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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: January 2019

Old Poem Revue #1: They Flee From Me

31 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Old Poem Revue, Poetry

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Old Poem Revue #1 by John King

They Flee From Me

Who wants to discuss old poems?

I’ve decided that on Thursdays we here at TDO should try to share pre-twentieth century poems that have stuck with us.

I’ll begin with this 1535 bluesy verse from a sixteenth century courtier:

They Flee From Me by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

1200px-sir_thomas_wyatt_by_hans_holbein_the_younger_(2)

In the first stanza, women are treated like wild animals toying with being tame—in a scenario that suggests that the speaker should be considered dangerous, poor fella.

In the second stanza, he brags that twenty women have stayed with him, though if they stayed, then where are they? Did they all stay? Are they in his basement? But the woman in a nightie who got naked and grabbed him in her arms and kissed him has him feeling bitterly nostalgic.

In the final stanza, he promises he wasn’t dreaming—which I didn’t think he was until he insisted that he wasn’t.

Hold on, though. Is that really the moment that he cannot let go: a kiss, a term of endearment, a shameless request for romantic feedback? I don’t need Thomas Wyatt to dabble in pornography, but he’s clearly already writing in bad taste, so why not? Or maybe he is full of regret because the naked woman did not get beyond coitus interruptus with him. Maybe he orally pleasured her and then she, sated, left? That would make sense of the “strange fashion of forsaking” in the final stanza. In that case, this may be the earliest letter on file written to Dan Savage. But I think it more likely that she didn’t come when next he called. His tallied 20 other lovers were presumably dropped by Tommy, though the whole this-is-not-a-dream thing makes me think that number is probably inflated by at least 20 lovers.

The turn in this overlong sonnet is that life isn’t fair. Hmmmm.

I read this in a survey of Brit Lit class as a college sophomore, and I certainly felt sensitive and bereft like our fair poet above, though the thing has the stink of toxic masculinity to it now, although the internal contradictions are fairly interesting, though maybe as an exhibition of neuroses. I don’t blame him for having a foot fetish:

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

The iambic pentameter bounces from the start, but the poem doesn’t really live up to that—the overture contains the opera here. What did these (probably imaginary) women see in him? What did he see in them? In her? This is kind of a disappointing poem about the power of sex. (Unlike Aphra Behn’s amazing poem about the power of sex, “The Disappointment”). Wyatt thrilled to the surprise of meeting, that confrontation of desire, that revelation of a secret self—but without a woman as a mirror, he didn’t really have much of a self to talk about.

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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #5: The Music Connection

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Music

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Tags

Angel and the Ape, Gunning for Hits, Love and Rockets, The Complete Phonogram, The Wicked + The Divine

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #5 by Drew Barth

The Music Connection

There’s a deep and wide history interconnecting music and comics that goes back decades. For now I’m just going to focus on one aspect of it: the ways in which music has influenced comics. These influences go deep. Anything from Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello lyrics at the ends of issues of Watchmen to DC’s Young Animals imprint being headed by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way. And even more of it goes further back with more of DC’s work in the sixties being directly influenced by the counter-culture and, by extension, the music of the era.

angel and the ape

We would get these series like Angel and the Ape, Brother Power the Geek, and Prez that were such products of the late-sixties/early-seventies era that it’s hard to look at the imagery used for their titular characters and not see the ways in which that particular musical era inspired them. This ties even deeper into the Adam West Batman of the era doing the Batusi (referenced later in the greatest piece of Bat-media, Batman: The Brave and the Bold’s “Mayhem of the Music Meister”).

But it isn’t always just superheroes. In the eighties we first got to see Los Bros Hernandez bring us their wonderful comic Love and Rocketsthat was dripping with musical references and stories involving various characters connected to the LA punk scene. The series even has its own unofficial soundtrack compiled from songs referenced or sung throughout the series. Love and Rockets made that leap from having music influence series in a superficial sort of way into being a part of the DNA of the series.

love and rockets 13

When we get more into the modern age, we start to see this flourishing of music related comic series come into the mainstream, most notably with the creative team of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. Beginning with the first volume of their series Phonogram in 2006, they began to show how music could work in comics in a more fundamental way. And that isn’t even getting into the playlistsGillencreatesfordifferent series. But what Phonogram did as a series was tap into something that everyone experiences: the idea of music as magic. This, layered with copious Brit-Pop references that are nigh incomprehensible unless you wrote for NME in the 90s, created a series that treated music as inspiration and source material. Like Love and Rockets before it, Phonogram worked with this idea of how music makes an individual feel but took it a step further with how that feeling is tantamount to magic itself and how people utilize that magic for themselves.

