GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #502: THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE

I'll bet a hundred years from now we will still have new Twilight Zone shows.

 

While I was recovering from my second toe amputation I took it upon myself to watch every single episode of the new Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, and I fucking loved it. Not every episode was good, but some of them I would put up against almost any original TZ episode from the 'Sixties. I say that as someone who saw every episode of the original. Every episode (sadly) of the one with Forest Whitaker hosting. And I've seen a few of the episodes from the 'Eighties version because it's not out on DVD and no one cares to stream it.

(Side note: one of the 'Eighties ones was about JFK surviving that day in TX and how horrible the world turns out because of it. I'm almost certain Stephen King ripped it off for 11/22/63.)

So the new series. These things inevitably feel the need to remake an original episode. This one chose "Nightmare at 20000 Feet," cunningly retitled "Nightmare at 30000 Feet." This one has a special place in my heart because it guest stars Dan Carlin, the host of my favorite podcast of all time, Hardcore History. I liked the way it was updated so that instead of seeing a gremlin on the wing, the protagonist finds an mp3 player with a podcast on it about the doom of that very flight. It fucks with the guy until he's Shatner-crazy so that even though he's not aware of it, he's making the podcast become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also stars Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley as a stranger sympathetic to the main character's needs. And it never ceases to amaze me that this actor voices Mickey Mouse, especially considering how foul-mouthed he was on Silicon Valley. The ending of this episode made me laugh a lot, but I won't spoil it here.

"Six Degrees of Freedom" is a powerful episode that would lay waste to maybe half of the originals. A group of astronauts on their way to Mars discover that while they're in space the earth has been destroyed. They no longer have a home, and they are the first humans to go to Mars, so there is no terraforming or anything. The tension can't merely be cut with a knife. The tension would take that fucking knife and cut YOU.

I also enjoyed "Blurryman," but I suspect many of you would find that kinda cheesy mostly because of the reveal in the end. I dug it a lot, and it brings a writer back from the dead, so that's super cool. Again, no spoilers here.

But hands down, my absolute favorite is "Try, Try." Often a show will do a Groundhog Day episode, and this is certainly TZ's version of that. But no one ever asks, what if you are part of someone else's Groundhog Day? What if that person is obsessed with you? What things has this person done to you that you don't remember because the world resets every day? This episode asks those questions and more, and I'm delighted with the answers.

I'm pissed off that they ended the show after two seasons. That was a quality program, and I would have loved more episodes. Fucking . . . fucking shit. If you have Paramount+, I highly recommend you watch it. And don't forget the new Star Trek shows, which are awesome. And check out Strange Angel, while you're at it. It's the true and very weird story of Jack Parsons, a pioneering rocket engineer who, in his spare time, was involved in a sex cult. The show didn't get this far, but in real life he was scammed by L. Ron Hubbard, who took him for a couple thousand dollars, a boat and Parsons's wife. I don't know how people like that con artist. Hubbard was a good writer but not that good.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #135: TOO MUCH TV

Once upon a time, when I was in junior high, one of my fellow students was taking a poll for class. It was about the TV habits of preteens, and she asked me what shows I watched on a regular basis. I told her I don't really watch TV. All I watched in those days were reruns of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (and cartoons, of course, but those were usually on VHS and didn't count). Truth be told, I thought everything on TV was complete garbage, so I didn't watch it.


Fast forward more than twenty years, and I'm watching TV every night, at least for one hour. Don't get me wrong, I still think there's a lot of garbage on TV. I think Sturgeon's Law might be a bit too generous for what's being broadcast these days, but I do have my shows. Now, with so many shows taking a break for the holidays, I don't watch TV EVERY night, but when I was a kid, I would have never thought I'd have ended up like this.


Mondays are for GOTHAM. Tuesdays for Marvel's AGENTS OF SHIELD. Wednesdays are for AMERICAN HORROR STORY: FREAKSHOW. Thursdays are for WHITE COLLAR. Fridays are for CONSTANTINE. Saturdays are for HELL ON WHEELS. Sundays are for THE WALKING DEAD, THE TALKING DEAD and COMIC BOOK MEN. Repeat.


It's a marvel I get anything done. What happened? What changed me?


I actually don't think I'VE changed. I've always eagerly consumed excellent content, be it from books or movies. I think TV changed. The quality is better (which doesn't say much, but still). When they upped their game, I took interest, that's all.


But I am glad that great TV isn't in the majority. If every show was good, I would probably have dedicate a lot more time to watching TV, and I shudder to think of that as a good thing.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #128: QUIET DESPERATION

MAD MEN is nearing its end. It comes back in spring 2015 for the final episodes, and I'll be truly sad to see it go. For a show seemingly about nothing, it's also about everything.


