This shit matters, okay?

I don’t talk a lot about the comics I read personally and in detail because I have reason to believe not many people I know care too much about it, and also they lose interest within three minutes on average when I do begin discussing such things that are less important to them than the fungi that they don’t yet know are growing under their carpets.

But now and then, certain comic books can do some good. Maybe sway some non-believers into picking up a copy. Maybe Archie can take a back seat to Cable & Deadpool or The Preacher once in a while. Hard to believe. There are moments where its genuinely beneficial for someone to read a comic book.

This is one of those times.

You already know my opinions on gay rights and all that jazz, at least at this given point, I hope you all are on the same page with this. If not, all the more reason to at least check this comic book out. It’s only 40 pages of a picture book for older people, so bare with me.

SOLICTIATION: "OUT, OUT..." This is the X-Men comic that will have people talking for years! Some candles burn twice as bright and half as long. Some candles don't get a chance to burn at all.  Generation Hope discover what happens when a light goes out.”

NECESSARY BACKSTORY: There are not a lot of mutants anymore in the Marvel Universe. Recently, one girl became the first mutant to come a long in a while, and after, her existence started springing more across the world. Mutants were happy, because they were growing out of imminent extinction.

These new mutants just manifest their powers, so they’re teenagers. And the girl bands them together, as a sort of teenage team, under guidance of the big X-Men. Their main job is to look for the newbies who spring up, and get to them before someone else does.

Generation Hope #1-8 are in Local Comic Stores now if you want to know more.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT:  Spoilers, kind of, below.

 “It Gets Better” is a direct reference to a certain online help group that allows bullied and suicidal LGBT teens seek guidance if they feel threatened, ostracized, disowned, or considered unequal.

The character on the left is one of those new mutants, and if you read the comic issue, you’ll understand what he’s saying a bit better. You know the character on the right. And you can get a sense that he knows what he’s talking about, since he’s been around for a while. The point is, comic books and real life are very much alike in some ways. Comic books are not novels, they don’t just end. There’s not stand-alone narrative that can be taken as it is and then left alone.

Comic books reflect life as we live it. It’s very modern, and most times, events in our reality are often satirized or represented in comic books across the medium, within major publishers specifically. Rooting that kind of realism in frankly spectacular stories of superheroes creates a contrast that persists through the narratives presented.

As I’ve said before, X-Men is a prime example. X-Men’s subjects, its allegories, change with each generation, because they represent an entire concept, instead of a specific issue. Prevalent today is very much so the damaging effects of gay bullying, rashes of gay-related suicides in the US (where most comics are set), and added onto that, is the fact that this book is marketed towards teens, because it’s about teens—one of the few out there today.

This is a prime example of good comic book writing, and what comic books can do for its readership. Yes, comics and their characters are absurd, but they can also incredibly real.

Think I’m full of shit? Deal with it, go back to your Gossip Girl, Catcher in the Rye, Adventure Time or whatever piece of narrative you prefer. I’m sticking with the spectacular. 

Give it a chance. Please do pick it up at your local comic book store. No need to read previous issues, it’s a one-issue story, and it works well that way.

Wooooooo!

Christening of the second (?) official fashion post is underway! If there’s been more than two on this blog, then let’s just say one of them isn’t official.

Ever wanted to know how to pull of Hogwartsian style without looking like a cheap cosplayer or something you got from a party store? Ever wanted to look like a supervillian without being arrested for public indecency? Ever wanted to be cool?

Well, blogs exist out there to assist you in such endeavours.

Character Inspired Style is a Tumblog that combines your favourite characters across all works of fiction, and some non-fiction, and the lovely person who runs it arranges outfits distinctly inspired by each said character. Tons of neat stuff on there. Characters from movies, television, comic books, novel series, you name it.

If you are secretly a geek, go check it out. I know you are.

One small problem, it’s girls only—but really, if you’re male you won’t have the attention span for that blog anyways.

Aurually Audacious Endeavours – Wye Oak

From The Walking Dead’s new Comic-Con Trailer.

Literally found these guys three minutes ago. Indie folk duo from Baltimore.

Thought the singer was a man before I saw this video. Turns out it wasn’t. And that’s a good thing, too.

Title track off their new album, Civilian.

EPIC Concept Art of the Week

Kekai Kotaki is a concept artist from Hawaii.

He’s the lead concept artist for Guild Wars 2.

Click through any of these above tidbits to get to his website. Plenty more goodies including his work with the original Guild Wars, and most of his freelance work.

I honestly hope you find all this as cool as I do. Read my posts about the game itself if you want to know more about it.

While fiction about real-life drama and existential monologues are all good topics to make narratives about, nothing really beats experiencing what we most want to: an entirely different world.

It’s guys like this one who are in the industry getting to craft those worlds and share them with everyone so they can live it too. Truly an amazing profession.