the complete phonogram

And then The Wicked + The Divine happened with Gillen and McKelvie taking that music as magic idea even further with gods being reincarnated as pop stars. Because, from the floor of a show, that’s how the music feels. What WicDiv(as it’s typically stylized) does is tap into what it means to be a fan and everything that comes with that—and I do mean every soul-crushing moment that comes with it. Gillen and McKelvie created something both delightful and harrowing in equal measure. It’s a series I’ve been following since its debut and every page follows this inaudible beat as the story rips through your soul. But it is so imbued with this musical spirit that you can’t help but dance through the tears.

the wicked

All of this brings us to a new series Image Comics released recently that wears its musical influences a bit more on its sleeve. Gunning for Hits is a series that is seeped a bit more in the business side of the music industry. And that makes perfect sense as the writer, Jeff Rougvie, is a music producer who’s worked on albums from David Bowie and Big Star.

gunning for hits

When looking at the state of the music industry and how harrowing most media typically portrays it, it makes perfect sense for a comic from someone within the industry would revolve around a former hit man working as a talent scout. While previous series glorify the music as a piece of art and the emotional connection people develop, Rougvie and Moritat gives us a kind of unerring reality seeped in back-room rumors and healthy cynicism.

Gunning for Hits is a series that feels like a natural step in how music and comics have interacted for the past fifty years. We’ve gone from the fans to the people who had a hand in creating some of these albums that were influential to those original fans. But of course, that idea of influence is a two-way street. I wonder where an intrepid reader could learn more about that.

Get excited. There’s a part two coming next week.

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drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Buzzed Books #86: The Kiss

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Brian Turner, The Kiss

Buzzed Books #86 by Aurora Huiza

The Kiss

The Kiss: Intimacies From Writers is a lovely arrangement of vignettes, short stories, essays, and poems. Each is a quick, satisfying read. They all have to do with the act of kissing. More broadly, they are about intimacy. And if bountiful, rapturous show of affection is possible, then there are also festering wounds and forever scars. The body remembers a kiss just as it remembers trauma and violence. Experiences are lasting and they inform the trajectories of lives. So it is refreshing that some of these stories also explore bad kisses, violation, and loss. Major Jackson’s piece is particularly memorable in this respect. He writes about observing a young couple kissing, and admits that their love reaches a part of him “that needs healing.” Even in adulthood, he can move back into his “childhood of violence” like walking “through a door.”

The Kiss

Many of these pieces are doors. We walk through them and sit for a few pages in somebody else’s waking life. In doing so we remember our first kiss, our first time. Rebecca Makkai offers us a brief but powerful story about what it’s like to be in college and miss your period, something that many might recognize. She later learns “that when Cassiopeia was cast into the sky as a chain of stars, an angry Poseidon ensured she’d spend half the night standing on her head.” A woman’s life, it seems, is turned upside down because of a man. She makes us think of the things that almost happened to us, of how scared we have been for the future we currently live, and of the people we knew briefly but fiercely.

Upon finishing the book, some standouts naturally come to mind. Who you are likely determines which writers you latch on to. There is something for everyone. Terrance Hayes recalls the first time his father kissed him. He prefaces this with a fictional story about a giant named Tall Paul. Tall Paul kisses his father. “The kiss was so near his ear,” Hayes writes, “the giant could have whispered something about sadness to him. They pretended it had not happened.” We ache and we long to share our deepest sorrows, and especially to connect with our parents.

Some writers truly make us hurt. Laure-Anne Bosselaar finds a poem her late lover wrote about her. He had written that there is a kiss for her left inside him. He says “it will be the last of me to die.” Much of this collection is simple but grand in this way. Such is love.

There are plenty of small truths and great lines. The shudder of a train reminds Honor Moore of a man that was once beneath her. The comparison is heavy and jarring.

The book can also be funny. Christopher Paul Wolfe offers us a slice of intimate family life. In bed with his wife, he tells her, “‘I want you more than Hillary wanted Barack’s soul.’”

These writers all bare their souls. This anthology is inclusive and refreshing. Our most sacred memories as readers are lodged in these pages. It is a book best read in parts over time, and it is meant to be mulled over. Otherwise you might find yourself overwhelmed with feeling. You might have to call your mom gushing. It’s something you’ll want to flip through every now and then, especially in your most emotionally vulnerable moments. Brian Turner did an excellent job curating an honest, diverse assortment of work.

