My cousin was the only one in the family with a Super Nintendo growing up. I skipped that particular Nintendo console since I was embroiled in an ill-fated affair with the Sega CD, so I was always interested in playing it whenever I went to my aunt’s house. The only games my cousin had were Madden and NHL ’96. I had no idea what I was doing, and my cousin was having too much fun pummeling the noob to stop and give me tips. Thus began my hatred of sports games. I haven’t touched one since.

In the interest of bettering myself, I decided to seek out a sports gamer and get his or her perspective on the genre. Maybe then I could begin strengthening my gaming weakness. Fortunately, my friend Brandon Kelley was just the guy I was looking for, and sat down with me to discuss his gaming history and the finer points of the FIFA franchise.

BK: Do you need me to spell my name for the record?

SC: You’re not on trial here, sir.

BK: We’ll see!

SC: So, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how I have certain holes in my gaming experience, and as a games writer I feel like I shouldn’t have any. But I just can’t get into sports games! You’re the only person I know who plays sports games regularly.

BK: Right, right, and with the first-person shooters you at least try to play them but you’re just not any good.

SC: Well, I’m getting better because of Mass Effect, which is third-person, but I’ve found I’ve been able to translate skills. I’ll never be good enough for multiplayer, but then a lot of people aren’t. But first let me ask you a couple questions about your gaming experience in general: how long have you been playing video games?

BK: I vaguely remember when I was a small boy, for Christmas, my family got the Atari — I can’t remember if it was the 2600 or the 5200 — it was whichever one they stopped making games for maybe two years after it came out. And my dad was really into it and he would play it with my brother and me. My brother’s three years older than me. We’d play Breakout, which you know is very similar to that game everybody plays on their Blackberry. And we also played this game called Bounty Bob or Miner 2049er, and it was kind of a rip off of King Kong where you played this little miner who had a mustache. Or at least it looked like he had a mustache.

SC: Wait, King Kong or Donkey Kong?

BK: Uh, Donkey Kong.

SC: Right.

BK: I’m a real gamer.

SC: (laughs) Hey, there could be a game that’s licensed to King Kong that I don’t know about.

BK: Uh, no, definitely not. But the object of the game with Bounty Bob was that there was a course with various platforms and ladders like Donkey Kong, and as your guy walked over the platform it filled in with color. You just basically had to traverse all of the platforms, and then you’d move on to the next level.

So, post-Atari we got our first personal computer as a family. I was about ten so this would have been the late eighties, and there was a game that sort of lit me up called Freddy’s Rescue Roundup. Did you ever play this game?

SC: No.

BK: It was similar to Bounty Bob where you were this little guy Freddy and you’d just make him jump with the spacebar, and you’d have to collect all these pigeons throughout the course. I remember always stealing away to the basement where the computer was to play Freddy’s Rescue Roundup and listen to the radio for hours at a time.

Then there was the Super Nintendo, and that was when I would say you could really call me a “gamer.” The Super Nintendo was bought for both my brother and me for Christmas, but he never played it. I played it all the time. Street Fighter II, Super Mario World, with the cape. I remember the day I got 100% completion on Super Mario World. That was huge.

Leading into sports games, I can remember having two sports games that I played on the SNES: NBA Jam — “He’s heating up! He’s on fire!” — and then there was a game called Super Soccer Champ. Super Soccer Champ was a sports arcade game, as opposed to a sports simulator, which is a distinction that will be important when we’re talking about FIFA. But I’d play that game with my buddy Kevin cooperatively, as opposed to facing off, which was pretty novel at the time.

SC: Did you play sports in real life at all?

BK: Yeah. I played soccer when a little kid in the local township leagues, and I continued to play through high school. I was a letterman.

SC: Nice. So you were good at soccer in real life, then.

BK: Well, I was good enough to play in high school. (laughs) I was passionate about soccer, but I wasn’t good enough to explore that passion through my own athleticism. What’s exciting about getting into the simulation aspect of FIFA is that games like that allow you as a fan and former player to exercise your brain — your tactical sports brain — and see the fruits of that tactical awareness on the screen, when you physically can’t achieve that.

SC: Would you say that the primary reason you play video games in general is to achieve that kind of immersion?

BK: I don’t know. I think with my most memorable gaming experiences, that would not be true. Through high school, the game I played most was a puzzle game called Bust-A-Move 2 for the PlayStation. My favorite thing to do would be to come home from school, fire up the PlayStation and Bust-A-Move, and put on my favorite music CD at the time. I guess it was immersion in that I got to let everything else go away, and I wouldn’t have to think of anything but that activity. I would of course do that thing that you do when playing any game — be it jump rope, hopscotch, or shooting basketballs — I would think, if I don’t get the high score on this level then I’m going to hell.

SC: Then the floor is lava.

BK: Then the floor is lava. Or you imagine that you’re competing for a gold medal in the Olympic event that is Bust-A-Move 2. So I think that maybe that’s me trying to insert myself into the game. But in FIFA you’re able to…

SC: And FIFA is currently your game of choice, right?

BK: Yeah, FIFA is my game of choice. I play the online pro portion of the game where you take a player from a very amateur skill level and compete online with other real-life players, or with your team with other real-life players, in order to improve your guy. As he scores goals, completes passes, runs a certain distance, he becomes a better player.

You can mold this player to physically look the way you want. His height, his weight, his face, his hair, and a lot guys try to make theirs look really cool like World of Warcraft style. But I always try to make my guy look exactly like me so when I’m playing I can imagine it’s me up there.

SC: So then FIFA is totally about immersing yourself in the game you love.

BK: Totally.

