Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
Something unusual — I do the header logos for the THR Heat Vision newsletter every week. I fell into it by accident, because I started by tweaking the logos someone else had done, and then somehow I was just doing the logos every week. It’s a surprisingly fun part of my week, even if I know my logos are far below the standards of people who, you know, do this for a living. Here are some of my favorites from the first few weeks.
This one wasn’t written for publication or performance; it was the notes I made to accompany my submission to Shelfdust’s Top 100 Comics List, when I submitted my Top 10. (To clarify: It was specifically top 10 comics single issues, not storylines/collections/graphic novels, and it was by any definition I wanted — I went for something between what they meant for me personally and how good I thought they were.) I didn’t know that it wasn’t for publication at time of writing, because I didn’t know whether we were supposed to write note to share or not, but that just made sure that I wrote more, which is always good.
#10: The New Guardians #1 (1988, DC Comics)
— I loved Millennium, the crossover this came from, so much that I subscribed to this (for an exceptionally large amount of money; I was in the UK, after all) before it launched. The series was a disaster, with Steve Englehart leaving midway through the second issue, but even today, there’s something special about the launch issue: A vision of socially inclusive and diverse comics that I was looking for but hadn’t found yet.
#9: The Invisibles #12 (1995, DC/Vertigo)
— The Invisibles was a (the?) seminal series for me, and this is arguably the most important issue in it; the one that introduces the true hero of the whole thing, and also explains how bad guys become bad guys. It’s very much in the whole pulp tradition, but also something that asks and expects a little kindness from those reading.
#8: Uncanny X-Men #185 (1984, Marvel Comics)
— The comic where I decided that I was going to collect comics. What was it about this? Claremont arguably in his prime, Romita Jr. and Dan Green at the 1980s best, but also the sense of it being this expansive fictional universe that went far beyond the superhero comics I’d read as a kid. This felt “other,” it was amazingly exciting.
#7: Or Else #2 (2004, Drawn & Quarterly)
— Kevin Huizenga has the honesty of an Eddie Campbell, but the formal curiosity of a Chris Ware and the heart of a Jaime Hernandez. This was the first thing I read from him, back when it was a mini comic called Supermonster #14. The reprint (that was, I think, also redrawn and/or expanded?) just cemented how wonderful he, it, and comics in general, are.
#6: Deadline #5 (1989, Deadline)
— The first issue of Deadline I bought, and the place where I discovered comics that weren’t superheroes or 2000AD. My first taste of Philip Bond, Jamie Hewlett, Nick Abadzis and Shaky Kane. This was unspeakably important to me at the time; it really felt like the world was opening up and comics were a place to explore all these things in a language I’d understand.
#5: Mister Miracle #10 (2018, DC Comics)
— No comic has ever felt like a more perfect expression of a relationship than this one, to me.
#4: Flex Mentallo #4 (1996, DC/Vertigo)
— “Being clever’s a fine thing, but sometimes a boy needs to get out of the house and meet some girls.”
#3: OMAC #1 (1974, DC Comics)
— One of the most perfect first issues ever made in comics, and also one of the most prescient pieces of 20th Century science fiction. Oddly, also released in the same month I was born, apparently.
#2: Dork #7 (1999, Slave Labor Graphics)
— Evan Dorkin writing about his nervous breakdown was (and, in many ways, still is) a shock considering this had previously been his humor anthology, but he does it with such honesty, anger and wit that it’s undoubtedly one of the best comics I’ve ever read.
#1: Grafitti Kitchen #1 (1993, Tundra)
— Simply one of the best one-shot issues ever, one of the best autobiographical comics ever — sure, he’s pretending to be Alec McGarry, but still — and one of the most honest pieces of writing about how complicated and dumb and hopeful we get when it comes to relationships.
Another thing written for an unexpected outlet this year, and an unexpected revival — this was for io9, which asked me for a brief submission about the best supervillain. It was my first piece there for… eight years or so…? I also went to a get-together of io9 writers past and present at NYCC this year, so perhaps I’m over my weird grudge finally.
