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gaww, last issue was my least favorite, but this one put it in context beautifully.
- Superman looks scary in that 1st preview page; it's the most "ugly-sketchy-dirty" I've seen from FQ, but pertinent in a story of a exhausted fever-dream Superman in a Wasteland Country of Shit to b(l)oom up Superman in fireworks, sacrifices and rockets.
Fuck, I can't even write decently. I think my mind went pop at the possibility of one of those Bizarro extras being sarcastic.
- Funny that a bizarro JLA (Underground-Sewer JLA) ended up being vaguely, by coincidence, conceptually the same as the one in Assbar. The ("satiric") self-consciousness of Miller in avoiding lunar high heights of imaginative flight reminds me of those scenes in Flex Mentallo (that begins with that amazing flight reference to go down-earth revealing to be just a vertigo "realistic" -- with a non-flying he-man -- airport and to finish later with a splash of flying colorful heroes to cement the comic's point) that talks about comics in the late-80's through 90's (Spiderman and heroes constantly going to sewers, Spawn, and all the grand guinol things -- even when something like Spiderman wasn't all that self-consciously "dark" while meddling in the seedy undergrounds of NY's sewers).
Loved the chains in Bizarro Flash's suit (power-walk, LOL!), that's just good design. What was the idea behind WW being a ulgy statue (with introverted "hands in pockets", loved it)? All it came to mind was maybe a playful reference to male-gaze (even a MJ statue) mixed with Medusa's petrifying stare ("she's a good team player").
- Lois was beautiful. How come we don't yet have a comic in the lines of "Lois Lane, Superman's Girlfriend", but with Lois the Journalist in futuristic Techno-Spy Thrillers (of course, in a world like A.S.S.')?
- Superman introduces ("invents") THE WHEEL!!! Ha! OMFG! You can imagine whoever invented the wheel was received like Zibarro is. Sup's way is rejected and he must find a way to convince them all that the symbolic wheel (his idea and plans -- or a "chakra:wheel") is a good idea, learning to talk in their language, find a way to connect, reaching out, empathize and find his way to push the right buttons, unlike Zibarro. SilliconDream said it better, "But Zibarro's too insecure about his innate superiority to do that. His poetry ("reports"), his self and will-desires, his views, expression and voice and his ways not finding the proper venue due to it. I'm betting that after this, he at least started writing in Bizarro-speak, even if only for a bit.
I like the idea of him (Zibarro) as a Clark Kent more and more
Yes, I went on that direction as well. He has the emo outsider, alien(ated), hamletinian qualities that Superman also has, but he's stuck on them. Lex is the extention of that taken to the extreme. I think of that as the fundamental difference between the idea of Superman and the entire X-men mythos. (I think I said it better earlier than I can now) "it plays around the unique-special X outcast-alien in contrast to what makes Superman super in Grant's eyes (the wheel scene), and at what point in that Zibarro strays and fails at it. He's whiny about his uniqueness as he regards himself above and outside the "inferior sheeple" bizarros -- maybe to contrast to Superman, that has a more self-inclusive empathetic nature despite of (or specially due to) his uniqueness (no matter what Bill said to Uma Thurman!). Something to play around the "of the people/ my people" (as he says in the end of the issue 7 to Bizarro) VS the "special unique missunderstood alien messiah outsider."
And I loved that at the end he comes to a realization that his alienation might have more something to do with him and a condition previous (and independent) to the enviroment and the not-self, very much like Joyce's portrait of the outsider artist and poet (and himself), Stephen Dedalus ("and no more turn aside and brood").
Hey, the Bizarro flag displayed during the singing of the "ancient Bizarro anthem" looks like the alternative history black power U.S. flag from Jim Crow's music video, back in The Invisibles, doesn't it?
How come they didn't launch this issue in the 4th of July?
The entire american hymn is pretty much a solar one, isn't it (the flag and the idea -- or "propaganda" -- of america is pretty much a appropriation of solar qualities, they even branded the moon -- and by that extent, humanity -- as them-as-the-IdealNormative-or-IdealNormative-as-them/theirs)? All the things about standing firmly and redly through the dark blue night to meet the hopeful bright white dawn of the sun ("the flag! The brand! We're home!") amongst the glimpse of hopeful rain of tiny stars. Superman himself is a walking american flag, where the white of the star is already fulfilled with the ascending warm sun (instead of only pure white that can turn cold), he's all about the shiny part of it. It's majesticly iconic and representative of this Big Idea that was a Big Idea before the brand America appropriated (but that hoppingly still, could represent it beautifully). Superman is to America basically, at step one, pretty much what the flag is to the hymn. And how he can be universal and human instead of regional, and how that universal-and-human dangers in falling back and reappropriated into an "teh imperialist" regional setting. This series has been an unbelieavable pop art deluxe (narrative and images feeding into the por art feeding into the narrative and images). I need to read it again. The entire thing was too much. How can someone pack so much in one thing?
- Is Superman in hymn scene Jesus carrying the cross (is his bleeding a bizarro reversal of what he stands, like the reverse hymn and flag and all? Doesn't the grim and gritty portrayals of Superman always have him bleeding and in that place)? His bleeding face close to the wood sparkled that in my mind somehow. Is Zibarro Simon of Cyrene?
- In addition to Le-Roj as SaturnXChronos, I thought he would, like Abraham (and God), sacrifice his Zibarro as the lamb. Maybe a intented reversal in the idea of elderly fearful preying of the young and the future comings. And why is there a bizarro minstrel blackface crowning him?
- And I love that the only brawl Superman has got himself into so far was in #7 (and still no punch-and-touch). This and the still-immature young Superboy fighting the overtly-militaristic Superman-from-the-future amidst dialogues like "you can't resist me!".
The rocket was intended for Zibarro all along. But by refusing to take it, he becomes the superior man who chooses to stay in the filth and work with his lessers...one step closer to Superman.
YES!!!
I need to read it again. That was batshit raving insane with too much going on (and you know when the old comics would have in one issue what today is a 50 issue epic, all that information and story packed into one thing? That's what Quitely and Jamie are doing, fucking A!). |
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