What Would Batman Do?

I've always liked Jonathan Ross. Even before he became the UK's answer to David Letterman, before he became famous for dressing outrageously, asking David Cameron inappropriate questions about Margaret Thatcher, and pulling off juvenile phone-pranks with Russell Brand. Even before his wife Jane Goldman became famous for writing the scripts for Stardust and Kick-Ass, I liked him.

I've liked him, in fact, since I was twelve, and I read the introduction Ross wrote to Batman: Vow from the Grave, a Titan Books reprint anthology published way back in 1989. What I liked was the fact that Ross had written the introduction. There was a lot of talk in those days about how 'comics were growing up', but here was a famous, successful guy, a bloke who was on the telly and that, unashamedly confessing his love for the antics of a man who fought crime dressed like a flying rodent, and in particular his love for the intelligent take on the concept written by Dennis O'Neil and thrillingly illustrated by the great Neal Adams. Look, I could shout at people who mocked me for sitting in the lunch queue reading Death in the Family or Challenge of the Man-Bat, you lot may think I'm a moron for still reading comics instead of porn I've found in the woods (what we had before the internet, kids: ask your parents), but Jonathan Ross reads them and he's on telly, so kindly drokk off!

And then they would sneer that Ross was a poof with a speech impediment and beat me up. But, still, the fact that a successful grown-up liked Batman was a comfort to me, during those hard teenage years before I was able to invent an army of terror-meks and wreak a bloody vengeance on all those who had mocked me in my youth. The fools!

If you've been following this blog, you pretty much know what's coming at this point. 'AJ's began a post by praising someone,' you're thinking. 'She only ever does that when she's going to put the boot in.' And you're right. Because this morning, courtesy of Paris Lees of Diva and Meta magazine fame, I learned that Ross, who I've admired and followed since I was a gawky, squeaky-voiced teen, turns out to be just another scumbag who thinks transphobic 'humour' is the funniest thing EVAR.

I hate discovering that my heroes are transphobic. Finding out Tony Judt had helped hound a young trans woman out of university made me burn with rage that a supposed 'liberal' thought this kind of shabby treatment of vulnerable women was acceptable. But with Ross, I'm just disappointed. Disappointed that, despite providing the introduction to Vow from the Grave, he seems to have forgotten one of the most important stories in that collection: 'Night of the Reaper'.

'Night of the Reaper', like many of the best Batman stories, is about the morality of vigilantism, and what happens when one goes too far. In it, Batman encounters the Reaper, a Holocaust survivor who has taken to dressing up as death to enact a grisly revenge on the Nazi camp commander who tortured him, and some disgruntled fellow Nazis who seek to punish the same guard for embezzling party funds. In the course of his rampage, the survivor, Dr Gruener, cuts a swathe not just through the fascists, but everyone in his path, including some of Dick 'Robin' Grayson's college friends - including his Jewish friend, Alan. And, then, in one of the most haunting shots in comic-book history, Gruener comes face-to-face with what he's become.

Gruener believes his actions are justifiable, admirable, even: like Batman, he dons a costume to battle evildoers. But when he kills people, when he takes the lives of his prey, when he acts as if endangering the lives of innocents is just a means to an end, he goes too far. And, realising that, he leaps from the dam he stands on and takes his own life.

The message is: you need to have limits. You need to have boundaries. You need to have a line you must not cross. And that applies whether you're a comic-book vigilante or just a comic. Ross may feel his jokes are justifiable: admirable, even - he's giving people a laugh at the end of their working week. But in making trans people an acceptable subject of cheap, mocking, humour, he legitimises the kind of  prejudice which sees trans people verbally abused on the streets, attacked in public or even in their own homes, and murdered at a rate much greater than that of the cis population. In doing that, he crosses a line. His comedy ceases to be inclusive and welcoming, as befits the host of a show on one of the main television channels in a diverse, modern country, and instead becomes exclusionary and unwelcoming for some of the most vulnerable people in that country.

