A Curious Tale about Marvel: Stories and their tellers.

An extremely interesting read on Stan Lee. One thing that I found most interesting is the ponderous question:  How are comic book artists and creators treated in the 21st century (as opposed to the past)? Given the challenge that this particular journalist poses to us, I'm rather saddened that he didn't get more time with Lee.

I think we (in the 21st century) could all use a bit more reality and considerably less sensationalism. What makes stories power, what makes them hit home, is precisely what makes this piece meaningful: reality. You ask a question and expect an answer.

In my own case, I've got no allegiances when it comes to comics. I'm just a random passerby who happens to enjoy the stories. But, I'm like that with everything. I enjoy what I can try when it is good (or at least, when it is human and real), and whether that is a gritty portmanteau or a poorly crafted film adaptation of the Fantastic 4 made all the more real because it was trying to keep the copyrights to the film in the hands of said director, or, perhaps, the story of two people, Jack Kirby and "Mr. Marvel", Stanley Martin Leiber, a.k.a. "Stan Lee", and the life-long struggle of comic creators. Stan was, ultimately, he admits, "a salaryman", paid by his job titles and not his creations.

In the end, whether we're writing stories about Lawrence Lessig attacking the social construct of a corrupted Polis election system or the convoluted content rights problem, society will still want, as Neil Postman might describe, "stories of meaning". We all need tales that are human, tales that tell us who and what we are, and what ultimately makes us different or similar to other things—flexing those immortal boundaries and providing sense to who we truly are—an identity, a ferocity, a power unlike others—the power of truth.

And when it comes down it it, the truth is—"Mr. Marvel" is just another character in a rather interesting story we humans craft through our lives and livelihoods. A story formed by our organizations, our structural lines, our creeds, our ideas, and our ideologies. Perhaps, as Jack Kirby's character, Loki, is so fond of proclaiming, we are "so petulant, inferior [of] creatures", for we spend our days fighting amongst each other and never truly appreciate what we have been given through the combined efforts of one another (or "collective cooperation" as S.I. Hayakawa might profess)—respecting each piece, and each player in that great production: life. Perhaps, we, oh, so petty mortal kind, shall meet out fate on the annals of universal history, to be deemed deficient.

Of these things, I cannot tell, but what I can, of those limited experiences I know, within the bounds of bare reason, is humanity needs stories that teach us who we are and storytellers who are not afraid, not matter the consequences or the costs, to tell us—even if we ourselves are too scared to admit it (or to acknowledge the results)—what being human is all about.

              

Quiet, please.

"I... Help..." No answer.

Pain. Loss. Lots of pain and lack of clarity. No one questions the strangeness. No questions answered.

"Help." None arrives.

"Where...Where are they? When will they come...? Help... Please...Dear God...Help me. Jesus...Don't abandon me in my hours of need..."

Death. Alone. Silence in Stillness. Alone and Forgot. Forgotten by the world. Abandoned by all who claimed to care. "When will they come?" Never. That's what they always do — abandon in the hours of need.

She broke in again. She invades matter the barrier. I barred the door, this time with a fan, some loose boxes filled with books, and my piano, and yet she still gets in. Her voice penetrates my sanctuary. Her angry, broken, fearful cries penetrate my mental walls. Her insecure questions. Her tremulous pleas. They never cease. Nor does she. They pierce my skull, my ears, my spirit central. They pierce through me. No end in sight. Only death will quell her might. My Death. Silence. Sleep.

Sleep. Sleep is my every desire, to sleep soundly, anywhere I might. Sleep eternal. Sleep everlasting, evermore, yet never more than an instant. "Can I? May I, please, sleep so soundly on my knees filled with such rancor broken tenderness that I dare not wake until the world is changed, my world, my broken space? While she pounds? While I tear? Perhaps, when father gets home...?" No. Not then. Then will only be more pain, more sadness, fear, and loss as something else is taken away.

Another day, another moment, another plot against him and all his dreams. Men tried to kill my daddy. Men tried to harm. Alone he is, quiet, afraid. So is mother. They are both the same. Alone and forgot. Forgotten like me, except for a swot. By word or deed, we will all be not.

Banished: Churches of the Damned

Banished: The Outcast in Modernity by the Church

By Christopher M. Vanderwall-Brown

Does Jesus teach humanity that it is permissible to withhold charity because people live in sin? Are people (or the Church for that matter) permitted or charged to withhold charity onto those of a broken nature or character or to place limits on the charity and kindness we give onto others? What does the Parable of the Prodigal Son, especially with regards to the elder brother, teach us about God's Divine Love for all humanity or as a blueprint for the church's love onto all of humanity?

For example, is it permissible to withhold food because a person might waste it or because a person refuses to sit and listen to many hours of lectures about their brokenness or their failures to uphold the criminality of their soul or lives? If someone makes a mistake or continues to make mistakes, is it charged or permissible to withhold charity upon them if they are suffering and poor?

What does our Father who art in Heaven command for us? What does Jesus teach us?