SC: So you play online with real people. Tell me a little bit about your. . . club?

BK: Yes, it’s “club.” Right now there are about fifteen players on the team, and of those fifteen probably five would be considered inactive because they never play with us. Of the remaining ten people it’s a constant rotation of four or five that are online at any given time. We usually only play together as a club if we have at least three people online. You play with less than three, and you’re putting yourselves at a disadvantage.

SC: Because AI populates the rest of your team?

BK: Exactly. You have much less control.

So our club, Half Baked FC, called such because the creators of the club are really big into the movie Half Baked starring Dave Chappelle and Jim Breuer, we play in a stadium that is called Mile High Stadium. When I first started playing, our team “kit,” or uniform, was the LA Galaxy uniform because their sponsor is Herbalife. Now I don’t think this is particularly interesting, but if you’re an online gamer you run into a lot of stoners.

SC: Hm. I see.

BK: Most of the guys on my team are stoners. They’ll have to take thirty second breaks to “roll a doobie.” Their words, not mine.

SC: You seem as though you are, perhaps, not a stoner?

BK: I am not, and I’ll have interesting conversations with the guys on the team where they say, “so uh, you don’t smoke weed, do you?”

SC: Wow, they can tell just from your voice?

BK: (laughs) Well no, they ask directly. But their follow up question is always, “so, what DO you do?” Look, I’m the oldest person on this club, so far as I know.

SC: Do you have any long-standing rivals? Every team needs a long-standing rival.

BK: That’s true, but there are just too many teams. There are teams that we come up against frequently, but you know this from playing online, most rivalries stem from various racial epithets being thrown around the headset.

SC: Or in my case, some classic sexual harassment.

BK: Right, and I don’t condone any of it at all! Though I’m not above trash talking.

SC: There’s a difference between trash talking and harassment, though. What would be a choice trash talk from Brandon Kelley?

BK: I like a good “yeah, bitch.” (laughs) It depends on the situation. If I’m trash talking in the instance where I got the better of the other team, then I’ll deploy the “yeah, bitch.” If I have to get involved in trash talking when I have been on the losing end, I’ll only do it if they did, in fact, best me. There will be situations where the other team won either through computer error, or they just got lucky. Then I will have to tell them.

SC: (laughs) You will have to inform them of this.

BK: “I’m sorry, but there was a CPU error. The artificial intelligence really needs to be improved in this aspect of the game, since it was the only reason why you were able to score a goal.”

SC: And you do it in this calm, reasonable manner, I’m assuming. That’s really helpful of you.

BK: My actual favorite trash talk right now is when I do something that’s really great, I’ll do the McDonald’s theme song: (sings) “Boo do boo boo boo, I’m lovin’ it!” I especially like that one because my Polish teammate is also really into it, so he’ll do it too. Then of course there’s the old standby: “You mad?” The one I’ve been trying to work in that I don’t think is going to work is, “Google me.”

What’s interesting about my team, is that we have been playing together for about two years, but I don’t know anybody’s real name. So, Hairy_Bud: everyone calls him “Hairy.” Maybe his real name is Harold, I don’t know. There’s a Marine, and his PlayStation screen name is USMC and then some four-digit number that has some significance to him. So we call him “US.” I think his name is Ryan? They call me Kelley, because I chose my screen name without fully understanding the world I was getting into and used my gmail address. (Sara laughs) Yeah, I’m pretty close to just having my social security number be my handle. But then somebody calls me “NYC” because they know I live in New York City.

It’s sort of like being in the military, where everyone goes by a nickname like “Tex.” And I absolutely feel camaraderie with these guys. Particularly when new people come into the team. They are expected to defer to the founding members of the club and to those who have been around for longer. It’s very comfortable when I log on with these guys. There’s no awkward interaction. There’s a rapport that’s already been established.

SC: So it’s like playing on a real-life sports team.

BK: Yeah. These are guys who you would be comfortable enough around to say, “Man, I had a shitty day.” And you can sort of let off some of that tension.

SC: That’s awesome. So what was the last non-sports game you played that you really enjoyed? Just to prove you have breadth in your experience.

BK: I really enjoyed Journey.

SC: Perfect game. I hesitate to call any game perfect, but perfect game. That and Portal.

BK: I definitely wouldn’t dispute that.

SC: Thanks for chatting with me. Maybe sports games don’t actually “suck hard” as twelve-year-old me would say while suffering through Madden. Any parting words?

BK: Google me.

–

Sara Clemens is an ad copywriter for a book publisher, so every single day she pretends she’s in an episode of Mad Men. You can follow her on twitter at @TheSaraClemens, and find all the things she’s ever written for the internet at saraclemens.com.

It is surprising that we often feel very strongly about the need to defend and justify our beliefs about these underappreciated cultural works. In doing so we are not only defending the things in question but also our own tastes and in some way our validity as social and cultural commentators. It matters to many of us that our friends and colleagues respect our opinions and understand why we believe what we do. Which is why this column is about my appreciation of All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder. The often-delayed Frank Miller and Jim Lee ten issue series is almost universally despised by both critics and comic book readers alike but I have a strange affinity for the story. Reviewers generally praise Lee’s artwork but despise Miller’s storytelling. I, on the other hand, appreciate both creators’ work, and find that the two mesh together to create something unique and exciting, the likes of which I have never seen. The narrative showcases a nearly psychopathic Batman who seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity as he drags a twelve year old Dick Grayson into his war against crime. There is nothing likable about this Dark Knight, he’s extremely violent, overly profane, masochistic, and bordering on sadistic. He is not a good guy and may not be a hero. He is a deeply troubled man who tortures criminals, kidnaps little boys, seems to be devoid of empathy, and is only concerned about himself. He is a highly unsavory character who displays many of humanity’s worst traits and is a role model for no one.