There’s a tradition in superhero comics for truly powerful beings to be beyond human morality — so, you get characters like Marvel’s Galactus, who eats planets but is somehow not evil because, hey, who are we to judge? Similarly, Marvel also has characters like the Beyonder or Michael Korvac, both of whom are omnipotent and definitely antagonists, but could they really be considered supervillains…? There’s an argument to be made against, seeing as neither are really trying to do much more than survive and learn, even if that process threatens the free will of everyone around them. Surely intent figures into deciding whether or not someone is a villain, super or otherwise…?
I really want to say it’s Darkseid, because Darkseid is obviously the best supervillain. He wants to eradicate free will, and he’s got no problem doing whatever it takes to achieve that aim, even though he’s bound by his own weird sense of honor. He’s complex, contradictory and fascinating, and he’s also been able to kill Batman and beat up Superman and screw with the entire Justice League, so he’s clearly pretty powerful. But, really, he’s not the most powerful supervillain. We’ve seen far stronger. (Nekron, for example; he could bring all the dead guys back to life as evil zombies!)
Instead, I’ll nominate the Anti-Monitor, the awkwardly-named villain of 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. While his motivation and, really, personality, were somewhat unclear in that series, it couldn’t be denied that he was powerful: He was literally destroying entire universes to further his agenda of destroying all positive matter — he’s the Anti-Monitor, after all —succeeding, he killed countless versions of DC’s biggest name characters and, thanks to the cosmic laws of DC mythology, his being from the Anti-Matter universe automatically means that he’s evil. Most powerful supervillain? Almost certainly. That costume alone should earn him a place on the list, let’s be real.
Finishing out a year in which a lot has happened, but there’s been almost nothing happening on this site — mostly because a lot has happened. But I’m using this place as digital storage by including some writing for unusual places from the last few months. First up, this is a piece written for the launch party of Oni’s The Long Con at Portland’s very own Books with Pictures, which ended up being read aloud by the wonderful Ben Coleman.
Based on the questions I’ve been asked over the years, there are a few preconceptions about being a journalist at Comic-Con that I feel the need to try to clear up. Firstly, no; it doesn’t mean that you automatically get into all the popular panels and hang out with movie stars and eat free food, although I did once accidentally leave Hall H in San Diego through the wrong door and ended up in the celebrity waiting room, which had a spread like you wouldn’t believe, and was filled with the cast of some big blockbuster I can’t even remember, all staring at me while clearly thinking “You don’t belong here.” I was quickly escorted out by security.
And, no, being press doesn’t mean that you automatically know where all the good parties are, and it definitely doesn’t mean that you get invites and can sneak everyone in. I mean, yes, there was that time I got into a party where the band was Josie and the Pussycats from Riverdale and they were actually performing live, and everyone lost their minds, but that happens, like, once or twice a convention, tops.
Most of all, despite what I’ve just said, it isn’t glamorous. It’s glamor-adjacent, and that’s fun and strange and great, sure, but it’s also weird and uncomfortable and occasionally just very… awkward. Here’s the best example of what I’m talking about. It’s about eight or nine years ago, and through some unlikely happenstance, I’m working for a well-known weekly news magazine that I won’t mention the name of. I mean, technically, I’m working for the website of a well-known weekly news magazine, but the distinction is meaningless to anyone I tell about the job. Honestly, it was pretty meaningless for me, too; I was firmly under the impression that I had arrived in the big leagues, and that everything was going to be great from then on.
This was before I arrived in San Diego to discover that I would be sharing a room with five strangers for the next four nights. And that the room had two single beds, and we could maybe get an extra cot if we were lucky. On the one hand, everyone seemed very nice and there was only a couple of people whose work I recognized and felt embarrassed to be sharing a bed with because, really, they deserved better. On the other, I can’t emphasize this enough: We were all working for a well-known weekly news magazine — like, one of the ones that’s actually a name — and they definitely could’ve afforded at least another room or two. This was just cheap.
