Scriptorium

have in previous posts talked shit on Rob Liefeld. There are a lot of valid criticisms to levy, but I've also expressed in previous posts my theory of the utility of all art forms; that all art, almost surely popular art, is serving some people something, even if it isn't immediately apparent what that something is. This is a painful inconsistency in my writings, and so to rectify this, I'm forced to give Mr. Liefeld an even shake in order to preserve my intellectual integrity. (That was a lie, the real reason I'm writing this is that I was reading X-Force, and it kinda rocks, actually.)

A little while ago I heard a cartoonist give an interesting defence of Rob's work. While Rob's art was this extreme, hyperbolic style that intends to sort of shock-jockey you with absurd proportions, pouches, and blasters, he said that it felt like that art was attainable. He was able to look at Rob's art and say, okay, I think I can do that. I can be a cartoonist like this guy if I try.

I'm not going to tell you I especially like Rob Liefeld's art, that would just be a lie for the sake of being subversive. However I can recognize this powerful, often unspoken effect that some artists can have on their readers. Stan Sakai is an artist I feel this way about. Liefeld and Sakai are two artists who couldn't be further apart, but have a similar effect: their artwork is expressive and feels attainable to a reader. It isn't as easy to draw like them as you might think, but it's easy to comprehend why what they do works and how it gets you excited about drawing.

Let's make another comparison. In the manga Berserk the late Kentaro Miura illustrated page after page of intricate, highly rendered drawings that are quite frankly impossible to replicate. In Stan Sakai's long running samurai comic, Usagi Yojimbo, he employs a much more cartoon-like, clean linework that is no less stylistically unique than the aforementioned example. Sometimes I read a comic because it was in the dollar bin and It looked interesting, other times maybe because it's a particularly interesting piece of comic history that I'm unacquainted with. With Usagi Yojimbo though, I have found myself authentically enthralled in its pages. This thing has its jaws in me, and I'm sure you can recall a similar experience when you're simply captivated by some work.

Everyone has their preference, and this may sound absurd to some, but I would much rather read an issue of Usagi Yojimbo than Berserk. Berserk is exhausting to look at. I won't argue that it's not impressive- it absolutely is, but it is just like, a lot. This is because it is so highly rendered, but also because as an artist it is so beyond my comprehension to draw a comic at that level. (side-note: Berserk isn't really my cup of tea to begin with, but I use it as an example here because it's convenient.)

The artwork in Usagi Yojimbo is simpler, but no less effective. It is amazing, solid cartooning that understands that each panel is in service to a story that's being told and benefits that story in some way. It is simply masterful and has its own virtues over more rendered styles. When I read Usagi, not only do I feel like I can sort of relax and just read, but meanwhile I also get excited about my own drawing. I can think “Wow, I want to make something like this” and I don't feel stupid about that because it feels attainable, (even though Sakai is 1000x the artist that I am.)

It's a plausible theory that the more complicated a message becomes, the more becomes lost in the ether of the medium. At least for me, I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing I am being presented with a set of glyphs and manmade markings that I can fully decode and comprehend- there is no information on the sheet that I am not grasping.

This kind of artwork is what I'll call 'mentally accessible', and that provides a number of distinct advantages. One is that you don't feel guilty about turning the page because maybe you missed some details on a page that is incredibly detailed. Another is that it is easier to observe the drawing techniques and elements of design in a bare, minimalist space. Comics are an escape from the world, which at times can feel overwhelming, complicated, and overstimulating. At times like these, clarity and legibility provide an incredible sense of ease and confidence.

Usagi Yojimbo is an extreme example of this, but I think this is a strength of cartooning as an entire genre. I realize at this point in the post I'm just regurgitating Scott McCloud's theories, so consider further readings. Can you spot Usagi?

Consider the spread above, from McCloud's Understanding Comics. Reality and Meaning are opposites— a dichotomy that has disturbing implications, but let's just move forward with this for the moment. Now imagine your mind as a hard drive. You have files on your hard drive, and you want to transfer them to someone else's machine. Before you send those files, you might compress them into another format that takes up less space. Cartooning is much the same— in order to preserve mental bandwidth and make the process easy, we compress reality. I present this as a metaphor, but it isn't far from the literal truth. What is easier to comprehend, a novel that is several hundred pages, or a poem that is ten lines?

On the other hand, I've always had a rocky relationship with photography. I haven't practiced it in a number of years now. For me, photography has often felt more like a science than an art. It is, in my experience less a form of expression than a capture of the way things are. In my photography classes, I vastly preferred to stage photoshoots as much as I could as opposed to taking candid photos, because it felt like the more I removed my photo from reality, the easier it would be to collect something dramatic, some sense of story or meaning.

Pure, unrestrained images of reality contain no meaning at all. Only images that resemble reality, but necessarily lack the infinite fidelity of reality, can comment on it. This is why drawing and writing are closer to one another than drawing is to photography, because drawing and writing are not trying to show you the objective truth, but tell you something.

Of course, we enjoy fidelity, and it has many important uses. An image being close to reality has its own sense of relevancy, or perhaps necessity for comprehension. Information that is compressed to an extreme degree will be utterly annihilated, and this may vary depending on what is being said. There is also a certain bliss in being unable to fully absorb something, a feeling of closeness to what is real, a validation of the message. This is why REALITY and MEANING are on two ends of a scale which encompass the comprehensible image. Where an artist positions themselves on this scale is part of what makes their work unique and appealing.

Let's bring this back to comics as I close the post out. Lots of comic strips, chiefly Peanuts come to mind, have a similar effect on me as Sakai's work. Charles Schulz's simple, clean and legible artwork, accompanied by an uncomplicated but witty sense of humour has a comforting effect on a reader and an energizing shot in the arm to the aspiring comics-maker. Hergé is another solid example of someone who I find affirming, and after I read their work just want to start drawing immediately. Yes, this comic, and this artwork understand me. This is a language I can learn to speak. These artists are/were masters of their craft- but that doesn't mean your feeling of “I can do that too!” is mistaken. Comics are a medium that is compatible with any kind of drawing at any level of practice because it's ultimately about telling a story, not just how well you can render a drawing.