The logical question to ask at this point is; if this Batman is truly so unpleasant why do I like the story so much? In truth it is because this version of the Dark Knight has little to no redeeming qualities or social value. To my mind this Batman is the logical extension of many of the Caped Crusader’s traits taken to the highest degree. Batman has often been portrayed as disturbed, violent, arrogant, and pompous. These characteristics were soft-pedaled or muted by other more desirable qualities in past stories. This book enhances the Dark Knight’s core self and displays how unbecoming such a hero truly would be. I read it as a commentary on society in a post-September 11th world (the first issue was published in 2005.) The narrative asks the reader to consider what price is he/she willing to pay for security and what amount of freedom is he/she willing to sacrifice in the process. I find the effort to be bold and rather forward thinking. It follows the tradition of Miller’s own Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen in presenting the negative aspects of superheroes but it does it at an intensity never before seen in a story featuring one of the comic industry’s best known characters. I can understand why some readers are repulsed by the effort but I believe that such feelings are the point of the story. We should be repulsed, the idea that a mentally unstable billionaire dresses as a bat and violently fights crime would bother many of us if these events happened in the real world. I understand that Batman is fantasy and that escapist literature provides an avenue to flee reality for awhile but isn’t Miller’s notion of a maximized Batman something worth considering?

The other reason that I like All-Star Batman & Robin so much is in many ways the opposite of my above way of thinking. This Batman story takes place in the same universe as Miller’s most notable Batman stories: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. When combined these stories create a dense narrative that presents the Dark Knight at the beginning of his career and at the end. This progression is fascinating and allows the reader to see how the Batman from The Dark Knight Returns was created and how he changed. It provides insight into numerous plot points and story details that were before unexplored. Miller has created a sinister universe in which not only Batman has become a super-enhanced version of himself but so too have other heroes like Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow. Like Batman, these characters’ core qualities are maintained but are taken to their furthest logical extent. All-Star Batman & Robin rewards readers that follow along closely and connect the dots from previous stories. The narrative also contains numerous Easter eggs from throughout DC Comics history and encourages the reader to consider Batman’s mythos and how the character has progressed since 1939 when he began as a hardcore vigilante.

So, that’s my overall spiel. I doubt I’ve convinced many of you because I imagine a large number of readers find the story to be too distasteful to stick with and also because I didn’t give any concrete examples from the book. The problem is that I don’t think I have room to fit any good illustrations into this column. To remedy this I am going to use future columns to review individual issues of All-Star Batman & Robin and give tangible examples of why I think the narrative is so good. Imagine me as the guy at the party who is trying his best to convince you to rethink something you have written off as inferior. Feel free to argue with me, I’d like the input and relish the challenge. Hopefully the hors d’oeuvres are good, the beer is plentiful, and I don’t have spinach in my teeth.

–

Jeffrey Johnson is an avid reader of comic books, watcher of television and film, and an annoying fount of 1980s and 1990s trivia. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and has written numerous journal articles and book chapter about popular culture. His latest book is entitled Super-History: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present. He currently lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.

So the Nook is dead, long live the Nook. I’m thinking of buying a new one. The main problem with this plan is that the damn thing is so sensitive. One hard drop on the bedroom floor and the screen saver was broken. Instead of cycling through different authors it stuck with one face until I woke it up to read, then a new face would appear. I was taking the Nook to bed in what turned out to be a much darker room than I anticipated. Bam, I ran into the bed, dropping my phone and the e-reader. The phone is fine by the way. I have dropped my iPhone about a million times and every once in a while I can only hold conversations over speaker phone but the next time I drop it, it fixes itself. This is the kind of technology I need. Self-healing.

The Nook is not self-healing. I got used to seeing one author for days at a time. Sometimes I would wake up the nook just to change the face, Gertrude Stein is a little too handsome of a woman for me to have staring at me from the coffee table for days on end.

The next time I dropped, it the results were a little more destructive. You think I would have bought a case for it after dropping it the first time. Not me. It was fine, therefore it was tough enough to survive my lifestyle. Things end up on the floor a lot in my life. I think I can pick up just one more thing and everything goes crashing down to the ground. I was carrying the baby in one arm; his change of clothes, a cloth diaper, and the Nook were all tucked under my elbow. Things started to slide and so I tightened my grip on the baby and kept walking down the stairs.

Not the best plan.

Obviously holding the baby above all else is good. But I should have stopped, rearranged, set something down. The Nook fell, hit the wood floor, slid, fell down four steps and landed on the slate tile entryway. I thought nothing of it. It had survived the first fall. It was initiated into my way of life. I scooped it up and went on my merry way. The screen had two vertical stripes through Kurt Vonnegut’s face. No big deal. They were only slightly darker than the surrounding screen. They were a little more noticeable when I turned on the backlight but, let’s face it, I deserved it for not buying a case.

But it was more than lines. The backlight turned on, but nothing else did. I pushed buttons in vain. I couldn’t even turn it off and back on again, my go to electronic fixing move. I held down the power button for over two minutes. Nothing. Finally the battery died. My husband charged it for me but it never turned on again. The Nook was dead.

I decided I didn’t care. I didn’t really like the thing in the first place. I was old school. I liked paper books. I could totally read them while I held a sleeping baby. I went out and bought a new book light that was way too bright and had no dimmer switch. I missed the soft glow of the nook a little. I pushed the thought out of my head. Things would be fine.

