Quick update on MONARCHS OF MAYHEM and breaking news on Alan Moore!?!

Quick update.

I have four new MONARCHS OF MAYHEM interviews that have come in and three more that I’m waiting to arrive, and just have to schedule them and put them on the calendar. Last week completely threw my time table off, and this weekend isn’t helping any.

But yeah should have the next couple of MONARCHS OF MAYHEM up after the weekend.

And once all the MONARCHS OF MAYHEM posts are up that’s just the end of the first stage, the second stage is where it gets fun. But I’ll notify you of that when the time comes.

On another note the link usage has dipped a bit, so if we can turn that around that would be great. You guys using the links and purchasing through those links, is a huge deal. And is greatly appreciated.

Well that’s all the minor updates for this posting. Have a great night, and I’ll leave you with the craziest thing I read all day over on BLEEDING COOL, namely… Alan Moore goes… OFF! (Again:)). I love Alan Moore, even when he’s completely napalming everyone in sight.

Check out this line, from Mr. Moore:

“In the world that could have been, I could have carried on working happily with the American comics industry.

I know a way that they could have sorted out their continuity. I could have gotten rid of all of their problems for them. It would have been really simple. But, like I say, they unfortunately alienated me. But, they’ve done that [to] everybody who has been a heavy-hitter creatively. Jack Kirby and all the people who genuinely created stuff all got screwed. It was only the company employees who kind of created stuff that wasn’t really that original in the first place that didn’t. It was the Len Weins who kind of did all right out of it because they always did what the company told them.” — Alan Moore

Ohh, I grew up reading some Len Wein comics. Ouch that’s harsh. Heh!Heh!

But the thing about Alan Moore is, even when he is bitch slapping people, and saying ‘F*ck! You write like a retard!’. You cannot argue with the man, because he has the body of work, even to this day, to back up his talk. And the man has a reason to feel screwed.

So I completely get his tirade with the industry. Where I think he does a disservice to himself is with his burning of bridges with his co-creators. That has a bit to do with how Moore views himself.

From what I can gather reading his interviews, he does have a bit of a high opinion of himself, bordering on perceiving himself as the messiah, the savior of comics. Which while not true, is complicated by the fact… that it’s not entirely false. Alan Moore’s work made something… new out of comics. It redefined what a comic could be, it raised the bar, and here almost three decades after he raised that bar, no one else has arguably equaled it, and without argument no one has transcended it. Thirty years later and WATCHMEN is still hailed as the best, most sophisticated work the comics medium has produced.

So yeah given that, and given the fact you’ve been rewarded for this achievement by being repeatedly lied to, cheated, and used, and ripped off… yeah… I can see that persecution, mixed with an unequaled body of work, will give anyone a bit of a messianic attitude. His falling out with Dave Gibbons is part of this.

Moore taking an idealogical stance against Hollywood films, has been signing over his revenue from these films V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN etc to his co-creators. Moore’s stipulation being he wants his co-creators to call him up and thank him when they receive the money. Both David Lloyd and Dave Gibbons, ultimately balked at this.

Being an outsider I can see both points of view:

Moore sees he has on idealogical grounds signed over a considerable sum to his co-creators and wants to be thanked. But if I’m a co-creator my stance is ‘I didn’t tell you to sign over the money, if that’s what you want to do great, I appreciate it, but you’re not going to compel my appreciation. I’m not going to thank you for a work that is mine as much as it is yours’. And I can only gather that’s Lloyd’s and Gibbon’s stance.

This is the problem with altruism when it is misplaced, and I think in Moore’s case it is. He gives away the money but wants to be thanked.

Note to Moore: If you want to be thanked then give your proceeds to your family or a charity. But to relinquish your profits to your coworkers and then insist they thank you when they get the check??– well that’s you putting fellow creators and fellow men and I would assume fellow friends, in a subservient position to be beholden to you, and therefore that’s not giving them anything at all.

That behavior is attempting to buy something. So yeah I completely understand what Moore wants to do on idealogical grounds, but he would have been better doing it without expectation of being thanked, or bnot doing it at all.

So Moore, burning bridges with his friends, when friends always a rare commodity becomes ever rarer as we get older; is the only thing, If I had his ear, I would suggest he reconsider.

As far as his industry comments…

Well once again a lot of people are up in arms, talking smack about Alan Moore because of his attitude. Here’s the thing, you have to earn the right to throw bricks. And when it comes to the industry Alan Moore has earned the right to throw bricks. A lot of you attackers have not. Stay the heck out of it.

I agree that perhaps there’s another way to handle this almost three decade old feud, between Alan Moore and mainstream comics (specifically DC) rather than tossing gasoline on it. But if that’s not the way Alan Moore chooses to go, that’s his choice. I’m not in his shoes.

Sometimes the price of genius means you tow an idealogical line, perhaps to your detriment, and past the understanding of those of us who eat compromise for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so we attack anyone who doesn’t compromise, or quiet down like the rest of us.

