Love the Suck - Booknook

After I use a rideshare service, I generally get a ping on my phone once I'm ten or so feet away from the car that just brought me to my destination. I know what the notification is, and I dread opening it because I know I'll be faced with the most disingenuous choice of my day; my app will ask me to rate my driver. In this industry, and in increasingly more industries, any rating less than five stars like a condemnation of the service provider.

The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror covered this phenomenon in the past, but with the arms race towards excellence, there's a sanitization to the experience that hides the humanity of it. The carrot-and-stick of providing the utmost care surely protects people from bad actors, but everyone else is also punished for being "normal," instead of the above and beyond and the creme de la creme that the advertisers pour into our ears and eyes. This insistence on excellence and texturelessness feels existential and reminds me of other experiences we've peeled away from our cultures for the smoothing effect that exists for the sake of productivity and comfort (the absence of disruption of productivity.) The death industry might be the poster child for this distancing effect, as before the mid 19th century the care of the dead largely fell to their families, and the knowledge and processing stayed in community instead of being outsourced to specialized businesses as happened later.

So we're distanced from the truths of life, and we're compelled to be complicit by this race to the apex of service; what happens to people who are just mediocre? How can we allow anyone the grace to get better through practice when we actively participate in the installation of these systems that only allow for superiority and one-upmanship? How will we get better at making sandwiches, painting landscapes, driving cars, or fighting crime, where the skill expression we're allowed to have is binary: not good enough, or the best there ever was.

Maybe it's too risky or embarrassing to be just okay, or even bad at things, but there's gotta be room somewhere for people who are only alright at things.

Maybe there's even a space somewhere for folks who suck a little.

Enter the Superior Foes of Spider-Man.

The book is by Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber, and a few months back I read some out of context panels of it set to Steely Dan's Dirty Work, and the pairing left me giddy. What if a bunch of D-list villains teamed up for the crime of the century, while fighting their self-destructive patterns and also each other?

This is what I imagine anyway, because at time of writing Andrew is still on vacation and my copy is trapped in a box he can't open because again, the man is taking a well-deserved respite. I've waited this long, what's another week between friends?

Actually, I'm incredibly impatient, and so while I dutifully wait for Andrew to exhume my copy, I ended up reading a bunch of comics about wonky superhero and supervillain teams made of the last folks you'd want in those positions. Even in a post-Gunnian world, where dysfunctional squads, and guardians alike have become the norm for anti-heroic/anti-villainous protagonists, I still find it refreshing to read about folks who imperfect, because I need the room to see myself as imperfect, but worthy. Sure its important to have characters in new myth who embody the ideals and morals of the day, but those aren't people, they're myths, and no life lived should ever be as sterile or frictionless as a five-star, no comment review for your local Uber driver. Getting to read about burnout villains and mentally ill heroes gives me the space to hold empathy for them, and maybe someday that I'll be able to extend that empathy to myself.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall.

COPRA by Michel Fiffe

"They're ugly. They're mean. But up until today, they've always been loyal. So when one of their own betrays them, the men and women of COPRA have no choice but to turn their nightmarish skills back on every son of a bitch who ever looked at them funny." 

UMBRELLA ACADEMY by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

An outrageous superhero epic that Grant Morrison called "An ultraviolet psychedelic sherbet bomb of wit and ideas. The superheroes of the 21st century are here at last..." In an inexplicable, worldwide event, forty-seven extraordinary children were spontaneously born by women who'd previously shown no signs of pregnancy. Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of the children; when asked why, his only explanation was, "To save the world." These seven children form The Umbrella Academy, a dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers. Their first adventure at the age of ten pits them against an erratic and deadly Eiffel Tower, piloted by the fearsome zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel. Nearly a decade later, the team disbands, but when Hargreeves unexpectedly dies, these disgruntled siblings reunite just in time to save the world once again.

Suicide Squad by Keith Giffen and others

Sgt. Rock--now a general--is back in action to lead the Squad to victory, or to death. The question remains: How can the new Squad's leader come up with a plan to take on a biological weapon that's gone out of control? This is just the beginning of political intrigue and corporate deceptions from LexCorp all the way to the presidency.

In "Casualties of War," everyone loves an island party; unfortunately the Squad just got caught crashing. Now these crafty convicts must pool their dwindling resources and figure out how to defeat an attacking populace that can't be killed.

Uncover who is really behind this new Suicide Squad! Can Rock's hastily formed team of Deadshot, Killer Frost, Major Disaster, Reactron, and Blackstarr stop trying to kill each other long enough to prevent the end of our entire planet as we know it?

 

DOOM PATROL by Gerard Way and Nick Derington

The spirit of Grant Morrison's groundbreaking Doom Patrol is captured in this debut series starring the cult-favorite misfits as a part of Gerard Way's new Young Animal imprint.

Flex Mentallo, Robotman, Rebis, Crazy Jane, and more are back to twist minds and take control. This new take on a classic embraces and reimagines the Morrison run's signature surrealism and irreverence. Incorporating bold, experimental art and a brash tone to match a new generation of readers, Gerard Way's Doom Patrol establishes radical new beginnings, breaks new ground, and honors the warped team dynamic of the world's strangest heroes.

This abstract and unexpected ensemble series nods at the Doom Patrol's roots by continuing to break the barriers of the traditional superhero genre. 

New X-Men by Grant Morrison and others

The X-Men, re-imagined with a new look and a new mission, must face weird new threats including evil twins, organ harvesters, sentient bacteria, rebellious mutant youth, power-enhancing street drugs and living weapons! Joined by wicked telepath Emma Frost and mysterious powerhouse Xorn, the X-Men go public — expanding Xavier’s school to train a new generation of mutants including the insect-like Angel, the bird-boy Beak, the living sandstorm Dust and eerie telepathic quintuplets the Stepford Cuckoos. And as secondary mutations alter familiar mutants, the team is tested when Emma Frost sets her seductive sights on Cyclops, the all-consuming Phoenix threatens to rise again, and shocking traitors plot the destruction of everything the X-Men have accomplished! 

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Ben Doane has been a member of the Pandemonium Team since 2019, and has been playing wargames, rpgs, and tcgs since 2004 and earlier. When not blogging, Ben runs the wargames and mailing departments, and also makes the newsletters. Her favorite book is going to be The Superior Foes of Spider-Man Omnibus by Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber once it comes in, at least for a little while :)