Category: Untitled, unfinished, incomplete

→ ..rant follows.. ←

Been reading Batman, The Dark Knight Returns after I found the series at a closing sale deep in the Mission. I always have loved Frank Miller’s work and this is no exception.

Reading comics now, when I’m 25, is a different experience than when I was younger, more naive, and perhaps less literate. And certainly just as much if not more visual. In fact the stories really never resonated with me much; sure I’d read them but I was much more into the art.

So reading comics now — comics only 10 years old but already classic in their own right — while reading the news, I wonder if we’re stuck in some weird life-imitating-art vortex. Or some alternate reality. Yeah, that must be it.

In which case, I don’t see any reason why I can’t put a call out for all remaining heros to show themselves. In fact, I’d call for amnesty on all of them, if they’d just come out and give us a hand and maybe provide, even for a fleeting moment, some semblance of a heroic ideal.

You see it in the movies in fact. You see it with characters like V. But those tales of hyper-violence that exist in the Matrix genre of reality are farcical, pretending to give us some deep clue about the inner reality of our time but only obfuscate the confusion and true alienation of our time.

I’m sorry, I can’t just call in an exit. I’m sorry, I just can’t take the blue pill. I’m sorry, I don’t have the strength of 40 men with the ability to absorb hundreds of bullets fired point-blank. I’m ordinary; I’m human; I’m no hero: I’ll die and make mistakes. And so I’m terribly desirous of someone who is some kind of superperson to come in and clean up the mess we’ve made.

. . .

No but see, I did the dishes tonight (– at least part of them). We had our pasta, we did the dishes. Has the President ever done dishes?

Look, I’m utterly distressed. I’m at a loss for a clear sentiment here — I mean, any hope of raising kids normally, with a sense of right and wrong and order is out the door, thanks to the most popularest-ever Decider in Chief. You do realize what’s going on, right? You do realize what else has been happening lately? You do realize that nothing the President says is true, is believeable, is trustable, is something that you should repeat with authority? That our credibility as a nation is in the ashtray? That this country — our country — is being lead by a baboon?

Fuck, the man signs a bill into law and then jots down the ways in which he’s not bound to play by them in the Federal Registrar. I mean, why have a system of courts? Why have a Constitution? Why did they fucking play that stupid ass “How a Bill is Made” video over and over in grade school when they left out the most important part: that the Supreme Dicktator isn’t bound to mortal laws… only the ones of His choosing.

. . .

That’s why I’m calling out the superheros. That’s why we need their help. There is no law in this country — not even the one that was supposed to get the person that we voted for the most into the White House — that applies to this administration. While the sniveling proletariet stutter through the metal detector conveyer belts that They Who Rule’ll never be subjected to, shovel $8 fuel into oversized steel death machines, while we foot the bill and they sip the champagne of Crusade Spoils and the rancorous chorus of the maligned, the disenfranchised, the disenchanted, dispirited, overpromised, underdelivered — the normals — grows deafening, the cracks begin to appear.

But they’ll not tumble without an unyielding force of righteousness — and without the help of the supers. I mean, badazz supers, like Batman. Or like Jules in Pulp Fiction. This is what he’d say, on the page right before the very last page of the series:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.