Comic Con, Before the Fear

When I got the job in Japan, I figured I'd be missing San Diego Comic Con this year for the first time in nearly 20 years. Little did I know everyone would be missing it; due to the Corona virus, Comic Con 2020 has been cancelled. There is going to be a "Comic Con@Home" thing in which panels will be posted on YouTube starting to-day. It'll never be the same as actually being there, though. The sense of community, of surprise at never knowing what or who you'll see around the corner, the brilliant costumes, and, above all, the many great conversations you can have with total strangers about things you both love. The Internet experience just isn't the same.

Some would say we should burn down the internet. Ray Bradbury, for instance. This year, Comic Con is celebrating the late frequenter of Comic Con for his 100th birthday which will be on this upcoming August 22. As it happens, I recorded video of Bradbury in 2009 discussing what he would like on his 100th birthday:

This was before I had a camera with a decent zoom. That was my first camera and although I have plenty of blog entries on Comic Con before that year, 2009 is the oldest one with pictures and video. In 2010 I started getting more creative, editing together footage to a theme. Here's a horror themed clip from 2010:

This was back when the "Zombie Walk" was a staple of Comic Con, before a tragic car accident one year when an elderly man drove through some zombie cosplayers. But that isn't didn't wholly curb the wonderful spirit of provocative geek performance art that used to permeate the Con. Going back through my blog entries I was reminded again how much the atmosphere at the Con changed after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Most notably, the Con used to be much, much sexier.

This Morrigan Aensland is from 2010.

You could still find a little burlesque art here and there last year but, by and large, gone were the many young ladies seeing how far they could push the envelope with cleavage and waistlines.

Here are a couple sexy Venture Brothers ladies from 2013. That same year I ran into sexy Sherlock Holmes twins:

A sexy lingerie stormtrooper:

And, of course, the formerly ubiquitous Slave Leia:

I also ran into Faye Valentine in 2013. A writer and executive producer on the upcoming live action Cowboy Bebop, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, was recently asked if Faye would have her familiar costume on the show to which he replied, no, because, "we need to have a real human being wearing that." Well, Mr. Grillo-Marxuach, have a look at this:

Yes, sex was everywhere. There was a time when even Trekkies could have some tongue-in-cheek fun with sex:

In 2011 I even ran into a sexy xenomorph (which some might say is redundant).

In 2015 there was a sexy Yoshi Warrior Woman:

And the shenanigans that went down on this Ash versus Evil Dead panel, which were edited out of the video, would definitely have gotten people in trouble to-day. Just look at Sam Raimi's face:

So, while this year may be the end of Comic Con, in a way I feel like it's been gone for years. But then again, for as long as I've been going to Comic Con (since 1995) I remember people complaining that it wasn't as good as it used to be. Maybe I just miss the Comic Con from my time. I still can't help feeling everyone was in better psychological health when this was a normal sight:

Twitter Sonner #1376

Italian voices bottle English steps.
In amber drops reflected rooms were bent.
The melted paint was found in ocean depths.
A metal man beneath the sea was sent.
A dizzy count replaced the cookie dough.
The image shows a crumb beside the plate.
Instructions said the seated had to row.
Announcements came behind the easy mate.
The whistling Hamlet rides again the hill.
Determined trills incite the shadow moves.
The rapid sticks divide the empty bill.
Another joins with Odin's binding grooves.
Reportless days proceed in frightened dreams.
The wire tightens 'twixt the face's seams.

Waiting on Mars

Ray Bradbury obviously found Edgar Allan Poe's forehead rather striking. In his short story "Exiles", included in The Illustrated Man, Bradbury more than once returns to the forehead as a point for vividly describing the 19th century poet.

Mr. Poe’s black eyes brooded under his round and luminant brow.

. . . They moved down the echoing throats of the castle, level after dim green level, down into mustiness and decay and spiders and dreamlike webbing. “Don’t worry,” said Poe, his brow like a huge white lamp before them, descending, sinking.

It is an impressive brow, at least in every picture I've seen, and invoking it does help create the mental image. "Exiles" is a story in which many of Earth's great writers live in some strange form on Mars alongside hordes of their creations. The story actually begins with the witches from Macbeth, just a few of the many assembled to defend the planet from an approaching human rocket. On Earth, the great works of fiction have been routinely burned, a detail foreshadowing Bradbury's own Fahrenheit 451. In "Exiles", the book burning causes the spirits of the authors and their creations to fade and finally vanish entirely. It's a more fantastic tale than Fahrenheit 451 and bittersweetly effective.