Just as Gruener didn't want to become the kind of killer he hunted, I don't think Ross wants to be the kind of comedian who makes that type of joke. But I don't expect him to jump off a dam to redeem himself. All I want, like the thousands of other people Ross has alienated with his thoughtless attempt at humour, is an apology, and an undertaking to try harder as a comic in future, to make jokes that don't exclude members of his audience who've been fans for twenty-three years just to get a cheap laugh. Because, as a comic book fan, Ross really should know that power - even, perhaps especially, the power of an entertainer - comes with responsibility.

That's the main moral of Spider-Man, of course, but the message of pretty much all the great superheroes, the thing that makes them awesome, is the same. Batman may beat up criminals, 'a superstitious and cowardly lot' to be sure, but he always protects those who are truly vulnerable; Spider-Man will crack wise at anyone going, but he never mocks the weak. Real heroes never do. And those of us, trans or cis, who've thrilled to the exploits of the mythic metahumans know that while we can't be the last children of a dying planet, get bitten by a radioactive spider, be born carrying the X-gene or train our bodies and minds to the peak of ninja-detective perfection, we can imitate them morally. The superheroes represent our best qualities: tolerance, openness, physical bravery and moral courage, too. When I get angry at cis people like Ross and burn, for a moment, with the thought that we should go terrorist and exterminate all the brutes, I remember that the X-Men protect the world that fears and hates them; when I wonder if I should go back to the closet and hide for the rest of my life I think of Mystique, in X-Men 2, telling Nightcrawler that she doesn't disguise herself as human all the time to please the humans 'because we shouldn't have to.' Mutant and proud.

All of which is really a long-winded way of saying: Jonathan, we read the same comics. We have that much in common, if nothing else. And what we both know is: Batman wouldn't do this. Spider-Man wouldn't do this. Superman would die before even considering doing something that would alienate a single human being. We're not superheroes, and we'll always fail to live up to their ideals, but we both know that kind of thing is wrong. And when you do something wrong, you apologise. Don't you?

Vote Cameron, Get Torquemada

So we've all seen this, haven't we?

As I pointed out here recently, any idea that David Cameron has brought real change to the Tory party is wishful thinking. Cameron says 'change' every chance he gets because he feels such contempt for the electorate he thinks they'll look at him, hear the c-word and immediately be convinced that a pudgy-faced, badly-shaved toff is in fact Barack Obama, but the fact is the Tories are every bit as hateful and bigoted as they were when they introduced Section 28 in the 80s. Oh, sure: they suspended Philip Lardner, but only because he got caught. In the background, the same dark forces that drove Thatcher's government - one of the most homophobic, racist, misogynist and authoritarian governments in UK history - are awaiting their chance to come back.

In my first anti-Cameron post I invoked the work of Pat Mills and compared the Tories to the Fomorians, the villains in Mills' 'thinking man's Conan' series, Slaine. But I now think a more apt comparison to Cameron's supposedly 'changed' Tory party would be Torquemada, the right-wing, alien-hating religious fanatic from Mills' sci-fi series Nemesis the Warlock:

If, like me, you're far from pure, then you'd be advised to be vigilant about David Cameron and his allies. And if they do win on May 7th, this deviant certainly plans to misbehave.

Kiss My Pencil

Pat Mills. Genius. Responsible for some of the greatest strips in the history of British comics (and Sex Warrior too), and also a guy with spot-on political views. Never better than in his landmark series Slaine, (basically a smarter version of the Conan meme)* in which the Pagans were the good guys, God was a woman, and - best of all - the baddies came from Tory Island. No accident, that: Slaine, like most of the other 2000AD classics, was written during the last period when this country was unfortunate enough to be saddled with a Conservative government. Mills was doing his patriotic duty to turn the geeks of the nation against the party then in government by linking them with a race of demons who oppressed the Celtic people and drank the tears of women. Some people might refer to this as allegory, but, as someone who grew up under the handbag of Thatcherite domination I feel it incumbent on me to remind younger folks reading this blog that this portrayal was in fact a matter of stark factual truth.

Winston Churchill famously said that if a man isn't a liberal before the age of thirty he had no heart, but that if he wasn't a conservative after the age of thirty he had no head. Sherry-sodden old buggers with a Churchill-fetish are fond of quoting that line, though they leave out the fact that Winston was probably all fucked-up on drugs when he said it. But like a lot of cliches it contains a kernel of truth: becoming a Tory is - unless you're some kind of freakish mutant - something that happens to you when you reach a certain age. It might not be thirty. It might not be forty. It might not even be fifty or sixty. But there comes a point in your life when it can happen. It doesn't mean that you've morphed from being a naieve innocent to being a hard-headed political realist, though. It means you've given up.

