Magen Cubed's Blog, page 6

Comic Book Review: Ms. Marvel #10

Picking up after last issue’s closing plot twist, Kamala discovers the Inventor’s heinous plans in Ms. Marvel #10. So far this series has done a great job of packaging Kamala’s adventures in ways that appeal to today’s diverse readership, and this issue is no exception. Using a compelling contemporary framework to approach the overt silliness of giant mechs and talking birds, Wilson and Alphona successfully ground this arc’s super-science hijinks in something meaningful that many younger readers (this reviewer included) can certainly relate to.

As Kamala learns, the teens volunteered to become the human batteries for Inventor’s machines in order to seek alternative power sources for a rapidly expanding world. The teens believe they are little more than parasites, an “extra generation” using dwindling resources and contributing little in turn. In sacrificing themselves, they aim to leave a positive mark on the future that adults already blame them for ruining with smartphones and student loan debt. Noble intentions aside, the Inventor shows his true colors when he attacks Kamala and abducts Lockjaw. In turn Kamala rallies the other teenagers in a cowboy speech that even Captain America would be proud of, and leads the teens against the Inventor to set up for the arc’s conclusion.

While admittedly a little heavy-handed in its execution, the theme of youth standing up against a culture that devalues (and often demonizes) them is extremely relevant in today’s media. The pervasive narrative that the lazy, selfish millennials have led the contemporary western world to its doom is all but inescapable these days. To see young people so beaten down by their parents’ generation that they consider their own lives as disposal rings very true to most post-grads on the street, and for Kamala to take a stand against that narrative is uplifting. It also further solidifies her role as today’s every-woman hero, speaking to (and for) a widening audience of comic book readers from all walks of life.

Once again Wilson and Alphona bring their A-game. Wilson’s scripting is strong and Alphona’s pencils are as beautiful and energetic as ever, wonderfully complemented by Herring’s palettes. Another compelling, visually engaging issue from this stellar creative team.

Comic Book Review: Captain Marvel #10

Carol Danvers returns in her 100th solo issue for an oversized anniversary special just in time for Christmas. The first chapter of a holiday-themed two-parter, Captain Marvel #10 catches up with Carol’s friends back home on Earth through a series of letters picked up by world-hopping rock star Lila Cheney. Shifting gears from the series recent spacefaring adventure theme, this issue slows down to show that behind every great hero is a strong supporting cast of family and friends.

Through messages from Kit, Jessica Drew, Jim Rhodes, and Wendy Kawasaki, Carol gets a glimpse into the adventures her fellow heroes are having without her. Self-proclaimed Captain Marvel villain Grace Valentine returns to antagonize the city once more, hatching yet another cartoonishly mustache-twirling evil plot. From these alternating perspectives the reader is treated to the old-fashioned heroic adventure story that DeConnick delivers so well, even if the set-up is pretty corny. The issue is peppered with endearing personal moments and memories, especially in Jessica and Jim’s respective storylines, which serve to ground all of Carol’s friendships in ways designed to tug at the heart strings. Every character is given a moment to shine on their individual merit, and it’s a refreshing change of pace to see Carol’s support network in action against a villain.

Artists Lopez, Takara and Braga lend their respective styles to each section of the story, splitting the workload with a great deal of success. While their styles do vary in weight and character of line, the transition from one artist to the next is pretty much seamless, and all of their individual pages keep the story moving at a good clip despite that initial visual discrepancy. Colorists Loughridge and Filardi also mitigate some of this inconsistency through uniform palette choices that make for a visually cohesive reading experience. Soft blues, muted beiges, and warm orange tones create an inviting, almost pastel world for the reader to follow, affecting the kind of dreamy reconstruction that comes of reading a story secondhand.

It has a predictable villain and a paint-by-numbers plot, but the endearing nature of the story and its execution is what makes this issue a highly enjoyable read. Captain Marvel #10 is obvious fan service, but with a sense of heart at its core, it perfectly encapsulates Carol’s enduring popularity in recent years. This title has made a name for itself by serving standard cape book comfort food with a strong emotional foundation that dictates the stories being told, and it makes sense that the 100th issue special is no different. This issue is must-read for Carol fans.

Comic Book Review: Sex Criminals #9

As Fraction and Zdarsky’s clockwork universe of time-stopping sexual exploration broadens its scope, we’re introduced to Ana Kincaid. Better known as Jon’s pubescent sexual idol Jazmine St. Cocaine, Sex Criminals #9 tells of how a small town girl rose to porn star fame and discovered her otherworldly sexual abilities. While the set-up is certainly familiar, this is the story of Ana’s journey from porn to academia, subverting the blame-and-shame tropes surrounding sex work with Ana’s fresh perspective.

With Jon and Suzie reconciling their complicated relationship status, Jon begins looking into the others on the Sex Police’s radar. This is how we meet Ana. Born into typical small-town mediocrity as Rae Anne Toots, throughout high school Ana balances her academic success with the thrills of her hard-partying lifestyle. High school’s cheap thrills wane as she looks forward to college, but Ana’s attempts to begin her life are thwarted when her father refuses to help her pay for school. On her own, Ana struggles to pay for her education with a minimum wage job before an excursion to a strip club clues her into the serious cash-making potential of stripping. She leaves McDonald’s behind to become a stripper, becoming addicted to the sense of sexual freedom and power that comes with it. She also develops an addiction to cocaine, and soon college is left to the backburner.