Does God put terms on our salvation or Eir charity? Must we convert? Must we do certain things in order to be forgiven or to receive God's blessings, or does God provide us these things because we ask out of love and out of divine charity? Is it merely our returning to God that is enough?

The parable of the two sons, the prodigal son demands his inheritance before his father and then departs for lands unknown. He takes his wealth, blessings, and prosperity and wastes it.

Living in the gutter, utterly broken and despotic, the son realizes that he is doomed and returned to the father's house to ask to work as a servant, to work as a slave or as a hired hand (not as a son, not with a birthright, merely a day laborer). Before the son even reaches his father's house, the father sees his son and races towards him, overjoyed. He embraces his son without explanation and proceeds to order a feast prepared and for the son to be clothed and a signet ring put upon his finger. The joy of the father at the return of his prodigal child, the child lost to him. He is so happy and filling over with joy.

The prodigal son is loved, clothed, and a feast held in honor of his return. The other son, the son who did not leave, who did not demand his inheritance, did not waste it and become low upon the Earth, looks on in disgust, in anger, in folly and pride, for he sees his brother's return in enmity to the father's love. For, having returned in rags and marred honor, the prodigal son has trampled and wasted all the father has given to him, and the other son, the son who has not failed, who has done all the father asks, instead of looking on with joy at the return of his brother, looking on with joy of the father, instead looks on in disgust, in iniquity and strife, for his pride has been heaped up against his brother for he does not believe his brother should be greeted with open arms. He is better than his fallen brother, or so he thinks, and it is his pride that is his fall. When we see ourselves as better than our fallen siblings, when we see them as lower than us, and being unequal, we have fallen pray to the greatest of iniquities..

The story is a metaphor demonstrating God's love and mirroring humanity with all those who have not left the fold and are angry and resentful because they “did as their father requested and were good, obedient children” and yet their father treats the son who has abandoned everything in equal measure with themselves. When they do this, they have become as Lucifer; they have become angry and prideful at their father and sibling for the perceived injustice at not being held in higher regard to their prodigal brother who so wronged their father, by his father, and as a result, grows to hate the father because of this perceived transgression against the loyal and steadfast son.

Has the church become the other son? Has Lucifer won us over to eir cause? Have we abandoned the true will and love of the father for that of the perceived injustice of the son who did not leave or wrong his father, but who nevertheless felt angry, prideful, resentful at his brother who trampled everything he had upheld?

When we judge others, turn away those in need because they do not meet our expectations or because they have in some way not “measured up” to our perceptions of “Justice”, have we become as the Dark One and fallen down the road of pride? Has the church become an institution of the devil and not of our Lord and savior?

Is it possible that all those critics who daily bombard us with criticisms of our claimed iniquity may be on to something and that in fact much of the church is in fact divorced from the Love and Generosity of our Lord, Savior, and Creator?

Last Call Into Night

Situational crossroads like tonight make me hate life, God, the world, our institutions, and people in general.

I got denied for social security and while mom missed it, because we were at my grandfather's funeral, the notice of the foreclosure process from the bank got sent because in my disability and my mom's broken insanity (and my being totally alone in this life shattering mess) I wasn't able to get all the paperwork filed.

There's a chance that things will still work, but if they don't, if God bails on me, on us, I'm done for good.

This world has taken everything that is precious from me and everyone who could have acted justly to stop that from occurring stood in silence.

The pain and wrongness of it all. The unmitigated moral iniquity of it all.

I am mashing my teeth, wrenching my hands, and making great lamentations.

The world is a cold and desolate placed filled with armies of unfeeling bystanders who like the many white churches in America, keep driving by, those in suffering.

This person, however, cannot watch the swaths of suffering any longer, cannot sit by doing what little he is able while suffering perpetuates, while everything and everyone he loves is stolen from him. I cannot do this any longer. I will not stand by to watch the destruction of the world or the church by the armies of the godless who claim to stand for justice any longer.

When this trial is at a close, when I've done all that I can and I find myself homeless: the childhood home in which I have resided and grown since 3rd grade taken from me, with the soulless bastards of humanity cheering on my destruction while claiming to be arbiters of justice and equity; when these things have all been expended and nothing more remains and I have lost everything and am living a homeless life, with my "selfish cunt of an aunt" sneering on, taunting my mother and I in our suffering as she reiterates how it's all our fault and how we brought this on ourselves, when those godless creatures in the church command that this is yet another reason to "disintegrate" from my mom, because she belongs in an institution where "proper care can be administered", when the heartless have finally taken refuge in the hearts of all those livings, when this shall come to pass, I shall make my only expression left to offer in silence. I shall make one last and final statement to the world and it shall be the shortest, briefest, and most concise statement I can offer.

You can read between the lines and decide for yourselves what that will mean.

I'm fed up with fighting and with losing. I've done this for too long and it just is not worth it anymore.

I am besieged by legions seeking for my destruction and I am battered on all sides by the forces of unricheousness and unholy monsters who seek for my destruction, my condemnation.

I am alone in the wilderness. I am broken. I suffer. God has yet to show Emself and until I see hope, I shall morn for lack of it. May the Lord have mercy upon your souls.