Grant Morrison & The Aftershock of Comics, or The World of Comic Books Is Exploding & A New Universe Is Blooming

A lot has been going in the word recently. There's wars going on overseas. Gay marriage became legal countrywide and the threat level went up on July 4th for the U.S. Google and Apple are spitting on each other for some new bout of nonsense that will most likely be settled in an overly long legal dispute.  But, none of that matters anymore because it's only two days old and this week is one of the most exciting things to happen to comics in a long time. The bad news is that on both counts, you're going to have to wait a while before any of it actually happens. Still, the news is very exciting! Yesterday, it was announced that Grant Morrison (yes, that Grant Morrison) will be the new editor-in-chief for Heavy Metal Magazine (yes, that Heavy Metal). If that isn't equal part exciting and wonderful, let me make it even weirder than Morrison's mind could conjure up by telling you Entertainment Weekly (yes, that Entertainment Weekly) broke the story. It will be very interesting to see what Morrison does with the magazine, considering how the publication has evolved into something that has many stories that focus on either a tone of heavy violence, elements of softcore pornography, or a mix thereof, and Morrison's stories are usually weird yarns that make you feel like you've been shooting up heroin with the ghost of Buddha and listening to the Dalai Lama divulge the secrets of the universe. Or maybe they're just incoherent gibberish. Either way, Morrison's stories are a rollercoaster ride that everyone should take the time to enjoy, while many Heavy Metal stories past the mid 80's are more action/adventure and T&A sensationalism. For that reason, it's hard to place Morrison in the world of contemporary Heavy Metal, but that may not be what will happen when you consider what the man has to say:

We’re trying to bring back some of that ’70s punk energy of Heavy Metal, but update it and make it new again. One of the things I like to do in my job is revamp properties and really get into the aesthetic of something, dig into the roots of what makes it work, then tinker with the engine and play around with it. So for me, it’s an aesthetic thing first and foremost. The idea of immersing myself in the aesthetic of Heavy Metal is exciting. It’s going to change the clothes I wear, the way I create; it’s like a performance for me. Beyond that, just the idea of being able to curate stories, decide the direction of the magazine, and work with great talent and develop new talent is an exciting opportunity.

The idea of digging into the roots of Heavy Metal, a place where artists like Moebius, Bilal, Loustal, Boucq and Crepax enriched the soil, may be one of the things that is missing from comics today. While the prime usual suspects of Heavy Metal didn't shy away from sex and violence, they brought american audiences styles of art that hadn't been seen in comics and told stories that no U.S. publisher would dare tell (they had the comics code). The roots of Heavy Metal didn't just bud glorified smut and violence, they sprouted original comics stories and highbrow erotica. To revamp that plant as e-i-c might be one way to fertilize minds that Morrison hasn't pollinated yet, it may go up in smoke, but knowing morrison, it'll be one hell of a burning bush if it does. (Yes, I intentionally kept that metaphor going that long to juxt-a-pose Morrisons mixed one).

On the other end of comics news is Aftershock Comics. While Image Comics has been showing Vertigo that they've been in a bit of a dizzy spell for about a decade when it comes to creator-owned work, Aftershock has announced that it will be coming to comic shops in a big way by publishing creator-owned work from writers like Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Paul Jenkins, Garth Ennis, Justin Jordan, Phil Hester, Neil Gaiman, Frank Barbiere and Marguerite Bennett. If you haven't heard of Aftershock, that may be because they haven't released anything yet or because their site isn't fully developed. One great thing about Aftershock also involves its editor-in-chief. Mike Marts, former executive of the X-Men line will be taking the helm of e-i-c for Aftershock and explains, "When we launched AfterShock, our mission was to attract the best comic book creators in the business, and we're beyond excited to develop original projects with these industry leaders, but it’s only the beginning." With Gaiman, Ennis and Palmiotti, it's hard to imagine Aftershock not doing well. It's even harder to imagine their panel at San Diego Comic Con not being flooded with that name recognition. What makes them most interesting is the mission statement on their Facebook page, which reads, "Aftershock is a comic book company that combines the creative edge of an independent comic book publisher with the strengths of a traditional one." While this statement is vague, it hints at some promising possibilities like the idea of world building through serial titles that may have finite runs, but begin, middle and end like proper stories. With a mission statement like this, it echoes the idea of what CrossGen set out to do while mixing in the sensibility of classic Vertigo. Making a statement on his participation with the new publisher, Ennis offers some insight saying, “AfterShock looks to be making all the right moves. I’m delighted by the arrival of a new home for independent, creator-­owned comics.”

Comic Con may shed more light on these projects and answer questions, but Morrison's Heavy Metal and Aftershock sound like they will shake up the world of comics by doing what no one expected and the big two will regret not doing in the first place, giving fans what they already like and presenting it them in a way they never knew they'd love. 

Spoon Covers The Cramps, Oh The Lack Of Horror

The Cramps: Rock & Roll Spook Show

The Cramps came on to the music scene with songs that obviously and unapologetically ripped off riffs from classic gems of the 50's/60's era garage rock, surf rock and rockabilly. This has been well documented with the 3 volume compilation set "Songs The Cramp Taught Us," which brings the original songs together. What distinguished the songs The Cramps put to tape from the original source material is lyrics that came from the pits of hell and describe scenes of horror. While The Misfits did something similar, Danzig would scream and croon many of his lyrics while Jerry Only played his guitar at the speed of punk rock. Not striking as deeply into the punk sound as The Misfits, The Cramps kept a toe-tapping rhythm under lyrics that were spoken/sung with Lux Interior's performative vibrato in a way that exaggerated the elements of paranoia and creepiness of the lyrics in songs like "I Was A Teenage Werewolf," "Human Fly," "Green Door," and "Voodoo Idol." These songs don't only narrate spooky tales, but attempt to make the audience just as unsettled as the characters in them. It wasn't just the effects on the guitar, but the way Lux Interior sang that gave The Cramps a distinct sound and made the horror movie aspects of their music work so well. 

