Comic Haul 10/25/2023, BRASS (2000) and eJUNKY (2023). Racism, Sexism, Good Art, oh my!

Written - 10/25/23 | Posted - 10/30/23 | Edited 10/30/23

Portfolio | Portfolio Directory | Prince Molder's Mind Palace

TW: Genocide, Colonialism, Sexism, Violence, Racism, Suicide

Recently I’ve been caught ordering quite a few Amazon packages; board games are steeply on sale. That's hardly sustainable. Ever since I started my job at a local coffee shop I’ve been feeling more connected to my community than ever. I can’t tell if it's part of southern culture or merely a power that all baristas possess, but people love to introduce themselves to you by telling you the most recent traumatic event in their life. It sounds worse than it is. I have regulars who give me updates on their lives constantly and I love it. It's nice to be a waiting ear and a shoulder to cry on. This has all made me more willing than ever to invest in my community.

So every so often I try to hit up as many local stores as I can and give them a little walking around money. That or I’m just spoiling myself.

https://pumpernickleback.tumblr.com/post/166312675788/imitation-lobster-meat-probably-my-favourite

I longboarded around the stunning River Arts District today and grabbed not one but two cups of coffee. The second cup of coffee I bought because I really needed to use a coffee roaster’s restroom and didn’t want to do so without buying anything. Baristas hate it when you leave without buying anything.

Sweeping past the beautiful autumn leaves while sipping on an oat milk cap really cannot be beat. And, as the name might suggest, the river was artistically rendered in the fall light. Halfway through my trip I set my board down on the riverbank and finished my coffee while watching the water flow. Even saw a vivid black and orange moth. Can you tell I’m excited for Halloween?

Today also held a very nerdy circuit between a board-game store, The Wyvern's Tale, for a copy of Star Wars X-Wing 2.0, (which I belatedly realized I needed AFTER I bought the 2.0 Rebel’s conversion kit), my favorite bookstore, Malaprops, to order a copy of Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 4, and finally the very new Nerd Dungeon for some comics!

While local businesses often need to charge slightly more to keep themselves in business, in the end, it's worth it. You’re paying to preserve something valuable and special. It's difficult to avoid Amazon entirely, but maybe after ordering a $60 game for $5, spend the money you saved at your favorite local games store.

While Malaprops and The Wyvern’s Tale are both institutions and are unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon, The Nerd Dungeon is hardly as stable. They established themselves in a stripmall alongside Dickies Salvage Foods and The Junk Store four or so months ago. That is not an editorialization, those are the names of its neighboring businesses. I love the south and its naming conventions.

The Nerd Dungeon is super close to my house and sells local artisanal products but currently has a limited selection of books and games. I really want it to succeed but I worry that its location and clientele might not be conducive to the kind of business they are trying to cultivate. But they are committed to building a community space; putting on weekly movie nights, YuGiOh tournaments (sadly one of the only Tactical Card Games I don’t play), and a writers group which I plan to attend next week!

They also have three big boxes of comics, all for a dollar each! I’m very picky about my comics; if I don’t like the art I simply cannot read them. I also hate jumping into the middle of a series; I gotta start at issue one. So I came home with six wonderful issue #1’s of some obscure comics I’ve never heard of.

The two comics I was most excited to dig into were BRASS by John Arcudi, Carlos D’anda, inked by Richard Bennet, Colored by Alex Sinclair, lettered by Alex Heisler, and edited by John Layman and eJUNKY by Nicholas Tana, Art by Kyle Faehnrich, edited by Cal George, Andrea Lorenzo Molinari, Gregory Blair, Cassie D’Agosta. BRASS has a hyper-detailed mech on the cover and eJUNKY sports a neon cyberpunk dystopia. My only weaknesses!

If I had intentionally picked two comics to compare and analyze I could not have done a better job. BRASS came out two months after I was born and eJUNKY was published this year, yet both still reflect American fear of terrorism and a lurking racism against Middle Eastern people. Note that I use the term ‘Middle Eastern’ to reflect a Western perception and flattening of a diverse group of peoples who have historically been marginalized by colonialism and thus have been forced to form bonds of solidarity and not as an accurate descriptor of any specific ethnic group.

