Hi everybody!
I just reread LOST GIRLS by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. Now, Alan Moore is the greatest writer to ever grace the comics medium. Unfortunately, illustrator Melinda Gebbie is as anatomically-challenged in her way as WONDER WOMAN artist H.G. Peter was in his. H.G. Peter had a peculiar ability to draw a specific type of attractive woman, and all other people he generally depicted as grotesqueries, which gave the overall comic an effect comparable to your typical Tijuana Bible. This H.G. Peter artwork supported the subversive qualities in the WONDER WOMAN comic which William Moulton Marston concentrated his efforts on. With LOST GIRLS, Alan Moore looks at the dirty underpinings of Alice In Wonderland, Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz and Wendy from Peter Pan. However, instead of the effortless erotic draftsmanship of, say, Milo Manara, Alan Moore is teamed with the exaggerated delineations of Melinda Gebbie. Unlike H.G. Peter, not even Melinda Gebbie's women are particularly attractive, which is troubling for an erotic distraction like LOST GIRLS. Alan Moore explores incest, molestation, bondage, bestiality, name your sexual poison, but it largely comes across as an academic exercise instead of a passionate reverie. As boring as having your grandfather talk about sex is, the illustrations in LOST GIRLS make the story appear undernourished, as well. Alan Moore is never entirely without insights, but LOST GIRLS becomes more about bad sex than revealing truths. Similarly, after the initial burst of original ideas that fueled the original WONDER WOMAN comics, Wiliam Moulton Marston largely ignored telling credible stories and overindulged his symbolic obsessions. Let me give a movie analogy: the dirty kick of Marilyn Monroe playing to type in SOME LIKE IT HOT is lessened by the complete lack of chemistry between herself and Tony Curtis, and almost completely obliterated by director Billy Wilder's epilogue suggesting that Jack Lemmon in drag could do worse than by marrying the homely male suitor who has fallen in love with him. The only recent cinema I have seen that has allowed a young girl have big adventures without being punished for it is THE GOLDEN COMPASS.
Sorry to be so explicit and depressing this time around. However! I am beginning work on this year's Christmas card for one and all, so I'm feeling more cheerful than usual.
Talk to you, soon! Be good!
Brad
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
BULLETS & BRACELETS, BRICK & MORTAR!
Hi everybody!
Just to reiiterate, the WONDER WOMAN comic has never established a home city or a strong supporting cast for our hero. WONDER WOMAN has no deep relationships with other people or to a reality-based place. Her strongest connection is with mythical Paradise Island and her fellow imaginary Amazons, where she does not live except while on vacation, which would be like Superman only having a strong connection with Krypton, which is destroyed; or with Krypto, who is a dog.
The WONDER WOMAN comic has had 68 years to build an emotional and physical infrastructure for our hero and has chosen for various reasons to not do so.
Of course, the only city in our actual reality that has a real-life heroine in charge of it is Chicago IL with Oprah Winfrey. How would Oprah look in a WONDER WOMAN costume?
My point is, for all of her years in our collective imagination, WONDER WOMAN remains largely an unexplored canvas of infinite possibility.
That is why our Wonder Woman Project is very necessary!
Keeping it short, for once! :) Talk to you soon, be good!
Brad
Just to reiiterate, the WONDER WOMAN comic has never established a home city or a strong supporting cast for our hero. WONDER WOMAN has no deep relationships with other people or to a reality-based place. Her strongest connection is with mythical Paradise Island and her fellow imaginary Amazons, where she does not live except while on vacation, which would be like Superman only having a strong connection with Krypton, which is destroyed; or with Krypto, who is a dog.
The WONDER WOMAN comic has had 68 years to build an emotional and physical infrastructure for our hero and has chosen for various reasons to not do so.
Of course, the only city in our actual reality that has a real-life heroine in charge of it is Chicago IL with Oprah Winfrey. How would Oprah look in a WONDER WOMAN costume?