If you've never heard of The Cramps, you may not alone. They were nowhere near mainstream and probably make a few people uncomfortable. When songs like "TV Set," describe homicide and dismemberment, The Cramps weren't exactly radio friendly. Since the movie Poltergeist is being remade, it makes sense that the soundtrack could use a cover or two. One cover that will be on it is Spoon's version of The Cramps classic "TV Set." While Spoon's cover of The Cramps is actually very good, it is absent of the creepiness that makes the original unsettling. Spoon's version is so clean that it comes off as The Cramps if they were produced by Phil Spector. Britt Daniel does a great job of transcribing the jittery cadence Lux Interior first performed it with, but the frightening tones present in Lux's voice is not in Daniel's. While the cover is well worth listening to, it only make me wonder how great it would be to watch a scene in a horror movie where the original version plays as people are running scared.

The Sandman Movie Is Going To Be An Action-Packed Joyride, or Joseph Gordon Levitt Doesn't Watch Television

I have feelings and stuff

For those that don't know, actor and musician Joseph Gordon Levitt is adapting Neil Gaiman's Sandman for the big screen. It's likely no stretch to bet both Sandman and Gaiman fans are excited for this project since it has been in development hell for over a decade and the books have been one of Vertigo Comics biggest sellers for over two decades.

Still, the begged question of "why a movie and not a tv show" is even more present in a time where shows like Game of Thrones have become international successes. While movies are still big projects that gain popularity in many countries, Game of Thrones hit a level of popularity so high that its piracy is its own story. With creative sets, costumes with beautiful detail , very good acting, and visually astounding special effects and lush cinematography, Game of Thrones is pushing the boundaries of what to expect from television. And it's not alone. 

Before Game of Thrones, HBO, AMC and other channels produced shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Tudors and many others that brought television audiences stories that were more often delivered through movies. With great plot lines, writing and acting, a show like True Detective attracts movie actors (Woody Harrelson, Matthew Mcconaughey, Collin Farrel, Rachel McAdams) to the small screen for quality roles. It also tells a whole story that could easily suffer the pitfalls of truncation which so often happens in film. With this renaissance of television goin on, it's confusing that Levitt would say the following while trying to explain why he's making Sandman into a movie:

I think a big screen adaptation is a better idea and here’s why. If you did the episodic version, I think it could very well end up as a not-as-good-version of what is already brilliant in the comics. But by reworking the material into a big movie, Gaiman’s brilliant characters and ideas get to take shape in a way they never have before. Also, I think Sandman deserves to look absolutely mind-blowingly awesome, just on a visual level, and as cinematic as some tv shows are becoming these days, they still can’t compete with big movies visually, just because they can’t afford to.

This isn't to say Sandman shouldn't be a movie. (I don't think it should be, but that's not what I'm getting at here). However, looking at a show like Game of Thrones, the budget averaged 6 million per episode in season 4, and 8 million in season 5. With ten episodes, a season costs 60 -80 million dollars. To put this into perspective, the new Terminator movie has an estimated budget of 155 million. The new Terminator movie costed just under twice as much as the last season of Game of Thrones. While Terminator Genysis isn't the adaptation of a comic book, Kick-Ass is, and it cost 30 million, half as much as season 4 of Game of Thrones. While the budgets of these two movies factor in a great deal of action and explosions, Sandman's source material has none of that. Sandman, like Game of Thrones, is a plot based epic that will need a nice amount of CGI. Unlike, Game of Throne, Sandman doesn't have action. For this reason, it seems hard to imagine that HBO "can't afford to" adapt Sandman. However, when reading his quote, it seems easy to imagine that either Levitt doesn't watch television, know much about arithmetic, or is turning Sandman into the Terminator.

Oh no he didn't!!!!!!

Rethinking Music with Beck's Record Club

You wish... and so do I, to be honest

Imagine taking a group of musician with styles that only the most bizarre venn diagram would show overlapping traits. Then, put them in a room and have them cover another band's record. This is the goal of The Record Club, and the mission statement of the project goes a little something like this: 

Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happens over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering.There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens.

Beck started Record Club in June of 2009, but I didn't find out about it until recently. After watching some of Beck's old music videos online,  I let youtube cycle through videos on its own while I opened another tab on my browser to research for an upcoming article. At some point, a song that  I was unfamiliar with came on. Beginning with part of the original INXS song, "Gun in the Sky," the video goes into a reworking the song, beginning with a drum beat that could belong to an industrial band before Angus Andrew, of The Liars, starts singing. Scratchy guitar comes in to flesh out moments and is followed by a clumsy keyboard line that could be coming from a child's casio piano or melodica.

Joined by members of The Liars, Os Mutantes, Keyboardist Brian LeBarton, and St. Vincent, Beck would go into the studio to cover Kick, by INXS. While those musicians may all share influences like Talking Heads, Beatles and random jazz figures, they record with very different styles and unique approaches to melody and rhythm which sometimes result in the abandonment of them, as with Liars. With "New Sensation," reverbed violins and flirting background vocals come in to produce what tonaly sounds like it could have been a b-side from the Sea Change sessions. This aesthetic would carry over to the group's version of "Devil Inside," to remove all of the attitude INXS put into the song and replace it with a haunted sound.

Abandoning the others, Beck takes over all roles for a three track version of "The Loved One." Structurally, his version is close to the original, with electric guitar substituted for acoustic to end up with a song that reflects his "Mellow Gold" era.

It's not just Beck taking control through the whole experiment. "Never Tear Us Apart" is a nice collaboration that follows the original song closely and shows off Annie Clark's singing. With "Mystify," The group moves through upbeat to calm moments. The cover stays in the calm area, breaking it down and reworking it as a country song, with emotional violin, pensive guitar and thoughtful vocal delivery to make probably the best song from the session, except maybe for it's closer.

Ending the session and record is "Tiny Daggers." For this track, members of The Liars take control of the creative direction to make the song sound nothing like its original. Where other songs make it obvious that Record Club is Beck's pet project, "Tiny Daggers" sound like a Liars song, not a cover. With menacing drums, noisy electric guitars and a reworking of the vocals, something that doesn't at all resemble the source material comes out of the experiment to produce an angry song nine minutes longer than the original.

Beck and friends have done four other sessions, covering Velvet Underground and Nice, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Yanni's Live At The Acropolis and Oar, by Skip Spencer. Videos are available on youtube and tracks are available on Beck's website. They're all worth checking out, but I think the version of Kick is the best one and hope Beck will return to do more sessions.

♪ How Do You Solve A Problem Like A Pop Song ♪

In 2012, Beck put out a record in the form of a book filled with sheet music. He may be an eccentric genius.

