blog grade

Student Spotlight: Still No Country for Old Men

2011-09-13T22:51:00.000-06:00

Well, it's a new semester, and you know what that means--new student blogs! This Fall I'll be promoting the work of my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community students and students in my former Teacher for Tomorrow Learning Community. Last week, the former students watched the locally filmed No Country for Old Men in their History of Motion Pictures class and blogged about it for me. While the general consensus is that Anton Chigurh is crazy and Javier Bardem is creepy, few students really delved into the film's themes so deeply (or comically) as Sagey:

Ed Tom is now retired and is having breakfast with his woman. He tells her of two dreams he had in the night. The dreams are almost complete analogies to the story of the movie. He reflects saying that he travels into a snowy mountain (his life and being a sherif) and at the top of the mountain waits his father (the killer who waits for him at the end of the chase). Instead of staking out after Chigurh in a fatal battle, Ed Tom chooses a different path and retires.

That's what he imagined.

Take a look at the rest of her post, and let her know what you think!

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Greatest Game Never Played: Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association

2011-08-13T16:24:00.014-06:00

Henry Waugh has created an awesome pen and paper baseball dice game. He plays the proprietor of the baseball league, playing through every game in a standard season on his kitchen table, rolling dice for strikes, doubles, and even stealing bases. He has carefully laid out out all the rules on sheets of legal paper, each page featuring the rules for specific situations such as runners on first and second or extraordinary occurrences for when three dice show ones or sixes three times in a row. Anything can happen then: the pitcher could bean and kill the batter, the batter could bean the pitcher, or the crowd could riot and delay the game, possibly injuring or killing even more players. And each player in the league has their own sheet too, with all the stats on it from the current season. If they gain enough experience and have a little luck, they can move up to Ace or even Star level, making their dice rolls count in their favor more. But if it all sounds a little too luck-driven, it's not! Henry's a brilliant statistician, and he's carefully made all the necessary calculations to ensure that each roll of the dice is as real as every play in an actual game. He's completely obsessed with it.

Pretty cool, huh?

Now here's the bad news. Henry Waugh is a fictional character from experimental writer Robert Coover's second novel The Universal Baseball Association. And the game only exists in the piecemeal descriptions given by the author. Granted, Coover did come up with the idea...in 1968!

[Read the rest at Bitmob!]

A Late Review of Uncharted 2: Indiana Jones Directed by Michael Bay

2011-07-30T12:34:00.000-06:00

For the sake of full disclosure, I'm going to begin by admitting that not only have I not played Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, but the series as a whole never really appealed to me. It just didn't look like my kind of game. But when a friend of mine found this out he forced his copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves into my hands in hopes of showing me what evidently the rest of the gaming world considers one of the best games ever. Ten minutes in and I was pretty sure this was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom directed by Michael Bay. Several hours later and I was sure of it. Here's why that didn't work for me. Beware of spoilers, though I sense I'm the only PS3 owner on Earth who hasn't played this one.

Now I've heard this game lauded for it's excellent story, and while it's certainly epic in scope, it's essentially the story of a thief trying to find a lost treasure before some other thieves can. Of course, even an Indiana Jones movie wouldn't be complete without the old saving-the-world gambit, so there's that too. But even that falls into the whole "find the treasure before the other guys" plot. And so we follow Nathan Drake as he searches for the lost ~~Shankara~~ Cintamani Stone once sought by Marco Polo and Nazis alike and said to not only be priceless but able to grant the possessor great power.

[Read the Rest at Bitmob!]

Things I Learned at My First Comic-Con:

2011-07-26T12:28:00.000-06:00

I want to go to there...

San Diego shattered many of my preconceived notions about California.
Comic-Con is a big deal. Really big. Way bigger than I expected. Immediately after getting off the plane, the airport TV welcomed me. 10 minutes later I was staring at my first 30 foot trolley car featuring a full length Batman: Arkham City advertisement. Another 10 minutes and I saw a Lord of the Rings: War in the North bus.

Some comic book character costumes cannot exist in real life. Even the best Deadpool just looks like a really heavily armed BSDM enthusiast.
...And some people should really think twice about how much of themselves their costume's going to show off beforehand.
...And just because someone is wrapped in a blanket doesn't mean they're in costume. Sometimes they're just homeless.
Nerds come from every age and background, and it's epic!
...And they should stop letting G4 be their spokespeople. They're like that kid in high school who just hangs out with people they can put down to make themselves feel better.
I haven't read nearly enough comics, watched nearly enough movies, or played nearly enough video games yet.
...And if you want some good manga, room with a guy who translates the stuff into English.
Scott McCloud and his fellow comics visionaries are severely underrated. I mean really, a bunch of old school comics guys sitting around telling stories about how awesome Will Eisner is (the father of the graphic novel) and the room isn't even half full?
...And the guy who created the Joker is still alive!
Celebrities are just people too!
...Except Lou Ferrigno--that guy's a...Beast? Giant? What's a good word for "massive"?
The booth with the most scantily clad booth babes were the publishers of my wife's favorite comic series...actually, I probably could have guessed that one.
Not only are there a lot of other nerd couples out there, but some of them have started procreating! It's like a nerd baby boom!

Indeed an Incredible family!

If you're attending a group dinner, sit with people you don't know. You just might end up eating with a former graphic designer of Magic: The Gathering who now teaches middle school and his 15-year old, Axis Powers Hetalia cosplaying daughter who can give you mad webcomic recommendations.
Comics scholars are some of the coolest nerds ever, and you can easily strike up a conversation with any one of them about anything nerdy. I had one conversation that included Infinite Crisis, Stan Sakai, Batman: The Animated Series, trying to use Kenan and Kel in the classroom, and Samurai Jack.
The best part of Comic-Con isn't the comics, rare collectibles, awesome art, video game previews, or even the guest speakers. It's the camaraderie. Maybe it sounds corny, but being surrounded by people from around the world as passionate about the same stuff as me is simply amazing.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Summer Reading Progress Report

2011-07-06T10:29:00.000-06:00

Well, the 4th of July has come and passed, meaning summer break is half over! But I'm actually pretty pleased with myself so far; I've accomplished a lot in 6 weeks and enjoyed my "break." I got my lifeguard re-certification from the most hardcore instructor I've had in about a decade; I taught my first summer literature class; and I've been reading a ton of books and playing a ton of video games. But to keep myself accountable on those Reading and Gaming Lists, I thought I'd give myself a little progress report.

Dracula, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: These were all books I assigned to my summer lit. course on Victorian literature. Now I know what you're thinking. As JustSomeDude899 put it, "Classics are boring!" But I defended the classics then, and I defend them now! These books, along with King Solomon's Mines went extremely well. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't surprised. Jekyll & Hyde didn't interest them much, but they enjoyed discussing the possible messages/themes at work (such as the dangers of drug addiction and that the uncivilized are necessarily evil) and applying them to pop culture they're familiar with (one student gave a great presentation discussing Dexter as a modern version of the story). After King Solomon's Mines, they liked Dracula the most, and one student confessed to having nightmares after reading the book late at night. And the Sherlock Holmes stories we read were mostly just for fun to break up the 3-hour class period, but near the last day we had a great mock-trial in which Sherlock Holmes was placed on trial for aiding and abetting criminals (which we does in a number of the stories); each student in class played the part of a character on the prosecution, the defense, or witnesses. Some students had more fun with it that others (dressing up, using bad British accents, crying "Objection!", etc.), but it was a lot of fun regardless. Surprisingly, the book that went over the least well
was the one I chose to mix things up at the end of the semester, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I thought they would enjoy the chance to see the characters we'd been reading about all semester interpreted differently, but they didn't. C'est la vie!

Zorro:
Thus book is amazing. Isabel Allende crafts the first ever origin story of Zorro's century-long status as a pulp/film/television/comic book hero. The fictional biography begins before Diego de la Vega's birth and follows him into young adulthood and his early adventures as Zorro. Along the way, Allende gives the history of the places young Diego travels--Alta California, Central America, Spain, and New Orleans--including historical figures along the way. Who would have thought Diego stole his style from his kidnapper and famous pirate of bayou, Capitaine Jean Lafitte?! Curiously, Allende even weaves her tale into the established "canon" making references to the various pulps and movies that would detail Zorro's later adventures, including Antonio Banderas' interpretation (a film Allende has confessed to loving).

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt:
Haven't gotten around to this one yet...

Stories from the Edge:
...This one either...

Sometimes a Great Notion:
...Or this...

Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage:
...Or this :-(

Every Piece of Dead Space Literature I Can Get My Hands On:
I read all of the Dead Space literature there is, and it was extremely entertaining--my guilty pleasure of the summer, haha! Part of this was that I just wanted to enjoy the Dead Space universe a little longer. Part of it was for a post I published on Bitmob that earned the attention of the series' chief writer Antony Johnston here at The Daily Pugle :-)

Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita:
My wife Veronica convinced me to join a reading group a few of my friends were trying to get going (for the record, I've never liked the idea of reading groups--deadlines for reading aren't fun). This was the first novel we read, and while I haven't finished it (it arrived via ILL 2 days before the discussion) I plan to. I would describe it as the films Crash and Magnolia mixed together, because really, it's about class differences in Southern California/Northern Mexico with a smattering of magic realism. The characters are great, the writing is clever, and the story is very interesting.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor:
This is the reading group's third novel (the second was Zorro) to be discussed later this week. I've only just started it, and while nothing's happening and I don't like the main character so far, it's definitely interesting. I want to keep reading just to see how the story's going to unfold. Plus, it's been a long time since I've read some O'Connor (which I enjoyed in college), and the old girl deserves another look!

This has been a great summer for reading, and I've already read more books than I did last summer. I also have several other books not mentioned that I'd like to get read soon, so I'm sure I'll have more to discuss at the end of the summer.

And you, fellow reader, what have you read and enjoyed this summer break?

Isaac Who? The More Interesting Characters in Dead Space

2011-06-16T16:28:00.000-06:00

Let's make one thing clear from the get go; I'm a big fan of the Dead Space universe. I think it's one of the best multi-medium franchises to exist, and other game companies that try to release connected movies, comics, and books, should really pay attention. That said, the series' main returning character is the least interesting, and I'm tired of playing as him. Here's why: *SPOILER ALERTS*

I liked Isaac in the original Dead Space. Sure, he was voiceless and faceless and that made his motivation (saving his girlfriend) seem kind of unbelievable, but coupled with his occupation as an unarmed engineer (not a burly soldier or a even a baton carrying security guard) made him a kind of everyman to whom I could relate (no small feat in itself). But then Visceral decided to not only give him a voice for Dead Space 2 but make him suffer from hallucinations of his dead girlfriend. First off, suddenly giving Isaac a voice seemed to make him an entirely different character. Where he once witnessed gruesome creatures and near death with stoic silence, he now drops F-bombs at every other crashing transport ship and suicide he comes across. And the only thing more bizarre than these moments are now the ones when he doesn't speak up! At one point he sees a clearly necromorphed baby crawling to an unsuspecting mother. Does he warn her? Tell her to GTFO? Nah. He just watches her explode when she picks it up. You're a sick man, Clarke.

And then there's his girlfriend. Man is she annoying! She pops up about once a chapter to remind us how guilty Isaac feels about not being able to save her. And that gets really old really fast. To make matters worse, Isaac spends most of this game without any real direction beyond trying to find out what's happened in the last three years.

In the end, Isaac does mature as a character. He forgives himself the guilt of being unable to save the woman he loves and possibly sending her to her death in the first place. He even manages to destroy the new Marker he's unwittingly helped to create--which also makes him the cause of the events in Dead Space 2. And I fully expected and wanted him to die at the end of the game; really, it would have been the perfect ending, and Visceral still could have thrown in their sequel teaser. But no, Isaac Clarke lives to fight another day, and I'm sort of upset about it.

My favorite aspect of the Dead Space universe (the book and movie tie-ins) isn't that they try to retell anything. Sure, they might be parts of the same story, but they tell it from different perspectives. I loved not knowing exactly what happened on Aegis VII prior to Isaac arriving to the Ishimura. But I also loved finding out from the perspectives of the characters in Antony Johnston's comics, as well as the perspective of the rag-tag team of survivors in Extraction--which I also felt had the strongest story of any of the games--because these are good characters with good stories, as well. Isaac Clarke's story? I think it's over, and it wasn't as interesting in his as some of the others to begin with.

Here's some examples over at Bitmob.

Stories from the Edge of the Water: Comradery

2011-06-07T14:22:00.000-06:00

In response to my last Stories from the Edge of the Water, MacGhille_Mhoail pointed out that using "Army calls when not discussing something military...particularly when you're posting about Memorial Day" might be misconstrued as bad taste. And he's absolutely right; hopefully, no one took offense to my shout-out to my former lifeguards, especially since explaining my usage segues nicely into this post about comradery amongst lifeguards.

The biggest difficulty in my first lifeguarding class as an instructor was beginning at 8am, especially once the class got started and my students were exhausted from the previous day's swimming. I'd ask a question or give my students a task, and I'd get mumbled half responses. I think I made a half-joking remark that they should all holler "Hooah" like in the military. One student, who was somehow (I forget exactly) involved with the military, actually started yelling "Hooah" whenever I'd say anything. After a day or so, it caught on, and I had a class saying "Hooah" whenever I asked them to get changed for the pool or to swim a 500. That was an amazing class, and since I was the assistant pool manager, I ended up hiring some of them for that summer. Before long, half my staff of lifeguards were "Hooah"ing whenever I or one of the head guards would ask them to do something.

No, we weren't military (though some were or are now active), but we rallied around a common goal, a common purpose. That was the first summer I trained and took a team of guards to a competition. It required several hours of swim and training time in addition to our regular schedules. Between guarding, teaching swim lessons, and training, I was at the pool from 10am to 10pm most days, and I wasn't alone. They didn't complain about sacrificing their summer free time, they didn't quit because they were tired from being in the sun all day. They just kept at it because we kept at it together.

By far, that's one of the two things I miss most about my career as a lifeguard. I miss my team. I miss working with a group people all working together for a common goal: keeping people safe. And any good team of guards is the same. I was reminded of that in the last two weeks. I still guard on-call, and I retook the class to keep my certification current. The instructor was great. He was tough, fair, and really pushed the class, which was mostly made up of rookies. And yet, in two weeks, a group of kids I never worked with before and may never work with again, became a team. It still amazes me that, though no, it's not the military, lifeguarding can still bring a group so strongly together.

Stories from the Edge of the Water: Memorial Day

2011-05-30T09:26:00.000-06:00

So it's Memorial Day. If you're an outdoor guard like I was not so long ago, you've probably been both anticipating and dreading this day for weeks, especially if you're a new guard. On the one hand, Memorial Day is the first non-official day of summer break. It means school is out, the weather is nice, and the water is open for the season! On the other hand, Memorial Day is the first non-official day of summer break, and it means school is out, the weather is nice, the water is open for the season, your supervisor hasn't informed you that the powers that be have decided to allow the entire community to swim for free, and everyone in the whole world has chosen your pool/beach/water park to go swimming in celebration.

Where's Waldo? Better find him quick, 'cause he's drowning...

Appropriately so, everyone is a little on edge today. Your boss barks orders a little shorter, your fellow guards are a little less cheerful, and not one of the antics you've heard the veteran guards have pulled in the past happens today. In fact, the biggest cut-up of them all makes the first save for the summer, and for a second you're glad you weren't stationed there. Then you screw-up--nothing major. You just miss the rotation or get in trouble for not whistling at a kid to walk or don't see the little girl struggling to swim right in front of you, and her mom snatches her up and yells at you. So you begin to pray for lightning, break, a candy-bar in the pool, anything to get you away from the chaos for just a few short minutes. Then you feel bad for thinking these things! You're a certified lifeguard! You muscled through hours of training while some sadistic bastard laughed maniacally as you desperately tried to tread water with that damn break above your head! You wanted this job!

...He laughed as he tossed another chair into the circle of treading lifeguards!

That's when it hits you. Maybe it's another guard telling you to let that one go. Maybe it's the cut-up giving you a wry smile after making that first save. Maybe it's that first really attractive patron who walks confidently past your stand. Or maybe it's just the little rush you're feeling from freaking out so. You wanted this job! Some other poor sap is flipping burgers for his summer minimum wage. You'll laugh at him as you pick up lunch on your way back to "work"--getting paid to keep people safe, stay in shape, and maybe, just maybe, save someone's life. And there is no higher calling than that.

Hooah.

And then it's over. Three short whistle blasts/The air horn sounds/The water toys turn off and everyone clears out for the day. You trudge back to the guard office carrying your towel, water bottle, and guard tube with you. They all feel a little extra heavy. But you feel amazing! You feel like you did great work! Just to confirm it, your supervisor tells you so with a pat on the back. And with that one touch, you're entire back is on fire. You forgot to put on sunscreen...

...And these tan lines will be a summer long reminder.

Summer Gaming List

2011-05-20T21:10:00.000-06:00

So let's be honest. You didn't really think I was going to be spending my whole summer reading, did you?

For the same reasons that I have very little time to read for fun, I also have very little time for gaming during the school year. So I generally develop a nice little backlog of games I haven't been able to play. Fair warning: I'm cheap/poor, so most of these aren't new.

3D Dot Game Heroes: I started playing this last summer and absolutely loved it! Then I got the dreaded Saved-Game glitch, in which the game crashes whenever you try to save! I got caught up with other stuff, naturally, and never really looked into it. But this past semester, a friend of mine with the same glitch let me in on a little secret: if you run the game off of the disc instead of the hard install, the glitch is prevented! And as this game is best played with lots of time to devote to it, this is the perfect opportunity to go back and play this awesome retro love note.

Pokemon: I got back into Pokemon last year when I got Dragon Quest IX--which, I realize, may come as an insult to the DQ fans--and it's become my favorite de-stresser whenever school gets crazy. I got particularly obsessed with it after reading Robert Coover's Universal Baseball Association--and, for the second time, I promise, I will come back to this author and his amazing book in a future post! Well one day, my wife and I were chatting and the topic came to me playing a lot of Pokemon lately. She had a lot of questions about the series, and it suddenly occurred to me that she'd never played it! We got to talking about it and the new Black and White versions. Long story short, we got them for our anniversary this year and have been playing them all week! My wife is addicted! I've created a Poke-monster! (See what I did there?)

Dead Space 2: Severed: As I said in my last post, I really like the side-stories of this series, so I'm anxious to get back to the games' only returning characters. I just have to wait till the PlayStation Store comes back so I can download it...

GoldenEye 007: I don't buy FPSs too often; I have a very "you seen one, you seen them all" mentality. But this is an excellent replacement for Team Fortress 2, which I've been known to get obsessed with in summers past. Plus, both of my brothers have it, so we still get to game together despite being in three different states.

Chrono Trigger: I missed the game growing up, but I heard so much about it that I was very excited when it came out on DS...two and a half years ago...But it just came out for Virtual Console, and I downloaded it yesterday! I can't believe I'm only discovering this game! It's amazing! I've only just made it to the future (I'm trying to savor it), but I plan on enjoying it throughout the summer!

As I mentioned with my reading list, there are definitely others I've no doubt forgotten or haven't realized I need to play yet. And I'll most certainly be sharing my thoughts on most of these!

So what will you, dear readers, be playing this summer? And what are you suggestions for my list?

Review of Baltimore's Free Comic Book Day Issue

2011-05-19T16:12:00.000-06:00

Even Mignola's signature cover amazes.

Mike Mignola is one of the best comics storytellers of this generation. It's not his story concepts but his ability to tell a cohesive, engaging, and complete story in each issue. And unlike some creators who phone it in for Free Comic Book Day (I'm looking at your Kung Fu Panda), Mignola always gives 100%. And this year's entry Baltimore: A Passing Stranger is no exception.

The series follows Lord Henry Baltimore across a post-World War I Europe that first succumbed to a plague, then vampires, and now beasts of the old world - similar to Steven King's The Mist but with Mignola's signature Gothic. Where this particular issue fits into the established story in which Baltimore is hunting a vampire responsible for the death of a loved one, is unclear, but it doesn't matter.

Again, it's the way this story is woven that sets it apart. Told from the point of view of a boy who falls into a den of giant spiders, the reader (likely new to the series and its main character) relates most strongly with the victim rather than the savior, lending to the comic's genre as a Gothic horror, as does the foreshadowing of things to come. But perhaps the best indicator of this story's value is its completeness in 14 pages; you don't need to have read anything by Mignola before or after to enjoy this story.

9 / 10

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Summer Reading List

2011-05-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

By the end of my Master's Degree in English Lit., I was pretty tired of reading. After all, reading academically is so much different from reading for pleasure that I'd actually forgotten how to switch off. And having written my thesis on superheroes, I couldn't even read my favorite medium (comics) anymore without applying this theorist or that model, yada yada.

But now, having just finished teaching my first lit. class, I suddenly love to read again! All semester I kept adding to a mental list of books I wanted to finish, start, even reread! Once the end of the semester was in sight, I started keeping an actual list of books I wanted to read over my summer break. And here is that list:

Dracula, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: The first novel I taught this semester was H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines--a book I discuss here incessantly in relation to Resident Evil. Rereading it along with my class and following it with Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen reminded me how much I love Victorian lit. Not only that, but both books were fairly successful among my student (though The League more so). So when I was offered another lit. class for the summer, I knew what the topic would be! And these are the other novels for that course.

Zorro: I've been wanting to read Isabel Allende's take on "The Fox" for awhile now. It's sort of a Native/Mexican American retelling of the character. It's also research for a short story I'm planning to write over the summer! *gasp*

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: I started reading this a few years ago and really enjoyed it until I got caught up with other things. But it's time I revisit Savannah, especially since I won't be moving there this year as previously planned.

Stories from the Edge: Jimmy Santiago Baca may be visiting my campus next fall to present to several different Learning Communities that I'm either teaching or helping to organize, so I'd really like to get more familiar with his work. Sadly, I've read very little.

Sometimes a Great Notion: I've been slowly reading a little bit of Ken Kesey's novel every summer since it was given to me as a graduation gift from the chair of my thesis committee. The book is excellent but very dense! I felt bad for taking so long with it until I read that it was a book best savored. So I've been savoring it for three years now!

Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage: A colleague of mine insists I give Grant Morrison another chance (I'm not a fan), so he lent me this comic for the summer. I've actually been wanting to jump into this series for a long time, making for a nice compromise.

Every Piece of Dead Space Literature I Can Get My Hands On: What? I have to have some guilty pleasures on here. I'm a big fan of this game series, and I actually got into it via the first movie. And as much as I enjoy the games, the best stories come out of the side works. I've read bits of the novel and comics, and really, they're not that bad. The novel's author B.K. Evenson (his science-fiction pen name) is actually a pretty accomplished writer and wrote a companion book to the work of Robert Coover (another author I taught this past semester and on whom I plan to write more in the future). And the comics' writer Antony Johnston has a pretty decent resume himself.

This is what I'll be reading in the comic weeks, and you can count on my thoughts concerning at least half of them. There are other works too, I'm sure, but my preference lie on these.

So what will you, dear readers, be perusing this summer?

Debatable Definition Causes a Ruckus in the Comic World

2011-03-01T09:15:00.028-07:00

This week, my class tackled Dylan Horrocks' Inventing Comics. It's a difficult piece, and as always, separates the hard core students from the slackers when it came to blogging. Among those, Tiara's stands out as an example of summarizing the key points from a lengthy, dense text. Even more impressive is her weaving of summary with quotations, creating a hybrid text of her and Horrocks' words.

Debatable Definition Causes a Ruckus in the Comic World

Horrocks goes on to claim that McCloud does not justify why Eisner’s definition of “Sequential Art” is definitive in comics, and he chose it based on his personal likings. McCloud takes the concept of “Sequential Art” in order to rewrite it and rename it as comics. Horrocks claims that the definition is a metaphoric system made from other related metaphors, such as, “Comics are a literary genre”...But since McCloud decided that pictures must tell a whole story, Horrocks feels that McCloud should add an amendment to his definition stating, “Comics must not only contain pictorial narrative; they must be dominated by it”.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Dracula, Frankenstein, and The T-Virus: Resident Evil's Victorian Roots

2011-02-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

Like many gamers, Resident Evil was my introduction to survival horror. Growing up, I was a Nintendo fanboy, so I didn't get to play the series until the Gamecube remake, but it still changed the way I look at games. A cautious gamer by nature, I was thrilled to finally discover a game that rewarded my play style but still challenged me. Since then, I've slowly played my way through most of the series (though I only just played and beat Resident Evil 2 via PSN download last month) while acknowledging but shrugging off most of the criticisms concerning the game mechanics and stories. I've also earned three degrees in literature. It's the job of the literary academic to place a work within the greater context of its time, its culture, and even with other times and cultures. I've made Victorian literature one of my areas of research and begun to connect some of it to one my favorite video game series.

This area of interest began whilst I was first playing Resident Evil 5 in 2009. As I played it, I was struck with the number of plot similarities between it and Sir. H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines--one of my favorite novels. Haggard epitomizes one of the most popular late 19th century British literary genres--the Adventure Story for Boys--and many of its characteristics are found in Resident Evil 5 (and even Resident Evil 4): travel to a distant land, horrific events, exotic women, and treasure of some kind, all found on the route to "manhood". But Resident Evil 5 and King Solomon's Mines share more than similar plots; at one point or another, both faced accusations of racism. I've written on this before, both online and for a conference, so I don't want to turn this into an academic presentation or a class lecture (if interested, here's a link to the Flash presentation on the topic that I made for my literature class).

Dracula? Frankenstein? Zombies? Could be anything in there...

But The Adventure Story for Boys was just one popular genre of Victorian literature. Others included the Suspense, the Invasion-Scare Story, and the Gothic novel. The bulk of the Resident Evil series embodies each of these at some time or another. For starters, anyone who's at least played the original Resident Evil in any of its incarnations can attest to the Gothic feel of the mansion--the game's chief setting. And many of the games in the early chronology use exactly the same style--ornate tapestries, grim period art, gas lantern-level lighting, brass key security, etc. It screams of late-19th century Gothic aesthetics, and the designers clearly had them in mind. For an even more over the top example, look at Resident Evil 0's Ecliptic Express. Have you ever ridden Amtrak? I have. It's nothing like that. Resident Evil 4 even takes place partially in a European castle. And Resident Evil 2's secretary journals even peak over the fourth wall when she writes about not understanding the police chiefs' obsession with renaissance-like art that he displays around the police station.

[Read the Rest at Bitmob!]

The 6 Steps of the Rhetorical Analysis: Weekly Student Spotlight

2011-02-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

This week's Student Spotlight maps Scott McCloud's Six Steps to our Rhetorical Analysis essay. Incidentally, Chapter 7 is my favorite in Understanding Comics. For one, it raises important questions and discussion about art; how different artists approach the Six Steps (with Morgan Freeman mastering them at the end) is incredibly interesting. Secondly, McCloud's Six Steps can be applied to just about anything, and the application of them can force us to really consider the creation process, as Jakob demonstrates below:

Don't Judge By the Cover Alone

In all honesty I wasn't looking forward to reading this chapter at all. The first few pages didn't spark an interest. I did become interested once it started getting to where McCloud started describing each artist and the steps that he/she went through. Then I started thinking about all the work that I had been doing for each of my classes along with previous classes. Even when writing our rhetorical analysis paper do we use these steps. Idea and purpose were used for the content of our papers. Our form was the paper itself. Idiom is our vocabulary and subject matter along with structure being MLA format. Craft is used for our papers just by our will to "get the job done." Now surface in our paper is harder to put my thumb on. I don't really see how surface comes into a rhetorical analysis paper but I'm thinking that maybe it has to do with the way that the essay itself is presented. But, this chapter actually contains some valuable points in the pursuit of the understanding of comic value.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Weekly Student Spotlight: More Scott McCloud!

2011-02-15T07:00:00.002-07:00

I have some excellent student bloggers this semester! It's made this week's Student Spotlight choice very difficult. But there can only be one! Margaret's excellent summary of Chapter 6 of Understanding Comics is not only well written, but it's a fantastic quick-reference piece of the chapter's concepts, and that was one of the hopes for student blogging to begin with! So check it out, and give her some feedback!

Hurray for Show and Tell! The Balance of Pictures and Words

Scott McCloud explains in chapter six how comics are all about show and tell...The pictures show whats going on and the words explain in depth whats happening. There are different types of show and tell when it comes to comics. The different ones are word specific-which have pictures to show but need text to complete it, picture specific-words do more they are like a "soundtrack", duo specific-words and pictures do the same thing, additive- words or pictures "amplify" or "elaborate", parallel- the words and pictures follow different paths, montage- the words are literally apart of the picture, interdependent- the words and pictures go "hand in hand" they both need each other. Pictures and words work together when it comes to comics. They are a team and have to work together to accomplish a goal. There needs to be balance when it comes to comics.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

How We Understand McCloud's Rhetoric...Weekly Student Spotlight

2011-02-07T22:52:00.001-07:00

Last week, my Rhetoric of Comics class began blogging for the semester. Their first assignment was summaries of Chapters 3 and 4 from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, our main course text. In this week's Student Spotlight, heli143 discusses the advantages of McCloud choosing a comic to deliver his message about comics. It's an important observation since many students (including myself as an undergrad) take for granted how the medium of the text supports McCloud's rhetoric. It's a brilliant move, and it's one of the reasons why his book is so appropriate for a Composition classroom.

How We Understand Panels and Time....

In my opinion McCloud did a very good job at explaining and helping me “understand” both closure and time frames in both these chapters. I really like how this entire book is in comic book style. I am able to grasp the simplicity of reading a comic in an educational manner and I really think that's great. McCloud makes things much easier to understand while giving us examples of everything he’s trying to teach. This book so far actually has me interested! However I really want to color this book.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies? Share them on heli's blog!

My First Prezi: King Solomon's Mines are Still Full of Zombies!

2011-01-31T08:34:00.001-07:00

"King Solomon's Mines are Full of Zombies! Using 19th Century British Literature to Answer the Resident Evil 5 Race Debate" was the presentation I gave at least year's SWTX PCA/ACA Conference. And the topic is one I've never quite gotten over, since I still love Haggard's "Adventure Story for Boys" and Capcom's "Survival Horror" series. In light of that, I decided to assign the novel as the first in my Intro. to Pop Culture class.

One of the assignments for class involves making a class presentation/leading class discussion on how a particular novel relates to another Pop Culture artifact--the idea is to get students thinking outside of the context of the books we're reading. To get them started, I'm giving a mock presentation to show what I'm looking for. It's basically a bare bones version of that conference presentation. And it's my first time using Prezi, which is awesome, easy to use, and way more fun than PowerPoint!

King Solomon's Mines are Full of Zombies! on Prezi

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Gamers in the Hands of an Angry God: Purgatory, Deicide, and Religious Critique in Video Games

2011-01-18T18:31:00.001-07:00

Back in April, I wrote about deicide in video games on Bitmob. It was promoted to the front page, and within a couple of weeks had a quarter of my personal blog's lifetime hits. I received some amazing feedback, and the idea of expanding on it has been growing in the back of my head. At last, those ideas have begun to come to fruition.

Below is the research proposal I submitted to the National Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association academic conference--a step up from the regional conference I've attended in the past. Pulling heavily from that original post about deicide, I've broadened the topic a bit to argue that many games now feature a kind of religious critique that we should analyze and understand. I really enjoyed studying video games through a literary lens at last year's conference, so I'm definitely looking forward to continuing that work. But this time, I thought I'd open the topic to a wider discussion before I really get into preparing the presentation (which I'll be giving this April).

Every so often, video game trends give us new enemies to face without feeling too guilty about destroying their throngs of followers—Nazis, zombies, Nazi-zombies—but the new final boss of choice is God. Really, in the adolescent power-fantasy that is the average video game, what could better serve as the ultimate attack on authority? Yet for every spectacle of deicide, there is also a critique.

In the video game departure from the epic poem, Dante refuses to accept his death and a one way trip to Hell for his sins, instead journeying through the nine circles to rescue his fiancée, kill the overseers, and decide for himself who should be damned. Meanwhile, Demon’s Souls sticks players into a kind of mournful, depressing purgatory, from which the only proposed “escape” is killing god—assuming the player manages to get past the punishingly difficult first level.

Religious themes and allusions in video games are certainly not new. Infamous' Cole loosely resembles Christ. Bioshock demonstrates man's inability to live without religion whenever the player stumbles across boxes of smuggled Bibles. But even the cutesy Little King's Story continually pokes fun at religion with its Church of Soup, whose followers end prayers with "Ramen." But the sheer number of games to employ this type of criticism in the past year is indicative of the times and deserves critical attention in return. After all, if we can kill god in our games, with what does that leave us afterward?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Lazy Blogger's Year-in-Review

2011-01-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

I had about three different "Year-in-Review" posts planned, but it's been a crazy holiday--not bad, just lots of awesomeness and very little writing time (even this post has taken a couple of weeks). So I stole this from a friend, who stole it from a Runner's World blog. It may be all I get around to this year. But here it goes:

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Lifeguarded with my little brother--meaning I've now guarded alongside both.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I've always made my "resolutions" at the beginning of the new school year, but so far, so good.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not last year, but this one!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My family's dog Trigger passed away right after my last visit home. He was 13 years old.

5. What countries did you visit?
None this year. Though we did drive over 5000 miles.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
Publications--I didn't write nearly enough this year.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 18th, the day we got our puppy Memphis!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It isn't much, but I've read more books this year than I have in the last several :-)

9. What was your biggest failure?
I've probably written less this year, too :-/

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not quite, but I think I'm beginning to develop allergies :-/

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A mini-shopping spree in Savannah, GA, resulted in a really cool, semi-vintage, black leather messenger bag :-)

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My beloved wife's work ethic continues to amaze me. I can't fairly summarize everything she's done, so I won't try. Instead, check her blog :-)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My College Discourse students who generally acted like ANY act of participation wold secure them an A in my course--and that's putting it politely.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Bills, bleh.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Meeting Stan Sakai!

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
It's a tie.

California Gurls" by Katy Perry slowly became the song of the summer at the pool my little brother and I lifeguarded this summer just because it played on the radio so often. Now, I sort of love it. I think he does too.

But my little brother, wife, and I spontaneously breaking into Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" during an evening drive from Santa Fe is a memory forever tied to that song for me.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?
Continued blessings = More happiness
ii. thinner or fatter?
Little chubbier, but it's been a busy semester, and I'm workin' on it.
iii. richer or poorer?
Probably a little bit poorer--we traveled a lot last year.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Read, write, and play video games.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinate.

20. Did you fall in love in 2010?
More in love!

21. How many one-night stands?
Nope.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
My wife has made me a "Gleek", haha!

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate's a strong word, but I'm definitely not too happy with someone.

24. What was the best book you read?
Tom Bissell's Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter most certainly changed my outlook on video games, writing, and even my understanding of memoir/autobiographical writing--simply and excellent read.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Chiptunes--music made with the kind of 8-bit sound used in old NES games--like the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game soundtrack are pretty much my new favorite thing on my iPod.

26. What did you want and get?
A puppy!

27. What did you want and not get?
I actually can't think of anything...

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Hands down, it was Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I saw the movie three times in theatres, and I can't even count how many times on DVD and my iPod--simply a brilliant film.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
For my 27th birthday, my wife took me and our puppy Memphis to Santa Fe for his first puppy training lesson, my favorite pizza, and shopping. It was a nice change of pace.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I would have loved for my turkey to cook on Thanksgiving...I'm still pretty upset about that...

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Slightly more eccentric-professor-ish, I'm afraid, since I often didn't have to shave or get my hair cut.

32. What kept you sane?
Honestly, my return to Pokemon and it's simplistic JRPG design, portability, and overall pick-up/put-down playability...Okay, I'm just trying to rationalize my nerdiness. But Pearl did wonders for my sanity last year, and hopefully HeartGold and Black will do wonders in 2011.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
The video game law California took before the Supreme Court, essentially over whether or not video games are art.

34. Who did you miss?
Our fried Beth who moved away!

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Tony and Mel with their awesome board games, beer, and dinner parties!

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Puppies know when you need them to snuggle with you :-)

I'm SO Proud of My Wife!

2010-12-09T17:14:00.000-07:00

Next semester, my wife will graduate with a BFA in Digital Film Making and a Minor in Fine Arts. But this semester, she's preparing her portfolio for her grad school applications. But her first choice, Savannah College of Art and Design's Motion Media MFA, required an example of typographic motion, which unfortunately, she did not have. In fact, she has yet to even take a class in typography, so she was a little worried about that hole in an otherwise exceptional body of work. So she applied for a fellowship that would afford her the money (and therefore the time) to teach herself typography and create a work by semester's end. Of course, not to take the easy way out, she also incorporated stop-motion animation. This is the result:

Over the Rainbow from Veronica Black on Vimeo.

I'm ridiculously proud of my wife and her work. She continually impresses me with not only her work ethic but her brilliance and creativity. To date, her department has sent her to three conferences to showcase her work, to DC twice (once on a field trip for exceptional students and once to create a virtual tour for a science museum), and a short documentary she made for a museum exhibit has gone on to be installed in museums across the state. She's met the creator of FarmVille, been invited to New Zealand by museums to work on their installations, and has already been offered jobs for when she graduates. She's amazing. And I'm married to her. That's our song :-P

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Scott Pilgrim Vs. NMHU: Weekly Student Spotlight

2010-11-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last week, my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community sponsored an open-to-the-public screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to coincide with the end of Writing Project 3 (our Case Study on the film). My class had to also write a review of the film, while I offered my other classes extra credit should they choose to attend and write their own reviews. The result was a weekend of very positive reviews for Scott Pilgrim. So for this week's Student Spotlight, I've chosen one from each of my classes. Tiara analyzes the film's themes, and Capella looks at the faithfulness of the adaptation. Read, and comment on their blogs!

Finish HIM!!!

The movie was totally interesting and humorous. I liked the fact that it portrayed the awkwardness of a teenager’s life, the confusion of love, willingness to approve of another’s luggage, and realizing one’s self worth. Michael Cera fighting and defeating seven evil exes was surprising, he appears so weak and dorky you just do not expect it at all...I enjoyed the movie so much; I do not know why film critics cannot just appreciate it for what it was-funny.

Scott's Wicked World

Scott Pilgrim VS the World is a new milemarker in film making. From what I'm aware of, no other movie asside from cartoons has displayed the comic's genre better then this film. Different shots and scenes literally spell out onomonopias like you would see them in graphic novels. During some fight scenes as well as a scene taking place on the phone with Scott, his sister, and Scott's roommate, there is a space between two or even three "panels" that normally serve as the essence of graphic novels.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Weekly Student Spotlight: "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"

2010-11-10T12:15:00.024-07:00

Last week, my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community screened The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, my favorite movie of all time. So today's Spotlight features three student posts! First, "The Good"--Olivia continues to write concise summaries and interesting responses:

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly… a strong willed gunman, a greedy hit man, and a Mexican bandit out in the Wild West...I thought this was an awesome movie. I totally love the music, love Clint Eastwood and his amazing hair and just overall loved all the actors. I can definitely see why this is a classic. It had amazing suspense that kept my eyes glued to the screen. It made me really hungry too. I never knew what they were eating but I wanted some. I was never into western movies, but now I want to see more. It was just a classic “badass” movie.

Duong's post is only "The Bad" in that it needs some proofreading. And yet, his analysis of the film is very deep:

"What's his name? Lee! LEE!"

"The good, the bad and the ugly" is the epitome of Spaghetti Western, a genre of movies directed in Italia and Spain in the sixties. The superb music by Ennio Morricone is the highlight of the movie, with its simple yet extremely tense melodies. Together with the closeup shot at each character's eyes, the music creates a creepy suspense each and every time something is about to happen. Although Clint East Wood basically does nothing but frown, his character is well portrayed. He is still a badass despite his being The good, since he kills so many people. The character Tuco is the most well acted protagonist in the film. The actor, Eli Wallach, succeeds in depicting a dumb and funny yet emotional Mexican bandit in such a natural way that the audience is most attracted to him and even develop a sympathy with the character.

And last, "The Ugly" is a post by a student who didn't actually review the movie. Still, Vince posted an interview with Edgar Wright about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the subject of the Case Study we just finished, the group project the class is making short films about now, and the screening the class'll be attending Thursday at 7:30pm at the Ilfeld Auditorium (You should come!). And that's got to count for something right?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Dramatic Dead

2010-11-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning of my response to a prompt on IGN. Follow the link for my full review!

It's interesting that the first review of any kind that I published online was of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye. This was before I even had a blog. I posted it on LivingSocial, a social network of readers, film buffs, and gamers, that existed almost solely inside of Facebook. I wasn't terribly kind:

...what really sucked me in was the Introduction written by (I believe) the author. He explains that he really enjoys the zombie genre because it lends itself so well to social commentary, and this really intrigued me as we see so many "apocalypse" stories these days ("I Am Legend," "World War Z," "Cloverfield," etc.). These are America's version of Britain's 19th century invasion genre (books like H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds"), and in the wake of 9/11, they say a lot about us as a culture - our biggest fear is an attack we cannot repel. Unfortunately, that's about where the series ends for me. It makes use of the usual clichés with only a few innovations (that zombies' main sense is smell is a pretty neat idea). While the art is generally good, the storyline is choppy, and I often felt like I missed a beat between frames. Still, if only for the Introduction, it's worth a read.

(Read More)

Weekly Student Spotlight: TX School Board Case Study Wrap-Up

2010-11-03T09:04:00.000-06:00

Well, my students' Case Study of the Texas School Board's Social Studies curriculum changes is coming to an end--in fact, I'll be handing back grading papers this morning. But before that, let's look at one more student post on the subject. classof2010_knights' summary and position on Eric Foner's "Twisting History in Texas" are excellent.

Where has Martin Luther King Jr gone?

The article specifies that conservatives want students to learn more about the success in our country rather than the rights our people fought for. “Veterans Day replaces Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the list of holidays students should be familiar with.” The board seems to suggest that Americans don’t need to pay attention to the rest of the world, or of noncitizens in the country...Anyone who doesn’t want students to learn about “women who demanded greater equality” must not value their rights as a woman. People have fought hard to give those conservative board members their rights. Some have even risked their lives, such as Martin Luther King Jr., to make everyone equal. And yet the new curriculum advises that his birthday not even be recognized?

Leave here some comments!

Scott Pilgrim vs. Thomas Jefferson: Weekly Student Spotlight

2010-10-20T15:54:00.000-06:00

The Weekly Student Spotlight is a feature I began this past summer with my last Rhetoric of Comics class, in which I posted a blurb from and link to an exceptional blog post made by a student. The idea was to encourage better blog posting by my students through the promise of bonus points for posts selected and to increase feedback by opening their work to another audience. We got off to late start with blogging this semester, so the feature wasn't really necessary. But as both my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community class and my non-LC English 111 near their blog-heavy case studies, it seemed an appropriate time to resume the feature.

And since my Movies LC class is blogging for their Case Study about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World while my non-LC English class' Case Study is about the Texas Board of Education's Social Studies curriculum changes last spring (which involve decreased emphasis on Thomas Jefferson for his belief in the separation of church and state), I thought I'd also give extra bonus points to whichever post has the most comments at the end of the week--yes, I'm trying to guilt you, Dear Reader, into commenting on their work. Not to worry if you aren't familiar with the issues, because the best posts accurately summarize them for you; just click on their titles for the link! So without further ado, Olivia Kuykendall's"Don't Hate" and Racheal Chacon's "Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams":

Don't Hate

In the article “Scott Pilgrim vs. the Unfortunate Tendency to Review Audiences”, the writer, Linda Holmes discusses how some film critics have been stereotyping their opinion of intended audiences for the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World...I agree with Linda all the way on this issue, just because you hate a movie doesn’t mean you can hate on the people who like the movie or want to see it. I have not seen the movie, but it looks pretty awesome, and like Linda I am not a gamer, I’m not a teenage boy, I’m pretty sure I don’t have ADD and I have a life. My life heavily involves watching amazing movies, and this is one I plan on seeing.

Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams

“The Wall of Separation” by Daniel L. Dreisbach begins with the presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Religion has always played a role when it comes to political campaigns. In this particular presidency election between Jefferson and Adams, religion was one of the main things that made this election so intriguing. One of the main arguments about this election was the religious backgrounds of both candidates. A majority of people believed that Thomas Jefferson was not fit to be president because he had no set religion...In 1802, President Jefferson wrote a letter. In this letter he talks about the first amendment and how it “denied Congress the authority to establish a religion or prohibit its free exercise, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” This metaphor has been interpreted several different ways. This “wall” has censored religious expression in schools, stripping public spaces of religious symbols, and denying public benefits to faith communities.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Mid-Semester Report

2010-10-14T22:51:00.000-06:00

It's been two months to the day since my last blog post. I'm not proud of that. I've missed writing. But it's been a hectic semester so far. For some reason, I've taken on a record number or responsibilities and activities, which include but are not limited to: coaching U10 soccer, which is surprisingly more stressful than U8; playing on the adult soccer league (I suck, but I'm getting better); being faculty adviser for the university's co-ed soccer club; adopting a puppy; joining a writing club; auditing a life drawing class; collaborating two learning communities; and suddenly deciding that my care-free-winging-it attitude to teaching was no longer for me and that I needed to spend more time planning, preparing, enlivening my classes. *Phew* My wife's usually the one who takes on more than she should, but I seem to have caught the bug.

Despite it all, however, I'm actually really enjoying it! I have a new-found love for soccer that I'm not sure I ever had when I was younger. And I love coaching. On my birthday, my wife filmed our game and we hosted a screening/pizza party. The kids loved watching themselves on the big screen, and I used it as an opportunity to show mistakes and praise good plays; in fact, I may have learned more than them.

Our new bagle hound (beagle/basset hound) Memphis is awesome. He's ridiculously cute, and manages to lighten my mood just being. Granted, he's still house training and wakes up (literally) before the crack of dawn, but he and I have gotten into a routine. We get up and go for a quick walk, I make us both breakfast, and he falls back to sleep while have a cup of coffee and work on all that school stuff I mentioned.

Which is crazy for me. I'm making lesson plans now! I simply never bothered before because I believed in the organic classroom. But they keep me on track, remind me of the important stuff I used to forget to mention, and I still manage to leave myself wiggle room when a student wants to argue about why Star Wars is such an important film. I like the structure it's created, and I like planning assignments and activities more now--like putting together a puzzle. And my students are churning out some excellent work! I'm ashamed I haven't continued my Weekly Student Spotlight series, because there have been some great discussions that should be shared. So starting next week, the series will return! It should be especially interesting as my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community begins its Case Study about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

The only major downside is that a lot of things I really love doing have taken second fiddle to this stuff--like blogging and writing in general, really. I hardly play video games much these days, which I suppose isn't a terrible thing. I'm also not reading much--something I really got used to over the summer; case in point, I have a stack of comics I got on my birthday two weeks ago that I haven't touched! But even then, there's a several lining. What I have read has been high quality--catching up on the Usagi Yojimbo series! I even met Stan Sakai last month!

And as the Fall Break begins this weekend, I've lined up some reading in preparation for the 200-level literature course I get to teach next semester. I'm extremely excited about it, and we're offering it as a learning community about popular culture. I'll be a taking a kind of "Pop Culture Through the Ages" approach to it by having students read a traditional work of fiction like H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines followed by a contemporary comic like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The other pairs include Tom De Haven's It's Superman! with The Dark Knight Returns and Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association (which was recommended to me by my chair, and so far, I'm enjoying) with Scott Pilgrim's Volumes 3 & 4 (which seems odd, but I have my reasons). I'm very excited to try my hand at teaching lit.

So yes, it's been an insanely busy semester, and I don't foresee having a ton of time for blogging (or reading or gaming for that matter) for the rest of it. But I think that's okay, as long as they don't feel like major sacrifices. And right now, they don't...Though Fall Break will likely be a chance to recharge those batteries.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Tom Bissell Gives Me Some "Extra Lives"

2010-08-14T16:14:00.002-06:00

Recently I'd been hearing a lot about Tom Bissell's gaming memoir/critique Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. Admittedly, I was skeptical. After all, whenever gamers gather around a "great book," it's usually something along the lines of a new Halo novel. And who the hell is Tom Bissell, anyway? Sounds like a pen name for a Spaced fanboy, if you ask me.

So when I spied a copy in my local bookstore, I read up on him in the jacket cover. Still, I'd never heard of any of his books, and I don't read any of the publications for which he's known. But before I put it down, I took a look at some of the praise it's received on the back cover; the words "Resident Evil" caught my eye:

Tom Bissel's description of killing zombies in the first iteration of Resident Evil is simply a tour de force. -Keith Gessen

Strong words, indeed. So I flipped to the chapter and read. And suddenly, I wasn't in a bookstore anymore. I was in a mansion in a "forest zone situated in the northwest of Raccoon City," defending myself frantically from zombies. That was it. I was hooked. I bought it and devoured it. It's excellent.

First off, Bissell is simply an excellent writer. He writes with a level of wit that lesser writers can rarely muster, let alone maintain for 200 pages. And while he's clearly passionate, he never falls into fanboyism; he may love games like Far Cry, but he's just as acutely aware of their achievements as he is their faults. But his description of the first ten minutes of Resident Evil (a game that, like Bissell, I cherish) made me feel like I was there again--sitting on the carpeted floor in a dark room, frighteningly pulling the trigger and wasting precious ammo every time the phone rang (even though he did so on the PS1 for the first time and I played the "REmake"). And I thought, "If he does this with every game he discusses, it'll be like replaying my favorites!" Of course, Bissell doesn't do this for me the entire length of the book. For starters, he brings up close to a hundred games.

Tom Bissel saw this...

...I saw this. We both peed our pants.

Secondly, I've only played about a quarter of the games he mentions, and I've been playing for about twenty years. So no, reading Bissell's book isn't like replaying my favorite games. It's better. It's like getting to play a bunch of games I never got to experience. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that Bissell's descriptions of Fallout 3 can replace or are even akin to playing it for oneself. But after a chapter about it, I have a better sense of what it is, how it plays, where it fails, and why it's good, than all the fanboy ravings and professional reviews I've read could give me.

And if he does this with a game that I'm very unlikely to ever get to (due to my enormous backlog), isn't that the next best thing? Fallout 3 and Mass Effect are huge RPGs requiring time or means I don't have (no XBOX, you see). But at least I can appreciate their intence work in dialogue trees that create a unique experience for every gamer, every time they play it--which is to say, on a level deeper than just, "ZOMG! fallout ftw!!!" And I'd always viewed Gears of War as just another war shooter without paying it much attention. But finally knowing what stands-out about it (besides its innovating cover-system and allowing one to curb-stomp enemies) and what went into them makes me want to play and appreciate it. That is a huge feat to Bissell's credit.

If I were to make any criticisms of Bissell's work, it would be his odd lack of Nintendo references. Granted, much of his book is memoir, and he can hardly be faulted if he simply didn't play Nintendo games or if they didn't resonate with him. But at some point, he was playing games with this book in mind, and choosing not to get into any of them (new, old, whatever) suggests to me that those games don't matter.

I realize that this is probably going out on a limb, but it goes back to my comment that most of the games Bissell mentions I haven't played (and given that I grew up on Nintendo, it's safe to assume that he's only played a similar handful of what I might have listed). I can only presume then that most readers would have played the same fraction of Bissell's games. And even if their own memoir contained the same entries, it would no doubt be filled with different experiences. I may be wrong, but I can't imagine too many gamers addicted to cocaine and Grand Theft Auto at the same time. How many gamers simply don't have games resonate with them in those ways?

How many Gears of War players are more interested in fragging online than in Bleszinski's subtle attention to architecture?

And all of this begs an even bigger question, for whom is this book written? The droves of "casual" gamers play for the entertainment, not the experience. And those who'd place themselves in the "hard core" camp already know why video games matter, even if we can't fully express why. Is Bissell then just preaching to the converted? Absolutely! But that just makes us missionaries, with a bible from which to finally preach ourselves. Is it perfect? No. But it's the best we have so far.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Only Comic to Ever Scare Me: Horror in Comics

2010-07-30T01:43:00.000-06:00

I've been reading Mike Mignola's horror comics for a while now. And even though I've yet to closely read H.P. Lovecraft, I'm told Mignola's style borrows from that author's method of creeping out his readers. Yet in all this time, however creepy his stories get (The Crooked Man being an excellent example), I've never been frightened by his or any comic. And really, can a comic be scary in the way a book or film can? The very nature of the medium (open and exposed to the reader) defeats the method in which one is most often frightened--surprise. Without this element, can a comic (even a horror comic) be anything more than creepy? Well, I have found one, written by none other than Mignola himself.

Earlier today, I was doing some work in Borders, as I often do to avoid distractions like video games and naps. Still, I always keep a pile of book close by for my perusal when I start to get burned out. Today, this pile included the B.P.R.D.: 1947 trade-paper back, as I remembered how much I had enjoyed the series but that I had never been able to find the final issue in the arc. But also included was a short from the Dark Horse Presents MySpace page entitled "And What Shall I Find There"? At only eight pages, go ahead and read it. (Follow the link, and under "Back Issues," scroll to Issue 23 for the comic.) I'll wait...Go on then!

...

Am I right, or am I right? Sitting in a crowded, day lit Borders, the part where Trevor feels the dark, hot, stink closing in on him literally gave me goosebumps. Now, I know it was a pretty obvious outcome, but it was the situation that got me--Broom sitting in a dark bell tower with a painting of a priest and his dark accomplice. I mean, how many times have you found yourself alone, at night, watching a horror movie, playing a survival-horror, or even reading a good horror story, and suddenly the room seems smaller? The shadows seem bigger and darker. The silence magnifies the intensity of every sound. And you could swear you were no longer alone.

All horror appeals to those things we would find frightening were we exposed to them in real life. But the best horror is that which appeals to those situations we find frightening when we are exposed to them in real life. And while the former can still provide some great scares, perhaps for comics, the later holds greater potential. Just some late night thoughts from a Mignola fanboy who can't sleep...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Little Brother's Thoughts on "Zen Ties"

2010-07-28T19:53:00.002-06:00

I attribute my love of reading and writing to the summer book report my dad would assign me every year with the promise of some awesome surprise when I finished. While I remember all the novels I read and wrote about (I even have some of those, tucked away inside the books), I don't remember all the surprises (except the basketball hoop I got for reading and writing about My Side of the Mountain during the summer after kindergarten) or even the other stuff I did on those vacations. So knowing that my youngest brother would be spending the entire summer with me and my wife, I thought it would be good for him to take up a similar practice.

Now, that's not to say Dad's lightened up any. He sent my brother here with two workbooks for him to practice the math and language lessons he learned this past year. Plus, he had two books for summer reading. He did about half from each workbook but finished the second of the two books weeks ago. Knowing this, I didn't think it would be fair to make him read any other books and then also ask him to write about them. Instead, I let him, for the most part, pick up and read just about anything else he took a fancy to: comics, Harry Potter, a random homework assignment I'd given my class that day (okay, I promise I only did this once...maybe twice...but now he knows what to expect from college reading!), etc. Then, I'd ask him to write me about two paragraphs in his composition book--one to summarize the reading and one for his thoughts and opinions. (Sound familiar?) Books weren't the only things he wrote about, though.

My brother and I did our best to instill our love of video games into our youngest brother from an early age, and perhaps we worked a little too hard. The result is a kid with game-ADD enjoying a summer in a home with tons of games he'd never played before. Since even I didn't want him to spend all summer in front of the TV, I made him a deal. He was only allowed to consistently play a couple of games at a time, and before moving onto a new game, he had to write a similar report on the one he was finishing.

After every little report, I'd read it, ask him to fix a couple grammar issues, and maybe expand on an idea in a place or two. Similar to my Rhetoric of Comics summer blogs, it's been a real treat to watch my brother's writing improve. Granted, he was never really thrilled with the task, but I see his improvement, and I'm sure he's teachers will, as well. So to commemorate him leaving tomorrow and all of his good work, I'm posting here his thoughts on Jon J Muth's picture book Zen Ties (the sequel to his award-winning Zen Shorts)--his last report of the summer. I chose it for that reason, but also because, like the Stillwater's nephew, I hope my brother learned something from his summer away from home. Enjoy!

Zen Ties is about Stillwater the Panda and his nephew Koo. One day, Stillwater's human friends Addy, Michael, and Karl ask Stillwater to play with them. Later, Michael tells Stillwater that he is nervous about an upcoming spelling bee. Stillwater takes him to Miss Whitaker, a neighbor.

But Miss Whitaker thinks that the kids are all rotten. Stillwater notices that Miss Whitaker is sick. So Stillwater, Koo, and the kids help make soup for her. After she gets better, being a former English teacher, she helps Michael prepare for the spelling bee. Michael studies with Miss Whitaker until the day of the spelling bee, which Michael takes first place in. A couple days pass and then Koo leaves to go back home.

I think that the book was a brilliant idea. The art style is amazing. It looks as if nothing at all was drawn; it was all painted. I haven't read the first book, but now I intend to, along with one's in the future.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! Bonus Double (Last of the Semester) Feature

2010-07-27T23:15:00.000-06:00

This has been a really interesting feature for me, and I'm definitely considering continuing with my other classes this Fall. I've enjoyed looking back at my students' posts every week and seeing what stands out. It's also really interesting for me, as their teacher, to look closely at how their writing evolves over the course of the semester.

For this last installment (and since I skipped a week in all the finals craziness) I'm going to include two samples that I hope you'll follow to read in their entirety. Both are on superheroes, but one is Beth Meyer's thoughts on the animated film Batman: Gotham Knights (a series of shorts by several different, celebrated anime directors); the other is bfarrell's post about the "Under the Hood" chapters from Alan Moore's Watchmen. Both show two students' exceptional improvement from the beginning of the semester to the end. Enjoy!

The Interpretations of Batman

The rest of short series explains how a man can do such extraordinary things. He trains hard, works through his pain, and uses his riches to attain special weapons and machinery. How he is seen through the eyes of children, the cops he aids to apprehend bad guys, Commissioner Gordon, the woman who trains him, Alfred the butler all vary. Who is Batman?? The question is an ongoing debate in the series.

I enjoyed these interpretations of Batman. Seeing the different segments gave me more background on the hero… I have seen the movies but only read the comics assigned in this class so my exposure is very limited. I feel that viewing these short films also gave me another perspective on “the look” of Batman. Batman was drawn differently in each section and the differences all served a purpose. How we perceive Batman can change how we interpret him.

Crazy Kinky Nazis - AKA Super-heroes

Having watched the movie Watchmen, I was somewhat familiar with the plot. I found the more developed back story behind “Night Owl” was very interesting to read. Watchmen is a somewhat more realistic portrayal of the “super-hero.” They are portrayed with flaws, and some of them are just adrenaline junkies, and aren't really the good moral people you would typically imagine a super-hero to be. This is such a refreshing perspective. While it does make the world darker, and more unstable, it also adds depth to the characters. When your super-hero's alter ego is a crazy, kinky, Nazi, you have to ask “what made them want to become a costumed adventurer?” Its great that Mason explains his motivations.

"Under the Hood" is a great look into a uncommon, but fascinating, world of super-heroes. Real people with uncertain futures that fight crime dressed in silly costumes. These super-heroes have issues, just like real people might. They're crazy, they're kinky, they're nazis, they're unpredictable; and that is exactly what makes them interesting.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

A Portrait of the Nerd as a Young Man: "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour"

2010-07-23T22:42:00.001-06:00

My induction into the world of Scott Pilgrim happened entirely by divine intervention. Some might call it luck or fate, but the series proved such a match for my life, interests, and sense of humour, only God could have been involved on that day. What followed was what I now affectionately look back on as the "Summer of Scott Pilgrim," in which I not only hunted down and read all five books but reaffirmed my love for Edgar Wright by finally getting around to watching his hit series Spaced in preparation for his film adaptation of the series. Admittedly, with the sixth book having just now come out (a year later) and the film still almost a month away, I was a little too excited. Still, my excitement has been rewarded, as the final chapter of Scott Pilgrim's quest to defeat The League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends and live happily ever after with his beloved Ramona Flowers doesn't disappoint this fan.

As usual, we open on Scott being a loser, though he perhaps has a pretty good excuse this time. He's living along, his bands' broken up, his best friend's moved away, and Ramona has left him. Predictably, he's crawled under a blanket with a video game and some ramen.What follows is a quit journey through some of his past relationships, closure on them, and the final confrontation with Gideon, the seventh and most powerful Evil Ex-Boyfriend. Without spoiling anything, their battle is epic, and the ending is very satisfying.

But one of my favorite aspects of Bryan Lee O'Malley's opus is the melding of the every day with the magical from video games, comics, and anime. When I first wrote on the series, I likened this to magical realism (instead calling it "nerd realism") with a few notable differences that became more apparent as the series wore on (and came to a head in this final installment). Whereas with magical realism the magical is considered ordinary, the characters in Scott Pilgrim are often as aghast as the reader by the way their world seems to meet at a crossroads with those other mediums of nerd-dom. This break of the fourth wall is one of those things that truly allows O'Malley's work to stand-out. And yet, what makes the story ultimately relatable, is the way the work is grounded in the every day. While it's the nerd references that may entertain and appeal to us as fanboy and girls, it's the real world stuff Scott and Ramona have to deal with that makes this work more than just an ego-tripping, gaming web-comic.

To my knowledge, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw hasn't ever really discussed Scott Pilgrim, but I think it's fair to say he'd at least appreciate it for this reason above all others.
In his video on gaming webcomics, he points out their importance as part of the culture that surrounds gaming. With its excellent art, brilliant dialogue, and classic gaming references, Scott Pilgrim is everything those gaming comics he chastises are not. But it's one more thing, as well--a real story with real characters that actually develop in the face of real conflict.

In the end, Scott Pilgrim isn't about a nerdy guy who has to defeat the seven evil exes of his would-be girlfriend. That's what happens, but that's not what it's about. Scott Pilgrim is about an immature, selfish, ambition-less man-child growing up. It's in the titles of the first and last volume, for Pete's sake. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life to Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour perfectly describe the growing up he does. He makes himself a better person by putting aside what he wants for someone else. Scott Pilgrim is a nerd-coming-of-age story, and all nerds should be able to relate it. I know I do, if only in that I try to not be the Precious Little Life Scott (concerned only with what my relationships can do for me and the video games I'd rather play than do something for someone else) but instead the Finest Hour Scott.

See? Who says comic books and video games can't teach life lessons?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

What's in the Little Blue Bag? Week of July 14, 2010

2010-07-20T23:49:00.002-06:00

This entry's going to be short for several reasons. For one, I plan on reading tons of comics in this week leading up to and following Comic-Con. And I want to write about as many of them as I can. So in the interest of not burning myself out, I'm only going to be looking at the most stand-out stuff. That's not to say that, for example, last week, this was the only good comic I picked up; this one had something...special. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I also see myself, in this week of epic comic reading, getting really burned out from reading about comics. The summer semester is rapidly coming to a close, which means I have been reading rough drafts and will be reading final drafts of research papers from my Rhetoric of Comics class. Now, I love comics theory as much as the next guy, but there's only so much Scott McCloud I can take in one sitting. And speaking of my students, I'd really like to feature at least one more sample of student blogging from that class in my "Student Spotlight" series.

Which brings me to my last concern; I don't want you, my few readers out there in the vastness of the interwebs, to get burned out on all this comic talk, 'cause I guarantee, some of it, most of it, is going to be awesome.

Velocity #1, by Ron Marz, Kenneth Rocafort, and Chris Cross:
With a cover featuring a superheroine shoe shopping, this was my wife's pick. Now usually I don't review her comics (mostly because they don't stay in my Little Blue Bag long enough), but I really like the cover--the juxtaposition of a superheroine doing something as normal as trying to find the right pair of shoes immediately gave the character a sense of humanity. But I was surprised to find I liked what was inside, as well. Granted, perhaps I'm bias, as the sexy, shoe-shopping, old-movie-loving speedster reminds me of my wife.

Regardless, it's the art I most like about this comic. It has a sketchy look to it that lends well to Velocity's zooming around the page. And the colouring and shading are excellent.

Story wise, this is a continuation of Top Cow's Cyberforce/Hunter-Killer series, which I know nothing about. Still, this issue did a good job of catching me up to speed before the character profiles at the end of the comic. Still, it's not anything extraordinary: cyborg Velocity and her cyborg-buddies have been infected with a computer virus, and with her super-speed, she alone can save them. For obvious reasons, she spends a lot of the comic running away, straight to a cliffhanger ending. And while I hate to see her go, I love to watch her leave.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

What's in the Little Blue Bag? Week of June 30, 2010

2010-07-12T17:51:00.000-06:00

It's been over 8 months since I did one of these features! What started as a break for the holidays/finals season (since I don't get to the comic book store often, nor have time to really write, during that period), became a major hiatus from thinking about comics critically, altogether! That's not to say I haven't been reading any. When my wife and I visited Savannah College of Art & Design in May, I found a comic book store near campus with an insane collection of back-issue Usagi Yojimbo comics! Actually, that's something you may have missed. I've become a major fan of Stan Sakai's samurai bunny who, shockingly, I actually remember from his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon cameos! So that's one comic I have to start writing about!

But what really spurned me to restart this feature was the startling new way comics are being reviewed over at IGN. I've been a strong commenter of their review process in the past, constantly asking for a wider variety of reviews as opposed to sticking to the better-known serials. And their new process, where by they only provide "full reviews" for some titles and "Quick Takes" for others has proven to provide even less coverage of the comics I'm interested in. Luckily, it seems I'm not the only reader who dislikes the new system, but it doesn't alter which comics get reviewed on IGN and which don't. And that's where I decided I needed to jump start this feature. IGN isn't a comics review site, so it makes sense they'd review the titles that the readers of their gaming news site are most likely interested in (at the same time, other comics news sites I've found to be simply to snooty). This just means that there's room for some reviews right in the middle, from the professional appreciator like me (those of you curious about the title of this feature can check out the reason here). Sadly, I still don't seem capable to read and review my comics picks in a timely manner. But without further ado, this is "What's in the Little Blue Bag" this week!