It's hard work, being good. It takes effort to commit yourself to trying to be a better person, not abusing your privilege and putting in the hours and time to defend the disadvantaged and create a world in which people are treated with equal respect regardless of skin colour, religion, sexuality, gender identity, or disability. Sometimes you want to give in to the hatred, to the fear, to the moral cowardice that tells you it's their fault: the asylum seekers, the Muslims, the gays. That it's people like you; normal people, not freaks, who are the real victims, and that it's about time you stopped fannying around with diversity initiatives and equality legislation and got down to the business of taking care of your own and fuck you, buddy. Sometimes you see the front cover of the Daily Mail and its icy talons of fear reach deep into your heart and you don't have the will to keep fighting it. You give in. And that's when you turn Tory.

The mainstream media are almost falling over themselves to tell us the Tories have changed, that it's all compassionate Conservatism and time for change and Dave's about to have a baby and SamCam - isn't she lovely? But this past week we've seen signs that the Tories aren't actualy as nice as all that. There's Chris Grayling, the Tory Shadow Home Secretary who chased the dragon of Mail-reader votes by supporting homophobic B&B owners. Here's Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, the lesbian former Tory activist so disgusted by the party's homophobia she's telling the media she now plans to vote Labour. Who's this? It's Wirral Tory councillor Denis Knowles, who made comments on his Facebook page about 'limp-wristed' Labour activists (and, for a bonus point, also described them as 'definitely not local' - regional xenophobia and anti-gay bigotry in one tight little package? You stay classy, Councillor Knowles.)

Here's another Tory councillor, Eddie Wake, who reckons rape prevention campaigns are something to joke about - even if his 'jokes' leave a woman in tears. And here's Michael Kaminski, Call-me-Dave's ally in the European Reformists and Conservatives group in the European Parliament - a man who refuses to apologise for an anti-Semitic pogrom, uses slogans like 'Poland for the Poles', tells foreign workers to go home and calls his opponents 'faggots.' Lest you think that Mr Kaminski is one bad apple spoiling an otherwise respectable coalition, vada Valdemar Tomasevski, another 'Reformist Conservative' who voted for a homophobic hate law in Lithuania. Here's the evidence that a vote for the Conservatives is a vote against a woman's right to choose.

I could go on, but by now you get the point. Forget all the crap about the superfecundity of Samantha, or how Dave is so much more presentable than dour old Gordon. Forget all the business leaders supporting Tory economic plans - those businessmen are backing Dave because they know he's their gateway to a golden age of ripping off the little guy. If David Cameron announced plans to lower the age of consent to three, paedophiles would write letters to papers supporting him. If you're a captain of industry, a Russian oligarch or a member of the landed aristocracy, David Cameron's tax plans will benefit you. But few of us are. Lots of us are gay, though. Lots of us are members of ethnic minorities. Lots of us are disabled, and a hell of a lot of us are women. And even if you aren't, I'm pretty sure you know people who are. Your mum, for a start.

David Cameron: the man who hates your mum. Keep that in mind, when you go into the voting booth on May 6th. And count yourself lucky. Slaine had to swing a massive great axe to get rid of the misogynist slimebags from Tory Island: all you have to wield is a stubby little pencil. Use it wisely.

* Admittedly, Slaine did occassionally get a bit 'never again the BURNING TIMES!' on occassion, but it was still great and chock full of fantastic sword-wielding muscle-chicks so it still rules, okay?

Life Reboot: Y/N?

In the 1970s, Batman writer Denny O’Neill decided that Stately Wayne Manor was too conservative and staid for a hipster playboy like Bruce Wayne, so he contrived to kick him out of the mansion and make him live in a flash penthouse apartment in Gotham City itself. Eventually, of course, a later writer decided that it was time for Bruce to go on home again. Because this is how it works in comics: your franchise-redefining idea will always eventually be shelved as an act of fanservice to the hordes who believe, with the zeal of suicide bombers, that comics are only right when they’re the same as they were when they were growing up with them.

