Blasphemy is Entertaining

I consider myself to be a lazy atheist. I’m not as intelligent as Richard Dawkins nor am I as boisterous and clever as Bill Maher, two people who famously try to educate the believers, so I am not skilled enough to try and express myself to the multiple congregations. I just sit back and enjoy my nonbelief in peace. But while I do not believe in any established belief system I must admit I have derived a large amount of entertainment from those belief systems. Or I should say I have derived enjoyment from the mockery and sacrilegious examinations of belief in various media.

For the most part I am going to stick to Christianity in this blog entry. Not that there aren’t other films that poke fun at religion, but Christianity seems to dominate the number of satires. Life of Brian, Dogma, the comic book Preacher, these are excellent works of media. They are also properties that have received vitriol hatred from the religious right and inspired more than a few protests and the occasional book burning.

Sadly all religious protesting has ever done for a film or book is encourage people to want to experience it more. Life of Brian was a small film from the Monty Python crew that received worldwide recognition due to its “blasphemous material”. Many members of the Christian right are so detestable in their shaming of the average citizen that any chance to rebel or anger them is welcomed by the rest of society, or the individuals looking for anything to rebel against. Much of this ranting from me is inspired by a graphic novel I recently picked up entitled Punk Rock Jesus (available at your local comic shop now). In it a clone of Jesus Christ, created to star in a reality show, grows up to essentially rebel against all the teachings favored by modern Christianity, essentially declaring himself an Atheist and joining the last punk rock band on earth. I can only hope this book sells out in droves.

What has never made sense to me about people protesting for religious reasons is why? Why does one care about the beliefs of others? This may have been what lead me to becoming an Atheist, but were I still a believer I would take comfort in the fact that I was going to Heaven and all the nonbelievers were going to Hell. And I wouldn’t care what those who are hellbound (not just the second film in the Hellraiser series) were doing. I’m not them. More room in Heaven for me. If anything it is beneficial for the righteous for there to be as many sinners as possible in world. Makes their good behavior stand out more.

Entertainment has long existed on parody. Taking the social and political environment of the day and openly mocking. And nothing has entwined its self more into society and politics than religion. And it isn’t just in modern times that entertainers have felt the need to speak truth to power. Plato, Socrates, even the brilliant Shakespeare had moments in his work where he mocked the concept of religion. Which could explain much of their popularity.

Now, while the title of this article says “Blasphemy is Entertaining”, I in no way think blasphemy is a good thing. Because I don’t think religion is a good thing either. Blasphemy implies going against the tenants of your religion while still being apart of it. Honestly if one feels the need to mock their religion they probably shouldn’t be a part of it anymore. The pop singer Madonna famously mocked Christianity and then said she still considered herself to be Catholic. To me, I would have just left the religion.

I also do not consider these things blasphemous because poking fun at schools of belief is no where near as offensive as the atrocities committed by the institutes themselves. People have used religion as justification for horrible things, so why not comedy at their expense as well? Many will be offended just by the suggestion that it is okay to mock religion. To them I say, Two Priests and a Rabbi walk into a bar….

TV Programming: Location Is Everything

Since the advent of cable television the market for TV shows has literally exploded. There is a channel for EVERYTHING. Every interest a person could have there is a corresponding TV show or even entire channel dedicated to it. And yet even with this plethora of cable channels tailored for a specific audience, shows are canceled left and right. So while there is room for every show there is also a need to know the right placement for that particular program. The right channel can mean life or death for a show.

To exemplify this phenomenon I will use the brilliant TV series, The Walking Dead. Based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book of the same name, The Walking Dead is currently finishing its third season on AMC. Many people thought the very fact this show was on the air was extraordinary, especially considering that AMC had been known for such shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. To program a show about zombies along side such acclaimed dramas seems like an odd choice. But if this show were to be programmed anywhere else I have no doubt in my mind that it would have been cancelled after just one season.

The thing that makes AMC such a perfect fit for The Walking Dead is that it is a channel that has shown it is willing to take risks. Breaking Bad is a show about a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin. Mad Men is a period piece about ad agents. Neither of these shows seem like an instant easy sell. And that is what AMC has become known for. TV shows that don’t quite fit the typical mold. While most shows of that caliber used to end up on pay cable channels (aka HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc.) AMC has become the basic cable home for unique shows.

Now had AMC not existed, The Walking Dead might have still ended up on TV. But chances are it would be airing on a channel like SyFy. It certainly would never have ended up on Network TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX). And I am convinced that if the Walking Dead was on SyFy it would be a completely different show. First of all, the show would be filmed in Canada instead of Atlanta. Canada is the land of discount filming and since science fiction and fantasy requires large budgets for special effects, the easiest way to cut costs is to cut locations. Vancouver has doubled for Boston, New York, Chicago, Metropolis, Gotham City and any city real or imagined you can think of. Filming in Atlanta gives The Walking Dead a unique look since not many productions film there.

