MOVIE REVIEW: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

 Written and Directed by David Cronenberg

Cinematography by Douglas Koch

Production Design by Carol Spier

Music by Howard Shore

Edited by Christopher Donaldson

Produced by Robert Lantos 

Starring

Viggo Mortensen as Saul Tenser

Lea Seydoux as Caprice

Scott Speedman as Lang Dotrice

Lihi Kornowski as Djuna Dotrice

Don McKellar as Wippet

Kristen Stewart as Timlin

Nadia Litz as Router

Tanaya Beatty as Berst

Welket Bungue as Detective Cope

Yorgos Pirpassopoulos as Dr. Nasatir

. . .

"SAVE THE TUMORS!"

-bumper sticker slogan attributed to the American stand-up philosopher George Carlin in the late twentieth century or thereabouts.

"BODY

IS

REALITY"

-slogan appearing on a tube tv screen in the film Crimes of the Future (2022)

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

A body changes. A slogan appears on a screen-"BODY IS REALITY." So, reality changes. We are not what we once were. Gestation, birth, growth, exercise, diet, thoughts, beliefs, politics, art, sex, doubt, drugs, tattoos, piercings, aging, surgeries, modifications, medications, infections, sickness, death. Changes we choose, changes we seek, changes by chance, changes imposed by religion, changes imposed by the state. There's who you are, who you want to be, and what others want you to be. A lot of times, instead of the word want the word need gets used, but maybe that's stating the obvious.

In the movie Crimes of the Future, the human species has stopped feeling pain, and it has stopped getting infections . . . so, like, where's the orgy at? 

Whoops. I guess I just laid my cards on the table. Sorry 'bout that.

Clears throat.

In the movie Crimes of the Future, the human species has stopped feeling pain, and it has stopped getting infections. Therefore, naturally, cutting becomes a recreational/sexual activity, and surgeons become performance artists. Instead of going to some boring museum to look at LCDs of some atrocious NFT monkeys, you crowd into what used to be a BDSM fuck dungeon in a post-industrial sector, and watch people get sliced open by precision robotic surgery machines, and then laser-cauterized shut just for the hell of it. I suppose the orgy is to be inferred. Hey, this is still a mainstream narrative movie. You can literally expose someone's guts as part of your content, but heaven help you if you have people fuck in any combination. It ain't boring, that's for sure.

We have various couples:

Saul Tensor and Caprice: Saul has a rare medical condition wherein he constantly grows novel organs that have to be cut out of his abdomen before they crowd out his essential viscera. Caprice is a former trauma surgeon. Together, they are the premiere power couple of the surgical performance art scene. Saul grows it, Caprice uses robotic scalpel armatures to slice it. The harvested novel organs are catalogued and stylishly illustrated into art objects.

Lang and Djuna Dotrice: These two had a son that was a mutant who lived by eating plastic. Mom Djuna was disgusted by this and so murdered her offspring to express her disaproval of such an abomination. Dad Lang is convinced his son was the next stage of human evolution, and so he establishes a radical evolutionary front movement to advocate on behalf of this new mode of being.  So, the question is: was their son an aberration to be shit-canned or the embodiment of the human future?

Wippet and Timlin: These are a pair of colleagues, working on behalf of an evolutionary enforcement agency. They're supposed to be policing radical evolutionaries, but each of them seem to be drawn to the radical surgeries put on by Saul and Caprice, and, possibly, to the radical transformations that Lang is advocating. They're kinda like establishment squares wrestling with their inner freaks. 

Router and Berst: Colleagues, but also a couple. They're technicians who service the biomechanical surgical beds that make the avant garde surgery scene possible. They represent the interests of what passes for Big Tech in this peculiar world. 

Detective Cope and Dr. Nasatir: Not actually a couple, but these two each represent the ideological hardcore. Cope's a lawman looking to gather intel on the evolutionary outlaws. Nasatir's lending his medical expertise to the surgical artists and the mutant faction promoted by Lang. They're enemies, but they don't quite know it.

Crimes of the Future has a lot going on, much of it conveyed through layered, witty dialogue, and cleverly realized special effects setpieces embedded within moody, subterranean production design. The surgery beds have a gristly organic look evoking technology as an extension of human bodies and human desires. 

Accelerated evolution brings about changes in technology, values, identity, sexuality, law, and economics. Some resist the future, others embrace it, still others react with violence. 

I find the characters of Wippet and Timlin especially amusing. They're supposed to be government regulators but they're woefully underfunded and stuck using antiquated dead tree methods of record keeping. 

Saul and Caprice have a couple of memorably perverse scenes of what I suppose could be described as, um, Surgical Sexuality? I said that this is a future wherein people have stopped feeling pain, but there's also the implication that humans have rapidly evolved new sources of pleasure. 

