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Free Comic Book Day
By
Tomorrow is the happiest day of the year.
Speaking of which, I keep meaning to mention Mark Waid's Empire -- it's cool. In particular, I think it puts two interesting twists on the cliché dystopia genre. One is that it seems to me to endorse Richard Rorty's interesting, but deeply unpopular, reading of 1984 -- namely that Truth and Justice do not prevail. In a world where Golgoth prevails and imposes his will on the entire world, there's no realm of "goodness" outside the world to condemn him. He is either opposed or he isn't, and by the end of the book it appears that he isn't. Might has made right.
The other thing is that by blending the dystopia genre with the superhero genre Waid nicely, I think, demonstrates the essential absurdity of much dystopian literature. He's provided the most plausible account I've ever seen of how a dystopian system could remain stable for the long term and it involves . . . superpowers. In the real world, totalitarian systems are intrinsically subject to collapse due to falling-outs among the leadership clique.
Speaking of which, I keep meaning to mention Mark Waid's Empire -- it's cool. In particular, I think it puts two interesting twists on the cliché dystopia genre. One is that it seems to me to endorse Richard Rorty's interesting, but deeply unpopular, reading of 1984 -- namely that Truth and Justice do not prevail. In a world where Golgoth prevails and imposes his will on the entire world, there's no realm of "goodness" outside the world to condemn him. He is either opposed or he isn't, and by the end of the book it appears that he isn't. Might has made right.
The other thing is that by blending the dystopia genre with the superhero genre Waid nicely, I think, demonstrates the essential absurdity of much dystopian literature. He's provided the most plausible account I've ever seen of how a dystopian system could remain stable for the long term and it involves . . . superpowers. In the real world, totalitarian systems are intrinsically subject to collapse due to falling-outs among the leadership clique.
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