A second important factor, AMC is able to attract a level of talent that SyFy sadly can’t. Frank Darabont (Three Time Oscar Nominated Writer-Director) was the show runner for the first season of the series and famously directed the pilot episode. This is a man who has famously adapted Stephen King stories into amazing masterpieces and he is helping to bring a comic book to life. Again, like location, how a property is adapted can greatly affect the look of the series. Even though Frank Darabont has left the series, you can still see his artistic influence on the look of the show.

The worst thing about knowing if The Walking Dead was on a different channel is that the show would not be getting the critical praise that it currently enjoys. Even if none of the differences I mentioned happened because of the shows channel location, there will still be a backlash from the critics based solely on the channel the show is on, if most critics even bothered to look at the show at all. Sadly SyFy is one of the channels that often get neglected by the more snobbish critics. They feel some sense of superiority by looking down on basic cable. Network gets attention because they are the heart of television. Pay cable gets attention because it is where the artistic shows with gratuitous swearing and nudity go. Basic cable is seen as the dumping ground for shows that don’t fit in any particular category. Of course seeing the dreck that DOES end up on many of those cable channels, perhaps I understand (and share) their disdain.

Granted all of the above is just my understanding of things. There are people making lots of money who study these patterns and trends in media with far more gusto and attention than I do. And the sad fact is, most of the time they’re wrong. Because tastes change. While AMC is currently the home of daring and innovative television, there could come a day where every show on that channel is formulaic and predictable. Much like SyFy used to be. When it first debuted (as the Sci-Fi Channel) it featured some of the most interesting and high budget shows on TV. No longer. Plus with the developments of new technology may eliminate cable television all together as we see shows being developed solely for download through services like Netflix. Bottom line, nobody knows.

Injustice: Dudes Among Us

As a comic book fan, I am all too familiar with the “Who would win in a fight?” arguments that are so prevalent among this culture. Which is why I am so excited to pick up the new game Injustice: Gods Among Us. This game is from the creators of Mortal Kombat and allows players to do battle with all their favorite DC Comics heroes and villains. At least with all the male ones they can. If you are a fan of female DC Comic book characters, you are sadly out of luck.

In a previous entry I explained how video games are predominantly male oriented (see here), but comics have matured more in the past few decades. While the amount of talent in the comic book field is predominantly male, there is a plethora of female characters in comics. Well rounded and well written female characters. Certainly there are enough female heroes and villains to be make up at least half of the characters in a fighting game about them. But sadly that is not the case with Injustice.

Only a quarter of the available characters at the time of this game’s launch are female. While the game developer has promised a slew of additional characters to be available as DLC in the future, I doubt that the majority of those characters will be female either. So the disproportionate amount of male characters will always be present no matter how many DLC is made available.

I also have to question the characters chosen for the game’s initial launch. While characters like Wonder Woman and Catwoman are obvious choices, there are a few other characters that I question the choice of. It is obvious the creators of the game were trying to sandwich additional female characters in to appease fans. However I do not feel appeased. Right off the bat I see Killer Frost on the list of characters. Unless you are a die hard fan of DC Comics (whom I’m sure would all buy this game no matter who is in it) you have no idea who Killer Frost is. I consider myself TO BE a diehard fan and even I have barely heard of her. Same with Raven, who really only is recognizable to fans thanks to the Teen Titans cartoon show. But in the comics there was a whole period of time where she was absent from the pages of DC titles. And I don’t think I even need to talk about Hawkgirl (see entry about her here).

Harley Quinn is the one character I can see why they included her, even though with the presence of the Joker as a playable character she is not necessary. That does seem to be a problem with DC female characters. So many of them are female versions of an already established male character. And usually since the male character existed first, he has a larger fan base than his female counterpart. So it becomes redundant to have both the male AND female version in the game. But Harley Quinn is a fan favorite who has appeared in all the incarnations of Batman since her inception. When Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy was still in preproduction, so many fans suspected she would show up at some point, and I myself and hopeful she will make an appearance in any future franchise Batman films.

So of the quarter of female characters available at launch, only half of them are actually characters whom fans would want to give major play time.  Meanwhile nearly all the male characters are recognizable fan favorites who will no doubt get hours and hours of multiple replays. And that should not be. As I said before there are multiple female DC comic book characters who could have been added to this game and whom fans would recognize well enough to want to give just as much play as the male characters. Zatanna, Vixen, Supergirl, Power Girl, Starfire, Maxima, Giganta, Poison Ivy, Cheetah, Batgirl, Batwoman, Big Barda, Doctor Light, Dove (of Hawk and), Fire, Ice, Huntress, Katanna, Knockout, Lightning Lass, and so on and so on. Granted not all of them would be recognizable to all fans, but certainly thee are better choices than the ones that were initially made.