Beck's done it again. After winning a Grammy that caused a little controversy (Kanyeversy?), Beck decided to take a different approach to music with his new song, "Dreams." While the award winning Moon Phases is somber, moody and borders on depression, Beck decided to come back with a 180° rotation that had  his foot land on the kick drum. It's hard to expect anything from Beck, an artist that has used samples like a hip hop dj (Odelay), country like a boot wearing cowboy, and left field antics like he's Captain Beefheart (Stereopathetic Soulmanure). Expecting what Beck will do next is an exercise in futility. When he released a book of sheet music (Song Reader) for fans to play, he showed his audience that his next album may not even be an album.

While Midnite Vultures was a funk/rock masterpiece that could propel any dance party into 3 a.m., "Dreams" isn't funk as much as pop/disco ala MGMT. This new sound isn't surprising considering he's working with writers and producers that have made careers for themselves writing and producing for Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce. Though this new single is an unabashed, straight-up pop song, it's not as cotton candy as Britney Spears or princess party as Katy Perry. A little shocking upon first listen, it eventually comes off as exactly what you would imagine a pop song by Beck to sound like. With that, I'll leave you to press play and make up your mind.

Here's an interview Billboard did with Beck about his new song and upcoming record:

Culture Crop: Managing Mainstream Marijuana's Morals

Freeling rolls away her worries behind Reagan's back.

Cheech and Chong may have created the stoner comedy. Since then, movies like Half Baked, Pineapple Express and Friday have been fueled with silly jokes about weed and the people that smoke it. When people are smoking marijuana in movies or tv, it’s not often taken seriously. The theme of teenagers smoking in the basement of That 70’s Show and in Dazed and Confused show high school kids getting high as something to laugh at. In Poltergeist, the mother smoking in her bedroom, while she relaxes with her husband, was a set up allowing the tone of the movie to jump from calm to anxious. Using pot as a plot device normalizes the substance. Having the mother be a smoker didn't add to her character development, didn't give her character a vice to overcome in order to save her child and family, it didn't change the story at all. The mother smoking a joint was just dressing, possibly a relic from writers that were coming into their own during the summer of love. Though, this scene could have been a slap in the face of the Reagan's own republican perspective and the onslaught drug culture would face during his terms: look at the book Mr. Freeling is reading in the foreground while Mrs. Freeling is rolling up something for herself in the background.

"I learned it by watching you!"

By telling people to "just say no," in 1982, Nancy Reagan aimed the spotlight to a war on drugs that officially started in the summer of 1971. The 80's and 90's saw P.S.A.s filling airwaves. T.V. shows put out “special” episodes where a character has a special problem (domestic violence and A.I.D.S awareness were two big players in the P.S.A. game too). Drugs become demonized with the help of the media and writers eager to snatch from the headlines. Not every P.S.A. targeted children. One of the most memorable of these announcements directly targeted adults by warning them that a child's bad habit may be an imitation and perpetuation of what they see parents doing.

Even still, fighting a problem isn't about placing blame, it's about coming up with solutions and informing your target audience of the answers. A key element to getting your message to an audience is letting them know that it affects them, no matter who they are. When you show kids that not even their idols at Bayside High were free of troubles and pressures, your message gets a chance to resonate. Kids may not want to listen to parents, it's part of their DNA after all. Instead of having a sit down with your kids, taking them out of their routine to give them a talk that may be uncomfortable, why not have the talk placed into their routine? Better yet, why not have their best friend, Zack Morris, give it to them when he's over next time? It's sneaky! It's genius! It might have even worked on some viewers when Saved By The Bell gave over-achiever Jessie Spano her own  substance abuse problem. Under the pressure of acing tests and keeping up with clubs to look good for colleges while pleasing parents, getting ready for the big dance and being a teenager, Jessie turned to caffeine pills to keep up. In this special episode of Saved By The Bell, "Jessie's Song," Zack convinces Jessie that she doesn't need the pills, that the pills are the enemy. In this episode, the audience sees a teenager, faced with very typical problems, turning to drugs for an answer.

No one is perfect

By the end of the episode, the demon drugs are thrown to the floor and a good talk between old friends shows Jessie that she has loving people in her life to get her through problems, that she doesn't need drugs. The conclusion of this episode is that drugs are bad for your health, don't get you what you want, and, when Zack Morris (the personification of cool) is telling you to stay away from them, that they are not for cool kids, even if it's JUST caffeine pills.

Fast Forwarding to 2005, when the smoke from the Reagan era had cleared to elect one president that "did not inhale," and another that lived it up, Showtime put out a show called Weeds. Even though it was on a premium channel and it debuted after a legion of pot themed movies, Weeds came out on the small screen, the same screen that brought us all those Public Service Announcements. It may seem easy to write the show off as a prime-time soap opera, but it was more than just pretty faces captured in the flash of the California sun. Disregarding the relationships and sentimentality centered at the structure of a primetime soap, the show's basic plot shows something serious going on (growing?).

Weed is given a pin-up girl. how times have changed.

When the main character of Weeds, Nancy Bowtin, finds herself trying to keep her family in the same tax bracket they were in before her successful husband died, she decided to sell pot. Being the single mother of two children and choosing to sell drugs gives a tv show a lot of topics to run with, everything from how circumstances blur the lines of right and wrong to the which-batch-of-brownies-is-for-the-school-fund-raiser-and-which-is-to-sell episode (I'm not sure they did that episode, but they should have!). Still, what's most interesting is how Weeds shows a cultural shift, from the days of the P.S.A. and episodes with special lessons about drugs, to a time when pot is almost a central character in the show, one that is not only normalized but glamorized, and sold like hot rods (pictured left).

It's now well passed the 80's. The public service announcements that used to air on television are not very present and that may be because T.V. and movies don't have the same cultural cache they once did. More people are tuning into pay channels to watch shows produced with the creative liberties that were afforded to Weeds and The Soprano's. Still, even more people are being visually entertained by the internet. Like Weeds, High Maintenance doesn't focus on pot. Weed is the background noise of this series that just got picked up by Vimeo. The show is revolves around pot and wouldn't be the same thing without it, but the show doesn't try to make a statement about pot or its use.