EPIC Comic-Con Trailer of the Week

AMC is known for their badass series. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Killing. Yeah I only watch one of those series, but fuck it, we all know they’re sick shows. A while back, I did a post on The Walking Dead, the first season, like two fucking years ago (Holy shit, why I have blogged for so long?), and since then I’ve been following it lazily since last Comic-Con and eventually when it aired…

…You can imagine my reaction.

Point is, season one is worth watching. Honestly, it is a great series, probably not on par with long-running critical and commercial successes like Mad Men and to a lesser extent Breaking Bad, there is a lot of really good material here. And I don’t need to tell you how ambitious this is. This is horror drama, with zombies. Instead of period suits, there’s hours of grimy dead person make-up and sweltering on-location heat. Instead of drug deals, there’s guns and blades and crossbows and trust issues.

This series takes a lot to make. Check out the behind-the-scenes production featurettes at amctv.com to see how much goes into making this series.

If you need more reassurance: this isn’t a summer horror blockbuster. This isn’t a satire. This isn’t a B-movie with a budget.

It’s a drama. It has characters, it has conflicts, and it has writing.

The kicker—and probably the best kicker in all of modern television history—is that there are zombies thrown in.

There is not a logical way that something like that could be bad.

Season 1, while hyped to oblivion, didn’t capture as many of the audience’s hearts as I imagined Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile—he’s legit), executive producer along with Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator) may have wanted, but shit, the fanbase is so huge now, I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.

Talks of a third season were well underway before Comic-Con. Put it in the bag.

God, I fucking love zombies.

Oh yeah, read the graphic novel series. Still ongoing. Started nine years ago. Award-winning and best-selling since then. You’re dumb if you don’t read it.

NEVER CHANGE, Americans.

We are despicable creatures sometimes.

‘Persons of Colour’ is a stupid phrase.

I mean, its pretty outdated. Kind of a dumb thing to point out.

‘Colour’ certainly has a connotation of diverse hues. Like blue, or aquamarine. Or lime. Nobody’s skin colour is lime.

There’s only like, three. Dark brown, brown, and beige. And most of it depends on how much melanin you have or something.

Now, if someone ate a shitton of carrots and turned orange, I think I’d jump on a chance to say he or she’s a person of colour—no, I’d rather say a colourful person.

That way it’s literal and complimentary.

Just say, non-Caucasian if you must. But still, white people have skin, and it’s a colour, and its definitely not white. I know it’s a conditioned phrase, but since ‘minorities’ is the politically-correct term, even though it really shouldn’t be, just use that.

Never mind where this is coming from.

Just know that saying ‘Persons of Colour’ is a faggy thing to say.

Didn’t mean it like that. Disassociations are the first step to tolerance.

More on THE SECRET WORLD

Okay, I’m sorry, but watch these videos on the Secret Societies.

Well, this explains a lot.

The original shit-disturbers.

Uptight.

OH MY GOD MAKE A COMIC BOOK ALREADY. HOLY SHIT IT WOULD BE SO AWESOME.

I’m doing fanfiction, fuck this.

EPIC Video Game Trailer of the Week

The more I read up on The Secret World, my imagination starts running rampant with the possibilities of what this game might include and what I want it to include and what if this was actually real life and oh my god, what if the Slender Man is real?

And then I go to wondering about how awesome this concept for a Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. For anyone who’s not familiar, most MMORPG’s are Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones/any well-known epic fantasy fiction-esque arching storylines with magic and swordsmanship and GLORY.

What’s different about this? Well, as you can tell, there’s that guy in the trailer who reminds me of John Constantine only he actually gives less of a fuck, and also there’s a crazy tentacle ghost-monster? The Secret World is set in modern day times, in ‘our’ world, with everything seemingly normal except that every single fucking supernatural conspiracy exists beneath the shroud of everyday life.

So, given that realization, I jumped on the bandwagon because I love me some supernatural creature design. Werewolves, Wendigos, Vampires, Djinns, Spectres (badass-looking ghosts) and zombies are just some of the enemies to be found in this game, replacing the traditional enemies you’d find in other MMORPG’s we’re familiar with.

Since you probably don’t care about gameplay mechanics, I’ll just skip that part and keep talking about the art of this game. It’s pretty damn cool if you look at both gameplay and cinematic trailers. Like these earlier two:

With all these fantastically Lovecraftian creatures running about the world, there needs to be some bros to put an end to it right? Right! So you got three ‘secret societies’; hell yeah, they exist—the Illuminati (of course), the Dragon, and the Templars. Three factions have different philosophies, intentions and ulterior motives to what they want with the supernatural, but I believe they’re all looking for certain relics around the world to do something crazy with.

Really, if you don’t think this is cool, your imagination is about as thriving as a decomposing leaf.

I mean, fuck, I could spend 2 blog posts just talking about the character and creature design. But I’m merciful. Do I care if this game will be good or not? Hell no, I just want more cinematic trailers. Cinematic video game trailers are one of the best things ever in the world ever. Ever.

Supernatural monsters come a close second.

NEW ROLE MODEL

Best dad ever. Also, zombies.

