Post in part more useful than many of mine, but for which I suspect I will not be thanked

[alexsarll]

Why do people scurry? I've been noticing it a lot in these cold, foggy nights - people see me looming out of the haze, and they start scurrying - hunch shoulders, head down, pace uneasily quickened. Scurrying never helped anyone. I mean, I used to work with a guy who did it really badly, even in the office in the daytime, and even though I quite liked him and have never done anything of the sort in my life, I still had to clamp down on an atavistic reflex which wanted to mug him. And this guy was forever getting mugged, assaulted and what-have-you, to a degree which would be baffling if it weren't for the way he walked. Seriously, if you want to take evasive action - cross the road, speed up, whatever - then fine. In many circumstances, it might be the sensible thing to do. But for heavens' sake, do it with your head held high and your spine straight, because the minute you start scurrying, you look like prey. And if whoever's looming out of the fog is a predator, they will notice that, and you will have become one more contributor to the ranks of self-fulfilling prophecies.
(And not that I should have to say this, but this verges on certain sensitive issues so for the sake of clarity - no, this is not to even remotely absolve the predators and no, this is not to say that walking (apparently) unafraid is an entirely infallible strategy for avoiding harm. But it does work a lot better than scurrying)

Over-rated Fables scribe Bill Willingham has written a piece opposing grim'n'gritty 'superhero decadence', and arguing that ' the superhero genre should be “different, better, with higher standards, loftier ideals and a more virtuous — more American — point of view.”' Cue applauding comments from the sort of charmers who object to foreigners and non-white superheroes, or have plain creepy thoughts about Lois Lane, which for all Willingham's noted right-wing politics, is possibly not quite what he was getting at. More to the point, just as this C-lister is claiming that his own Elementals was one of the comics which kicked off the darker trend - a claim I've never seen from anyone but him - he's now acting as though he's the first to object to the trend, a trend he presents as still at its height through highly selective quoting of recent comics and films. Alan Moore - who alongside Frank Miller and maybe Howard Chaykin, *actually* started grim and gritty - has been saying for years that it got silly, that comics have had enough solve and now need a little coagula (or as the less alchemical* might put it, enough deconstruction and now need some reconstruction). Grant Morrison has been arguing something similar since at least Flex Mentallo, whose final issue was meant to be taking us past the Dark Age and into the Neon Age; you could argue that Final Crisis shows a funny way of going about this agenda, but All Star Superman was as purestrain heroic as the Superman comics Willingham seems to want, even if it was perhaps a little lacking in USA! USA! jingoism for his tastes.

*Speaking of alchemy, I never mentioned anything about Foucault's Pendulum on here, did I? From now on, I'm going to tell every conspiracy theorist I meet to read that book before they try it on with their controlled-demolition-of-Twin-Towers crap. Because even if it doesn't convince them - and part of the dark beauty of a real conspiracy mindset is, nothing will - then 650 pages should buy me a fair period of peace.

Comments

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

Why do people scurry? I've been noticing it a lot in these cold, foggy nights - people see me looming out of the haze, and they start scurrying

Pipe down the ego - people 'scurry' because it's bloody cold - nothing to do with you!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

a) People thinking I'm about to mug them is really not that flattering.
b) It's not just the weather - I see them react when I come around the corner/cross the road (to the side I live on) or similar.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's all action!

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager I used to always walk with my head down, looking at the ground because I had v low self esteem and thought I was very ugly so didn't want anyone to see me.
I still do it now through force of habit I think. Maybe that's why all the other people do too.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember doing the teenage shuffle. It was only after I was talked into ditching that in favour of a purposeful stride that I realised how much hassle I'd been drawing my own way. I don't think of you as moving like that, though - you normally seem bright-eyed and alert!

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

Other people have told me when they see me randomly in the street I seen to be off in a dream somewhere, staring at the floor.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Off in a dreamworld is not a problem, so long as it looks like a dream from which awaking you would be more trouble than it's worth.

