THE FULL LID
26th February 2021
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Hi everyone! Welcome to The Full Lid! My weekly newsletter and your weekly download of pop culture enthusiasm. Movies, books, TV, games, if I've encountered it and it's interested me, this is where I talk about it.
Think of it as email, but good!
This week's interstitials are some of the best female-identiftying creators working in horror right now, rounding out our Women in Horror Month coverage.
All set? Great! Contents!
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Contents
Working the Angles
Superman and Lois
Universal Transitive Headcanon: The Tale of Gandalf and Magneto
Signal Boost
Where You Can Find Me This Week
Signing Off / Playing Out
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Working the Angles
In 1974, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Don King made history. The fight between Ali and Foreman in Zaire was the culmination of a music festival, a pop cultural event that transcended national boundaries, and politics. General Gadaffi of Libya was a primary sponsor. The bout itself only happened because King outmaneuvered every other promoter, as he'd continue to do for decades to come. It was a heist conducted in public view, a man who appear willing to walk into his own execution for the largest fight purse known to date. Foreman was younger and stronger, Ali had come off a multi-year suspension for refusing the draft. He was the rank outsider. He won.
This isn't that story. It's the story that happens next to it.
Magnum Photos have produced several of these photo essay collections, but this is the first to reach the UK. Take the photos of an iconic event, interweave them with the story of the photographer's experiences at the event, and illustrate the whole thing. This is in essence the fusion of two comics: legendary photographer Abbas' photos, wrapping around the art of Rafael Ortriz and the colors of Hiroyuki Ooshima. Together, they create a story both familiar and alien, famous and yet entirely new. A classic punch thrown from a new angle.
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The page above is a single, beautiful example. The photograph slips seamlessly to art which slips seamlessly to fight posters which leads back to art. The style contributes to the myths of all three men. A moment where Ali finds out Foreman punches so hard he rips the heavy bag open haunts the book in two ways. Firstly, the terror (Ali admits to feeling this) of the upcoming fight. Secondly, the slow realization that for all the big talk and big money, Foreman and Ali trained on top of one another in tiny facilities, the psychological boxing match lasting weeks longer than the physical fight. A moment of pure physicality, the sort of thing the Drago boys would nod approvingly at, becomes part of the framework of the story.
It also provides a doorway into Ali's strategy. Knowing full well there was no way to avoid the punches that had ended him once already, Ali instead taught himself to take the pain. Able to do that, he could spend round upon eating Foreman's best, goading him into throwing more and knowing full well the only thing the other man was getting was tired. He taunted his younger opponent constantly, leading to the occasion, where as Foreman recollects, things started going wrong:
"I hit him hard to the jaw and he held me and whispered in my ear: 'That all you got, George?'
I realized that this ain't what I thought it was."
Neither is this book. In addition to the story of the fight, it's also the story of Ali's life and career, leading up his loss and the bone-crunching montage of the men he defeated to get to Foreman. We also get a look at the quiet, disciplined young man who would become world champion as well as devout Muslim. This is Ali as iconoclast, a man whose shadow is longer than Foreman's reach. From the perspective of history, the outcome of the night was never in doubt.
The book is also elevated by our persistent side angle on action. Abbas has nothing but admiration for the boxers, alongside cynicism for the event they're crowning. As a photographer, he's close enough to the action to focus on it and far enough from the pageantry to it for what it is. There's a double page spread that he rightly views as the best shot he took that night: Foreman down and stunned, Ali looking over his shoulder. The future unfurling in the middle of the Kinshasa night in a way neither man quite expected it to.
It's Abbas who we finish the story with, a moment that's delightfully shaggy dog and still in keeping with the cheerfully corrupt nature of professional combat sports. Abbas grabs a bottle from the ring once the fight is over, one he finds in Ali's corner. As he lurches out into the city-sized party, he concludes it's spiked, implying it may have contributed to Ali felt no pain that night. It's an urban myth briefly captured in solid form. From one perspective, a moment of delicious uncertainty. From another, an ugly insinuation of Ali's religious beliefs.
Rounded out by a detailed breakdown of how the book was assembled, a timeline of Ali's life and a detailed breakdown of the book's production by author JD Morvan, Muhammad Ali, Kinshasa 1974 really is something else. Equal parts sports journalism and comics history, it's the celebration of one of the all time greats viewed through the lenses of art as history, and history as art.