(I think the fastest any company pulled this particular reverse-ferret was when Grant Morrison killed off Magneto during his New X-Men run. I don’t have the exact dates for this, but I’m pretty certain Marvel brought Mags back in a new iteration of X-Men tie-in book Excalibur not three months later. Even Superman was dead longer than that.)

If my life were a comic book – and I have often, in an experiment in what one might term applied magical thinking, imagined that it is – then it can only be assumed that its rabid fan-base consists of people who think this book was at its best, dammit, back when I was a scabrous adolescent wannabe poet living in one room of my parents’ rambling fin de siècle pile. Because that’s where I am now. In continuity terms, my life has been rebooted.

Except, of course, that, while I may be scabrous still, I’m hardly an adolescent anymore. I’ll be thirty-two years old this September. I was a crazy, damaged, pretty kid back then. Now I’m fatter, older, and uglier – but the crazy and the damage never really go away. I still have all of the parts of the old me that make life less liveable (and therefore more dramatically interesting, I suppose, if you want to sustain the conceit): it’s the good bits of the old me that have gone away. There are times when I feel like the Adam West Batman dropped into the terrifying crimescape of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

But that’s the thing about continuity-redefining events, I suppose. Whether in four colours or three dimensions you have to face them, as the Flaming Lips put it, when you’re not prepared to face them. So I guess this is the time to embrace the New Order and admit that this is Year Zero, at least in terms of my writing.

Some of the more keen-eyed readers of this blog may have noticed that the little potted bio to the right no longer makes mention of ‘the forthcoming All Haste is from the Devil’, my planned second chapbook of poetry. The reason it isn’t mentioned is that it’s no longer forthcoming: it’s dead. And it’s dead because I killed it. Contacted the publishers and told them not to go ahead. There are all kinds of complicated reasons I could go into for why I did what I did, and the motives I had at the time don’t really chime with what I’ve came to think about it since, but in the end it all boils down to this:

I finished putting together All Haste... in 2004. Since then, there’s been a lot of re-editing, a lot of adding new and stronger poems to the collection and getting rid of weaker ones, a lot of checking and re-checking and let’s-try-this-again. And somewhere along the line it became clear to me that, essentially, it had stopped being a collection. It didn’t hold together anymore. Worse still, I no longer found myself quite as impressed with some of the poems that were doing the heavy lifting as I had been at one time. Two poems in particular struck me as, for want of a better term, lies. Egregious, attention-seeking lies: and these were two of the stronger poems in the selection. And as much as I liked many of the other poems therein, I realised that to let the thing be published as it was would be akin to erecting a building, otherwise perfect, which nevertheless contained a dynamic, if unsightly flourish which concealed a major structural defect. It would stand, for a while: but it would never really look right and then, at one point, inevitably, it would all fall to pieces.

So what could I do? Well, there was only one thing for it: I would have to go back and gut the thing, start from scratch, rebuild it in a way I could be happy with. Except...

Except that, if I did that, it wouldn’t really be All Haste... anymore. It would be, to all intents and purposes, a completely different book. It would still contain more than a few of the poems in the original – but these would be augmented by a new selection of material which would give the book as a whole a different cast, and reflect the older poems in quite a different light. And if that was the case, if it would really be so different, then the only thing to do was start completely from scratch, with the whole thing. Including preparing, editing, and submitting the manuscript.

So that was that. Five years of work would have to be given up, like a valuable chess piece whose sacrifice is the only way to release the King from check. Just as my marriage, just as my expectations of what my future held as a husband have had to be given up...so too would I have to abandon all the assumptions I’d made about my artistic future. Like the Fool in the Tarot deck, I would have to take no more than I could carry, leap smiling into the void, and see what happened. What happens when you lose everything? You start all over again.

At least, that’s how I explain it to myself. But cognitive science tells us that most of the ways in which we explain our behaviour are lies, post-hoc rationalisations for innate, preconscious drives of which we never become aware. Maybe I only think this is the reason why I abandoned All Haste is from the Devil. Maybe the actual reason is much simpler.

Maybe it happened because it had to happen. Because everything had to go back to square one. Because this is the reboot.

Because: this is Year Zero.