~ Your friend,

(This is an article that's been sitting in my notes bin for over half a year. I think I imagined I might add more to it, but I guess not. I wrote it, I haven't posted anything on here in a while, so what the hell..)

he surface of the planet is sleek, white ice without terrain as far as the eye can see, but for the snow dunes which rise and fall, moving over time as waves with the wind. Even in the insulated safety of your cockpit and hard-suit, you can feel the cold taunting your extremities- like an icy god playing with you on the tip of his knife. The only thing that lives here is the brutal and vast howling wind.

As your Mech carries you on the trek across this ghost-world, your mind wanders to the ice. You wonder how deep it goes, and remember that your briefing had no mention of that.

Suddenly the white-blue canvas of nothingness is pierced by a small black beetle crawling over the horizon- or it reminds you of one as it approaches from a great distance. But as it approaches, it is clear that these are no beetles. Hulking, almost waddling metal beings, holding close to the chest giant assault rifles and glaring back at you with a piercing red, glowing eye.

Nonno and Nonna's house was truly a portal to another place in time- homemade lasagna, a smell I had yet to learn was homemade wine, and so on. One thing was for certain though, Nonna would sit us down at the television and put on the channel that only plays 80's cartoons. It would become fairly obvious that she just wanted an excuse to watch Looney Tunes- but there was always one sound in particular that I was waiting for. Ever since then, myself and countless other idiot kids have been hooked on giant robots ever since.

There's a lot of reasons that the impossible mecha fantasy is attractive- It is something that is made by humans but is not human. The mecha robot is transcendent, an idealized form that we can assume. The mecha symbolizes more than any vehicle or weapon can on it's own; it is a projection of identity and a visual of raw titanic power. The psychology of mecha is a blogpost for another time, but the important thing is that it is a visceral genre that plays with expressions of self, power fantasies, and fascinations with machines- just all the stuff we're addicted to.

At some other indeterminate point in time, brother Noah sent me in the direction of LANCER, a tabletop game not unlike, and yet very unlike some dungeons and dragons you may be familiar with. Of course, I was enchanted by the artwork at first, which is brilliant. By Miguel Lopez and Tom Parkinson Morgan, (aka, Abbadon,) Lancer is a game where your players will be taking on the role of elite mechanized cavalry pilots, rivalled in skill by few, and taking on a galaxy of deadly machinery. In this post I'll mostly rave about the game, and share some snippets from our recently wrapped campaign, which spanned about a total 18 sessions, (or, by my crude estimation somewhere around 70 hours, give or take).

It started as a one-shot, just a short little adventure to try out the system and see if it would stick. I wrote up an intro mission called “OLD_DOG”, but there was a problem- we were going to need a team. A group of specially assembled psychos who were up to the challenge of the most nerdy shit known to all mankind...

You are aboard the Starship UNS Marigold, a small sized freighter ship that runs the edge of Union space, the outskirts of governed territory. When you had boarded the Marigold, you noted the bizarre asymmetry of the geometric craft- it seemed a miracle that this frankensteins starship could lift off the ground at all, though for that it gives no small thanks to an army of retractable stabilizing fins and growling blue thrusters. The only hint of elegance on this monstrous ship are the bright yellow and orange flowers painted along sections of the hull, seemingly having grown over the ship's previous markings.

Three realtime days have passed since takeoff. You knew that you had not been put aboard the most luxurious type of craft (in fact, this is probably as cheap as it gets,) but this had been torture- with no windows on the entire ship, and only a tiny crewman's quarter to call your own, what had only a few days earlier seemed a dauntingly large vessel quickly shrank into a cramped, claustrophobic box in the middle of outer space, with no exits. More than that, if you have never experienced zero-G environments before, you're probably only now getting used to your own weightlessness.

The setting of Lancer is one of the most unique pre-written settings I've seen for a game. Set in the impossibly distant future of 5016u, humanity has spread across the stars and become a vast, scattered and diasporan race. The only real galactic government is an organization called Union; a collection of worlds dedicated to equity and human rights. Recently reformed and re-consolidating its power, Union looks to turn a new leaf for the galaxy, and from its own checkered past.

Union and much of the galaxy at large exist in a state of post-capitalist, post-scarcity; thanks to the invention of 'printers', and an endless supply of resources thanks to space-travel, there is no need for such primitive class struggles. The revolution has happened, and it happened a millennium ago. For many, the barbarism of capitalist society is not even a memory. But not all the galaxy is so enlightened, or free. This is the Union's great project, and where our heroes come in.

The dystopian science fiction has become deeply engrained in the greater genre, and is not entirely without it's merits. A dystopian fiction has much to say about real life issues, reflecting on a dark future that when done well, is the consequence of the poor choices humanity makes today. Indeed there is much value in the cautionary tale- but we also need fictions to aspire to, fictions that give us hope for a brighter day. While Lancer's galaxy is far from perfect, it is a fiction built around a hopeful future.

A 'lancer' is essentially a term for an ace pilot, a mecha pilot whose skills are a cut above the rest by virtue of raw talent or special training. Imagine a galaxy populated with human life- how many more geniuses, incredible talents and wunderkinds would be produced. Some of these wunderkinds become Lancers.

First in no particular order, was Sebastian Silverago, a farmboy from the deep-union world Karthas who likes to set things on fire. In his pee-paw's old mech, he signed up with Union to improve his skills in the mech-tourneys. Then there was Cordelia Darlington, a pale-haired princess and a deadly markswoman from the serene world of Vernado, accompanied by her retinue of protective royal mechanics. In order to earn her birthright, she took to the battlefield. Finally, Mercury Callaghan: The man from the edge of the galaxy. An experienced killer and an ex-pirate looking to make good with the law, you can always count on Callaghan to do something unconventional, or potentially insane.

The game system itself though, could fit right into whatever type of world you can think to make it work in, with minimal tweaking.

