Feeding the Superhero Readers
13 Comments | Posted: June 21st, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking About Comics | Tags: girl talk, umbrella academy, x-men
Greg Gillis makes records under the pseudonym Girl Talk. What Gillis does is popularly known as a “mashup” but where many people are happy to take two or three songs, beatmatch them in Ableton, and create melodic tracks like the Kelly Clarkson/Depeche Mode mashup “Since You Been Gahan,” Gilis takes twenty or more to create a 4-minute survey of pop music, snatching bits from Queen, Tones on Tail, Paula Cole, and The Cure and creating something that’s not so much a whole as an amalgam of moments – bits of things that you know (and like, at least out of context) played in a very tight sequence. His music is schizophrenic and celebratory, occasionally recontextualizing material in surprising ways (the clipped strings and sped-up symphony of “Girl/Boy Song” by Aphex Twin under Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s,”) but it generally consisting of Ginnis putting something familiar with against something else the audience is likely to know to create a pleasing fifteen or twenty seconds of synchronicity, like the swingbeat smash “No Diggity” meeting Kanye’s “Flashing Lights” in “Still Here.” While I’ve been enjoying Girl Talk’s latest, Feed The Animals, quite a lot, it feels disposable in a way I was having trouble putting my finger on, until I was in the middle of the last trade of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.
What makes that title successful frequently transcends the (undeniable) craft applied to the material – it’s that sense of seeing something familiar treated slightly differently. Astonishing features a team that is very much “our” X-Men: Cyclops. Wolverine, Colossus, Beast, and Kitty Pryde along with Emma Frost go and have big loud adventures, exchange quips, and very rarely do something that’s a genuine surprise to the readers. This is franchise superhero comics at their best. Even the ending, which features an blatantly set-up solution to the whole “bad guys firing a fuck-off huge bullet at the planet” problem, manages to make one gape a bit, thanks to John Cassaday’s ability to render the most unbelievable moments in a down-to-earth fashion. It’s well-done and a great example of the X-genre, but at the same time it feels hollow, especially when compared to another trade paperback release from this week, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy.
It’s simultaneously difficult to understand and completely believable that The Umbrella Academy is Gerard Way’s first major comics work. Way’s comics-related output was limited to some material with Boneyard Press in his teens and some work for Cartoon Network prior to forming the hugely-popular My Chemical Romance, whose rapid rise to the top of the modern rock charts left little time for the medium. There’s a freshness to The Umbrella Academy that’s undeniable, even if one detects notes of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Bob Haney’s batshit scripting in this high-concept story of a tight-knit superpowered “family” who share a tragic past. It’s unclear if it’s unabashed enthusiasm combined with ideas that have been gestating in Way’s head for years or if the tone and world presented are calculatedly different from other takes on the superhero, but where Astonishing X-Men is a remixed and mashed-up take on what’s gone before, The Umbrella Academy is something set firmly in its own world.
While it’s clear why so many enjoy Astonishing X-Men and The Sinestro Corps War and All-Star Superman for their very nicely-done takes on corporate-owned characters, the experience can seem a bit hollow, particularly during times like the present, when every editorially-mandated event is hyped to the nth degree and things that should be straightforward, fun adventure comics become recycled 10 o’clock drama cliches with some spandex thrown in for variety. Even at their most enthralling peaks, it’s blatantly clear that no permanent change will ever occur and that the status quo of seventy years of superhero storytelling and that the audience likes it that way. They want new versions of things they’ve enjoyed in the past, mashed-up beats and hands-in-the-air moments, not original compositions that are unfamiliar and require something besides appreciation for what has happened before.
Hmm…I certainly see the comparison you’re trying to make, and I almost agree with it. But while I’d maybe buy a comparison between Astonishing and, say, “Smells Like Booty” or something, I feel like Gillis moves beyond that. I mean, certainly there’s some appeal to familiarity, but do you really think the people getting down to GT’s samples of “My Humps” or “In the Air Tonight” would do the same to the original songs? (Not in my experience, at least.)
I’d say Gillis is more in line with Way than with Whedon in this case. I enjoyed Umbrella Academy much more than I expected, but the debt that book owes to Morrison and Mignola in particular is pretty clear. What Way does is twist those influences into something that’s, if not entirely original, completely distinct and exciting. Gillis’s work is similarly transformative – at least as far as I’m concerned. On the other hand, Whedon’s work on X-Men failed to build anything genuinely different from its influences.
Essentially: It took me a while to give Girl Talk his due, but I’ve been enjoying Feed the Animals since Thursday. I stopped enjoying Astonishing some time before it ended.
I’d say Way and crew are closer to original composition based on previous material than Gillis/Whedon. If I felt like stretching the metaphor further, The Umbrella Academy is one of Coltrane’s live performances of “My Favorite Things” – one pass through that’s vaguely recognizable, then 20 minutes of completely balls-out madness.
Still haven’t read the latest “Astonishing” collection but it’s in a short stack right under Way’s “Academy”. The reading had been put off because I’d been listening to “Feed the Animals” and was also trying to figure out why it felt so slight.
It’s certainly entertaining, though having grown up in a place and time where Styx and Kansas and REO were the unfortunate norm I’ve got a different context to place these bits than someone to whom they’re inconceivably new. It probably didn’t help that I’ve also been listening to the Steinski collection (also available in the same place you can get the Girl Talk). Steinski’s broader, more mature palette, coupled with an intellectual PLUS instinctual basis for his mixing and mashing makes for a well-rounded concoction I can go back to many more times over the years and still find something new I hadn’t noticed before.
Gillis has skills which I respect and am consistently entertained by, but more in a snack-like way. Steinski remains the main course. Or maybe Gillis is like Family Guy while Steinski is like David Lynch.