When the excitement of her current work fades, Ana goes on to modeling and later porn to recapture the rush. In a sequence that lovingly parodies Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked and The Divine, Ana’s first foray into porn unlocks her secret power when she has her first real orgasm. Having suffered a childhood injury that left her unable to feel sexual pleasure, this transcendent time-stopping experience becomes Ana’s new addiction, chasing it throughout her career. With time and sobriety, Ana’s fascination with her experiences in the Quiet/Cumworld become an academic preoccupation, and eventually she leaves porn to become a horology professor. This is how Jon and Suzie meet her in the closing pages of the issue, in her office at the local college, studying how sex and time coincide.

Fraction’s voice for Ana is one of the strongest in the series so far, a no-nonsense perspective on sex and addiction that breathes some new life into this series. While Jon and Suzie are competent narrators, their respective emotional baggage views the Quiet/Cumworld through a melancholy lens that, at times, feels a little repetitive. Ana’s clinical understanding of their powers helps to shed some light on the larger world that these characters operate in, and reorients Jon and Suzie’s story in a more proactive direction. The nuanced treatment of her story is engaging, and delivers one of the best stand-alone issues in the book.

As ever Zdarsky’s rendering of her scenes is both humorous and heartfelt, and employs some meaningful imagery throughout. The appearance of Gillen as the director of Ana’s first porn is an amusing touch, as is the eight-panel splash of Ana’s career portfolio, true to the title’s irreverent, tongue-in-cheek tone. He also manages to make Ana’s treks the Quiet/Cumworld specific and unique to her story, despite the recycled color and texture overlays that serve as visual shorthand, distancing her from Jon and Suzie’s shared experiences.

Short Story: Molly’s Entropy, Speculative Fiction by Magen Cubed

I knew my memories could no longer be trusted when the old brownstone on Morning Avenue disappeared. It was a morning in October when it vanished, a townhouse with green shutters and wide flower-boxes. I passed a row of them each day on my way to the office, cups of designer coffee in hand and my scarf tucked under my coat. The brownstone had left a void in its place, a soft white outline where it had once stood before being snatched up from the foundation, every shingle and tile evaporating with it. Something shined from inside the silhouette, a gentle light, maybe radiation, pouring into the street and between the shrubs and fences of the neighboring houses.

Police put a barricade of yellow tape and plastic cones around the brownstone, uniformed officers posted outside in shifts. Each morning people walked past them without looking, and each morning I stared into the cavity and waited for something to happen. For someone to step out or something to fall inside of it, doors to open or dimensions to crumble. Nothing seemed to change. I stopped one day on my way to work to ask the officer there what was going on. The man looked too young for his black uniform, with big brown eyes and a dopey half-smile. He said it was to keep out the trespassers and school children that wandered too close, taking cell phone pictures or throwing rocks into the white space. He never explained where the brownstone had gone, like it had never been there at all. I couldn’t say that it had either, with nothing to point to but an outline, so I thanked him for his time instead.

At my desk I waited for the predictable cubicle chatter to turn to missing buildings or lying policemen. No one said anything. In the break room Nancy and Dan from accounting talked over microwave diet food and bottled vitamin water. We took lunch together sometimes, when I didn’t feel like eating alone. They always talked about celebrity gossip and reality television, and I sometimes regretted their company. I found myself particularly disappointed as I refilled my coffee cup, watching Nancy and Dan consume their freeze-dried, carb-friendly space food and talk about nothing. I didn’t feel like eating anymore.

There was nothing on the evening news about Morning Avenue, no headlines on the newsstands or on magazine covers at the grocery store. No one spoke of it, and I began to think I had imagined the brownstone. After work, I stripped down to my underwear and bra, sat on the foot of my bed and flipped through the channels on the television above my dresser. I held my breath without realizing and watched for signs of recognition in the fifteen minute news cycle. Men in suits made stiff speeches at podiums or banged Bibles on tables. Women cried in front of mobs of reporters, microphones thrust in their faces, mascara running down their cheeks as they sobbed about murderers or aborted babies. For days nothing changed. I sat in my apartment and watched television alone, and said nothing of the brownstone to anyone.

***

The only person who ever talked about the missing building was Rachel.

She was a singer at Marina’s, a lounge I sometimes ventured out to on Friday nights, when I exchanged my suit jacket and skirt for a pair of jeans and a low neckline. That was what young professionals did, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Rachel was a narrow slip of a girl, who smoked too many cigarettes. I only knew her name from the small marquee sign outside and the way men talked about her at the bar. She sang jazz standards to piano played by her partner, an older man with a stern-looking face. He dressed in dark suits and rarely spoke to anyone.

Men were all over Rachel but she never paid them much attention, taking the drinks they bought her with just a smile or a nod of thanks. I couldn’t blame them for crowding around her at the bar. She was beautiful and she didn’t care, showing up at night in flimsy thrift store bride’s maid gowns and short heels. Two weeks after the brownstone disappeared she came to my cocktail table after a set, a cigarette in her mouth. I sat alone as I usually did; drinking for the sake of drinking, because it was Friday night and I had nowhere else to be. I never looked for company. If I wanted to be chatted up I had my pick of the girls at the bar in short dresses, smiling and licking the alcohol from their lips. Rachel was different. I knew better than to go near girls like her, who played coy when men were watching. I didn’t like to have my heart broken.

Rachel sat at my table unannounced. She lit her cigarette and inhaled, blowing a stream of smoke sideways to avoid me.

“Strange days we’re having, wouldn’t you say?” she asked.

I straightened on my stool. “How do you mean?”

“That house on Morning Avenue,” she answered gently, testing me. “You know, don’t you? It’s gone.”

Relief warmed me in a wave. “I was starting to think I was the only one who noticed.”