Muhammad Ali, Kinshasa 1974 is available now from Titan Books (£24.99 UK, $29.99 US) |
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Women in Horror Month: Jordan Cobb
Working primarily in serial audio fiction, Jordan Cobb has made a deserved name for herself as a prolific writer and actress. I'm especially fond of Primordial Deep, Cobb's current project. |
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Superman and Lois
Editor's note: spoilers for the pilot
It will come as no surprise to regular readers, or indeed anyone who has ever met me, that Clark Kent is one of my house gods. I’m writing this within sight of a Superman fidget cube and a House of El paperweight and those are just the two icons nearest me. Clark -- the big, friendly, kind small town writer -- was one of the first fictional characters I clung to as proof I wasn’t… well… from another world. Not really. He embraces duality: both big and clever, both kind and strong. And kind of a goof.
Like I say, house god.
This latest incarnation of him, layered superbly by Tyler Hoechlin, has been knocking around the CWverse shows for a while. Now, he and the world’s greatest reporter have been given a show of their own.
But, it’s complicated. Lots of it works. Lots of it doesn't. And the parts that don't are insidious.
Some inside baseball before we begin. Show writer Nadria Tucker posted this thread about her experiences. Tucker cites numerous instances of conflict but there’s one I really want to highlight:
"…me FIGHTING to ensure the only Black faces on screen aren't villains"
Hold that thought.
As pilots episodes, "Pilot' is both action packed and sombre. It takes all of ten minutes to catch us up: Clark and Lois have two teenaged sons, Jordan ( Alexander Garfin) and Jonathan ( Jordan Elsass). Jonathan is sweet natured, hard working and an athlete. Jordan has anxiety bad enough to need medication and is moody and isolated. While dealing with these challenges, Clark and Lois also tangle with a mysterious villain leaving mocking Kryptonian graffiti at sabotaged nuclear power plants, the loss of their jobs, and the death of Clark’s mother. Returning to Smallville to coordinate the funeral, they discover Martha put a second mortgage on the farm and used the money to help locals. Also that very few people are happy to see them, and Jonathan is not the son who has inherited Clark’s powers. There’s also a disastrous party, a tension filled clash with old flame Lana’s husband, local fire chief Kyle Cushing ( Erik Valdez) and the boys discovering the family secret.
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That last is where the show is at its best. Elsass and Garfin have good sibling energy. Garfin’s mournful, quiet Jordan never feels performative, and the two brothers have a lot more in common than they’d dared hope. Their dynamic is magnified by a LOVELY moment at the end between Jordan and Lana’s daughter, Sarah ( Inde Navarrette) -- a withdrawn, careful young woman who instantly bonds with Jordan. In the final moments she explains a big reason why shew as drawn to him was that she saw him take his meds and if someone like him had issues then maybe she wasn’t as messed up as she thought.
From the inside Jordan thinks he’s a mess. From the outside, the very fact he knows he’s a mess inspires other people to take action. The S stands for hope, and serotonin. It’s also a clear callback to one of the single greatest pages of Superman comics.
The show is SOMBER, mournful even, Romer’s score subtly plucking same heartstrings as Hans Zimmer’s Man of Steel score. The Kents start the episode in trouble and end it in the same place, just with a bit better view. It would be easy to view this as grimdark'ing up the least grimdark character in comics. The phrase ‘liberal elites’ isn’t used but it doesn’t have to be for the message to be clear: the Kent family are aliens in Smallville, but not in every way.
Which brings us back to Tucker's quote.
There are three villains this episode. See if you can spot the trend:
- Kyle Cushing, played by Erik Valdez, an actor of Spanish, Mexican, Native American, Irish and English descent
- Captain Luthor, the mysterious figure in armour, played by Wolé Parks
- Sean Smith, a teen who attacks Jordan at a party, played by Frtzy-Klevans Destine
The three most prominent actors of color in the episode. All three are either antagonists or out and out villains. A scene set in Shanghai features predominantly Asian extras, sure, but the action is carried by a villain in armor, a violently jealous boyfriend, and an exhausted, traumatized, and furious Fire Chief. The characters could be off the shelf tropes.
On the one hand, the series is young. On the other, what else is Tucker going to be proved right about?
Superman & Lois’s first episode isn’t what I expected and that's both a good and a bad thing. I'm equal parts hopeful, disappointed, and exhausted that yet again we have to walk this path. Fingers crossed the S for Hope carries the day in the weeks to come.
Superman & Lois has no current airdate in the UK. It airs in the US on The CW Tuesdays at 8 pm.
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Women in Horror Month: CA Yates
Long standing Friend of the Lid and goodest of eggs, CA Yates' work is a heady mix of invention, razor sharp with and full teeth bared horror. Start anywhere, but their work in Weird Noir is especially good. |
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New reader? Looking for a back issue?