BRASS’s depiction of terrorist violence in New York city was surprising to me, especially since it came just a year before the 2001 attacks. Of course those attacks were long since precipitated by an USAmerican fear of retaliation from insurgent groups in the Middle East that the United States played a significant role in creating and arming.

eJUNKY is a little more on the nose, using a caricature of a Middle Eastern man decapitating the protagonist while proclaiming ‘Yamut Kafir,’ “He dies in blasphemy” according to Google Translate. This happens on page 2. It's difficult to see racist depictions of Middle Eastern men especially as the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people continues for the second week. One common strategy for manufacturing consent for the genocide is the dehumanization of Palistinian people, men in particular, by claiming they enact animalistic violence.

Even after two decades United States propaganda has remained largely the same. While the violence does not compare to that currently being enacted by the Israeli state, 5,000 Palestinian’s killed as of writing, 2,500 of those being children, Middle Eastern Americans are once again being attacked and killed in racially motivated crimes just as they were in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

Edit: As of publication, over 7,000 people have been killed.

These comics were a great reminder that we must do everything we can to support Palestinians during this horrific time. Go to marches, sign petitions, contact your representatives, share information from Palestinian voices, make sure no one can forget these people or the violence inflicted upon them.

There is no perfect time to speak out and any repercussions you face for speaking the truth are paltry in comparison to what Palestinian people have been experiencing every day for two weeks and the seventy five years before that.

Both comics are also rather sexist. The only woman with a speaking role in eJUNKY is a pop star who is the victim of terrorism. The only woman with a speaking role in BRASS is a reporter. All other women are objects of sexual desire or are only portrayed in relation to the male protagonists. The women in BRASS do tend to have more clothes on, however.

The men in both comics aren’t all that interesting either.

The unimaginatively named cookie cutter former detective of eJUNKY is Hector Holmes and he is addicted to experiences; an experienceJUNKY. He is the only one brave enough to inject the powerful new drug experiences developed by the terrorist group Guardians. His addiction to experiences is placed in opposition to society’s dependance on emotional regulators, devices that prevent them from ever feeling pain, and their addiction to crass popular culture. It is a thin metaphor for the usage of antidepressant medication and opioid mass media, neither metaphor being used in a particularly novel or interesting way. The point is belabored when the protagonist sheds his jacket covered in advertisements at the end of the issue for a jacket that's “off the grid.” I hate corporate culture too but, man, please have something specific to say about it. Make a nuanced statement rather than just saying it’s bad! Let me know why!

I find myself liking BRASS’s Hershel Goldstein a bit more. He opens the issue by trying to kill himself and is instantly protected by a bio-generated mech suit, a nanobot disease called BRASS. I wonder if this comic was an inspiration for the 2010 Cartoon Network show, Generator Rex, one of my favs growing up about a boy able to make his body into machines with the help of nanities. Hershel is an intentionally pathetic window-washer who nonetheless tries to stop the terrorist assassination of a dictator of the fictional nation of Bazhaczian. The Bazhaczian flag notably features a moon and star remarkably similar to that of the flag of Turkey.

If the authors were willing to put in so little effort to obfuscate the target of their ire they might as well have used a real nation and its flag. I often find myself frustrated by the usage of fake nations in fiction. So often it is done to direct criticism away from the authors themselves. “I’m not criticizing Turkey! See! It's Bazhaczian! I made it up! I’m not really saying anything!” Kinda a half assed misdirection that feels as though the author was trying to avoid accusations of racism and xenophobia, or maybe just didn’t want to upset Turkish readers. I don’t think you put in enough effort to divert either, bud.

I believe in the power of fiction to create commentary on the real world, but if your critiques have so direct a target why bother with the obfuscation? Make your point directly so your argument can be judged on its merits. I think the necessity or lack thereof of violent protests against dictatorial leaders is a salient and oft debated point. Present your argument. Of course, the author could have invented Bazhaczian due to censorship from publishers, which I would understand. Using false nations also gives the author freedom from the real world baggage of history and atrocities. However, again, it's such a direct comparison that the imagery used is connotatively loaded, at least in the author's mind.