I don’t know — still trying to figure it all out…
Not sure if you’ve seen the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy, which (for it’s musical portion) features Gillis. It’s online at
http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
Take care out there!
I think what you are talking about is common in other media as well, look at all the remakes, and the various movie themes (“underdog sports movie”) that replay themselves over and over again.
There’s a distinct difference between theme (man works against the odds to prevent catastrophe) versus actually using the same characters in the same way again (policeman John McClane finds himself the lone gun against a terrorist organization), and I’m not discussing themes as much as the cycles of the same set group of people doing the same set group of things over and over with small variations in storytelling. (Ken Lowery succinctly calls this “putting the camera over there this time.”)
So . . . did you dig the record or not? For my $13 paypalled cashola (gets you a hardcopy in the mail), I have to say that this essay may have verbalized why I’m just okay with it. Namely, Night Ripper was so amazing and exultant that when I first heard it, only about a year ago, it totally knocked my shoes off.
Now, I’m prepared for the neckbreaking symphony, the stitched together samples and choruses. It’s no longer new, and thus loses some of its aesthetic power (which, in my view, is what you’re saying in the strong essay above–and I love that Lowery quote).
I did order the full version, even if I thought charging extra for the shipping on the CD after saying “For ten bucks, you get all this” was a bit somethingsomething.
Interesting thoughts, but I disagree with you substantively on the conceptual framework underpinning Girl Talk – I don’t think you’re giving Gillis enough credit, and I think you’re missing a lot of the conceptual underpinnings at work. I talk about it here, if you are interested…
I don’t think I’m missing the “conceptual underpinnings” of Girl Talk’s work, and am more than a bit bothered that you’d think I’d listen that shallowly. It’s obvious that Gillis works very hard to create collages that are musically literate, dense, enjoyable, and contain a level of craft that very few other people can approach, but in the end it’s about party potential more than anything transformative and unique. I think Feed The Animals is a great album, worthy of multiple listens in a day, even. (And quite possibly the best washing-up music since Oakenfold’s first Goa mix for Radio 1,) but I can’t help but be aware of how highly tuned the entire affair and how much it depends on my knowing Nine Inch Nails and Kelly Clarkson in equal measures.
(You mention Coldcut’s Journeys By DJ mix, and the difference between that and Feed The Animals is plain to me, with the former featuring a broader pallet and an (at least as inferred by me) intent to educate as well as make the head nod. Gillis looks for the perfect thing, Coldcut’s mix seems to also seek the perfect reasoning, even if the end result is undeniably similar.)
I still think referring to it as “party music” is a pretty essential difference of opinion. I don’t know how you could party to something like Feed the Animals, since it pretty well demands you sit down and listen with all your attention. It doesn’t strike me as appropriate for most parties to be sitting around tapping your chin thoughtfully! After the first couple listens, at least for me, the “Gotcha!” effects dissipate – no more surprises, at least, and with the burden of shock lifted it’s a lot easier to appreciate the musicality. Perhaps it’s not as good as Coldcut’s mix – I misspoke if I implied it was – but I don’t necessarily see that the two mixes are really as different in execution as you do. Even though most of the music in Feed the Animals is far, far more familiar than even the most obvious tracks on 70 Minutes of Madness, the way he cuts and distorts the mix makes it easily as adventurous – taking a pile of sow’s ears and turning them into a big-ass silk purse, almost unrecognizable. Which is where the Joss Whedon comparison really bristles, to my mind – Whedon is a magpie who doesn’t really do a lot, in my eye, to transform his “samples” so much as merely move them about with different players. (I’ve seen exactly one episode of Buffy, and it was such a blatant and artless riff on “The Dark Phoenix Saga” that I decided never to bother again.) The effect of Gillis’ work goes beyond the samples themselves, I believe, and to me the proof of that is the fact that the mixes get better and *more interesting* with every listen, which is something you simply could not say if it were simply the sum of all the hundreds of different samples.
Gah, used “simply” twice in one sentence, and I should have said “but I don’t necessarily see that the two mixes are really as different in their implied intent as you do.”
Which is where the Joss Whedon comparison really bristles, to my mind – Whedon is a magpie who doesn’t really do a lot, in my eye, to transform his “samples†so much as merely move them about with different players.
Entirely agreed here, at least with respect to his X-Men. On the other hand, I’ve been to more parties than I can count where Girl Talk was playing/being danced to.
Final point I’ll make: Kevin, did you hear that “fake” leak of Feed the Animals a few months back? Honestly, it wasn’t until then that I was finally/fully convinced Gillis was doing much more than just relying on listener recognition – the fake was a mess of beatmatched pop, using the same methods as Gillis but ending up borderline unlistenable.
Count me as one of those guys who simply doesn’t understand the appeal of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY. Original and bold? Absolutely, but the characters are a bunch of incestuous jerks who only seem to behave “heroically” when they’re falling back on their confined, depressing upbringing. Why would I want to spend time with such people? Their stories are told with skill, but they’re so damn depressing I wish they’d just hurry up and commit suicide, already.
I honestly think that the state of affairs you describe is WHY so many critics fall all over themselves to praise UMBRELLA ACADEMY. It’s different! (But not TOO different.) It’s something that superhero fans can point to and say, “See? See? The things I love AREN’T just the product of an endless, mindless recycling process! I can feel smarter for reading this, because it has new ideas, yet isn’t unfamiliar enough to actually challenge me!”
That nerd-reinforcement has been part of the marketing pitch for certain superhero stories since at least the 1960s– the early Marvel Age, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, DARK KNIGHT, WATCHMEN, early Image, Grant Morrison.
DC and Marvel haven’t been so good at it lately, so it’s not surprising that the audience would exalt some independent work to fill the gap. I just hope that the next piece we pick is a little more uplifting.