“You know what is, don’t you? Why nobody’s talking about it?”

I shook my head.

“We all see it, the space there. It’s all that’s left of the house, like an outline. The information is gone, but the outline is still there because we know the house didn’t really go anywhere.”

“You lost me.” I was beginning to rethink letting her sit at my table. “What do you mean information?”

“Everything is information. You and me and this table, we’re information. Information doesn’t disappear because it can’t, so what we’re seeing is an outline because our brains just don’t see the house anymore.” Rachel inhaled smoke. “All our brains are processing so much all the time. Sometimes stuff gets pushed aside to make room for new stuff.”

“So we deleted the house to make room for new information?” It almost made sense, in a way. Like Science Channel documentaries on theoretical physics or Quantum Mechanics made sense to me if I paid attention, instead of dozing off like I usually did.

“You got it.”

“And what happens if we keep deleting information? Do houses just keep falling off the map?”

Rachel shrugged. The strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder and she didn’t bother to catch it.

“Haven’t got a clue. Guess we’ll find out.”

I couldn’t help the laugh that rolled out of me. “I guess we will.”

Rachel smiled. Without saying anything else she put out her cigarette in the ashtray built into the center of the table, got up and walked back to the stage. Men clapped for her and she smiled for them, too. From my table I just watched and let my mind wander.

***

By the next weekend, a billboard off Daily Street and a stop sign on Carter Avenue had gone missing. I could see it from the parking lot outside my office, the empty space where the insurance company advertisement had once been. The police didn’t bother to barricade them. Like everyone else, they didn’t seem to notice the billboard and stop sign were gone. I knew they had been there, even if I had no proof. Thinking of Rachel’s theories, I took my lunches alone, drinking coffee in the break room over brown-bagged sandwiches and potato chips. Nancy and Dan didn’t join me anymore, and I found myself grateful for it. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to them talk about nothing and eat even less. If the logo on my designer Styrofoam coffee cup occasionally vanished, I tried to ignore it.

At my desk I tidied up batch reports and sent out memos for staff meetings and quarterly balances. Waiting for Mr. Allen to retreat to his office, I began researching what I remembered of my conversation with Rachel, something about information processing and the human mind. I found websites and articles on things I didn’t understand: paradoxes, information doubling, and Hawking radiation. I printed them out anyway, stapling them together and placing them under my desk before Mr. Allen walked by. He smiled at me from behind thick lenses. I smiled back.

After work each day I skinned out of my skirt and jacket to watch the television in my bedroom. There was nothing on the news but polished anchors with perfect teeth. I began to suspect that Rachel had been right. People only saw what they chose to see, what they could bring themselves to let darken their doors. Refusing to think of Rachel in my underwear, I reached for the print-outs I had smuggled from work and laid across my bed to search for answers.

***

I found myself at Marina’s on a Thursday night. It was quiet, a few people hanging by the bar while others crowded around a couple of tables. I hadn’t bothered to change after work, ordering from the bartender and retreating to my cocktail table, a stack of print-outs under my arm. Rachel was there, as I hoped she would be. She stood in the corner by the piano talking to her partner, who looked even sterner than usual. She smiled at him, and then glanced up at me from across the room. Her smile disappeared and I held a breath.

“You’re back early.” Rachel invited herself to my table as she had the last time. She wore a loose blue dress that pooled around her collarbone, like she took it off the rack without trying it on. “What is this, homework?”

“Sort of.” I felt a little embarrassed but it passed as Rachel settled onto the stool beside me. “Do you know about information doubling?”

She shook her head. I recalled what I could from an article I’d read online.

“It’s the rate at which information is being generated every day. Television, internet, newspapers, it’s all producing new information that we have to process. It’s doubling every eleven hours. Nobody knows what that’ll eventually do the human mind, since we can’t evolve fast enough to deal with it, you know?”

“So I guess you believed my little theory, huh?”

“It makes sense, if that was what’s going on.”

“Do you think so?”

She smiled. I shrugged, placed the stack of papers under my coat in the next seat.

“I’m just looking into it. But it makes me curious.”

“How so?” Rachel leaned in on her elbows, taking up half the table. She smelled like wild flower perfume and cigarette smoke. I hadn’t meant to notice.

“Why do you and I see all this? Why are we the only ones who seem to notice that these things are gone?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you and me see things a little differently, you know? Our brains aren’t so jam-packed with information that we need to delete things. Maybe we’re just suffering for the collective unconsciousness and its short-comings. Maybe we’re just victims in this whole thing.”

“You think the brownstone is still there?” I asked. “The billboard and that stop sign?”

“Does it really matter, Molly? Nobody would believe you if you told them they were.”

I straightened immediately, felt my face heat. “I never told you my name was Molly.”

Rachel smiled. “Of course you did. It was last week, when we sat at this same table?”

I laughed softly, a knee-jerk reaction. “I think I would remember that.”

“And so would I.”

I didn’t remember telling her my name. If asked, I couldn’t remember the stop sign or the billboard or the brownstone either and that made me uneasy. She patted the table softly and kissed my cheek, like a mother would a child.

“Hey. I have a set in five minutes. Stick around so we can talk later.”

I nodded and watched her slip away. When her back was turned I paid for my drink and left. I regretted it all the way home.

***

It was nearly November when it began to snow. Three more brownstones had disappeared by then, a shabby townhouse and two new tenement buildings across town. I resigned myself to the nonchalance of cable news, despite my better judgment. Each morning I walked to work and tried not to stare into the void on Morning Avenue and the billboard sign that faced my office. The logos on my coffee cups came and went when I wasn’t looking, like jumps in a reel of film. It wasn’t worth mentioning to anybody.

