Combat Queer Online

Best Part Of This Week's Battlestar Galactica

So, this week's Battlestar Galactica. Man, how awesome can you get? A wide spread mutiny? Civilians and marines rising against their leaders? Starbuck and Apollo teaming up to try to save the day? Oh, BSG sure is giving Lost a run for the "best serialized television show" money.

But you know what my favorite part was? When Starbuck got the drop of the mutineers holding Apollo, she immediately dispatches one of them, let's them know they're caught, and when one tries to resist, immediately, no hesitation, blasts him in the head. 

That's story telling, that's a character, that's awesome television. 

Bullshit

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,486108,00.html

So thanks to the fact that no charges were filed against the cop who shot an unarmed man for no reason for several days, it looks like the boys in blue have gotten their story together.

See, apparently, dude mean to *taser* the dead man, not shoot him at point blank range. What a silly mix up! 

What's Going On

So, as you may have noticed if you're a regular reader of this blog, I haven't put much up lately about military stuff or trans stuff. You might be wondering what the deal is. That would be natural.

Basically, I'm counting down the days to the beginning of my deployment. It's getting pretty freaking close, but I'm having teeny tiny panic attacks here and there. I spend a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I'm making the best possible use of my time. It's tons of fun

Because of my current, vaguely panicked state, I haven't been thinking too hard about military stuff. Or rather, I have, but in the back of my mind, in that place where it keeps you up at night but it doesn't make for interesting writing. Every time I start to read a news story about the war, I starting thinking, "Oh fuck, I'm going to be over there right quick, wouldn't it be a better use of my time to go hang out with somebody I love? Would it be a better use f time to grab a few good comics, take a long lunch at my favorite dinner and enjoy the world a little? Really, isn't it true that I should be using as much of my energy as possible to romance one or two beautiful queer girls?"

And I don't write about the military.

And the trans things? Well, I'm dealing the fact that I'm going to have to cut out of the transition right here directly, stop becoming more and more female as the days pass, and that worries me also. Is my beard going to come back? Is my face going to take on a harsher, more manly look? Is there anything I can do to stop it? Fuck fuck fuck, why hasn't Obama addressed trans folks in the military yet. 

And then, as that spiral of thoughts turns downward, I have trouble breathing, and feel the need to go hammer at the sheet of ice on the sidewalk in front of my building some more.

i

So yeah, tick tock tick tock, the deployments getting closer. Before too long, there will be delightful little stories from the war to keep you informed and entertained. I'll be doing all sorts of hard reading, so get ready to feel smart after reading about Sufi poets, philosophers, scientists, all the great things that school can try to teach you, but can rarely make interesting.

Oh fuck, here that all comes.

Be praying for this poor queer.

Ultimate Spiderman: Ultimatum

So, apparently the Ultimate Marvel Universe is ending.

Screw, says me.

Now, I'll admit that I've always had good feelings about Ultimate Marvel. The Ultimate Marvel lines were starting right around the time I got into comics, and they were a great introduction to the medium. The various book presented classic characters in updated stories that went in interesting direction. 

Ultimate X-Men was great. I've always loved the idea of a group of young mutants coming together, but frankly, the 616 X-Men(616 is the standard Marvel U, don't ask me why) are usually so weighed down by mythology that the stories make no sense even if you have taken the time to read through several decades worth of back issues. Ultimate X-Men really cut it down to the essential nature of the concept, the hip, different young people doing their best to survive. And that was awesome.

Ultimate Fantastic Four was also a lot of fun. A shocking amount of the backbone of the 616 Marvel U springs from FF mythology, and reading through the Ultimate version, well, it made both universes make more sense. Ultimate FF really shined, though, in its reintroduction of the characters. Yes, they were younger, hipper versions of the 616 team, but they were also more like the Fantastic Four of the Jack Kirby days than the 616 FF had been in years. Once again we had Reed Richards being not only one of the smartest men in the world, but also a deeply broken person. First his egotism lead to the accident that gave the FF their powers, then his guilt over Ben Grimm being turned into the Thing constantly blocked him from achieving things. 

And man, it was good to see Ben Grimm truely horrified at being turned into the Thing again. I'm sorry, but 616 Grimm just isn't as interesting since he's learned to accept his fate as a giant, rocky monster. Dude got turned into a monster. He needs to rage at the heavens some.

And Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. The 616 Torch has long since grown up, become a mature, caring individual. The selfish, childish, often mean-spirited character that Kirby created? You can't find him anywhere outside of the Ultimate Universe.

And Ultimate Sue Storm, well, three out of fours pretty good, yes?