Usagi Yojimbo #129 by Stan Sakai:
So of course, I'll start with Usagi. What I love about this series is the way it hearkens back and captures the feel of feudal Japanese stories. They're so similar to the old stories of knights and castles, that they capture that same childlike wonder. But then they add a Japanese flair that I've been intrigued by since anime got its first big surge in the late '90s and I went wild for the culture. However, Sakai's been at this since 1985! And he's had plenty of time to practice his craft (though, looking at some of his older issues, arguably he was always a genius). Part of the appeal of Sakai's storytelling, for me, lies in his sense of pacing. He really knows when to slow down and expand on a plot point or character and when to jump ahead to the action.

The issue evidences this perfectly, with the first part of the story weaving together the paths of Usagi and another samurai tricked into thinking Usagi cheated him out of a bounty. The action climaxes when Usagi rushes to the samurai's defense as he's ambushed by bandits. Their conflict understood and resolved, the two set-out together to confront the boss who played them against one another.

And therein lies another aspect of Sakai's masterful storytelling. Though part of an ongoing arc, this story stands on its own. I've not written on this before (I don't think), but this is something I hold in high-regards among comic book seriels. And it's one of the reason I'm generally disappointed by superhero comics with their trumped-up, cliffhanger endings, designed to get you to buy the next issue. Whereas with this type of story, I could miss out on the next issue (as often happens with my erratic comics shopping schedule) and not feel cheated. In other words, I want to buy the next issue, but I don't feel like I'm being forced to.

Abe Sapien: The Abyssal Plain #1 by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Peter Snejbjerg:
Oh Mike Mignola, how I've missed you! I've had major trouble tracking down the last several titles that my favorite comics writer has penned. And while on the one hand, I'm glad to see he's garnering even greater fandom, on the other, I've missed out on what I hear are awesome stories. I did, however, manage to score the first in his new, two part Abe arc, and I hope I can manage to find the second! I've so far been really pleased with Mignola's treatment of a character that has largely been side-kick material till recently; The Haunted Boy was one of the creepiest of his one-shots to date. And The Abyssal Plain doesn't disappoint.

I really think this speaks volumes to Mignola and his team's capabilities of weaving a horror story set in the main character's natural habitat. This time around, Abe must investigate a sunken, World War II, Russian submarine in the Norwegian Sea, looking for an ancient knight's helmet, said to give the wearer supernatural powers. What he finds is a sub full of undead sailors. This is what impresses me. Abe's a fishman, surrounded by lumbering zombies, and Mignola still manages to make it as creepy as were I the one faced with the ordeal! That's good comics.

Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #2 by David Petersen, et. al.:
I have a confession to make. I've been reading David Petersen's Mouse Guard series for over a year now. I picked up the first volume, Fall 1152, in Borders one afternoon and was immediately hooked by the universe of medieval-era mice he created--the same knights and castles theme I mentioned in my Usagi review. The tales of mice struggling to exist amidst the hardships of nature, their predators, and even amongst each other, coupled with the rhyming code of the Mouse Guard to survive it all, really drew me in. That's why I was very excited when I heard about this new arc (written and drawn by comics creators as in love with the series as I am) chronicling the tales of mousekind before the Guard existed.

So far, I haven't been disappointed. While one of the appeals of the series has so far been the development of its central characters, these series of shorter stories don't suffer from static characters. And while the art styles are characteristically Petersen's, they offer a new perspective on the world (I particularly like Sean Rubin's art in the story "Potential").

Unfortunately, if you aren't already a fan of the series, I'm not sure what this arc will do for you. To be perfectly honest, it feels like something to tide the fans over till the prequel series The Black Axe comes out this fall. Luckily, it's a very satisfying appetizer.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

"Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel

2010-07-06T22:47:00.000-06:00

One of the professors in my department, along with his wife who's an assistant librarian, has been hosting a book club for two semesters. Each semester he's done a different theme; first it was Jewish literature, and then is was Latin-American authors. As he was on my Master's Thesis committee and has continued to mentor me in some of my academic pursuits, I wanted to support his efforts in reaching out to the literary community of our little town. But despite meeting only once a month, I simply didn't seem to have the time to either read the novels or attend the discussions. Until the last meeting of the semester, held one month after the end of the school year. And the last novel was Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate.

From page one I felt transferred back in time to Eleventh Grade Honours English, reading Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel about magic realism, Latin family politics, and sex. That's not to say that Esquivel's novel is exactly the same, though; her's is also about food.

Like Water for Chocolate is about the youngest daughter of a Mexican ranch family. Dictated by tradition as the child who can never marry, Tita must forever take care of her mother, Mama Elena. Her other destiny is as the family cook who must learn all of her family's recipes, in much the same was medicine women memorized their entire village's oral history to be passed on to the next. And that's really the format the book takes. Each chapter is a recipe for some dish or remedy, explained just as it would be were you in the kitchen with her--getting the recipe, yes, but also whatever stories accompany its past preparations.

In Tita's case, however, the stories are of her lifelong love affair with Pedro, the boy whose request for Tita's hand was refused and replaced for Tita's sister by the tyrannical Mama Elena. But Tita's passion finds an outlet in her cooking, and it is here that Esquivel weaves the magical. Driven to nausea over having to prepare her sister and Pedro's wedding cake, the whole wedding party is made so sick that her sister is swept away in a river of vomit. Unable to feel the sensual touches of Pedro's lustful eyes, she prepares a dish of quail that ignites a passion inside her sister Gertrudis so intense that her body heat ignites the wooden shower she tries to cool herself in, sending her fleeing naked into a field where she is swept up by a young captain of the revolution. They make love then and there, mounted on his horse as it gallops.

And that's really where the charm lies in Esquivel's book. No not the sex...well, not in just the sex. But in the realness of it. Reading it, you want to believe that those things can happen, or you're belief in them is just affirmed. And that is truly a worthy value of literature--making the hidden magic, of the every day, real.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! "lois lane sees the cape"

2010-07-06T10:30:00.001-06:00

Teacher's Note: This week's post comes from tamra jean, and it's on a reading I didn't even ask her to blog on! Poor girl missed that part of the assignment :-) But I really dug her thoughts on Tom de Haven's It's Superman!, and his take on the origins of young Superman. Plus, all her talk about her favorite show (Smallville) had me put the first season on Netflix. I got to watch some of it this weekend, and it's as awesome as my teenage-self remembers! So I had to share her expert opinion. Enjoy!

I would like to say first off, that i read through this assigned reading so quickly that I was extremely disappointed when it was over. I really liked how Haven made his jumps between the characters. From Lois' insanely descriptive mind, to Lex's over inflated cocky mind to Clark's honorable but fragile mind. I also appreciated the brief introduction which helped me as the reader to understand his frail thought processing. I am now looking for the novel so I can read the entire thing!!! =0)

Read the rest and comment Here!

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! "How to Rescue Comics"

2010-06-28T10:13:00.000-06:00

Teacher's Note: It's nice when students convert to full-fledged Scott McCloud fanboys. And every semester, I always get at least one. But it was evident from his defense of McCloud from Dylan Horrocks' Inventing Comics that bfarrell was this semester's "one." And it's not something I've quite let him live down, especially since his fandom continued this week when we took a brief look at McCloud's Reinventing Comics.

Reinventing Comics can sometimes feel like a plea for help. Poor McCloud. He releases his first book, Understanding Comics, around the pinnacle of comics popularity, and then comes a major decline in the industry. I cant help but wonder if McCloud asked himself “didn't they read my book?!” In the introduction he cites many possible causes of the comics recession. I wonder if the rising popularity of the internet didn't have something to do with it, though McCloud doesn't mention that as a cause. McClouds appeals, and his “Twelve Revolutions” seem especially suited to those in the comic industry: creators, publishers and the like. Its purpose for comic readers seems to be just informative, not so much a call to action.

Read the Rest Here!

My Own "Toy Story"

2010-06-27T14:58:00.000-06:00

Last week, my wife and I took my brother to the midnight showing of Toy Story 3 in 3D for his twelfth birthday. As a preteen, he's quickly entering the phase of being "too cool to get excited about anything." But he was excited about this. Interestingly enough, he'd only just turned one when the second film in the trilogy came out, and like him now, I'd just turned twelve when I went to see the first film in theatres with my family. We couldn't miss it--it was computer animated for cryin' out loud! That just didn't exist back then! I remember being floored. I'm not ashamed to say I was still playing with toys at that age (mostly Legos and Micro Machines) and would continue to do so for at least a couple more years. So the idea that my toys came to life when I wasn't looking was everything my imagination could have ever hoped for.

When the second film came out, yes I was older. But neither it or the first film (which by then was nearly warped from continuous VCR playback) had not lost any of their appeal. I remember seeing the preview for it set to a cover of Thin Lizzy's "The Toys are Back in Town" and my other brother and I being psyched for another adventure with Woody and Buzz. We eventually went to see it on Christmas Day with two of my cousins, my youngest brother missing out, being only a year old.

But that didn't matter. We were a movie family. We watched the same movies over and over. We rented movies every other Friday when money wasn't too tight. And we went to see the biggest ones on Saturday or Sunday afternoons Dad had off. So of course, my family and I grew up with Andy, his little sister Molly, Buster the dog, and their mom.

Of course, I didn't realize this then. Heck, I didn't realize this till last week, in the last ten minutes of the film, as it became clear that this would be Pixar's last foray into the story of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and Ham the Piggy Bank. Without giving too much away, in the end, Andy has to say good bye to his toys, his friends. He's grown up now, going to college, and leaving behind his childhood. And despite that Andy's "grown up" about eight years slower than I, felt like I was saying goodbye to my toys, my friends, too.

And I'm not going to lie, it was a teary farewell. But just like leaving your childhood behind, you never leave behind your memories. And perhaps that's where this last installment really hit me. It brought back all those memories of seeing those movies for the first time, as a child. As a sequence of films, I think that's where their value really lies for me. They represent my own growing up. And that's just really cool.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! "Superhero Soup: A Recipe for Greatness"

2010-06-20T23:00:00.000-06:00

Teacher's Note: This week we finally jumped into superheroes, with a look at the two greatest in their first appearances ever: Superman in Action Comics #1 and Batman in Detective Comics #27. It was an exciting trip back to the last 1930s that always garners some interesting posts. But none so much so as Beth Meyer's take on the superhero definition as a recipe and the inclusion of this bizarre little pic to touch on the allegations of homosexuality in early superhero comics before she closed. Yeah, it's so bizarre that I defy you not click on the link associated with her post. I couldn't, when it appeared in my blog roll over on the right *shudder*

To Create Your Very Own Superhero from the 1930's You Will Need the Following Ingredients:

One costume (preferably tight-fitting to show off a manly physique)
Physical Strength or Special Abilities
Alias/Secret Identity
Connections (for crime tips)
Desire to Do Good

Mix together. Throw in some humor, back story, vices, fancy gadgets, or even a sidekick to taste and ...

Voila! Bon Apetite!

Read the Rest (Which Isn't as Creepy as that Pic Would Suggest) Here...

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! "Unraveling the Complexities"

2010-06-14T13:22:00.000-06:00

Teacher's Note: This week's post comes from bfarrell. His post is, for lack of better explanation, excellent. Below you'll find just the introduction and conclusion of his well-written summaries and thoughts on Chapters 4 and 6 of McCloud's Understanding Comics, but they really represent the work as a whole--as a good intro. and conclusion should!

In Chapters Four and Six of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art Scott McCloud discusses how time is handled in comics, and the interplay between words and pictures in comics. In Chapter Four his examination of time in comics explains different techniques creators use to manipulate time, and convey it to the reader. Chapter Six explores the different ways pictures and words work together to make comics as we know them...

...Both chapters successfully unravel complexity where at first I perceived none. This seems to be another major theme of McCloud's. Apparently Understanding Comics partially means understand how complex they can be, and not taking them for granted.

Read the rest, and comment Here!

The Rhetoric of Comics Weekly Spotlight! "Emotionally Understanding Comics"

2010-06-07T21:30:00.002-06:00

Teacher's Note: This is the first of what I plan to be many Spotlights featuring my student bloggers and their work. I'll be taking the best post from each week, copying some of it here, and providing a jump to the full post, at which point I hope you'll follow, read, and comment. The goal is to expose their work to a new set of eyes, get them additional feedback, and hopefully set them on the path of responsible internet publishing with the promise of bonus points! And while new to the subject of comics, I've yet to have a semester of new students who haven't opened my eyes to the study in some new way.

For this first installment, we're taking a look at JoshSilva's summary of and thoughts on the first two chapters of Scott McCloud's opus, Understanding Comics. JoshSilva deftly summarizes McCloud (twice, no less!) then breaks down a key point from the text that most readers (including myself) overlook in their first read. Enjoy.

Emotionally Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud understands that comic books are usually "crude, poorly-drawn, semi literate, cheap, disposable kiddy fare, " but he believes they don't have to be. McCloud thinks that comics contain some kind of hidden power. He feels that people fail to appreciate comics as an art form because they try to define them to narrowly. McCloud then opens chapter 2 with a description and example of the Magritte painting, " The Treachery of Images." Although the subject of the painting is a common pipe, the artist's message reads, " This is not a pipe." As Scott explains, this is really not a pipe, nor is it a painting of a pipe. It is actually ten copies of a drawing of a painting of a pipe, when one considers that each panel on the two opening pages depicting the painting actually represents one copy. McCloud uses this example to demonstrate one of the many uses of icons, or images used to represent a person, place, thing or idea. McCloud also goes on to discuss how varying levels of icon ism and realism are used in comics to achieve various effects.

Click to Read More...

Back to Writing!

2010-06-05T22:55:00.000-06:00

So...wow, it's been over a month since my last post. And a month it's been. Of course, May means finals week and all that that implies: grading, outcomes assessment, and whatever random administrative stuff needs to be done before my vacation. And then vacation, which in my household is hardcore. This year, it included somewhere in the ballpark of sixty hours of driving, three cities, and 100%+ humidity in two weeks. Pretty epic. We visited family, of course, but we also checked out my wife's top pick for grad schools--Savannah College of Art and Design--and the Coastal Georgian area. It's pretty amazing. We also returned to New Mexico with a stowaway--my youngest brother Noah--who'll be spending the summer with us in our new apartment (into which we've still been slowly settling).

But I plan to spend a lot more time writing this summer--blogs, stories, essays, whatever--as well as reading, movie watching, and video game playing (and I've succeeding in two of those ventures already!). So I should have plenty to report.

I'm also teaching summer school, which I actually really enjoy--it's much more laid back, and I really feel like I have time for my students (since I only have about a third of them from usual). One new thing I'm trying in my class will be to publish, once a week, the best post from our class blog The Rhetoric of Comics. It's partly an incentive (the chosen student will receive some bonus points) and partly a chance for students to get some more feedback.

So, yeah, I've been pretty absent. But stick around for some more updates. It's gonna be a good summer.

Why "Kick-Ass" Might Be the Best Superhero Movie Ever

2010-05-02T15:11:00.000-06:00

My wife and I went to see Kick-Ass last weekend...It's difficult for me...to put into exact words how much I loved this movie, except to report that shortly after seeing it, my wife and I agreed that we needed to see it again. Now, I see very few films in theatres more than once, but this one bares a second watch, if only to support an independent movie that's not being received terribly well.

I wrote my Master's Thesis on superheroes. Specifically, I wrote a superhero story in an effort to prove that superheroes could exist as literary characters in prose. But the three-year long project began with a look into literary superheroes in comics. What a search that was! There simply aren't many. Umberto Eco wrote an essay in the seventies titled "The Myth of Superman," arguing that while Superman (and most superheroes for that matter) makes an excellent mythic hero (which never change) he was a poor literary character (which must change and grow to be interesting). But it's this mythic quality we most appreciate about our heroes, and it is why superhero stories have remained, for the last seventy years, largely unchanged. So I was looking for superhero comics that were "different." Of course, there have been some. Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns are almost completely responsible for completely changing the way the world looked at superheroes (and, indeed, comics). But those were published over twenty years ago!

Since then, a few movies have come out that definitely try to change things up: Unbreakable, Batman Begins, The Incredibles, and now Kick-Ass. But this most recent film, may be the best of them all. So I spent the week re-watching some of those recent classics, especially considering how much Kick-Ass takes from the Spider-man series and The Dark Knight--shots and certain plot situations but also music cues and lines. And yet, somehow, Kick-Ass does them better. And that's really the only way you can describe Kick-Ass--by comparing it to other superhero stories.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, teenage Dave--out of boredom but inspired by the heroes in his favorite comics--dons a wet-suit and a mask to patrol the New York City streets for crime. But when he gets stabbed and hit by a car in his attempt to stop some petty criminals, he gains "superpowers" in the form of metal implants and nerve-damage giving him a higher threshold for pain. Soon, Kick-Ass is an internet sensation, and his teenage alter-ego is the girl of his dreams' gay BFF. Soon, fellow heroes are coming out of the woodworks, and Kick-Ass finds himself teamed up with goofy Red Mist, vengeance-driven Big Daddy, and 11-year old Hit Girl trying to take on the mob.

At first glance, it doesn't look that original, and really it isn't. It closely resembles the plots of the aforementioned Spider-man film and Alan Moore's Watchmen. But it's the way the film executes the story that makes it so brilliant. Dave isn't really a starry-eyed Night Owl or crazy Rorschach or cynical Comedian. He's kind of all of them together in a hormonal, comic geek's teenage body. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are like homicidal versions of The Dark Knight Return's Batman and Robin--even dressing similarly. The pay dirt is how these characters evolve. Kick-Ass is born of the anti-thesis to Kitty Genovese Syndrome, in which bystanders don't act against things they morally object to on the basis that someone else will. At one point, Kick-Ass apes Stan Lee's most famous line to explain this, "With no power comes no responsibility." And when he protects a man from three thugs in front of a crowd of onlookers taking camera pics and they call him crazy for trying to help a total stranger, Kick-Ass questions how he, the only one trying to help, is crazy.

Big Daddy makes costumed adventuring a game for his young daughter Mindy so that they can take out the mobsters who killed his wife. Her bedtime stories are superhero comics, some drawn by Big Daddy himself, depicting his life prior to the gangsters' attack on his family. So instead of asking for a puppy for her birthday, Mindy asks for a pair of butterfly knives. Instead of ice cream in exchange for dishes, she takes slugs from Big Daddy while wearing a Kevlar vest to learn what being shot feels like. It also makes for a situation in which a little girl tosses around swears more often than the grown characters, and kills more bad guys than anyone else, as well, but that's be taken with a grain of salt really.

Aside from all the superhero stereotype smashing, Kick-Ass is also just a really good film. The acting is all excellent, even if Chloe Moretz' Hit Girl steals the show. The dialogue is well-written and believable. As a film student, my wife loved the shooting, despite and especially because of what it takes from other films. The music selection and score--while taken or aped from a number of other films, as well--are excellent and aptly set the mood for the entirety of the film. If I were to complain about anything, it would be that film ends too quickly. After what is certainly a harrowing climax, it's suddenly all smiles for everyone, and I really wanted more closure. Granted, the film is obviously setting the stage for a sequel, but that doesn't mean this film shouldn't feel complete when it ends.

Kick-Ass may be the best superhero movie ever made. It simultaneously satirizes and homages to the genre, while taking a new spin on the classics. And while it may not be a wholly original angle, it's a welcomed one and arrives just as the new wave of superhero flicks are beginning to stagnate--see Watchmen...if you must...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Some Thoughts on Writing, Employment, and Mr. Hoefle's English Class

2010-04-17T10:27:00.000-06:00

Awhile back, I was looking up my Honours English teacher from high school, Harold Hoefle, to see if he'd finally published a book (The Mountain Clinic--haven't read it yet, but it sounds autobiographical, and therefore, awesome). I remember he used to write for a Canadian literary magazine--the now defunct Danforth Review--so it made sense that my Google search turned up the site. What I didn't expect to find was a piece he wrote including reviews written by his Honours English students--this Honours English student! What?! You mean to tell me I was published in a literary review in high school, and I didn't find out about it till years after the fact?! I dunno, maybe I was absent the day he announced this to the class or something. And granted, my first sentence is a freakin' run-on! Still, it's interesting to read the thoughts of 17-year old Ben--like a 300-word time capsule. And I'll be tagging all of my peers from that class on Facebook, so they can share in the nostalgia/animosity (Hey, Mr. Hoefle wasn't for everyone.).

Recently, I've been seriously thinking about what I'm going to do for a living in about a year's time. My wife will be finishing up her BFA, preparing for her MFA, and we'll be moving to Georgia for her to do so (note my confidence, V). Up till now, I've had it real cushy in the employment department. Most universities only hire composition teachers like me part-time or per-course. And with the major cuts to education around the country, it looks like a difficult proposition.

My original major was journalism; I loved writing in high school, and I ran the school paper for a couple of years (though admittedly, it wasn't much of a paper). It's a prospect I've always kept in the back of my mind, and it looks more appealing all the time, and my recent success over at the gaming website BitMob has really inspired me (just three stories in one month, and already I've had more hits over there than here or at my IGN counterpart). Unfortunately, getting into any field of journalism is really difficult.

Still I've been writing, a lot (for me)--anything that'll help me put a line on my CV. I wonder if I should put this on there, or if it would make a difference. Couldn't hurt, right? All in all, I'm really not worried, and all of this is a year away, giving me lots of time to figure it out. Just some random thoughts on a rainy Saturday morning--stupid rain canceled my soccer game...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies? (I stole this from Mr. Hoefle.)

Gamers in the Hands of an Angry God

2010-04-11T15:15:00.000-06:00

As the Easter/Passover Holiday weekend came to a close, I was reminded of the take on religion that's begun to permeate our popular culture--film to be sure, but video games, too. See, every so often, video game trends give us new enemies to face without feeling too guilty about destroying their throngs of followers: Nazis, zombies, Nazi-zombies, etc. But it seems as if the new final boss of choice is God. I first noticed it playing through Demon's Souls. For my character in this epic to save the kingdom of Boletaria from The Old One and his demons loosed upon the power greedy people, I chose a Temple Knight--a guard of the old temples of god. After all, what could be a better choice for saving the world from demons than a soldier of god? But as the game progressed, I slowly realized through the exploratory narrative of the game that the god from whom my character received his holy strength was, in fact, The Old One! The game gives you the choice, in the end, to either join The Old One as one of his demons or to kill him! Kill God?! Perhaps this hit home more for me because of how much I had vested in my character when the time came to make that choice, but the concept of a devout follower of a religion killing his own god blew my mind!

