MY SECOND LIST O'LOST QUESTIONS

Starting with new numbering:

1) Sayid, convinced by Ben that Widmore is responsible for Nadia's death, kills several people at Ben's behest. Then one day Ben just says thanks for playing, I don't need you any more. Sayid, instead of using his "mad ninja skills" to personally go after Widmore without Ben's help, just gets very glum without a boss to tell him who to kill. Then he gives up on the revenge thing and goes off to build houses in the Third World. Some time after the death of "Jeremy Bentham" Ben again approaches Sayid, offering him the chance to kill kill kill. Sayid wants nothing to do with Ben, but whereas Locke's invitation to return to the island and save the island-bound garnered only indifference from Mr. Jarah, Ben's revelation that Hurley's being watched by a Widmore-agent is enough to motivate Sayid to pick up his gun once more. I really didn't think Sayid and Hurley had much to do with one another back on the Island, so I don't see Sayid having some great protective instinct toward Hurley. Is the real reason he accepts the Mission to Help Hurley because Sayid really wants to be set back on the path of fighting Widmore, even though he won't accept Ben's help any more?


2) We know that Sayid felt pissed when Ben gave him the big kiss-off, but is that the only reason he has such a massive distrust for Ben later? In the dock-scene Sayid warns Ben that if Ben approaches him again things will become "extremely unpleasant," i.e., Sayid's ready to kill Ben dead as a Tex Avery roach. That seems a more extreme emotion than he showed when Ben just gave him the air. Did Sayid find out something new about Ben's manipulations? Does he subconsiously suspect that Ben might actually be the one behind the killing of Nadia, but he won't quite let himself consider the possibility that he was so completely fooled?

3) Did Ben have anything to do with the killing of Nadia? It seems unlikely, since in between his turning the donkey wheel and his popping up in Tunisia, the events relating to Nadia's death have already transpired. Mastermind though Ben is, it's hard to see him pulling strings during his ten-month trip to temporal limbo. I suppose that either he or Widmore might have set up the killing long in advance due to foreknowledge given them by time-travel, though Ben doesn't act like he has THAT much foreknowledge. Widmore still seems the more likely candidate, though both of them share the motivation of wanting Sayid back on the Island.

4)Why is Widmore such a pussy during Season 5?

I mean, Widmore in Season 4 is fricking Lex Luthor. He calls together three top specialists to deal with the Island's freakazoid propensities (granted, maybe he calls them together because his past self KNOWS that he WILL call them together). He outfits a freighter with a helicopter and a shitload of C4, plus a shitload of deadly mercenaries. And though the Island's crazy-making radiations seem to keep the freighter's people off in some cases, Widmore's people do end up capturing Ben, killing Alex and doing other dastardly stuff.

But in Season 5, Widmore, knowing that Desmond's brought his daughter back to America, can't do shit to intercept Ben from trying to kill her: Penny's saved only because Ben muffs killing Desmond, who then beats Ben to a pulp before collapsing. Ben also kills Abaddon with complete impunity once Abaddon's helped Locke make his first attempts at O6 enlistement. Maybe it would've been a good idea to send at least TWO men with Locke, Charles W? One would think he could afford another whole squad of mercenaries to keep Locke safe-- though again, maybe Widmore "knows" that Locke's destined to die and (sort of) return to the Island. However, there's no textual support for THAT foreknowledge.

5) What's Miles' role in all this? Faraday performs lots of calculations that help the freighter mission, and he and Charlotte together neutralize the poison-gas weapon so that Ben can't use it as he used it on the Dharmas. But the only reason Naomi gives for Miles being enlisted is that they want Miles to be able to talk to dead bodies on the Island. Once there Miles does this a few times on his own recognizance, but he never explicitly does so looking for particular info that he's been assigned to ferret out. Since dead people aren't much of a resource for helping Widmore's people locate Ben, was there ever a mission-justification for Miles to be on the Island, or is he going to perform a more crucial action in Season 6, one that Widmore knows or suspects he must be there to perform?

It's also interesting that on one occasion Miles does seem to be able to partially read the mind of a living person, as when he declares that "Kevin Johnson" is not Michael's real name. This may have been nothing more than a cutesy throwaway, though. At the very least Miles seems to have far more ability to read dead people.

That's enough for now.

MAKING A MEAL OUT OF MELIORISM

I'm not the first to wonder to bring up "meliorism" in connnection with LOST, that would be Houston Chronicle blogger Therese Odell. I don't recall the specific essay where she brought it up, but will try to find it later.