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Universal Transitive Headcanon:
The Story of Gandalf and Magneto
by David Steffen
Editor's note: spoilers for the X-Men and Lords of the Rings movies. This article is based in the idea of UTH (Universal Transitive Headcanon), a metafictional framework proposed by David Steffen at Diabolical Plots.
From our perspective, most people in our world and time view Gandalf the Grey (and his second persona as Gandalf the White) as one of the greatest heroes of Middle Earth (i.e. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, etc), in part because of the incredible portrayal of the legendary character by Sir Ian McKellen. Time and again Gandalf learns of a great threat to peace and life as people know it and he races ahead to forewarn those in danger to give them time to prepare a defense. Yet, Gandalf is known by another name by many people of that time and place that gives us a sense of the skewed perspective of those very same people he has saved: Storm Crow. Because, wherever Gandalf visits, a wave of chaos and death is surely following closely behind. And, while this is certainly true, many people confuse Gandalf's role in the proceedings; Gandalf is not the cause of the chaos and death. With no Gandalf, entire kingdoms and their residents would have been wiped off the map in quick succession without forewarning to defend themselves. Gandalf has certainly saved many thousands of lives many times over, yet he is often blamed for those who didn't survive despite his best efforts.
It is no wonder, then, that even after saving most of the then-known world from the evil power of Sauron yet again, that Gandalf would become embittered and, not only take on an entirely new persona of Eric Lensherr/Magneto (X-Men, X2: X-Men United, etc.), but turn his back on his prior methods and many of the people he had fought to protect. No longer would he spend his efforts protecting a populace that as a whole despises and blames him. He may have been emboldened to change tactics by the modern rise of more people like him--in the times of The Lord of the Rings he was a rarity, only a handful of superpowered people like him, but by the time of the X-Men timeline there are multiple organized teams with their own agendas and with more superpowered people revealing themselves every day. As we saw in X2: X-Men United when Professor X uses Cerebro to target all mutants on the planet, there are multitudes more that are hidden in the population who perhaps do not even know that they have powers, or perhaps have just managed to keep it a secret from most. Perhaps in the time of The Lord of the Rings, a similar number of people have powers, but have not had the opportunity to develop it, or they manifest in ways that are taken for granted by those around them, but in any case the number of evident superpowered people has greatly increased from one film to the next.
Where Gandalf once depended on the support of the Fellowship of the Ring, Magneto now depends on the support of the Brotherhood of Mutants. Having revived from death at the hands of the Balrog and saving the entire population of the world from the evils of Sauron, and finding the world just as unwelcoming to him and to people like him as ever, he is back and is determined to establish a world where people like him can thrive without the blame and persecution of those who view them as different:
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"We are the future, Charles. They no longer matter".
Gandalf/Magneto, among his more flashy talents, has a keen eye for new recruits, as we see in X2: X-Men United as he snipes Pyro from the X-Men team using Pyro's insecurities and animosity toward Ice Man as a wedge. We see the start of his yearning for brotherhood with others of his kind with his befriending of Bilbo in The Hobbit, and then Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring. At the beginning of each of their stories, Bilbo and Frodo seem fairly quiet and unspectacular people among a local population full of quiet and unspectacular people. But, especially in Frodo his skill at recruiting is never stronger. Without the Hobbits in general, and perhaps Frodo specifically, the battle against Sauron would surely have been lost. Frodo's pleasant and calm demeanor is but an aspect of his supernatural resilience and resistance to the forces of outside corruption. Gandalf himself is susceptible to the mind control of Sauron: "Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself." But Frodo carries the One Ring to the brink of its destruction, farther than any other individual may have carried it, even if in those final moments his resolve finally crumbled (though thankfully the deed was still carried out!). Of course, Boromir's betrayal shows that Gandalf is not infallible in his recruiting skill--his recruiting is a high-stakes gamble—the world would have been lost if he had not found a mutant with an appropriate power to counteract the Dark Lord Sauron's powers, but the flip side is that when this gamble went wrong it tore apart the Fellowship of Nine.
Before we see Gandalf in the guise of Magneto rising to notoriety at the head of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, he has found a way to use technology to conquer his greatest fear: the fear of mind control, using a specially crafted helmet that shields him from telepathic influence. If he were to face Sauron again, he would be more prepared. He has also focused on some of his abilities to the loss of many others--can you imagine how much simpler most of the battles of Middle Earth could have been with the powers that Magneto has developed over metal? Every orc's blade turned against them, a battle could be over in seconds with no survivors to tell of it! It's no wonder that he focused so much of his power in more recent years on honing that skill to perfection.
