Attack on Titan Love

After Hunter Hunter I finally have allowed myself to begin watching Attack on Titan again.

I forgot how perfect the Season 2 opening song was.

Because I have been nothing but lazy this month, let me share it with you.

November Update

     Hello there, it's been a while! Been sick and lazy and all that. My month's been filled with sitting in front of the television, in a sick slouch or not, and hammering away at Fallout 4, Blasphemous and Dead Rising 4. Good games, although both the first and the last swiftly deteriorated into vapid busywork. Blasphmous, though initially not really my type of game, being a side-scroller, had an art-style and a type of lore that I loved and so I stuck it out and ended up having a blast. Here, take a look at the launch trailer.

     But, I've been wasting a lot of time this month, or so it feels. The truth is that I'm very out of sorts. So out of sorts that I have not much thought about blogging for these past few weeks, and on those times that I did, I had the damnedest difficulties in actually writing anything I was pleased with. Whether or not that any of this is due to not having imbibed any alcohol for nigh on a month or whether that it is because of a delayed reaction to the events that transpired earlier this year I don't know. Either way; this blog continues, I'm not here to announce my retirement. But I am saying that:... what the fuck man, why is this so difficult right now?
I'm annoyed and saddened that something that I could devote so much of my time and energy on has been delegated to a position of lesser import.

     I have been reading again though. There were maybe 2 weeks where I barely read a thing because of a very annoying slow-burn cold that took root in my brain, but since then I've finished a few comics, Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence, and a whole bunch of Jules De Grandin short stories.
     Of those, the one that I both want and don't want to talk about is the Imago Sequence.
You see, after a great start, specifically after The Procession of the Black Sloth, which read like a weird and terrifying Asian Silent Hill- kind of story, I was all set to proclaim Barron now one of my favourite authors, but then the last 2 or three stories in the collection veered a little too much into an abstract type of writing that is almost dis-associative free-form, and which, if you're not in the mood for it, is irritating in the extreme.
     I've indulged in that type of writing myself in the past, usually in the throes of depression or some or other violent passion, and it's quite an empowering form of art-making. You feel as if you are creating something truly impressive, and it's something that seems to validate itself, even if or maybe even because some or all of the audience that'll read it won't understand what you're talking about. There's a barrier there, and not everyone can slip past it. It's a form of magic, of perception.
But, as I said, it kind of sucks when you're not in the mood for it. Sometimes the chemical brain just doesn't care to cooperate; lack of sleep, nutrition, or being at the whim of emotional circumstance.
     So, though I loved Procession of the Black Sloth, and can recommend anyone to read that one, though Old Virginia, Shiva Open Your Eye, and Bulldozer were all bad-ass and very enjoyable to read, I didn't much enjoy The Royal Zoo is Closed, the latter half of the Imago Sequence short story, and though I thought that both Parallax, Hallucigenia and Proboscis were a little unoriginal, and though after all that, it seems like I didn't have a good time, I did actually appreciate pretty much of all that I read.
     I'm being unduly harsh here, and I wish the stories could've hit me at a better time maybe, but it is what it is.

     I also finally finished off Hunter X Hunter, which I pretty much only allowed myself to watch whilst exercising on my Home Trainer. At 148 episodes for 20-23 minutes per episode, it took me about 8 months of exercising before I'd gone through the whole bunch.
I had a good time. Hunter Hunter is a show not without its flaws but one that has some real nice emotional pay off.

     Lastly, it was my birthday this month and, as you might've expected, I replied to everyone that asked for gift ideas to just go and give me books, as if I didn't already have enough to read. What can you do? An addict is as an addict does, or something. I'll give you a look next post.

Garth Ennis' A Walk Through Hell

 

Two FBI agents go missing in a Warehouse, and the SWAT-team sent in to check out the situation comes out bawling, refusing to go back in.

FBI agents Shaw and Mcgregor go in to find out where their friends have gone.

And then, in their van, in tears and in despair, the SWAT-team commits suicide.

In the warehouse, the two agents are faced with the darkness of their past, and as the world around them steadily becomes more horrible, the horrors without start to merge with the horrors within.

And worse is yet to come.

A Walk Through Hell is one of those comics that is very likely to rub some people the wrong way. If you're familiar with Garth Ennis that shouldn't really come as a surprise,

 as you'll know that this is what he does in most of his work: Violence, deviancy and sex, swearing and extreme gore; the man's actually put out most of those comics that I put on the top shelves, their sweaty red-and-pink pages deemed shocking enough to keep out of reach of the kids.
     Crossed, Preacher, Caliban, his run on Hellblazer; in these there's always some line being crossed, something that'll manage to shock and thrill all but the most hardened of readers. And since I am one of those, so when I need to get my kicks Garth Ennis' tends to be an interesting bet, if not a safe one.
     On top of that, his way of building-up a narrative and his method of structuring stories generally make for very good, and very enveloping reads, easily capable of letting the hours while away, leaving one completely absorbed in the unfolding story.

*BANG*

     A Walk Through Hell is pretty much like that; fascinating and shocking and a pretty good read, annoying in some places but still pretty forgivable there ( more on that below,) and if the comic does one thing wrong and it's a big one! it is that its ending is unmitigatededly bleak, kinda shit and pretty unsatisfying. I wasn't really expecting to be let down by Ennis as his stories tend to end really quite well.
     Despite its content and viciousness, even Crossed had a more hopeful ending, even though that ending was only good in the way of all in medias res endings everywhere, with the happy couple probably dying horribly a few minutes after the last lines or the last panels.

    But not so With a Walk Through Hell; it ends straight up horrible. That isn't anything new par Ennis of course, but at least usually, he brought us micro stories, snapshots of a greater horrible whole, that ended well within the bounds of that greater horrible whole. And that isn't the case here.

     It's a real bummer, as I went into this with high hopes and I really wanted to like this one, but this story isn't really one that stands on its own. It comes across more as reactionary, as an outlet for Ennis to rant against the state of our society, with a higher focus on the derailment of America. But it doesn't offer anything else hopeful on its own, some redeemable way forward, and this isn't too bad all by itself but what is bad is that this isn't a piece of art that satisfies in its own right.

Ennis probably should've sat on A Walk Through Hell's ideas a little longer as anything to do with the supernatural elements and the ideas at the heart of what is actually going on seem to be sound. I would have loved to see more of that. But the whole package is so much a product of its time that it can only be read with knowledge of American society's current ills, and it's worse as those ills have infected Ennis' tendency to craft satisfying endings. But then, this might just be the point. This isn't supposed to be satisfying. It's instead something that's supposed to alarm.
It is a warning: worse is yet to come, for all of us. Be wary, and be afraid, the world is about to shake.

-----

     And I should also mention why that some people are going to end up annoyed even if they aren't left cold by the ending: Though I wasn't really all that bothered there were some elements that were so in-your-face that it jarred me out of my immersion a few times. Ennis does satire pretty well in general, but here his point of attack wasn't much occluded by the choice of fantastical elements this time and instead he chose to put them front-and-center: Twitter, Trump, Racism, SJW zeitgeist, Gender Politics, and more. If that irritates you, then you just can't read this comic.