Marvel Fanfare portfolios: The mighty Charles Vess

- Originally published in Marvel Fanfare #20

Marvel Fanfare portfolios: The remarkable June Brigman

- Originally published in Marvel Fanfare #53 and 54

Marvel Fanfare portfolios: The spectacular Craig Hamilton

- Originally published in Marvel Fanfare #35

Marvel Fanfare portfolios: The astounding Kevin Nowlan

 - Originally published in Marvel Fanfare #18 

 (It's another round of school holidays, so the Tearoom of Despair is going into low content mode for a couple of weeks while I take the kids to the zoo and the movies to see the new Shaun the Sheep. As always, I am filling the void in daily posting with artwork that makes me happy, and in this case it's my favourite pin-ups sections from the Marvel Fanfare series of the 80s. That comic was full of strange little one-off stories with some remarkable artwork, and sometimes editor supreme Al Milgrom would devote a few pages to the artwork of various artists. The fashions may have changed, the characters they depict might look nothing alike anymore, but they still all look gorgeous to me. Holy shit, I can't stop looking at the Mark Badger chalk drawings.)

Airtight Garage: At last!

- The Airtight Garage (Epic ) #1
Story and art by Moebius 

Translated by RJM Lofficier 

Colours by Isabelle Leconte, Rick Wayne, Arlette Auvergne, Allison Kendis and Chris Palomino 

Letters by John Workman, Gaspar Saladino, Kevin Nowlan and Phil Felix

The Joker doesn't need any daddy issues

Considering how much American genre fiction loves giving its characters daddy issues to explain all their complex problems, I am genuinely pleased that nobody has ever picked up what Marty Pasko and Irv Novick put down on the last panel of the 70s Joker series, and the promise of the story of his father. 

It's a very weird final issue, with Elton John showing up as the devil and the Joker murdering/not murdering the Justice League, and ends on this cliffhanger which remains unresolved to this day (as far as i know). And long may it remain so - the Joker doesn't need something as basic as a traumatic childhood to explain his homicidal laughs, that's far too easy for him.

You wouldn't deadname the Wu-Tang Clan

I once got into an argument an elderly relative about how hard it was to remember the new names of people who had chosen fresh ones to better express who they are. Their argument was that people should just stick with what they were called because that was easier for everyone else, and my argument was that it wasn't that fucking hard to call someone by their preferred name.

And while I didn't make this reference because they were very old, I also wouldn't ever deadname somebody, because that would be like meeting Ghostface Killah and calling him Dennis, and that feels both rude and dangerous.

The concepts of stage names and pseudonyms have been around as long as they have been actors and writers, and nobody ever had a problem with it. So when my friends and colleagues go through any kind of transition process, I will always gladly use their new chosen name, because it makes them happy, and that makes us all happy.

The act of choosing a new name for yourself has inherent power, but it also can have deeper resonance and meaning than your birthname, which always was out of your hands. 

The members of the Wu-Tang Clan are made up of people who were named Russell and Clifford when they were born, but that's not who they are, and the names they are now known by throughout the world also happen to be completely fucking awesome.

The Wu-Tang are, of course, all about honour and respect, while also being badass gangsters, and if I ever did have the fortune to meet one, I would call them by their true name. Because they are not some dudes from Staten Island, they are kung fu master monk warriors from the ninth dimension. I could only show my real life friends, the ones who have happily buried their dead names, the same respect.

I think my Dad is haunting my sunroom

I don't know the psychology behind how smelling something can trigger memories that might be long buried. I don't understand how the way I can sometimes smell 1996 is almost metaphysical.

What I do know is that sometimes I can smell fried dripping and cigarette smoke in the sunroom of our new home, and I can only assume it is the ghost of my dearly departed dad, keeping an eye on the grandkids he never got to meet, and stinking up the whole joint. 

No context, all feeling: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

A recent urge to only read reviews of new movies after I've seen them has been really paying off. I can still get the idea of whether a film is worth seeing from headlines, star ratings and general vibe, and I can leave the analysis for afterwards.

Sometimes I don't think I'm getting anything further out of it, and almost every piece of criticism about something is making the most basic of observations, the most inane of takes. And increasingly, I find a lot of modern film writing genuinely baffling, because they are immersed in a wider context that is so broad that I just can't get my head around it.

Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma is clearly not for everybody, but I definitely got my kicks from it - I got the jokes about who produced The Burning, or the name of the old-school director. It's not the sort of film that I would recommend to everybody, because there is complexity in the way it tells its story, and I'm not entirely sure what is real and what isn't by the end of it, and I am 100 percent fine with that. 

I'm sure I am missing a whole bunch of subtext, just because I'm not a gender-fluid young person still figuring out their place in the world, but there are universal pleasures in a subversion of a slasher film, along with recognisable feelings of awkwardness and horniness that can resonate with anybody. If nothing else, we can all admit to having a giant crush on Gillian Anderson, no matter which way you roll.

And I have read some writing about the film since seeing it that has giving me wonderfully intellectual food for thought, and most of it has been generally positive about the film. But I've also stumbled across some fairly harsh criticism of the film, and it might be completely warranted, but I honestly have no idea. They are all about the film's place in a vaster and largely online culture that is completely alien to me. I just have no idea what they are talking about. (And I'm not going to link to the piece here, because that's not going to help.)

I have only tasted the tiniest portion of queer cinema, and love it as much as a painfully hetro dude can, because it gives me another point of view of the world, and that is always valuable. But I don't really engage in the wider culture around it because it's not my culture, and the last thing it needs is another buffoon like me trampling all over the fuckin' place.

But I do my best, and I don't sweat it when this film is slammed for improper representation, because they might have a point. I don't know.

I'm sure this kind of criticism is extremely useful for people who do understand what they want, but looking at a single work as just as a tiny piece of a wide context also feels like a faintly miserable way to engage with an artwork.

There is a blissful ignorance in not knowing exactly what is going on, and what it is trying to say, and I look forward to making some effort to getting my head around it. It's something new to learn about, it's that wider view of the world again, it's what it's all about.