tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post3129909750434367366..comments2024-02-22T02:31:34.108+00:00Comments on Too Busy Thinking About My Comics: On "Scalped: Casino Boogie" & "Hoka Hey" by Jason Aaron & R.M. GueraUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-79555695132171879522012-04-30T20:44:09.623+01:002012-04-30T20:44:09.623+01:00Hello Carol:- And you make me realise that - as of...Hello Carol:- And you make me realise that - as of the middle of the third collection, and to the best of my memory - no-one in Scalped insults the reader by spelling out the irony. It's a comic that trusts to its reader's intelligence. Bless it.Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-37637128357824915862012-04-30T06:38:24.915+01:002012-04-30T06:38:24.915+01:00personally, i appreciate the economy of irony in t...personally, i appreciate the economy of irony in those three words: "Crazy Horse Casino." it manages to top the Crazy Horse Memorial, while being conscious and not actually desecrating anything.<br /><br />carolcarolhttp://www.theculturalgutter.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-73902561968903094392012-04-25T19:09:49.724+01:002012-04-25T19:09:49.724+01:00Hello Brian:- I haven't a fraction of the read...Hello Brian:- I haven't a fraction of the readers of a great many comics blogs, but I've got a fair few number of good eggs who drop in that are entirely trustworthy when it comes to spoilers :) <br /><br />You make a good point about trusting JA where it comes to those themes and perspectives. I guess I believed that no-one who had constructed those first few books so precisely could possibly drop the whole enterprise and head off in a new direction, which shows how much trust his work inspres. <br /><br />I'm into the third book of Scalped, which makes me about a long way behind you. I'm glad that your enthusiasm remains :)Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-85331385274283066312012-04-24T22:07:11.046+01:002012-04-24T22:07:11.046+01:00I appreciate how much trust you've given to yo...I appreciate how much trust you've given to your readers to not spoil upcoming events in a book you're writing about, but have not yet "caught up" to many of us reading the monthly issues. (Wait, there aren't "many" at all reading the monthlies, are there...) In any event, it's to Aaron's credit that you also felt emboldened to discuss the themes of the story only 2 books in, trusting that he won't come up with some illogical deus ex machina that sets your whole premise on its ear.<br />I'm still catching up myself. Read issue 43 last night. Couldn't agree more with a previous commenter about how there's just too many things to read, and not enough time. And I came early to the comics party, 30 some years ago!<br />I'll look forward to a future update on your thoughts about Scalped as you progress. Enjoy!Brian Wiggettnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-12041145782940031142012-04-23T09:06:11.326+01:002012-04-23T09:06:11.326+01:00Hello Kiwijohn:- Thank you :)Last night I finished...Hello Kiwijohn:- Thank you :)Last night I finished a column for elsewhere at about 1am and read myself to sleep with the first few chapters of the third Scalped collection. The poverty gets worse! Yet the fundamental relationship between social structure and the individual which you discuss remain - huzzah - meaning that it's always the world that folks have been condemned to which picks up the biggest share of the blame. Individuals are never excused, of course, but there's always a reason for their behaviour beyond their individual characters and circumstances. That that should be a radical statement in 2012 suggests that the West hasn't embraced the huge mass of sociology and psychology we have on the causes of crime. I've no doubt your analysis of why some folks avoid looking at the situational explanations of crime. Equally worrying to me - perhaps far more - is the fact that we just don't teach social science in schools in a way that might actually open up challenges to perceived wisdoms. Some students get such a necessary experience, but not across the curriculum. Pah and pah again.<br /><br />Thank you for your restraint with the content of future issues. Yep, I think a tragic resolution will indeed be - shall we say - the most likely end. I too admire how carefully structured the piece has been from the start, with the '70s radicals and their choices working out across the years.Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-4652225699027846732012-04-23T00:29:10.019+01:002012-04-23T00:29:10.019+01:00Hi Colin,
Fascinating article as always.