My point is, for all of her years in our collective imagination, WONDER WOMAN remains largely an unexplored canvas of infinite possibility.
That is why our Wonder Woman Project is very necessary!
Keeping it short, for once! :) Talk to you soon, be good!
Brad
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Polanski Towne!
Hi everybody!
Roman Polanski is the antithesis of the message we are trying to send with The Wonder Woman Project.
While people accused director Alfred Hitchcock of cinematic sadism, it is Roman Polanski who mastered that art.
REPULSION is an elegant but unrelenting study of a woman's descent into isolating madness.
ROSEMARY'S BABY is about a woman who is forced to give birth to the spawn of Satan.
CHINATOWN concerns an incest survivor who gave birth to her father's child and is killed by her father, who then raises her surviving sister/daughter. "My sister, my daughter, my sister and my daughter!"
There is a relentless pattern of illegal/immoral behavior serving as the foundation of his studio movies.
Further, under Polanski, horrific crimes routinely go unpunished. Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne famously argued over the ending of CHINATOWN, with Polanski prevailing that the offending father get away with pedophilia. Coincidence? "It's Chinatown, Jake."
Polanski; had he stayed with studio movies; would have lost his "snap" as the measured perversion that he favored fully gave way to "blockbuster" fare like JAWS, STAR WARS and ROCKY in the 1970s.
Our popular culture did not suffer much in Polanski's absence, yet he is still lionized in the creative community. This is a false regret, because Robert Evans and the rest of the crew from CHINATOWN culminated in the "COTTON CLUB" murders several years later in Hollywood. Jack Nicholson had already won an Oscar before CHINATOWN, and his star has continued relatively undimmed, but the last gasp of studio "creative edginess" heralded by BONNIE AND CLYDE effectively ended with the release of CHINATOWN.
As to Polanski having violated a 13 year old girl while staying at Jack Nicholson's house following CHINATOWN, let us recognize that on the personal level Polanski proved to be far more perverse than his movies.
We see with the publicity surrounding MacKenzie Phillips' memoir how devastating such events can be. MacKenzie's father John introduced her to heroin (old news), had a "consensual" sexual relationship with him and after he impregnated her paid for the abortion of their child (which is recent news).
Incest never goes away. Child rape never goes away.
Society failed Polanski's victim: her mother drove her to that photoshoot then did not stay with her to supervise. The "responsible" adult figure; Polanski; drugged, disrobed and debauched her. The legal system had plead Polanski's jail sentence down to time served and still he fled sentencing when released on his own recognicence.
Polanski's fugitive status is now seen as a badge of honor in Hollywood, but Polanski is a slayer of childhood and a coward of epic proportion. Polanski by taking a 13 year old girl and molding her to his extreme sexual desires like so much clay proved himself to be a completely remorseless skidmark of a man. Polanski's running away from any responsibility was contemptible: to call any of this a miscarriage of justice against himself remains ludicrous.
I used to be 44 years old, myself; as Polanski was when this crime against nature was committed; so if he had not yet learned how to control his base impulses by then, he never had any discernable self-discipline to begin with.
It is unseemly for Polanski to keep invoking his Holocaust survivor card, his Helter Skelter survivor card, his hounded by the blue noses card. Polanski is a practicing pedophile and should go to jail for the full nickel! Period. Case closed.
Security begins within the civilized heart. When we carelessly throw our precious children to the ravenous wolves like Polanski, then we reap the whirlwind. It does not matter who stops the cycle of madness against children and women as long as the cycle is stopped.
Wonder Woman is here to represent the necessary intervention to improve the general welfare of women and children!
Little girls are severely mutilated in nations like Africa, are married off to brutal strangers before they lose their baby teeth, and die of malnutrition long before they see any of their own children reach puberty.
The Wonder Woman Project will prove a tonic to such toxic fare as Polanski has left us, to such toxic behavior as Polanski has modeled for us.
Wonder Woman shows us the wonderfulness inside all of us!
It's a wonderful world and Wonder Woman is here to keep it that way!
