MONDOmagazine

By Denise Liu

The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert
Marc-Antoine Mathieu (w + a). NBM, 2007 translation.

Read if you like: irony, Absurdism, secret history, art history/theory, neurotic artist types

A majestic glass pyramid. Halls of gilded frames. Creepy pink-eyed albino monks. What do all of these things have in common? Yes, The Louvre Museum, the very same that has co-published a series of four stand-alone graphic novels. Why? Who cares. The Museum Vaults is an awesome read.

The Jist: An art assessor and his hunch-backed assistant are hired to appraise the gigantic collection of The Musee du Revolu (an anagram of its forgotten name, The Louvre). Together, Monsieur Eudeus Volumer and Leonard spend a lifetime touring its bottomless ancient catacombs, each room containing a sort of Willy Wonkian affair of specialized art preservation tasks. These journal entries are the objective observations of a ludicrous machine, and tend to read more like the travel diary of a bizarre dream.

Monsieur Volumer is part arts critic and part explorer. Apart from aging, both he and Leonard are pretty static characters but are given loads of personality through Mathieu’s deft drawings. They guide readers to the true shining personality and star of this story, The Musee du Revolu. Read the rest of this entry »

Miles’ Book

Robin #180
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Freddie Williams II
DC Comics, 2008

I’ve talked about my love of Tim Drake’s Robin before. Somewhere in my mother’s house resides the first 18 or so issues of Robin. Now, 160 or so issues later, it’s hard to see that kid I loved so much.

This isn’t a horrible comic. It shows Tim in the role he should have, as a junior detective, using his smarts rather than his fists to solve problems — though he still uses his fists a lot on this issue. It’s a plot-driven issue, with Robin putting together a couple clues and trying to gather evidence. This is all good, but there is little in the way of character moments, and what is there seems a little off.

There’s a couple lines that scream, “man who hasn’t seen his teens in a long time trying to write a teenager.” For example, as Robin fights a man in the Red Robin costume, Tim thinks, “And this guys shows up, wearing a costume that ‘Jan Brady’ Robin and current butthead Jason Todd wore during some weird adventure.” For me, there are two big problems with this thought: one, nobody in their teens knows who Jan Brady is, I even kinda forgot; and two, no one has said the word “butthead” without ironic intent in at least eight years.

Williams is an artist who tends to be better at drawing action poses, but he seems to be bored during quiet scenes and will rush his art accordingly. There is also a problem with his action in that it’s all poses and there’s no fluidity between the panels. For example, during the fight with Red Robin the panels go as such:

• Panel one: karate poses
• Panel two: Red Robin has fired a gun, Robin has ducked.
• Panel three: Robin has apparently teleported across the roof next to Red Robin, and is disarming him. Teleportation is not a power that Robin has.

This might also be a case of the writer not giving the artist enough room to execute a proper fight sequence, but either way it robs the reader of any excitement.

It might seem like I totally hate this comic — I really don’t. It’s an average comic, but this character is deserving of so much more. I’ve read that they are going to cancel this series in February; I won’t be surprised if there’s a new number one in March. There’s a lot of potential here, and I hope DC knows it.

Isaac’s Book

Deadpool #4
Written by Daniel Way
Pencilled by Carlo Barberi and Paco Medina
Marvel Comics, 2008

The premise for this adventure is that Deadpool, in need of some money (aren’t we all?) gets a job from this guy Zeke (whom he hates, because Zeke is a scumbag) to kill this plastic surgeon that creates zombies out of his patients, including Zeke’s wife.

While there’s a number of pretty funny stuff in this comic, here’s what really got me: Deadpool is slinking into the community of potential zombies on his way to complete his job, when the local constabulary (really, you won’t just write police?) suddenly surround Deadpool, brandishing all manner of firearms and one guy yells out “Aim only for the body!”