Here's the handy Wiki definition of meliorism:

"Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one."

Now, here's the closest Jacob comes in Season 5's THE INCIDENT to making a philosophical statement in conversation with "Esau:"

Esau: “...They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.”
Jacob: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that…just progress.”

Meliorism would seem something of an alternative to determinism, although of course one has no way of knowing what WOULD have occured if humans had not taken action.

MY FIRST LIST O' LOST QUESTIONS

Season 6's first episode of LOST is less than a week away. I'm expecting to be blown away by some revelations as well as to be frustrated by shortcuts and cop-outs. This state of affairs should make LOST the ideal TV show of all time, incorporating the best and worst aspects of series TV.

I even thought of starting another blog just to take care of LOST questions-- and perhaps reach out to a LOST-specific fandom. But I decided that it was easier to post them here: at this late date, most of the LOST-blogs already have their following.

SPOILERS for everything, of course.

1. Will the writers EVER explain why pregnant women began dying if they conceived on the Island? It doesn't seem like an edict from Jacob that they should die, for it's implicitly a peril Sun faces as well from having conceived there (though she escapes before the hammer comes down). For similar reasons it seems unlikely to be a direct consequence of Jughead's presence: radiation underneath Dharmaville wouldn't affect Sun over on the beach-- although maybe one could blame some freaky interaction of nucelar radiation and the magnetism beneath the Island. The dual explanations seem at war with one another, like the dual explanations Bram Stoker gives for vampirism in DRACULA.

2. In season 3 Richard isn't the least bit concerned about the mortality of pregnant Other women, and seems to think all of Ben's tests are a waste of time. He intimates that he expects John Locke to do something different, but what? And will Richard's plans for Locke ever be resurrected now that Locke appears to be Really Quite Sincerely Dead?

3. Faraday states in Season 5 that people can change time because they are the "variables" in the mathematic equation. This would seem to be a development from his Season 4 observation that Desmond was "special" and somehow not subject to the rules of space and time. So far that "specialness" has eventuated mainly in Desmond being able to "talk to himself" across space-time, but he hasn't actually changed the past, to the audience's knowledge, and his changes to the future were minor, in that he prevented some Charlie-deaths but not The Big One.

4. Does Charlie's vision of Aaron as some sort of Holy Child mean anything? Aaron, like Sun's kid, was pretty much sidelined in Season 5, and in contrast to Walt, Aaron was played as Ordinary Kid. Did the whole schtick about the importance of his not being raised by someone other than Claire mean anything in the larger scheme, or is it one of those things that will get "LOST" in the shuffle?

More later.

THE EXEMPLARY AND THE EXCEPTIONAL PART II

I started refining some of my thoughts on the topic of "quality in popular culture" upon giving more thought about how one might defend certain choices for "best comics stories" on a transpersonal basis, rather than just personal liking. If one's only criterion for inclusion on such a list was exceptionalism, then there's no way that one could ever find room for "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," the first story to introduce the character of the Batman. I've mentioned before that in terms of the pulp aesthetic that prevailed during most of the Golden Age, the Batman stories possessed an overall higher quality than that of most other costumed-crusader features. Yet "Syndicate," the story to initiate the Batman series, was in almost every way a thoroughly ordinary tale, as evidenced by the stiff art above, in which nothing seems to have any life but the dramatic figure of the Batman. Moreover, fan-research revealed that most of the story was cadged from a text-tale from one of the SHADOW pulps, so that it's not even merely a derivative story, but a swiped one. If one's only criterion is one of exceptionalism, of that which exceeds the normal boundaries of a given form, then "Syndicate" would not make an exceptionalist's list.



And yet, "Syndicate" does have that one appealing element of the Batman, flitting in and out of the prosaic goings-on. The earliest form of the character's costume is almost entirely an abstract design, with little resemblance to what a real man in a costume would look like in a representational drawing. Even Joe Shuster's Superman, crude though it is, looks more like a real figure. Yet, as I've observed before, the Siegel-Shuster SUPERMAN posited a supernormal crimefighter who automatically outshone almost all of his adversaries and supporting characters, while Batman, a normal crimefighter with only the appearance of the supernormal, quickly propagated his occult aura outward, so that even minor enemies like the Monk and the Duc D'Orterre became significant figures in the series' expressive design.