The baby kept fussing due to my awkward page turning. My hands are not big enough to hold a 400 plus page book in one hand. I broke a few bindings. My mom spilled juice on a book. The baby kept waking up and turning his head toward the super bright light skinning down on him. I finished a book while holding him and had nothing else to read. I started to miss the Nook in earnest.

Plus there was that book I was in the middle of. I downloaded the Nook reader for my computer after a chat with the Barnes and Noble help crew. I immediately hated it. There is too much going on on my computer for me to be able to read a book. Plus there’s glare. And I can’t snuggle up. The screen is too bright and the battery is dying. I need a new Nook.

This time I’ll be smart. I already picked out a cool orange stripy case. If it isn’t sturdy enough, I’ll hit up Barnes and Noble in the mall and buy something giant to protect it. I’ll buy a screen protector and actually apply it, unlike the screen protector for my phone, which is still in a box somewhere. I’ll carry fewer things down the stairs. And next time I’m holding the baby and the Nook and the Nook starts to slide I’ll be able to let it go, knowing I’ve done my best to protect it. The Nook of course, not the baby.

–

Kelly Hannon worked in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon

Having spent a fair amount of time in graduate school researching serial killers, of both true crime and fiction, I’ve come to notice a particular rhythm to their tales that takes effect, as well as that of the heroes who pursue them. It is most often in the investigator, not the investigated, that we can actually know the depths of depravity to which these modern day monsters sink — for you can’t actually experience it in the killers themselves, so overwhelming is their psychosis. Pure sociopathy is a vacuum, and like the horror film tagline says, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” But the terror and frustration experienced by the obsessed cop or unhinged profiler is palpable and loud by comparison. And if their own psychosis is also on display? Well then, all the better.

In their 1998 mini-series Torso — published first by Image Comics and later collected by Marvel Comics — writers Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko unravel the events of Cleveland’s real life serial murder from the mid-1930s. Depicting the investigation into twelve unsolved murders, all involving victims whose heads and other body parts were removed, this true crime story begins, appropriately, with the arrival of new Public Safety Director Eliot Ness. Having developed his reputation as the leader of the Untouchables, a band of police who attempted for years to put Al Capone behind bars in Chicago, Ness is no stoic hero standing against an unknowable evil. His own insecurities and blind spots provide ample mirror for the unseen horror behind an increasingly bloody canvas of his new hometown.

Ness is clearly a man experiencing the dark side of fame, as his inability to finish the job he set out to do in Chicago still haunts him upon arrival in Cleveland. The Torso Killer, as he soon discovers, is his second chance at the brass ring — and one he can’t afford to leave untidy as he did with Capone. Jumping into the investigation already in progress by detectives Simon and Myrlo, Eliot Ness is not exactly a dynamic figure, but his own insecurity and failures drive much of the action moving forward. Torn away once again from experiencing normalcy with his too long patient wife, Ness’ own ego drives him to burn down the shanty homes of an entire community in poverty, keep communication with the serial killer a secret, and ultimately lose the battle once again against a criminal too many steps ahead of him. If the killer’s psyche can be imagined as an emptiness of sorts, then his pursuer’s decisions are a jumble of fragments — actions that, like clues which nag, repeat and magnify, remain scattered and doomed to incompletion.

Bendis is at once partnered with Andreyko on narration and solely illustrating the series, a rare exhibition of his significant artistic prowess of which we haven’t seen much in recent years. Combining dark inks with photo collage and repetition of panels, Bendis develops the look of the title to mirror a climbing psychosis, even in the quietest of moments. From panels that rotate like stairways in darkness to newspaper headlines superimposed on the spaces between panels, the intense layering effect the writer/artist employs perfectly captures the frustration and overwhelming nature of the investigation. The same clues stare back at Ness and his team, taunting them more severely with each new body that surfaces. And as politics conspire to confound the policemen all the more, pages of repeating images echo and shatter any sort of clarity the detectives could achieve. It’s only in the explosion of one seemingly careless detail that a lead on the killer develops, and the formerly dark landscape opens up to dramatic white.

Tonal shifts and compulsion aside, the magnificence of this story comes frequently in the form of creative layout, as Bendis truly harmonizes his sense of pacing and patter — core competencies for nearly every of his narrations for over twenty-five years — with the page itself. Every texture one might expect from a film noir classic is absorbed onto and spread across the two-dimensional surface. Titled camera angles and deeply drawn shadows cast every motivation into question, and create a harrowing atmosphere through high contrast rendering. What could come off as overly simple instead represents the icy façade of our killer, a gap between his intense darkness and the unblemished page he means to sully so completely. If Ness’s motivations are foggy and grey, certainly the Torso Killer’s are crystal clear, a division between good and evil as sharply severed as the head from one’s body, and in as few strokes as possible.

Worth noting is a strong subplot between detectives Simon and Myrlo, where the former confides in his partner, after much brooding, the reality of his own homosexuality, and defends (himself) against the presumptions his fellow officer makes about the criminality of perversion and vice versa. Simon stands out as a deeply honest portrayal of a good man living his truth long before social acceptability of one’s gayness could make its way to him. While the character isn’t necessarily portrayed as out and proud — something that would be a clear anachronism for 1930s Midwestern culture — Simon has a clear sense of his own identity, and Myrlo’s acceptance amid doubts is a wonderfully touching moment in an otherwise chaotic series of developments.

In standard true crime fashion, the events of Torso remain a cold case, never truly resolved in the case files, much less the minds of Ness’s constituents. The reader, however, is left with a deeply satisfying tale of how darkness comes to the unsuspecting, and mania is not the exclusive property of the criminally insane. It’s right that the killer never faces justice, in a sense, as the protagonists’ own flaws defy resolution as well. We do get to look into the face of evil by the story’s end, but all we’re left with is a central, captivating dilemma. What remains most disturbing — the monster’s ultimate success or the hero’s inevitable failure? This is the stuff of modern horror.