 
THE GALAXY OF "LANCER, The 1984 Original Series"
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1. Cradle     4. Vernado
2. Karrakis   5. Nebula Terminal
3. Karthas    6. Ichor

Building Lancer characters is based more around the horizontal progression than slowly powering up over time. Each frame (essentially your robot's class,) has three levels you can put into it. Mixing and matching parts from different machine archetypes to create something nasty and effective is the fun of Lancer characters, taking all the options in the book and making a sheet that feels truly unique to your character.

Like a shower-curtain, the goliath pushes aside brick, splintering wood and shattering glass. The goliath's red eye scans the battlefield, assessing. Even now, you know that the UNS Marigold has begun its descent from above the clouds. The clock is ticking now.

The Goliath points this giant's shotgun, bearing a giant shield mounted on the upper arm which is inscribed with the names of the dead of the city guard. A resounding BROOOOOMP! erupts from the black barrel of this sonic weapon.

Let's face it, when it comes to D&D combat mechanics, it is what it is. There are some times that rolls simply need to be fudged on the other side of that screen, and that's just a necessity for extracting narrative tension from those mechanics. After your turn is over, you begin a new quest to find the bottom of the pretzel bowl, because you will be doing nothing at all for the next 20 minutes. In Lancer, it never felt necessary to do any of that, and while I don't have an exact answer why, I have to imagine it's because the combat feels so interactive as it is.

I would joke that I had successfully tricked everyone into just playing a wargame with me, but it is true in a lot of ways. In Lancer, you're going to be thinking about things like line of sight, range, cover, terrain, and team tactics. More-so, as the GM, setting traps for players has never felt so devious and evil.

The most interesting, and interactive part of the whole game is the way Lancer handles initiative. You wont be rolling or adding any agility bonuses. Instead, each team decides their own turn order as the round progresses. This leads to some seriously interesting strategic decisions. Should Callaghan go first, trying and take down the big opponent with his melee attacks, or allow Cordelia to try her smartgun on the invisible assassins, but meanwhile risking a big attack on himself from the enemy demolisher? There were plenty of moments where the difference in the decision of which party member would go first was palpably the difference between life and death- and watching the party seriously discuss the merits of their options is one of the true joys of GMing.

Likewise, as a GM you will begin to think tactically as well. Player characters in Lancer are powerful from the start, and this really enables a DM to stop pulling punches- making things deadly in this game rewards the experience greatly. Of course, you don't do this by padding npc stats (usually,) but by fielding considered teams of NPCs that have their own strategies and can compensate for each other's weaknesses. Want to add some snipers to the next fight to really force the players to use cover?– better add some defenders to protect against a straight charge, or a controller to provide an additional distraction. As aforementioned, Lancer is kind of a game for when the GM wants to play killteam, but the players want a roleplaying game, and in my opinion, it fuses the best of both worlds.

Lancer is clearly though not explicitly inspired by battletech, but takes advantage of the recent and gushing influx of D&D roleplayers by taking that tactical, interactive combat and making it player-sided and diverse enough to work with the 'new crowd'.

Let me put it this way, it's like battletech, except not for old geezers. This is the young folks' battletech, a battletech for blue-haired baristas, for graphic-tee loving anarcho-communists, and for tumblr girlies- which is deeply to its credit. (battletech also rules btw)

Towering mechs bearing waving banners have turned the sky into a patchwork quilt of many colours. Knights, Union Soldiers, and freelancers have formed the united army that now marches on enemy ground. Above your own heads a black banner flies, on which a coiling red dragon holds an orange flower between its fangs.

Your band marches past smoking craters, destroyed homes, and a large but deliberately placed metal slate, painted with obscenities and most prolifically; “UNION DOGS, FUCK OFF AND GO HOME!” The heavy rain has made alliance with the blistering winds which bombard your company.

Your skin yet stings from the kiss of the tattoo artist's laser brush, but by now you are built of tougher stuff and it is barely a fleeting nuisance to your senses. You are running on little sleep, but you've gone with less. Ahead may be your greatest battle yet- a siege that may end the war on the planet called Ichor.

If you can get an enthusiastic group together to play Lancer, I highly recommend. We probably got lucky, because any rpg group is a unique and singular dynamic, and everybody just really understood the vibe of the game. Sometimes the rules can get a little crunchy and you might have to crack open and check the rules on something now and again, but it's not overbearing on the overall experience.

LANCER, The 1984 Original Series (a story only four people will ever know): PART ONE 1. Pilot(s) 2. Trial By Fire 3. Beer Pong 4. Goodbye, Centurion 5. Dragonslayers 6. Left Behind 7. Rescue Part I 8. Rescue Part II 9. The LANCER Halloween Special PART TWO 1. Time-Bomb 2. The LANCER Holiday Special 3. Red Wire 4. Glass Throne 5. The Phantom Centurion 6. One Last Night on Ichor 7. Tombworld 8. He said, “I guess I'm just homesick.”

further reading: – massif press – transformers, the movie – Neon Genesis Evangelion – zeroranger

~ Your friend,

comics and coffee

lright, I got covid again. Might as well use this time to write some reviews on what comics I've read lately. But don't even think about starting this article until I've had my coffee.

Mmmm... You may proceed.

Roaming

by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki Published by Drawn And Quarterly Roaming tells the story of three Canadian girls in their first year of college, on a 5-day trip to New York City. I won't say too much of the story, because I want you to read this book, but it deals with only the kind of bullshit that really happens to 19-year-olds, in friendship, fast romance, and sitting next to a weird guy at the airport.

Every page is a pleasure to look at, drawn in a bubbly style that always works. The book is brilliantly coloured with only two pastel hues that create a dreamy and glowing New York City. From front to back, I was floored by the colouring.

The city is almost explicitly the fourth character in the book, depicted sometimes in near photorealistic drawings, and then swirling collages of artwork, landmarks, and people. In a way the depiction of the city is the same as the character studies: We start with the outward identity, the mask the person wears. As we learn about the person, we see more of their insides, what makes them work, their more private self.