Thus, on the basis of the one design element of the Batman, with its enormous kinetic appeal, I can fairly pronounce "Syndicate" to be an exemplary tale in spite of its obvious failings. Poor as it is in many respects, it set a palpable example for better stories. I wouldn't say that every origin-story does this, however, which is one reason I disagree with Tony Isabella's 1000 COMICS book, in which he indiscriminately lists any story that begins a significant series. Some origin stories may actually be technically better than Batman's first outing, but not all first stories are exemplary stories.

In contast to an exemplary story, an exceptional story needs to convey the sense that it has not only fulfilled the requirements of a given form or genre but has in some sense surpassed it. Such is patently the case with the aforementioned six-part DETECTIVE COMICS serial by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, which reputedly sought not to simply tell another Batman story but to capture the essence of the Batman concept: condensing in six issues the major tropes of the serial, at least as Englehart and Rogers perceived them.

In the Golden Age there was no thought of attempting such a condensation. Even when Golden Age stories got better, with Bill Finger's scripts becoming more finely-tuned while artists like Sprang and Robinson easily outdid Bob Kane's crudities, there was no sense of "going beyond" the limits of any single Batman story; of telling, in effect, an exceptional "meta-Batman" tale.






In Rogers' work, Batman's costume is no longer as abstract as in the original Kane story, but now it has become a design-element in a greater design, that of Rogers' Eisneresque comic-book architecture. And in like manner, Englehart's story consistently articulates sophisticated (some would say "pseudo-sophisticated") meanings to what the original audience considered to be nothing more than simple pulp fantasies. In the section excerpted, Englehart has villain Deadshot expouse pure moral relativism: "I want what I want, and don't care how I get it!" Earlier in the same story, Rupert Thorne, a crime boss operating behind a respectable front, becomes far more philosophical than any Bill Finger gangster could've been, as Thorne tells Batman that the people of Gotham want the hero gone because he "stirs things up." Whether or not one agrees with me that Englehart and Rogers did succeed in crafting an exceptional Batman story, the conscious intent evident in their stories makes clear that this was what they were aiming for a quintessential Batman story, rather than just another of many stories in the opus.

For those interested, I would say that this refinement should gloss my earlier meditations on the subject, where I devoted considerable energies to defining the reasons "why Batman's as good as The Spirit," with the former being "exemplary" and the latter "exceptional." For my trouble, I was flatly told that I was merely "dancing" around the truth that THE SPIRIT was the "clearly superior work." I don't expect the above refinement to make any difference to proponents of exceptionalism, but I'll put it out there anyway, just for the hell of it.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE EXEMPLARY

Before embarking on the long compare-and-contrast I announced in THE EXEMPLARY AND THE EXCEPTIONAL, I want to spotlight someone else's concept of an "exemplary" comic even though the person in question probably would not use my term. It's my intention to show that the base *concept* of the exemplary already exists in readings of popular fiction (though maybe not only popular fiction) regardless as to what one calls it.

The person in question is Shannon Gaerrity, and her 9-18-09 Comixology essay describes her take, and that of others, regarding the story "Silent Interlude" in G.I. JOE #21 (1984).

Gaerrity begins her piece with a quote from Scott McCloud, who tells her that "that comic was a kind of watershed moment for cartoonists of your generation." Gaeritty goes on to say that she does remember it, though I'm not clear as to whether it was a "watershed" for her in particular, though she later says that it was for others:

'The one remarkable thing about the issue is, of course, its wordlessness. Comic books in the 1980s were wordy. "Silent Interlude" cuts through the verbiage; it's a 22-page action sequence. Hama's blunt, anatomically careful art (he drew this and a few other G.I. Joe issues) isn't beautiful, but it has a clarity that's perfect for pantomime. "Silent Interlude" demonstrates how to tell a story visually. Hearing cartoonists who were kids—okay, boys—in the 1980s reminisce about it, I'm reminded of older manga artists who recall first looking into Tezuka's New Treasure Island, the master's first graphic novel, with its wordless, cinematic opening sequence. Silent, upon a peak in Darien.'



I myself only collected G.I. JOE from the quarter boxes, but would agree with Garrity's characterization re: Larry Hama's take on the Hasbro characters. I remember liking "Silent Interlude" a little, but I've never gone back and re-read any of the JOE comics. In '84 G.I. JOE was something I collected less to enjoy than to study as part of my ongoing critical project.