It also made it difficult to do work. It isn’t unusual to end up working late into the night to meet deadlines at Con, and when you’re sharing a room with five people trying to sleep, it’s not so easy to stay up, typing away, without making people mad at you. All of which explains why I ended up sitting in the foyer of the hotel, trying to write a couple of stories at ten o’clock at night one night.
So, I’m sitting there with my laptop and headphones on, listening and listening and listening to this interview, trying to transcribe it and write whatever I was writing, and I kind of half-noticed that it was getting pretty busy. I didn’t really think that much about it, because it’s Comic-Con and everywhere is busy at Comic-Con, especially hotels. And it keeps getting busier, and busier, and at one point I look up and realize, wait, everyone looks really fancy. This is odd.
It took me about another hour or so, and by this point it’s maybe 2am and there’s really loud music and the foyer is just packed, to realize that there was actually a party going on all around me and I hadn’t realized. And it’s a big party; there’s a DJ, there’s people dancing and drinking and making out and all kinds all around me and I somehow just hadn’t noticed for hours. I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t go back to the room, everyone was asleep and I hadn’t finished work, so I just…stayed there. And pretended none of it was going on while I sat on a couch, with various things happening literally right beside me that were very distracting. Eyes fixed on the screen. Writing. Just writing.
And then, at one point, with no warning, the music just stopped suddenly. The crowd groaned en masse, but stopped when it became clear what was going on: Everyone shuffled aside to let an ambulance crew pull a stretcher towards the elevators, and then they disappeared. No-one said a word, everyone just staring at the elevators for minutes until the ambulance crew re-appeared, with someone strapped into the stretcher.
This sounds like a downer, I know, and you could tell at the time that the ambulance crew was clearly thinking the same thing. They didn’t look anyone in the eye as they moved towards the door of the hotel, and then they paused, before one of them said in this wonderfully embarrassed voice, “He’s going to be fine!” As in on cue, the music immediately started back up, and everyone got back to partying, like the whole thing had been planned.
That is what Comic-Con is like as a journalist. Being exhausted, under deadline, surrounded by people having more fun than you, probably, and unsure whether or not you just saw something actually tragic, or if it was some weird performance art piece in the middle of a party. And, you know, also getting to see Josie and the Pussycats perform live on a hotel rooftop standing next to the cast of Arrow as they lose they minds.
What can I say? It’s really large. It contains a lot of multitudes.
Then there’s the impact of the digital revolution on publishing and, by extension, on politics. “Our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years than perhaps at any time in the past five hundred years,” says Emily Bell, the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Journalism School.23 Digital technology, she warns, has actually put the future of publishing “into the hands of a few, who now control the destiny of many.”24 Social media, Bell says, have “swallowed journalism” with what she dubs—with a medieval symbolism that might have amused Erasmus of Rotterdam—the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, engaged in a “prolonged and torrid war” for our attention. These private superpowers are thus becoming our “new speech governors,” usurping the traditional role of government in determining what can and can’t be published.25 Meanwhile, online publishers—the actual creators of content and, one would assume, economic value—remain mired in crisis, with 85 percent of all online advertising revenue going in the first quarter of 2016 to just two of Tim Berners-Lee’s centralized data silos: Facebook and Google.26 The monopolization of media isn’t just a problem for publishers. With Facebook as our new front page on the world, we are simply being refed our own biases by networked software owned by a $350 billion data company that resolutely refuses to acknowledge itself as a media company because that would require it to employ armies of real people as curators. It would also make Facebook legally liable for the advertising that appears on its network. So what we see and read on social media, therefore, is what we want to see and read. No wonder everything now seems so inevitable to so many people. This echo chamber effect, the so-called filter bubble,27 has created a hall of mirrors, a “post-truth” media landscape dominated by fake news and other forms of online propaganda. Thus the disturbing success of Trump, Brexit, and the alt-right movement; thus the virulence of Putin’s troll factories, networked ISIS recruiters, and the other mostly anonymous racists, misogynists, and bullies sowing digital hatred and violence.
