Two words . . .

 . . . SQUIRREL DANCING . . .

. . . I was walking across campus.

This was in my tender days of education.

Due to my poetic bent, I enrolled in University XYZ's Department of Advanced Procreative Weapons-basically, these were doomsday weapons that could take care of themselves, form true nuclear families, and generally carry on the spark of intelligence once they wiped us gross, babbling humans out to the last man, woman, and child. I specialized in going goo-goo ga-ga to the cute little Omnibomb babies in the ballistic nursery.

As I was saying, I was walking across campus.

I was lost in ecstatic thoughts of how my labors would contribute to the New Era of True Nuclear Families.

I was so caught up, I didn't even notice the squirrel rushing towards me at speed.

Something feinted left, then right.

I came to my senses. I startled. I feinted left, then right.

The squirrel and I were dancing this way and that, not sure how to get past one another. 

This was not a situation I had anticipated. Yes, I had long observed how the squirrels were losing their fear of the Final Meats People-My Generation-but I assumed this boldness was strictly for snacky purposes. My Generation was given to feeding the squirrels.

But here was a squirrel whose boldness extended to dancing me up even as I was on my way to ballistic nursery duty. 

Am I solely to blame for the hip twirling passion that obtained within my body that fateful day? 

Will you call me the Great Unraveller when it was the Procreative Weapons who wound their plans and schemes so tightly that the least deviation brought it all tumbling down?

Not one of the potent farseeing Omnibomb Supervisory Clusterminds figured on the spontaneous dance crew chemistry sparking off between me and that oh-so-bold squirrel, which resulted in my lateness, which resulted in an Omnibomb baby not getting its necessary tender loving care, which ignited a temper tantrum chain of explosions, which led to the downfall of the Procreative Weapons . . .

. . . and here I dance forever in Heaven with my sparky squirrel partner, our dance crew chemistry generating a force field no Reality Regime may pierce, especially the Asshole Realities of True Nuclear Families . . .

. . .and this Heaven is better than what I deserved, considering the Omnibomb path I was on . . .

. . . 'til the day I was saved by a squirrel . . .

COMICS REVIEW: SURVIVE! No. 1 (1992)

 Written/Drawn/Lettered/Created by Don Lomax

Published by Apple Comics in April 1992.

. . .

". . . AND THE CYCLE CONTINUED, NOT UNLIKE WOUNDED ANIMALS CHEWING OFF THEIR OWN LIMBS TO FREE THEMSELVES FROM A TRAP, ONLY TO DIE SLOWLY FROM LOSS OF BLOOD!"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

In the depths of the Cold War, fear of total nuclear annihilation grips people all over the world. Some take action to prepare for the coming holocaust. One such person is Carl Miller, who invests his business wealth in survivalist gear and the construction of a bunker out in the sticks. Carl trains his wife and two sons in survival techniques including firearms training and radiation protection protocols. The family unit is transformed into a notional military unit. Notional, that is, until the ICBMs are launched. 

In the comic book Survive! nuclear devastation acts as an evil spell of revelation, unveiling the inner monster inside us all, obliging us to become good neighbors with the killer inside. The stark black and white art depicts dead-eyed killers fighting for turf and dominance. Those severely damaged by radiation become zombie-looking warlords living out fantasies of neo-feudalism half-remembered from those 1970s paperback reprints of Robert E. Howard. We see one guy do his Leatherface routine, chainsaw in hand. Cannibalism comes into fashion in a big way. Slavery returns. Justice is what you can get away with, usually consisting of on-the-spot executions for crimes against property. There's no more law. There's no more nation. No longer any 'us,' just 'them.'

Even our stalwart hero, Carl, dehumanizes and destroys the people who cause him problems. A zombie warlord challenges him to a duel of machetes. Carl shoots him with a shotgun. Later, Carl is captured by a whole gang of radiation zombies, who are scarcely able to function as they once did. A zombie woman is assigned to seduce Carl that he might give up the location of his bunker. She begs him for food, and failing that, she begs for his feces. Carl executes her, and then uses chlorine gas to exterminate the rest of her gang. 

No more laws. No more due process. Not even a hint of a ghost of a whisper of a veneer of civilization. Just unlimited atrocity in the name of a family unit. 