If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, High Maintenance is a web series about a weed dealer biking through New York City. But Seinfeld wasn't a show about nothing, it was a show about a comedian and his group of friends that were over-grown children trying to behave like adults and failing miserably at it. With a show about a pot dealer, it's almost impossible not to have smoking in the show, but this show has no agenda. With legalization popping up in states and the promises of big money being the main focus of marijuana in the media, the plant is given a new life and cultural weight this century. Still, this show is not out to advocate. One episode starts off showing what seems to be a young couple, Heidi and Mark, in love. The camera shows the two new characters in their twenties set up a fort in the living room, eat meals together and talk about this and that between moments of affection. While this happens, Heidi is seen smoking marijuana occasionally. When Heidi leaves to pick up food, Mark, stays home to wait for their delivery man. Once there, the guy (yes, that is how he is credited) and Mark start catching up. Mark starts talking to the guy about Heidi. He reveals he met her online, that the past two weeks have been great before showing him a picture of her. The guy, a man about town, reveals that Heidi is actually "Homeless Heidi," a scam artist that uses unknowing men. All the times Heidi has been shown asking for money for the delivery food, or to pick up groceries or buy the pot, flood back to Mark and he knows the guy is right. In this episode, aside from the guy, pot smokers are shown to be deadbeats that are smart enough to con people, contrary to their easy going, peace-loving, absent-minded cliche.

In the episode "Helen," the show starts off with a man, in his late twenties or early thirties, lying on a bed with his sickly mother as they talk and watch television. The audience learns that the mother is bedridden and that her son, Patrick, cares for her. The camera watches as he shops online, grooms himself and accepts delivered groceries. We get to see into the uneventful life of Patrick before the guy knocks on the door. A cleaned, well dressed Patrick answers the door and invites him in. The two chitchat before it's time for an exchange. It's discovered that Patrick has a crush on the guy when he makes an awkward grab for the guys waist. The guy, always cool (for all intents and purposes, he's the personification of pot, which is assisted by not giving him a real name), brushes it off as no big deal by acting natural and leaving amicably. When the guy does leave, Patrick is shown throwing the bag of pot in a cigar box filled with others like it. The credits don't just begin to scroll, instead the guy is seen on the streets, enjoying the wonders of a parade on the streets of New York as a happy song plays. A massive divide is being presented between these characters. If the guy is a personification of weed, then Patrick, a man that never leaves his house, may be a symbol for closeted gay men. If pot was the plot device for silly jokes, then it has now become one to talk about, or at least hint at, bigger issues and look at complex characters with real problems that have nothing to do with substance abuse.

Ellen & Ruth watch birds while Saul gets high 

While the pot might not have gone to the person you expected it to in "Helen" (the sick mother), High Maintenance takes nine minutes to bring another look at how marijuana intersects with sick people. In "Brad Pitts," We are taken into the life of Ellen. Ellen likes to go out and watch birds when she's not at the office. Other than that, all we get to know is that she's having trouble eating and setting a date for the doctor. This story focuses on her making a solid friend in her community of bird watchers, and getting someone to drive her to and from her appointment. In the process, she happens to choose someone that knows the guy, Ruth and her husband Saul. Aside from the very serious tone of this episode, "Brad Pitts," manages to bring in comic relief. After Ellen and Ruth start to talk, Ruth suggests Ellen smokes pot to bring back her appetite. The laughs start when Saul gets in touch with the guy. Not able to get it himself, Saul calls the guy explaining how he'll need to bring it to Ruth by using profanity as he urges the guy to be polite to his wife and friend that have no real experience with dealers. The guy arrives briefly to help out the ladies and the laughs hit a crescendo when he gets a call moments after leaving because Ruth thinks she's gone crazy before the whole episode wraps with an element of closure as Ellen is seen eating ravenously while exit music plays.

High Maintenance isn't a show about weed, it's an anthology about characters. These episodes range from five to fifteen minutes. In that amount of time, it's hard to tell big stories, but the perfect amount of time to take a look at a group of strangers. Like a collection of stories by Raymond Carver, with each new act of High Maintenance, the audience gets to peek into the lives of a person, or group of people, and see what makes these people move and stay together. As a viewer, you never know when the guy is going to make an appearance, only that he will. It's not the guy that keeps someone clicking the play button on each new episode, it's the writing and the insight. Without the internet, a show like High Maintenance may not have been given the room to breathe: there are no guidelines to length, the main character doesn't have a real name and he's barely in it for most episodes. It might also have a hard time getting commercial sponsorship.

With the internet, format is malleable and largely at the discretion of the creative forces behind a video or movie. Sponsors may not be needed, after all, this very website costs nothing to post to, neither does youtube. While the internet is filled with its share of people making big clicker videos that show people unboxing phones and giving tips from everything to make-up to videogames, the internet has opened doors for well-made, thought provoking shows like High Maintenance, even though it's a show about a pot dealer on the surface.

On the other end of the internet spectrum, exists the show Getting Doug With High. On comedian Doug Benson's video podcast / talk show, Doug and a group of people, mostly other comedians, sit around a table and get high. If pot was a supporting character or prop in the background for other shows, then it is the main character and setting for this show. Unlike most talk shows, there are not fascinating stories taken from the paper for the host and guests to discuss, just weed to smoke and a few marijuana related trivia facts to talk about. A guest comes on, smokes, talks about his or her first experience with pot, smokes, answers questions from twitter and smokes some more.

Doug Benson, professional stoner.

What makes this show worth talking about is that, despite its basic format and Wayne's World production value, it succeeds. In between the actual smoking, there's a lot of talking. With a room full of comedians, the talking tends to turn into funny off-the-cuff jokes. The show is unchallenging but that is why it's so good. Void of any pretense, whatsoever, episodes of Getting Doug With High have garnered more than 1 million views. Building an audience and branding himself through twitter, Benson proved that beyond the pot, he's a businessman that earned his show sponsorships with several companies and products advertising during the short segment breaks. While all the sponsors are for pot smokers (vaporizers and delivery services), this show is still finding a way to keep itself rolling in the green (pun intended). What's best about this show is that, despite Benson saying that he doesn't know how the show can be funny for people that aren't smoking while watching, it is. While it may be a novelty to virtually get high with comedians and actors, I can honestly attest that it's still entertaining to watch stoned comedians and actors joke around with one another while sober. After all, you don't have to be drunk to laugh at Drunk History.