Roaming does that thing which so many stories strive to but fall short: depict truth. The truth of young passion, friendship, and wonder, with all its jagged edges and corners. The main characters of Dani, Zoe, and Fiona are distinct personalities that are at times loveable, at times not so, but constantly believable to the point that you can only empathize.

If you are only going to read one comic this year, make it Roaming.

Clippings

by Gabby Golee Self-Published A brilliant little comic with really expressive art that is oozing cuteness and weirdness. Dealing with the awkward relationship between two girls living in a crumbling Torontonian house, I highly recommend buying this here if you want a cute zine by a Torontonian artist who deserves some attention. They also sell some killer stickers on their site.

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982

By Charles M Schulz, Seth Published by Fantagraphics I don't have to tell you about Peanuts, or Charlie brown, or Snoopy. You already know about them. What I will comment on is the absolute mastery and merits of the daily strip in this volume. By the 80's peanuts had been running in the papers for 30 years, and Schulz displays an unrivalled ability to write consistent, witty jokes and fun storylines into his strip. By the point in time this book collects, he is far past fully developed in both his writing and drawing skills. As a daily strip, there is little put to waste in the drawing, each line is deliberate and there isn't a penstroke more than there needs to be.

One of the hidden abilities of the daily strip is that they collect into volumes so nicely- This book is the most approachable a comic book can possibly get. You can pick it up, read as much or as little as you like, and put it down. You can start reading at the beginning, middle, or end, and not be ruining anything for yourself. Unlike some popular manga like One Piece which boasts over one thousand chapters of continuous story, there is no barrier to entry for Peanuts or similar daily strips. Just start anywhere.

The foreword by Lynn Johnston, (creator of For Better or For Worse, as well as a personal friend to Schulz) is particularly touching and insightful. Her writing paints a picture of an artist obsessed, in melancholy and in love with his craft. Seth's design work on this book, as the other volume of complete peanuts I've gotten my paws on, is also top notch, putting together a hardcover that just looks good wherever it's sitting, that be on a coffee table or part of a collection.

While reading through this volume, I watched Schulz's interview with Charlie Rose and a specific moment I think aged quite well.

Rose: You are a real artist, in your eye. Schulz: You think so? Rose: You think so. Schulz: No. Rose: You don't think cartooning is real art? Schulz: Yes, but, not many cartoons lie into the next generation. Rose: Ah, that's true. Schulz: And that's probably the best definition of art isn't it? Does it speak to succeeding generations?...

Well, I'm sorry to do this Sparky, but I'm going to have to issue a correction on that one. If you want a solid coffee-table book that is witty, but also innocent and pure-fun, look no further.

The Good News Bible: The complete Deadline strips of Shaky Kane

By Shaky Kane Published by Breakdown Press Get ready for a wild one. From 1988 to 1995, Deadline magazine published some radical stuff (see: Tank Girl). This book is a collection of gigantic pages of kirby-esque, punk art that explodes on each page in glorious black and white. The oversized pages really do a lot for me, seeing the art in such fidelity conveys the pure attitude and weight of the drawing.

This book heavily features the 'A-Men', a group formerly NYPD, they have decided that their duty as cops should extend to the spiritual world, enforcing a Christian-facist rule on the city of New York. They take on such heroic tasks as beating on people in their own homes and monitoring all the city's pornography in their massive goon-cave.

Other heroic characters include Metal Messiah, who devours his worshippers with his iron jaws, Insect Erectus, The Sadistic Prowler, and your Pal, Shaky Kane.

Along with provocative and deeply satirical subject matter, I'm hypnotized by the drawing in this book and probably will be for some time, though i probably wouldn't recommend it.

Hunter X Hunter Vol.1

By Yoshihiro Togashi Published by Viz Hunter X Hunter got it's hooks in me pretty quickly with the drawings of wild beasts and simple enough concept. It's pretty formulaic, but doesn't give you any space to get bored. It definitely feels like a spin on Dragon Ball that's original enough to keep you from walking away, which is all that really matters.

I love the idea of the character's power being rooted in their attunement to nature and ability to do things like tell when a storm is coming, or a beast's emotions. I'll be cracking into Vol.2 whenever I feel like getting into another long Shonen Jump series.

~ Your friend,

I

here are good movies, and there are bad movies. This is generally agreed. Film, like all art, is a subjective medium. This is also agreed. But this leaves us with an obvious contradiction. What makes a movie good or bad?

When we say, “That was a bad movie,” we are really saying, “I didn't like that movie.” This seems like a reasonable translation to make. However, why is it that we behave as though we are speaking to a universal set of axioms and precise, exact criteria?

When we leave the movie theatre, we immediately need to pass a judgment; was that good, or bad? We might try to come up with some reasons why, but they likely won't be easy to articulate. We want to know if our time and money was well spent.

One could argue, that a movie's value can be derived from its ability to engage you, interest you in the imagery being shown, and keep your attention. If this were the true, then most pornographic films would have equal, or more value than the average Hollywood production. I think not- we intuitively understand that there is more dimension to a film's value than this.

Another possible explanation is that a film's value lies in the value of the information being communicated to the audience, in other words; what is the takeaway? What is the moral of the story? How does will this information inform my behaviour? This approach quickly collapses into the political, and I don't think we want to enter that realm either.

There is no one true use-value to any given movie. There is a utility to the idea of a rating system of averages which attributes value based on the average opinion of moviegoers/reviewers, but anyone can attest that this is at best an unreliable metric to seriously make your own purchasing decisions on.

Instead, we ought to accept that 'good' or 'bad' is a nonsensical judgement and that what you determine to be good or bad is not based on any universal set of axioms. A person is just as likely to enjoy a movie as you are to dislike it, the only real factor being previous lived experiences.

It is a perfectly comprehensible statement to say, “This is my favourite movie.” You are not making a value judgement on anything, but expressing that you favour this one thing, for reasons implied to be specific to you. However, it is blatantly inane to say seriously that any one movie is the greatest to ever exist or the worst of all time.

