Why Video Games aren't Enough, Hooray for Boardgames

I have a theory.  It is only a theory. Video games are less able to create strong minds and memories than board games and similar sorts of games.  Growing up my brother and I knew an enormous number of people, friends, acquaintances, who read history books, read from books about what people had done in the past, either in fiction or non-fiction.  The chance thereafter to play board games that reenacted a war, or simulated the event in question, wasn't based upon imagination, but rather, upon the facts of history.  This isn't necessarily saying that it was perfect, I lost battles that the Allies in WW2 had won.  But it allowed me to see the risks and rewards of various strategies.

Video games of the last 30 years have absolutely progressed beyond belief.  A kid born, such as me, in 1963 could never have imagined what people can do, online, and in the video games of the present.  That the alien planets of the imagination, that cities of the future and past could be recreated, are all exciting, fun to visit settings.  I have no question that the people creating them are talented and far brighter than anything I might achieve in a similar field.  This is not, then, to say I hate video games.  It is that the games I played relied often upon your ability to understand strategy, and your familiarity with the past, and the great leaders, tactics and events of the past.

In one situation the player is essentially led through an adventure.  On the other, a person has to be able to understand the information he has learned, and translate that to action, and pour it out upon the maps and game fields of the board game in question.  I have absolutely nothing against role playing, either in the form of video games or pen and paper, dice and books, but the difference to me is, one requires acting, random chance, and fiction, while the other ends up being an outgrowth of your deepening understanding of the event in question.

The game I am sharing is RAID ON St. NAZAIRE by Avalon Hill.  The game simulates an amazing event, when the United Kingdom's Commando force developed and carried out a raid to destroy the only Dry Dock's large enough to repair the Tirpitz and other attacks meant to destroy the submarine pens and other facilities.    The fear of the dry dock not being put out of action was that the enormous sister ship of the Bismarck would be able to repaired, and released back into the Atlantic, wear convoys were fresh targets to the hungry U-boats and commerce raiders of Nazi Germany.

The more one knows about the plan versus the result of the raid actually helps the player play.  Repeated plays of the game replay the random events, and a perfect  mission/raid is nearly impossible to achieve.  But in the end, the player is well able to appreciate the enormous courage required, the planning and intelligence used, and in the end, the amazing consequence for the war of stoppering up the Tirpitz to ports north, and without the ability to fully hold the behemoth ship Tirpitz, the battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies.

THE RAID ON SAINT NAZAIRE

A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE RAID

THE SAINT-NAZAIRE SOCIETY

There is a lot to be said for video games.  But I do not know how they further ones intellect, understanding, or wisdom.  They seem to me to be fun, but there is nothing, or very little beyond that that I find of deeper interest.

This sounds, of course, to the players of video games, that I am saying, your games suck, and you are stupid.  I really don't mean to say that.  What I mean to say, is, games from the past were born from books about relatively important factually knowable statistical events.  Games from the present focus upon fiction.  Board games and the books and ideas that fed them, were not "geek" oriented, you could find professors of history or military men feeling entirely comfortable playing them, in a form of war gaming.  There was always fun, but, the fun was based upon a depth of knowledge, interest, and a growing knowledge and understand as a result of playing.   My brother, referred to earlier, and myself, read books, all kinds.  We had friends, in the same peer groups, reading the same kind of works.  History books, battle books, and more were normal reading.  The average person I knew, read and was interested in similar matter.  The internet and video games,  does offer a vast array of information, areas of interest, hobbies, fictional universes, movies, and fictional concepts to deal with.  But to the extent that I agree with that, the issue is not with the variety of information, but how it is used.

Why, that is Inhuman!

They have existed under the sea, on a far away hidden island, in the Himalayan mountains, and on the Moon, as well as countless other unrecorded locations.  But always they lived in a land of a specific name.  First mentioned in 1941 by Jack Kirby, Attilan a country, city, and mystical place.  It is the ancient city, capital and home of the Inhumans.

They are an evolutionary advanced offshoot and self mutated group of humans who are both super human, and also, persecuted for being different.  The royal family is generally what the comic book appearances feature, and their first appearances in comics were in Fantastic Four #45.