[suicideally.livejournal.com]

I have two walks in London - head down, striding purposefully during the day (so as not to make eye contact with anyone and attract interaction) and head up, striding purposefully at night (so as to look alert).

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

What she says, only in ver North.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The alert walk can go too far, of course - when I'd not been in London long I got lost in Brixton, and was so overdoing the 'yeah, I know what's what' walk that people kept asking me for directions.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Of course it helps if you're a 6'2" bloke like me. Maybe you feel differently about the world if you're 5'4" and it's dark and cold.

OTOH I find myself tensing my upper back muscles just because it's really cold. And walking faster for the same reason.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sure it's easier for a) big b) males, but some of the people I see doing this also fit both categories. Indeed, once or twice it's been blokes I initially thought might have designs to attack me, in which cases I do admittedly tend to amp up the body language slightly.

[baphomette.livejournal.com]

It's fairly common knowledge that night time predators such as muggers will target people who look 'weak'; women in high heels who can't run after them, someone looking at a map who doesn't know where they are and so on. So yes, totally, looking confident or even just *capable* puts them off even if it happens on a subconscious level.

I, touch wood, have never had any trouble with muggers apart from an incident when I was at Uni, after one of the worst days of my life so I was virtually crawling back to my car. Trouble was, it had been a bad day in an angry-making near-snapping way, so the man attempting to snatch my bag got rather a surprise when I kicked him in the shin and walloped him around the head with my handbag full of textbooks. (Quite theraputic actually, I almost felt like I should have thanked him).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Yeah, I've had bad days when I'd actually quite liked someone to have tried something so that I could get it out of my system guilt-free...

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I think to an extent it's a bit sneakers-in-the-jungle, where you don't really have to look like you'd be Trouble so much as you'd be more trouble than someone else that's bound to be along in a minute.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This also. And the next person along will probably be a peon, so sod 'em.

[moleintheground.livejournal.com]

Fables is rub.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's not 'rub' so much as...just there. It is the exact baseline of comics below which I would not read them at all. If you wanted to create a measure of interest, the minimum measure would be one Fable.

[oneofthose.livejournal.com]

It was also the reason someone, who shall remain nameless, used to get shouted at, chased and, on one occasion, kicked in the back when visiting my house in Wood Green when I would walk there daily and nightly without even so much as a derogatory look.

And a girl I briefly dated used to get an extraordinary amount of sexist catcalls and aggressive arse grabbing that I soon realised was largely because of the way she walked (which was in the manner of someone expecting sexist catcalls and aggressive arse grabbing).

On my first week of London student life we got given the Time Out Student Guide. The only bit I remember was about looking too busy to get mugged. It really works.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

Similarly, my sister had a friend who once experienced an attempted attack which basically went like this:

Young Man: *makes attempt to grab Sister's Friend in "I am going to drag you down this dark alley and do bad things" sort of way"

Sister's Friend: "Look, you little shit, piss off home, I don't have time for this!"

Young Man: *runs away, tail between legs*

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I think what Willingham is calling for is actually pretty moot. For an industry prone to following trends, there have always been a few guys in comics going the other way out of contraryness or awkwardness or a need to do something different... I totally agree that All-Star Superman, exciting and noble and old-fashioned (and by it's very nature revisionist, let's not forget) is what he seems to be looking for. Amazing Spider-Man too is currently ablaze with ideas and all those things that he wants, and is as close now in spirit to the first Lee and Ditko/Romita run as it has ever been. Probably not a recommendation for you, Mr Sarll, but for me it's the comic equivalent of Shakespeare.

But then again, I also think that Fables is really good.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Even though I basically can't stand 616 Peter Parker (the films annoyed me intensely through their very fidelity), I am reading the Dan Slott issues of ASM and loving them. Yes, they got there via what sounds like one of the worst stories in comics, but never mind the journey, the destination was worth it, especially after all that mystical guff JMS attempted.