It's hard to say how long before all of the United States will have Marijuana legalized, if it will be a good thing in the long run, or if it's way overdue. Still, the change in public attitude is seen in everything around us, from the teenagers in the park that don't fear a ticket (I'm writing from Philadelphia) to the movies in theatres and the shows on television and its successor the internet. A change is happening and starts with what people perceive pot to be. Some shows like Getting Doug choose to attach itself to the classic view and depict pot as a recreation for people to relax with as they joke with friends. The show Weeds used pot as the glue used by a mother to keep her family together. Now, the show High Maintenance uses pot as a plot device that gets the camera behind closed doors to take a look at how strangers live and talk to one another. In these times, there's as many way to use weed to tell a story as there are uses for hemp.

Black Mirror: The Present Tense of The Future's Digital Dystopia

FAIR WARNING: This article contains spoilers

Right now you are using what Charlie Brooker calls a "black mirror." You may be using more than one if you have a television on in the background. Black mirrors are the screens of smartphones, computer monitors and televisions that are making up the new ways people digest media and communicate with one another. In the 21st century, people are using social media and text messages to talk to each other instead of making phone calls. While print media is on the decline, information is being published on the internet. Even television has moved from traditional broadcast formats, with writers and actors developing programming for Netflix and Youtube, bypassing network TV. While technology changed the way we do things in very noticeable ways, it comes with side effects that may not be as obvious. It is the side effects of technology that Black Mirror chooses to talk about. It's common for science fiction to examine complex ideas and offer parables to give readers a glimpse of beautiful worlds. Black Mirror uses the science fiction genre to explore the impending horrors the digital age brings closer while making unsettling futures to create satirical dystopian realities we may live in one day.

Charlie Brooker explains it all.

In many ways, Black Mirror gives Brooker the opportunity to continue his lambasting of modern culture and its relationship with television. With a six part mini-series entitled "How TV Ruined Your Life," Brooker rants on how television shows have warped people's notions of beauty, given them expectations of life they will never see, and generally misinformed them throughout their lives. It's just a little funny that these mini documentaries were produced for television. The series is on Youtube (for now), and would be a good introduction to the way Brooker uses cynicism, sarcasm and vitriol to make his point. He makes the same points in Black Mirror that he makes in How TV Ruined Your Life, only he does so with hour long dramas in what may be the best anthology to come along since Twilight Zone. 

There are no elements of the future in the first episode of Black Mirror. Flying cars and laser guns are nowhere to be seen and android police play no role in the world of  "The National Anthem." In a lot of ways, it has a visual tone of an Aaron Sorkin drama, with his signature "walk and talk" style building a fast paced world where the characters are constantly moving and information is flying at the characters and audience at an unbelievable rate. Sound familiar? When you take a step back, it is dark view of our current world that we are looking at. "The National Anthem" opens with a wake up call, literally. The Prime Minister is woken by colleagues to find out the Princess has been kidnapped. Posted on Youtube, the ransom video shows the princess, tied up, reading a demand letter that says she will only be released if the Prime Minister has sex with a pig on live television, by 4pm. Even though the British Government takes down the video from Youtube and urges local media to not give the matter attention, it's new media that takes over and lets the video  and story go viral.

"The Princess & The Plea"

The episode soon moves to the setting of a television news room. When the producer mentions that adhering to the D Notice, which has kept the story from breaking on the air, a smart mouthed member of the show lets everyone know that "facebook's coverage is pretty comprehensive." This is where the heart of the episode comes out. Local people are shown glued to their televisions and smartphones for updates while discussing the kidnaping and terms among  themselves. It's the screens (black mirrors) that act as the driving force behind the reality these characters live in. With cellphones, televisions and tablets updating the politicians, journalists and viewers, the audience watches people addicted to black mirrors as if they were watching a news story develop in real time. "The National Anthem" has its events mirror a real news story, with constant coverage and speculation turning horrific events into reality TV which is brought to light when Mrs. Callow address how people react to a world where such misfortunes are used as building blocks for the 24 hour news cycle, saying: "I know People, we love humiliation."

The audience watches the people living in this version of England, as they go from screen to screen for information, getting feedback from people on Twitter and Facebook, watching a TV journalist use her phone to send racy photos to a member of the PM's staff to get undisclosed information that puts her life in danger as she searches for footage that will draw in more viewers. Every step of the way, black mirrors move the story to its frightening conclusion. By the end, the event is revealed to have been masterminded by a prize-winning artist and a broadcaster notes that an art critic referred to it as "'the first great artwork of the 21st. Century,' in an event in which we all participated."

In an interview with The Guardian, Brooker says the following: "If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects? With "The National Anthem," the side effects present a culture that is so obsessed with cable news and social media that it fails to see how they are being used by the artist that is also manipulating the prime minister. The world of "National Anthem" shows a culture where the participation of viewers that "love humiliation" create Mr. Callow's fate, a culture where the audience watching the Prime minister and the audience of "The National Anthem" are blurred and suggested to be the same.

Hot Shot is forced on Bing for the Fifteen Millionth time

Black Mirror goes on to put its audience in the show with episode two. "Fifteen Million Merits" shows a future world where people either ride a stationary bike to earn merits or clean up after the cyclists. In this future, the highest aspiration available to people is to earn enough merits (15 Million) to use for a ticket to participate on a reality TV show, Hot Shot, that will give them a new life or embarrass them in front of the world. Personal values and the importance of human connection is questioned where people spend merits on accessories for their avatars, to play video games, eat and skip commercials put on the screens occupying their surround walls.

In this dystopian future, Bing wakes up every day to mount a cycle. While the people around him play games, build their avatars, and watch pornography as they cycle, he is uninterested by the digital options, and pays to avoid ads that urge him to be a consumer. Bing lives a mostly solitary life until Abi joins the cycling team. Struck with her beauty and vocal talent, Bing uses the merits he inherited upon his brother's death to buy her a ticket to compete on Hot Shot. While people watch her sing from their room, their avatars take up space in the theatre, make facial expressions and mime their movements. Even though the audience enjoys her performance, the judges convince her to become an adult actress. This leaves Bing heartbroken, meritless and just as alone as he was before meeting her.