And Ultimates, the Ultimate version of the Avengers? Dear Reader, if you want to see a perfect example of how to do a Big Action Comic that captures the feeling of a specific time, a weird little slice of the end of 2001 through the middle of 2003, well, Ultimates is that. The first two Ultimates series are almost as good as superhero comics can be, and the third, well, that's where the problem is.

See, Ultimate Marvel started out really well. Like, amazingly well. Problem is, when you have an amazing set of comics, it's not going to last. Writers move around, artists move around, shit happens. A single series might be able to maintain high quality, but a bunch? Never.

So the Ultimate Universe has been spiraling down. Gone are the simple, earnest stories featuring interesting characters, what we're left with is one big "event" after another. Prof X DIES, the comes back, then Nightcrawlers evil, and maybe an assassin, and Gambit's living in Rouge's head, and on and on. And Ultimates 3. Oh man, Ultimates 3 was awful. That series somehow managed to find every new and interesting thing about the previous two Ultimates books, and make it boring, overdrawn, oer acted, a parody of itself. Seriously, if you got late stage Frank Miller to put the whole mirror up his nose, I doubt you could squeeze out anything quite so awful as Ultimates 3.

...

But, even with all that, I'm sorry to see the Ultimate Marvel Universe end. Ultimate Spiderman has been a good comic, all through its 130 issue run. The characters have stayed strong, but they've also grown. The book's riffed on some old mythology, but it fun and smart ways. It's never fallen into the "let's see how many references to old 616 comics we can cram into each issue" trap. Ultimate Spidey has just been fun.

Oh, and it has a trans character. Spiderwoman? Totally a female clone of Spiderman, complete with Peter Parkers memories. She's a girl who remembers being a guy. And is a superhero. And is awesome. Now, here in the last three issues, it looks like we're going to get some more story featuring Spiderwoman, and I'm thrilled about that. Spiderwoman, though realizing that she used to be male, feels female, and has no intention of going back. I want to see her character goes.

 I hate to see this comic end. It just doesn't feel like it's over to me.

Ultimate X-Men and Fantastic Four, eh, they've had good runs, but it really feels like they've run out of ideas. Ultimate Spiderman is different. It keeps going, keeps having new and better things happen. I wanted to know how Peter and Gwen are going to share a house, go to school together. I want to see if girl-Peter can be integrated into the Parker family life now that Aunt May knows about her. 

Arg, stupid Ultimatum.

Final Crisis 7 of 7

I'm going to try to talk about this issue, and maybe the series as a whole, but it's going to be difficult. First, while there will be spoilers, I'm really not sure if I understand what happened after the first two or three issues well enough to really spoil much.

But here's trying:

So, at the end the last issue, Batman died after shooting Darkseid, the god of Evil, with a god-killing bullet. Yeah. That was pretty freaking weird. This week's Shortpacked does a good job of explaining everything that's wrong with Batman getting blown up by an evil god after shooting him(The short list of reasons is: Batman don't use guns, Batman's a essentially human, on the street character, he wasn't really a part of the story until he showed up to die, and seriously, what the fuck). 

But that's last issue. This issue... there's a lot going on. 

Superman's facing off against Darkseid, Captain Marvel and The Question are going universe hoppinh to round up a posse of super-people, something's happening with Lois, possibly on the set of Charlton Heston's Planet Of The Apes, but that may be another universe. I really don't know.

The Flash, the old one who died back the 80's Crisis On Infinite Earths, shows up and does... something. He apparently has Death, or a death, or time, or some other vaguely allegorical, vaguely metaphorical figure chasing him, and he helps to kill Darkseid by, I'm really rather confused here, running by him close enough that Death runs into Darkseid, killing him maybe. Goodness, so little sense was made here.

Oh, oh, and according to the narration, Time was stopping. Or collapsing so that every moment was every other moment. Or something.

And this is where is get weird: See, Superman is trying to build a god-machine based on the one Brainiac-5 showed him last issue(and no, I don't understand how that happened, but it did, and it's part of the story now). Apparently the god-machine will grant Superman one wish. As he's completing it, a cosmic vampire arrives on stage and ask to eat Sups.

Now, dear reader, you may be saying, "Combat Queer, weren't you just talking about the heroes fighting Darkseid? What happened with that?" Well, dear reader, I'm not clear on that. I think he was killed, but I don't know. The comic also says he fell through a black hole at the bottom of the universe. I've got zero idea. The point is, he seems to be gone, but what he did was bad, and Superman is trying to fix it with the god-machine.