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Aurora Huiza

Aurora Huiza is from Los Angeles, California. She is an undergraduate student at NYU studying English and Creative Writing. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction.

Episode 351: Elliot Ackerman!

26 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode, Journalism, War

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Dark at the Crossing, Elliot Ackerman, Green on Blue, Waiting for Eden

Episode 351of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I speak with the war veteran, journalist, and novelist Elliot Ackerman about composition and revision strategies, and the emotional access points from our own experience to the stories we tell.

elliot ackerman

Photo by Huger Foote.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Waiting for Eden.pngdark at the crossingGreen on Blue.png___________________________________________________________________________

Episode 351of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #258: Manhattan Baby

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

The Curator of Schlock #258 by Jeff Shuster

Manhattan Baby

There’s no baby in this motion picture. 

We haven’t covered a Lucio Fulci movie in awhile. This is a crying shame that will now be rectified. Italy’s Maestro of Madness deserves an entire wing in The Museum of Schlock. Today’s exhibit is 1982’s Manhattan Baby. It’s a bit different. Not the usual Fulci fare. For instance, this movie is about an ancient Egyptian curse and we’ve never had Lucio Fulci featuring ancient Egyptian curses. I’m reasonably confident about that fact.

mb1

The movie begins in Egypt with an exhibition led by George Hacker (Christopher Connelly of Peyton Place fame). Along for the ride are his wife, Emily (Martha Taylor), who is a professional journalist, and their ten year-old daughter, Susie (Brigitta Boccoli), who is not a professional journalist. George decides to explore some tomb that the locals say is cursed. What else is new? Listen, George is an American living in Manhattan. This means he has a posh Manhattan apartment. The family also has an au pair named Jamie (Cinzia de Ponti) to look after the kids.  What the heck is an au pair? Oh, it’s a nanny from another country. I think. Kind of like a student exchange program, but for nannies. Anyway, au pairs must be expensive, as are Manhattan apartments. Emily’s reporter salary won’t make a dent in that. George has no choice but to plunder the tomb. I’m assuming that’s his motivation and that archaeological discovery has nothing to do with it.

mb4

One of the local Egyptians decides to follow George in. This Egyptian isn’t afraid of any curse. It’s not long before George and said Egyptian fall through a trap door. The Egyptian gets impaled on some spikes, but George escapes unscathed until some statue of Isis shoots laser beams out of her eyes, blinding poor George. I think it was a statue of Isis. I’d have to watch Manhattan Baby again to double check, though, and that ain’t gonna happen.

mb3

Meanwhile, little Susie is given an antique pendant by a strange blind woman who declares that “Tombs are for the dead.” The family heads back to New York City where Susie is reunited with her younger brother Tommy (Giovanni Frezza of The House by the Cemetery infamy). George’s doctor says his eyesight should return in about a year, which ticks him off to no end. Emily returns to work, and we’re introduced to one of her reporter friends, a guy named Luke (Carlo De Mejo), who is a bit of a practical joker. He wears funny glasses like the kind with slinky eyes. Luke is also a big fan of the snakes in a can trick. Naturally, we hate Luke and want him to die.

mb2

Strange things start happening in their Manhattan apartment building. The building security guard gets trapped in an elevator. The floor of the elevator falls underneath him. Luke gets killed when he investigates Emily’s apartment, so good riddance, but it’s kind of lame. He just disappears and rematerializes in a desert where he dies of thirst.

Where’s the gore? This is a Lucio Fulci movie. I want to see eyes getting gouged out and people throwing up their own intestines. We do see one guy get his face pecked to death by some stuffed birds. I don’t know. Not Fulci’s best. Fans of Fabio Frizzi’s score for The Beyond should be happy that he’s returned to score Manhattan Baby…by using the exact same score for The Beyond.

Fail.

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Jeffrey Shuster 2

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #4: The Middle

23 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Aquaman, Catwoman, David Messina, Garry Brown, Genevieve Valentine, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Robson Rocha

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #4 by Drew Barth

The Middle

It’s hard to talk about comics without mentioning specific runs of things. Walt Simonson’s run on Thor, Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette’s Swamp Thing, Paul Cornell and Pete Wood’s Action Comics, etc. “Runs” as they’re typically known are portions of longer running series where a writer, artist, or writer and artist team continue that series by either following along with what previous creators did or create their own new stories. Some of these become iconic in the superhero genre due to how they reinvent well-established characters and make them new icons in their own right or use the space to introduce new characters and stories that would become series mainstays. These runs are the lifeblood of the genre as they are the baton-passing point between creators to do what they wish with these characters.