I had given up going home to my television after work, going instead to my table at the lounge, listening to Rachel sing. Sometimes she came to my table and we talked about disappearing information. Sometimes we didn’t talk at all, and that was fine, comfortable in our silence. I gave up asking how she knew my name. She would just laugh and tell me I was being paranoid, and I was beginning to believe her. It had been snowing for two days when I stopped by Marina’s that Tuesday night. Rachel was all black eye shadow and lipstick in a red dress. Men clapped and cat-called between songs, gathered around the first row of tables to get her attention. She smiled at them the way she always did, and if I felt at all jealous I didn’t let it show. It wasn’t my place. She and I were barely friends.

After her set Rachel came to my table, smoking her cigarettes and sagging in her seat. A young guy at the bar in a salmon shirt gave me a dirty look. I didn’t care, because Rachel didn’t care.

“You know, I was reading about black holes the other day,” I said to make conversation. “For a long time researchers thought everything consumed by black holes disappeared.”

Rachel blew smoke, a slow stream like steel wool. There were words in the smoke, stretched out into the space above her head. She seemed to exhale them, swelling in her lungs then squeezing out to escape.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, leaning forward on my elbows. The words tasted like ash on my tongue. “But information can’t disappear. It can be damaged or broken, but information can’t be destroyed, only change its shape. They called it an information paradox. Then they figured out information didn’t disappear in black holes, it was just smeared across it. Like an image on film, or a copy, changing its form.”

“So?” Rachel asked.

I shrugged, leaned back. “I don’t know. I just thought it would be interesting if they were wrong.”

“You think the buildings were swallowed by a black hole?” Rachel laughed. “I think people would notice that, even in this sleepy town.”

“Maybe somebody’s stealing it, sucking it all up.”

“What? Like the Koreans? What could they do with it?”

“Make a bomb?” I shrugged again.

“I still think shooting at us would be easier.”

I couldn’t help but smile. The smoke above Rachel’s head curled in arc, spelling out the words This, On, and Ending, like newspaper clippings strung together to make a new sentence. I didn’t ask why.

“If information disappears, it means nothing is sacred, you know?” Rachel said. “The whole world is information, and the world only exists as you and I can perceive it. If somebody starts fucking with that, then all bets are off for you and me.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I sighed. “It means our memories could be wrong. And if our memories are wrong, how do we know what we even have?”

She canted her head to the side and smiled. It looked a little sad.

“Guess we should stick together then, huh?”

“Why?” I hadn’t meant to sound as distrusting as I did.

“We’re already here, you know? Every night at this table, talking about it, what nobody else sees?”

She shrugged. “It has to stand for something.”

My heart thumped.

“I should get going.”

“Where to?” Rachel looked disappointed.

“Home.” I gathered up my coat from the next seat. “I have work in the morning.”

“I can walk you home.”

“No thanks. I think I can handle myself.”

“Then I can keep you company,” she said. “Until I decide to go home.”

“Okay.” I swallowed, nodded. “I mean, if you want to.”

The guy in the salmon shirt glared as Rachel and I walked to the front door together. I felt myself puff up a little, bolstered by the closeness of her body and the smell of her perfume through her clothes. Outside snow banked each side of the street, too soft to stick as it melted slowly onto the sidewalk. It fell upward from the ground toward the sky, moving back in time past my knees to catch in my hair and eyelashes. Rachel reached out to take my hand, lacing our fingers together loosely. She smiled.

“Strange days, wouldn’t you say?”

I said nothing of it and walked us back to my apartment in silence.

***

Rachel began staying with me through November. I had never seen her home and I decided not to ask where she lived. I found that I cared less and less about the details. Each morning another dress found a hanger in my closet, another pair of shoes at the foot of my bed. She stayed in while I went to work and was gone when I got back, slipping out to the lounge. When she returned at night in a new dress, I kissed her at the door and on the bed, lifting up her skirt to take off her underwear and skim my hands up and down her bony ribs.

She never undressed in front of me, not even to shower, which she did in private while I dressed for work. I didn’t ask why, just accepted it as a fact. We ate meals together, and watched television in bed and didn’t have to talk about what was happening to the world. I was content to stroke her back through her clothes, and to touch her skin beneath them when the lights were out. They were simple pleasures, and I was content with them, too.

In the mornings Rachel smoked cigarettes by the kitchen window while we ate breakfast. The smoke spelled out words between us, like street signs and advertisements. She never seemed to notice. As I had with missing brownstones and coffee cup logos, I came to accept that I didn’t understand most things. My memories could no longer be trusted. Once the information began to vanish I had only outlines to go by, patterns and shapes in my mind. I could remember the colors of the traffic lights on my way to work, and once they were gone I couldn’t say for sure what they were. Having Rachel eased the sting of it. Squeezing my fingers each time we walked past an empty space, she smiled, like everything would be okay.

***

“I grew up in a little house with my mom and brother,” Rachel said one night. We lay in bed and stared at the slices of streetlight coming through the curtains. “My dad left us when I was two, for a woman he met in the service. We didn’t have very much money and my mom was never home. She worked all the time at the grocery store up the street, so it was just us kids at the house.”

“Yeah?” I skimmed my fingers over the dips in her long thin hands, admiring the way her knuckles stuck out in points. “That must’ve been hard.”

“Yeah?” It was like a question when Rachel said it, looking at me from under her hair. “It was okay though. We used to build forts in the backyard out of stuff we found on people’s curbs and stay up all night watching TV. We were like Lost Boys, you know? It was good like that.”