But the cosmic vampire, the cosmic vampire. Well, the cosmic vampire is apparently also a Monitor(not to be mixed up with Marvel Comic's 'Watchers', of course) and also the Lord of the Dead? Or something. Well, the inter-dimensional army of Superman show up, roast the vamp with laser vision, and Sups makes his wish.

And the day is saved.

So, yeah, this comic made zero sense. If you've read any of Grant Morrison's All Star Superman, you'll have idea of the sort of surrealness that this series is over flowing with. It's just jam packed with ideas about the Ultimate, whatever that may be. It's all about infinite gods, who have infinite lives and deaths. Morrison took a freaking big bite when he was writing this stuff.

And now it's confession time: I don't hate this. No, I don't understand it, I don't think it works very well as a narrative, but as a piece of art, it is lovely. The images of the story are broken, no doubt about it, but each piece  of the broken whole is gorgeous, astounding, the sort of beauty that sticks with you.

So, if you're looking for a good story, it isn't here. What is here is more like one of the those poems that summons a ranged of images, many contradictory, and allows each member of the audience to be taken to her or his own place by the work.

Or maybe it's like one of the Japanese rock gardens where the trick is to realize that the understanding you come to is valid, but in no way invalidates anyone else's. This rock garden, instead of gravels, is full of tiny bits of sensible narrative. 

 

Haggard the Pedophile?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/26/colorado.church/index.html

So, you know what I find really horrible about this article? No, it's not just the fact that is confuses the "gay" category with the "molester" category.

It's that it's somehow OK for a large church's *official* response to a charge of molestation be to pay the victim to stay quiet. 

It's actually a couple things. First, Haggard left his position in shame in 2006. If the young man is 20 now, was he over the age of 18 when he and Haggard had a sexual relationship. 'Cause if not, there needs to be a statutory rape investigation right now. Also, it can't be legal for church members to try to cover up a crime by paying off the victim 

What really, really frightens me about this article is this one line:

"We've added 1,500 people in the last 18 months," he(Boyd) said. "We're trying to adopt 100 orphans into families in the church.  

Yep, that church, the one that deals with molestation victims by paying them off, is trying to adopt one hundred orphans. I'm sorry, but that sounds like an awful situation? Are the other molesters in Haggard's flock trying to set up a kiddie harem?  

'Cause it sounds like some creepy shit is going on there. If the police could raid that Mormon compound last year, they can sure as hell raid New Life Church. Until the authorities understand the extent to which members of the congregation helped Haggard rape children, there should be some extreme measures taken.

MtF Comics

If you love comics as much as I do, and are sufficiently alert to any sort of gender-bending story line, one thing you notice is that in most cartoons and comics that run long enough, there is a story in which a main male character is either briefly turned into a girl or is forced to dress up as a girl. It's happened to Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Thor, Ron Stoppable, everybody. Heck, in the case of some, like Guy Gardner, it'll last a few episodes or issues. In almost every case, the female version of the character is attractive, and not butch in the least. Guy Gardner, the super masculine asshole Green Lantern? Once he become a her, she somehow decided to start wearing the most strippertastic uniform you ever did see(If you want a much more longer, check out www.tgfa.org. It's crazy).

Now, the regular story has the recently feminized character working feverishly to turn back into a male.   Occasionally the character will decide to stay female, but that's rare.

But here's the thing, with the exception of a story in It's Walky, I can't think of a single example of a female character being turned male and trying to regain her femininity. You just don't see it. Now, that probably has a lot to do with the common fear, had by both sexes, of loosing one's masculinity, one's power in society. Frankly, there's probably a pretty strong relationship between the “Turned Into A Girl” story and the “Turned Into A Baby Or Child” story. Both are about the character taking a big step down in the world, and having to deal with her lowered position.

I guess it's not as interesting to have a female character discover how much easier her life would be with a penis and all.

For the few examples of turned female characters deciding to stay female, well, the point of those stories tends to be something like, “hey, sure it's a lower position, but because this character likes it and wants to maintain that societal position, it must be ok for it to exist that way.”

But my point, and I'm trying to get to it, is that you almost never see the female turned male, trying to get back to being female. As much as I enjoy the neat little fantasy of waking up one day magically %100 genetically, physically, and socially female, I don't find it to be a compelling story. It's too easy, it's like if Ulysses was able to get back to Ithaca the day after the thing with the horse. 

I want to write a story, or at least for there to be a story, about a broken world where there's a girl born a boy, and she, through fantastic means, becomes more and more female.

It's not much of an idea, neither the skin or the backbone, but I'm thinking about how that story could work, how I might be able to write it. I don't know how to write it right now, but, I'm thinking about it.

