robert.neuschul

Comment Threads

• Gerald Fnord commented on The myth of heroism
  I couldn't maintain interest in "Supergods" very long, as Morrison seemed to be surrendering to the same sort of self-involvement and credulousness that makes some Alan Moore material uninteresting to me...but near the end of his run of "Animal Man" there's a moment when an explicit author avatar ('grant Morrison') says something on the order of 'We have complex problems we can't solve so we dress up hyper-muscled men in costumes and have them punch each other to figure them out.' (Material not available to us, so read once, two years ago, so my apologies for any inaccuracy in that.)...
• Gerald Fnord commented on The myth of heroism
  'Marital breakdown': don't completely lose heart, those of us inclined to be saddened by this possible fictional event. Plenty of things that break down have been repaired---marriages are notoriously difficult on that score, but as a mad old marriage counselor once wrote (in Edward FitzGerald's translation) 'That is not dead which can eternal lie.', and even though these characters don't have eternity as such, having (as Jerry said to Frank) the Heat Death to look forward to, theirs are universes of possibility...magic seems to be able to do more and more as the series moves on, probably a combination of...
• Jay commented on The myth of heroism
  It's to be expected, really. Bob and Mo have to be getting a bit low on SAN points by now....
• scott-sanford commented on The myth of heroism
  ...and none of their exorcisms ended with a heartfelt 'Now piss off.' I have no trouble imagining Bob doing that after a long day at work....
• metachromatic commented on The myth of heroism
  Your heresy against the Lightning Gods is not appreciated, unbeliever. They will smite you. Methinks you've missed the economic drivers in superhero fiction, Charlie. More likely that superhero fiction reappeared in the 1920s and 1930s because that was when economic inequality skyrocketed, taking Euro/American societies back to levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age or earlier. As everyone knows, economic inequality has (if anything) worsened today. The essential paradigm of superhero tales involves paternalist authoritarianism: in a society where only the elites are empowered, only a member of the elites can save you. Bruce Wayne must therefore be...