Last year, I gave a presentation at an academic conference about the American-cinema version of a genre of 19th Century British Literature--the Invasion-Scare Story. Basically, the Empire became so confident in its dominion of the world, its fiction began to portray threats to Queen and Country, such as Dracula and HG Wells' War of the Worlds. My presentation suggested that America was facing a similar consciousness, as evidenced by movies like Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. I also suggested that this trend was already on the outs, and nature was becoming the threat of choice (see The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Happening, Wall-E, etc.). I would now argue that this trend continues to evolve, with these films taking on God and religion as the ultimate threat to man, like in The Book of Eli, Legion, and The Clash of the Titans.

And it's begun to permeate our games too. While a god or religion as the enemy in video games is not entirely a new plot device--even the relatively "new" God of War series is already 5 years old--the sheer number of games to employ this in the past year is indicative of the times. The God of War trilogy has come to a close with the death of Zeus; Final Fantasy XIII pits its cadre of heroes against a theocratic government; Dante refuses to accept his death and a one way trip to Hell for his sins, and instead journeys through the nine circles to rescue his fiancee, killing the overseers, and deciding for himself who should be absolved and damned; Bayonetta faces off against angels; Darksiders sees one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse trying to clear his name for "accidentally" ending the world; Momohime travels from Hell to Heaven, battling gods and demons alike, just to try out the unstoppable sword style of her possessor with her Muramasa blades. The list, I'm sure, could go on. But I'm hard pressed to think of many games from previous generations to so feature religion and/or god as the final boss.

My sentiments exactly.

Granted, religious themes and allusions in video games are certainly not new. inFamous' Cole loosely resembles Christ. Bioshock demonstrates man's inability to live without religion when Jack stumbles across boxes of smuggled Bibles. Little King's Story continually pokes fun at religion with its Church of Soup, whose followers end prayers with "Ramen." Even the Legend of Zelda series introduced religion into its equation with its Super Nintendo iteration. But unlike in film, which went through a period of embracing religion (The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, etc.) before destroying it, video games seem to have jumped straight to the end. And I feel like this should bother people. But, as Penny Arcade suggests above, could we have already reached the stage in which deocide (What? It's a word...and a band actually...) has become so commonplace that even media watch groups would rather jump all over God of War's violence instead of its plot of killing gods? Are we too caught up in our uber-realistic graphics and game play innovations to notice what we're up to? Is this trend too subtle to notice? And if it is, what does that say about us and our society?

I don't have the answers, and I'm not going to pretend I do--just as I'm not going to pretend I've played all those games I mentioned. These are just some observations about which I'm curious. Because the original King Koopa fails in comparison as a epic, boss fight when compared to battling the Dragon God in Demon's Souls. And if we can kill God in our games, what does that leave us with afterward?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

How Jaime Escalante Gave Me the "Ganas" to Teach

2010-04-02T14:12:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week, the world of teaching and Latinos lost one of it's greatest champions--Jaime Escalante. As a member of both of these communities, the man meant a lot to me and taught me through his example. Now, I never met the man, but my experience with him was much the same as for most--the film Stand and Deliver.

Stand and Deliver tells the true story of Jaime Escalante's experience quitting the burgeoning world of early 1980s computing to teach at the East Los Angeles Garfield High School (also famous in a previous generation for the "walk outs" staged by Latino students demanding the same civil rights as the upper-middle class, predominantly white city schools). What he finds is a school of Latino students who largely don't care or understand why they're in school. They and their families seem to find more hope in their lives as auto-mechanics, waitresses, and gangs.

What follows is the story of Escalante trying to revamp these students education by starting with the brightest, setting out to teach them advanced mathematics, and aiding them in passing the AP Calculus Exam, giving them a shot at going to college and changing the destiny set out for them by society. What's amazing is that not only did Escalante succeed, he and his students also overcome accusations of cheating, growing the school's advanced mathematics program from 15 to over 400 within a decade. Many of his former students have achieved life goals unprecedented for their social status and expectations. And this became one of Escalante's greatest teaching tools--students will rise to the level of expectations set them by their teacher. In other words, by giving them the "ganas" (desire) to succeed, they will.

As far back as high school, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had excellent teachers as role models, but really, I didn't have much in common with them or their Canadian upbringing. My parents had grown up in a society where speaking a language other than English was looked down upon, whereas I was now living in a country where it was the norm (most of my friends were at least familiar with three languages--English, French, and the language of whatever ethnicity their family was). I was often unsure if I could even be a teacher. Was there even a place for Latino teachers who taught something other than Spanish? I'd never had one, even growing up on a Texas border town.

Discovering the film Stand and Deliver woke me up to something inexperienced. Here was a Latino man who had not only succeeded as a teacher but had helped hundreds of Latino students to do the same. Not only did Jaime Escalante inspire me to want to teach, but this film about him encouraged me to seek out other teachers like him, such as "Crazy" Joe Clark (Lean on Me) and Lou Ann Johnson (Dangerous Minds). They taught me much and inspired my teaching style--something that while I feel is still developing (and will never stop) has proven fairly successful not only at my largely Latino university but in my early days as a lifeguard instructor for the YMCA.

Naturally, I was greatly saddened by Escalante's passing, but it only solidifies his inspiration to teachers, Latinos, and Latino teachers, like me. I'm grateful for his strength (from Bolivia, he had to first learn English before teaching in the language), his passion (after years of success in his new home, he returned to his old to share his teaching with more even more Latinos), and his sacrifice (years of teaching left him largely unable to pay for the treatments of the cancer which eventually claimed his life). He will be missed but never forgotten.

"Zombies! In! Space!"--A Very Late Review of "Dead Space"

2010-03-27T23:34:00.001-06:00

So I realize I'm a bit late to the party, but Dead Space was released before I had my PS3. But with the intriguing early news of a Wii version in 2009, my interest was piqued. Of course, I would eventually find out, that this "version" would actually be an on-rails shooter. When reviews showed that even this game was actually pretty good, and a small franchise was developing around it (including a comic book series and an animated movie) I had to check it out. So when Dead Space: Downfall appeared in my Netflix Instant Queue, I watched it and was surprised to find a decent sci-fi horror story.

It turns out that in the future, mankind has to travel to distant planets to sustain our insatiable desire for more stuff--no shocker there. Aboard giant star ships called "planet crackers," humans literally crack open planets for their valuable ore. But when the largest of these ships, the USG Ishimura, pulls apart a forbidden planet after finding a mysterious artifact, all hell breaks loose both on the planet's surface and aboard the Ishimura. Okay, okay, so you've heard it before. But these aren't just regular aliens, these are zombie aliens! That's right, these aliens kill the crew of the Ishimura to turn them into other crazed killers! With four arms!

It still took me a few months to get around to playing the game that started it all, but I beat it this past week, and it was almost everything I expected. The original story puts you in the space shoes of engineer Isaac Clarke, sent to investigate the distress calls from the Ishimura and to find his girlfriend also stationed aboard. And wouldn't you know it, his ship crashes in landing, leaving him stranded aboard the ship with every problem conceivable besides the alien zombies trying to cut him in half: transportation aboard the city-sized ship is down, communications are down, the engines are down, the ship is falling back towards the planet (while passing through an asteroid field, of course), and a religious fanatic (who believes he's doing god's work by helping the zombies finish off the remaining survivors) keeps getting in your way. If I sound jaded, it's because I am a little. This is yet another in a long line of games that seems to enjoy making the player feel like a "gopher."

"Hey Isaac, go for the controls in the engine room!"

"Hey Jack, would you kindly save my wife and kid?"

"Gordan, sneak through enemy lines by yourself and take out that garrison so that our troops can get by?"

Granted, Dead Space (like my Bioshock example) creates a reason for this within the narrative (except that despite that the Ishimura requires a crew of thousands, an engineer can safely operate the ship practically by himself). But I'm getting seriously tired of taking orders from my video games, especially when it seems like someone else could just as easily give me hand or even do something themselves. Of course, when this does happen in Dead Space, the helpers usually get dead. And this is all meant to make you feel alone amidst the chaos, and certainly it works to create tension.

But Dead Space has a lot going for it in that respect already. This has to be one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played. As soon as you arrive on board, not only are you immediately aware of the immense size of the ship but that something is there with you. Screams occasionally echo through the empty halls. Things clatter and fall on levels below you, knocked over but who knows what. Blood and gore are almost always found on the floors and ceilings--a hand print here, a trail of blood down a passage telling you someone was dragged down it. And of course, there are the messages bloodily written on walls in both English and alien lettering. There's no doubt about it, the USG Ishimura is a freaky place to find yourself stranded.

Sadly, this is about where the horror ends in Dead Space. Despite that the game has been lauded as the best survival-horror since Resident Evil 4, I don't see it. Granted, the game does much in the tradition of survival-horrors like the Resident Evil series, as well as pulling references from just about every main-stream sci-fi horror movie to date. It even tends to subtly poke fun at the RE series' archaic design choices but using science fiction to explain them away (even though, for some reason, baby zombies drop loads of military-grade munitions when they die). But what made old school survival-horrors scary was that it was difficult to survive. Resident Evil wasn't just about shuffling zombies popping out of closets. It was also about the very likely chance that before, during, or after that encounter, you might be out of ammo, health, or even both. But this never happens in Dead Space. I finished the game with tons of the stuff, and I died for completely unrelated reasons (stupid centrifuge...).

But let's say, for arguments sake, that you didn't just come off of playing Demon's Souls, a game that makes it difficult to get out of the "defensive gamer" mindset, and went all willy-nilly with your mining tools-converted-to-weapons and find yourself ammo-less (and broke, since you can buy ammo). Luckily, your high tech space suit allows you to pick up random stuff (saw blades, explosives, and even stray body parts) and chuck them at the oncoming hoards. And let's continue to play devil's advocate and say that either you're a crappy shot who can't manage to sever the zombies' over-sized limbs ('cause that's how they die) or there's so many of them that you can't quickly fire a limb, pick one up, and fire it again before they swarm you. Well, not to worry--you can just freeze them with your suit's other power! And while they won't stay frozen for long, you should have plently of time to dismember them.

Defeating a space zombie: 3 rounds of ammo.

Freezing them, shooting their legs out from under them, pistol whipping their faces off as they fall, and finally, curb stomping them once they hit the ground: priceless!

Which brings me to my final conceit. I still really like this game. Once I came to terms with this being more of an action-horror game like Resident Evil 5 (though admittedly scarier) and less of a survival-horror game like Resident Evil, I really got to enjoying it. The fact that all of the game's vital information appears either on or from Isaac's suit allows for great atmosphere by keeping unnecessary crap off the screen is a welcome change of pace. And what atmosphere it is! The zero-gravity and vacuum segments are not only original, but handled masterfully. And even though the story is completely ridiculous at times (At one point a ship load of armored, armed, and battle-stations ready space marines attempts to come to the Ishimura's rescue only to be overwhelmed by one, one, escape-pod jettisoned zombie. One!) it's cohesive and compelling.

Where I feel it falls short, however, is in the execution of its scares. Dead Space could have come in as the single-most frightening video game of all-time, even wetting the trousers of the most jaded gamers. Instead, it's an action game with frightening moments. And even these thin out as they start to get repetitive. At first, the zombies like using the ship's vents and grates to sneak around and jump out at you. After the first few times, it stops being scary. And just as this happens, it's like the zombies get lazy.Suddenly they're just lumbering at you down long hallways. Or they continuously spawn out of the same grate for a few minutes. And yes, some of these moments are frightening, but you're never overwhelmed--a few well-placed shots and you're on the straight-and-narrow again. Okay, one more conceit. I can imagine the game being insane on the unlockable uber-difficult mode, especially since you can't choose the difficulty of your New Game+ (taking all your high-tech gadgets with you), so I can only speak for the core mode. But even Resident Evil was scary and hard on the normal difficultly (especially if you unwisely chose to play as Chris "I-Got-No-Pockets!" Redfield). Still, perhaps I'll be singing a different tune once I play it again--just not "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." That song's forever ruined for me.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Does the "Resident Evil 5" DLC Really Make the New Edition "Gold"?

2010-03-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

There's something about academic research that just makes you really dislike the subject of your study. And since "Lost in Nightmares" and "Desperate Escape" are apt descriptors for how I felt during the preparation stages of my recent pop culture conference presentation on Resident Evil 5, the last thing I wanted to do when I finished said presentation was play the game ever again. But it is a testament to the two new downloadable chapters that they reaffirmed my love for the game.

The first of the two downloadable contents, "Lost in Nightmares," fleshes out a back story only vaguely told through flashbacks in the main game. The chapter is an excellent return to form for the series, simultaneously satirizing and paying homage to the first game in the series--that saw the birth of the survival horror genre.

All the elements are here: cheap scares, puzzles requiring archaic cranks and keys, less than enough ammunition to defeat the monsters, and of course, mounting tension in the guise of journal entries. Granted, it's very short (taking me a little over an hour to play through on "Hard"), but it gave me a renewed inspiration in RE5 as a whole (to see what the developers could have done, rather than boldly taking the series in a new direction) and left me wanting more classic Resident Evil. I promptly went online to download RE2 and jumped right in (which, though I'd never gotten around to it before, had aged very well).

The second DLC, which only came out this past week, takes a wholly different approach. This time filling in the gaps in the story of two secondary characters, "Desperate Escape" embraces the new direction of RE5 by dialing up the intensity to adrenaline pumping proportions. And while the chapter plays out like an extra-long session of the game's arcade-like "Mercenaries" mode, the stakes are greater, as each character is given only the bare minimum of equipment to start with (and only the possibility of randomized upgrades) to face the hordes of zombies.

While the chapter is also short, it's brutal even from the outset, leaving little room for error. Where the core game is generally easier when replacing your AI partner with a human one, this switch seemed to make little difference in "Desperate Escape." Eventually, I was able to beat it, but by myself after a couple of human players bailed on me online. Games like Demon's Souls and RE2 have retaught me to relish this kind of challenge, and "Desperate Escape" only solidifies that.

As much as I love both of these new chapters, however, I'm nevertheless jealous of gamers who will pick up the game as the yet-to-be-released Gold Edition--to include all of the game's DLC. How will it affect their perception of the game to play the "complete" experience? I'd imagine they'll like it better, getting it all at once. This in itself almost makes me appreciate it less. Why didn't these "extra features" get included from the start? RE5 is even shorter than RE4, and even that game came with a bonus chapter telling the story of a secondary character.

But I can't really be upset with the developers over this. After all, this isn't a new practice. Ironically, that novel which I spent the last two months comparing to RE5 (King Solomon's Mines) was first released as a series, only later to get it's own "Gold Edition," complete with revisions and additions of its own.

In the end, I suppose it's only fair for Capcom to take their good game, tweak it, and make it great. And really, that's what "Lost in Nightmares" and "Desperate Escape" do for Resident Evil 5--make it great, make it Gold.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Dealing with Classroom Close-Mindedness

2010-03-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Every semester, in my Rhetoric of Comics class, I teach a selection from Simcha Weinstein's book Up, Up, and Oy Vey! In his book, which is part history lesson, part Bible study, and part pop culture survey, Weinstein discusses the history of comics main superheroes and their Jewish American creators. He argues that because their culture and beliefs no doubt influenced them in their creative endeavors, we can trace characteristics of the genre back to those religious beliefs. He's primarily interested in simultaneously giving superhero fans, critics, and creators a new way of looking at their genre and reclaiming a cultural artifact of his faith.

Now, Weinstein's no academic, and while he has history on his side (some of the most famous superhero creators were, indeed, Jewish--Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby among them), some of his connections are very loose. For example, he tries to argue that The Fantastic Four are an example of the Jewish belief in the importance of family values. Of course, that could be said of any belief system. But that's why I assign this reading every semester--it teaches students something new about superheroes, yes, but it also challenges them to see through Weinstein's rhetoric, so they can better prepare their own.

Now, I've never had problems with this reading before, but a few of my students in one of my classes this semester really balked at Weinstein's ideas, and it shows in their blogs (sometimes, offensively so). First off, they seem to have a real problem with just the basic fact that these creators were Jewish. And that seems to create a huge problem; they're reading his text as though he were saying all superheroes are Jewish. This simply isn't the case. (In fact, in his conclusion, he points out that the moral messages that can be gleaned from the genre are applicable to anyone, religious or otherwsie.) And this close-minded attitude is seriously prohibiting them from actually seeing what Weinstein's points are. It can be seen even in their post titles, but it comes out somewhat offensively in a couple of places--accusing Weinstein of making non-Jews not want to read comics, failing to appreciate the plight of Jews during the Holocaust, and even backhandedly referring to the Jewish religion as "crap."

So, aside from the fact that this points out gross failures in their ability to closely read an argument before weighing in, it also means their failing to actually look at his rhetoric--which defeats the purpose of the reading, among other things. And perhaps I'm overreacting, but I'm worried what this tone might set for the rest of the semester. We haven't gotten to Maus yet, and we're also going to look at Persepolis--two religiously charged texts.

I'm not sure why I'm writing about this situation here--maybe to vent my frustration (we couldn't even have a two-way conversation about it in class today because virtually no one other than those students who blogged had even read the text), maybe to seek advice on how I should handle the situation (I commented back to those students, suggesting that, among other things, they read more open-mindedly, and took aside one student in particular after class to drive home the point for him), or maybe because it just really bothers me to encounter such ignorance.

That's not to say that those students are bad students (because they're not), and it's not even their faults really (most of them equate the Holocaust with America's involvement in World War II, assuming all was well before that--and they couldn't give you that date to save their lives, either). Maybe I'm just so new to teaching that classroom racism shocks me.

I'm open to comments, either here or on my students blogs. In fact, I'd love outside comments on my students blogs to give them better scope, multiple perspectives. I trust my regular readers wouldn't chastise them, so I'm not worried about opening that invitation. Otherwise, as always, I'm open to...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Hitler? You Mean that Guy from "Call of Duty"?

2010-02-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

So despite the fact that I've finally recovered from my last conference presentation on Resident Evil 5 and King Solomon's Mines (I promise I'll post a summary of it at some point; I need all the feedback I can get as I'm going to revise it in hopes of publication) I'm throwing myself once more into the breech with yet another one. This time the proposal deadline really snuck up on me, so this post is more for me to draft my ideas than to seek feedback (though that would be nice too, especially if I'm not accepted). This time around, I'm submitting not to a pop culture conference, but an English language and literature one in the area of pedagogy--specifically technology and education--for the purpose of discussing the use of video game adaptations in teaching.

The title of my proposal comes from an amusing (albeit frightening) anecdote that one of my colleagues likes to tell about trying to place a reading in the context of the Holocaust for his students, who largely knew nothing of the event. That some were only aware of the perpetrator of this dark moment in history because of his customary inclusion as the villain of a World War II video game is disturbing sign of the times.

More and more, our students are learning from the titillating versions of what we would teach. But how, as teachers, do we deal with this great gap in learning when our students seem all too eager to fill with the version that features zombies, machine guns, and inhumanly powerful and attractive heroes? The answer is simply that we must use it.

By looking at the potential for tangential learning that video games can provide (as opposed to the kind of edutainment that has failed in the past), it becomes an obvious (albeit understandably ludicrous) proposition. But this presentation will study how it can be done now, how it's been done in the past, and what we as teachers should prepare for in the future.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Constructive Criticism: Some Thoughts on my Course Evaluations

2010-02-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

At the end of every semester, our students are encouraged to fill out Course Evaluations for all of their classes. As I've mentioned before, I'm a big believer in this practice and take my evaluations pretty seriously. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it often takes a few months for these evaluations to be released--it's February and I'm just now able to view the results (a little late, if I needed to make any drastic changes). Still, I thought I'd look at some of the constructive comments made about my courses and discuss (as well as open for discussion) how I can go about learning from them.

Note: the evaluations are anonymous, but for further security, I'm not going differentiate which comments came from which courses (since all class have the same evaluations).

The instructor was enthusiastic about the course.
Soometimes got a little too excited about comic books--I, of course, admit to getting way too excited about comics, on occasion. And while I don't necessarily see passion as a bad thing, it can, I believe, intimidate students already shy about expressing/forming their own opinions.
The instructor had their bad days.--I definitely know what this student is talking about. I had some serious problems with one of my classes last semester, and more often than not, I took it out on them. That's not to say they were not a problem, but more that they were only part of it. I feel a better attitude on my part would have won them over a little better.

The course was intellectually challenging.
a little too challenging sometimes
I had to actually try because Canada said you grade harshly and only give people Cs--"Canada" is the nickname of a former student. I do admit, I like shaking student expectations up by telling them I don't give Bs or As; they have to earn them. But this is something I often feel my students take out of context. I admit freely, early in the semester, that I have high expectations of my students--pointing out that the same level of work that earned them a C in a previous class will not be enough to earn them a C in my class--when you advance to a higher level course, the level of work advances too. That said, I make my students a deal--if they show up to class and do their work properly, I will give them a C. That is to say, even beginning writers can pass my class while experienced ones are still expected to show it. The syllabus is designed this way (I had actually very little to do with it). Unfortunately, this often means that experienced writers, or ones used to doing the bare minimum and still Acing their classes, are often in for a rude awakening. In other words, I don't care how good of a writer you are, I still want to see your rough drafts, your tutoring slips from the Writing Center, and your butt in your seat when class begins. I think that's fair, right?

The instructor was fair and impartial in assigning grades.
More As would have been cool--I also admit to being a very nitpicking instructor. An A to me, usually means there are no problems--are questions are answered, all points are defended, all evidence is cited, etc. I've been told I've become more lenient as I progress--by a student who took three classes with me, no less! And yes, I failed more students last semester than I ever had before last semester, but I also had more students earn As and Bs last semester than ever. Still, I know I need to lighten up on some things.