An odd man among the denizens Bradbury places on Mars is Charles Dickens, who parties at Fezziwig's and refuses to join Poe and Ambrose Bierce in defending against the Earthlings, insisting he's above the stories about ghosts and witches and their authors. He even seems to kind of like the humans who only burned his books, he feels, by mistake. I wonder if this is due to the underlying leftwing nature of Dickens' basic arguments in his work. At the time Bradbury published "Exiles" he was a Democrat but in 1952 he took out an ad in Variety in which he wrote; "Every attempt that you make to identify the Democratic Party as the party of Communism, as the ‘left-wing’ or ‘subversive’ party, I will attack with all my heart and soul." Which goes to show how differently Democrats regarded themselves at one time.

Bradbury's Poe points out to Dickens that he did indulge in writing ghost stories, with A Christmas Carol and The Christmas Goblins. Of course, Dickens' writing also has much that could appeal to conservatives--I've heard Uriah Heep, the villain of David Copperfield, referred to as a perfect parody of a leftwing ideologue. The humans of "Exiles" have also banned Halloween and Christmas which reminds me of Oliver Cromwell's England in which Christmas was also banned. And plays, for that matter. Like the humans of "Exiles", the English Puritans believed in total commitment to reason and abhorred superstition. "Superstition" is a word that Bradbury uses twice in "Exiles" by Poe but I wasn't clear on whether or not this Poe approved of superstition or deplored it.

One of the men on the rocket has nightmares. I really liked the idea that humans without fantastic horror fiction would naturally have strange nightmares as though some natural feeling is being repressed and is finding other means of expression.

Twitter Sonnet #1318

A little thing disturbs the rubber tread.
A metal river shifts the plastic boat.
A diamond bee divides the footed bed.
A lamp appeared between the sheep and goat.
Decisive shorts define Colossus legs.
A second bun creates the burger plate.
Between the flour fold the thinking eggs.
A waiting knight observed a narrow mate.
Awaited plays deliver forest dreams.
Repeated songs appease a sleepy heart.
A newer sun was born of extra beams.
The sandwich mustard makes the yellow part.
The brilliant head was camped before the sea.
The crimson pot produced a cherry tea.

Thanksgiving Dinner on Mars

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I've been reading Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man again lately and it occurred to me "The Other Foot" is a pretty good Thanksgiving story. The tale of a black community on Mars that has to wrestle with their own consciences when facing the prospect of white refugees from a war ravaged Earth, it's in essence about stopping the cycle of revenge. Like many stories in the book, it's about a psychological or cultural reboot after terrible destruction and death. The opportunity for spiritual growth that arises in the wake of catastrophe.

Of course, the story reflects its origins in the early 50s. The number of cultural shifts that must occur between the 50s and the future in which the story is set, where Martian colonies are long established, would seem likely to have brought society to a permutation of race relations less similar to the 1950s but most inhabitants of the town portrayed in the story are old enough to remember segregation in the U.S. As the white man from the rocket describes the destruction, the Martian community finds their thoughts shifted from memories of Jim Crow and lynchings to something else.

After twenty years it was rushing back. The towns and the places, the trees and the brick buildings, the signs and the churches and the familiar stores, all of it was coming to the surface among the gathered people. Each name touched memory, and there was no one present without a thought of another day. They were all old enough for that, save the children.

Life is more complicated than revenge allows for. Before the arrival of the rocket, it's easier for most of the town's inhabitants to make "No Whites" signs and start instituting back of the bus rules for the newcomers. The crimes of racism in the U.S. are real and descriptions of lynchings are particularly potent. Who wouldn't want to exact some retribution?

It is a story curiously locked in an American perspective for being about a global war. One wonders about black communities in other parts of the world--did the populations of Africa and the Dominican Republic move to Mars, too? But certainly the heart of the story is in the right place.