The gr...Hi Colin, <br />Fascinating article as always. <br /><br />The grinding poverty seen in Scalped is a pretty much all pervading. I initially thought that the characters themselves weren't terribly three-dimensional, but they do get 'fleshed out' as the series goes on - and I think it could be fair to say that some of limits of the characters and their thinking and choices are the limits set by their circumstances and their terribly restricted world - the constraints of their poverty and powerlessness. The characters are ferocious towards each other as some of the only "power" they have is within the confines of the Res' and their relations with their fellow residents. Even Red Crow and Agent Nitz - the two who arguably are the most powerful people in Prairie Rose - have little room to move. <br />The other strong point of Scalped is that actions of the characters have real and often unintended consequences - most of the impetus for the story stems from events in the 1970s, but those events are still affecting the Res' and many of the characters even thirty years later and even the very arrival of Dashiell on the Res in the first place is the consequence of some of his actions previous. The actions of Dashiell, Red Crow, Nitz and others in the very early issues echo right through to the latest issue (58) and the I don't think it is a spoiler to say it looks there won't be a happy ending - a satisfactory one (from the reader PoV) maybe, but happy? I think not.<br /><br />As for your quote above - "much of the West still manages to approach the idea of poverty through the ideology of the less well-informed of the Victorians" - I'd argue that this is because this absolves the powers-that-be (and a good chunk of the rest of the population too - the rock-solid conservative vote in NZ for example is around 33%) from having to actually having to do anything about poverty. <br /><br />kiwijohnAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-71364958033245134412012-04-22T22:20:36.500+01:002012-04-22T22:20:36.500+01:00Hello Mike:- Yep, I'm late with Scalped, and i...Hello Mike:- Yep, I'm late with Scalped, and in fact I didn't get it when I read the very first issue a good while ago. It's a good job I always work from the premise that I'm wrong, which means that I always go back after a while when I've not enjoyed a book. With Scalped, I'm obviously very glad indeed; it's a great book and I'm just about to launch into book 3, and experience I'd've missed if I'd've gone on first impressions.<br /><br />I don't think you're over-generalizing about poverty, and especially not in the context of the comments here. Having occasionally slipped close to it in my younger days, and having taught the psychology and sociology of it for almost two decades, what shocks me is the belief on so many folk's part that poverty is simply an obstacle to be overcome with virtue and effort. If only life were that simple, if only the only explanations for poverty were a lack of virtue and effort. It never fails to astonish me that so much of the West still manages to approach the idea of poverty through the ideology of the less well-informed of the Victorians.Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-58701553621213855502012-04-22T20:01:46.508+01:002012-04-22T20:01:46.508+01:00I'm glad you're reading Scalped, as it'...I'm glad you're reading Scalped, as it's among my favorite series. As dark as the series can get, there's a great deal of humanity in Aaron's scripts. I tend to like artists whose work has a grimy surface; my one complaint about the book is that I think the printing or paper type in the tpbs can obscure Guera's images. <br /><br />The above is the kind of write-up I would like to see more of in the comics blogosphere; for all that I enjoy reading reviews and posts about various facets of the plots, characters, and creators, I think theme and meaning get left behind. Of course, too few comics have enough substance to write at length about, but I'm glad we have series like Scalped amid all the dross. Baffled bloke you may be, but your thoughts came through perfectly clearly.<br /><br />I've been lucky enough not to have ever experienced poverty directly, but I see what it does to students and their families at my school. Poverty has a way of destroying hope and contextualizing people's lives. Being unable to do what others take for granted and having to adopt a harder attitude become accepted, and education is not seen as a solution. I'm over generalizing, probably, but I'm drawing conclusions based on what I've seen and heard. Poverty is an insidious, dehumanizing force.<br /><br />-Mike LoughlinAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-73953785143644864542012-04-21T10:19:41.078+01:002012-04-21T10:19:41.078+01:00Hello Joe:- I'm not sure it's coming late ...Hello Joe:- I'm not sure it's coming late to the comics party which means there's far too much good stuff to read :) I've been sitting in the kitchen here for decades now & I'm not just failing to dent the "must-read" pile, it's getting bigger and bigger with quite literally every passing day. As you say, it's easy for a book like Scalped to get lost in that, because it's easy for any book to suffer that fate. And yet, again as you say, that would be a shame and a great deal more than that. What I wrote above was of course nothing more than a baffled bloke's notes, but I can see that I was grasping for now was (a) how a book can use the conventions of the macho shoot-em-up to actually project a profoundly humane agenda, and (b) how to use a book to discuss a social problem without pretending to be able to solve that situation in the comic's pages. The very fact that those issues are so well illustrated in Scalped speaks volumes, I think, although of course the central matter is, as always, "Is it a good story well told?" And the answer, as we both agree, is yes!<br /><br />It's a time of extraordinary riches in the comic biz, isn't it?Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-41563330557347555672012-04-21T10:08:44.947+01:002012-04-21T10:08:44.947+01:00Hello Carol:- The Crazy Horse casino. Until recent...Hello Carol:- The Crazy Horse casino. Until recently the Brits like to pretend that the reason a great of Brit humour didn't travel across the pond was because Americans didn't understand irony. It was never true, of course, and it's certainly not true now. A huge nation will always have a huge number of folks who don't either care for or grasp irony. But the Crazy Horse casino would seem to me on its own to show that irony is anything but alien even to the supposedly lowly comic book. I do appreciate how under Scalped's apparently macho blow-it-up surface, a great deal of smartness is going on.Colin Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15246781681702128600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-15727758597614477952012-04-21T09:27:21.396+01:002012-04-21T09:27:21.396+01:00You'll not need any restraint from me nor fear...You'll not need any restraint from me nor fear any spoilers. I'm only 4 volumes into Scalped myself, and it really is SO good, but I keep finding myself to put off getting the rest for all the other comics I need to catch up on; Neon Genesis Evangelion, Blade of the Immortal, Lone Wolf and Cub, Berserk, Preacher, Northlanders, DMZ, Fear Agent, Morrison's Animal Man, Orbital, Aldebaran/Betelgeuse, Prison Pit... <br />(That's both the blessing and the curse of coming a little late to the comics party: there's sooo much great stuff out there that it's hard to know where to begin, and once you've begun where to go from there. Of course, that's not really a bad problem to have.)<br />It's not that any of these comics are any better than Scalped, it's just that Scalped always seems to be an after thought for some bizarre and unjustifiable reason.<br /><br />But you're absolutely right about Scalped being a very humane comic despite being horribly nihilistic. In the face of and because of everything that's happened to and by everyone, it's hard to absolutely hate anyone.Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04857537495427793076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5618879740460069575.post-42557284560614873292012-04-21T06:33:17.284+01:002012-04-21T06:33:17.284+01:00I don't know if I'll ever get over a casin...I don't know if I'll ever get over a casino named after Crazy Horse--of course it would be and, of course, it should never be.<br /><br />Once again, a thoughtful article I will be pondering for some time.carolhttp://www.theculturalgutter.comnoreply@blogger.com