Most people wonder why I like the show, and it certainly isn't the reason most people like it. Everyone sees the characters smoking and drinking at work. They see an age when black people never rose higher than the elevator operator, or the waiter, or the cook in the back. Women knew their place as housekeepers. People look nostalgically back at those things, not realizing that the show is actually taking the piss out of that shit. Honestly, it might have worked a hundred years from now. The problem is, there are too many people still alive today who remember those times, or they're children of people who remember those times. Hell, I was raised by my grandparents, and the tang of the MAD MEN era was still alive in my own childhood, just about to die. Instead of recognizing the show as a lampoon of a misbegotten era, everyone looks fondly back at those good ol' days.


OK, I wouldn't mind being able to drink on the job. That would be cool. But keep in mind, the good ol' days were only the good ol' days if you were white, male and preferably middle-class, at the least.


The part I truly enjoy about the show is the quiet desperation. The lack of communication. The unsung desires of the heart, and the unfulfilled dreams of the average person.


But there's more to it than that. I completely forgot, but the show used to have a tagline, and I was reminded of it tonight: "Mad Men: Where the Truth Lies." I hate most taglines, but that is pretty much spot on. I think the ultimate message of the show is that we are all advertisers. We pick the best versions of ourselves, and we put them on display to the world. See how cool I am? Come on, fellas. Like me. Please?


But that version of us is rarely the truth. It's the truth we want, and if we want it enough, maybe--JUST MAYBE--it becomes the truth. We spend most of our time trying to get people to like us. To be our friends. To maybe fuck us. To spend time together. We no longer need our survival instincts when it comes to our physical lives. We've become completely independent on our social survival needs.


This is so much more true today. We post things we think will get our friends' attention. We live to see who likes our Facebook posts or retweets things in our Twitter feed.


Here's the interesting part, though: I don't think that's a bad thing, just so long as you don't hurt other people to get that attention. We all want to be loved. Sometimes, when we're at our wits end, and we're ready to throw in the towel because everything sucks and always will suck, we just want to be held and to be told that we're worthy of another's love.


Don Draper is his own creation. Literally. His real name is Dick Whitman (as we learned in the first season, so I don't want to hear anyone screaming about spoiler alerts). He was dissatisfied with his life, so he took the place of someone else when the real Don Draper died in the Korean War. He built a new life for himself. And as he gets older, it's tearing him apart. You can see the Draper facade falling apart, and Dick Whitman yearning to break through again, which is why he took his kids to see the house he really was raised in, a whorehouse from the Great Depression.


It's all about identity. If you look at it from a certain angle, it's THE TWILIGHT ZONE without SF or horror elements. It's all about one man's self-destructive tendencies because he no longer wants to live the lie he created. He wants to be what he once was.


I think that's something many of us can empathize with. Sometimes I think back on certain memories, like the year that I obsessed over the Garfield comic strip and hid the books my mother borrowed from the library, just so she couldn't return them and I could keep them. Or the days when my cousin and a few friends would stage GI Joe wars in my basement. Or the war games we used to play with water pistols. Or the times I could sit back and enjoy a good thunderstorm. Or when I could look out at a snowy day, knowing that I didn't have to go to school and enjoying the eerie silence outside my bedroom window. All of those things and more.


But the one thing that Don Draper doesn't take into account--just as we don't--is that the good ol' days were not really the good ol' days. Murder, kidnapping and rape happened in our towns, but either they didn't make the papers, or our parents kept knowledge from us. Maybe small town America could leave their doors unlocked at night, but you can bet the motherfuckers living in the cities threw the deadbolt on before going to bed.


Nostalgia is a funny thing. It fills you up with good emotions, but it's all a lie. Things are never as they seem, and they are rarely as we remember them.


Something to think about when MAD MEN comes back.

COOL SHIT 4-10-14

KICK-ASS 3 #7: (Please remember that Cool Shit contains spoilers. To quote a great man, “Tread lightly.”) Mark Millar’s not fucking around. This is the end of KICK-ASS. He pulls a very bizarre move in this issue though: he has the Motherfucker turn on his Mafia family and try to save Hit-Girl. I’m unclear as to why he does this. It’s completely out of character for him. Is it just so he can have his Hobgoblin-from-the-third-Spider-Man moment? Ugh. Not that it matters, though, since the Motherfucker gets killed in this issue. Seriously, Millar is an animal. He could do anything. There is one issue left, and there’s no way to predict the ending. For all we know, Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass die in the end. I suspect Hit-Girl will get it. I don’t know about Kick-Ass, but we’ll see soon. (PS: I love Big Daddy’s monster truck.)