While the Inhumans are not warlike they are not so peace devoted as to become martyrs for a world that would rather see them destroyed for racial purity.  Many of the stories of the Inhumans feature forms of racial persecution and racial hate and segregation. As I am a fan of the great Jack Kirby you might assume that I love the Inhumans due to his part in their creation.  But the best Inhumans story was written by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by Jae Lee, I can only recommend it, I cannot force you to read it, but you should.

Party Lines

“I often think it comical

That Nature often does contrive

To make each boy and ev'ry gal

Who's born into this world alive,

Either a little liberal

Or else a little conservative.”

– W.S. Gilbert

Some years back, I came across a piece whose author contended that comic book superheroes were by their very nature intrinsically conservative. I no longer remember where I read it, alas, nor do I recall the author's reasoning, but it made me think. I considered writing a piece of my own for a blog I contributed to at the time, and went so far as to ask a few comic book professionals a friend introduced me to for their opinion on the subject. Only a few responded, and about the most useful reply came from Mike Grell, who wrote and drew the excellent JON SABLE FREELANCE back in the '80s and the graphic novel GREEN ARROW: THE LONGBOW HUNTERS. He said: “Liberal hero = Green Arrow written by Denny O'Neil. Conservative hero = Green Arrow written by me.”

I set the idea aside because I had trouble organizing my thoughts on the subject. But every once and a while I pick it up again, and maybe this time I'll get somewhere with it.

The biggest problem, of course, is first defining our terms. Ambrose Bierce defined a Conservative as “A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” Which is pithy, but not particularly helpful. Trying to get more specific, I find myself careening into one type of strawman or another. For example, some have embraced THE INCREDIBLES, one of the best superhero movies ever, as a conservative film because it rails against the mindset that “everybody gets a medal” and that those who excel at anything ought to be punished for their success. Which is apparently supposed to be a fundamental tenant of liberalism. But you could just as easily point to Bob Parr's boss in the movie, who chews him out for putting his customers ahead of the company's bottom line, as a critique of conservative-style Free-Market Capitalism. But that's a simplistic caricature, you say? Yes, it is.

I suppose one argument on the conservative side of the superhero question is that heroes are all about Fighting Evil, while everybody knows that Liberals are Soft On Crime. There's a bit in Frank Miller's BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS in which Batman is pressuring a henchman for information. “I got rights!” the crook bleats. “You've got rights. Lots of rights,” Batman replies in a Clint Eastwood rasp. “Sometimes I count them just to make myself feel crazy.” But you could also say that heroes are all about helping people in need and that this runs counter to the Gospel of Selfishness preached by the disciples of Ayn Rand. Yes, more strawmen.

Perhaps a better argument would be that in the world of comic book superheroes, the Government, as represented by the police, is incapable of fighting evil by itself and needs the help of the Heroic Citizen-Super, the Rugged Individualist who asks for no Government Handouts. And there are heroes who fit this view; but are they intrinsic to the genre?

Superman would seem to be the perfect example of the Republican Super-Hero. Raised with small-town Midwestern values, he represents authority and fights for the American Way. He's been called a Big Blue Boy Scout, and he neither denies the charge, nor considers it an insult. In recent decades, it's been fashionable to contrast his politeness and willingness to work with the Authorities with Batman, who follows his own moral code and whose relationship with the police, outside of Jim Gordon, is decidedly touchy. ; and many writers have followed that characterization.

Some critics have seen in the early Superman a personification of FDR's New Deal, swooping down to defend the Little Guy being pushed around by the Big Shots. In one early story, Superman helps a group of striking miners by grabbing the mine owners and bringing them down to the mine, forcing them to negotiate.

Others have gone as far as to label Superman a fascist, mostly because of his name and it's association with Friedrich Nietzsche. “You always say yes – to anyone with a badge – or a flag...” Batman grumbles to Superman at one point in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS; and the movie trailers for BATMAN V SUPERMAN certainly play up the the idea of Superman as Creepy Übermensch . But I think that's a glib and superficial reaction too. Apart from the name, Superman shares none of Nietzsche's philosophy. I suspect that Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster chose the name mainly because it sounded cool.