The problem I keep running into is that stories, especially the fantastic sort that I hope to write, tell the truth through wild metaphor, but for the life of me, just about every story I can think of seems to contain a broken, false imagine of transsexuality, one which I have no interest in talking about.

One idea I've had is  this:

A goddess decides to escape heaven by being born human, but the chief of that the tribe of gods, he discovers her plot. As she travels down to Midgard, the chief god arranges for her to be born a boy, but for her to be punished with a knowledge of her nature as a goddess. As the goddess grows in her human body, she travels, searching near and far for a way to regain her female form. 

Now, this idea for a story has a lot of what I want, but it's imperfect. It has the person with the form of a boy trying to take the form of a woman, but... well, I just can stomach the idea of calling a character based on myself a goddess. This has less to do with my fear of Christ's anger at such a claim, but more to do with the fact that I don't feel like a goddess, I don't feel like a divine being trapped in human package. For whatever it's worth, I feel pretty human.

But that's not the biggest problem with my goddess story. I think the biggest problem is that it's too unambiguous. It's too absolute, too easy. I don't feel like my body, as it can be male, is a shell or falsehood. My male body is me, but I am also more than that, separate for that, by my choice. I think the goddess story misses that.

I'm working on a story, but it's not ready yet.

 

Green Lantern #37

So, here's my other favorite on-going superhero comic: Green Lantern. While X-Factor holds onto the small human side of thing, Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps explore the space opera genre. Now, what both GL and XF have in common is that they set up rules for the world in which the characters operate, and the stories stick by those rules. Along with the good, strong rules, there is a strong continuity within the books. Often continuity goes out the window in superhero books, but in both of these it is employed to create rich, unique worlds.

But, let's look at this specific issue. 

We're finally getting into the "War Of Light" story that we were promised back at the end of the Sinestro Corps War(Now, that was a strong plot. If Darkest Night can live up, well, it'll be something). Frankly, I was a little worried that the whole "seven flavors of lanterns" thing would turn into a silly Freak Of The Month style slide. It's an easy out for writer to keep telling the same story over and over with tiny variations. I'm glad that GL seems to actually be making each Corps a separate entity with a well defined purpose and nature. 

The Red Lanterns are not only different from the Yellow Lanterns, but also refuse to really differentiate between any of their enemies. I'm enjoying the fact that the 'good' lanterns aren't simply lining up again the 'bad' ones. There's more going on, everybody has an agenda. It's great fun.

And it's good to see Hal Jordan infected by evil again. I'm really glad that a Red Lantern ring was able to take him over. Despite the high quality of recent Green Lantern comics, I still think Hal Jordan is usually a pretty boring character. The only comic he was ever interesting in is New Frontier, but I think that comes more from Jordan being the product of a specific era on which the comics focus, and that helps.

But Hal Jordan, the most interesting thing he ever did was go crazy, kill a few other Green Lanterns, kill his little blue bosses, and steal a big chunk of all the power in the universe. In his years as a super villain, Jordan was never comfortable in his villainy, but man, he was interesting. Of course, all that had to ret-coned into nothingness. Now it, "Oh, he wasn't really evil, he was taken over by an evil ghost, and the lanterns and the bosses weren't dead, and etc" booooring.

So it's nice that they're exploring why it was possible for Jordan to be used against the Green Lanterns in the first place. Exciting. But unfortunately, the way they got there? Classic abuse of a female character.  

See, DC is doing its Faces Of Evil thing right now, putting a villain on the cover of all its comics with that villain's name written in an *evil* font. If they're going to put the villain on the cover, you'd think the villain would be more important. GL has lately done a great job with its villains. In The Sinestro Corps War both Superman Prime and Cyborg Superman got more and better characterization than I've seen them get before. The desperation of Superman Prime is at once heartbreaking and disgusting, Cyborg Superman's desire for oblivion remained me of a sick cat trying to slink off to die. The story didn't exactly make you like them, but it made you feel something about them, and for a superhero book, well, that's something.

But, this issue. On the cover, we have Laira, the Green Lantern who turned Red Lantern because of her killing rage at a murderer. After she became a Red Lantern she flew off and... what? *Spoilers* got killed by Sinestro. The end. No development, no attempt at salvation, just BOOM dead. It was kind of lame, and frankly, it reeked of being a Girl In A Refrigerator.

The term GIAF actually comes from an earlier Green Lantern comic, although it is far, far too common in superhero comics. A GIAF is when the main character, usually a man, has a relationship, usually romantic, with a secondary female character. In order to develop an antagonistic relationship between the main character and the bad guy, the writer has the bad guy kill or abuse the main character's girl in some terrible way. It shows women as being less than people, as being nothing more than a piece of the protagonist's back story.