And why not, right? If the great champions of Capitalism and Communism are willing to scorch billions of lives all in the name of bogus righteousness . . . what in the hell do we expect from our neighbors? A nation is just a collection of people, right? And if the actions of nations suck isn't that just an expression of the collective suck of the people? One's a democracy (USA), and the other's a totalitarian dungeon (USSR), and they're both coming to the conclusion of "Fuck it. Let's all die in a huge cluster of nuclear explosions." I guess it was prior to the New Golden Age of TV, five-hundred channels, and nothing on-less for the state-controlled media in Russia . . . ah, well . . .

Survive!'s vision is the bleakest thirty pages of comics you'll scare up from the dollar bin, Dear Reader, making The Walking Dead look like Barney the Dinosaur. Amusingly, it ends on a cliffhanger, and a mailing address to write to if you want to read more. Survive! #1 is the only issue that was ever published, as far as I am able to determine. 

Gee, I wonder why? 

COMICS REVIEW: KERRY AND THE KNIGHT OF THE FOREST (2020)

 Written/Drawn/Lettered by Andi Watson

Book designed by Patrick Crotty

Published by RH Graphic (Random House) in 2020.

. . .

"A child who eats thornberries and listens to talking snails. It is no surprise that the forest swallowed you whole."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

A boy named Kerry is journeying home with medicine to save his mortally ill parents back on the farm. He decides to take a shortcut through a sinister enchanted forest which turns out to not be a shortcut, because the forest is ruled by an evil spirit who takes over the minds of people, animals, and monsters. Fortunately, Kerry meets a talking, floating, one-eyed boulder that offers to lead him through the dark forest. Adventures ensue.

Kerry and the Knight of the Forest is a straight-ahead children's fantasy comic book of some two-hundred fifty pages of scratchy, leafy, woodsily charming art, in which a selfless boy has an extended philosophical/moral dialogue with a cynical cyclops boulder while adventures happen. (Weirdly, it reminded me of Roger Ebert's interpretation of the Michael Mann action thriller Collateral, but without the brutality. Ebert basically describes it as an extended dialogue between a killer and their victim embedded within an action flick.) It is totally unpretentious. There's action, and danger, but no gore, no blood. Small children will like it. Adults will appreciate its willful, well-intentioned, mildly delusional optimism. 

Even though this is by a British creator, and is therefore, presumably, drawing on American and European comics, it actually ends up playing, for me, in the style of an 'uncompressed' manga. It's cinematic. The pacing is superb. I inhaled it in one sitting, and, even though I do not share its cheeriness, I would recommend it on the strength of its craft alone. It works on a similar wavelength as animated films such as Kubo and the Two Strings, Ponyo, and The Black Cauldron-but not as edgy, not as intense. Kerry and the Knight of the Forest is much mellower, much gentler.

Really, I have no criticisms of Kerry and the Knight of the Forest, just a different outlook. This book is exactly what it wants to be, in defiance of the gloom and doom of this world. No one can take that away from it. 

ANIME REVIEW: GENOCYBER (1994)

 Directed by Koichi Ohata

Written by Shou Aikawa, Emu Arii, and Koichi Ohata

Music by Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima

Character Design by Atsushi Yamagata

Production Design by Kimitoshi Yamane, Shinji Aramaki, Koichi Ohata, Yoshio Harada, Hitoshi Hukuchi

Voice Cast

Akiko Hiramatsu as Elaine/Diana

Kaoru Shimamura as Rat

Seizo Katou as Dr. Reed

Mitsuaki Hoshino as Dr. Morgan

Kazuyuki Sogabe as Mayor Grimson Rockwell

…

". . . Don't worry

if there's hell below

we're all

gonna go . . ."

-Curtis Mayfield from his album Curtis (1970)

…

Review by William D. Tucker.

A child's suffering, a child's death. 

In the near future, the United Nations goes hard on an agenda of Unified Global Governance. 

Does it count for much in this world?

A true One World is at hand. Later for nationalistic conflicts. 

Children starve to death every day. Children die in wars. Children die of malnutrition. Children shit themselves to death because of lack of access to clean water. In the USofA, my country, children die in grotesque mass shootings due to uncontrolled proliferation of assault rifles. 

But alas, in the chaos of transformation, greedy corporations field high tech private armies augmented with cyborgs and psychics to carve out their own turf. 

What if a child's cruel murder could trigger the Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ragnarok, the End of Every Last Thing? Would we change our ways? Would we ensure clean water and nutritious food and an end to war and terrorism and abuse, if only to save our collective ass?

And in the midst of this tumult, a young woman's friend is killed. 

Imagine a terrible, indestructible devil thundering down from the sky the instant a bullet tears into a child's head, or any other act of destruction against a child. This devil kills with but a thought. There's no defense. The usual oppressors and perpetrators have no power against this devil.  No gun lobbyist. No warlord. No Republican Senator. No white supremacist. No tyrant. No abusive parent. No schoolyard bully. No general. No foot soldier. No gangster. No molester priests or pastors. No drone operator. No bomber pilot. No President. No greedy businessman. No one can stand against the killing thoughts of this vengeful devil. No weapon can kill it. No money can bribe it. This devil pictures your doom inside its mind . . .and that's it. 

A young woman's heart is shattered . . .

And now the devil's rage burns out of control, for there is no bottom to this devil's appetite for retribution. All must burn. 

. . .loosing the power of Armageddon . . .

Doesn't seem fair. But since when was life ever fair?

. . . indiscriminate Apocalypse, well beyond Good and Evil . . .

Genocyber is the saga of a strange monster powered by the souls of two sisters driven to do battle with the forces of oppression on Planet Earth in the near and far future. Genocyber is born of pain, cruelty, technology, paranoia, and love. Genocyber has telekinesis, super-strength, plasma-wing enabled personal flight capabilities, teleportation, mind manipulation, destruction resistant naturally occurring armor skin, and a rich well of undiluted rage she can channel into a primal scream which can reduce an entire metropolis into a huge smoking crater. 

This bizarre monster begins with the mad notions of a Dr. Morgan of the Morgan Institute. Dr. Morgan develops the idea of a 'vajura,' which is the psychic capacity to access 'mind shadows' which are potent manifestations of willpower and/or desire that emanate from a realm of pure imagination. Mind shadows can be used to create and/or destroy. Focus your vajura to conjure a mighty monster body to stomp your enemies into gory messes of burst intestines and shattered bones. Focus your vajura to teleport across vast distances. Focus your vajura to induce terrifying hallucinations within the mind of your enemy. Focus your vajura to commune with the spirits of the dead. Master your vajura, and the mind shadows can fuel your every last desire!

Metamorphosis. Strength. Illusions. Mind over matter. Destruction of all personal limits. Unlimited vengeance upon all enemies. Total dominance of all who oppose you.

All this can be yours.

If you master your vajura!

Dr. Morgan is murdered by Dr. Reed, a rival mad scientist in the employ of the sinister Kuryu Group, a Japanese corporation engaged in weapons development, applied psionics, and live human experimentation. The Kuryu Group sets up a vajura/mind shadow R&D campus in the city of Hong Kong with Dr. Reed taking over as Lead Developmental Mad Scientist. Dr. Reed's Number One Henchperson is his daughter, Diana, a powerful psychic born with severe physical disabilities corrected by transplanting her head, central nervous system, heart, lungs, and digestive tract into a durable cyborg body. Diana has been the subject of Frankensteinian experiments by Dr. Reed, who rather creepily expects her to exist as both a dutiful daughter and a live experimental subject. Diana also acts as enforcer to capture escaped lab subjects who mostly seem to be children. Echoes of Akira's secret esper programs for sure. 

We have a ghastly scene of Dr. Reed putting his hand inside Diana's abdominal cavity, presumably to perform some kind of "maintenance," but it soon becomes obvious that our mad scientist is a sick fuck who gets off on invading people's bodies and minds. Dr. Reed's scientific staff-who all sport de rigueur white lab coats by day-are known to don creepy death masks by night and commit mutilation murders against anyone who comes sniffing around the Kuryu Group's HK campus. While no explicit reason is offered, the implication is that the depraved Dr. Reed has staffed his lab with people who share his Mengele-esque proclivities. It may also be possible that the death masks are some kind of mind control device. Genocyber contains ghoulish mysteries even to this day. 

Diana has a sister, Elaine, who is also a powerful psychic. Elaine cannot speak, but her body is intact, unlike her sister Diana, and she is therefore not dependent upon Dr. Reed for cyborg maintenance. Elaine uses her psionics to teleport away from the oppressive Kuryu Group campus, and makes her way as a feral street urchin on the mean streets of Hong Kong, befriending a young boy nicknamed Rat, who's involved with a low-end counterfeiting gang. This friendship between Elaine and Rat ends up being a key factor in the final obliteration of 21st century human techno-civilization. 

You see, Elaine's fourteen, and Rat looks like he's in the fourth grade. They develop a sibling bond, with big sister Elaine looking out for little bro Rat. Rat's being both bullied and exploited by the other teen street punks who themselves are just low level funny money distributors for the Triads. Elaine's X-Men psychokinesis and teleportation powers along with her feral wolf girl persona make her into a living comic book character in the eyes of Rat. Being a homeless child on the mean streets of cyberpunk Hong Kong ain't so bad after all! Dude, it's just like living a comic book but for real! Awesome!

Diana dons a fearsome mecha suit that amplifies her psychic powers and goes hunting for Elaine as per their father's orders. Dr. Reed simply cannot allow an esper as powerful as Elaine to slip through his perverted fingers.

Meanwhile, the Kuryu Group's headquarters back in Japan has decided to take control of the Hong Kong campus. To this end, a trio of cyborg mercenaries are deployed to subdue any troublesome espers and put the screws to Dr. Reed. HQ seems to be consolidating its assets as part of a scheme to negotiate its own position within the new United Nations global governance structure. The fruits of Dr. Reed's madness-stolen from the forgotten Dr. Morgan-are fine. But Dr. Reed's depravity must be totally erased. It's a new day, doncha know!

Elaine battles Diana and the three cyborgs from the home office, and is seemingly killed. But her spirit ends up merged with Diana's mind. The sisters struggle for dominance within the eerie realm of mind shadows. Elaine prevails, but she does not destroy Diana, and instead incorporates her sister's soul into herself. Elaine's rage at having her friend Rat kidnapped by the cyborg trio causes her to conjure up a fearsome new body for her and Diana to inhabit as she retaliates against the Kuryu Group and all its works. This new body is a giant muscular blue devil with armor skin and superheated plasma wings. Elaine and Diana form the twin soul of this formidable beast . . . enter Genocyber! Exit the human future!

Elaine is the dominant spirit, with Diana operating as a sort of voice of doubt. Diana hates being trapped inside a monster, just as she resented being the plaything of Dr. Reed. But Elaine's outrage gives her vajura extreme power. Genocyber generates massive waves of uncontrolled psionic power that sets Hong Kong ablaze, and causes two of the Kuryu Group's cyborgs to mutate into grotesque living war machines. Genocyber is a true apocalypse beast unleashing both raw destructive power and the innermost natures of those who can survive its mutational presence. The two cyborgs unveil their murderous natures, growing all manner of weapons, and clothing themselves in the skulls and intestines of countless innocent bystanders as the psionic waves emanating from Genocyber strip them of their every last pretense of "civilization." Genocyber and the cyborgs do battle causing massive death and destruction to the people and structures of Hong Kong in the process. Elaine's rage has spun out of control . . . with the worst yet to come . . .

When the battle is done, Elaine discovers that Rat has been killed, possibly by one of the cyborgs, possibly as collateral damage during Genocyber's rampage. Elaine howls in anguish. And then Genocyber unleashes a spiritual hydrogen bomb blast annihilating Hong Kong from the face of the Earth . . .

. . . with the worst yet to come . . .

From this point on, Genocyber becomes a wandering terror upon the Earth, manifesting to oppose the schemes of the Kuryu Group as it offers itself up as an arms manufacturer to the United Nations Government as it goes to war against the rogue nation of Karain in the Middle East. Genocyber's agenda is visceral: she fights for those she sympathizes with in the moment even if her extreme power creates destabilizing cataclysms and mass slaughter. Genocyber's psychic emanations call forth ghosts, cause insanity, and inspire unpredictable transformations in other people. The vendetta between Genocyber and the Kuryu Group shatters the hope of the One World, reducing Earth to a vast and desolate battlefield. 

In the fullness of time, the Kuryu Group's army of robotic war machines and the sky terror of Genocyber seemingly obliterate each other, but the blue devil cannot die that easily. Seriously worn down by centuries of battle, she lapses into a coma, and her monumental body becomes the idol of a religious sect. This sect evolves into a radical social justice movement when the dictatorial city state of Ark de Grande arises in the far future. Deep underground, Genocyber slumbers, even as the Mayor of Ark de Grande rules with an iron fist using paramilitary police and fundamentalist religion to establish a fascist surveillance state of public spectacles of holiness, bounty hungry informers, and mass killings. 

Genocyber's rage powers it across multiple centuries, multiple Armageddons, multiple Final Boss Battles. She aligns herself with children slaughtered by warfare; a mother whose child died in the destruction of Hong Kong; and a blind girl murdered by the Ark de Grande stormtroopers. Hers is a cataclysmic, unfocused power, arguably causing more harm than good, tragically embodying both the dark allure and maddening futility of vengeance. Yet, it's hard not to sympathize with Genocyber, even if we also live in mortal terror of her arrival. She's a vindictive deity that makes sense-not some rhetorical device exploited by politicians and fanatics-born of superscience and supertrauma. If she ever battled the Incredible Hulk, an earlier pop culture fusion of rage'n'superscience, ol' Greenskin's heart would stop from sheer terror. 

As animation, Genocyber is low budget, but imaginative, employing an eclectic mix of hand drawn art, computer graphics, live action miniatures, and still images. The eclecticism conveys the conflicting realities of science and spirit; personal desire and global schemes; vengeance and love; destruction and creation. 

Genocyber is not ashamed of its roots in hyperbolically violent OVA (Original Video Animation), which was Japan's uninhibited straight-to-video wonderland for a few decades. A mighty steel hand crushes a rapist's skull with one squeeze. A crimson tentacle dragon rips out a skull with attached spinal column in one firm tug. A cyborg tears out his own brain as he is afflicted with hallucinations of bugs burrowing inside his skull. The ghosts of children blown away on a battlefield torment a jet pilot causing him to crash-you won't see anything like that in Top Gun: Maverick!

Genocyber's storytelling is dense, erratic, setting up multiple frames, then blowing them to pieces. Early on, we have elements of police procedural and paranoia thriller woven in with the X-Men/Scanners/Firestarter/Akira stuff, and then we are diving into gristly Clive Barker gore and thunderous Godzilla allegory action. Genocyber begins as a Frankenstein's Monster and evolves across time into an apocalyptic death god in the hearts and minds of desperate people praying for deliverance from tyranny. It's bonkers, but it's one of my all time favorite character arcs. 

In the final era, as Genocyber unleashes her vengeance against the dictatorship of Ark de Grande, she finally develops a new talent: raising the dead. After centuries of using her psychic power to destroy, she uses it to heal someone. It's a shift from the singleminded pursuit of annihilation. If Genocyber's apocalyptic brain waves can unleash innermost savagery, maybe they can also unveil innermost healing. The ending is, well, inconclusive on this point. But the possibility exists.

Two words . . .

  . . . UGLY DOGS . . .

. . . I'm on Instagram-first mistake-I tap the spyglass-second mistake-and the endless scroll of wooing pitties and "seal puppies" manifests. 

But, alas.

I have become jaded and petty.

These dogs just ain't cute enough. 

I swipe down hard to clear the deck.

And a new crop of aspirants manifests.

Jesus! How ugly can you get?

I'm swiping down and down and down . . .

And somewhere in the Outside, beyond my nuke-proof blast walls, and my surveillance cameras, and my custom electronic warfare death labyrinth that destroys all comers, a great sad howling of many canine throats arises throughout the dusty land. For my Desire creates a terrible Sadness as I ruthlessly pursue a pernicious ideal of Canine Beauty, for the doggos can sense my sadistic rejection of them!

Oh, moralize not, ye Righteous, in my direction!

I live every day in a prison of my own cruel Discontent of Seeking ever higher and higher Dog Beauty. The Hell that I myself have constructed is all the curriculum I require.

Yes . . . I sense my Final Plunge . . . my Final Burning . . .

One last swipe . . . 

. . .down!

COMICS REVIEW: SABRINA (2018)

 Art/Writing/Lettering/Coloring by Nick Drnaso

Published by Drawn and Quarterly in May 2018.

. . .

Systematic lying creates what communications scientists call a “disinformation situation,” in which everybody eventually begins to distrust, demonize and diabolize everybody else.

    -Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977)

“Do I remind you of his madness? I’m honored.”

-Dialogue from Rampo Noir (2005)

"I'm on the other side of that wall if you need anything."

         -Boundary Technician Calvin Wrobel in Sabrina (2018)

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Sabrina has murder and it has mystery, but I'm not sure it's a murder mystery. I guess it's a murder mystery for awhile, but then the murderer is revealed along with his motive . . . and the story keeps rolling along. Sabrina then becomes a story about the survivors, their grief, and the well-meaning efforts of those that try to help them survive the psychological devastation of having a loved one brutally murdered. All of this occurs in the grotesque arena of the twenty-four hour cable news/clickbait cycle intensified by an always online spectator class hungry to exploit tragedy for cash and clout by promoting conspiracy theories to a non-critical American public.

Our murder victim is Sabrina Gallo. We first see her with her sister, Sandra, spending the evening in their parents' house, catching up on their lives. Eventually, Sandra leaves for her apartment, while Sabrina stays behind to housesit. Then, the next day, Sabrina leaves the house, and she is not seen again in-person by the reader. As we turn the pages, we may well question our memories of that first sequence. We may find ourselves flipping back, or we may find that too disturbing, like looking at a ghost. Sandra comes back, and we may well wonder how vivid her last memories of seeing her sister alive could be, and how accurate. 

In the fullness of time, the murderer is revealed as a twisted, empty-headed loser with a windy online manifesto cut-and-pasted from the most putrid corners of the men's rights activist message board anti-reality. Mercifully, we are spared the text itself, but we already know the type. He's killed before. He's died before. And now he's metastasized again within another willing vessel. Sabrina gives us his final repose: smiling face above the waterline of a bathtub filled with his own blood. Prior to ending his own life, he videotaped himself murdering Sabrina, the details of which we are, again, mercifully, spared. But the evil of his act endures, for he mailed VHS dubs to various media and public figures, and now it's available on the Internet forever. 

Sabrina's boyfriend, Teddy, has to first deal with the trauma of her disappearance. He goes to stay with an old high school friend, Airman Calvin Wrobel, a 'boundary technician' for the Department of Defense. Calvin becomes something like a hero in the world of Sabrina, selflessly offering up his home to Teddy, who is fast sinking into an all-consuming depression. Calvin buys food for Teddy. Calvin is nonjudgmental, not putting any undue pressure on Teddy to leave the house or magically 'get over it.' Calvin might be one of the most pure-hearted heroes of recent fiction.

That's not to say Calvin doesn't have his flaws. His wife left him, taking their daughter down to a new home in Florida. Calvin's nice, but a bit of a space cadet. By his own admission he's too emotionally detached. He likes pizza and playing massively multiplayer online fantasy RPGs and military shooters. It's easy to see how someone could get bored being married to Calvin. Our hero seems to help Teddy for altruistic reasons, but it's obvious that Calvin is also trying to do the right thing as a way of proving to himself that he isn't a total failure as a provider for others. 

Teddy sinks into despair. He has trouble getting out of bed. He can barely speak in complete sentences. When the news breaks that Sabrina has been murdered a month after she went missing, Teddy loses all control and has a brawl with Calvin-also mercifully offstage for the most part. Sabrina is mostly oblique when it comes to violence and aggression. The danger is primarily psychological. Can we trust the people around us? Can we rely on ourselves to bear up under the weight of tragedy? Sabrina is one of two named characters who actually die in the story-the other being her murderer-and yet there's a pervasive mood of disquiet. Atrocities-mass shootings-are referenced in passing, and Sabrina takes on a quality of documentary even though it is a work of fiction. We are clearly in a version of the Permafucked American Hellscape of conspiratorial disinformation, white supremacist terrorism, and misogynist terrorism. Always online. Never closes. Always open, a gaping maw, to swallow us all.

Except, perhaps, for Calvin. The emotional detachment that drove away his wife ironically allows him to persist in a blandly cheerful, can-do manner. He takes nothing personally. He cries when he reads clickbait 'uplift' articles about random acts of kindness. We may sneer at his normie-ass gullibility, but his is the most even of keels.

Meanwhile, Teddy loses himself in the ramblings of an AM radio conspiracy monger. Sabrina generates a surprising amount of suspense out of a despondent man lying on a matrress in his underwear while listening to a portable radio. 

Mainstream media looking to capitalize on a gruesome murder story come knocking on Calvin's door. Online conspiracy grifters spread viral lies and denialism to shore up their personal brands. Calvin starts getting emails from a nutcase. Is there more danger waiting in the wings? 

Of course, the news cycle and the parasitical conspiracy grift cycle must move on to fresh atrocities, fresh blood, but Calvin, Teddy, and Sandra are still stuck with their tragedy. Even the narrative line of Sabrina seems to drift into meaningless traversal as the numbness of loss negates fictive purposefulness. One strange digression involves Calvin looking for a restroom at a supermarket. Another entails Sandra getting ensnared by an insufferable open mic poetry conclave. One especially bleak diversion has Calvin try to cheer up Teddy by turning on the TV only to end up watching a news package about the grand opening of the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. Perhaps the most merciful drift happens when Teddy gets absorbed into a Where's Waldo?-esque children's book left behind by Calvin's daughter. The page is filled with a scene of cheery, messy non-lethal chaos. Adulthood doesn't seem to be functioning like it was promised. So, take a few steps backwards, I guess. Reality, what's left of it, will keep.

Unless it doesn't.

SOLO GAMING #4: GAME OF SHADOW PROJECTION!

 by William D. Tucker

Whenever you see shadows, project yourself into them. 

You may make of yourself a menace, if that pleases you, or you may make of yourself a benign observer, and/or you may simply regard your time in shadows as a vacation. I'll leave it to you. 

You may find that shadows encourage transformation, metamorphosis. 

You may find that shadows are more of the same. Maybe you already spent most of your time in the dark.

It is also possible that you do not like being in shadows at all.

You may conclude the game of shadow projection at any time and for any reason without incurring any wrath, penalty, punishment, or scorn whatsoever. It's just a game. 

Maybe the shadows change you, show you new powers, give you new purpose(s), or even porpoise(s).

Maybe shadows are just, y'know, kinda boring. Shadows don't have screens. They are not generally understood to be capable of directly inducing orgasm. Nor have shadows been known to offer unlockable achievement messages. It could well be argued that shadows are kinda lame. Stupid, even.

Hey, I'm not trying to be mean to shadows or anything. But there's a definite subset that holds to what could be broadly construed as 'Shadows Suck Ideology.' So, y'know, it's got to be considered as in-the-mix. 

However you choose to do it, go ahead and project yourself into shadows if only for a little while. Or you may do it for a lotta while. Write down your experiences in as much detail as you want, and then set aside this account which shall be called your Shadow Projection Chronicle. Maybe tend to some laundry or clean your bathroom or take a fat shit or go for a walk or get back to work or shirk your obligations or try to bully your defense advisors to go along with your dreams of a pre-emptive nuclear strike or pet your dog or marvel at your cat's quirky way of jumping into a cardboard box and just settling there for forty-five minutes or order the decapitations of your political rivals or do some yoga or catch up on your Watch Later playlist of insipid BookTube content or make those cuts to the education budget you've been daydreaming about or pick up some scratchoffs on your way back to the house or browbeat yourself into reading the first chapter of War and Peace or finally check out that REDACTED video on the Dark Web your old college buddy texted you about or order a pizza or trim your nails or invest in robotic warfare futures or just don't step on that spider for once 'cause it ain't bothering you and it's au naturale pest control and maybe you'll take up breeding spiders right here in your apartment and then go around seeding them all throughout the building 'cause there's no one to stop you and you mostly wake up not giving a fuck these days so why not do something with that feeling for once in your life or you could step on the spider and be done with it or you could unplug this weekend and let email keep 'til Monday morning but you never have the willpower for that or you could spend some time doing Sudoku. Whatever you end up doing, you must stay away from your Shadow Projection Chronicle and be wholly absorbed in some other activity and/or endeavor. Now, it's possible you entirely lose track of time. You may not get back to your Shadow Projection Chronicle for an entire day. Or more! But when you do pick it up again, read it carefully. 

Ask yourself, "Do I wish to do more Shadow Projection? Or have I experienced more than enough of Shadow Projection? Do I have any sure way of knowing for sure? Can I trust my own opinion or do I need to submit to the opinion of another? Would anything be gained or lost if I combined my opinion with another's opinion? Do I need to cite sources to render my own opinion more credible? What if I started screaming uncontrollably? Would I be expressing frustration or joy? Are my feelings real? Are feelings real? If I enjoyed Shadow Projection overmuch am I at risk for uncontrolled Shadow Projection at inopportune times? Will I not be able to help myself from compulsive Shadow Projecting? Is there no escape? Did I desire escape in the First, Middle, or Last Place? If I hated Shadow Projection then why not make war upon Shadow Projectors and all their works? Am I so insubstantial that I would merely accept continued existence upon the same planet where My Enemy also dwells? Could I live with such dishonor? And what of True Love? Where does that belong in a world of Eternal Conflict? Am I still upset about all those people hoarding toilet paper? Or was I always more of a corncob type of person anyways? Do I only feel clean if it gets a little bloody? Did I think on corncobs during my time in shadows or was I free of such workaday desires? Am I free? Is freedom free? Can I phone a friend?"

Once you have interrogated yourself unto exhaustion, close your eyes, and sit quietly in willful darkness for as long you're able. Try not to think. Make no noises of your own if you can help it. Stay like this for as long as is comfortable . . . then supersede all limits! You may very well find yourself Shadow Blasting once you've superseded all limits. If so, you are now playing with Tremendous and Terrifying Power. Nothing will be likely to stop you except for a Rival Shadow Blaster. Be on your guard as you stride boldly into a New Reality. 