With a new mission, Bing puts in as many hours on the bike as he can. Opting to eat the leftovers of other cyclists and watching every commercial, a montage shows Bing earning enough merits to gain an audition on Hot Shot. With everyone's avatar joining the judges as they watch, Bing begins to dance before taking a shard of glass to his throat. In a long speech, Bing address the judges, the audience of Hot Shot and people watching Black Mirror, the people the avatars are a stand-in for:

"All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That's how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our Dopple, it doesn't exist! It's not even there! We buy shit that's not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful. You couldn't. Yeah? It'd break us. We're too numb for it. I might as well choke. It's only so much wonder we can bear. When you find any wonder whatsoever, you dole it out in meagre portions. Only then until it's augmented, packaged, and pumped through 10,000 preassigned filters till it's nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride day in day out, going where? Powering what?"

When Bing addresses the judges, with the excerpt above, it is no longer him. These words are from Charlie Brooker and sound like the commentary he uses on How TV Ruined Your Life. The judges and avatars that face Bing are the real world. This speech nearly breaks the fourth wall to comment on the consumer culture of Black Mirror's audience by placing them in the future where they are cogs in a machine, earning merits to be spent on non-existent things that are constantly at reach and being dangled in front of them with their own black mirrors.

With a twist ending, Bing gets commissioned by a judge to makes his own show, where he rages to an audience about the world they live in. Though Bing is seen finishing a show in his nice apartment, drinking orange juice from a pitcher instead of a packaged container, the episode ends with him just as alone as he was in the beginning. Regardless of class, "Fifteen Million Merits" shows a future so burdened by consumerism, filled with people that live through dopples and absent of real experiences, that even winning the game show that everyone tunes in to can't help change who someone truly is, or influence their quality of life.

With four more episodes and a Christmas special starring Jon Hamm, Brooker went on to give more focus to dystopian futures fueled by man's relationship with technology. These episodes have a recurring theme of how technology will make us more distant from one another, more focused on our technology and more interested in our new eyes than the world we're looking at. But it's the first two episodes that actually bring the viewers in by giving them analogues through the avatars of "Fifteen Million Merits," and viewers of "The National Anthem," that make those episodes so life like that it's hard not to see how the side effects of technology have already begun to take root.

For anyone interested in Black Mirror, you can buy the dvd box sets or find them on Youtube before they're taken down.

The Art of War Comics

War sells. It has been bought, sold and commodified since the preservation of history. War is in the production of weapons people use and collect, governmental motives, the tickets to movies and sporting events people attend, and in the pages of the books we read. War can even be found in our comic books. Even today, most people think of the spandex stereotype when hearing “comic books.” It’s not very surprising that this is the case. Despite the proliferation and growing popularity of the genius marketing term, “graphic novel,” which has aided the public relations campaign to legitimize the comic book (to the chagrin of some creators and fans alike), it is superheroes that come to mind when comics are brought up.

"My father conceived the idea of taking

the Sunday pages, folding them over,

and folding them once again, and ending

up with something roughly the size of

todays comic book"

-William M. Gaines

With Superhero stories flooding today’s theatres and making their way to television screens, it’s no surprise that people associate comics with superheroes. Though, comics have since moved from originally being refolded inserts of Our Gang, Krazy Kat and Popeye to be found in the pages of newspapers, marketed to get the pennies from young pockets after relieving the nickels from their parents' pockets. Soon after the basic shape and tone of the medium was formed, the war story became one of the biggest sellers. Along with romance and funny animal stories, there was a time when comics that focused on war occupied the same number of hands that superhero stories originally did. This was a time when war was commonly found in the newspaper and on the radio waves. War served as topic for discussion and was shown in a glamorous light through posters and propaganda scattered around the small towns and big cities of early America. For its time, it only made sense that the genre of war stories would be a popular one before the blood and gore found in the horror genre took focus and before the superhero came to the rescue. This is a time where the heroes and roles of make-believe for children were policemen, fire fighters, cowboys and soldiers.

In the later 20th century, most American comic books were mostly free of war. Taking a look into comics with science fiction elements, readers certainly observe the presence of war. Alien races the Fantastic Four encounter are often at war. The Kree / Skrull war is something the Marvel universe may forever keep in the stars to serve as a potential plot device for future stories. Though, with many superhero books, war is nothing more than a plot device. With the exception of a one-shot here and a mini-series there to bring back The Unknown Soldier or Enemy Ace for a look into the history of comics and the role war stories played in it (meta stories), war stories did not serve much of a role in comic shops past the 70's. There are exceptions to be found with titles like Real War Stories (2 issue by Eclipse Comics, one published in '87 and one in '91), which brought together some of comics most refined talent to tell moving and true stories that may not have been given an audience elsewhere. But these stories moved beyond the more common war stories of soldiers staying alive while working a path through enemy lines. These stories attempted to show another side of war by giving accounts of the post war lives of soldiers.

Now in the the 21st Century, which can also be referred to as a post 9/11 culture, the war story is something much more present in comics. More than the war story, the focus is now on war itself. After the attack, Marvel, DC and many other publishers began to print books with covers that acknowledged the events. Some titles told stories that focused on the actual event with one-shots and larger anthologies printed to raise funds for workers and families. With The Amazing Spider-Man, a character with a movie about to be released, Marvel printed issue  #36 with a cover that was all black except for it’s title , number, and company logo. The story turned the New York City that was ravaged and covered in the clouds of dust and cement of the real world into the NYC Spider-Man fights the Vulture and takes pictures as a photographer, the same NYC that houses a large portion of Marvel characters. The issue had Spider-Man take a look at the damage of his city and wonder how this could happen. Careful not to make a political statement, the story focused on one man trying to wrap his mind around the events and regret not being able help, a sentiment shared by many readers.

Five years after 9/11, Marvel decided to print Civil War.  To call Marvel’s Civil War event a war story would not be completely accurate. At best, it’s an allegory that has one super villain using his powers to cause a destructive and violent act towards civilians. The super villain attack is a way to examine the current role of the superhero (namely Captain America) in relation to the role they played in the 1940’s. In this story, the U.S. government forces superheroes to register themselves as weapons of mass destructions by using their real identities. When certain heroes refuse, they flee or get taken to detention camps. The story reflects the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay, both very serious issues to be sure. Still, this is not a war story, it’s a story that uses war, and the real life events that come about because of it, as a vehicle to tell a different story, a story that questions the role of the superhero in a world where super villains still exist and do evil, a story that questions why evil is still active 70 years after the superhero put on a mask. Even then, that’s a question Alan Moore has examined twice with Watchman and Miracleman.