During World War II, Superman and Batman, like pretty much all their contemporaries, set aside differences of Right and Left in order to help smash the Axis. After the War, some heroes went looking for other villains to fight. Captain America tried a brief second career as a Red Smasher. This didn't work out quite as well. Commies just didn't seem to make as good villains as the Nazis did. When Cap was revived in the '60s, this phase of his career was first ignored, then ret-conned as the adventures of another guy posing as Captain America. Superman briefly went after the KKK. A reporter had gone undercover to investigate the Ku Klux Klan, but could not find a news outlet willing to publish his story; so he approached the writers of the Superman radio serial. They did a lengthy story arc in which Superman battles the Klan, using information from the reporter's investigation.

Both Superman and Batman appeared in public service ads during the post-War era that seem pretty liberal these days. At the time, though, these sentiments were considered mainstream and uncontroversial. When Superman urged his readers to “Hop on the Welfare Wagon!”, as he did in one PSA about how public, private and charitable organizations all have a role to play in the health of American citizens; or when Batman reminds kids that treating others equally regardless of race or creed is the American Way, they were both promoting ideals of Good Citizenship, not partisan ideology.

It's been said that Stan Lee was politically in the center; too conservative for Jack Kirby, a working-class Democrat and child of the Depression who co-created Captain America, and too liberal for Steve Ditko, the principled Objectivist. But as he tried to incorporate real-world elements into the comics he wrote for Marvel, political themes came in as well. Tony Stark became Iron Man when he was captured by Communist forces in South East Asia and had to invent his way to escape. Many heroes of the early Marvel Age fought Communist villains such as the Red Ghost (and his Super-Apes!) in FANTASTIC FOUR, and the Abomination in THE INCREDIBLE HULK. But other heroes had WWII backgrounds; most obviously Captain America, but also Nick Fury and even Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. In one early issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, the team fought a character calling himself the Hate-Monger whose incendiary oratory (and mood-altering H-ray device) inspired people to commit violence against immigrants. Unlike present-day nativists, the Hate-Monger wore a purple Klansman hood and when unmasked was revealed to be none other than Adolf Hitler. (Later this was ret-conned to be a clone of Hitler).

During the late '60s and early '70s a generational shift occurred at DC as well. I have a copy of AMAZING WORLD OF DC, the company's in-house fanzine which has an article about the history of the Justice League of America. The piece contains little caricatures of some of the creators who worked on the JLA, and you can see the shift. The old guard, men like Gardner Fox and E. Nelson Birdwell are white collar men in ties with neat crewcuts who would have looked perfectly at home in an episode of “Mad Men”. Then there were the new breed, like Cary Bates and Denny O'Neil, long-haired hippie radicals.

O'Neil in particular became an influential part of DC's “Relevance Era” during the early '70s. He re-cast Green Arrow, who had previously been a fairly lame Batman knock-off with an archery gimmick, into a latter-day Robin Hood, driven to pursue Social Justice. In a famous issue of GREEN LANTERN, he challenged the by-the-book space cop Hal Jordan to re-examine his priorities and for a while the comic, re-titled GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW, became a buddy book as the two heroes traveled the country in a pick-up truck searching for America and discussing politics. Similarly, during his run writing JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, O'Neil had Green Arrow argue politics with another Establishment figure, Hawkman.

This idea of using comics to express a dialogue on political views comes up every once in a while, but it's difficult to do well. During the Vietnam War Era, Steve Ditko created Hawk and Dove, personifying the Pro and Anti-War factions in the country as a pair of super-powered brothers with differing philosophies about violence. I think Ditko's intention was to show these characters complementing each other and finding a balance between the two views. Later writers pretty much turned them into Goofus and Gallant: Dove, the peaceful one, was intelligent and always right; Hawk, the violent one, was stupid and always wrong.

