TAKING STOCK OF 2022

 Year 2022 was dominantly my "year of the crossover." Though I started my first systematic analysis of the phenomenon in late 2021, most of my key writings on the subject took place in the newly departed year. Among other things, I believe I finally came to some conclusions about what separates a crossover from a mashup.

Although I'd devoted an earlier post to the subject of the "Asian claw imagery," I gave the subject a thorough investigation here, ranging from Sax Rohmer's novel THE YELLOW CLAW to Marvel Comics' various iterations of their same-name villain(s). Only an equally Rohmeresque subject, it was fun to re-examine the author's 1918 GOLDEN SCORPION, which for me encoded some clues as to why the author might have played down his best known creation Fu Manchu for roughly a decade.

I finally came up with serviceable names for the quanta of the didactic and mythopoeic potentialities here.

In the year of George Perez's regrettable passing, I was finally able to isolate a story from his WONDER WOMAN run that I could designate as a mythcomic. Similary, though for years I'd known that Ra's Al Ghul was a strong villain, 2022 was the first year I learned that he was also a mythic villain.

I learned about some interesting dichotomies in the work of the philosopher Wittgenstein thanks to reading and reviewing one of Stuart A. Kauffman's books.

I concluded my reviews of Dennis Wheatley's four most renowned occult novels in TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER. And while I may never get around to reviewing *all* of the Moore-O'Neill LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN novels, I was moved by O'Neill's passing to review the first and the last, which together offer some interesting data as to what the authors did and did not accomplish.

Lastly, I enlarged upon an earlier concept, consummation, so as to illustrate what makes fiction different from reality, and why the former is most desirable when it's least like the latter.

As for the NUM blog, some key reviews in terms of giving me good mental exercise in their analysis include:

The 1931 DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE.

The anime AQUARION and the two seasons of HEAVEN'S LOST PROPERTY.

The 2022 BATMAN.

The four ALIEN films, starting here.

The psycho-thriller WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.

The bizarre BLINDMAN.

The 2001 METROPOLIS, a good version of a mediocre Tezuka work.

TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, even if it was a poor version of a good book.

And in December, I finished reviewing all the ATOR films, with the pleasant surprise that the only one with mythic resonance-- despite still being riddled with goofy inconsistencies-- was IRON WARRIOR, which I'd seen once and barely remembered. WARRIOR was also the last film reviewed for the year, which at least took away the taste of the HE-MAN/SHE-RA CHRISTMAS SPECIAL.

Finally, though I usually don't play up the things I put on my "junk-drawer blogs," I devoted several posts to surveying the sadism tropes found in the HEAVEN'S LOST PROPERTY manga, starting here.

As for the current year will bring-- quien sabe?