Now if you actually think it through, he means aim for the body as opposed to the head; it’s the equivalent of “take the zombie alive!” But I didn’t think about that, to me it was just a man yelling the most obvious statement possible. And I find that hilarious. I will proudly be among the crowd who laughs at one of the few things not really meant as a joke.

The second thing I greatly enjoyed also takes a little explanation. The art in the book is just okay, it gets the job done, nothing to write home about, and the last five pages are done by Paco Medina, and it actually gets a bit more on the bland side. So a classic hunchback Igor-type guy shows up, suggesting that Deadpool wants the plastic surgery treatment, on account of Deadpool having that face of his (for those that don’t know, it’s disfigured). This is great since it means Deadpool is that much closer to his target, but he’s also pretty excited to see a real hunchback, so Deadpool hunches over and says to the guy “Go like this an’ say: ‘it’s pronounced , ‘Eye-Gaw””

The following panel (lacking any real expression on the hunchbacks part, again, the art, bland, remember I said that?) is just a close up on the hunchback saying “Plastic surgery will only change your outer self, you know. Inside, you will still be a horrible person.”

I found that hilarious, partly because the art was weak there.

One place the art is not weak is the cover by Jason Pearson – it’s as if Deadpool was around during the time of brown suit Wolverine over in Marvel Comics Presents (he may have been chronologically, but I’m just saying it’s a similar style to the comic series itself, particularly the stories starring Wolverine. Remember Marvel Comics Presents is an anthology book). It’s also as if Rob Liefeld were good at art. Truly, the stuff of Bizarro universes.

Deadpool is a pretty crazy guy (he sure does love his exploding chair), so excuse me if I indulge my own crazy side a bit and have a ton of fun with this comic.

Positing on positivity! Get it? You’ll laugh later.

By Heather Loney

[Read part one of this article here]

Thinking positively, for a surly naysayer like myself, can be exhausting. In fact, just writing that sentence — having to explain it — feels like a tepid wave of lethargy washing over me. Fortunately for this article, my parents just dropped off a novelty can of “Canadian Beaver Buzz,” and before you think my parents are inappropriate and pervy (gutter-minds, all of you!), realize that CBB is Canada’s rebuttal to the Red Bull epidemic.

With that in mind, allow me to recount. Part one of this topic — how to be remembered after your death — featured some useful, albeit negative, ideas for achieving this feat. Part two vows to be positive! Nothing like a little sunshine in your day, right? The Beav is kicking in, so here we go! Positivity! For the next three paragraphs!

Positive tactic number one: emblazon yourself in pop culture history by being just famous enough to wind up on a witty t-shirt or coffee mug. My first exposure to Sartre wasn’t in OAC Philosophy or first year university. It was on a t-shirt that my dad used to wear that read: “I’m not here. You’re not here. Don’t leave a message. There is no beep — Jean Paul Sartre’s Answering Machine.” And I thought, “Wow, I don’t know who that is, or what that means. But all of the adults around me seem to be chuckling smugly at this shirt right now; I like this Sartre character” — and a future philosophy major was born.

Similarly, this summer I was at a cottage, and while making the morning coffee found an old mug that read “I’m saving myself for Tom Selleck.” I had to pause. I mean, it had never really occurred to me to think of Mr. Selleck in this way, but seeing such a blunt expression of desire for him, suddenly I had the urge to forget about the whole “old enough to be my grandfather” thing, dust off my copy of Mr. Baseball, and seriously rethink my original stance on this aging beefcake. Way to go T.S.!

Positive tactic number two: sorry, what? Apologies. I was just thinking about something else. Let’s just say, get on a mug. Get on a mug by being really handsome, and growing a formidable mustache, and making funny, awesome movies about playing baseball in Japan. Yeah, then I’ll remember you.

In this article ,”conservative” is used synonymously with “prejudiced.” A double-edged sword?