The terrorists/freedom-fighters then blow up a block in their assassination attempt and Hershel steps in because “People are getting hurt!” It's not a bad motivation from a superhero and I do like the simplicity of it. We all want to believe the best in people, and it would be especially nice if those in power used it to protect those without. However, this motivation doesn’t reflect Goldstein’s relative disempowerment in other aspects of his life. Perhaps this attempt at heroism would be more fulfilling if it was positioned as more internally motivated: saving people as a way for him to reclaim power.

I did look it up, and the real world Prime Minister of Turkey during 2000 was subject to six different assassination attempts! All of which occurred during 1970. From the very limited reading I have now done on former PM Bülent Ecevit, it hardly seems like he was a dictator, but he was opposed to much of the USA’s aggressive foreign policy during this time. I don’t really have any strong feelings about this Prime Minister as I haven’t done enough research and do not have any lived experience to form a salient opinion, but I do think his record of assassination attempts is very interesting in context!

Hershel also needs to attempt suicide to activate his BRASS alter ego, much like Bruce Banner and the Hulk. To stop the violence in the streets he jumps from his window-washing stand, turning into BRASS on the way down. It is a striking visual and is very related to the themes of disempowerment the comic has posited and then done nothing with. I doubt it will be expanded upon but I would love to be proven wrong.

After he fails to save the dictator he loses his job as a window-washer on account of him destroying all of the windows he was supposed to be washing with his giant robot body. The loss of his job feels a little formulaic: the hero is punished for heroism. Very Spiderman. This doesn’t do much for me; Goldstein already didn’t have anything to lose. He tried to kill himself in the first couple pages, remember? Losing a job isn’t a consequence.

I wish I could find it, but I recently saw a TikTok commenting on the social role of superheroes as one of preserving the status quo. I think it might have been made by @Luckyleftie but even if I’m wrong, check out her content. It's great. BRASS, here, even though he is only trying to help, unknowingly tries to protect a dictator. I’d like to see if the comic continues to explore these themes in its limited run.

After he reverts to human form he is then booked into the government's registry of superheroes. Very funny for a superhero registry that in other comic universes, such as Marvel’s, cause massive wars, ideological clashes, and dozens of ripped spandex deaths, is already an accepted fact of this bleak world.

I’ve been very negative about these comics but I must say, the art in both is stunning. I am particularly struck by the lettering in eJUNKY. Sound effects fill panel space in satisfying ways that tickle your brain. It is also so richly colored. The cover’s promise was well delivered upon. I just wish the plot and themes had as much to contribute as the lavish artwork.

BRASS is filled with over-rendered technology and bold scratchy lines. It is oodles of fun to look at. There are a lot of greeked logos on buildings and vehicles, a half Sony logo here, a half Macy’s tag there. It makes everything seem more real and makes a statement about the presence of brands in our lives more compellingly than eJUNKY, even though it does it obliquely. Page layouts are also ingenuitive, mixing themselves up and often breaking out into lush double page spreads.

Speaking of brands, oh. My. gosh. The ADS in BRASS!!! I’m talking the real deal, relics from 2000. Vintage. Uncut games industry ‘edgy’ low poly goodness. I hope hearing 2000 being called vintage made everyone reading cringe a little bit. Most of the video games being advertised in the issue are completely forgotten in the collective memory. My favorite is a double page spread of Times Square but all of the advertisements have been covered with hints for the game Wild Arms 2. It's so turn of the millennium. I’ll post some scans of my favorites below.

My conclusions on these two series are pretty definitive. I’m going to finish reading BRASS, and I’m going back to The Nerd Dungeon to see if I can find more of this six issue run. It is just visually superb, even if it is narratively weak, and I want to see some more of these ads (which I couldn’t find online). There were another three issues produced previously in ‘97, and I might settle for reading those… elsewhere.

eJunky is going into my scrapbook bin. Despite its style, it hasn’t earned my patience and attention. And I’m pretty patient. I see why it was a dollar. I think I might cut some parts out and paste them on my longboard or one of my writing journals. If I do, I’ll be sure to post it here.

The other comics I picked up were WONAR: World of Ninjas and Robots, Injection, WHO IS NO/ONE, and WE CAN NEVER GO HOME. Wow, lot of capitals, huh?

Well, thanks for reading! I’m off to play some Cities: Skylines II, which I will write a first impressions post about soon. Stay well, grab a coffee or two for me.