Crossover, season 3?

PRIDE and stuff

So, I think Pride Week just ended with the Pride Parade in downtown Toronto, and guess what, I went. Pretty much dragged along, a nothing-better-to-do sort of thing, but I might as well while I’m not doing anything really that productive at home.

What I regret, is that I didn’t go with an intention, or much of a motivation. For me, there wasn’t much of a goal. Being heterosexual, and more so, being me, I found it hard to connect with a lot of what was going on. PRIDE Week might as well be Healthy Nutrition Week in my books—pretty much a detached, apathetic observer than a participant, or an activist, or a community member.

I regret it because I didn’t get to appreciate a lot of what I saw. I saw a lot too. There were drag queens, transsexuals, gays, lesbians, straights, couples of all types, topless women, pantsless men, the old, the young, the middle aged; firefighters, policemen, gamers, DJ’s, dancers, singers, school groups.

Saw them all, and I regret not getting to feel something along with them. Because the more I think about it, the more I think about how proud they really are for having the life that they have, and being able to express themselves the way they do.

I’ve never had the privilege of having a close gay friend. I wouldn’t have called it a privilege a year ago, maybe even a few months ago. But if I could talk closely with someone who has gay, I’d learn how to be a better person, absolutely.

I deal with problems—external, internal. I battle with myself, my emotions, past and present decisions. I beat myself up. I hurt.

But it’s obviously nothing compared to someone who is gay. That’s what I regret not taking to the PRIDE Parade.

To be gay, is to be labelled immediately. Without your knowing, and with the inevitable realization—at least in a society where it can be labeled—that you will have to walk with it wherever you go, either waiting to burst through your skin, or having it come out by itself and facing the consequences without preparation, mental or physical.

So much of what defines Western society depends on what someone or something else has told all of us, and we’re conditioned to listen, to the letter, until something or someone different happens and we’re too damn scared to face it that it leads to hatred, ignorance, suicide.

I don’t know what it it must be like, but I know the emotions that a gay adolescent probably goes through. Intensified, I’m sure, much more vivid. Much more concrete and convincing. Not only emotions, but thoughts. To have that kind of seed planted, and the potential of having it planted so damn early in one’s childhood—those roots stay with you. Stay with you into your early adulthood, if not you’re whole life.

It takes an army to pull out that kind of root. Gay people rarely have an army behind them. Surely, it’s quite the opposite. In America, definitely. In Canada, I’m thankful it’s not that bad.

Gay people take more shit from others than I had my entire high school experience. For most, it’s started earlier. And it starts with the first bully—themselves. They ask the questions of their sexuality first. And then others ferment it, reinforce it, and convince them of what or who they are. I may not know it first-hand, but I can relate.

Bullying, ironically, is all-inclusive.

And to fight back from that, to be one of those that crawls, hands and feet, up from the mile-deep hole that others—friends, enemies, parents, strangers—dig relentlessly for them and shove them in it, that takes a fucking powerful person to do.

Gay people are shoved with adversity and hardship right out of the gate, and I’m surprised the child suicides aren’t higher now. In fact, I’m proud they’re not high. Because I know, thankfully, that most of those gay kids who are fighting for that place in a society that mostly shuns them, are succeeding.

The one way I can relate to someone who is gay is that they’re constantly getting back up. There’s no doubt in my mind that they probably feel there’s little left in the world for them, when they’re in, or were in, that place or time, and there’s but one tether, one anchor keeping them from falling off the face of the earth, as if its what they deserve, because someone tells them it.

I thought I had it hard. I didn’t. I still don’t. Yes, it’s hard to stay humble when you’re given such a privileged life. But thinking about something like this gives you those moments. I’m choosing to record it, so I can come back to it, and realize all over again, why there’s something to be happy about in the world.

Gay people are tried and tested. They come out on top, more often than not. I know God would be proud, if he’s out there. If he’s not, all of us that support them are proud, and that’s enough.

I regret not thinking about all this while I was there. While I was there I was indifferent. Detached. Not realizing that what I’ve gone through, and sometimes, what I’m still going through, is an infinitesimal fraction of what someone who finds out they’re gay has to face. Daily, yearly, perhaps for a better part of their life.

But things are changing. Snail’s pace it may be, they are changing. We’re moving progressively, in the right direction. Albeit, it’s often one forward and two back, but I hope with a large quantity of my hoping ability that the veils of ignorance and prejudice pull back one day.

Fuck, if there’s one thing you should be irrational about, it’s hope.

And if you’re reading this, and you’re not sure of your sexuality, or if you are sure, and you’re regretting it, please, don’t. I regret not caring. I regret not being able to walk down a hallway and stop it the moment I see it, and at times, being a part of it. I regret not having the chance to help save a life. I regret not feeling proud for you.

Feel proud. You should. You’re going to beat out everybody else, you’re going to take the worst possible punishment and you’re going to come out on top.

And if you already have, then I’m sure you were at the PRIDE Parade.