II

his is all to say, of course, that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny does not need to be evaluated under this metric. It does not even need to be evaluated as an artistic work, but rather evaluating it only as a communication will suffice.

Before I continue, here is a basic version of communication theory. It will become important in a moment;

                                  (Noise)
Source -> Encoder -> Transmitter -> Channel -> Receiver -> Decoder -> Destination
                                   (Noise)

Somewhere, a source contains the information that will be sent. The information is encoded into a specific format (a language, for instance,) and is sent by the transmitter into the channel. A receiver then takes the information, which is then decoded for the destination, and a message is received.

A communication is successful when the information delivered to the destination is functionally similar to the information which originated at the source. However, the process is often risk-averse. The channel can be filled with noise that might distort the encoded information or the information might be encoded or decoded incorrectly. When this happens, the destination could contain a functionally different, or incoherent set of information from the source. This is a communication failure.

Does this object succeed as a communication? This is a mode of evaluation which exists outside of artistic interpretation or personal preference and thus, we can come to a confident conclusion on this question.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is definitely a motion picture, and that at least can be said. There is continuity in the sense that it can be understood that this is a story where characters move from place to place, (sometimes) obey laws like gravity, and are meant to depict human beings like you or I. However, when the credits roll, you are left turning to your fellow and scratching your head. “Huh? What? That's the end?” In the context of communication, this is generally considered to be a bad sign.

The movie has characters with accompanying character traits, and this much is successfully decoded. The Whos and Whats of this scenario are clear. The Whys and Hows, however, are essentially incoherent.

The villain's plan is less than stupid, it's nonsensical. From beginning to end, there is no clear reason for any of the events that unfold. Our brand new sidekick / female lead has character development, but what that development is seems entirely unclear. The story itself is so unclear that it leaves you feeling stood up, balls blue, and confused in the rain. Traditionally, Indiana Jones movies have been morality tales, yet this movie has managed to turn even that fundamental part of the series into gray, secular and uninteresting slop. It is simply lacking in nutritional value.

We are reaching the point that we are not asking if a movie is worth seeing again, but if it is coherent at all.

It would seem almost meaningless to point out my distaste for this newest sequel, the third send-off for a series so close to my heart. If it were only a bad movie, I could let it be. After all, movie reviews are little more than a rambling, shallow sort of rhetoric that speaks only to personal preference, a wildly variable sort of thing. On the matter of this movie, my rage is so hot that I would rather provide a more concrete verdict: That it is a failure in its most fundamental ideal, not as a quality film, but as a communicated expression of thought. It fails to justify itself in any way, or communicate anything of substance, and it leaves the viewer not only upset but with a million questions. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a communication failure, and I am objectively, logically correct in not liking it.

~ Your friend,

prefer not to have negative opinions about anything, if it can be helped. Okay- that was not a strong start, but bear with me Taylor Swift Army.

For me, beer has been a great teacher (and a good analogue, I think). I don't think I've met anyone who liked beer the moment it first touched their lips. Love at first sight is only for Shakespeare and Swift, it seems. But as you taste that bitterness, the internal contradiction becomes clear as day. Somebody clearly likes this, but I for the life of me, cannot understand why. Eventually you will crack that code though, for some time now I can safely say that I get what is going on there.

Here is another contradiction: I do not like trying new things- But, I do like to be challenged. This particular drink is not bad, It's just challenging. When your immediate reaction is repulsion, remember that somebody likes this thing for some reason! There is some merit here, I just have not realized it yet. Everything annoying is instead a puzzle, if you contextualize it the right way.

I will drop the façade I have been putting up for some time now: I am not the world's biggest Taylor Swift fan. But I have enlisted two of the greatest swiftie scholars of our age in Sister Edna, and Sister Kaitlyn to tutor me. I have received their playlists and studied them. Not to do so would be reprehensible, anyone who receives a custom playlist from someone and doesn't listen to it is utter scum.

I would describe the contents as, um, very challenging. I don't really like pop, and I'm pretty selective about my country, so I already knew this would be difficult. I also think that this has a very specific audience that is not me. A lot of the the recurring themes are things that either don't apply to me, or are ideas that I am generally oblivious to.

There were a couple of songs that stood out to me, Dorothea, coney island. To be honest though, the stuff that I can most easily enjoy is her older pop stuff that I heard everywhere in high school. It just gets into that silliness territory that makes it fun, like going back and listening to All-American rejects or Mariana's trench. It provides a sense of nostalgia for a time when these types of narratives felt relevant to me.

I won't go as far as to say that this music is entirely without utility- a lot of the music I listened to has a numbing effect that allows one to focus on another task, (like drawing or writing). It's probably good music to lose yourself in a task to. But I was promised nutritional value.

The method of contextualizing art as a series of challenges is novel because you win some, but you're going to lose some.

It's the end of the fourth round and I'm bleeding from my face, I can't see out of one eye and the other one isn't so hot either. I can't hear shit. Coach leans over the rope and mouths “Throw in the towel kid. Live to fight another day.” “I'm tired boss.” I tell him, “I'm really tired.”

I am defeated, and there is no simple way around it. Is this music bad? I think that is a bit of a short-sighted question. It serves a utility to someone, which is the important thing. Am I going to be utilizing it? Uh, probably not on my lonesome, no. I am still a supporter of the Taylor Swift People's Militia, but maybe I won't assume the role of General any longer.

~ Your friend,

omics and Illūminārī are in many ways distant relatives. I think if you showed those scribes some action comics, they'd be all over it. To clear my conscience; this is an art joke about comic book art. The genesis for this was that it is very important for me that people do not confuse Jack Kirby with the most hated lord of darkness Rob Liefeld, who we despise. Someone suggested as much the other day and it rocked me to my core. I shudder to think that there are people out there who think of Rob Liefeld when they think about comics art- so consider this a PSA.