As we see the resurrection of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White, it is explicit that Gandalf is not bound by the same laws of mortality as the rest of us. One component of this great character's life that is a matter of fierce debate is the debate of the other chapter of his life involving a quest for resurrection as Asparagus, aka Gus the Theater Cat (Cats) who joins with the others at the Jellicle Ball to determine which one of them will be reborn.
My personal interpretation of the Gus/Gandalf ordering is that his time as Gus the Theater Cat tells of the later years of his long and storied life. It's only natural for him to take on a role in the theater, considering how skilled he had shown himself to be by then to take on different roles. And in his role of Gus we finally see spelled out how his earlier resurrection may have worked, although it seems that significant details must have been left out in the telling in both the books and the movies.
Although strong rules dictates certain parameters around a Jellicle Ball, it turns out that these rules are more customs than laws. Gandalf defeated the Balrog and earned his own resurrection by calling an impromptu Jellicle Ball as they fell from the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Gandalf the Grey and the Balrog took their turns pleading their case for why each of them deserved resurrection in musical form. Of course with only the two of them, they could not fairly judge themselves in this case, so a higher power had to step in to make the choice. It turns out that Gandalf wishing to return to the surface and save everyone from the Dark Lord was more convincing an argument than whatever the Balrog could come up with in the heat of the moment when it had been expecting this confrontation to be a literal song and dance. Or perhaps it was Gandalf's performance that made the difference rather than the contents of the argument itself, and thus inspired his later life in theater, as theater had saved his life and allowed him to finish his greatest work. One can imagine that the Balrog's performance probably had a great deal of shaky rhymes and trailed-off sentences and circular logic, and the Balrog died for its failure.
It's unclear why Tolkien skipped the musical nature of this sequence, considering The Lord of The Rings books are basically musicals anyway (count the number of songs in their pages and tell me I'm wrong).
But why skip the most striking musical number? Perhaps Peter Jackson also skipped this musical sequence as a nod of deference to Tolkien, but the continued lack of a musical adaptation of the Gandalf/Balrog Jellicle Ball sequence is simply a travesty that I hope will some day be rectified! (preferably soon enough that Sir Ian McKellen may reprise his role!)
Gandalf's breaking of custom may also have something to do with why Gus failed to secure resurrection at the later Jellicle Ball. He had already earned his chance at another life, and under a Jellicle Ball whose legitimacy could be called into question, and here he is at another one making the case for yet another life? So, this last chapter of his life was a quieter one, where others elsewhere were fighting the battles that save the world.
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Signal Boost
The Printed Form
Editor's note: Look at that pigmentation! Red black options! Squee!
People
- Sarah Bennetto of Questing Time and friend of the excellent Ed Fortune, was mugged this week. The details are in the Twitter thread, please go help her out if you can. Especially as her character name is LL Cool D.
Podcasts
- SJ (who has a seriously cool Twitter handle) brings us news of Blake Skye, PI, "a story that takes all the good things about noir and cosmic horror and kicks the garbage to the curb, all while being chock full of lgbtq rep."
- The Lavender Tavern is the latest work from the excellent Faustian Nonsense Network, is a collection of new gay fairy tales. THe entire first season is available now.
- Return of The Box Room! A 'publess chat down the pub' podcast by excellent friends Jen Williams and Marty Strider.
That's this week's Signal Boost, folks. If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch.
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Where You Can Find Me This Week
Awards Season
Inexplicables
Novel O'Clock
- 1000 words a day or DEATH! Which at times feels preferable but NO! 1000 WORDS A DAY!
The Clock App
Twitch
Podcast Land
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Signing Off / Playing Out
Thanks for reading, folks! I'm writing this on Monday at a sprint -- looks like it's going to be one of those weeks. Hope it went well for us all! The future looks great! Do you have sandwiches there?
TFL returns next week. Check out my Carrd for all the places you can find me, including the Team KennerStuart Instagram and the Twitters, who once doubled for Lou Ferrigno in Hulk: STRONGEST MUSICAL THERE IS! and still know all the words and I NEED YOU TO UNDERTAND THAT. Plus Twitch, Tik Tok, and any other place that will host our chaotic but tasteful and inclusive mind ramblings.
This work is produced for free. If you like what you read please consider dropping something in the tip jar or sign up for The Full Lid Plus, my monthly subscription deep-dive into the Disney+ back catalog. And thank you!
Playing us out this week are The Stupendium and Dan Bull with their excellent Among Us inspired track, 'An Impostor Calls'. Know what ISN'T SUSS?
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that this is a Full Lid.
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