Here, I feel robbed of an interesting character. I had hoped that Laira would be able to control her rage, turn her rage to service of justice, be a good Red Lantern. Or something. The DC Universe could really use some badass superwomen who aren't Wonder Woman or Supergirl. It kind of pisses me off that they just blew her up, and gave that story to boring ol' Hal. 

And seriously? The Blue Lanterns think Hal's the ultimate savior? How dense are they?

 

X-Factor 39

Oh Shit.

Now, that I wasn't expecting.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but X-Factor is one of my favorite on-going comic series, and probably my favorite on-going superhero series. Peter David is a fine writer, and I've really enjoyed what he's done with the book. 

Unlike just about any other super hero team, X-Factor is less about them heading out to fight wacky scifi monsters, and more about a small group of people being different. The new series follows Jamie Madrox as he tried to navigate the new world created by the depowering of the vast majority of mutants. X-Factor maintains a level of humanity, a level of ugliness mixed with joy, that few other super-hero comics can match.

Also shockingly, if you count the six part Madrox series, this run of X-Factor has been going strong consistently for about four years, which is really an accomplishment in the world of superhero comics.

But man, issue 39. Now, the issue starts with a plea from Peter David himself not to ruin this issue by putting spoilers online. If I didn't really love this series, and I wasn't truly amazed by his craft in this story... well, I'd laugh such a plea off and tell you story.

But, I'm convinced. This is the best comic I've read in a while. It maintains it's standard connection with the reality of humanity, it surprises without relying on ridiculous twists, and it asks some very basic questions not only about the series, but also about the tropes the series is based on. It's amazing.

A Confession

So, we're all real, real excited about Obama being president. I just checked CNN, and Barack hasn't quite gotten around to extending Veterans' Health Benefits to covering the costs of transitioning, but hey, I'm sure it'll happen any minute(The British did it, why can't we).

But something funny has been happening in the last twenty four hours or so since Obama officially took office. People keep asking me if I still have to go to Iraq. 

Yeah, I still do. Obama isn't pulling anybody out, isn't planning to have it over for another sixteen months. He wasn't just hiding a policy change in his back pocket until Bush had been safely returned to the wild. We've still got all the problems we had yesterday morning. Well, not all, I did finally get a better boss.

But here's the thing, and dear reader, I'll understand if you're a little horrified. Every time someone has suggested that I won't go to the sandbox, and I feel a tiny note of panic, like a single piano key being hit in an otherwise empty house. The idea of it being over without me having directly participated, it just, well, it terrifies me. 

Have you ever heard of the strangler fig? Is this amazing tree down in South and Central America. It produces these big, fat figs that all the birds love to eat, and after they gobbled a few fig they tend to poop in the tops of other trees. Well, in the first stage of the strangler figs life, it's looks like a vine. The fig ends out shoots that grow around and around the host trees, eventually reaching the soil and becoming roots. 

Over the years the strangler grows larger and larger, eventually killing the host tree.   

Now, what I was amazed by the first time I played in one of these trees was that even the fully grown ones are hollow. They're a giant mass of woody vines. You can climb right up the middle, and find these beautiful, wide, flat platforms of vines near the top where it's fun to sit and picnic and sunbath. Wonderful trees.

But I'm getting off topic.

My life, it seems, is like the strangler fig. For years it's been growing around this deployment. All the training the preparation, the putting things on hold... Even many of the relationships I've built have been built, at least partially, on this idea that I'm someone who's going off to fight. It's not a war I believe in, but it's something I feel like I have to do. 

The idea that that host tree might fall before my vines are strong enough to support themselves, the idea that I might go down with the war if it ends before I've gotten everything I need out of it... It scares me.

Now, obviously, this is a deeply selfish truth. There are around 700,000 dead Iraqi civilians who might otherwise be alive today if not for this war. If it could end this afternoon, that would be wonderful, a boon to humanity. That would be something worth celebrating for generations. I'm not going to pretend that it isn't monstrous that I am terrified by the idea to quick end to the war. It is awful, selfish, mean, shortsighted, but it's the truth.

I don't know what I would do, could do, if I wasn't going to war for the next year. I've given up so much to get ready for this moment. So much. 

All I can think of to do here is pray for peace, both in the world and in my own mind. One of the great blessings of prayer is that God understands that we are broken, and He will listen to us even when we don't know the right thing to pray for or the right way to pray. 

If it's your thing, please pray for the world also, and please remember us poor broken soldiers.