By Ben Robinson

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article with some questionable humour in it. A reader named Dasha posted a comment that said I had crossed the line. I had offended Dasha. That was not my intent. Here is what I wrote:

“Maybe if you had said you had just hit your girlfriend because she wouldn’t shut up about being on her period, you would be allowed to continue to exist spiritually with your brethren, but owning a blog — and what’s worse, advertising its existence — were capital crimes.”

This is Dasha’s response:

“Good point about blogging; I agree. Although I’m not at all crazy about the reference to violence against women as an acceptable conversation topic. It is my understanding that this was a joke, but it was a stupid one indeed, one that might alienate a sizable portion of your audience. Keep that in mind, son.”

The point of my paragraph was that violence against women is unacceptable. More accurately, the point was that talking about it is unacceptable. When writing this, I thought to myself, “What is something one could say that would be so shocking that one might not be allowed to continue to speak?” Violence against women sprung to mind. I did not mean to imply that violence against women, or talking about violence against women, is acceptable. I meant to mention something taboo as a way of illustrating how taboo blogging was. The joke was that blogging isn’t as bad as violence against women. The joke was not that violence against women is funny.

Inside the joke about how talking about violence against women is unacceptable, a joke is made about violence against women that is unacceptable, and the unacceptable nature of the joke within the joke is what makes the main joke humourous. I apologize that reading my article brought up something that evoked such a negative reaction in Dasha, and possibly other readers. My intent was not to offend. I encourage more comments about how I sometimes cross the line and how I can prevent myself from doing so in the future.

I consider myself a comedy junkie. I watch a lot of comedy. A relatively new style of comedy that I have noticed in the past ten years is something I will refer to as “The Double-Edged Sword.” This may be a very old technique, but I have only noticed it in comedic media that has appeared since the late ’90s. The Double-Edged Sword is a bipartisan style of humour that typically deals with political correctness. In my mind, it was pioneered by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. It was also employed by The Man Show and to a lesser extent other youth-oriented comedy shows such as Politically Incorrect, Sara Silverman, SNL, and MadTV.

How it works is this: someone says something blantently racist, sexist, or homophobic as a joke. To liberals, the joke is funny because the joke is so offensive. The butt of the joke is the teller of the joke. The fact that the teller is being unashamedly racist, for example Cartman in South Park, is funny because racism to liberals is seen as a sign of stupidity. It is a form of slapstick. On the other hand, to conservatives, Cartman is funny because he’s being racist, and the butt of the joke is the category of people Cartman makes fun of. Both liberals and conservatives laugh at the same joke, for different reasons.

In my opinion, what politicizes the joke is the person telling it. It seems to me, most comedians who use The Double-Edged sword are liberals. That’s how the sword gets its two edges. If a conservative told a Double-Edged joke, it would be purely racist, sexist, or homophobic. The true intention of a Double-Edged joke is to make fun of prejudiced views. The power of the Double-Edged joke is that no spin is necessary, a straight telling of the old kind of joke is funny because it is ironic.

If I may be so bold, I told a Double-Edged joke in my blogging article. I think a lot of people tell these Double-Edged jokes, but they are usually apolitical. For instance, if you act like a baby, and try to make someone laugh the exact same way a baby would, that is funny both because baby humour is genuinely funny, and because you are not a baby, so you are making fun of the baby. The goal of these jokes is to make the original edge of the joke seem stupid. If you are Cartman, you are making racism stupid by being racist. If you are a baby, you are making babies stupid by being a baby. Or more accurately, you are making adult baby-aping behaviour seem stupid and unacceptable outside the confines of a joke.

Perhaps this kind of joke is dangerous. Maybe it shouldn’t be done, because the wounds are still fresh. But I believe The Double-Edged Sword has an important place in modern comedy. I believe it is an effective tool in combatting prejudice. In the future I will try to make more clear whose side I am on when using this humour. And I apologize if just reading about abuse against women was offensive. I apologize for your hurt feelings. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I want to be on your side.