–

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

My mom’s side of the family is full of athletes; they keep themselves busy with sports of all kinds, but of all the meets, games, and matches of theirs I’d observe, running seemed to be the most attractive to me. Maybe it’s because there’s no team or rules or sets of special skills I could mess up. Maybe it’s because it offered a way of being athletic sans the threat of being hit by any kind of ball, but running seemed like something I could maybe, possibly figure out how to do.

During middle school and high school summers off, I’d watch my aunt with her giant muscled calves, circling the track, ponytail bobbing. I’d go with her to her workouts, walk the same circle and another nearby dirt path ad nauseum. Sometimes my cousin would join us. We’d all arrive in the same car, stretch at the same time, but they’d go one direction and I’d go another. I’d wonder what they talked about, double ponytails bobbing, and I’d feel really lonely, soft, round, and slow. And all the endless walking never seemed enough, never shaped my calves into angled mounds, never made me the kind of girl who had the kind of juicy problems worthy of puzzling through on a long run with an adult. Walking could be calming, could provide a pleasant admixture of thought and movement that would cushion introspection or spin out the wordy tendrils of a poem or story, and it was freeing, but in comparison to the running, the runners, it felt pathetic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, I ran a half marathon. I’m still not sure how that happened. I know I joined a running team, found a Saturday running partner. I know I put in the time and the grumbling and the pain and the doubt. Did I cry and/or beat myself up when I had a bad run? Yup. Often, it felt like such a ridiculous trick I was playing on myself — who was I fooling trying to outrun myself? My identity as fat smart kid seems so. . . inescapable. Anything else is beyond my comprehension. I don’t get how people feel strong and capable, how they throw their arms up in victory, feel like powerful monsters that pad around in sneakers and tear up the road. After my race I knew I wanted to feel confident and proud; it was amazing to hear praise about what I’d accomplished. But my feelings haven’t caught up with my mind. I understand that I did an amazing thing, that my body pushed through the shit of my past, proved stronger than I ever imagined it could be, but the mantle of the runner still fits awkward on my frame.

Early in the race a train halted any progress forward. Everyone around me was pissed (or pissing), I was enjoying an impromptu parade in my brain — a rousing rendition of some Souza tune for this free break in the drudgery. But, then looking around me, there was that familiar lonesome hollow in my gut. These people were competitors, and thus somehow more “real” than I was. Though I wished that I had hopped the train like a hobo of olden days, I kept going, pounded bruises into my toenails, popped bloody blisters while climbing hills. My partner and I spotted dogs, discussed their fluff, or butts, or faces. No ponytails, but our thick calves did flex in rhythm.

At the end of the race I broke down. Had to stop, had to breathe and uncoil a knot in my belly. I let my partner go on and I freaked out for a good minute. Ghosts rushed through me, all the thoughts that hurt. “Here you go, getting so close and collapsing. You can’t finish anything. See? You don’t belong here. See? You’re all alone.” And I kept going, feeling like I’d already lost but needing to save face. That last bit felt stupid and awful and dumb and stupid again and just when I was about to walk a bit more, some man I don’t even know told me NO. “You will not stop,” he said, “you can run with me and we’ll do this together.” Except I couldn’t hear a damn thing he was saying but somehow that was communicated. There was wind in my ears, but he was guiding me through the whole ending, what was left and how to do it. It didn’t matter that the words never landed, it was just so good, so incredibly good, to not be alone, to lift out of that sports + me = alienation equation for long enough to cross the finish line.

–

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

Generally when I think of parallel Earths stories I imagine the superhero variety; costumed champions from multiple universes both battling themselves and world conquering villains. My favorite is Crisis on Infinite Earths, one the touchstone comic book stories of my childhood. Surprisingly, the best parallel Earths comic book tale that I’ve read in a long time isn’t a superhero narrative. Rather it’s a sad and heartwarming story of multiple lived and outcomes. Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Grabriel Ba isn’t a classic parallel Earths narrative and not just because it doesn’t feature superheroes. Rather, the story probably takes place on only one Earth on which events are shifted in order to display how small actions irrevocably change our lives. The ten issue-length stories have the feel of parallel worlds though, in which things are almost the same but something is slightly different. Here the difference is time and how the passing years change each of us and make us parallel versions of our younger and older selves. The stories provide a commentary on growing older and explore the different eras of a person’s life. Superhero stories are generally juvenile power fantasies that embrace the reader’s need to feel exceptional and value action over thought. In contrast, Daytripper investigates the reality of aging and death and searches for shared human experiences no matter how unpleasant or unsettling they may be. The stories also celebrates the large and small joys of life and relishes the moments that make us human. While superheroes make the extraordinary commonplace, Moon and Ba make the common extraordinary.

The stories are structured non-chronologically, so the reader bounces back and forth through the main character Bras de Oliva Domingos’s life. This effect has been used in numerous novels and films but it still provides discomfort to the reader accustomed to linear storytelling. It allows us to follow events and threads through Bras’s life and see how he and those around him grow, adjust, change, and decline. As with most fiction, the true joy in reading Daytripper is internalizing the narrative and reflecting on one’s own life and the lives of his/her parallel selves. What are the events that could have changed your life and what are the possible parallel realities that were created from such choices? Somewhere is there a you that took that job in London and now lives with a spouse in England? What happened to the 22 year old you that did join the Peace Corps? Or the you that decided that you were sober enough to drink although you’d had six beers? The decisions were endless and so are the possibilities. The latest episode of Community is focusing on the idea of a dark parallel universe, which spun out of an earlier story about choices creating parallel worlds. This most likely is reference to the original Star Trek series episode that features a dark universe version of the Enterprise crew. (I sometimes wonder if my goatee marks me as the dark universe me.) So, seemingly I’m not the only one that finds the idea of parallel lives interesting.