Down with Polanski! Up with WONDER WOMAN!
Talk to you all, soon! Be good!
Brad
Roman Polanski is the antithesis of the message we are trying to send with The Wonder Woman Project.
While people accused director Alfred Hitchcock of cinematic sadism, it is Roman Polanski who mastered that art.
REPULSION is an elegant but unrelenting study of a woman's descent into isolating madness.
ROSEMARY'S BABY is about a woman who is forced to give birth to the spawn of Satan.
CHINATOWN concerns an incest survivor who gave birth to her father's child and is killed by her father, who then raises her surviving sister/daughter. "My sister, my daughter, my sister and my daughter!"
There is a relentless pattern of illegal/immoral behavior serving as the foundation of his studio movies.
Further, under Polanski, horrific crimes routinely go unpunished. Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne famously argued over the ending of CHINATOWN, with Polanski prevailing that the offending father get away with pedophilia. Coincidence? "It's Chinatown, Jake."
Polanski; had he stayed with studio movies; would have lost his "snap" as the measured perversion that he favored fully gave way to "blockbuster" fare like JAWS, STAR WARS and ROCKY in the 1970s.
Our popular culture did not suffer much in Polanski's absence, yet he is still lionized in the creative community. This is a false regret, because Robert Evans and the rest of the crew from CHINATOWN culminated in the "COTTON CLUB" murders several years later in Hollywood. Jack Nicholson had already won an Oscar before CHINATOWN, and his star has continued relatively undimmed, but the last gasp of studio "creative edginess" heralded by BONNIE AND CLYDE effectively ended with the release of CHINATOWN.
As to Polanski having violated a 13 year old girl while staying at Jack Nicholson's house following CHINATOWN, let us recognize that on the personal level Polanski proved to be far more perverse than his movies.
We see with the publicity surrounding MacKenzie Phillips' memoir how devastating such events can be. MacKenzie's father John introduced her to heroin (old news), had a "consensual" sexual relationship with him and after he impregnated her paid for the abortion of their child (which is recent news).
Incest never goes away. Child rape never goes away.
Society failed Polanski's victim: her mother drove her to that photoshoot then did not stay with her to supervise. The "responsible" adult figure; Polanski; drugged, disrobed and debauched her. The legal system had plead Polanski's jail sentence down to time served and still he fled sentencing when released on his own recognicence.
Polanski's fugitive status is now seen as a badge of honor in Hollywood, but Polanski is a slayer of childhood and a coward of epic proportion. Polanski by taking a 13 year old girl and molding her to his extreme sexual desires like so much clay proved himself to be a completely remorseless skidmark of a man. Polanski's running away from any responsibility was contemptible: to call any of this a miscarriage of justice against himself remains ludicrous.
I used to be 44 years old, myself; as Polanski was when this crime against nature was committed; so if he had not yet learned how to control his base impulses by then, he never had any discernable self-discipline to begin with.
It is unseemly for Polanski to keep invoking his Holocaust survivor card, his Helter Skelter survivor card, his hounded by the blue noses card. Polanski is a practicing pedophile and should go to jail for the full nickel! Period. Case closed.
Security begins within the civilized heart. When we carelessly throw our precious children to the ravenous wolves like Polanski, then we reap the whirlwind. It does not matter who stops the cycle of madness against children and women as long as the cycle is stopped.
Wonder Woman is here to represent the necessary intervention to improve the general welfare of women and children!
Little girls are severely mutilated in nations like Africa, are married off to brutal strangers before they lose their baby teeth, and die of malnutrition long before they see any of their own children reach puberty.
The Wonder Woman Project will prove a tonic to such toxic fare as Polanski has left us, to such toxic behavior as Polanski has modeled for us.
Wonder Woman shows us the wonderfulness inside all of us!
It's a wonderful world and Wonder Woman is here to keep it that way!
Down with Polanski! Up with WONDER WOMAN!
Talk to you all, soon! Be good!
Brad
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