Garrity's summation makes clear that G.I. JOE #21 was not, to insert my own term, "exceptional." The "clarity" of Hama's art, "blunt" though it was, may have seemed a small breath of fresh air in the domain of Jim Shooter's Marvel, for Shooter, like his former boss Mort Weisinger, seemed to have an animadversion to the power of comic-book art, as if he insisted on heavy wordage to keep the art bolted down. But even without Shooter's editorial controls, it's a safe bet that no one would be comparing Hama with the greats of comic-book art: the Eisners, the Kirbys, the Kuberts.

Still, Gaeritty ends with an encomium on the "silent issue" of G.I. JOE:

"Scott McCloud asks me if I'm familiar with the silent issue of G.I. Joe. I call Andrew over and hope he can explain how these things happen, how a soft-spoken gun nut with a work-for-hire gig can derail a boy's life—half a million boys' lives—without a word."

To me personally, G.I. JOE is not an exemplar of the best a comic book can be while conforming to the expectations of the audience, but I can entirely accept that it is an exemplary work to others. The boundaries of "the exemplary" are circumscribed more by personal taste-- by one's acceptance of what Frye calls a story's "narrative values"-- than they are by "significant values," which have more to do with What the Author Wants You to Get from the Story. The latter values are more often found dominating those works I call "the exceptional," for stories which can coherently communicate an exceptional level of thematic meaning are always rare, in any time or clime.

More on this sort of thing later.

THE MAYBE-THIRTY-PERCENT SOLUTION

The above title refers to the percentage to which I agree with Tony Isabella's choices in his new book, 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ.

I put in the "maybe" because of the "organizational problems" I mentioned having had with the book. Most of the time I can't tell whether or not Isabella is recommending particular comic books-- that is, the whole package as a collector would get it from a vendor-- or particular comic book stories. If Isabella had chosen one or the other, I could be surer of my percentage calculation, and thus I would've been able to satisfy the principal reason fans will have for buying the book: to check their lists, real or pending, against Isabella's.

I can't imagine any other reason for buying the book, as the sheer quantity of individual entries make the book pretty hermetic to someone not already acquainted with the history of comics. I can't see the book serving as an introduction of young readers to comics, despite the suggestion of same in Isabella's explanatory essay:

"...this book will introduce you to some of the best comic books ever published and the amazing writers and artists who created them."

I suppose that the book *could* introduce new readers to certain comics that they'd never heard of, but I think operatively speaking, only hardcore enthusiasts are likely to give it a shot. I think Isabella would have to look long and hard to find young readers to whom his book was a thoroughgoing "introduction."

In the same paragraph as the above quote, Isabella addresses his real audience:

"I won't include every milestone or even the best of the best. I'll most likely omit some of your favorites due to that pesky limit inherent in our title."

See what I mean? What do newbies know about milestones? How often do they have their own lists of "favorites?" Only hardcore fans are going to care about a project this detailed and time-consuming.

It's also a project which I often felt should have been titled 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ AT LEAST PART OF.

For instance, whenever Isabella recommends a collection of stories, such as the ENEMY ACE tales of the Silver Age, I think it's implied that Isabella thinks that everything in it is worth reading, and that satisfies the implications of his title.

Yet he also says of some entries, "Due to space limitations, I generally focus on just one story in any given issue [of an anthology title]. Those same limitations are why I also list just one or two writers or artists per issue, even though many more individuals contributed to these issues."

Thus, for instance, ACTION COMICS #1 is Isabella's first selection, and its only credits listed are for the first Superman story, implying that in this case that's the main "part" that Isabella's readers should be concerned with.

OTOH, for choice #12 Isabella recommends PLANET COMICS #1 not for any particular story, but for the whole package, because it "was the first comic book devoted entirely to science fiction."

I don't doubt that this kind of herky-jerky organization is exactly what Isabella wanted. And I can't say it will bother any of the fans who are its main audience, though I would think the whole point of making a list is so that others could easily check it twice or more.

I think Isabella's book would have been a more solid concept had it focused purely on spotlighting comics in one of two ways:

(1) Comics considered as whole packages-- which includes everything from a single issue's cover, which sells the book, to interior hype-tools like letercols and editorial soapboxes-- as well as collections of whole runs:

Or,

(2) Particular outstanding comic-book stories, whether they were stand-alone tales or continued arcs.

Since Isabella is a writer, and since he does have an encyclopedic knowledge of particular stories, I think he'd have done better to go with the latter.

Admittedly, I'm prejudiced in that I've often contemplated a list of outstanding stories that would combine the best of genre-comics and artcomix.

Also, had Isabella been more consistent, he also would not have tripped himself up as much. In the opening he writes:

"I will cheat our title at every opportunity, often counting collections, runs of issues, and story arcs as if they were merely single issues."