“My parents wanted everything to be perfect when we were kids. The neighborhood was perfect, the house was perfect. We had storybook holidays in the country at my grandparents’ house. Even my sisters were perfect, too.” I sighed. “Pam and Sarah were always prettier and smarter than me. They had all the friends at school and boys wanted to be with them. It was kind of pathetic being me, really.”

A passing car casted a bright yellow stripe of light across the room, and then disappeared. Rachel folded our fingers together and let out a little shiver of a laugh.

“It’s not that pathetic. You didn’t even like boys, so fuck them anyway.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, a startlingly honest sound. Rachel kissed me and I felt warm all over. She never talked about her past again.

***

When Nancy from accounting vanished, I knew nothing was sacred anymore.

It happened at the office, just after lunch. I had taken my break at the deli down the street for a roast beef sandwich and coffee. The snow was falling sideways that day, drifting slowly past the window by my table. No one noticed things like that anymore. I remembered that snow fell from the sky, but I’d gotten comfortable with the fact that I couldn’t know for sure. I returned to the office, shed my coat and scarf on my desk before going to the break room to fill my coffee cup. The logo had been gone for two weeks. I had stopped missing it before then.

Before I walked in I heard Dan’s voice. I already knew Dan was sitting with Nancy, eating his carb-friendly space food and talking about nothing. Coming around the corner I realized it was no longer Nancy. She sat in her seat but only an outline remained in her place, a white void in the shape of Nancy’s short blonde hair and dress suit. Dan talked on in a one-sided conversation about dieting and prime-time television. People walked in and out of the break room, for coffee or tea, but no one noticed Nancy or the hole she left behind, like television static squeezed inside a woman’s silhouette.

I felt sick. I left my coffee cup on the counter and went to Mr. Allen’s office, asking for the rest of the day off. He said I’d earned enough sick days and let me go early. I didn’t bother thanking him. At home I waited for Rachel to come back from the lounge and laid my head against her stomach while she stroked my hair with her skeletal fingers.

“We’re all made of the same stuff,” she said. “It was bound to happen someday.”

“It’s like she never existed,” I murmured into the folds of her dress as we sat on the floor in front of the sofa. Rachel smelled like cotton and skin, and a strange perfume that I didn’t recognize. I ignored that too, like most things that I didn’t understand about her. “If that can happen to people, how do I know what’s real anymore?”

“We’re real.” She tutted me like a patient mother and ran a hand down my back. “That’s good enough for me.”

“But what if I disappear, or if you do? What’s going to happen to us?”

I angled my head to look up at Rachel. She smiled slowly before it faded away, like all things did.

“I won’t let that happen,” she said. “I promise.”

For what it was worth, I believed her, and slept that night with my head in her lap. In the morning Rachel was gone. Vanished like most things had, leaving only a pack of cigarettes on the table and her dresses in my closet. Sitting alone on the floor, I didn’t know what to believe so I just stopped trying.

***

People kept vanishing through Christmas.

They stood frozen on the sidewalk in mid-step or sitting in front of their televisions, silhouettes at office desks or lying in hospital beds. Cars sat empty on the street with outlines in the driver’s seat, faces disappearing from magazine covers and the sides of buses. I gave up watching the television, lying on the sofa with a book while the snow drifted in strange patterns across the window. Rachel never came home after that night, nor had she gone back to Marina’s. No one knew where she had gone, not her partner, the bartender or the men at the bar who called for her. After the third night spent waiting for her at our table, I gave up on Rachel too.

I stopped worrying about black holes and information doubling. I burned the articles I’d printed out in the kitchen sink and stopped searching for solutions in books and documentaries. There was no point in asking questions when my perceptions could no longer be trusted to provide any answer. Rachel had lied with her theories and guesses, and I felt stupid for having ever believed them. It hurt to realize we had never taken any photographs together, that I had never introduced her to my coworkers or my family. All I had was a closet full of dresses and shoes that didn’t belong to me, and a hope that I hadn’t made them up in the first place.

I spent Christmas in the suburbs with my parents, my sisters Pam and Sarah, their husbands and children. From my mother’s couch I drank coffee in my pajamas and watched the children open their gifts with smiles on their faces. I smiled, too. My sisters and their husbands sat around me in their dressing robes with their coffee mugs to admire the tree, brightly decorated with tinsel and lights. The lights glowed in colors I didn’t recognize, the sparkling reds and blues replaced by shades I’d never seen before. No one else seemed to notice. I said nothing of it, or of Rachel who ran away. They wouldn’t have believed me if I had.

***

It was New Year’s Eve and I was alone. Aaron from human resources was having a party at his apartment, which I heard of from Dan as he sat in the lunch room eating with Nancy’s ghost. I put on a black dress and high heels that didn’t suit me, wearing my good jewelry and pulling up my hair. I didn’t want the company but I went anyway, just to be normal and to pretend for one night that I didn’t see things any differently. It felt good to lie for once, and to drink for the sake of drinking and make polite conversation with people I didn’t care about. It was easier than I imagined, and I didn’t have to feel guilty for it.

After the party I walked home in the backward-falling snow, hugging my coat to myself. My head was fuzzy from the alcohol, senses dulled and tongue loose. The heels of my shoes felt uncertain on the wet sidewalk beneath me and I nearly tripped twice, catching myself against the wall of the convenience store I was passing at the time. I stopped to check my wobbly heels and smelled words in smoke, tasting like ashes when I breathed in it. Looking up I saw a trail of cigarette smoke in curling fingers of outstretched words, For Sale, Act Now, leading back to the bus stop down the street. There a bench sat below a black metal hutch, a woman huddled underneath it.