Two sides. Same coin.

Now granted, sexually equality is not the first thought game makers should consider when making a game. It should all be about making the game as fun as possible. But when you have a property such as this there is really no excuse. The characters already exist. And these characters are already designed to fight so they lend themselves to the mechanics of the game already. There is no reason why this game could not have been half female characters and still be immensely popular. There is certainly room. I can already see several characters that are just doubles of another character on the list. Why do we need both Green Lantern AND Sinestro? Same with Black Adam and Shazam? These are characters with the exact same power sets and I am sure their fighting skills are identical as well. On a similar note, I’m sure Bane and Solomon Grundy probably aren’t that different either. And although he’s a personal favorite of mine, Nightwing is probably just a cross between Batman and Catwoman. That’s at least three spaces that could have been given to a cool female character with a complete new set of fighting skills.

"My eyes are up here boys."

In the end, none of this really matters. People who are going to buy this game will buy it regardless of how many women are featured in it. And I guess I should be happy there are any female characters in a fighting game at all. When I look back at the first Mortal Kombat game it had only one female character. The original Street Fighter didn’t have any (Street Fighter II did add one character). And the only games that did end up having large female casts were games where sexually exploiting the ample bosoms of the characters was more important than compelling gameplay. In the end, these types of games have come a long way. They just need to go a little further.

Understanding The New 52: It’s Mostly Green Lantern’s Fault

As stated in a previous blog (see here), I am having a real hard time understanding the continuity of DC’s New 52. Timelines and character histories just don’t seem to match up. And after more than a year and a half of reading these books I have concluded that my confusion is all to be blamed squarely on Green Lantern. Green Lantern is the one holdout that confuses anyone trying to reconcile the previous continuity with the events of the New 52.

Here is the problem with Green Lantern. While all the other titles that were rebooted with new number one issues decided to start off brand new storylines, Green Lantern and its various spinoff titles merely continued the storylines from before the events of New 52. This causes a great amount of confusion. Were Green Lantern a stand along title that had no interaction with any other DC super heroes then there would be no problem with its continuation. But Green Lantern is a major character in the DC Universe. He has been involved in nearly all the major storylines that have run throughout the history of the previous continuity. So how can Green Lantern’s history not have been changed if every other character’s history was?

Important storylines like the Death of Superman and Identity Crisis (my personal favorite Justice League story) seem to have been erased from DC history. But Green Lantern was an important part of these stories. Parallax, one of the major villains of the Green Lanterns was birthed directly out of the events of Death of Superman. Without Hal Jordan’s fall from grace over the destruction of Coast City, he never would have gone on his crusade to absorb the power of the Guardians and become Parallax. Without Parallax there never would have been a Sinestro Corps, another important storyline in Green Lantern history. It’s like a long row of dominoes and by removing one you should have essentially prevented all the others from being knocked over as well.

But all the dominoes did fall. Currently in the pages of Green Lantern and all its related titles there is a storyline called Wrath of the First Lantern. This storyline comes on the heels of another storyline, Rise of the Third Army. That previous storyline is a direct result of events that happened pre-New 52. Instead, it ignores any changes from New 52, not acknowledging the truncated timeline established by the new DC Timeline. If the New 52 timeline is to be referenced, then Green Lantern has only been around for about five years like most of the other DC Super heroes (though it has been hinted that Batman might have been in operation for almost ten years).

Not to completely throw all the blame on Green Lantern, though he deserves a good amount of it, there is also Teen Titans to blame for the confusion of the New 52 timeline.  While there is a Teen Titans title in the new 52, this teem of Titans is brand new, being founded by former Robin Tim Drake (who calls himself Red Robin). While some of the characters are brand new Titans, many of them are characters that were Teen Titans in the previous continuity. Wonder Girl and Kid Flash meet for the first time. Superboy, who is not the clone created after The Death of Superman, initially hunts the team down before finally rebelling against his masters and joining them. My point is, there is no reference to a Teen Titans existing before now. But in the pages of Red Hood and The Outlaws, Starfire clearly states having had a relationship with Nightwing. But the problem is, those two characters met IN THE TEEN TITANS! Their romantic past is linked with that title which has been established as no longer existing.

The real problem with the New 52 is inconsistency. DC Comics wants to pick and choose from its history what stories to acknowledge, and which to ignore. The problem is that we the fans acknowledge everything. For us, every comic we read is a part of DC history. To simply state that the books we read no longer matter seems like a slap in the face to anyone who has ever bought a comic.