Course objectives were clearly stated.
Needed to explain it more.--I'm really bad about this. In fact, some classes have gone by without me discussing them more than once. I'm endeavoring this semester to bring them up every time we begin a new project, so that the students can see how it relates to the course, but I still often forget. I'm not sure what it is about them that must make them see unimportant to me subconsciously, because I certainly don't maliciously leave them out. I think better planning on my part is necessary.

The instructor was willing and available to help students outside the class.

Sometimes when they had the time.--This is something I'm also not that great about, in that I do the bare minimum. I give my students my office phone number (which sends voice mail to me e-mail), my e-mail address, and my office hours. I do my best to respond to student calls and e-mails as soon as possible, and I stick to my office hours unless something comes up (and I try to inform students of canceled hours as soon as possible). But I simply do not like working in my office. I'm not sure why, but as soon as I don't have to be on campus anymore, I go home. If a student can't meet during my regular office hours, I'll definitely stick around for a time that better suits their schedule (so long as it doesn't interfere with mine). But otherwise, I can rarely just be "found" on campus. Part of me says I'm doing all I need to do, but part of me definitely feels guilty that I don't make myself as available as some other instructors who put in eight hour days regardless of how few classes or office hours they have.

If you have any additional comments.
Watch more movies...that was fun...--Believe me, I would love to show more films in class! Today's students are so film illiterate, I consider it a necessity for their future education to show at least one film in every class, but there simply is not time. I usually give students two days off from class for individual conferences, and then still hold "extra credit" classes to show a film they have to write a short response to. Sadly, very few students take advantage of this, but I do wish I could find a couple of days to watch a film for credit in every class. I've done some moving around of assignments in all my classes this semester, and so long we as we don't fall behind, we should have a couple of free days to watch a film in each one.

These are hardly all of the comments I got, though I didn't get any straight negative ones (I always seem to really upset a few students, so I'm taking this as a good sign). Most of the others were positive, and I will certainly learn from those, as well--as things I should keep doing. But I really wanted to reflect on the more constructive ones, and I'm glad I did. That's not to say I have the answer to any of these issues (and hopefully, some of you will weigh in), but I've got some ideas.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Thoughts on "The Hangover"--One for My Students

2010-02-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

So some of my students are baffled about how I can talk about so-called classics like Casablanca or Star Wars when I haven't even seen The Hangover. And they're probably right. I opposed seeing the film after the first previews, mentally assigning it between Superbad and just-another-Will-Ferrel-movie in the categories of dumb comedies! How dare I categorize it, saying it was less than those other great films without seeing it?! So I resolved to put it on my Netflix queue, only to find that my wife had already snuck it on (that saucy minx), and finally got to watch it this past weekend. And now I can say, with authority, that it falls somewhere between Superbad and just-another-Will-Ferrel-movie in the categories of dumb comedies. Let me explain.

In my students' defense, I can see why they like it, and to be fair, I certainly got a chuckle out of it at several scenes. And to be even more fair, I was probably looking to not like it in the first place.But even in trying to put aside those biases, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Indeed, as 2009 came to a close, several movie sites placed The Hangover in their "Best of 2009" lists, and I just don't get that.

I should also say, that this kind of comedy simply doesn't appeal to me all that much. I prefer my comedies to be clever, as opposed to just trying to shock me with absurdity. If I had to pin the funniest movie I saw last year, I'd probably put down Zombieland for it's hilarious use of "Rules" that interact with the action, Bill Murray's priceless cameo, and Tallahassee's quest to find the last twinkie on Earth (which, incidentally, would have also made a great title for the film). That doesn't mean I didn't crack up in The Hangover when Ken Jeong jumped out of the trunk of a car naked and wielding a crow bar (particularly since I think the guy's priceless and, after years of bit parts, I'm glad he's finally found a home as Community's Senor Chang). It just means that I sat puzzled over the majority of the film's humour. Really, hitting babies with car doors? That's what we're using for comedy nowadays?

In the end, I suppose I have more of a problem with what The Hangover represents as opposed to having a problem with the movie itself. Sure, it was funny, but mostly, I just worry that if this is the "best" movie my students saw last year, what are they missing out on?

"Bioshock" Doesn't Wow Me

2010-02-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

I've always done my best to avoid movies that are trumped as the greatest of our time because I always seem to be disappointed by the results. After forcing myself to finally finish Okami last year, being unable to force myself through No More Heroes, and Bioshock being my first game beaten this year, I feel as though I may need to adopt the same policy for video games. All three games I played primarily because of the high praise they received in the community. And all three left me wanting.

That's not to say that I think Bioshock is bad (far from it). It just didn't "wow" me like I'd heard it would. To start with though, I'll begin with what I liked. From an artistic standpoint, this game is excellent. The setting, character design, atmosphere, music (an anthology of 1950s classics), voice acting, sound, etc., are all spot on. A lot of care clearly went into making this game as immersive as possible. All these things initially pulled me into the game very well. And one of the things I absolutely loved about the game in its earlier stages were how much playing it felt like being on a ride at Disney World--I mean what could be a greater feat than making you believe you're somewhere you're not and in danger when you're not?

From a technical aspect too, the game is quite good. Almost everything works when it should (I did get stuck in a glitch once and had to kill myself to get clear of it), and the controls are intuitive.

So with all this good, what problems could I have with the game? Only the most toted part: the storytelling. For that, I turn you over to IGN's five minute recap if you're unfamiliar with the game (or need a refresher) and don't mind spoilers.

BioShock 2 PlayStation 3 Video - BioShock In Five Minutes

To start with here, I need to finally return to a complaint I left unspoken when I lazily reviewed Half-Life 2 and its other first-person shooter clichés: I hate video games that make me a "gopher." You know, "Go for this, go for that." That's Half-Life 2 felt like to me most of the time. I felt like an extremely well-armed errand boy. And Bioshock made me feel exactly the same way. The initial splendor of the game's environment, mystery, and survival horror elements wore off after I received about my 50th order to "go find this key," or "kill this leader," or "deliver this ice cream cone," and I'd even quit playing for a couple of weeks.

Now, before the backlash begins, I realize that about half-way through the game, the story conjures up an explanation for this cliché in this game (whereas Half-Life 2 had me continually asking, "Really?! I'm the only one in the entire resistance who can open that door/kill that bad guy/save that kitten stuck in the tree?!"). The "would you kindly" catchphrase of supposed ally Atlus/Fontaine is probably one of the best video game twists ever. And it was when I got to that point in the game I became re-interested enough to finish it. That this double-agent has been subconsciously ordering you around (like an errand boy) is a brilliant way of masking what is a very guided/directed game. The only problem there is that it doesn't mask anything at all! There's no hint or clue concerning your subconscious slavery until just before you discover it, so I think my quick annoyance with the game prior to this is fair, especially since this game mechanic continues after breaking from Fontaine's mind control.

My other major problem with the game is how its difficulty undermines its atmosphere. That is to say, this game is much too easy to be as interesting as the story. Now perhaps I should also point out that preceding this game, I'd been on my second play through of Demon's Souls (what is considered one of the most difficult games ever). And in comparison, I can see how any other game might seem trivial, but even still, I've got to point out some odd development choices here.

For starters, we have the game's hacking mechanic. You can pretty much hack your way through this game: hack vending machines and you can access cheap items and ammo; hack turrets and security and you can add some extra fire power to your side; hack safes and combination locks and you can find all kinds of goodies to make your game easier. Hacking something begins the mini-game mentioned in IGN's recap above. If it looks familiar it's because this is puzzle that's been around in gaming for over two decades. It was 1989, and the game was Pipe Mania for the Amiga personal computer. And while I never played it's original version, incarnations of it have been appearing in games for almost a decade to my knowledge: I remember playing through the same thing as far back as Batman: Vengeance for the GameCube. Now, why on earth would you choose to build a game changing mechanic into your video game based on an older video game my 8-year old brother could figure out?

And as if that didn't make things easy enough, there are an entire set of plasmids for making hacking easier! In fact, there are an entire set of plasmids for making everything easier! Which brings me to my next critique: Bioshock's moral choice system. This was all the rage when this game came out, and we're seeing it's continued evolution in games like inFamous and the Mass Effect series. When you find a Little Sister toting her ADAM (your source of superpower), you can either kill her for tons of the stuff or take just enough to rescue her from the ADAM's influence will keeping her alive. But your choice makes little to no difference in the game. There's little reason to kill them for their ADAM, as just rescuing them allows you more than enough ADAM over the course of the game to max out your best plasmids. And aside from a change in the game's ending, little else changes based on your choice except that for rescuing Little Sisters, their caregiver provides you with powerful presents as a reward, which essentially balances things out. The real choice with Little Sisters then is whether or not to deal with their bodyguards, the Big Daddies.

However, as the game progresses, you have less and less reason (if any at all) to fear these encounters. While powerful, these foes are not particularly difficult to defeat. There are several ways of dealing with them in relatively safe means: whether it's laying traps for them or taking advantage of their weakness to electricity. And should you happen to die, you're immediately brought back to life via the city's Vita-Chambers. And when I say immediately, I mean immediately. The Big Daddy in question sticks to where you were last fighting him and even stays at whatever health level you took him down to before dying, making death essentially a minor inconvenience (in fact, with a little patience, there isn't even a reason to buy or seek out health sources at any point in the game save the final boss fight). And while the rest of the game's enemies continually get better armed, armoured, agile, and by extension, difficult to kill, Big Daddies seem to stay about the same for the entire game.

This is one of the more disappointing parts of the game, as the Big Daddy has become revered as one of the more ominous and infamous gaming baddies in the last few years. And the only reason I got excited about being one at the end of the game was getting to make their tell-tale stomping sound when I walked.

Now, of course, as some will no doubt point out, I could have just raised the game's difficulty (which can be done at any point, little on screen messages kept telling me). But I simply wasn't that interested to do so. I was mainly playing the game for its story anyway, and the game's mechanics didn't jazz me enough to voluntarily prolong the experience.

In the end, I appreciate that Bioshock is a very important game. It pushed the medium forward and gave us one of the most engaging and atmospheric first person shooters ever. But for me, it was marred by several poor choices in execution that kept me from really appreciating it--in fact, as much as I like the "Would You Kindly" twist, had a more standout phrase been used, I could see how this game might have lived on in "The Cake is a Lie"-esque infamy. As it is, though, this was merely a game just a little above average for me, when what I was expecting/promised was a completely mind-blowing experience.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Dear JD Salinger, This is why I hate your book. Rest in Peace, Your Pal Ben

2010-01-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Cover of The Catcher in the Rye

I've never made much secret amongst my literary friends of my utmost contempt for that most taught of high school literature, The Catcher in the Rye. But those new to my feelings, let me summarize. I hate that book. After years of hearing how good and important it was, I was finally asked to read it in 9th grade. And I forced myself to read it to its anti-climactic, pointless end just so I could say I read the whole thing when I would trash it. But when it came time to discuss the book in class, I quickly realized I was the only one who thought so. Indeed, amidst my peers who rarely, if ever, read anything assigned in class, the room was abuzz with "What a great book!" type exclamations. It would be several years before I met someone, anyone, who shared my view of what I considered the dumbest novel I'd ever read (beating out even Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which previously held that posthumous award--and of which the Muppet version is infinitely better).

I just didn't get it. Yes, there was a lot of sex and swearing and the like that had been missing from my previous high school reads, but these where never enough to win me over like my classmates, who had adopted Caulfield's sex euphemism "giving her the time" in their sex jokes. Needless to say, I kept my mouth uncharacteristically shut during that entire unit. After all, despite English class being one of the only classes I felt confident enough to speak up in, I was already one of the "nerds," and I wasn't anxious to increase in this capacity, especially amongst my fellow "outcasts" who did like the book.

On the other side of the spectrum, James Joyce' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of my favorite books. I identified with Stephen Dedalus. One of my colleagues would always give me a hard time about this, saying he couldn't understand how I could like that but hate Catcher. After all, what's the difference between Caulfield and Dedalus anyway? How could I like one and not the other? They both stumble through life, searching for answers to teenage questions. Easily, I would respond, Dedalus doesn't whine the whole time he's doing it.

Now, years later, with two degrees in English Language and Literature, I'm told it's Caulfield's own awkward adolescence that so appeals to the youth who otherwise hated literature during the decades that this was the go-to book if teachers wanted to "shake things up." So why couldn't I, along with my peers, identify with Holden "The Phony" Caulfield? Why could I not appreciate his own wandering-through-life, falling-in-and-out-of-love, parental-affection-lacking postulating? These questions bothered me then, as a teenager myself; but as a 20-something, I like to think I can accurately look back on my life and Caulfield's and see the difference in the angst that pervaded it. I, like Dedalus, didn't whine through the whole of my adolescence either.

To be fair, I'm sure my parents would disagree to some extent, and the Lord knows I had my share of grumblings--I didn't dress "cool" like the popular kids, I wasn't particularly athletic, and besides English, I didn't really stand out academically. I had no impressive hobbies (like my friends who sailed), no girlfriend or even prospects (like all of my friends), and no crazy vacations (like all of my European classmates who traveled back home at least once a year. And worst of all, not only was I an American living in Canada, but I was from Texas (that most redneck of states in the average Canadian's mind).

But I took these things in stride. I had to wear a suit and tie to school everyday, so what did I care if the stifling ensemble was by Hilfiger? What difference did it make if I sucked in math? I was going to be a famous author! Having been active in my church while attending (by nothing short of an act of God) a Jesuit high school, clearly the Lord was steering me towards the priesthood, anyway. And didn't I give a long talked about, humourous lecture on "What Texas is Really Like" in my junior speech class. So yeah, I was a teenager, but I was also a crazy optimist. And no, I did not blame my shortcomings on others.

I suppose this is why I so hated that book. I wanted Caulfield to quit whining and man up. And I didn't want my peers, who routinely complained about not having one luxury despite their dozens of others, to be validated. But they were. Like Caulfield, it wasn't enough that they went to a prestigious school, or could date whoever they fancied, or had so little parental attention they could do virtually whatever they wanted. And like Caulfield, they complained about it endlessly while looking down on everyone else.

I should clarify here, I do not hate JD Salinger. Quite on the contrary, when in my following year of school, we studied a selection of his short stories, I was fascinated by him. Being in an era before the prevalence and ease of information that the internet now provides, rumors still abounded around Salinger. Of course, we knew he hadn't published in decades, but was he working on something new? Where did he live that he was able to stay so secluded from the media and his droves of fans? My teacher told and even encouraged these kinds of rumors surrounding literary figures (his good friend, a missionary in Africa, had once been awoken by a pounding at his door to find a rain-drenched Ernest Hemingway on his doorstep, looking for a place to sleep). One such rumor, my favorite, involved Salinger living on a tiny island off of Manhattan, like this episode of Hey Arnold!

It's the romantic in me.

I've tried to explain my dislike for this book dozens of times over the years, especially when I'm tricked into re-experiencing the story through another outlet, like the graphic novel Ghost World or the film Igby Goes Down. But I've never really tried to analyze it until now. And I think I've really hit the nail on the head here.

So rest in peace, J.D. Salinger. You were a brilliant writer who wrote a book I hate. In another life, I may have liked it.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

A New Semester--Second Week Progress Report

2010-01-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

So the third week of the new semester is about to start, and I'm shockingly on the ball. My Monday and Tuesday classes are all prepped, I have no administrative duties to slog through yet, and I'm caught up on all my grading. Well, technically, I'm still waiting for my students to post their blogs (due by midnight) so I can grade them, and with less than three hours left, they're waiting characteristically late to do so. All this means that the only thing I need to do is get on to writing my presentation on Resident Evil 5 and 19th Century British literature for next month's pop culture conference.
So...yeah, I totally stalling. I know what I'm writing about (subject-wise), but I have no idea where to start. Plus, I haven't been writing much lately, so I'm certainly rusty. So I thought I'd get the ball rolling with a little look back at the start of semester and what's to come.

For starters, the beginning of the semester started out shockingly well with some new figures on a course I helped design last summer so I gotta gets some bragging in. College Discourse is a class meant to be paired with a remedial English course as a Learning Community to teach grammar and prepare students for college life, along with getting their reading and writing skills up to snuff. Because this was a new course, we didn't pair it with all the sections of remedial English. The Composition Director tracked the students and found that about 80% of students who took a section of my new course passed, whereas only around 50% of students not in the course passed. Naturally, I feel pretty good about that, especially since this is the first time I ever designed a course.

Sadly, I'm not actually teaching that course this semester. Though I did manage to get The Complete Persepolis added to course for this semester! But I don't mind; it's in much better hands. Happily, I am teaching two sections of my comics-subject Freshman Composition II class; I love teaching that class! And I'm also again teaching the Composition I section of a Learning Community titled Heroes, Villains, and Vampires. My class is paired with an Introduction to Fiction class that studies literature of those genres. In my class, we supplement that with critical readings on their texts. It's a lot more fun than it sounds. The other day we looked at Entertainment Weekly's top 20 heroes and villains of all time. This sparked lots of conversation, even if my students were unfamiliar with any of the heroes older than two decades and thought only nerds liked the rest. I've written on this subject before, but it still makes me frustrated how little this generation knows about film. At one point, Gary Cooper from High Noon came up, and they couldn't understand how anyone from a black and white movie could be heroic, let alone why anyone would even watch a black and white movie. Still, the argument a bunch of them got into over who was the best superhero was excellent--even if the Spider-man/Batman/Superman camp couldn't convince the Hulk fan.

I like both of these courses. I get to have my students read things they actually enjoy (from past experience) and teach them something they wouldn't expect. They are amazed at how Scott McCloud enlightens them to the world of comics, and they get their minds' blown when we study his ability to convince them of his ideas on virtually no evidence. And while they may not like Frankenstein, they love Mary Shelley's account of writing it as a teenager. And her process teaches them something about writing.

In the months ahead, I'm taking both courses in some new directions. I've added some new comics to that course, and hope to use some of our Learning Community money to take the Heroes, Villains, and Vampires class to Free Comic Book Day. And of course, I'll be presenting that paper next month. And all of it makes me glad I'm a part of the academia. I love teaching.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Top 5 Games of 2009

2010-01-07T16:37:00.001-07:00

My Year in Gaming
Now that I'm no longer a student and actually make enough money to live comfortably, my video game budget has expanded a bit. Granted, full-time teaching/administration doesn't allow me as much time to play as I'd like, but I can at least spend that time playing new games for a change. This isn't to say I'm able to afford every game I want, or even that all the games I buy are recent titles--though more were this year than in years past. But it's nice to finally be the kind of gamer who can modestly support his hobby.

All that said, I'm not endeavoring to create a definitive list of "The Best Games of 2009." For one, I don't fancy myself an expert on the subject--I simply didn't play enough games for that. For another, this is more a simple retrospective for myself--if it sparks conversation, great; if not, no worries. And lastly, not all of these games came out in 2009--my budget may have grown, but I'm still not above waiting for games to go on sale 6 months after they came out. So, without further ado, here are My Top 5 Favorite Games of 2009:

5) The Orange Box:
This was the first PS3 game I got when the missus and I bought one for our Christmas present last year--mainly because I'd spent all my money on a PS3 and this 5-games-in-1 was cheap. But I'd also heard a lot of good things about all of those games. Still, I didn't really get to sit down with it until after the New Year. What proceeded was a long romp through the Half-Life 2 series (which I thoroughly enjoyed, despite its glaring FPS clichés). Even better, though, was Team Fortress 2, which I'm almost ashamed to say I got pretty obsessed with everytime I finished one of the other games on my list. It got pretty bad actually; once I started getting invited to join clans for my prowess with the Sniper, I decided I'd gone a little far.

4) inFamous:
Having written my Master's Thesis on the very best the superhero genre has to offer made me very wary and critical about what is a "good" superhero story and what's just mindless fan service--so much so I don't really bother with the comics anymore and I'm still not jazzed enough about Batman: Arkham Asylum to pay $60 for it. So a brand new superhero story in the medium of a video game intrigued me right off. And I found just about everything I could have hoped for in a good superhero story/video game. For starters, it's an origin story, which are, to me, the most interesting parts in the lives of soon-to-be superheroes. What is it that makes a superbeing decide to use his or her powers for good or evil?

This story takes that question and builds an entire game around it. You play the character Cole, recently blessed/cursed with superpowers at the price of the near destruction of his home city. Cole may proceed on a journey to save the remains as a hero or destroy them and become a dictator. Now, moral choice systems in video games are still in their infancy, and most (like the one in Bioshock) are so basic your choices generally range from "Cure Cancer" to "Kick a Puppy." But your path in inFamous also affects how you're viewed by the citizens of the city, and your strongest superpowers can only be reached by fully embracing your path.

I'm also grateful that the game is an open-world one. You can go virtually anywhere and, once your powers mature, do almost anything. And yet, the action doesn't run the game. The story does. The story of a struggling hero or villain trying to find his place in the world--another reason why origins are the best parts of superhero stories. Lastly, this game proves that comics have their work cut out for them if they're to hold on to their most recognized genre.

3) Resident Evil 5:
This is going to be a somewhat controversial choice, I know. For one, it's held pretty commonly that this simply wasn't that great of game. But when you add on top of that of all of the controversy it garnered, it's actually surprising so many people played it anyway. There was, of course, the racist accusations thrown at the game, but also those against the developers for greedily trying to get players to purchase "digital" content that they technically bought when they got the game. And on top of that, the content in question (a new multiplayer mode) was apparently too broken to even bother playing anyway!

Call me crazy, but I loved this game anyway. While I haven't played all the games in the series, I've always loved the Resident Evil games, so I might be a bit biased there. Similarly, this game built on the new aspects of RE4 that I loved--the action, the weapon upgrades, even the terrible voice acting and dialogue. In fact, I love this game so much, I'm giving a presentation on it's connection to 19th Century British Literature at an academic conference next month. But the fact that I "have" to replay it for "research", yet again (most recently with my youngest brother-in-law during Christmas break) probably says more than words can.

