RETRO: Fifty-State Initiative
Marvel Comics has announced that, after the events of the much-touted Civil War series, the super-hero universe will be enacting a “Fifty-State Initiative” project, creating a set of locally-themed super-heroes for each state. Because, much like the Department of Homeland Security, they believe that each state is vulnerable to attack and needs gobs of money thrown at the problem to pretend that it’s been solved.
Regardless of how many super-hero stories have taken place in New Hampshire (come on, eager readers… I challenge you to name just one), this is simply part of Marvel’s schizophrenic approach to their world management. A very short time ago 99% of the world’s super-powered mutants were de-powered in an “event”, leaving a scant 198 costumed characters still viable for a bout of spandex violence. This was done, apparently, because in order to fill the plotlines of several dozen comic books every month, Marvel writers had gotten into the lax habit of simply creating a new batch of villains and making them mutants. Easy! If mutation is a massive shortcut that means we don’t have to think out origins or motivation, but only have to come up with some cool-sounding codenames and a bunch of vaguely-distinct costume designs, then it’s as simple as “ta-dah!” The Marvel comics universe was hugely overpopulated with these shortcut villains, and getting rid of them in a broad sweep matched well with the editorial tone of the current administration, mixing the super-real with a grounded, human series of character studies. It made the setting of the comics more mundane, and therefore should make the super-powered abilities of the remaining characters seem more spectacular by contrast.
It didn’t and it’s not difficult to intuit why, but as a basic idea as to the tone that Marvel comics should be setting, it’s not a bad idea. But that’s why this Fifty-State Initiative doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. We’ve just gotten rid of hundreds and hundreds of super-characters. And now you want to create, out of whole cloth, hundreds of super-characters? I mean, with the exception of Rhode Island, you can’t have just one super-dude patrolling an entire state… it’s geographically unmanageble. So you have to have teams in each state, which means four or five new characters time fifty states… And you’re right back with the overpopulated universe you just got rid of. Well done, Marvel.
Why do I bore you with all this nonsense? Merely to mention that I greatly prefer Threadless‘ fifty-state project. Threadless has chosen 107 national and international locations, spectacles, and landmarks that they want people to stand in front of whilst wearing their fave Threadless t-shirts. Bizarrely, the New Hampshire location is the little-known Museum of Family Camping. Still, we’re on the map! And I have trundled off the Museum to dutifully have my picture taken in its environs. Additional pictures may be taken in front of Massachusett’s Salem Witch Museum and the Ben & Jerry’s flavor graveyard in Vermont, if I am able to get my act together. Still more pictures, for those people too far away from a particular locale: on a roller coaster, submerged under water, with a celebrity, in front of your city’s welcome sign, or with any Paul Bunyan statue. Now that’s an initiative I can get behind.
RETRO: Boston Zombie Lurch
Found an article in the A&E insert in the Boston Globe about the second annual Boston Zombie March. As part of the coordinated efforts of the fine folks at Halfway to Human, a few hundred people dressed up in rags and tags and white makeup and wandered the streets of Cambridge last year. Some might deem this a “flashmob”, as it was an internet coordinated event with no human interaction between the participants until they actually arrive at the agreed-upon location. I think he tends to think of flashmobs as more sudden, more spontaneous, originated and enacted on the go with full-on mobile technology. However, these were zombies, and they required a little bit more time to shuffle into position.
The march — and I must protest against the term. Wouldn’t a “lurch” be more a propos? More thematic? — was intended to be a massive bleary shuffle from Davis Square to Harvard Square, but as our blood was up, we ended up tramping at least another mile towards Central Square in order to find a zombie-friendly drinking establishment. Slightly less than three miles is a long ways to maintain an awkward, jerking lumber in one’s gait, and by the last stretch, most people were cheerfully out of character. Still not marching, per se, but not lurching anymore, either. More like ambling along with blood spattered across their painted mouths. The organizers guessed that we had something close to a thousand people shuffling along the three-mile stretch, so — as you can no doubt imagine — we caused quite a few traffic snarls. It’s difficult to get across an intersection in the requisite twenty-eight seconds when one is moving only with the soulless animus of a bleating hunger for human flesh. Not to mention where there are hundreds of us in a row. So we caused the occasional human blockade for Saturday afternoon Boston traffic, which is not overly forgiving to begin with.
But we were also simply a rubbernecking spectacle of considerable proportion. And even when we weren’t obstructing intersections, the mass of us on the sidewalk caused cars to slow and swerve, and generally take a good long gander at the clotted corridor of inhumanity. And people wanted to know… what were we protesting? And while we were being protested by anti-zombie groups decrying our presence and demanding that life remain the purview of the living, in addition to some robots unhappy that zombies were stealing their jobs, we didn’t have an agenda. While zombie movies traditionally have a wider social or political message, we were not marching to highlight man’s inhumanity to man, the inevitability of pandemics, the sleepwalking participation of America’s political process, etc. But those people passing us by called out to us, needing to know what we were doing this for, because if it only had a purpose or a message, then they could drive on by, content in context. They needed it to be a “march”, essentially.
As it was, we gave them no cogent answer, content in our randomness. We merely shuffled over to their SUVs, gurgled and growled, smeared crimson corn syrup on their windows, and headed back to the parade.
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