I straightened myself up and followed the smoke to the bus stop. Rachel was sitting on the bench with a cigarette sagging from her mouth, three bags sitting by her feet. She looked the same as she had the last night I had seen here and my heart crawled into my throat. I felt left all over again. Pulling my jacket even tighter around myself, I put on a tough face.

“You’re leaving again, I see.”

Rachel turned, took the cigarette from her mouth. She looked sorry in a way I had never seen her. More words streamed from her nostrils hidden in a plume of smoke, like This and Home and Open, filling the space between us.

“I’m sorry, Molly. I need to get out of town for a while,” she said softly. “I’ve done a lot of bad things since I’ve gotten here.”

Her shoulders sagged when she spoke, making her delicate white shirt puddle across her chest. It was unbuttoned slightly, opening in a V between her breasts. There was a hole there, an empty black space where her heart would have been. It hissed like television static, swelling and contracting with every breath. It was then that I understood what was happening. A black hole, where people and brownstones and billboards were falling in, getting sucked up. I tried not to look as hurt as I felt.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked. “You made those things disappear. All those people.”

“I tried not to. I just can’t always help myself. I get hungry and things just fall in sometimes, whether I want them to or not. It all just got out of hand.”

“Why did you come to me?” I couldn’t help but shake under my coat. “Why did you drag me into this?”

“I take in a bit of everything, sometimes thoughts and memories, too. They get sucked in with the houses and the stop signs. I knew somebody saw what I was doing, I just didn’t know who until I saw you at the bar that night.”

“You destroyed my memories.” I shook my head, felt dizzy. “I don’t know what’s real anymore. I can’t even trust myself.”

Rachel bit her lip and stood up. The black hole rumbled beneath her shirt, a small terrible hum like a freight train at low volume. It sounded hungry and awful, sleeping inside her ribs. It frightened me. She stepped forward.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she said, and looked so sad when she did. “I just wanted to be close to somebody for a change. And you saw me. I mean, really saw me. I didn’t want to let you go.”

“You left,” I said. “That hurt.”

“I know.”

I wanted so much to touch her then, in the cold. Trace the dips of her hipbones and feel the warmth of her beneath my hands.

“You can come back,” I said, before I could stop myself from saying it. “We can fix it.”

“You can’t fix what’s wrong with me. Nobody can.”

“We can still try, can’t we?”

After a moment Rachel smiled. I didn’t feel so cold anymore. The black hole in her chest shivered and fell silent, like a bear retreating to its cave to sleep. Between us the snow fell backwards, settling in her hair and on her cheeks before it finally stopped.

“Okay,” she said. “We can try.”

Fleshtrap: One Year Later

So as of this week, my novel Fleshtrap has been out for a year. You know how the story goes: Casey Way has been haunted by visions of his dead pedophile father for the last twenty years, tormented by hazy recollections of his father’s murder at the hands of his stepmother. The trauma has left Casey burdened with guilt, which has manifested in debilitating insomnia and violent hallucinations. As the anniversary of his father’s murder approaches, his step-sister Mariska takes him back to the scene of the crime: their childhood home, to confront their past and finally get some closure. Instead, something follows Casey back out into the world, something ugly, violent, familiar.

Blah blah blah, that old chestnut.

The book I wrote between 2010 and 2011 in a fit of quarter-life nihilism has been out in the wild for a whole year now. Casey Way has been left to his own devices as I started work on four other books, finishing one and abandoning another along the way. He’s grown up and left me, living outside of me and the stories I’d planned for him, leaving this nostalgic little hole in my gut that I occasionally wax philosophically about if the mood strikes me.

And looking at it now, at how much has changed in that year, it’s a little strange.

I met a lot of people because of this book. In May I went to Texas Frightmare Weekend with the rest of the guys from Post Mortem Press. I’ve been on podcasts to talk about the book and had an interview on BookieMonster.com. I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with people who enjoyed the book; I’ve talked a lot about the nature of abuse, the duality of human nature, and how people can survive despite the weight of family history bearing down on them. It’s been rewarding, and in a lot of ways, it’s been cathartic to see something that I wrote at such a low point could resonate with people in ways I hadn’t even considered. To see that people could get something out of Casey’s story has made the blood, the sweat, and the tears — all the fear and loathing and panic that went into the book itself — worth it.

But this was my first book. Your first book is meant to be your training wheels. It’s the best you could do at the time that you did it, but it’s by no means all you have to give. I wrote it when I was 24 and 25; I’m now 28, going on 29. When I look at Fleshtrap, I see so little of myself in it now that it’s a bit strange to think even about. For a while I considered turning Casey’s story into a trilogy of books to explore similar themes and ideas, using Casey as kind of an unwitting bloodhound for the psychic scars left in the world. Think John Constantine, but with less swagger and attention to detail. I even started the second book last summer, just to see if I still had a horror book in me. After a year of seeing Fleshtrap out in the world, however, I figured out that I just didn’t. I don’t think I want to go back to that world. I don’t even think I could, really; Fleshtrap is so far removed from where I am now and the stories I want to tell. And that’s okay.

Fleshtrap was the book I wanted to write when I was 24 and 25. It was the exorcism I needed. Now that I’m older, Casey can be put to bed. It’s better this way, I think, for me and Casey both. In the time since I sent him out into the world, I finished the first book of my six-book superhero fiction series The Crashers. I’m currently shopping for a publisher while I work on the sequel, The Crashers, Volume Two: Koreatown. These are the stories I’m interested in, the characters that I care about putting out into the world. And if you liked Fleshtrap, I hope you’ll be back to check those books out, too.