I don't have a problem with this. But once Isabella gets to the Silver Age, he's conferring two separate spots to separate parts of two-part stories, like JLA #21-22 (see pages 117-18) and FF #25-26 (pp. 121-22).

See what I mean about the difficulty of comparing one's own pending list with Isabella's? How can you trust someone who tells you he's going to cheat but doesn't cheat in the precise way he's said he will?

The other major failing of 1000 COMIC BOOKS is that Isabella, despite his warning about landmarks, all too often selects a given comic just because it launched a particular character or group of characters.

Sometimes this is appropriate. While it's true that the first BATMAN tale is nothing special as a story, one can see the beginnings of the Batman mythos in it, and this qualifies it as "exemplary" (which specialized term I'll explore more in THE EXEMPLARY AND THE EXCEPTIONAL PART 2).

In contrast, though, Isabella also selects AMAZING ADVENTURES #21, apparently for no reason than because it was the debut issue of writer Don McGregor on the book's main feature KILLRAVEN. It's true that McGregor was the most important writer who contributed to the opus of the character, though I've pointed out in BACK ISSUE #14 the importance of contributions by earlier writers as well. But the artist on AA #21 was Herb Trimpe, whose work there was some of his worst ever. Had KILLRAVEN struggled on with his art or something of similar quality, had the feature never enjoyed the creative visuals of Craig Russell, fans probably would not remember the series any better than SKULL THE SLAYER. McGregor was an important factor in the series' critical reception, but not, as Isabella's entry implies, the most important factor.

There are many other points on which I could carp (DARK KNIGHT RETURNS didn't make the cut, but an issue of TEEN TEMPTATIONS did?) But by and large the volume does at least communicate how much Tony Isabella loves comics, and even if I can't use his list for comparison purposes, it's hard to fault him too much.

THE EXEMPLARY AND THE EXCEPTIONAL

Amusingly, I conceived the above pair of terms as part of my own ongoing concerns for defining the nature of "quality" in the popular arts. I then Googled the terms and found that they'd been used in some context by an avant-garde-sounding academic named Buchloh. Nothing new under the sun, sadly.

Putting aside whatever the other guy meant by the terms, for me "exemplary" means principally "that which is a good example of something," while "exceptional" means "that which goes beyond what is expected."

The exemplary, then, confirms expectations; the exceptional goes beyond them. Given that I view genre-fiction-- which dominates but does not characterize the totality of popular fiction-- as based in any given audience's set of expectations, this duality has significant consequences for my theory.

And for that I must give a little credit to Tony Isabella.

I haven't quite decided how to approach isabella's new book, 1000 COMICS YOU SHOULD READ. Because the book's selection of its recommended comics is based on no criterion save whether or not Tony Isabella liked them, it's a book that is as immune to critical theory as any other outright statement of pure taste. It's my conviction that taste cannot be argued; one can only argue the logic by which people intellectually justify their tastes. Since Isabella propounds no logical grounds for his choices, all one can say is things like, "how could he leave X out" and the like.

Nevertheless, thinking about how I would approach such a project reminds me of my own processes of thought when I complied some of the personal lists I've made here, like my 100 BEST COMICS. Isabella explicitly avoids saying that his chosen comics are "the best," but since I have said so, I as a theoretical critic DO have to justify that statement.

Now, when I wrote STREAMING VISIONS my main concern was simply to elucidate my perception of a "developmental quality" in serial works regardless of whether they were designed with a conclusion in mind or with the idea of running endlessly on, as per these remarks about the Batman series:

'In an issue of COMIC SHOP NEWS Clive Barker said that both serial comic books and serial television shows shared a narrative advantage in that both could take their time slowly revealing whatever ideas or themes the creators had to offer. I agree, and the serials I’ve listed below display this “developmental” quality, whether they run less than a dozen issues (the first Englehart/Rogers collaboration on Batman) or fill up fifteen years (the entire Golden Age period of the same character).'

One question I didn't dwell on, however, was whether or not there was a difference in the type of quality available in these disparate approaches to the serial format. Thanks to thinking about one organizational problem with the Isabella book-- the question as to how to count continued story-arcs as opposed to done-in-one tales-- I would now designate the latter type of quality-- that which is found in the "entire Golden Age" of the Batman chararcter-- as "exemplary," while that which typifies the closed-ended approach of the six-issue Englehart/Rogers arc is "exceptional."

More on this in part two.