More recently, the Marvel cross-over series CIVIL WAR set out to dramatize the debate between Individual Freedom and Homeland Security through a proposed law requiring super-heroes to register with the Government, dividing the super-hero community between those resisting the law and those enforcing it. Marvel's intent was to have reasonable arguments on both sides, but as the story actually played out the pro-registration side wound up looking like the bad guys.

A 2008 DC miniseries, DECISIONS, tried to approach super-politics on a smaller scale. An unknown villain is trying to assassinate presidential candidates by mind-controlling members of their campaign staffs. After thwarting one of these attacks, Green Arrow makes a public comment endorsing a liberal candidate, sparking a debate among his fellow Justice Leaguers about super heroes and politics. In the end, Superman is the one to deliver the stern moral that super-heroes need to keep their opinions to themselves and just do their jobs.

I guess I keep coming back to Mike Grell's comment, that a super-hero's politics depends on whomever is writing him. But clearly the spirit of the times in which the story is written has a lot to do with it as well. I keep thinking of more examples of politically-themed comics and am no closer to organizing my thoughts. And I still haven't really addressed the question I started with.

Maybe one of these day's I'll write this thing.

Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA

Behold Akira, the amazing journey into post apocalypse mutant madness.  Click the images for the larger image.

The year is 2019 and speed tribes, cyberpunk, mutant gangs all collide in the streets of old Tokyo.  It was destroyed in 1982 with nuclear weapons when the world entered WWIII.  Now Neo Tokyo tries to forget the past and become a beacon of hope and new beginnings.  But the struggles to forget the disasters, and mutations, lead only to new and more catastrophic events.

The comic was beautifully done and captured the Japanese sense of fear and pain over the past use of nuclear weapons, and its fascination with the motorcycle gangs (Speed Tribes) and cyberpunk worlds.

The manga was turned into an animated color film, and is considered by many critics to be a masterpiece.  I prefer the comics, and am not a snob, the comics are just more detailed and more clear about the events.

I thoroughly recommend this to any human.  Not to anyone who is mutant however.

Capturing real African American History through poem, music and photography

Abel Meeropol (February 1903 – October1986) was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. His best-known song is "Strange Fruit" (1937) adapted from his poem Bitter Fruit, especially as recorded by Billie Holiday.  This work was inspired by his outrage upon viewing the photograph showing the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930.

Billie Holiday went through a number of obstacles after receiving the poem now lyrics and having had them placed to music, to record the song.  From distributors saying no to carrying the music, to the artist's label refusing to release the music, Holiday went out of her way to release the work, and it eventually sold well over one million copies.  It was an anthem of the African American outrage towards lynching, as much as simply the horror and outrage by many towards the harsh racism prior to the era of Civil Rights, and beyond.



Originally the photo of the lynching was sold to souvenir seekers, and those who approved of such practices.  But upon seeing the photo, the author used the power of the image to turn the racist message upside down.  The poem and song powerfully tell the viewer of the image, exactly what they were seeing.

The Artist In Exile

Ovid Banished from Rome (1838) by J.M.W. Turner.

EXILE

Etymology-- Middle English exil, from Old French essil, exil, from Latin exsilium, exilium ‎(“state of exile”), derived from exsul, exul ‎(“exiled person”).
 
Meaning:
1. The state of being banished from one's home or country. 
2. Someone who is banished from one's home or country.  

The world does not gladly suffer fools, nor does it suffer geniuses.  Many of the greatest minds developed their genius, or creative spirit in isolation or solitude.  In doing so they have created new ideas, new outlooks and theories, and new art that could never have come from anyone else, until that artist or mind created it.   Many times the genius or creative does so not in a great effort to help or save society, nor to become famous or wealthy, but instead, to announce themselves, and to express what they are.

There are artists who are forced to leave their country due to the political backlash against their work.  There are geniuses who leave their country in self exile out of disgust or frustration with the response they've received.  Many are bright or talented beyond measure, but are so different, so iconoclastic that they never can fit in.  Many times the work of a genius mind or creative talent is accepted with joy by the audience.  And the creator of it is horrified by the demands of joining or being forced to be adulated by the herd.  Artists are often hoping for a response, but not looking for stardom.  Many introverts fear that response. 