Comic Book Review: C.O.W.L. #6

After a grim finale to its inaugural arc, C.O.W.L. begins its latest storyline in #6, Raven’s First Flight. Higgins and Siegel shift gears to delve into the backstory of C.O.W.L. Chief Geoffrey Warner, the Grey Raven, in this faithful reproduction of his imagined comic book exploits. Artist Charretier brings Warner’s early life to the page with all the strong jaws, fisticuffs and theatrical villainy of 1960s adventure comics, wonderfully developed by Reis’ flat primary colors and halftone textures. This issue serves an artifact of a comic book from a comic book world, posing questions about the nature of its own mythology and format.

According to his heroic origin story, graciously licensed to Image Comics in the spring of 1962, Warner begins life as the hopeful son of a decorated Chicago cop. However, his dreams of following his father into the police force are dashed when he finds out that his father is on Liam Stone’s payroll. Disillusioned, Warner turns to life as a professional boxer, earning him fame as a rising young star. His speed and determination make him a local sensation, but the wounds of his father’s betrayal are reopened when his manager asks him to throw his championship match. Disgusted, he quits.

Spurred by his desire to change his city for the better, Warner then becomes a private detective, pursuing cases that the crooked CPD won’t touch. This still isn’t enough for Warner, who is sickened by the sleaze and exploitation around him. When a series of robberies results in the death of cop, he seizes the opportunity to take a stand and becomes the Grey Raven. The case brings him face to face with the Robber, the city’s first masked villain, and in a daring takedown Warner learns that his father is the Robber’s getaway driver. With the Robber defeated and his father arrested, the Grey Raven becomes the hero that Chicago desperately needs.

Warner’s rise is neatly packaged in this well-crafted piece of propaganda, contrasting the virtuousness of those who don masks to fight crime against the corruption that had infested Chicago. Seeing what lengths Warner is willing to go to get his way, his righteousness and incorruptibility here is almost comical and sad in equal measures, but for different reasons. Is there some truth to the story? Was he ever this noble, or is this simply how Warner wants his city to remember him? To see a man with such good intentions get in bed with the mob he’s fought so hard against sheds an intriguing light on the moral complexities of this world and its cast, and Higgins and Siegel pull it off well.

Bringing this issue together is its production design. Its endearingly vintage aesthetic, complete with smudged and stained pages, is really brought home by the pulpy house ads scattered throughout the book. Charretier’s pages appropriately ape the cheap, quickly-produced action books of the 60s, with their flattened spaces and simple panel construction. Reis’s coloring use of bright, bold palettes is effective throughout, although I wish some of the stains in the margins could have been incorporated into the panels themselves more prominently.

Overall, C.O.W.L. #6 is a clever issue that uses the aesthetics and storytelling conventions of its setting to deliver is visually fun and thoughtful reading experience.

Comic Book Review: Elektra #8

After a somewhat lackluster two-parter, Blackman and Del Mundo return to breathe some excitement into the series with Elektra #8. Their imaginative collaboration once again carries this title in an issue rife with magic and mayhem, brought to the page by the strength of Blackman’s narrative voice and Del Mundo’s gorgeous artwork. While this series suffered from a loss of momentum in recent issues, this book is definitely back.

Hot on Bulleye’s trail, Elektra finds herself at Mercury Drop, a highly-guarded S.H.I.E.L.D. detainment facility. There she fights her way through jetpack-sporting S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to take Bullseye’s comatose body, only to find herself squaring off against Maria Hill. Maria gives Elektra the chance to leave without further conflict, out of respect to the assassin’s relationship with Nick Fury. However, as Elektra refuses, their confrontation is cut short by a surprise attack by the Hand. With Bullseye caught in the middle, Maria and Elektra put their differences aside to fight back against the Hand, concluding in a stunning magically-infused battle complete with dragons and mech suits.

Del Mundo’s artwork once again makes this book. His fight scenes are intricate and beautiful, his line work refined and delicate. The soft, painterly development of space and form makes for engaging reading as man and machine clash in these highly-energized panels. There’s simply so much energy in every exaggerated gesture, extended finger and swirling strand of wayward hair, creating a sense of vibrancy from the first page to the last. Completed by the rhythm of Blackman’s prose-like scripting, Elektra #8 is a beautiful issue and a highly enjoyable to read.

Comic Book Review: Moon Knight #9

Moon Knight #9 brings Spector to his doctor’s doorstep once again, this time to peer behind her cool façade and work out her motivations. Her contract on General Lor and the fallout of his last mission have left Moon Knight with a lot of unanswered questions as to his dear doctor’s extracurricular activities. Under shared hypnosis, the doctor guides Spector to his memories of Egypt and Khonshu, before delving into her own memories. There Spector watches General Lor’s military occupation of the micronation Akima, his doctor’s childhood home, as soldiers slaughter her village and kill her family.

What begins as a seemingly routine session exploring Spector’s various identities takes a sharp turn as Spector becomes a part of his doctor’s violent past. Within this shared dream-space she walks him through the horrors committed by men like Lor all over the world, men that she intends to wipe out by any means necessary. Smallwood brings these scenes to the page in tight, claustrophobic panels, overlapping time and space through alternating perspectives. The action is expertly paced and visually compelling throughout, utilizing negative space to emphasize the abruptness of Moon Knight’s violence. As ever Bellaire’s bold, nearly monochromatic palettes are on point.