So where else is war found in the pages of comics in the post 9/11 world? Marvel didn't own patriotism, even though they owned Captain America, the personification of American Patriotism. Also, Marvel wasn't the only publisher of war comics in the height of its popularity, not even close. They have Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos and The ‘Nam. Aside from those titles, war stories could commonly be found in anthology books published by Dell and EC. As far as recurring titles are concerned, many war comics were published by Charlton and continued by DC when they bought and incorporated those Charlton properties. Giving Garth Ennis and other talent the go ahead, DC did bring back the genre of war stories to comics for a brief period in the form of the mini-series, but they didn't stay around long. While Ennis is a big name in the world of comics, he would be able to keep the classic war story alive moving to publishers like Dynamite (Battle Fields), that work with hot and historically proven franchise properties and give well known creative talent a lot  of creative freedom.

By and large, the war story genre wasn't around in comics after the late 80’s. With Marvel’s Civil War, it was a domestic act that unsettled the state of operations superheroes faced, and to a point, a story that exploited real life events. The story was not a war story, it was about superheroes struggling with their role in society. Still, it wasn't since Captain America and Superman took to the battlefield to punch Hitler and his allied forces that superheroes had a role in war comics (Marvel knocked him in '41, DC smacked him '42). To get war stories in comics after the 70's, you had to abandoned Marvel, DC and superheroes, you had to walk away from fiction altogether. To get war stories in comics, you had to look towards the independently published work of Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi. In those titles, comics began to reshape the war story.

In the early 80’s Spigelman began to tell his own war story. There is no muscular hero with a gun, ripped fatigues and unstoppable attitude propelling Maus. It’s a war story that doesn't tell itself through the people fighting or waging the war, but the victims, the people caught in the middle, trying to survive and make sense of their situation. Spanning the time between WWII and the late 70’s, Maus is a literary comic. The story is framed and on the surface focuses on the author interviewing his father to get the story of  a survivor of Germany's concentration camps. The story proves Spiegelman to be a master or comics narrative techniques in the ways he seamlessly flows between his father's story and his own. Maus is a modern war story that doesn't aim to show battles of violence, but the internal struggles that follow war. Maus is a tale of how the author deals with the history of his family, his role as both a father and a son, and how the war he didn’t experience first hand haunts him in adulthood. Maus started a trend in reforming not only what stories comics could tell, but how comics took on the war story. Showing wasn't enough for the new school of creators. It was now time to take a deeper look at war, going past the battles by looking at them directly, then taking a look around them.

The war story changed its face in the 80’s. Spiegelman’s Maus may be the reason for this, but it wasn't the only book to take the nonfiction approach of telling war stories.  A journalist by trade, Joe Sacco would make comics from the interviews and experiences he had while in and around Bosnia and Iraq. Spiegelman played with the idea of the biography and created a comics work that is something very different than a biography. Maus became a very unique story and document about history, family and self aware art. Sacco, on the other hand, isn't interested in creating a biography with his war stories. What Joe Sacco does, and does very well, is work with the concepts and form of journalism. As with Maus, it’s not always the war itself that plays a character, it’s the post war reality and anxiety-fueled moments of rest that play as silent and loud character that emphasize motivations of characters, whether he’s a war profiteer (The Fixer), or she’s an orphaned refugee (Palestine), making sense of her new environment. War and its aftermath is ever present and forcing people to make the decisions they make, and the stories of the people that live through it is at the heart of what Joe Sacco writes about.

In her own books, Satrapi does not play with genre. Persepolis is an autobiography that focuses on the life of its author. The book takes the real life setting and atmosphere of Iran during the time of the Islamic Revolution. While the story isn't about Iran and Iraq fighting one another, the book focuses on first hand experiences of war similar to Sacco and Spiegelman. The reader is shown the life of a girl living in a culture under a time of change, where her setting forces values and behavior onto her before she leaves her home and moves to Paris to start living a new life. Persepolis is the story of how war can affect the development of a girl and the displacement it puts her though in order  to find her own path. It’s a story of how to navigate through and around war, where the role of war in the story is less graphic and unsettling to the reader than both a classic war story and books like Maus and Palestine. Like Sacco and Spiegelman, the work is built on serious topics that just happen to be in comics form.

Private Pyle is not made for war

With those works, it's evident the war story didn't completely leave American comics, it just changed its face. This face lift may have come from the tastes of comic book readers, it may have come from a cultural shift. Taking a step back from comics to look at movies that handle the war story, there’s Apocalypse Now and  Full Metal Jacket that exit the 70’s and head to the 80’s to show horrific sides of war. While there is combat in the movies, the most troubling parts of the movies, the scenes with the most character development and attention to detail, show soldiers that can't handle the realities of war, people that break down and turn to drugs and experience mental decay instead of kill the bad guy, with the seriousness of John Wayne, before coming back home to be greeted by the wives they left behind. These are the creations of people that lived through war and combat footage being broadcast on nightly news. These were the war stories of people that had no interest in making movies without a message. Perhaps the same can be said of the new wave of war stories looked at above. And perhaps this is the reason for the new wave of war comics being put out now.

While Saga, one of today’s most popular comics*, doesn't focus on a war and the people fighting in the trenches, like the classic war story, it revolves around a war and it exists because of one, focusing on characters living in the middle of one as they are ricocheted around the solar system because of it. Like the new war stories mentioned above, Saga wears more hats than war story. In many ways, It borrows from the titles mentioned above. 

Unlike the other new war stories mentioned, Saga is a work of fiction. The humanoid characters that have fallen in love are not real, the war being waged by their separate species did not happen, and the narrator a reader watches grow up was never really be born. Like the other comics and movies mentioned, Saga does not only tell a story of war, but of a family, the love between two people unlikely to share such a relationship, culture clashes, and self discovery all done with an interesting narrative technique. Like Civil War, Brian K. Vaughan is writing an allegory, an allegory of war, but one that isn't limited to the superhero genre, one that is afforded the opportunity and broad movements of a story that can take its genre in whatever direction it wants. If assigned a genre, Saga would be a Science Fiction / Fantasy story. But where Civil War used its allegorical aspects to tell a superhero story, Saga uses it’s SciFi / Fantasy genre to tell a story about lives and how they are affected by war to fully form its allegory. 