Anyways, let me know if this is against the rules since it's not exactly an article. As if I would ever publish a magazine without some funny pages— it is simply an essential component of the newspaper experience. If I was going to do a comic strip for Scriptorium, I would have to call it 'Marginalia', it is just too ample and bulbous a fruit not to be picked. I like naming things, it's just part of my thinking process.

I'm a big fan of the penny arcade format of comic with accompanying blog post, so maybe that'll be my way of cheating the printhouse rules if I ever wanna do another one of these.

~ Your friend,

I. The influx of evil Superman stories, and why Superman: Red Son is exceptional.

ome quick notes about this three-issue series; The art is quite good, combining the distinct look of Soviet propaganda with a comic-book style that suits a Superman story. Superman as a subject of propaganda is such a powerful motif that the imagery rarely fails to be striking. Superman's different outfits are always fun, other-world takes on a classic look and do a lot to visually communicate the story and His journey. Paul Mounts deserves a lot of credit for those colours. I also love the trope of putting superheroes into their correct time, looking at these characters with a historical awareness.

For me, Red Son was the original evil Superman story— in fact, it predates most of the modern interpretations of a more wicked man of steel. The evil Superman story has come full circle, from a compelling genre twist to a trope more tired than the thing that it subverts. They all play out pretty much the same way— Superman or his equivalent stand-in has decided to use his powers for evil, personal gain/conquest, and regular people must find a way to stop him.

Red Son is different from most evil Superman stories because he isn't maliciously evil. In many of the ways that count, he's still the Superman you know and love; a selfless individual who wants to use his powers to help the people. Red Son is masterfully framed with Superman himself narrating the tale from some other point in time. As an older man reflects on his youth, the narration gives an honest, but sympathetic, and retrospective look into Superman's motivations as he establishes his global Soviet union. As a character study, this is a much more honest and considered way of giving us an evil Superman- an evil Superman that we are still in a lot of ways rooting for, hardly unrecognizable from his standard characterization.

Superman wants to put an end to the evils of the world- he wants to save everyone he can. While the Superman of Injustice is filled with hatred, regret, and tragedy, the Superman of Red Son is still that pure eyed and naive farm boy.

I first read this story quite a few years ago, probably still in high school or early uni, though I can't recall. I think back then my takeaway from the story was communism = bad. While it is certainly true that a work has many interpretations, I think that I was sort of missing the point. Red Son, while it certainly wears a political skin, mostly tackles character ideas, relationships, and perspectives (which is good, because I'm not sure I want to read a Superman book on the merits of certain economic systems anyways.)

---

II. Superman and Fascism

Okay, here's where I inject an unhealthy amount of copium into the equation- Red Son isn't about how communism is tyrannical and corrupts good people. It is about how Superman himself is a fascistic idea.

This next portion will contain some massive spoilers, so I would recommend reading Superman Red Son before going any further if you think you might like that sort of thing. Despite all the issues I am about to highlight, Red Son remains one of my personal favourite comic book stories, specifically because it subverts expectations for more than sheer shock value, but as a mode of analysis. ( Let's forget for a little bit that Superman decided to use Brainiac's husk to enslave his dissenters. That entire decision happens off-screen and we don't really ever get Superman's rationale for that- we'll cover that later. )

Nietzsche wrote about his conception of the ubermensch (superman), the idea of a transcendent individual whose abilities and virtues go beyond that of the average person. The super-man is not simply exceptional, but his exceptionality ascribes him value- a value over the less exceptional. This value also qualifies him or her for leadership,

If Superman is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing, then from a political standpoint superman should be in charge. If Superman is a hundred times more capable and intelligent than any human, then his eternal reign would actually be justified. In that case, fascism and tyranny would be the answer. Red Son only dares to follow Superman to his logical conclusion. Of course, in the real world, the ubermensch is a mere fantasy, a deluded notion that any one man should have all that power, in the silent hope that maybe you could be that man.

If there is a god, he has decided to leave the world of man to a doom of its own designs, and eventually, Superman decides to follow suit as well. His ultimate realization is that it isn't his place to control and dictate the course of mankind— even he isn't the perfect, flawless being that everyone thought he was, and it is shown that humans would eventually reach a perfect utopia on their own.

But it is that latter context that makes the morality tale of Red Son confusing. In the end, Lex Luthor defeats Superman with a few simple words; Why don't you just put the whole WORLD in a BOTTLE, Superman?” Superman gives up on his global Soviet Union, destroys Brainiac once and for all, and silently retires under the alias of Clark Kent. He leaves humanity to have its freedom, baseball, and apple pie.

Except that isn't exactly what happens either- Instead, Lex Luthor, the genius with a superhuman intellect who had predicted the events of the last forty years with frightening accuracy, consolidates power. He implements his own one-world government, a capitalist utopia which also goes on to cure all diseases. Luthor's lineage continues to lead humanity for the next BILLION YEARS.

The world of Red Son only trades one Ubermensch for another. In the epilogue, an immortal and retired Superman remarks that he underestimated the resourcefulness of humanity- whose entire future was designed and planned by Lex Luthor. This is more morally acceptable than what Superman did because... Lex is a human? Lex isn't a communist? Lex doesn't force anyone to work for or follow him, he only manipulates everyone and everything to impose his will... (Which is actually more than Superman did, convincing the rest of the world to join him without conflict, but persuading them with the results of his system.)

Lex Luthor may not have incredible strength or speed, but he does appear to be unbelievably intelligent far beyond any normal man, or even Superman himself. Because of this, when he writes his note pointing out the absurdity of Superman's actions, it feels like a hollow dig when the rest of human history later plays out according to Luthor's design. The book, perhaps intentionally, never gives a reason why Luthor would be a better world leader than Superman, (well, minus Brainiacs's compliance implants.)

Luthor never cares about making the world a better place, only proving to everyone that he can do it better than Superman did- on his deathbed he admits, it was all about his ego. He is the quintessential capitalist; his mission is to destroy the competition by any means necessary and become worshipped by the world and the pages of history. At the end of the book, you can't help but wonder how different Luthor's world actually is from the Soviet Superman's- especially since we are hardly given a chance to examine it. From what we see, Luthor's alternative to Superman's world order is a capitalist dynasty that ends only once the solar system's resources have burned up- now that is fucking depressing.