Recounting the actual history of curating and exhibitions can help us steer clear of a related confusion: that the curator herself or himself is an artist. It is true that the exhibition format has become more recognizable and popular, and exhibition-makers have come to be identified as individual makers of meaning. As artists themselves have moved beyond the simple production of art objects, and towards assembling or arranging installations that galvanize an entire exhibition space, their activity has in many cases become more consonant with the older idea of the curator as someone who arranges objects into a display. These developments have given rise to an impression that curators are competing with artists for primacy in the production of meaning or aesthetic value. Some theorists argue that curators are now secularized artists in all but name, but I think this goes too far. My belief is that curators follow artists, not the other way around. The role of the artist changed greatly over the last century. The artist Tino Sehgal has said that the notion of art generated by sculptors and painters in the early nineteenth century, and fully articulated and established by the 1960s, is detaching itself from its material origins and venturing into other realms in the twenty-first century. The exhibition-maker’s role has expanded in turn. Curating changes with the change in art.
But the internet revolution, which was supposed to empower us, is increasingly enslaving us. The web’s decentralized architecture has become intensely centralized. What was created to enrich democracy is enabling a tyranny of virulent trolls and other antidemocratic forces. “The internet is broken”: thus conclude digital pioneers such as Twitter cofounder Evan Williams and Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales. Like Williams and Wales, more and more technologists are recognizing that today’s networked transformation is writing us out of our own story. The internet might have been described as the “people’s platform,” these critics say, but in fact it has a people problem. Jaron Lanier, the inventor of virtual reality and Silicon Valley’s most poignant thinker, even admits to a nostalgia for that halcyon time in the last century when technology did, indeed, put people first. “I miss the future,” Lanier confesses.
To make a collection is to find, acquire, organize and store items, whether in a room, a house, a library, a museum or a warehouse. It is also, inevitably, a way of thinking about the world – the connections and principles that produce a collection contain assumptions, juxtapositions, findings, experimental possibilities and associations. Collection-making, you could say, is a method of producing knowledge.
As we go on, Mystery becomes more important, too, because it helps us deal with things we can’t understand. It is fueled by faith: belief in ourselves, our friends, “the system,” humanity in general, and whatever else it is we need to believe in. There’s a reason we don’t want great magic tricks explained. Mystery is also valuable as a coping mechanism—the things that are all too clear are piling up, too: Life is short. Love can’t be taken for granted. Everything has a cost. Just holding on to something doesn’t mean it won’t go away. You can try to solve everything, but if you can’t, that’s okay. As long as you’ve tried your best.
As I was working on this speech, it became clear to me how agencies form their own antibodies against a president’s desire to move in a particular direction. A practice of having the intelligence community review speech drafts had been put in place after George W. Bush overhyped Saddam Hussein’s efforts to acquire nuclear material in his 2003 State of the Union address. Now Obama wanted to assert that tactics like waterboarding amounted to torture; the intelligence community struck that formulation, preferring the more antiseptic “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Obama wanted to call Gitmo a danger to American national security; the intelligence community wanted to strike that. Obama wanted to say that the 240 Muslim detainees in Gitmo had spent years “in a legal black hole”—a relatively noncontroversial statement, since no one at Gitmo had been convicted of a crime; the intelligence community wanted to delete that sentence as well, offering instead this justification: “The detainees at Guantanamo have more legal representation and have been afforded more process than any enemy combatants in the history of the world.” Sitting in my windowless office and reading those comments, I felt the gap between working on a campaign and working in the White House. The person I was working for was president of the United States, and a figure uniquely revered by people around the world; but his views did not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government.