My favorite Daytrippers chapter is one in which a 32 year old Bras struggles to find his way in the world. While working as an obituary writer he attempts to write his first novel during his free time and the words aren’t coming. He struggles to escape from his successful father’s shadow and to free himself from his over-protective mother. I remember the 32 year old me that had many of the same problems. I wish I could visit his parallel world and tell him that everything gets better. Warn him to enjoy his time with his father before he dies. Counsel him to worry less and enjoy things more. Actually, most of that is pretty good advice for me today. Maybe my older self is trying to tell me something.

–

Jeffrey Johnson is an avid reader of comic books, watcher of television and film, and an annoying fount of 1980s and 1990s trivia. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and has written numerous journal articles and book chapter about popular culture. His latest book is entitled Super-History: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present. He currently lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Jurassic Park hit theaters for the first time when I was nine years old. My mother had thought about asking our live-in nanny, Lori, to come with us but in the end decided to make the new dinosaur movie a mother-daughter adventure. About a week later Lori came back from the theater after having seen the movie by herself.

“Oh my God! It was so scary!” She announced. “Those dinosaurs! Oh my God!”

My mom and I suppressed smiles. I mean, sure, the dinosaurs were scary. And just because I was nine and she was a grown woman didn’t mean she couldn’t have gotten more scared than I had gotten.

“When they came into the kitchen I was so scared! I shouted out for those poor kids to hide!”

What? I still remember the kitchen scene. Three velociraptors were hunting the young kids and it was dark and terrifying. But shouting? Aloud? In a movie theater?

“I just screamed at them that the dinosaurs were coming. A man from the theater came and asked me to please be quiet, but I couldn’t! I just had to warn them!”

Did I mention she was a grown ass woman? She went on to tell us that she quieted down for a while but then another scary scene came on and she shouted for the characters on the screen to watch out again and had to be quieted by the theater staff again or she needed to leave. My mother and I thanked our lucky stars that we didn’t take her with us. She didn’t last as my nanny much longer after that.

This exchange came to mind after I finished Kate White’s The Sixes. Usually I don’t try to figure out whodunit while reading mysteries but this time I thought I’d give it a go. At one point the main character, Phoebe, starts a romantic relationship with a professor, Duncan Shaw, at the university where she currently teaches. Duncan reveals over dinner that his late wife, dying of cancer, drowned in the bathtub after she fell asleep reading there. The main mystery of the novel surrounded multiple drownings in the river that ran through campus. So of course I’m here, shouting in my head at Phoebe, that DUNCAN DID IT! Watch out lady, he’s a murderer!

I figured that he was impatient for his wife to die, he wanted her money, and was worried that her cancer would go into remission. See, Duncan and his wife were about to separate before she got sick. He was gallant and stayed with her, even moving back to her childhood home, while she lived out her last years. He told Phoebe that people who are severely sick often don’t have the same startle reflex that healthy people have. Normally the inability to breathe would wake someone and prevent their drowning in a bathtub. But his dear dead wife was so ill that her body failed to respond. He had even warned her of the danger of reading in the tub but she ignored him.

LIAR! I shouted! Watch out, Phoebe! He’s asking so many questions about the case because he wants to make sure you aren’t onto him! He killed his wife for her money, she was taking too long to die and then he developed a taste for it. He’s the one who has been drugging young college students and shoving them in the river, their healthy bodies useless, unable to startle them awake enough to swim to shore.

I pictured him watching from the darkened shore. Clearing the slackers and dullards from this small college campus. Someone needed to warn Phoebe. I tried, but like Lori shouting in the theater, it was useless, these characters’ lives were preordained.

Also I was wrong.

I don’t like being wrong. It’s embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as muttering to a character in a book that they need to use better judgment and stop sleeping with the killer, but close. Duncan didn’t do it. Someone else was shoving students in the river. Phoebe found out eventually, got into trouble, was hospitalized, but came out on top. Blah, blah, blah.

All the bad guys were taken care of. But I didn’t care. Duncan didn’t do it. My imagination had taken over while I was reading the book. In my opinion, it did a better job than the author’s. Duncan would have made a creepy, dark killer. His motives only a little comprehensible. His manner unassuming, sexy, persuasive. If he were the killer the book would have been better.

That’s why I don’t try to figure out how books end. I don’t keep track of clues and piece together the hints and evidence. If I’m right, why read the book? It had better be superbly written to keep me going once I know the bad guy. And if I’m wrong, I feel tricked. Kate White was pointing all the fingers in the world at Duncan. Looking back, it was too obvious. I should have known better. I might have even guessed the real killer if I hadn’t been too busy shouting about the wrong guy.

It made me mad at White for fooling me. She could have written the book without making Duncan look so guilty. It would have been better, in my opinion if either Duncan had done it or if he had a smaller role in the whole thing. Who likes feeling stupid? I understand not wanting to reveal the bad guy too soon, as an author you want readers to finish the book and then go buy your other books as well. But there is a fine line to walk and White overstepped. Maybe I was easier to fool because I was new to playing detective. But I still didn’t like how the ending unfolded. My bad guy was the better bad guy.

So I was wrong, tricked, and disappointed. Not a great way to end a book.

