8/02/2007

Wish

I wish I’d written the following two pieces below:

I.
First one is straight out of a mid-1980s song by The Pogues and some woman named Cait O’Riordan, which was part of the soundtrack for the movie Sid and Nancy, about the life of Sid Vicious (of Sex Pistols fame). The song is called Haunted, and tells of how this girl fell for this guy (and vice-versa) in the streets of London, and how much they mean to each other.

There’s a verse halfway through the song that goes like this:
“The first time I saw you
standing in the street,
you were so cool
you could’ve put out Vietnam.
My girlfriends ask me, ‘What's he like?’
I say, ‘He's kind of shy,
but that's the kind of girl I am,
he's my kind of guy’”


I don’t know why I like that bit so much. Must be the part about “Vietnam”. It kills me every time I listen to that song. Either way, I honestly believe Haunted to be the ultimate love song. Like, ever written, period.


II.
Second piece comes right off a 1989 comic book, the 13th issue of DC Comics’ Animal Man written by Grant Morrison.
That particular issue happens in South Africa with the whole Apartheid thing going on. Animal Man, a North-American superhero, is there to help African super-hero B’wanna Beast (who’s actually an African-based North American superhero, and how about that for imperialism…) to choose his successor, and this time preferably somebody actually from Africa.

The story is far more political than it might sound here but anyway, Animal Man and the Beast are to free this anti-Apartheid agitator from jail, where he’s been tortured by an abusive prison guard, who keeps lecturing him and comparing his cause to that of a fairy tale and a virgin maiden’s being used as a bait to ensnare an unicorn, etc.
B’wanna Beast, who has the power to change the shapes of the local fauna, creates a unicorn-looking beast. The prison guard ends up impaled by the animal’s horn.
This bit I don’t recall all too well, like, who said what, but it goes something like this: Animal Man arrives at the scene and asks what the guard died of.
“Symbolism,” says the Beast.

It’s not really possible to convey to you why I think that piece is such a masterpiece, a work of genius: It’s that sort of thing that could not be achieved in a book nor in a movie: It could only be depicted on a comic book. It’s all about the medium: The shape of the panels, the disposition of the characters in each panel, the timing of the dialogue, etc.
Sequential art to the fullest, you know?