 OUTCAST

"In Genesis 16:12 of the Bible, defines figuratively an outcast. "And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.""  Borrowed from Wiki

The life one leads within a community or outside of one is often lived within boundaries of normal.  The artist is at once gifted as a reporter of life, but often forced to live outside of it, either in punishment or as an outcast, one who is looked upon with distrust or worse, disgust and scorn.

EXAMPLES FROM THE REAL WORLD

Bobby Fischer was America's greatest chess player, the greatest mind about chess for decades.  And when he defeated the Russian champion of it, he was expected to become a multi year winner, and media star.  But not only did Fischer eschew the spotlight, he tried to disappear, and when forced out of hiding made numerous egregious statements, many being anti-Semitic.  He left the US when he was going to be sanctioned for playing chess in a country that was undergoing sanctions.  He never returned, and spat upon the US documents of citizenship, passport, and comments regarding his choices.  He remained a genius, but many saw him as both an outcast, and a self exile.

Ezra Pound was a great poet, but one who did not view the world from the same lens as most anyone else.  He was fixated upon ideals of purity and antiquity, the role of imagism, time juxtaposition, and allegory/metaphor playing deeply in his work.  He chose to leave the US for England, then mainland Europe, where people would have a similar outlook, or at least acceptance of his views.  As he lived, his views took upon a more troubled aspect, that Fascism as demonstrated by the Italian state under Mussolini could offer a firm society where the arts were patroned by the state, and people had lives that were tailored to become apt workers of the state.  And then he made that worse, by adopting the anti-Semitic words of other Fascists, that the reign of Mussolini mostly avoided.  Pound used his fame to help Italian fascists, and was considered by the US to be a traitor.  He is said to have gone insane during the time he was kept in cages waiting for trial.  But insanity is always a means of declaring an artist to be "out of step".  Late in his life Pound deeply regretted his views regarding Jews, but never really disavowed Fascism so clearly.


Ovid was the greatest or one of the greatest poets of Rome.  His work covered areas of legend, myth, and love.  He was greatly talented, far ahead of his time regarding his style, his devotion to craft, and was popular as an artist.  But he did something that the state did not like.  The state being the Emperor Augustus.  No one actually knows in the present what it was that caused this problem.  But it was a problem. In one of the great questions of literary history, he was sent by Emperor Augustus into exile.  And there in a remote province on the Black Sea, he remained until his death.

Ovid was exiled for reasons he and Augustus knew.  Perhaps as Ovid said, the exile was a mistake, and perhaps a poem struck Augustus wrong.  But the result was, a person so greatly devoted to the greatness of Rome, was cast out.

JMW Turner painted an image of Rome following the exile of Ovid, which cleverly shows the setting of the sun, the dying of the bright light, and dulling of the Roman state as a result.

Yukio Mishima was a pen name for a wildly talented writer, Kimitake Hiraoka.  He wrote poetry, essays, fiction, plays and was considered a very fine writer, with a few personal kinks.

He was fascinated and fixated upon the Samurai ideal.  He believed in many political beliefs that were out of step with the post World War 2 rebuilding generation.  While the West helped the Japanese rebuild after war, Mishima chafed at the neutered role of the military, Japan being forbidden from acts of war to the point that their military was called the "Self Defense Force."  He believed that Japan was becoming disconnected from its powerful, unique, and glorious Samurai tradition.

He also created an illusion about himself that he too was a samurai.  He used weightlifting to perfect his body into that of the warrior's perfect image.  He used his body in modeling, and to attract men similar in his outlook, as well as his bisexuality.  He created a small personal army, of sorts, and believed it was groups like his that would remind Japan of its role in the world.  At the same time, he smoked western cigarettes, drank foreign alcohol, wore European tailored suits, and was a world traveler.  He was a special kind of outcast and exile, he created an image and personae of a person who Japan was ready to leave behind.  The world paid well for the ingenuity of Japan, and war cost money, and killed young lives.  Mishima was an anachronism and one that sounded foolish the further Japan grew, and the louder Mishima became.