Though it’s current tone and pacing suggest this story has every intention of having a solid set of acts, complete with a planned ending, it’s unknown how long Saga will go. When it begins, there are plot points forming very fast in order to catch-up the reader on the world the story takes place. There are two characters from opposite species (Alana and Marko) birthing their love child. They are on the run. Both have dissent from their military posts and are different species. And the person narrating is their mixed species child. If this story came out in a different time, it may just be another science fiction story that deals with issues that a reader can relate to, but it didn’t. This is a story being written while several neighboring countries in the middle east continue to fight wars that have gone on for a very long time, while ruling governments and their motivations and tactics may not always seem so obvious. Also, this story is an American comic, directed to an adult audience (there’s cursing, sex and graphic violence) being presented to a post 9/11 culture aware of, if not terrible well versed in, world events.

If the story was set on Earth, which it could be, and the two main characters were human instead of humanoids, say Alana was Indian and Marko a Pakastani (or one was Israeli while the other Palestinian, China/Japan, N. Korea/S. Korea, etc.) and the story starts off in Kashmir before the characters take their child away to parts of China, or another land neutral in the dispute, the story would start to resemble one Sacco may cover, a displaced family Spiegelman may write about, or a little girl Satrapi may want to guide to self discovery. And if this story was set on earth, all three of them could do a great job of telling their story, but it doesn’t. This story never happened, the people never existed and the war never took place. But it could have. This story could be happening right now, but not without the war moving it from chapter to chapter.

*Saga does not sell as well as other titles by Marvel and DC. Though, the numbers don’t always account for the digital sales and, this being a book that is drawn digitally, I don’t think most would have a problem reading it on a screen. Which is to say, I bet there's a lot of readers not tallied in Diamonds estimation.  Also, with collected volumes, single issues are not as popular as they used to be. While Saga #24 didn’t place in the top 100 comics sold in January, there’s an alternative way to look at it. With four collections available, the title sold  22,233 units, with volumes 1, 2 and 3 placing in the top 8 for sales of trades. 

Fan Fiction, Genre and Plot

Genre is a big problem in literary theory. It's as big a problem in literary theory as it is in music. There's a level of constraint in how readers and critics approach a work when terms of designation are introduced. By introducing these terms, there's an element of expectation and the potential for complaints when a work doesn't form itself using all the expected elements. Playing the "what if" game is a staple of science fiction. If SF is "what if," then maybe fantasy is "only if." Stories in the world of Literature come about from asking "what if" and then thinking, "now only if," but present the finding in different ways, modes that reflect the same world as the reader. This is the contingency that keeps literature from becoming sci-fi or fantasy. That notion confuses genre when a reader isn't foreign to or othered by the worlds of the book. But it's possible to read a science fiction book that seems so plausible in its futurist notions that there's no need for suspension of disbelief.

This suggests that genre can be as much a temporal construct as it is a form to build upon. An example would be a point in humanity's future where the problems presented in a work such as Philip K. Dick's, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," manifest themselves from a natural progression in humanity: If, in the next 100 years, humanity creates artificial intelligence while letting the environment continue to degrade to the point where acid rain gets caustic, plant life struggles to maintain and animal life follows to the point of extinction, the world of Androids would not be so fantastic but realistic. This is to say, if the predictions in a Science Fiction work of the past manifest, the work becomes a reflection of the present in the same way a work of contemporary literature does. A scientific analog would be when a theory turns into a law of physics after being proven correct. While a theory at the time of inception, it develops into something else, a law, without a single change occurring to its makeup.

Asking "what if" does not always create science fiction. It may be the cornerstone in the genre, but it's also the cornerstone of Fan Fiction, a genre that can't help but open a can of worms that each have their own tinier can. It is a genre that exists as an extension of previously published works, characters that someone else fleshed out and created. While it may not be considered Fan Fiction, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea won several literary awards even though it exists as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen takes several characters from the annals of genre fiction, such as Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man and many others, and puts them in a Victorian setting where technology grew faster than it historically did. Is League now a steampunk book because of these elements or is it a work of fan fiction because it's the product of a person building something with other people's characters? Or, is League something else entirely because it takes existing characters and puts them together in a new world, an alternate England? But Moore is a creator with a very distinct tone, present when he writes Watchman or WildC.A.T.S. This begs the question of whether or not Moore has the right to be called an auteur, the word that seems to be the answer a lot of people (academics) use when trying to solve the problem of genre. While auteur is properly designated to filmmakers and cinematic criticism, it has been applied to all forms of artists that create a body of work that suggest the creation of an entirely new genre.

Before we go on, let's take a look at an entry for Fan Fiction provided by Dictionary.com:

noun

a fictional account written by a fan of a show, movie, book, or video game to explore themes and ideas that will not or cannot be explored via the originating medium[...]

According to the definition, both Wide Sargasso Sea and League are fan fiction. Both books take previously created characters out of the (cold dead) hands of the original creators and puts them into the hands of fans to tell different stories. With League, the use of Dr . Jekyll/Mr. Hyde could even be seen as bringing a character back to life since the original work suggested the character was dead... though by the words of an untrustworthy narrator, the town drunk. According to the definition, most super hero comics are also fan fiction, as are all Star Trek and X-Files novels. By the definition, every issue of Spider-Man and X-Men not written by Stan Lee is also fan fiction, as are all non Bob Kane Batman stories. This shows franchise as something that has a life blood of fan fiction.

But fan fiction can't be seen as a genre. While a science fiction novel can, in time, no longer appear to represent an alternative once the theories are proofs, thus seem more like literature, fan fiction seems more like an original story only after the original text is lost to the people reading it. How many readers know that Family Matters, (the actual name of the Urkle show), is a spin-off (thus a fan fiction) of Perfect Strangers? Never hear of Perfect Strangers? That's the point. This shows fan fiction to be something as fluid and personal as language (colloquialisms), a way to recreate things to make them relevant, keep them alive. When looking at fan fiction this way, it's easy to view it as a force of literary memetics. As long as the ideas behind the characters, what they stand for, is relevant, more fan fiction will come of it. But, the second it becomes old hat, it turns into cultural fodder or gets stored in the memory of the readers and their computers.

Fan Fiction is truly the reincarnation of the imagination. While the proliferation of fan fiction may owe a lot to the internet, it does so poetically. If the internet does become some sort of common ground, where everyone shares ideas and creations for free (like I'm doing right now --screw you academia!), our forms of entertainment may become quality works that do more than blur the line between the entertainer and the fan, they may erase the line altogether.