–

Kelly Hannon worked in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon

Linda Belcher of Bob’s Burgers

If I could only pick one TV mama to be my very own, it would have to be Linda Belcher. With big flippy hair, a penchant for sing-narrating everything she’s thinking, and a flair for the dramatic, this burger joint matriarch could very well be my genetic mother (I might be part cartoon). Linda is fantastic and refreshing because she’s so dorkily proud of her kids even and especially when they are doing or saying what others would deem troubling or strange. Tina’s writing erotic fiction about her peers? Linda excitedly responds to the “artsy fartsy” creativity of this hobby exclaiming, “Freaky friend fiction, all right!” When her attempt at producing dinner theatre in the restaurant is poorly reviewed — the set looks like children made it — rather than taking a negative critique negatively, she’s bursting with pride. It was made by children! Her children!

Ms. Belcher is a cool, kooky, sweet, funny mom who loves everything her kids make and do. A bastion of support, jokes, and cuddles, she can be a little over-the-top motherly, but ultimately I admire that she’s so incredibly hard to disappoint. She showers her family of weirdies with respect and accolades that ring perfectly silly and genuine and she does so without asking them to be better. Instead, she can be counted on to accept them and celebrate them as they are. Now, that’s all kinds of “all right!”

Here’s Linda kissing her porcelain collection of babies. Imagine what she’s like with her real kids!

Lorelai Gilmore of Gilmore Girls

Now, I avoided Gilmore Girls like the plague for a long while when it was on the air. It looked like a sappy, stupid mother-daughter fantasy land where mom and kid are best pals who share all their secrets over root beer and pizza. Well, yeah. Okay, Stars Hollow is pretty much a fantasy place and the Lorelais are definitely fantasy women, but once you get past all your cynical Sally stuff (How can they eat junk all the time and never gain weight? How can they watch all the TV and movies and still have time to read Finnegan’s Wake? How could a real mom be that awesome?) you fall in love with the fantasy.

When Lorelai is being a “drag” of a parent it’s often because she’s pushing Rory to be more daring — wear a two piece bathing suit, sneak out of the house. Mama Gilmore does anything and everything to provide for her girl; she supplies Lorelai Junior with all the books, warmth, junk food, and cable channels that a growing woman needs. With a ton of femme knowledge that far surpasses regular mom tricks like “smudge some lipstick on your cheekies!,” Lorelai has all the fashion know-how to make a blah cardigan look like a fetching, but not trying too hard, signature piece. When it comes down to it, L.G. is just your typical total knockout, monied teen mom, who leaves the lap of luxury to live life by her own standards and provide for her daughter in the quaintest most pop culturally saturated existence possible. She knows everything from Muppets to Monet, the Go-Gos to Grey Gardens, and just about any of her spit-fire dialogue is incredibly quotable. I’m not ashamed to say it (anymore), I’d love to be a Gilmore Girl.

Lorelai on motherhood.

Sophia Petrillo of The Golden Girls

I’ve been watching and LOVING The Golden Girls since I was a kid. So, maybe I didn’t get why Rose accidentally buying extra large condoms (and then the grocery guy announcing it for a price check) was hilarious, but everything else translated well, and I’m pretty sure I get that condom joke, now, thank you very much. Even as a girl, I identified with Dorothy (do with that what you will) but you wouldn’t need to be a Dortothy to love her mom, Sophia, and envy their awesomely sarcastic and loving relationship.

Sophia is the perfect little old lady. That grandma shuffle? That wicker bag? A great listener, an old school classic storyteller (“Picture it — Sicily…), and the comedic timing and blunt brashness of Don Rickles. Sassy, sexy, and fun, this lil’ mama is just as comfortable volunteering caring for sickies at the hospital as painting the town red with Mr. Burt Reynolds. She’s the kind of mom who you’d actually want to shack up with you and your best buds, and she’s the kind of mom who will continue to love her “pussycat” daughter with all her wicked little Italian heart. . . even if that daughter has sent her to “the home” at least once before. That’s amore!

A favorite Sophia and Dorothy moment. Why isn’t this MY life?!

Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development

Her? Really? Her? Well, no. I don’t want her to be my mom, but I think she’s really funny. She’s all yours, Baby Buster.

“I don’t care for Gob.”

Mama’s cuttin’ loose!

–

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

The film begins, incongruously, with a Bible verse, written in a Gothic-tribal font, then cuts to a black screen with the sound of the ocean churning. A light flickers in the bottom corner of the image, and eventually, we find ourselves on board a massive fishing boat, all clinking chains, painted metal, and winches. During the first ten minutes, we witness, through a camera strapped to one of the workers, the process of bringing up a net that’s been trawling the ocean, and then releasing the mass of slippery silver and pink fish caught in the trap. This labor feels, well, laborious, and has only just begun — when the sequence ends, we notice that light just barely turned the sky from black to navy blue.

The excitement and movement of the opening sequence belies the repetition and drudgery of the work to come. In two later sequences, the camera lingers on the men cleaning the fish, gutting and beheading them with an efficiency that comes from experience. To those unaccustomed to slaughter, the scene is almost enough to turn one to vegetarianism. As the men work, the camera pans down the side of the wooden bin where the newly caught fish are kept, awaiting their fate, to find it caked and dripping with gore. A group of skates are equally doomed; as a fisherman unceremoniously lifts one with meat hooks, another hacks off its wing-like fins and tosses them into a bin. The waste of the fish – heads, guts, and fins – is dumped back into the sea. With the camera sitting on the ship’s steel floor, a fish’s head sits upside down; its bulbous eye stares back at us, as if prompting a response. Then, we cut to another camera half-submerged in the sea, sometimes underwater, other times emerging into the air, as fish viscera slides out the side of the ship in a red sludge. If ever one needed a visual illustration of the term “biomass,” Leviathan offers it.