Thor 337.png

But then runs are kind of complicated. Moore and Bissette’s Swamp Thing begins at issue #20 in the series and Walt Simonson’s Thor (as the writer and artist) begins at issue #337. To an outside reader it may seem like beginning to read those runs would leave them confused in the middle of a story, but that doesn’t happen. Some of these most iconic runs also serve as jumping on points. The creators utilize the world they’ve been given to work on character arcs that have definitive beginning and ending points that a reader could stop if they’re inclined. It’s why seeing a new run on Aquaman by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Robson Rocha, beginning at issue #43, is both a continuation of comic tradition and a breath of fresh air (water?) for the character.

Aquaman.png

This run begins with an amnesiac Aquaman after two larger events in his series, Drowned Earth and Sink Atlantis, so he’s a bit of a blank slate right now. As always, this is the kind of perfect jumping-on point for readers that are new to either the character or the series itself if they were fans of the recent Aquaman film. But because this is a completely new team, with Kelly Sue DeConnick who is the writer of the most iconic run of Captain Marvel of the past few decades, they can potentially shape the character in completely new ways.

And this is good. These runs can bring in new readers and people who may not even like the character but like the direction they’re going in or the writers attached. I myself had only ever picked up a couple issues of Geoff Johns’ run on Aquaman years ago but didn’t stay on board(!) due to the story not really appealing to me. But while making a completely new series and starting fresh with a #1 issue still happens, they’re typically miniseries with planned ends. Here, though, there’s room to expand the character, grow the story, and experiment just a bit more with who that character is and what they can get away with in a mainstream superhero comic.

Catwoman.png

Another run happened a few years ago that typifies this idea of experimentation and growing a character. Catwoman—a series that hadn’t been handled all that well at the start of DC’s New 52—received a new team: Genevieve Valentine, Garry Brown, and, later, David Messina. Instead of the thief and occasional Batman love interest, she was now one of the crime bosses of Gotham City with all of the mafia and backstabbing drama that entailed. This run was another one of those jumping on points and I absolutely jumped on when I heard about it. The series had a new direction and a new team and the run was spectacular. Catwoman hadn’t really been the best written series out of DC due to no creator giving her a definitive run since Ed Brubaker in 2002. But it was Valentine, Brown, and Messina’s run that made me a fan of the character and made me want to seek out other work that did something interesting with the character along the same line as turning her into a Gotham mob boss.

And ultimately that’s what a good run is supposed to do. A good run will pique the interest of a reader outside of the normal audience for a specific comic. A good run can make someone a lifelong fan. A good run, like Grant Morrison’s Batman epic that encompassed multiple series, can further cement a love for an already strong character. These longer series tend to keep selling based off of buyer’s habits—it’s why they’ll never truly disappear—so a publisher taking advantage of those potentially guaranteed sales to keep pushing superhero comics forward is always needed. We drive out stagnation that can keep a character or a series from wallowing in the same story lines and rehashed plots over and over as well as bring new readers into the fold. And if there’s anything comics still needs, it’s new readers.

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drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 350: Eleanor Matthews!

19 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode, Kerouac House

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Episode 350 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I speak with the Kerouac House’s fall 2018 resident, Eleanor Matthews about Victorian novels, characterization and plots, and the connections between physical activity and creative writing.

eleanor matthews

Photo by Katherine Parker.

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Episode 350 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #257: Brightburn Trailer

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #257 by Jeff Shuster

Brightburn Trailer

Leave Superman alone. Just leave him alone. 

I don’t typically review trailers. What’s in a trailer, honestly? False advertising? Sure. Remember how excited you got after watching the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? Did that movie live up to the trailer? No. One of the worst trailers of all time is for a little film titled Dirty Harry, but nobody cares because that movie is a classic. So reviewing a trailer is kind of a waste of time because the finished product may not even resemble what is advertised. And I will now rant about Brightburn‘s trailer.

