Monday the 25th OT – Fishhooks and Eskimo Pies

I probably mentioned I was reading some Silver Age comics; Green Lantern specifically. I made it through the first five or six before I realized my brain was rotting from the inside out. They're absurd and kind of funny, but if a "Best of" volume is available, go read that instead. It's unabashedly kids' fare. There's an "Eskimo" character named Thomas Kalmaku who learns Hal Jordan's secret identity. Hal gives him a Lantern ring to take his place in issue #5. Some wild shenanigans later, he's transformed into a chimp.

Green Lantern V.2, #5, March–April 1961, DC, by John Broome and Gil Kane

I picked it up because I love Gil Kane's art, but the Gil Kane I love hadn't developed yet. The art was competent but looked like any other DC comic of that era.

The other reason I stopped, other than my brain shedding live cells, was "______ FISHHOOKS!" exclaimed by Thomas about 2–5 times per issue. Well, that and Hal, Carol, and everyone else at Ferris Aircraft calling him by his nickname, "PIEFACE". Is it racist, you ask? According to the 1960 edition of The Dictionary of American Slang, "Pieface is an existing term for 'a person with a round face and a blank expression.'" I'm going to go with pretty racist. Yet it's a huge leap forward from the Golden Age, where you had Steamboat in Captain Marvel, Whitewash Jones in Captain America, Chop Chop in Blackhawk, and Ebony White in The Spirit (Don't look them up. They're really awful). In contrast, Thomas is intelligent enough to work on jet engines, and while loyal to Hal, he has his own life and motivations. Progress in itty bitty baby steps.

I screencapped a handful of instances of "PIEFACE" and "GREAT/JUMPING FISHHOOKS!" from the first five or six issues before I got tired of it. The first three or four are from the issue in which Hal has to leave town and gives Thomas the awesome power of a GL. Not just any Lantern either; he gets to wear Hal Jordan's face. Shortly after, he's transformed into a chimp. Great Fishhooks!

This page is just to show how boring the DC layouts and storytelling were in 1961. Say what you want about the ADHD spectacles Jack Kirby created, but he never made anything this dull:

SAY YOUR PIE(fa)CE below.

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ETA – Alice Brock of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" fame died a week before Thanksgiving. I suppose she was sick of hearing that song too. RIP. Guthrie wrote on FascistBook:

“This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her,” Guthrie said. “Alice and my daughter Annie had spoken together recently and Alice, knowing her circumstances, approved an exhibit at the church to tell her own story. Alice and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, and she sounded like her old self. We joked around and had a couple of good laughs even though we knew we'd never have another chance to talk together.”

And if you're like me, you'll probably still listen to it at least once this week. It was, after all, ripped from the headlines:

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice). You can listen to it on You(rfaceforeverstompedbya)Boot, but at 18 minutes, you'll probably have to sit through half a dozen ads. Unless you throw more feed into the corporate trough. They'll have you know that Infinite Sustainable Growth is still possible if you wish hard enough.

ETA2 – About that Cormac McCarthy piece in Vanity Fair: I'm disappointed but not surprised by the actions of "Great Men" like him, and yes, I will continue to read his books (now ~20% less enjoyable), just like I'll watch Polanski's movies, read Salinger's stories, listen to Bowie and Miles and Zeppelin, etc... They failed as decent humans in profound ways, testing my ability to hold two opposing thoughts in my head at the same time. I haven't canceled anyone even if I find them morally problematic and find my enthusiasm for them somewhat (or a lot) diminished. At the same time, I fault no one for pressing the cancel button. (BTW, you know who never abused or raped an underaged victim? Vladimir Nabokov. That's right. The guy who wrote an entire novel about it. He's problematic for different reasons.) 

That VF piece though. Yeesh. The author had a followup interview with Dan Kois at Slate wherein he welcomes all haters and claims that his favorite author to steal from is Martin Amis. I'm glad to know that  someone's keeping the stylings of the New Unpleasantness alive. Find it yourself if interested. I'm not linking. I've no interest in helping some lucky, untalented hack self-promote. I'm not Oprah.

TL;DR: "Great Men" operate on the same moral level as the rest of us mediocre humans. Loving or liking a problematic artist doesn't make you a terrible person, but neither does despising them or their work now make you a good one. 

Still TL;DR, don't care: Bully for you. Enjoy your damn self.

ETA3 – Older daughter just performed in a church with her Baroque ensemble. All the pieces were Spanish and there were various readings of Spanish texts dating from the 17th C to late 18th. The tilting at windmills chapter of Don Quixote was read beautifully. The word for windmill in Spanish is molino. 

Live-streamed last night, luckily she informed spouse of the event so we could watch. Meanwhile, this is the kind of crap she sends me: