A secret official history
of the Justice Prevailers
the heroic lineage of the metamorphic warriors what went around blowing up all those dead malls full up with slimy, rubbery monsters-of-the-week born of the failed dreams of yesteryear’s compulsive consumers’ pathologies
freshly unearthed
giving the lie
to the widely circulated officially authorized public history of the Justice Prevailers
it fucked everything up
in theory
it made everything more complicated
in theory
illustrating with obsessively detailed insider accounts just how unregulated and corrupt and messy and confused and bitchy and backstabby and self-mythologizing and addicted to fighting for the sake of fighting and strung out on every kind of drug and deeply contemptuous of everyday people and paranoid and obsessed with acquiring more power and obsessed with stockpiling ever more destructive arsenals of ultratech weapons the Justice Prevailers actually were
in theory
people would read this stuff, and give a shit
in practice
people weren’t much for moderating their doomscrolling to read thousands of pages of boring-as-fuck words
in practice
much of the nuance got paved over
those who sought the destruction of the Justice Prevailers in the name of nostalgic defenses of enclosed shopping mausoleums continued to seek their destruction
and
those that professed undying faith in the Justice Prevailers as the harbingers of creative destruction simply ignored the unflattering passages
so
in practice
the two broadly construed opposing factions
ended up believing what they already believed even harder
which was fine
having the two factions pound skulls
generated lots of merch sales
and when the big budget based on a True Story Hollywood movie got squirted onto screens
it did okay
if only that budget didn’t get so out of hand
officially
sure
it was Number One
for a weekend
but the profit
heh
the profit was more of a Notional
as per industry standards
but the right executive people made the right kind of money
even if the final deliverable ultimately bankrupted a studio, put twelve special effects houses out of business due to burdensome contracts that tripled their workloads without concomitant pay increases, failed to impress critics, and constricted the overall economic space of viability for filmmakers of all budgets
hey . . . it was a pretty good movie
like to watch
not so much to think on
not one to be remembered
just a fling
no matter the true costs
which the Vast Squishy Middle types who make up the majority audience
aren’t even aware of
and so a set of images and notions about the Justice Prevailers
prevailed
and look you
what’s shambling our way
new monsters-of-the-week aborning
from the frustrated desires
of a culture writhing in despair
as they realize they cannot consume their way to happiness
but we still have the Prevailers
ready to kick ass, raise hell, make a big scene
take our minds off the despair focus
hell, I’m sure they’ll get around to knocking ol’ Despair Itself through a brick wall
that would be a cool scene for sure