G.I. JOE: SPECIAL MISSIONS #14: This one is reminiscent of the old Marvel G.I. JOE book. This is the perfect example of a Special Mission, taking one character and spotlighting him in the field. This is Lowlight’s book as he faces off against a Cobra sniper with a wounded Mainframe in the middle of it all. Since COBRA FILES ended, I’ve been greatly disappointed with this title. It was nice to see this one go out on top with a cool issue. That’s right, this is the last issue of SM. We’re stuck with the regular G.I. JOE from here on out (and the original Hama series, which is hit or miss). It’s a shame. I hope the next step for IDW and these characters is much better than what we’ve been getting lately.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE #4: And so the first story arc ends. It comes to a very satisfying ending. I’m not sure if it’s something that Rod Serling would have done, but tone-wise, I think he would have been proud. The only problem I have with it is the introduction of the next story by interweaving it with this one in an odd hybrid of an epilogue/prologue. It seems a bit cheap. I’d rather do without it. Besides, it ruins the effect of the final monologue (which, presumably, belongs to Serling). But I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read the next issue.

THE WALKING DEAD #125: Here we have it, ladies and gentlemen. The moment of truth. Rick vs. Negan, one on one. Except . . . it’s not the two-fisted battle in a boiler room you might expect. No, it’s a verbal argument. And shockingly enough, Rick gives Negan a wonderful argument for why the war should end. He’s of the opinion that they could achieve wonderful things if they just worked together instead of trying to kill each other. Surprise! Rick gets through to Negan. He sees the light. It looks like we’re going to have a peace agreement. Too bad Rick fucking slits Negan’s throat. All right, I don’t really think he does a good enough job. I’ll bet next issue, it will be revealed to be a shallow job, and Negan’s going to make it. Kirkman’s not done with a guy like Negan, not yet. No fucking way. We don’t have his backstory yet. But we’ll see. Next issue is the last of “All Out War.”

Here’s a bonus: NEXT TESTAMENT #8. I’m going to review it next week on Wednesday at the Napalm Reviews, but I just wanted to share this wonderful image from this book with you. Haemi Jang is a wonderful artist.

Stay tuned next week for a special announcement concerning this column.

COOL SHIT 3-6-14

TRILLIUM #7: Another mind-bending issue from Jeff Lemire. Wow, there are a lot of great visuals in this one, and a lot happens. However, the thing that truly makes this issue cool is the reveal that the Atabithian language can actually be translated by readers. It’s pretty easy to figure out what they’re saying when you have some context, but when there aren’t any words in English around their odd squiggly language, it becomes nearly impossible. In the back of this issue, Lemire gives us the means of translating it all. How cool is that?

VELVET #4: Dammit. Burke left us for another job. He was a pretty cool character. But in this issue, we gain a new, interesting character in the form of Roman, who used to be a Russian spy until a job went bad, and he started freelancing rather than go to a gulag. Velvet goes to the king of all masquerade parties in order to track him down. You don’t get more exotic than that, and of course there’s plenty of two-fisted spy action to go with it. Velvet and Roman are old enemies, but they seem to have a lot of respect for each other and enjoy being in each others presence. Great weird stuff from Ed Brubaker.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE #3: Finally! We get the story of who is really wearing Trevor Richmond’s body, and it’s a doosy. While the real Trevor gave up all of his wealth to get into a new body in order to evade the authorities, a man who is dying of a very painful disease is given Trevor’s body—and life—to live in until the time of his death . . . for free. The poor bastard, who was a stock boy at a Wal-Mart-ish store, is living Trevor’s life as Trevor should have. But now Trevor wants his old life back . . . This tale of identity is really getting heated up. Very obviously, the real Trevor is a piece of shit, and no one could possibly root for him, but he’s a resourceful piece of shit. Looks like this one will be wrapped up with next issue.

STARLIGHT #1: This book has a special place in my heart because it tackles one of my favorite subjects. Take an old fashioned pulp hero and take a look at him in his old age. I wrote a story on the subject called “Fade Away,” which was published in THE REALM BEYOND (buy it here!). My story was about a pulp hero who, as an old man, encounters the bones of one of the monsters he vanquished at the Field Museum. Mark Millar’s new book is about a pulp hero, but no one knows he was a pulp hero. (Or he’s got a screw loose. It’s hard to tell.) Once upon a time, he got sucked into a wormhole and found himself in another world, where he saves the people from a tyrant. Then, he comes back home and lives the life of a regular guy. Now he’s an old man who just lost his wife to breast cancer. The only family he has left are his sons, and they’ve got their own lives to live. He’s trying to make the most of his old age, but then a reminder of his past comes back to haunt him. Is he going to end up back in a pulp adventure? I don’t know, but I’m fucking excited to see where this goes. Some of these layouts are amazing, juxtaposing his adventurous youth with his mundane life as an old man. Great stuff from Goran Parlov, who also worked with Garth Ennis on his PUNISHER Max series and one of the greatest war miniseries ever written, FURY: MY WAR GONE BY.