2) Muramasa: The Demon Blade:
I made no secret of my love for this game when I reviewed it. As I said then, it's simply a hand-drawn masterpiece. Any game that my wife loves as much as I do must not only be great but have a very broad appeal, as well. And while I haven't had the time to go back and replay through to any of the 5 other endings, I plan to play to at least one or two others. The story is as unique as the storytelling, and time and again, the hand-drawn style of the game's art had me trying to imitate it in my Drawing class this semester. There simply aren't enough game like this, and it was easily the best thing I playing on my Wii this year, if not ever. That's a bold statement, I know--especially with so many other interesting offerings on the console this year: Little King's Story, Deadly Creatures, Madworld, etc.--but I stand by it.

1) Demon's Souls:

There's no question about this one. I love this game. Yes, it's relentlessly hard, but no, I'm not going to talk about my "love/hate" relationship like every other positive reviewer of the game. There is no hate. Let me explain. Over the last few years, I've gotten pretty tired of games that are either too easy or are hard in repetitive ways. Demon's Souls is neither. Yes, I've heard lots of complaints about the need to level grind, or the lack of save points, or how cheap bosses are. But I think there's simply a fundamental difference in gameplay between this game and any other of this generation. Most action games allow you to run in "guns blazing," allowing you to take several hits without any real danger. Then you're showered with equipment or health or whatever currency the game deals in. But for a gamer like me, who has always been a defensive player, staying as far from the action for as long as possible (must be the lifeguard training), I was actually able to proceed through the game reasonably far between deaths. And none of the deaths were "cheap." I was simply unprepared. The deaths were my fault, where most gamers are used to blaming their deaths on someone/thing else. If they die twenty times, it must be because the game is broken. I saw it time and again in the little blood spots in-game that show you how other players died; nine times out of ten, I watched them charge blindly, weapon over head, right off a cliff. What I'm basically trying to say is that I'm glad for a game that finally treats me like an intelligent person, rather than an instant-gratification machine bent on beating the game as quickly as possible. Everything about this game requires patience. And I love giving it mine.

Honourable Mentions:
There were, of course, other games I enjoyed this year--just not as much. For one, I really liked Little King's Story; it was definitely one of the most underappreciated titles of the year. But the game got too repetitive too quickly, and I never quite got around to finishing it--I'll have to go back. A couple of other downloadable games I really got in to were Fat Princess (the hilarious online, capture-the-flag game) and World of Goo (the brilliant, Dr. Seussian puzzle game).

Biggest Disappointments:
I've already discussed, at length, my perclivities concerning Okami, so I won't go on about that. Other disappointments, however, have to include The Conduit. When I reviewed it, I mentioned the importance of such a risky game. The single-player wasn't very interesting to begin with, leaving players with the hyped up online mode. With time, however, even the multiplayer seems to have broken. Player-exploited glitches of invincibility and invisibility have taken almost all the fun out of the experience.

But perhaps my biggest disappoint this year was the lack of attention my DS--formerly my most useful system--received. Very few games I was interested in came out early in the year, and I didn't get around to Scribblenauts or The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. But this brings me to the end of my post.

Games to Look Forward to in 2010:
To start with, my wife and I got tons of games for Christmas: Bioshock, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, and a Wii points and PS3 card. So at least the next couple of months are covered!

After that, there's not too much I'm crazy psyched for. MAG's promise of 256-player, online battlefields sounds great in theory, but we'll have to see how it turns out. I'm also understandably excited for the promised Legend of Zelda 2 for Wii--though, let's be honest, that probably won't come out until next year at the earliest. Final Fantasy XIV also shows promise. Oh! And Metroid: Other M looks awesome! Lastly, Heavy Rain seems interesting if only for its innovative design promises. But only time will tell.

Well, now that I've shared my two-cents, feel free to share in return. I'm always open to suggestions!

"King Solomon's Mines" Are Full of Zombies! Using 19th Century British Lit. to Answer the "Resident Evil 5" Race Debate--A Research Proposal

2009-12-07T23:44:00.002-07:00

Two heroes must travel to the dark heart of Africa in order to unravel a bizarre mystery. They travel over plains, across swamps, and descend into the very Earth, discovering the ruins of a forgotten civilization, all the while defending themselves from ferocious monsters and crazed natives (both of whom might devour them). Discovering a natural source of immense power, they must finally defeat the white woman who heads these savage people and stop her evil plan to take over the world. Luckily for our heroes, her plan goes awry when the very source of her power is what destroys her.

Now while this might appear, loosely, similar to the plot of Capcom's recent blockbuster Resident Evil 5, it's actually the plot of Sir Henry Rider Haggard's seminal work of 19th century British literature, She. And She, of course, represents the formulaic plot of Haggard's "adventure story for boys," made popular by King Solomon's Mines and the other Allan Quartermain novels.

It's been over a eight months since the latest installment in Capcom's horror video game series came out. And while, as a fan of the series, I went and bought the game straight away (and beat it a couple of days later), I decided to hold off writing about it. I did this for a few reasons. For one, most of what I might have said in the typical tradition of video game reviews had already been said. Indeed, IGN received an advanced copy and reviewed it almost a full week before it went on sale. Yahtzee attacked it nearly just as quickly over at The Escapist. And every gamer with a blog who beat the game in one fifteen hour run had already weighed-in on the crappy controls and the crappy AI controlled partner and the crappy dialogue (all of which I have absolutely no problems with when I play the game).

Secondly, the controversies surrounding the accusations of racism in the game seemed to have been all forgotten by the time the game went on sale--Yahtzee's review being an (interesting) exception but summed up both humourously and poignantly over at Penny Arcade.

Lastly, as I played the game, I became increasingly aware of the plot similarities between Resident Evil 5 and King Solomon's Mines (on which I'd written one of my first graduate research papers) and, to a greater extent, She.

Bearing all these things in mind, I decided to wait, do a little more research into Haggard and, indeed, She, let it all mesh for a while, and analyze Resident Evil 5's literary analogies--a seemingly oxymoronic endeavor, I know. But I feel something can come of this kind of analysis, especially if we compare the contexts of these two works' genres in relation to their respective mediums. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Resident Evil 5 is the She of video games. What does this mean? It means the game has a fantastic (read unbelievable) story with the same literary elements and plot as an H. Rider Haggard novel. It means that while video games journalist Heather Chaplin may be right when she tells video games developers, "It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents," this game will still influence greater works. It means that Resident Evil 5 is a benchmark for where this medium is and can go. And, unfortunately, it also means that, like She and King Solomon's Mines, Resident Evil 5 gets scrutinized for racism.

This past year, I discovered the joy of the pop culture conference. One of the things I'm really jaded about when it comes to being an academic is the "publish or perish" attitude that seems to drive a self-fulfilling cycle of generally boring material professors write for each other. Why would I want to go through the difficult process of researching, writing, and publishing a 20 page article on a subject I care little for so that a dozen scholars I'll probably never meet will read it just to add a line to my CV? But the conference atmosphere (especially the pop culture one) allows me to not only research a topic that interests me and feels relevant but present it directly to my audience for direct feedback. So I'm working on turning this idea into a proposal for the Southwest Texas PCA/ACA Conference. Typically, I turn to my colleagues here on campus for advice in this area (and I plan to for this, as well) but I thought it might be interesting to get some other feedback, as well--especially because I have no idea to which field I should submit the paper. And so, without further ado, my proposal:

As with all new mediums, video games have become more and more a part of popular culture, and they have received more and more of their share of media criticism--from early Nintendo games being blamed for decreased attention spans to first-person shooters being blamed for school shootings. But as the medium grows, using ever more imaginative means to immerse its players (in every way from super-realistic graphics to more "human" characters) so to do the criticisms. While few viewed the "damsel in distress" plot of Super Mario Bros. as sexist, games now regularly come under fire for not only their portrayal of women but also minority groups. The question then becomes, can a new medium learn from the pitfalls of the old? Can a recent gaming controversy, such as the allegations of racism in the African-set, zombie shooter Resident Evil 5, be understood and studied through the lens of its literary ancestors? When one considers the striking similarities this "adventure story for boys" has in common with Gothic novels like Sir H. Rider Haggard's She or King's Solomon's Mines that saw the birth of the genre, it seems the answer must be yes.

Haggard's novels, as mentioned before, were published in the Gothic tradition of the aforementioned "adventure story for boys." There was very often travel to distant lands, grand and violent adventure, horrific events, overtly exotic (read sexual) women, and treasure--exactly the kind of genre elements we now associate with "fanboy" literature, film, and of course, video games. And while we could say that on those merits any superhero comic, or film starring the current female sexual icon, or video game fits that description, Resident Evil 5 is special because it so closely adheres to not only the plot elements but the plot formula of these novels.

It only makes sense then to examine these similarities and judge the controversy drawn by a new medium based on the same merits as the old, should it be expected to grow. If a video game is simply going to fill King Solomon's Mines with zombies, we should want it to do so without falling into the same racial traps as the novel. And if we plan to continue throwing the race card at every video game to feature a minority group, we should know for what it is we are looking. Because however new the medium, we've seen it all before.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

What's in the Little Blue Bag? Week of Nov. 4, 2009

2009-11-14T13:18:00.003-07:00

It's been a rough time for comic blogging lately. For one, I'd begun to notice that after I review a few issues in a series or a few series by an author/artist, I'm just repeating stuff I've already written. I mean, just look at my Mike Mignola reviews; I'm basically just saying "Mignola pwns!" over and over again! This is not only no way to review comics, but it doesn't really exercise my writing. Now, take something like the Scott Pilgrim series; it has it's ups and downs, and I feel like I represented them pretty well, critiquing them fairly. But I didn't bother with the fifth book because I would have just reiterated my previous positive points. To that end, I decided I should start doing the same with the floppies I buy. Not only will this keep my critical eye keen, but it encourages me to buy into some new series.

So I've kept this new attitude in mind during my last few comic store visits. Trouble there is that I just haven't had time to read and write about what I've been reading. So here's the stuff from my latest visit. There's mostly new (to me)...but I had to include some Mignola :-)

Abe Sapien: The Haunted Boy by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Patric Reynolds:

I know what I was saying before about not just continually writing "Mignola FTW!" but I have to write about the Abe Sapien one-shot, if only because as a character who's essentially Hellboy's partner (read sidekick) it's nice when Mignola gives him special attention. Aside from The Drowning, this is only time he's really taken on a challenge by himself. And it's always good to see a hero get their sea-legs.

The story here follows untested Abe on a mission to investigate reports of a spirit boy haunting the pond where he drowned though his best friend lived. I won't go into too much more detail, so as not to give anything away, but this really reminds me of classic paranormal stories--The Exorcist, Poltergeist, etc.--while drawing inspiration (as always) from ancient mythology. Mignola, of course, paces a great story, but a lot of the credit here has to go to newbie comics artist (and fresh Savannah College of Art and Design, comics program graduate) Patric Reynolds' striking visuals--really creepy stuff. I also found that this departure from Mignola's regular style (which artists usually try to mimic when he's only writing) helps to really solidify this as Abe's story. I hope to see more like it.

Beasts of Burden: The Gathering Storm #1 by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson:
This is a brand new paranormal series from Dark Horse...starring talking dogs and cats. Now I know what you're thinking, 'cause I was thinking the same thing too. Rest assured, this isn't Scooby Doo or Jabberjaw. This is more like 101 Dalmations where Pongo and Purdy hunt down Cruella De Ville themselves, instead of leaving her to the police. That's not to say it's an ultra-violent, or even an "adult" comic. The pooches aren't dark heroes and the cats aren't manipulative tricksters (well, not the good ones).

The story follows a pack of suburban pets finding themselves rained on by toads who eat each other and grow, until only a loan, giant frog remains. Calling for help from the Wise One, an old dog with knowledge of the spiritual world, leads the team to take on the ancient demon. But a few don't return--which surprised me for a couple of reasons. For one thing...the writers KILLED cute animals, and not even like Old Yeller or Marley and Me (though the cover does kind of remind of those "boys best friend" novels I used to read in grade school), but by having a giant frog shoot its sticky tongue out and gobble them up! For another, the cute animals didn't come back to life when they cause the giant frog to regurgitate all the smaller frogs giving him his power!

Nevertheless, I loved this story so much that when, at the end, the editors explained how this series came to be (it started as three shorts in Dark Horse's annual anthologies) AND that I could read them online, I didn't hesitate. These are just as excellent and feature the ghost of a lost dog, a brood of witches' black cats, and of course, undead dogs from a pet cemetery. Good stuff here--I look forward to the rest of this series.

The Unwritten #7 by Mike Carey and Peter Gross:
When I first reviewed this series I made no hesitations about how I felt--a promising story and authors promising too much. And while I still don't think this is "the story behind all stories," I've come around, especially in this and last issue. Yes, it's a good fantasy story about a fictional character become real, but what I really like is how much this comic is steeped in literary awesomeness. Stories like that of the creation of Frankenstein and its relation to Dante's Inferno trip me out (in a good way), just like the cross-over of literary characters similar to what Moore does in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And this series has both.

Cowboy Ninja Viking #1 by AJ Lieberman and Riley Rossmo:
I had heard this was a good series, but truthfully, I picked it because of how ridiculous the cover is. What's behind the over is pretty ridiculous too, but it's a good story. Similar to the Jason Bourne series, we have an expertly trained assassin with no memory. The difference is that this guy has multiple-personality disorder, which manifests itself in the form of a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking. It's actually more clever than it sounds, doing interesting things with panels and speech balloons--depending on which personality is speaking, the balloon is overlaid with either a revolver, a katana, or an axe. But what really gets me is the art. Reading the bylines, I noticed "Art and Tones by Riley Rossmo." This is pretty cool. The comic is essentially black and white with tones of colour; this isn't essentially the same thing as shading, but more of an emphasis device. My drawing teacher would trip out, and I haven't seen this in comics before. And to play to this, the pages of this comic are just a little wider than average, which means you can really pay attention to the details. All that said, I'm not sure the story is worth continuing.

Groo: The Hogs of Horder #1 by Sergio Aragonés:
My buddy Andy Wales over at Panel Discussion has recommended both this long-running series and it's writer. So when I saw this first issue in a new arc of the series on the shelves, I picked it up. Now, I had know real knowledge of this series when I started reading about a for-hire klutz causing massive destruction in his wake where ever he goes, I felt like I was reading the longest Beetle Bailey strip in history.

But then I noticed the subtle analogies to the current state of the economy. First, a nation goes to war on principle then concedes for monetary gains, while its citizens work for pitance. And when several industries collapse, they turn to the rich banks for saving. I've seen social commentary in comics before, but not like this. It's laced in comedy as the unwitting Groo bumbles along, unaware of the great changes occuring around him--perhaps analgous for the general citizenry. It's the first in a series of four, and I plan to continue it.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Trying to Draw

2009-11-11T09:16:00.001-07:00

Note: This was a recent response to a homework assignment from my Drawing 1 class. I feel it captures my feelings on the subject pretty well. And hopefully, posting it here will keep me accountable for what I've expressed herein--especially where he asked what he could do to challenge us more, since I can just as easily challenge myself in those areas. Also, I stress the lack of colour in my work because I'm partially colour blind :-)

Drawing to me is the act of visual creation through line. I’ve actually thought a lot about this definition from last year and the whole “collage as drawing” assignment. I had similar thoughts when carving my Superman-S for the Drive by Press T-shirts and carving the sand mold for the Out of the Ashes iron pour. To me, they all seem to be methods of drawing (at least in their initial phases--print, mold, etc.), and I feel this definition encapsulate them all. To draw is to engage in any of these activities—recreationally, professionally, even absent mindedly (like doodling).

At this point, I think being able to draw realistically is more important than being able to draw expressively. In my mind, the later comes from mastery of the former—you have to know the rules before you can break them. How can I draw a person expressively if I don’t know how to express them? Honestly, though, I suppose it’s possible. For my own learning, however, I need to learn the one before the other.

Of course then, I’m not quite happy with my level of ability when it comes to drawing realistically. I feel I need to study form and shapes more in the context of what I’m drawing. For example, my bottle drawings earlier this semester turned out way better than those of last year, and I feel I have cylinders down in that regard. But drawings arms, legs, or other cylindrically shaped objects definitely give me some trouble. As another example, I wasn’t too happy with the way the bones in my Dia de los Muertos drawing came out. In this way, if I learn how to represent the shape of something better, hopefully, I’ll then be able to create it more expressively—but maybe that’s just my amateur view of it.

In the remaining weeks of the semester, I’d, of course, like to continue refining this, but I’m looking forward to drawing with/in some of the other styles/mediums we have yet to get into (again, collage as drawing, but also pen and ink). I really like working with ink (in part, I think, due to my love of comics and their generally heavy inking), and I look forward to trying my hand at it again. I should also work more with colour from here on out. I hate working with colour (I spend half my time trying to figure out what colour to use and then whether or not it achieves the purpose I wanted), but it’s not something I want to shy away from. Once I do, I know a return will be very difficult. To this end, I plan on continuing my work on my midterm drawing, really trying to make the colours stand out. If I can do it, it should serve as a good inspiration to keep working with colour.

I think that if I also play to my strengths I can continue this work. I definitely feel like I have a much better grasp of space than I did last year. It really makes me feel confident when I know things are where “they’re supposed to be”—I suppose that’s just my OCD, though. If I can continue to build on this, I should be able to tackle any challenge.

And as far as challenges go, make me use colour! And make me draw! If I stop drawing in class then it’s probably because I’m looking too hard at it or have zoned out thinking about other stuff. Throw something at me! Snap me out of it, and I’ll get back on task. That will help, in class. Out of class, you could make sure I’m drawing and researching more. Check my sketchbook and research binder more frequently; that’ll keep me on those tasks!

As for my own challenging, I think I’m definitely challenging myself more this semester than last year. Last year I took the class with Veronica, and I was only auditing it. As such, I relied on her help too much, and didn’t stress a great deal if I missed a class or didn’t make time to sketch. Without being able to bug her and knowing a grade is at stake, I’m definitely working harder. Also, looking at my peers’ drawings, I notice I’m picking compositions that have a lot of action to them, and I feel this is a good challenge, as well—where perhaps before, I would have chosen still lifes because they generally require less focus from me. Action sequences make me pay more attention to the spaces, and I feel this takes more concentration from me. I can shoot out a still life and not really be too concerned with what it looks like. But if I take a scene, I’m much more fastidious about representing that scene accurately. Again, I think this comes from reading too many comics.

Using Sex to Sell English Education?

2009-11-02T22:33:00.002-07:00

If I told you that within the top 25 most viewed YouTube channels of all time was a video series designated to the study of English philology (the study of language and linguistics) you'd probably doubt me. And if you're a grad student at NMHU, you're probably having flashbacks of History of the English Language, wondering how anyone could find the subject so interesting as to garner a quarter of a billion views. Yet such a channel exists. But if I added that the philologist recording these "lessons" was a funny, 20-something, could-be Russian supermodel, things would probably start to make a little more sense.

Undoubtedly, the thing I hated most about taking the SATs in high school was the etymology needed to understand the word-association problems and readings. Looking back, I can't help but feel that today's high school students, with their vocabulary building readings and course content designed to improve test scores, have it a bit easier. Last summer, I found out just how much luckier they have it when G4TV named philologist Marina Orlova as the "5th hottest woman on the net", for her website and YouTube video series, Hot for Words. I didn't pay too much attention initially--surely another internet vixen vying for attention in the guise of "Intelligence is Sexy." And with what passes for "intelligence" on that network, I was confident I was missing out on much. But then her name starting popping up more often. She was in my wife's Cosmo, listed as "one of the top 3 channels on YouTube." She had a regular spot on the O'Reilly Factor. And I couldn't but check out her site. And I was pretty surprised with what I found. Sure, it's the website of a generally scantily-clad woman exploiting her sex appeal. But it's also a website dedicated to the study of words--their origins and meanings. She holds two degrees in philology and taught high school English and World Literature in Russia before coming to the United States to pursue her PhD. Needless to say, she got a little lost along way. Still, I'd be lying if I didn't admit the immediate buzzing in my head, trying to figure out a practical application for the classroom.

This past summer she even published a book collecting a lot of the information from her videos. I'd be surprised if you haven't seen it. The two Borders in Santa Fe have kept it prominently on display at the entrance of their shops for the past three months. I'm actually surprised I haven't bought it on impulse. But then, the disconcerting looks of a wife are a strong deterent, especially when I shared my classroom-application idea. She wasn't sure it was a feasible idea, and without trying to appear to back-pedal, I'm not sure it is either. It's actually kind of funny, because I could see this video shown in English classes at my old high school, but then that school was also private, in Canada, and all boys (though, strangely, run by Jesuits). So I'm unsure of the reaction were I to show these videos in even the college classroom, and whether there would even be a real purpose.

But I'm a big believer in at least trying to embrace the culture of our students--I once made a great lesson connection by bringing the previous night's episode of America's Next Top Model (What? I can't watch TV with my wife?). And with attention from the likes of the above plus New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, and (a random Google find) The University of Hawa'i's library workshop series, it seems Orlova's popularity and the popularity of those like her, will inevitably rise with time.

At the moment, my ideas for application are pretty basic. For example, anything that can lighten a dense subject is generally appreciated by the students. Undoubtedly, my Heroes, Villains, and Vampires students were sick of analyzing the discourse community of vampires as described by different authors, critics, etc. Orlova has a great video on the origin of the word "vampire" (or rather lack-there-of; check it out, it's kind of creepy). But my first idea involved our College Discourse classes. With their emphasis in grammar and basic socio-linguistics as a support class for Reading and Writing for College, these videos feel like they have some application, even if it's only vocabulary building--which is not a bad thing for remedial students.

So there you have it--sexy English education (though, arguably, all English education is sexy). But is there are place for it in our classrooms, or do our students need to learn the meaning of floccinaucinihilipilification on their own time?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

¡Feliz Dia de los Muertos!

2009-11-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

I didn't make a Halloween post, 'cause I didn't have much to post. We went to a couple of parties, ate lots of candy, and won our last game of the soccer season! But I've had a Dia de los Muertos post planned for a week, if only because of the themed project we had in my Drawing 1 class. I did some research and really took to the style of Jose Guadalupe Posada.

Now, despite my family heritage, Dia de los Muertos was never a holiday we celebrated. But it's one celebrated in my New Mexico home, and so in honour of today, I'm presenting my art work for the first time here at The Daily Pugle.