Spector, despite his own charge as the protector of night travelers, refuses to help the doctor get revenge. Wood poses some interesting questions about the nature of vigilantism here as Spector argues against her murderous campaign. When the only thing that separates his mission from hers is his own set of moral standards, who is he to stop her? All of Spector’s righteous indignation aside, however, the doctor quickly turns the tables on him and becomes the vessel of Khonshu. Waking in her office, Spector finds himself alone, with no other personalities or identities living alongside him, with a bomb under the desk.

With its intriguing premise and cliffhanger ending, Moon Knight #9 is an engaging read from start to finish.

Comic Book Review: Black Widow #12

Natasha’s past comes back to haunt her in a very public way in Black Widow #12. As Anderson Cooper exposes Natasha’s recent activity, both as a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and contracted agent, the rest of the superhero and espionage communities at large must scramble to deal with the backlash. While “celebrity guest appearances” such as the one made here tend to be campy, the use of the news anchor serves to ground the story in a semblance of realism and considerably raises the stakes for Natasha.

In Somalia, Natasha is far removed from the troubles brewing back home during a routine mission with the Howling Commandos. After the recent dilemma with Chaos she welcomes the change of pace, even as the Avengers confer with Maria Hill to try to minimize the damage of the report. Every mission since the title began is put under the microscope, her actions and motivations analyzed and debated as eye witnesses give accounts of her very public encounters with assorted antagonists.

The visual transition from screen to screen, room to room as Natasha’s friends and compatriots across the city watch the news is expertly managed by Noto, using the tension of the script to its potential. Contrasting Natasha’s breezy, almost naïve narration during her Somalia mission against the grimness befalling her concerned friends as they watch AC 360 is a clever move on Edmondson’s part. In the end, however, Isaiah is the one who must pay the price for Natasha’s transgressions as he is shot in her apartment, seemingly killed by an unknown gunman as Natasha’s taxi pulls up outside.

In the age of whistleblowers and the demand for government transparency, Black Widow #12 strikes a timely chord. Such an investigation into the scope of Natasha’s missions as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and member of the Avengers calls both of their authorities into question; considering what these entities have recently been up to in Avengers and New Avengers respectively, the public is surely watching people like Natasha quite closely. Edmondson also brings up an interesting point of contrast, whether implicitly or not, between how the public (and the reader) views operatives like Black Widow or Hawkeye and “heroes” like Iron Man or Captain America.

While Natasha’s reputation as an assassin is well-known, all of them have done questionable, sometimes even treacherous things in the name of larger causes. The only thing that really separates them is the fact that people like Natasha primarily use violence as their means, whereas people like Tony Stark are largely Machiavellian, scheming and manipulating people and scenarios to achieve their desired outcomes. Of course the Avengers have been scrutinized by both the public and the government in various storylines, but it still raises the interesting question of who bears the guilt when secrets such as these come to light.

With strong scripting and artwork from start to finish, Black Widow #12 is another solid read from this creative team.

Comic Book Review: Captain Marvel #9

In general, I have very negative reactions to pop stars and singers in cape books. The bombastic, cartoonish depictions of musicians who drop into a scene to belt out a song while superheroes gush in the margins just doesn’t sit well with me, no matter how well-intentioned. Planet-hopping rock stars aside, this done-in-one romp, titled Lila Cheney’s Fantabulous Technicolor Rock Opera, tries to add some fun to Carol’s recent intergalactic adventures with a detour to an alien planet. Unfortunately, this breezy filler issue falls a bit flat in its execution.

Carol and Tic are on their way to their next undertaking when Lila Cheney teleports onto their ship, summoned by the sound of her own music playing. Lila quickly recounts her childhood adventures as an interplanetary traveler before transporting the three of them to an alien world. We learn that, during one of her youthful exploits, she became betrothed to Prince Yan of the Aladna Court, a group of flamboyant humanoids who speak only in rhyme, to establish an alliance with Earth. As an adult, however, Lila has no interest in becoming queen of the court, even if it leaves Yan’s legitimacy as heir to the throne in jeopardy.

Carol, roped into posing as Lila’s mother, tries to stop the wedding through mediation. Before she can save Lila from an unwanted marriage, a rival suitor named Marlo bursts in and demands to battle Lila for Yan’s hand. Carol steps in to fight on Lila’s behalf and easily trounces Marlo, but the king and queen still demand their son to take a wife. Tic offers to marry Yan to fulfill his royal duties and assure his ascension, so long as she remains free to travel with Carol. All’s well that ends well, until Lila gives Carol a letter “from a friend,” whose mysterious contents shock Carol in the closing panel.

To its credit, this issue does have some endearing elements. Allusions to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the Ziggy Stardust-esque costuming throughout bring a sense of fun and whimsy to the story. Furthermore, the gender role reversal that facilitates Prince Yan being married off in a society that privileges women in courtship is an interesting one. As ever DeConnick’s Carol is fun to read, and the respective contributions of artist Lopez and colorist Loughridge help to deliver another solid graphic narrative.

However, the rhyming dialogue convention quickly becomes grating to read as it persists throughout the issue. Such a device can be humorous in small doses, and in abundance, begins to read too much like a children’s book. The plot itself is decent enough but its execution is somewhat tedious, relying heavily on gimmicks and quirky alien customs to drive the story along while Carol awkwardly tries to navigate these circumstances. It’s jaunty, yes, but not memorable.

Overall, Captain Marvel #9 isn’t a terrible issue, but it certainly isn’t the best. It also isn’t my favorite kind of story. While I wouldn’t recommend this issue to readers outside of the Carol Corp., it is a lighthearted and silly adventure that some Carol fans are sure to enjoy.