Alan Moore wants to rant, he’s earned the right to do so. Cause even when he is ranting, he is erudite, and informed, and teaching us about navigating the slippery slope of dealing with businesses… with conglomerates in the early days of the 21st century. Hopefully without losing our souls…. it’s a history lesson and a cautionary tale. So rather than objecting to Alan Moore having an opinion take from what he says… what works for you, and leave alone the rest.

Pretty simple.

Read Rich Johnston’s synopsis here and when done with that, go here to read the whole eight page interview! I’m going to call it right now, with a whole 10 months left in the year, the best/most important comics related interview of the year. :)!

heh.heh. That Len Wein comment cracks me up. 🙂

President Obama: The Summing up Place. Conservatism, Liberalism… and the road yet traveled

The problem I have with President Obama, is not that he lied in his pre-election promises.

To some extent all politicians, slaved to corporate interests lie, it is an unfortunate failing of the American political system that we allow business to have more influence on our politicians than the citenzenry they are supposedly there to serve.

No my issue with Obama, that I hinted at on this blog prior to his election, is the magnitude of his lies.

He rode into office on the hopes and dreams and eloquent quotations, sufferings and civil liberties of the dream of America. Rode into office as an answer to this endless push to war, to the dismantling of liberties, and to the corporate plundering and rape of America, that characterized the Bush administration.

And unfortunately Obama’s administration has been, for all wild mutterings of America’s nazietic wing, has been a continuation of Bush’s policies, which is to say a continuation of corporate America’s policies.

He pays lip service to liberalism, when his policies, laws and edicts since entering office, is conservative to the point of totalitarianism. Granting the FBI and other acronyms of our abuse, unheard of powers to dismantle, without oversight or rule of law or due cause, civil liberties on a frightening scale.

They can shut down websites, the Internet in fact, a kill-switch, with no cause, and no oversight beyond their own. The FBI is allowed to put a tracer, a tracking bug if you will, on any person, any vehicle, at their discretion, with no oversite of law. With no word, but their own. A recent push to make abuse or violation of corporate rules by employees, a federal crime. And the list goes on.

Add to that the continuing rape of the American people, unholy taxation of the American people, financial slavery of generations not yet born, to support businesses unrepentant in their mismanagement and greed, and willingness to sacrifice America as a concept, to advance insane policies of the military-industrial complex, and new middle east pleasure nations, carved out of the bodies of all those we have blown to hell.

So yeah, you can say I’m not happy with the current administration. Obama was the lesser of two evils, but much like Kerry before him, whose race against Bush was a sham, too good old boys staging a fixed fight for the rubes, the wrestling crowd, he was just Bush, repackaged.

Which is to say, he is the talking head of global corporate entities, that love America not.

But what makes Obama’s betrayal, particularly egregious, is it really is a no win situation for him, the way he is currently playing it. He will go down as a traitor to the masses who elected him, and to the interests of people and causes and legacies, that he had the gall in his election bid to invoke, and the gall in his presidency to utterly betray.

And even though he serves well his Bushian corporate masters, following in policy the dismantling of liberties initiated by Bush, he is reviled and hated by the very conservatives that his presidency is clearly supporting. Hated because, he still plays enough lip-service to liberalism, in his color if not in his heart, to elicit a Pavlovian hate, from people who are ignorant of the larger mysteries, and for whom hate is all they have been bred to give.

Obama, if he continues the perilous road he is on, he will be hated by heroes, and he will be hated by the fools he serves. And his presidency will go down as a failure, to shake the very foundations of the empire.

Which is perhaps what it was designed to do all along.

There are those, chairmen of ships of industry, pullers of strings, proponents of slavery, and dismantlers of concepts such as minimum wage, and workers protection, who want very much to be their father’s sons. To be once again undisputed Robber-Barrons and Masters, and make the mass of men serfs and slaves. And all that stands in their way… is this dream called America.

If they can make Americans renounce this dream of liberty and brotherhood, this purposely failed concept of America, they can win, those great things, their fathers lost.

They can win, by extinguishing in the hearts of those who should love it most… even the dream of liberty.

And Obama’s presidency stands poised to give to these men their…New World Order. Their rise of Nazism. We are Germany, being groomed for the coming atrocities, for the rise of a new Hitler, to save us from our failed democracy.

Obama as puppet to corporate masters will serve nothing but his own vilification, and the destruction of his children’s future, all children’s future, and the immolation of 400 years on this continent, long before the constitutional signing, of striving toward a more perfect union.

Obama’s only hope, as President, as Father, as Man, and ultimately as descendant of slaves, is to be in deed the man of his election speeches, to give those who voted for him, his half of the contract. And to give those who hate him for no reason, cause to respect him, and if necessary to fear him.

It is a hard road to walk. But when the choices are liberty or slavery, I will walk the former road, though hell and some such neighbor bar my way, to paraphrase Shakespeare. And Obama is at that point in his presidency where he must choose his road.

As defender of liberty… or its destroyer.