Of course, Crimes of the Future, like many works of science fiction, can be interpreted both literally and metaphorically. We have here themes of sacrificing oneself for one's art; dealing with change; coping with sickness; asserting identity; art criticism; sexuality-it borders on the didactic, but I didn't mind this. Here's a movie with ideas, goddamnit, not a bunch of computer generated wrastling matches. It's funny, it's disturbing, its reach exceeds its grasp, it did not waste my time. 

This is a David Cronenberg movie. He's the guy who made movies like Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Shivers, Rabid, Crash, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, The Brood, The Dead Zone, Cosmopolis, Eastern Promises, and Videodrome. These are all movies dealing with questions of the body, of technology, of radical transformations-all within the context of a world driven by greed and the desires of established factions to impose controls upon outlaws, freaks, and rebels. Crimes of the Future is a worthy addition to this ever-mutating body of work. Internet tells me that Cronenberg is almost eighty years old, which makes me think that experience must count for something in this world. 

I look forward to the next one. 

Two words . . .

 . . . EQUUS TWO . . .

. . . in a dream, I laid out my pitch for a sequel to Equus:

"-our troubled young man leaves dreary old England for Hollywood, where he sweet talks his way into directing an independent feature for a Roger Corman-esque producer. This low-budj flick becomes his calling card for the majors, who throw him a low stakes comeback vehicle for an aging Marlon Brando-esque star that becomes the shock hit of the summer. Now our troubled thirtysomething can pursue his dream project: an epic western taking on themes of class struggle and range warfare and the sunset of the Mythic Wild West-and the Movie Gods shower him with cash beyond the dreams of avarice, and he shoots it on desolate locations out in Utah and Wyoming, where he builds elaborate soundstages indistinguishable from real life towns, and even though he's not permitted to actually harm the human performers he does put them through hellish twenty-three hour days, requiring thousands of takes just to get that one detail exactly right. In the depths of this slog, our Great Director snorts five mile rails of cocaine-he calls it the Molar Cracker Express-and begins to abuse the hundreds of horses that are already being  overworked under dubious conditions. And that's when he starts hearing the creepy voice of the horse god from the previous movie. And where did that voice come from, hmm? That was never fully explained the first time around, was it? No. Maybe it had something to do with those TV jingles he obsessively sang, hmmm? Put a pin in that. Sooo, after shooting several horses dead to get that authentic dead horse vibe for the shot, the horse god accuses him of murder outright in a strangely familiar drawling voice. A terrifying stallion cloaked in spectral fire chases our Great Director all through the elaborate frontier town set, lighting off everything and everyone. In desperation, the Great Director summons the MGM lion to fight the hellhorse. But the hellhorse tears out the elderly logo lion's throat with ease, and finally catches up with the Great Director. And the hellhorse speaks, saying,

"Hello. I'm Mr. Ed. And it's my turn, now, motherfucker!"

-well, it goes rather poorly for the Great Director. All those years of living in fear of a horse god . . . and it was merely misremembered dialogue from an old TV show. Yep. So, the hellhorse bites his face off as the frontier town set burns to ashes. Cut to a lavish golf course where not only do we see Apollo and Dionysus enjoying the holes . . . but they go riding off together into the sunset in the same golf cart! Roll credits."

 . . .of course, it is all still but a dream . . .

Well . . .

 . . . I've never been more relieved to not have children in my life than right now.

In my country-the USofA-guns and money are more important than human life.

Bunch of elementary school children slaughtered in a mass shooting? Doesn't count for fucking shit. 

Republicans will have their guns and their blood money and dead children don't mean anything. Not a thing.

Yeah. 

If anything's going to change, it'll probably take a general strike, a general walkout, 'cause the violence could strike anywhere.

You got mass shootings at schools, at churches, at mosques, at synagogues, at hospitals, at cemeteries, at stores, at supermarkets, at barbecues, at parties, everywhere-and we are all supposed to just accept this reign of terror. 

It's sad. It's fucking sick and twisted and depraved beyond all forgiveness. It's business-as-usual for gutless-mostly Republican-politicians who have all made their Devil's Bargain with the NRA. 

We need gun control, now.

We need a permanent ban on assault rifles, now.

We need to vote every last Republican out of office when the time comes. 

We need to face the truth that guns are made by people for people to kill other people. 

And, no, I don't think America has the guts to do the right thing. I really don't. Gun atrocities have been happening nonstop for years and years, and it has only gotten worse. 

We know what needs to be done, and instead we choose gun violence over the lives of children. 

That's why I'm glad I'm not a parent. If I were a father, I'd worry myself into an early grave. I don't see why any rational person would have a child in this ghoulish reality. 

And the saddest part?

These grotesque mass shootings aren't even statistically that significant when measured against the rates of gun suicides and gun homicides and awful gun injuries. 

The gun is a threat to us all.

When will we stop worshipping it as our True God?

Probably never.

Ah, well. 

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #2:

 COMBAT ENCOUNTERS MAY RESULT IN VICTORY OR DEFEAT. TRY TO AVOID DEFEAT.

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.