Hollywood has a Superman problem. They didn’t used to. Back in 1978, we had Christopher Reeve with his perfect smile and perfect curl throwing out cornball platitudes with abandon and it was inspired.

superman

Good was good. Evil was evil. Miss Tessmacher was hot.

teschmacher

All was right in the world. And then we had that Batman Killing Superman movie where Batman hogties Superman, ready to slit Superman’s throat until he realizes both of their moms have the same name. Don’t worry. Superman dies anyway.

brightburn3

And now we have Brightburn from Sony Pictures. In the beginning of the trailer, we see a quaint farm being attended to by a couple resembling the Kents (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman). A spaceship falls from the sky carrying an infant boy that looks human, but is not human. As the boy grows into a pre-teen, strange powers manifest such as super strength, the ability to fly, and even heat vision. The boy’s adoptive mother hopes he’ll be a force for good, but this foreboding trailer tells us otherwise.

bightburn1

What if kid Superman was a serial killer? What if he wanted to use his powers for evil and go around killing people? That’s the impression I get. He corners some waitress in a diner and we here a crunch after he flies toward her. Dani Di Placido of Forbes wrote about the Brightburn trailer in a recent column. He states that someone so powerful and so flawless as Superman would have to be some sort of sociopath.

brightburn2

I don’t know. I’d like to think that if I got super powers, I wouldn’t use those powers to become some sort of violent murderer. And is it that far of a stretch to imagine that someone with super powers might actually want to use those powers to help people? Maybe the people who can’t imagine that possibility are the real sociopaths. I’m just saying.

This looks to be another gem from Sony Pictures and I know I shouldn’t judge it until I watch the whole movie. Maybe they intend Brightburn to be a part of their Spider-manless cinematic universe. Perhaps Venom, the Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus will all join forces to take down evil child Superman. That might be something to see. I wish Sony well in their quest to not only destroy the super hero genre, but the very art form of cinema itself.

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Jeffrey Shuster 4

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #3: JUMP for Me

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

≈ 3 Comments

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #3 by Drew Barth

JUMP for Me

My first major foray into print comics was with Shonen Jumpwhen I was about twelve years old. It wasn’t hard to tempt me with the first issue of it I saw at a CVS—the Yu-Gi-Ohcover and free card on the inside was enough. But, mainly just wanting to get that free Yu-Gi-Oh card because I wasn’t a great child, I flipped through multiple chapters of manga I’d never seen before out of curiosity. Shonen Jumpis where most teens and twenty-somethings were first exposed to manga due to its ubiquity in our lives. This is Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, etc. Nearly everything we’d watch on Toonami after school came from this magazine.

Dragonball.png

But times change. Shonen Jump in America stop publishing physical volumes, moved to all digital, came back to physical for a brief period, and is now utilizing a new kind of distribution platform. It’s all digital again, but works on subscriptions along with buying individual volumes. Everything that Shonen Jump ever put out in English is now available on their online portaland app to read for a fee of $2 a month. Not only that, but new chapters are being released every week, day and date of the Japanese release, for free without paying the monthly fee. And that’s massive for two important reasons.

  1. There’s an old quote that essentially says that to end piracy of media, it must be easier for the consumer to get things legally than illegally. It’s the main reason why Game of Thrones is consistently one of the most pirated TV show every year. And this goes double for print material like comics and manga. Most western publishers have found ways to make things easier through the use of Comixology as a digital service for comics, but manga never really had this same kind of platform. A volume or chapter of a series would come out and it could take actual decades for it to get translated into English and put on sale. That barrier essentially disappears now.
  2. This is a new avenue for receiving comic content that directly competes with DC Universe, Marvel Unlimited, and ComiXology Unlimited. But what makes this one different from most of the others is that this is just the comics. No live-action shows, no movies, no merchandise discounts. The new Shonen Jump is simple, cheap, and precisely what it advertises: everything they’ve ever put out in America for reading right now.

When looking at DC and Marvel’s own digital platforms, it’s odd to me that they don’t do something similar. Marvel and ComiXology are the closest with curated lists of popular characters and story lines with all of the current issues available and older ones being added, but then they don’t have everything. DC Universe has a glut of content, from old Batman TV shows to Batman animated movies to the new Teen Titans show that has Robin. They’re banking on Bats. But still, in terms of raw comic content, there’s still a lot (of Batman) missing.

If I had these services and wanted to read every issue of Spiderman or Batman or Captain America or Wonder Woman, I wouldn’t be able to. And the different services try to work around that by showing curated content or specific runs they feel are the most relevant. Or, in DC’s case, shows and movies to supplement what’s missing. But if I wanted to read the entirety of Dragonball right now, I could. Admittedly, these manga aren’t as old as Batman or Spiderman, but still, if I went crazy and wanted to read all seven hundred chapter of Naruto, there’s nothing stopping me now.

