Sorry for lack of posts. More uncanny researches to follow. Here are some old comics covers. I think you are rather easy to please, apparently. I’ve gotten rather fascinated by an old DC series with the excellent title, “From Beyond The Unknown”, which is enough to strike even as undisciplined a mind as – oh, say Zizek’s – as a bit undisciplined, as para-Rumsfeldianisms go. (You’ve got your unknown beyond the unknowns, your known beyond the unknowns, but also presumably you want to introduce a beyond-the-beyond-ness axis. I leave construction of a box, exhausting the range of impossibility spaces, as an exercise for the interested reader.)
As I was saying, just some of the best. covers. ever. But the stories were all retreads of 1950’s comics, hence the need to update the material in one case.
Democrats can sympathize. Every times you think they’ve gotten as weird as they are going to get, they elect a weirder Republican. I’m tempted to Photoshop a copy of Hillbilly Elegy in there, and you-know-who onscreen.
Except I think that’s already Trump in one of the other issues. I assume this issue is a parable about the attitude of journalists – and, quite possibly, most Americans – in the run up to the 2016 elections. (He’s got the hair kind of right.)
The resolution is not so good on this one so I can’t tell if it’s Pruitt or Zinke in the purple jumpsuit. (But if it turns out Pruitt has misappropriated funds to buy extremely short capes, on the grounds that this is ‘necessary for security’, we should worry.)
I think this one is about, um, Russian bots on Twitter in the 2016 race. Or Cambridge Analytica?
And this one is obviously about how not the Access Hollywood tape, nor Mueller’s investigation, nor anything else, would cause Trump’s poll numbers to fall below a certain threshold. Some people would vote for him even if he tore off his human mask, right on 5th Avenue. He seems authentic. (Maybe it’s the jacket?)
In general I would be willing to pay good money if Rick Perlstein could rewrite his three big books [amazon], in graphic novel form, as old issues of “From Beyond The Unknown”. So long as the art was – you know, ok. Like old Gil Kane stuff, maybe.
Honestly, Eisenhower wasn’t that weird. Be fair, Holbo.
{ 20 comments }
John Holbo 04.25.18 at 7:37 am
If anyone is confused about the point of this point, here’s a hint. I’m employing a technique called ‘complex irony’. Not to get all Vlastos on yer ass or anything. It’s not exactly like a Socratic dialogue.
MFB 04.25.18 at 7:40 am
I switched over from researching science fiction to researching political discourse because, frankly nothing in science fiction is remotely as weird or as reality-challenging than the weird, reality challenged world of politics.
But I grant you that the United States gets the trophy for the weirdest and most reality challenged. Scarily, it has infected the world through its culture. Perhaps a Great Wall should be erected.
Phil 04.25.18 at 8:37 am
I thought TMWSTE might be an unnoticed antecedent of the very similar phrase used by David Bowie, but no dice – the reissue (above) came out in 1973, and it doesn’t seem very likely that Bowie in 1970 would have seen the 1954 original.
John Holbo 04.25.18 at 8:45 am
I thought of the same thing, Phil. But it seemed it bad taste to mix Zizek, Trump and Bowie in the same post.
anon/portly 04.25.18 at 4:56 pm
Every times you think they’ve gotten as weird as they are going to get, they elect a weirder Republican.
Nixon, of course, was obviously kind of a weird guy, although if you stick him in the House of Representatives at any given point in time, I wonder whether he cracks the 95th percentile for weirdness. (In the CT comments section he wouldn’t crack the 80th). But the Republican presidents elected since haven’t been particularly weird – maybe Reagan a little, but not Bush, Bush or Trump.
Surely witnessing Trump all these years the thought “weird” never came up before things like “crass,” “annoying,” “comical,” etc etc etc. Maybe in retrospect we should have thought he was weird, but really he’s just an extreme example of a mundane or banal type.
What’s weird about Trump is that he’s been elected president. It’s the American political system and/or electorate that’s weird, not Trump himself.
Note: it’s obviously a wonderful touch to have Nixon giving the double V sign. I have a hard time thinking of a similarly wonderful touch the artist could have used with any other recent president….