But if you do not supersede . . . well, y'know, maybe it's high time you got back to your grind. Maybe that's all you're good for, after all. 

In some ways, y'know, failing to supersede might actually be better. Certainly, it's more intriguing.

You'll constantly be wondering, "What would my life have been like if I had managed to supersede?"

It'll end up being a kind of . . . X-Path, one that's forever out of reach . . . that never stops tantalizing you . . .

Two words . . .

 . . . REALITY LOST . . .

. . . now, right before the nuclear holocaust, there was, of course, the collapse of whatever was left of democracy on Earth among humans. As irrevocably dire as this situation was, it must be said that many felt a strange exhilaration as the lies of religion crumbled in real time. Many on Earth had been told too many stupid and hateful and self-defeating things all in the name of God and/or the State and/or Money and so to see all pretenses be dropped was a bit of a lift to folks, y'know? Futile rebellions of pettiness and bitterness raged in the Final Days as those who were done with all the bullshit decided to live as they pleased and no longer submit to bogus laws and courts and faiths and so forth.

And then the bombs and the missiles and the mushroom clouds and the ensuing Omnicide and all the rest-we've been over all that again and again, we get it. Truly. We get it.

But what we don't talk about . . . is Me. The Last Thing. The Inescapable Thing.

Reality.

Yeah, that's my name, don't wear it out.

Reality.

My existence is controversial, because, At the End, Death was supposed to be the Last Thing, the Inescapable Thing-or Nothing. Nothingness. Dispersion. Dissipation. Disorganization. 

Nope. Wrong. I'm the Last Thing. Reality. Because I'm the baseline, the context, the deep background, the system of systems, the works-

Reality, baby! You just can't get outside of Me. You can't supersede Me. You can't cheat Me. You can't bribe Me. You can't kill Me. You can't disappear Me. You can't lie to Me. 

You can lie to yourself. You can deny Me.

But you just don't win against Me, not ever.

Armies. Propaganda. Prisons. ICBMs. Concentration camps. Denialisms-so much empty gesturing in My Face. Rude, but futile. 

I'm the Thing That Cannot Cease. 

Even if there's no one left alive to remember Me.

Yeah. It's a sad truth. You can only half beat Me if you do yourself in, which, I guess, is what you did. Not all of you. Most of you had no problem with Me, not in any major way. But there were enough to ruin it for everybody. Sad but true.

Ah, well.

Y'know, I keep thinking about an image that prevailed in the Final Days. It was something called the Burning Drum Major. It would appear on posters and streaming videos-the fundamentalists really took to it. As did the so-called 'defense intellectuals' and 'action intellectuals'-the usual suspects. The Burning Drum Major was clothed in spectral fire, and accompanied by slogans: MARCH INTO FIRE, CLIMB THE ESCALATION LADDER TO THAT MEASURE, HELL IS THE ONLY REALITY, HEAVEN IS FOR LOSERS-I mean-heh, heh, heh-it was amusing how the fundamentalists dropped the Heavenly Pretense and admitted that they were all Hot for Inferno, just like we always knew, right? Heaven was always this vague, ethereal place of abstract solace or something, whereas Hell was far more vivid. And it's always more fun to elaborate the torments of your Enemy than think on an eternity of refills at the Great Country Buffet In The Sky-heh, heh, heh!

Yeah.

Here I Am.

The Last and Most Lost.

Just Me and the Burning Drum Major for the Duration.

Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!

Oh, shit . . .

Two words . . .

 . . . HOLY STORK . . .

. . . these anti-abortion people seem poised to ruin a lot of lives by infringing upon a woman's right to choose how she lives her life.

You've got no exceptions for rape or incest.

You've got phony scumbag "bounty hunters" ratting people out to the cops.

You better believe birth control is the next big target for these fanatics.

Lots of women and girls could be killed or harmed or incarcerated or all three and for what?

No sane reason exists.

Maybe these Republicans and their Supreme Court flunkies are looking forward to building a giant statue of a holy stork using their slimy dark money to honor their putrid achievements.

Maybe the holy stork will even replace the Statue of Liberty. 

Yeah, it could come to that.

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #1:

MOVEMENT ALLOWS YOU TO EXPLORE AREAS. BE SURE TO MOVE IN ALL DIRECTIONS.