Ultimately, the inclusion of brainiac prevents Red Son from having to commit fully to a political statement- which as a decision, certainly has its advantages. Brainiac serves as a corrupting force, whose cold and calculated determinations of what is best for humanity bring Superman to do things that are amoral at best- reconditioning and even reprogramming his dissenters seems to be the worst of it. He serves as an analog for power violating the individual. Brainiac is also an example that not all super-men have the best interests of the people at heart and exceptional abilities are often implemented towards self-centred ends.

The story ends with the final moments of Earth before being consumed by its own sun— as the infant Kal-El, Luthor's distant descendant, is transported to a Ukrainian collective in 1938. History will literally repeat itself- yet it remains ever so optimistic, (this is a Superman story, after all,) with Kal's father asking him to “Bring a little light into our lives again.” (For some reason, I remembered the ending of Red Son as Kal-El's ship landing in Kansas, setting up an alternate origin for the mainline Superman. I think my version is better.)

Again, to be clear, I love this comic, it's easily the best version of the “What-if?” type stories to be done, with gorgeous art and it clearly has fun with its alternate history. Overall I love the story and I'm just nitpicking for nitpicking's sake. I had this written for some time but I needed to make myself do the minature of superman, which is pretty much half the reason i wanted to write this at all- that image of the soviet superman is just so subversive and captivating.

~ Your friend,

llumination as an art form is both beautiful and dead. Dead, but not forgotten. In time, even death may die- but there it is, I am a lover of the strange and obscure things.

The noble art of illuminating manuscripts fell out of favour as the printing press fundamentally changed the way that information was copied and distributed. It was, perhaps obviously, too intricate and laborious an art to last under the wheels of invention. But even the printing press was outmoded, and the task of distributing information has become an almost thoughtless activity. If I draw a miniature, I need not make copies of it to distribute to interested parties- rather, the invisible machines will dismantle and re-assemble it with perfect accuracy to anyone who visits this web address.

Let us reflect for a moment on our Patron Saint. In the internet, we have assembled the greatest, most volumed encyclopedia that has ever been written, and it grows still each hour. It is one of the greatest works in our history. Now, we must make it beautiful. If you love something, then glorify it. Adorn it in things so that it be elevated and treasured. Take note from the illuminators of our age, who so wisely build altars of their information.

In medieval times books and reading were reserved for the few in such positions of privilege that they had the education. Those who could read were envied, because books were treasures, and they were treated as such. In modern times, all can read, and our paragraphs are so often left plain and lonely, for they are so very common and unremarkable. But are they any less important than when kings wore crown and knights bore shield?– in fact, the opposite is true.

This world is so grey, so we must make it bright again. If that which we read has value, then let us glorify it as is deserving of mankind's creations. Enough with the uniform layouts and optimizations! Enough with the palatability! O forgive us, Isidor, for we have disrespected our own great works so shamelessly. Capitalism is antithetical to beauty, and we must each fight that in our own little way.

Leonardo Da Vinci said; “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Well, I think that is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. I am sick of simplicity, fatigued of readability, I have been fed so much marketable internet that I would rather swallow my own tongue. I want to escape from Glass City

As I write this blog, I shall both study and practice the art as best as I am able. I am only a student, a beginner to the art, and not a very quick learner. At art itself I have long been a pretender, but that is one of my more fulfilling vices. With time, hopefully, I can Illuminate this corner of our encyclopedia to some novel standard. In that way, this page may be both my place of pontification and my scriptorium.

Yet this post is also a call to arms; As a butterfly flaps its wings, that gust may not topple cities, but a kaleidoscope may wake the ocean, and that ocean may wash away the evils of humanity.

I promise that there is not one among you who has not practiced the art in a lecture hall, at a bus stop, during a moment of boredom, elation, or frustration. It is a universal experience, I think, to write in the back of a textbook, “I was here”, or something of that nature. If you have not tried it, I highly recommend it, should you find the opportunity.

To illuminate is a base human instinct. It is the itch you feel at the sight of an empty page or an empty margin. That itch is the itch of comprehending possibility, and melancholic longing for beautiful things. There is an angel in that margin waiting to be set free.

I beg of you, join my efforts. Do not fall into numbness as we have for so long. To scroll a lifeless canvas which is inoffensive is no journey at all. Take up now your utensils, and make haste on your hypertext and your cascading style sheets, for that is your canvas! Yes, information and communication are valuable for their own sake, but let's make them beautiful.

Sister Kaitlyn has greatly assisted my research, for she is knowledgeable in all the histories of the arts, and by some astral coincidence is currently studying the subject of illumination as well. I give many thanks to her. Also, other sources are; * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminated_manuscript * https://youtu.be/PF2nmSLjPG8 * https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205520/Pentiment/ * https://archive.org/details/lessonsinartofil00loft/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater

~ Your friend,

ight now I'm a few hundred pages deep into The Lord of The Rings, the great fantasy epic which is so deep in texture and song, and it is just as enchanting as they say. It is epic but also deeply personal, with a specific tone which is chemically constructed.

As a boy, my mind was nourished chiefly by three things, which I call the trinity of my childhood: Star Wars, Bionicles, and The Lord of The Rings movies. It explains a great deal about me, I think. The fact that I am only reading it now is honestly pretty surprising, and I'm yet to be disappointed by the work. At any rate, it is no wonder that there have been so many Tolkien imitators and aspirants.

On that matter, I will continue to illustrate the obvious and make points which are entirely unprofound: Nearly all of fantasy fiction looms in His shadow, and like many great authors He is emulated, but as to such an amount His is done He may be unique. All modern fantasy works are compared to The Lord of The Rings and often not without reason- but I know for a fact that there are plenty of amazing authors out there who write fantasy surely influenced, but totally original from Tolkien's work.