Electric Surrogates

Two parents go into a holodeck. They may never come back. But their kids, Peter and Wendy, may not be troubled by this. Ray Bradbury leaves it all a little unclear in "The Veldt", his famous story from 1950, included in his 1951 collection The Illustrated Man. The fact that the terrible incident is never spelled out, the motives never truly revealed, is integral to the story's impression of the sinister. If the reader must find and decipher the clues, what else might go unnoticed in this home, this world, ruled by convenient electronic devices?

Obviously it's a story that remains relevant--arguably it grows more relevant every year as the algorthims that shape your social media reality become subtly more powerful as your attentions and appetites are successfully manipulated.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fulfil their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children though zebras, and there were zebras. Sun--sun. Giraffes--Giraffes. Death and death.

Peter and Wendy's mother, Lydia, wonders if it's unhealthy to allow their lives to be run by machines. They also have a psychiatrist to diagnose their children based on their violent holographic fantasy of lions. Is it really so new? The names Peter and Wendy recall Peter Pan and the phenomenon associated with, but not confined to, the Victorian nanny who displaced the mother in the affections of children for being obliged to spend more time with them.

The impression I have is that the machine nanny doesn't make Wendy and Peter vicious as much as callous. What value can human life have when the machines are so much more accommodating?

Above image "The Wounded Lion" by Raden Saleh (1839)

Ray's the Standard!

As I mentioned a few days ago when writing about Delta and the Bannermen, variations of the name "Ray" are pretty common in Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Is it in ode to the ubiquitous Death Rays, Shrink Rays, and Freeze Rays that once populated the genres? Who knows. Anyway, I put together a list of who I consider to be the top six Rays.

6. Rei

In Rumiko Takahashi's classic manga and anime series Urusei Yatsura, a story about an oni alien named Lum who imposes her love on lecherous Earthling Ataru, a rival for Lum's affections eventually appears from her homeworld. Devastatingly handsome with the power to charm any woman except Lum, Rei nonetheless suffers from an inability to speak more than a few words at a time. Maybe a less attractive trait is his tendency to turn into a twenty foot tall rampaging alien tiger whenever he gets too emotional.

5. Ray Wise

You'd be wise to get acquainted with actor Ray Wise. As Commissioner Gordon, he was one of the few bright spots on the animated adaptation of The Killing Joke a couple years ago, he had a major role in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Who Watches the Watchers", and he had roles in RoboCop and the 1982 Cat People. But the best reason to get to know this Ray is for his performance as Leland Palmer, father of Laura, on Twin Peaks. Wise's talents helped make Leland a character capable of scaling impressive heights of comedy and horror.

4. Rey

I know what you're thinking; "But who are her parents?!" Relax, this plucky Rey will make you forget all about that. Well, maybe not, but she's a little Rey of sunshine away, inverting Luke's story about wanting to get away from his home to fight the Empire, Rey just wants a happy normal life away from it all. Lucky for us, this beautiful young woman's prevailed upon to repair the Millennium Falcon and wield a lightsabre, absorbing the powers of Han, Luke, and Leia into a single Star Wars juggernaut!

3. Ray Stantz

I know what you're thinking; "He took out a second mortgage on the house he was born in!" But it was for bigger and better things, believe me, as he became the heart of the Ghostbusters. Dan Aykroyd's enthusiastic performance made Ray's glee at obtaining a fire house not up to building codes or a hearse that barely runs irresistibly infectious.

2. Rei Ayanami

Don't ask about this Rei's parentage; suffice to say, it's complicated. Voiced by the great Megumi Hayashibara, Rei's a central part of the impact Neon Genesis Evangelion still holds on manga and anime. Over twenty years after the series debuted, Otakus are still either dreaming about Rei or Rei knock-offs like Rem from Re:Zero. None of the Rei imitators match her for complexity, though, or the fascinatingly weird depths of psychological disturbance the series takes her to. This was back when the best anime series would challenge their fans.

1. Ray Bradbury

The natural number one on this list, Bradbury crafted classics in both Science Fiction and Fantasy. From the insightful dystopia of Fahrenheit 451 to the beautiful impression of childhood nightmares in Something Wicked this Way Comes. But that just scratches the surface of his career of making classics that include The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. He also wrote the screenplay for John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick and co-designed Horton Plaza (based on his essay "The Aesthetics of Lostness"), a shopping mall in downtown San Diego. Which I'd advise you to check out if you haven't already before its owner, Westfield, finishes driving into the ground.