Shonen Jump does have a smaller base of printed material to put out there compared to DC and Marvel, I know this, but them putting everything out for incredibly cheap is astounding. No publisher of comics has made their material available in this way before and I can only hope that this helps to set more of a precedent for others to at least attempt getting more of the comic material out that their readers want.

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drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Pensive Prowler #27: A Modest Proposal for Politicians of all Nations*

14 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Pensive Prowler, politics

≈ 1 Comment

Pensive Prowler #27 by Dmetri Kakmi

A Modest Proposal for Politicians of all Nations*

It is a melancholy truth to those who walk through this great world of ours and see capital cities filled with politicians and their minions, amassing wealth and wanting to live all of their lives on the backs of the working people, that a pressing problem begs for solution.

london-parliament

It is agreed by all that this prodigious outpouring of parasites is a very great grievance; and therefore whoever should find a fair, cheap, and easy method of making the leeches useful members of society would deserve ample financial recompense and acclaim for all the world to see.

But my intention is far from being confined to provide only for current practicing members of the political classes. Like Herod with the baby Jesus, I intend to act pre-emptively, hoping to strike early and to net youngsters whose ambition is to one day rise to the dizzy heights of presidency and to prime ministership, chancellor or emir, or whatever title applies to the jurisdiction in which you, dear reader, reside and chaff under the load of hardship while those charged with looking after your welfare live in luxury and want for nothing.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighted the various schemes and opinions of others, I have found them wanting in the extreme. And I have no doubt, if put to practise, my scheme will save many a tear and lamentation in the dead of night as we sleep safe in the knowledge the office-bearer truly serves his nation with every fibre of his or indeed her ability.

I know not where you reside, dear reader, but I live in Australia—the lucky country (if you are not Aboriginal)—and therefore my comments will be limited to my borders, lest I overstep my expertise and offend.

canberra parliament house

At any rate, not taking in the shadow ministry and local councils, the Australian parliament has seventy-six senators and 150 members of the house of representatives. It is, you will agree, a fraction of the overall population and yet these moochers avail themselves of the greater sum of monies from the public purse and think nothing of besmirching the name of the sick, needy, and unemployed and blaming them for all of the nation’s ills.

The prime minister, for instance, is lauded with $AUD527, 852. By comparison, the average cabinet minister struggles with a mere $AUD350, 209. As an addition, these honourable personages receive superannuation and business expenses, including travel expenses, health benefits, a spouse allowance, an electorate allowance, and a resettlement allowance. They get a supplementary income for taking on additional duties, such as chairing a committee. Furthermore, retiring federal politicians are awarded six figure pensions for life. The ‘reportable’ fringe benefits make for most interesting reading.

Meanwhile, the median salary in Australia is $AUD80, 000. Homelessness is on the rise. Most live under the poverty line and many struggle to find work.

Thus inspired by Monsieur Jean-Jacques Rousseau and given extra zip by Mr Rod Serling, I shall now humbly proffer my solutions to this most exasperating dilemma, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing Greek physician of my acquaintance that a pampered, well-fed politician over the age of twenty-five makes for a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether fried, boiled or baked; and I have no doubt that the middle-aged will offer choice cuts and equally serve a mouthwatering fricassee, a ragout and, at a pinch, hamburger, thus freeing us up to reserve the grizzled elder statesman for sausages, mozzarella, and salami.

salami

The parliamentarian who takes especial care with his or her skin can be turned into designer handbags, shoes, belts, vests, leather chaps for sadomasochists, coats, and various other fashion accessories. Bones can be put to the service of furniture, kitchen implements and cutting-edge sculpture, thus using all necessary parts and assuring that no wastage whatsoever be entered into. We are after all in the age of recyclables.

As for up-and-coming politicians, from let us say the age of fifteen or sixteen, they can be rounded up in schoolyards as soon as they express the least interest in the political sphere and sold to Russia and China for organ harvesting, thus nipping the bud before the disease can spread far afield.

I reserve the best for the politician who treats the public with contempt and for whom lying and deceiving is second nature only to hypocrisy: round them up and turn them into pet food.

milk- dog

After all, they did want to serve their country and there is no better way to do that than to serve them up in a platter.

I can think of no objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless we desire to act against the number of people who will thereby find material and spiritual benefit in this endeavour.

And I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in promoting this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good; and I challenge any politician or member of the public who dislikes my overture that they first query the patents of their morals, whether they would not at this day think a gross injustice is remedied by my modest, though far-sighted submission.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

jonathan_swift_by_charles_jervas

*With sincere thanks to Jonathan Swift.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

dmetri-kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

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