Upon finishing his final work of his The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, the Decay of the Angel, he sent the manuscript to his editor.  He then prepared for his final act.  He gathered his closest comrades in his secret army, and strode into a colonel's office at a military base.  They kidnapped the officer, barricaded themselves inside, and demanded an audience with men from that unit who were training.  The unit was called out, and for a while Mishima harangued them about Japan, the world, Samurai ideals, and destiny.  In response he was called Baka-yaro which means asshole, or fool.  Mishima realized he was an exile within his own people.  He began his final act, Seppuku.  He took his Katana sword, bent down in the hara kiri fashion, and ripped open his bowels.  His second officer was unable to complete the ritual suicide, as planned, but another did so, and then to Mishima's second who was likely, his lover.  Japanese people were neither horrified, nor confused, but the world couldn't understand at all what was going on.

But the Japanese understood, even if they were not sympatico, what he was saying, they simply didn't wish to return to the past.  He had stated, more than once, "I want to make a poem of my life."  With his last act, he became a legend, rather than a writer.

Josephine Baker was different than others on this list, not for her gender, but for her race.  She was beautiful, talented as a dancer, and had a burning inside to perform, in a certain fashion, but would not be able to do so in her homeland.  She sought that stage, and found it in France.  While there is racism in France, and Europe in general, she was perceived as exotic, rather than simply a negro.  She was given money, and achieved fame, for her talents, rather than be limited by her country's outlook upon race.  It was not unnoticed by American blacks that she was a success.  And few scorned her for her choice.  They all understood the system that kept black Americans from becoming as successful as possible.  And when she finally returned to America, she did so as a star from Europe, than a returning American, coming home.

Many people who venture out to comedy clubs, in America do not realize that the R rated, or even X rated humor they are hearing would have been next to impossible without the struggle of Lenny Bruce.  He made some very clear comments about the world, used humor and black humor especially to punctuate his commentary, and he was crucified by obscenity laws, over aggressive prosecutors, and a society that had a Constitution and Bill of Rights, but apparently Freedom of Speech wasn't really for real.  Lenny Bruce challenged the country by what he said, some loved his work, many never heard his work but hated him with some degree of fire.  He was not a saint.  But he did cause Americans to think about, what does it actually mean to allow free speech.  He was an outcast, he was not beloved until much, much later.  But by challenging the passive, conservative society, he allowed others to speak without fear of arrest, for ideas.

First the comic, then the Movie or TV Series

COMIC BOOK WEBSITE

Some people haven't the time to try to understand what is going on with Powers.  That is the only thing I can imagine is their problem with it.  Because it does what others have tried for decades.  The comic, written by Brian Bendis and illustrated by Mike Oeming, tells a story that features police officers dealing specifically with the crimes of people known as Powers.  But, the thing is, however real other books have tried to be, powers don't exist for us but in POWERS they do, they are normal in the sense of known and seen daily, so the depth of emotion and consequence of the stories is insanely powerful (no pun intended).  If there were people who could do this, do that, and we knew, they'd be seen as being just short of Gods.  But also, while exciting, people without powers would eventually come to fear or distrust those with powers.  What other comics try to show, Powers deals with every issue.  It is among the best comics I've ever read.  At the very least, it reminds me of why I love comics with every issue I read.

And now, after a determined effort to bring the work to television, a misfire or failed pilot behind them, they've completed a first season of POWERS the television series. And it is a miracle. Critics can shed tears over characters and bloodshed, but I promise, if you are a comic book fan, and especially if you've read and loved POWERS, the series is amazing.  I accept that there are people who won't like it for one reason or the other, but I promise that people who love the series are involved in it, and it shows.  The only quibble I have isn't worth mentioning because, honestly, this isn't a review, but a notice for people who haven't been aware, that they need to be.

Playstation Network shows first run episodes, but the first season can be seen on Crackle.com.  And thank you Crackle.com.  I don't watch television.  But my son and I chose to try this show because of my love for the comic, and we both are now deeply ready for season 2.

BENDIS WEBSITE   OEMING WEBSITE

WEBSITE FOR THE TELEVISION SHOW