I know Dia de los Muertos art is traditionally more colourful, but I didn't have as much time for this project, and after the colouring nightmare that was my midterm--which I'll show here eventually--I decided to go straight-up charcoal, which I've grown sort of fond of.

I also went with some Posada images, reproducing them over an Alamo backround--one of my favorite places. The generic banner over the doors was a last minute addition when I started running out of time, and I'm not too happy with it. In general though, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. My teacher seemed to be, as well, 'cause he put it up in the annual Dia de los Muertos show!

"Eclectic Comics" #3: I Love Good Comics

2009-10-23T11:42:00.000-06:00

Well, I've finally gotten around to reading the latest issue in self-publisher Andrew Wales' quarterly serial, Eclectic Comics!

"Most of the comics in Wales' issues are the products of comics "challenges" like: "Draw a comic based on this quote," "Draw a comic using the lyrics of your favorite song," etc. In fact, Eclectic Comics is as much a learning experience for Wales as it is a reading experience for us. And that's probably what I like about it most of all--it has the same personal feel as, say, flipping through an artist's sketchbook or a writer's journal. But since it's a comic, it has the feel of both examples, making it a comic unlike any I've read. Most of the comics, though reactions to particular challenges, are based on personal stories, just as those featuring The Mighty Andar (Wales' superpowered alter-ego) are based on personal observations of comics in general. It's also interesting that Eclectic Comics appears to be a family affair, featuring comics by both his daughter Anna and son Daniel (who also helped with the "computer stuff" and colouring of the covers)."

This is what I wrote when I reviewed issues 1 and 2 of Wales' series, and while quoting my own review might seem like a cop-out, I can't help that it can't really be said any better this time around. Wales' sense of pacing, frame, and humour is only getting better--I particularly like his families' involvement with his daughter Anna's "Fathers Day Roast" and son Daniel's strip jabbing at Wales' Photoshop ineptness (I have the same experience with my Media Arts major wife!).

One area this comic does differ is Wales' increased inclusion of comics about historical figures such as the chef who invented potato chips, Thomas Edison, and a slew of "Weather Wizards of Ancient Times." It's clear Wales is a teacher interested in teaching. As a kid I would have loved lessons like these, and as a teacher myself, I appreciate the way Wales is trying to push educational comics with efforts better than some of those coming from even the Hill and Wang publishing house (most of which just read like history books with hand-drawn pictures rather than photographs).

If I were to make one criticism it would be that the text of this issue has a few grammar errors. It's a minor gripe, but surely Wales knows a brilliant, ruggedly handsome university English teacher who'd be happy to give his text a once over!

Regardless, this is undoubtedly a superb work--I mean, the guy's gettin' fan mail from the likes of Usagi Yojimbo's Stan Sakai for Pete's sake!

You can purchase copies online here, and you can read more about Wales and his work at his blog, Panel Discussion.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

"Muramasa: The Demon Blade": A Hand-Drawn Masterpiece

2009-10-18T11:56:00.002-06:00

I'm writing this review as I watch my wife play the game. And I'm not gonna lie, it's totally turning me on watching her control the lithe Momohime and her Muramasa blade as she jumps, rolls, and dashes her way around the beautiful Japanese countryside, forests, and cities. Enemy ninja strike with their swords and shuriken and vicious demons attack with mystical powers only to be cut down by her steel. But that's not why I love this game--well, that's not the only reason anyway.

More Muramasa: The Demon Blade Info

But let's start with that one--watching my wife Veronica play. The combat in this game is beautifully fluid and simple, while being open enough to allow different playing styles. It's why I like watching her play; she controls Momohime with an amazing grace, rolling past one enemy's attack before knocking a second in the air, leaping after him to cut him up before he can hit the ground, and then mid-air dashing back to the first enemy. It's gorgeous and very different from my own (I attend to just hammer through a line of enemies, as opposed to dancing around trying to separate them one by one).

But the buck doesn't stop there for playing styles. The game comes with two settings, something that's been translated for English gamers as "Normal and Hard Difficulty Settings." But they're more than that. The Japanese words "Muso" and "Shura" that were translated as"Normal" and "Easy" refer more to the play styles. Playing on Muso allows for a more action based experience (straight-up fighting to progress), while Shura recalls a more RPG experience (leveling-up, finding the best items, accomplishing side-quests, etc.). The game even features two protagonists, Momohime and Kisuke, each with their own stories, each story with three different possible endings! Clearly, the replay potential is high, but is it worth it to play through, essentially, the same game not just more than once but six times?

Yes. Yes it is. And here's why.

The other reason I like watching my wife play is that this game is simply just amazing to watch! When I reviewed Okami, I noted the beautiful art it presented. And I say with no hesitation, Muramasa makes Okami look like just another game. This game is beautiful, for several reasons, but I believe they all come back to the most basic aspect at work. Muramasa is a hand-drawn, 2-D video game. That in itself is nothing less than an astounding feat in this environment of 3-D, uber-realistic graphic envelope pushing. But playing or watching the game, you can see and appreciate the amount of artistic work that went into this game. Like Okami, the game borrows heavily from classic Japanese art, and it's even more beautiful here; it's cleaner, more colourful, and more detailed than any video game I've ever played. The animation is extremely simple (and Flash-based!), but instead of making characters look buggy and static, allows you to better appreciate the art. Lastly, and I promise I'll move on, the art style lends itself extremely well to the backgrounds of a traditional side-scroller. Mountains, forests, country-sides, even the burning hills of Hell, and the subtle things that happen back there, all give the game amazing atmosphere and depth. (The game is so beautiful, playing it actually makes me want to draw, and it inspired my Drawing 1 midterm project--which I may or may not share depending on my self-esteem level after I get my grade.)

"If only there was some sake!"

Yet another great aspect of the "watching" of this game is the health-system. And admittedly, this also has to do with the game's art. Health is replenished in a number of ways--save points, hot springs, leveling-up, etc.--but the one that most stands out is cooking and eating. Cooking while on your travels takes two forms--the first is when you roast food (sweet potatoes, char, squid) for later during dire battles; the second is when you boil something in a hot-pot for immediate enjoyment that includes a special bonus (like increased attack) depending on the dish. In both cases, a special animation takes place in which point of view shifts to first-person, making you the one enjoying the meal, bite by beautiful bite. Eating in restaurants is similar except that the variety of dishes increases. I've always said that a good movie makes you hungry. I've since learned that any good work of art appeals to not only to your emotions but your senses. This game makes me hungry. This game makes my wife hungry. We had to go out for Japanese food this week.

The last bit I want to address (and I'm not even going to get into the RPG elements, music, or how much the team who made it cared about what they were creating) is the story. It's very likely that this story will seem odd to Western audiences, mostly because VanillaWare hadn't even considered translating the game for us but also because the story is influenced by and steeped in traditional Japanese theatre. As such, there are tons of references the average player won't get--the protagonists' stories are based on classic tales--and may, therefore, seem a bit strange. But the influences the game takes are not only in the stories themselves but also in the storytelling. The game is broken into acts like a play, and the story progresses between each through dialogue that takes place as though they were on stage--the protagonists move across the "stage" to other waiting, characters, having their conversations one at a time. It's an interesting way to progress the story, and one most gamers will find odd. But it's a welcome change from the fast-paced cinematics and hole-ridden plots of most contemporary games.

In the end, this game is so unique, I have to recommend it to anyone with a Wii, though I know it won't be well-received by most gamers. But it needs to be given a chance for what it might inspire in future games, and what it might make us demand from future games.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

"Okami": The Game that Wouldn't Die

2009-10-01T21:52:00.001-06:00

I bought Okami for the Wii last spring, shortly after the then two year old game had been ported from the Play Station 2. I beat it this past weekend.

Now, taking my ever-loving time on a game is pretty normal for me. I took nearly a decade to beat the original Legend of Zelda--not because it was too hard but because I loved starting the game over and filling in the narrative gaps with my own stories. But this trend sort of stayed with me as I matured as a gamer (which is not an oxymoron!), if for different reasons (I don't always have a lot of time to devote to the games I love, and that time is very often split between several games; I do the same with books). It took me about a year and a half to beat Twilight Princess, a couple of years to beat Final Fantasy VII, and I've yet to finish Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

But Okami took me a long time for a very different reason. I've spent the last sixteen months in a very love/hate relationship with this game. See, Okami, for me, is kind of like that girl you fall in love with who's beautiful, clever, fun to spend time with, but is constantly making promises it doesn't keep--whether it be not keeping dates or having multiple personality disorder. And yet, every time you take her back.

But let me start with the good. Okami is beautiful. If there was ever an example to help drive the argument of Video Games as Art, it's Okami. And the game--essentially unchanged from PS2 to Wii--is three years old! The art style of the game is traditional Japanese brushwork--heavy outlining but with line variance, watercolours, tons of Japanese symbols and art references, and even some scroll-style storytelling. In a generation of hyped-up, super-realistic, 3-D graphics, Okami operates stunningly with art-school charm.

And yes, the game is very clever with some innovative puzzles, varying combat styles, quirky characters (the best kind), and tons of well-placed (if sometimes crass) humour. These aspects, joined with an interesting story, make Okami very fun to play. You control the white wolf Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of the Celestial Plain and Earth. A hundred years after your mortal death in combat against the dreaded demon Orochi, you've finally awakened to realize that your hard-won victory was for naught. The demon has returned, and you've no memory of your godly state or powers.

Now, up till this point, I was pretty psyched with this game. But about ten hours in, those promises started falling through for me. For one, every positive review (of which there are several) I'd read argued vehemently that this wasn't Capcom's version of Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess. And yes, technically, the two games are different, on the surface. But underneath, Okami is just an attempt to make a Zelda game without the prerequisite characters, world, mythos, etc., so much so that it uses to the same Zelda-formula I ranted about when I reviewed Phantom Hourglass. So instead of needing to find the bombs or the boomerang or the hook shot to use on the dungeon boss, you have to find the sacred brush techniques to use on the dungeon boss. Instead of searching for heart container pieces to extend your life, you need sun fragments. You even have a tiny, mystical helper who speaks for you.

The second, third, forth, umpteenth, promises this game breaks are the root of my subtitle. Okami is the most painfully long game I've ever played to completion.

So imagine you've been playing the game for about ten hours. You've battled a few bosses, found a few powerups, saved a few civilians, all with the aim of defeating the dreaded Orochi. And there you are, on the precipice of battle against the hated demon whose darkness has choked your beautiful world. Your mystical helper asks if you're ready for the ultimate battle against evil. You nod agreement, and he remarks that there's no turning back, this is it, the battle to end all battles and save the world. Charging headlong against the Japanese hydra, you carefully sever each elemental head until the beast lays slain at your paws. With victory firmly in your grasp you let out a sigh of relief, exhilerated by your accomplishment...Only to find out Orochi wasn't the demon pulling the strings. There's another, worse evil out there. It has no name, it's never mentioned before, but your helper urges you on to face this nameless monster.

I was sort of okay with it when this happened. It meant I got to stay in this world a bit longer, even if I wasn't expecting to and stayed up into the wee hours of the morning because I thought I was on the verge of winning the game. But imagine this happens not once more, but twice. How about three times? All with you still not knowing exactly who you're supposed to looking for, what they want, and why they're so darn ornery. The first fake final battle I could take. But with every subsequent one, I became more and more despondent about the game. Orochi gave me motivation, a goal, a thing to defeat. But simply wondering this world in search of the next villain without a goal got boring.

To boot, all of these battles are long. They require tact and precision (which is good) but mostly repetition and pattern memorization, lots of repetition and pattern memorization. So much so, in fact, that even in this story driven opus of a video game, the designers felt it would be a wise decision to make you fight every single, god-forsaken (literally) one of them a second time! Oh! Actually, one of them you have to fight three times. Of course, this design choice is probably based on Japanese gaming traditions--the Mega Man games are famous for making you fight every boss twice and then having you battle Dr. Wiley's three times. But it doesn't work here.

At the end of the day, however, I still have to recommend Okami. For everything about it that I don't like, there's something I at least have to appreciate (even if I don't like the choice). Most importantly, this is a game pushing the limits of not only art in video games but art as video games. And even three years later, there aren't many offerings as beautiful as this.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Direction of Comics Studies

2009-09-10T11:53:00.005-06:00

My good buddy at EN/SANE World pointed out this great article on the state of comics studies in the academia--something you may have noticed I've been stressing about of late. It's a great read, and I started to comment on his post but quickly realized my comment was getting a little long, decided to post it on my own blog instead of hijacking his. Here's what I wrote:

"Equally encouraging is the MLA's forthcoming Approaches to Teaching the Graphic Novel, edited by Stephen Tabachnick".

Sorry, but I gotta name drop. Dr. Tabachnick's Graphic Novel lit. class at the University of Memphis is the reason why I study comics today. He was also the chair of my honor's thesis which basically became the rough draft for my Master's Thesis. I owe a lot to this guy in terms of my career direction, so I'm definitely looking forward to this book :-)

To address the rest of the article, despite my previous fear-mongering, I actually like a lot of what this guy is saying. I've also noticed how a lot of academics either treat McCloud like he's the only game in town or ignore him completely.

And one of the things I like about comics is it's interdisciplinary nature, one of my fears that this article is quelling is that one field (like English) will try to "claim" comics to the exclusivity of others.

I also really like this because I'm learning (in my new position) how hard it is to coordinate interdisciplinary studies. And I really don't think it should be. Perhaps comics can be the "great unifier"--even if we discussed this in my comics class yesterday and most of my students refused to believe that this kind of "bridge building" is beyond the medium :-)

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Death of Pop Culture?

2009-09-09T16:18:00.008-06:00

Recently, I've been preaching about the importance of a particular medium of art. I'm shocked to discover most of my students are not as familiar with it as they should be. But I'm not talking about books or fine art or classical music or even comics (for once). I'm talking about film. I've begun to find out that the majority of this generation is woefully under familiar with cinema. And I'm not even talking about the classics--Casablanca, Ben Hur, or even my favorite, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I'm referring to great installments in even contemporary cinema: Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight, Wall-E! Lately, I've been semi-jesting when I remark that my university really should make History or Motion Pictures (an Art Requirement elective) a core requirement. But when I do take a survey of favorite movies in my classes, most students will list Judd Appatow or Will Ferrel movies. And while I admit, these movies have their place, it's troubling to think that this is the "high art" standard the generation will hold as a model--that's setting the bar pretty low.

Indeed, even my wife, a film student, has worked with dozens of film students (from both our university and others) who simply don't watch movies--which to me is sort of like claiming to be a chef but refusing to eat anything. This subject also came up recently when the new film professor approached me about creating a new learning community connected to his History of Film class in the future. And it's lead me to postulate that at least part of the cause can be attribute to the kind of short, pithy pieces that the current generation devours (and is keen to reproduce) on YouTube.

Ironically, I was this afternoon watching the Spaced DVD commentary with Quentin Tarantino. And he stated his take on the theory about the binding power pop culture has on each generation: in the '70s, '80s, and '90s it was mainly TV, movies, and video games; the '40s, '50s and '60s had primarily music; before that was literature. I think the increased popularity of more instant/passive media such as the aforementioned YouTube, but also Twitter, iTunes, and even games like Guitar Hero (which encourage "pick up and put down" play) has decreased the need for more traditional media. And because these new mediums of pop culture are, by their very nature, so temporary, my worry is that with today's generation's lack of TV, movie, video game, music, and literary knowledge, they'll have nothing that ties them together in a decade or two.

Just some thoughts.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Teaching Inspiration--The Performance Poetry of Taylor Mali

2009-09-05T21:40:00.002-06:00

This past week was very long for me. I had a kind of "crisis of identity" about my place in comics, the academia, and teaching. For starters, I was pointed in the direction of another new academic journal specializing in comics. In the past, I've been wary of comics recognition in higher places, and I expressed my concerns. The responses, while appreciated and certainly coming from a more experienced source, definitely made me question what it is I want to/can do with comics! Recently, I've been toying with the idea of trying to write for comics, but a quick survey of comics publishers revealed there isn't a lot of room for comics writers like me who can't really draw. And while journalism is another area I've been interested in, there isn't really an audience for anything other than mainstream comics. Which leaves me with doing something in the academia (about which I've already expressed my opinion) and teaching.

But to add doubt to that, I'm three weeks into teaching a very, very "difficult" class. I've never had a class of students like this before. Even with the most difficult, in the past I've been able to take an apathetic classroom and "jolt" them into participation. This class doesn't even laugh at my bad jokes! They just sit there and stare at me. Maybe I've just been lucky in my last couple of years of teaching, but this semester, I have the kind of class that the chair of my department (the PhD who I assist with Freshman Year Programs) calls "resistant."

Quite unrelated, however, she sent me this YouTube video of performance poetry by Taylor Mali:

Undoubtedly, this is funny stuff. And watching it after what had been the most painful class period yet really gave me a boost for the rest of the day. It even had me excited with a new activity I'm planning for one of my higher level courses (I plan on having a class watch the video and handing out a transcript of the poem to correct--should be fun).

Curious about who this Mali guy is (and hoping for some more funny poetry), I checked out some of his other videos. I wasn't disappointed:

This instantly reminded me of a lifeguard I trained/trained with who now teaches high school math for Teach for America (an organization that specializes in providing excellent teachers for underprivileged communities) who also used to teach taekwondo. (Incidentally, he's also trying to raise funds for an important class resource.)

But Mali's work isn't meant to be only humourous. And I realized this when I saw this video:

Really, these videos not only made my day, but really affirmed my desires to teach--even after a week of a "difficult" class and a "crisis of identity." As such, I simply had to share them. So I may still not be sure what I want to/can do with comics, but regardless, I know I want to keep teaching. Thanks, Taylor Mali.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

What's in the Little Blue Bag? Week of Aug. 26, 2009

2009-08-30T21:57:00.007-06:00

I still haven't managed to make it to my local comic book store on a regular basis. Near the end of the summer break I was able to hit it a couple of weeks in a row. But with the third week of the fall semester under way, the promise of making it in more than a couple of times a month seems very unlikely. So even though some of these have been out for a while, they're what I've been reading recently.

The Amazing Spider-Man #601 by Mark Waid:
I admit it. I bought this issue purely for the cover. I love it. A lot. But I can honestly say it isn't simply because MJ is forcing forward a pair of breasts massively disproportionate to her waist or the way her hips curve beneath those torn jeans or how full and voluptuous her red hair looks (though I'd be lying if I didn't say they were contributing factors). No, what I love about this cover is the expression on her face.

My favorite part of the second Spider-man movie was the final shot: the one where MJ has just told Pete she loves him, and they share a kiss. But then the police sirens beckon to him, and she urges him on. And after a city-swinging montage, the camera refocuses on MJ, and slowly fades out as the love-induced smile on her face fades away. Roll credits. Brilliant way to end a film!

Now, I haven't read a Spider-man comic in ages (probably Free Comic Book Day two years ago), so I have no idea what's going on in the universe beyond that Pete and MJ are having problems (I hear the "D"-word tossed in somewhere). Regardless, this cover just struck me in the same way that that final scene did; it's something integral to not only that particular relationship but the superhero/love interest relationship in general. That is timeless, and cover artist J. Scott Campbell captured it perfectly.

Beyond that, sadly, the issue sucks. The storyline is on par with a soap opera episode. And before you ask, yes, when I come home for lunch to find the TV left on to daytime soaps following the news shows I watched that morning, they do tend to suck me in with their completely ridiculous drama. And sure, Mark Waid does that really well here. But that makes neither the soap opera or this comic good. Also, the inside art here is really not to my tastes, especially since Mario Alberti has a tendency to make all the women look really manly.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels #2, B.P.R.D.: 1947 #2, Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #8 by Mike Mignola:
At the risk of sounding redundant...Mike Mignola is an amazing. He is easily the best contemporary writer in comics that I'm familiar with. Witchfinder further proves that he can tell an amazing story without having to rely on Big Red of even any of the members of the B.P.R.D.

1947 further proves that the B.P.R.D. series doesn't have to be all action but can still hold an excellent horror story within its pages.

And The Wild Hunt further proves that after some fifteen odd years of Hellboy, he can still give us something new and exciting. If you call yourself a comics fan and aren't reading Mignola, shame on you!

The Unwritten #4 by Mike Carey and Peter Ross:
This is an interesting plot-driven series I've been following (mostly amicably) from the first issue. But this issue seems to take up the action mantle to progress this part of the story--the end result of which is to reveal yet another connection between the "real" Tom Taylor and his supposedly fiction boy-wizard counterpart. I admit, this cliffhanger ending is intriguing enough to keep me interested in the series. You can bet I'll have a problem if it becomes a recurring feature of the series, though.

Zorro #15 by Matt Wagner:
Just when I stop reading Timothy Callahan's blog and reviews on Comic Book Resources, he reviews something I actually read! It's a great story. A new villain has turned up, and to get a feel for his opponent, "The Fox," he asks his diner party guests what they know about El Zorro! What follows are four different stories about the masked avenger, ranging from undead demon to the most refined gentlemen in all of California. Like me and Callahan, you might recognize it but with a different hero:

"It's the same story as 'Have I Got a Story for You' from the Batman: Gotham Knight DVD, which is a remake of 'Legends of the Dark Knight' from Batman: The Animated Series, which was based on a story called "The Batman Nobody Knows" by Frank Robbins and Dick Giordano."

Of course, Callahan calls this a "problem," while I call it a new take on an old favorite--just one of the many places we disagree, though he teaches literature and reviews comics on a respectable website for a living, so you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt :-/

One place we do see eye to eye is on the return of artist Francesco Francavilla. He really captures the different moods of the different Zorro stories. It's a good series, to be sure.

Scourge of the Gods: The Fall #2 by Valerie Mangin and Aleska Gajic:
So far, the second "Book" in French comic publisher Soleil's Attila the Hun retelling is a whole different beast from the first--which focused on the relationship between two rival leaders and their eventual warring. This one seems to have changed theme and tone to the gods that science is capable of "creating." The series has only one more issue (each of which includes a hefty sixty-some-odd pages--why does America seem to be the only culture to sell such flimsy comics?), so there's still a good chance the story will get back on some kind of track.

Still, the art of the series is quite good. And really, as a comic, however weird it may seem, it's quite good storytelling. I look forward to seeing how it ends.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?