DonBoy 04.25.18 at 6:30 pm
A joke I heard in junior high, which we’ll note was around 1972:
A man falls into a coma in the 1957. He wakes up 15 years later, and, still disoriented, he asks the doctor “How’s President Eisenhower?” The doctor says “Sorry to say, he’s died.” The man yells “Oh shit — Nixon’s president!”
Jim Buck 04.25.18 at 7:19 pm
” it doesn’t seem very likely that Bowie in 1970 would have seen the 1954 original.”
Actually, it is quite likely that Bowie saw the original—either: circulating with all the other comics that crossed the Atlantic as ballast to Liverpool, there to be stamped for sale at 9d (ninepence); or he might have seen the story reprinted in the DC Xmas annuals that postwar British kids could look forward to, if they were good.
Jake Gibson 04.25.18 at 8:52 pm
Not a new thought, but this dystopian political thriller we are living in really sucks.
Kiwanda 04.25.18 at 10:40 pm
” it doesn’t seem very likely that Bowie in 1970 would have seen the 1954 original.”
Wikipedia and Rolling Stone, at least, claim that Heinlein’s 1951 “The Man Who Sold the Moon” inspired the Bowie song.
J-D 04.26.18 at 12:01 am
Don’t be.
J-D 04.26.18 at 12:02 am
Hmm. No sooner did I post than I recognised a possible ambiguity. What I meant was not ‘I prefer it when you don’t post’, but rather ‘You have nothing to apologise for, as you are under no obligation to us’.
LFC 04.26.18 at 2:35 am
OP:
I would be willing to pay good money if Rick Perlstein could rewrite his three big books [amazon], in graphic novel form, as old issues of “From Beyond The Unknownâ€. So long as the art was – you know, ok.
I’m not a huge fan of graphic novels, but since I found myself unable to finish the rather prolix and overwritten Before the Storm — yeah, I’ll take the graphic novel. Provided Holbo pays for my copy.
Belle Waring 04.26.18 at 3:57 am
Jake Gibson, it’s specifically a Phillip K. Dick novel. That’s why I’m so paranoid right now.
JakeB 04.26.18 at 5:06 am
@10, then 11 — first reaction, “dang! J-D’s a dick” followed a moment later by, “oh, I bet he meant that he’s happy to see a Holbo post whenever they appear, whenever that is”, followed by reading 11.
Anyways, those are some magnificently weird covers.
dave heasman 04.26.18 at 11:58 am
“The story is simple. There was a boy who bought the planet Earth. We know that to our cost. It only happened once and we have taken pains that it will never happen again.”
But that was published in 1964, written by a man who almost certainly hadn’t seen the 1954 comic.
Josh 04.27.18 at 1:06 am
Cordwainer Smith? Why would he have not seen a 1954 comic?
Another Nick 04.27.18 at 12:42 pm
Kiwanda: “Wikipedia and Rolling Stone, at least, claim that Heinlein’s 1951 “The Man Who Sold the Moon†inspired the Bowie song.”
David Jones was apparently inspired by Heinlein’s “Starman Jones” as a kid, and briefly considered a film adaptation of “Stranger in a Strange Land” in the 70s.
But it’s worth noting The Man Who Sold the World was originally the working title for Saviour Machine, not his rewrite of Antigonish.
A couple of likely influences for that song:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Troubles_of_the_World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
According to Tony Visconti, the arrangement and lyrics for both songs were completed rather frantically during the sessions.
And no idea if Bowie ever read this as a kid either, but just for fun:
http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=26029e
Another Nick 04.27.18 at 12:44 pm
Here’s Thornton Ayre’s “The Man Who Sold The Earth†in 1940 btw:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?255577
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell_Fearn
Ogden Wernstrom 04.27.18 at 10:22 pm
Jake Gibson 04.25.18 at 8:52 pm:
I am convinced that, if there were a God and this dystopian political thriller took place on the high seas, he would fire a shot across our bow right about now.
dave heasman 04.28.18 at 7:03 pm
“Cordwainer Smith? Why would he have not seen a 1954 comic?”
It seemed unlikely to me; he spent a lot of the 50s in Korea, China & Egypt and also he didn’t seem the comic-book type. Though come to think of it he wrote “The Game of Rat & Dragon” in Washington in 1954 so maybe….
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