Matching the unsentimental vision of the labor needed to help feed a population eager for seafood, who in turn are shielded from the violence involved in securing those meals, is a vision of the sea as vast and all-encompassing. Shots where the camera is plunged into the water offer little but darkness and the muffled reverberations of the ship, interrupted only by the white streaks of the wake and the occasional offal. The film’s soundtrack of crashing waves, winches and chains, and the deep rumble of the engines takes on an ominous musical quality in these scenes; so much so that I imagined incidental music emerging just under hearing.

Whereas the scenes of labor lull you with a sense of repetition, the “underwater” sequences transform the sea into an aesthetic, where you glimpse only the occasional recognizable object — a chain, a fish, seagulls when the lens breaks the surface. Leviathan is one part Jeanne Dielman (1975), and one part Dog Star Man (1961-1964), though even together those films are not quite the right comparison. There is something more real, and more accidental, about Leviathan, something to do with the primal in the midst of the industrial. One of the last shots of the film shows one of the fisherman seated in the ship’s kitchen; the garbage from his finished meal litters the table and he looks towards us but slightly off-screen. It sounds like he’s watching Deadliest Catch, and what we can hear — dramatic music, narration, editing — differs so greatly from the experience we’ve just had. As the show continues, the fisherman slowly closes his eyes, obviously exhausted from his work, and the television cuts to a commercial for a colon cleanser — two final reminders of biological reality in this strange approximation of home, deep in the bowels of the floating factory.

–

Roger Ebert was the first film critic I read seriously. For years as a teenager I awaited his reviews every Friday, and his was the first collection of film criticism I ever bought. He taught me that one could disagree with accepted wisdom about a film, and reach one’s own conclusion about it; moreover, he taught me how to defend that opinion. I remember disliking David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) because of Ebert’s review, and after seeing it years later and revising my opinion, his influence remained, because now the lesson had stuck — my conclusion was my own. Although I read him less in recent years, he appeared still as a model of someone who believed in both cinema and humanity. Although it is sometimes difficult to retain a trust in either, this is another of Ebert’s lessons worth remembering.

–

Adam Capitanio lives and works in New York City as an editor and educator. He’s happy to talk to you about any dimension of film art and culture.

I’d perform soliloquies for Stitch, my teddy bear. My G.I. Joes took part in an ever-evolving saga of espionage. My Barbie dolls were the members of a huge and convoluted family tree, and participated in all the drama that comes with it. My mom’s Barbie was the mom. She still wore her makeup and hair exactly the way she did when she was a teenager herself.

Can’t you see it just dates you, Babs? You don’t look any younger!

I was also a voracious reader and movie watcher. I especially dug sci-fi. I saw Alien for the first time when I was eight, and apart from gifting me with the image that still pops up in my nightmares (the baby xenomorph birthing itself from John Hurt’s chest, obviously), it also introduced me to Our Ripley of Nostromo, the first female film character I found entirely relatable. I mean, Leia was close, but at the end of the day? I wanted to be Han Solo. Soon enough, I was calling my cat “Jonesy” and pretending she and I were going into cryostasis when we’d go to bed.

She always wanted to sleep directly on my head though, the little facehugger.

But wouldn’t it be great, I thought, to up the ante? To actually feel like I was on a spaceship? To wear the right clothes, say the right words, and be surrounded by a bunch of people doing the same? To feel really immersed in these worlds? Heck yes, it would. So I decided to become an actor.

And I did, and it was great. I made people laugh and cry (mostly laugh). I met the people who make up my core group of friends. I met my husband. I made contacts that got me my first paying gigs in New York. I told a lot of stories.

However, as with most things that are awesome, there was a catch. While little Sara assumed it was the actors who were at the center of the make-believe, actor Sara discovered it was really the audience (as of course it should be).

It may look like she’s on the deck of spaceship, but she’s actually standing in front of several panels of green spandex. Her costume is held together in the back by safety pins. Half the time, she’s not even talking with the person who appears in the scene with her. Theatre offers her more immersion, but then it’s a constant exchange of energy with the audience, because they’re actually there in the room. That energy exchange is important and wonderful and absolutely thrilling, and I miss it dearly, but there came a time when I realized I was the one who wanted to be fooled.

Enter Commander Shepard, stage right.

I was already well acquainted with the immersive qualities of video games, but Mass Effect took dead aim at my childhood fantasies and struck true. An epic space fantasy spanning three games, where decisions from the first affect outcomes in the second and third, it offered me the chance to be the badass space explorer I always wanted to be.

I stalked the decks of the Normandy. I donned space armors and wielded high tech weapons. I befriended my crew. Flirted with them, too. Some of them died, and I mourned them. I helped some people, and hurt some others. I saved the galaxy. For the most part, I was the good gal, but I followed my own code — sometimes you just have to use the Renegade interrupt option and blow up that gas tank your opponent is too busy monologuing to notice.

“Boring conversation anyway,” you’ll say out loud from your couch.

A video game tells a story for an audience of one. A great video game lets that audience help tell it. I may never get a chance to play Ripley in the Alien reboot (though I am totally available, Hollywood), but my Shepard ain’t a half bad substitute. Especially because she’s mine.

There are lots of ways to tell stories, and I’ve got no plans to stop.

–

Sara Clemens is an ad copywriter for a book publisher, so every single day she pretends she’s in an episode of Mad Men. You can follow her on twitter at @TheSaraClemens, and find all the things she’s ever written for the internet at saraclemens.com.