The trouble deepens, however, in the world of Tabletop Roleplaying games, with which I have some experience. Both dungeons and dragons are compelling separate subjects for stories, but in truth, a good number of people go to TTRPGs for the funny dwarves, and the sexy elves, and half-elves, and dark elves, and winged elves, and fire elves, and so on. For many, the features of Tolkien's world are less an influence, and more of a synonym for how TTRPGs look. I hold no issue with this, as the last thing I want is for parade-goers to feel they need keep an umbrella ready when I approach. As aformentioned, I love high fantasy and Lord of The Rings and all that shit, and tabletop roleplaying games are basically a tradition of borrowing ideas from fantasy books and movies. But, it can be hard to escape the feeling that we are all just cast in His shadow.

In any case, I've concluded that setting a tone or idea in a tabletop game is more about finding the right rules and mechanics that reflect the story you want to explore, rather than making a system that is geared towards something else bend to your will.

I do know that among the codemonkey cafe users, there are at least a few other tabletop roleplaying connoisseurs, so hopefully, this is post not wasted on at least a few of you. If the first half of this post bores you, this second half will not be much better, so you might as well quit reading now. Earlier this week, I ran a game of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, a book which is aptly subtitled Glory & Gold Won by Sorcery & Sword. Here is my review:

Before I can tell of the game, however, I must recount the tale of its finding. I had stumbled across it during my travels abroad in December, in an entirely unexpected way. A cold mist held that morning in a stillness. The streets of Philadelphia were weirdly empty, and after going to some great lengths to secure a cup of coffee, I encountered a small magazine stand- or it appeared as one. The magazines were obviously tales of adventure, that visually recall the legacies of Robert E. Howard and the dreaded H.P. Lovecraft. The salesman there explained that he was selling a tabletop roleplaying game of the OSR (Old School Revival) tradition, and directed me toward the rulebook. The thing could hardly be called a book- no, Tome would be a more appropriate title. On the shelf at home, I can't help but notice that the other RPG books next to it must be feeling pretty self-conscious about their size. But rest assured, the rules are actually quite brief, as a majority of the book contains a catalogue of weird spells, strange monsters, and gods, and two separate adventures to run your party through, as well as Dungeon Master/Judge's rules.

The huge wall of magazines were modules as it were, a massive variety of published supplements. Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, or DCC as it is often abbreviated is published by goodman games whose works are vast and their history storied. Their philosophy regarding publishing is two parts. A; that the rulebook should be an entire playable game by itself, and B; that they should publish a large number of supplements at low cost. In my assessment, this is extremely based, as opposed to some of the more modern ideas of how publishing TTRPGs should be done. DCC is like the RPG magazine of the '90s that never was, recreating that kind of magic for both the veterans who lived through that era and the newer dice rollers like myself who were born too late for it.

Persuaded, I bought the book from him, (Which I had neglected the foresight to realize I would then have to carry it around for the remainder of the day- not an easy task in my small laptop carrier.) Nevertheless, I was excited to read more about this new ruleset. I went to leave, but when I turned back to ask the man his name, he had entirely vanished along with his wares.

DCC is not your grandpa's D&D- it's more like your weird uncle's game. The one who smokes a lot of weed and your parents told you to stay away from. DCC's flavour is as we mentioned inescapably reminiscent of Tolkien, but it is based much more in the traditions of weird fantasy and even science fiction. In the time before Atlantis sank, there were strange aeons and cosmic horrors. In this game, your character is probably going to be more like Conan The Barbarian than Aragorn son of Arathorn, and you'll more likely be fighting an alien snake demon than a regular Orc.

DCC is a self-proclaimed RPG for seasoned veterans. It in fact forbids the casual or uninitiated in TTRPGs from owning the Tome, lest a curse fall on your bloodline. The way the game is written reflects this in a lot of ways, at times directly addressing the fact that some rules are not as you would expect. An unusual disclaimer, but one that allows the game to do some genuinely interesting and fun things.

First and most immediately, play in DCC starts with players each rolling up about four to five classless level 0 characters, whose peasant occupations and ability scores the game insists be determined entirely on the dice roll. Then you throw those losers into a level 0 dungeon (sometimes called a funnel) where most of them will certainly die, and the few who survive can become level 1 characters, beginning their life of adventure. You also play all of those level 0 characters concurrently, which sounds like more work than it is since their character sheets are really tiny, and most of them are going to die anyways. This leads to both tense gameplay and sometimes hilarious outcomes- but most importantly of all, it leads to a sense that both glory and death are on the table.

I ran the level 0 adventure which came in the back of the book, Portal Under The Stars. Without spoiling too much of the dungeon, some of the highlights of our first game were a short-lived rivalry between the local cheesemakers (Only one of them survived), a naked gong farmer trapped in total darkness beneath a killing machine, and a heavily armed halfling named Googinga, whose vocabulary consists entirely of the word “Googinga.” You have to be careful in this game because a throwaway joke like naming your halfling trader after this man who you are sure will die, might turn into your permanent character.

Despite the arm waving and disclaimers, on the most granular level DCC plays like a regular D&D game. Each character has a place in the initiative order based on their agility, they get a movement and they get an action. A good chunk of the time you are rolling D20 for skill checks, and so on. But the amount of weird and bad shit that can happen directly as a result of those rolls is a big part of the draw.

There's a whole list of other novel mechanics that I won't get into here, like the dice chain, spellburn, patron mechanics, etc. DCC is a game that emphasizes some of the most fun and chaotic aspects of RPGs, made by people who have invested many a night into this hobby. I've also said nothing of the incredible art in the book which recalls the early days of D&D and weird fantasy. The whole thing kicks ass honestly.

In the grand scope of TTRPG games, I'm still being deeply romanced by LANCER. However, DCC is a game that I will jump at the next opportunity to engage with- I've been kicking around the idea of a longer fantasy campaign with a specific vibe, and DCC feels like it would be a great home for that. Oh, and the softcover + PDF is $25.

~ Your friend,