This is kind of an update to Tuesday’s post.
It is awfully curious why the mayor would demand that a police precinct be abandoned for the mob to loot and burn, destroying everything in the evidence room.
It’s ridiculous to believe politicians could be involved in anything unethical, illegal, or evil, right? It’s also ridiculous to believe Epstein killed himself, but here we are.
It’s finally here, and the worst thing I can say about it is that it took so long to be released. I can’t remember the last time I experienced this kind of anticipation for the next episode of anything. Comic books haven’t inspired much but anger, boredom, and nausea for many years…until Alt★Hero came along.
As much as I’ve enjoyed all the Alt★Hero releases, the first Q comic was my favorite. It ended on a high point (of a dramatic, not emotional, quality) and I did wonder if the next one could live up to the promise established by the artwork, plotting, and action.
Not to worry. The art seems like a slight step down from last time, but the writing is still very strong.
As the title implies, Roland Dane was supposed to die alongside the target of the deep state hit in South America right before Q made contact with him. Q temporarily convinced the Cabal that their “two-fer” successfully took out Agent Dane, then Q gave Dane a new life and new identity, as well as a new mission.
That mission involves getting some background on the replacement for the assassinated Secretary of State, and it isn’t long before Dane is feeling the heat from the kill-crazy Cabal.
So far as I know, real-life Q enthusiasts/allies/researchers/autists work almost entirely online, at sites like 8Chan (which, by sheer coincidence, of course, was shut down due to pressure from powerful and shadowy entities unbothered by Internet forums populated by people actually guilty of what they accuse 8Chan denizens). In this story, though, the anons are more deeply invested, and physically involved in Q’s clandestine operations–in a support capacity, at least.
Some of the technical details (particularly with regard to military minutiae) are still being flubbed–which is par for the course in just about all entertainment these days. Not since Marvel’s The Nam back in the ’80s have I seen consistent effort at technical accuracy in a comic book.
Exposition was handled quickly and deftly in the first issue, yet it feels like the main plot is still being set up. Action junkies will be delighted with how the narrative is being weaved, though the individual issues certainly seem to fly by quickly. I’m still as intrigued as a reader can be, but I hope I don’t have to wait this long again for #3.
Let’s document a very recent sequence of events:
July 6, 2019: Long time Clinton comrade Jeffrey Epstein is arrested for kiddie-diddling yet again. (Despite the sexual predator receiving only a slap on the wrist after his previous convictions of sexual crimes against children, this time there is an Attorney General who might be interested in bringing him to justice.) Sites like Wikipedia begin whitewashing Epstein’s Internet footprint to erase his ties to the Clintons and other Deep State front men (and women).
July 24, 2019: Amidst speculation that Epstein is ratting out the politicians, powerful bureaucrats and others who flew on his “Lolita Express” and visited his “Pedophile Island,” the Democrats try to breathe new life into their Russian Collusion Hoax by having Robert Mueller testify before Congress. (It is a media circus in which Mueller refuses to answer questions, feigns ignorance about the witch hunt he conducted, and claims with a straight face that details of his own Special Council Investigation are “outside my purview.” Of course, he gets away with it.)
July 24, 2019: A possible attempted “arkancide” in jail against Epstein fails. You might notice that this attempt occurred while all the Democrat news outlets (AKA: “mainstream media”) were hyping the Mueller testimony, doing their best to make sure all attention was on the Congressional hearing.
July 25, 2019: Interview footage surfaces of Scammer Extraordinaire Ilhan Omar declaring that white men are the real threat in the USA. She takes time out from committing tax fraud, marriage fraud, immigration fraud, and incest, to explain that “white men” are more dangerous than Jihadists, and “we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.”
July 29, 2009: An active shooter incident takes place at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California (a “gun-free zone”). Originally the Lone Nut was reported to be a white male who announced that he was “very angry” in between indiscriminate murders at the festival. It turns out, Santino Legan is of Iranian/Italian descent, but you’ll never hear that from the Democrat-Media Machine. It’s doubtful they’ll even invent a “white Iranian” classification, lest anyone make the Muslim connection. The “dangerous white male with an assault weapon” narrative is what matters. Initially, a second suspect is classified as “at large” by the police. This will quickly be memory-holed by…
August 1, 2019: It is publicized that the FBI has declared right wing “conspiracy theorists” to be “domestic terrorists.” that’s right–you no longer actually have to commit a violent or terrorist act (or plan or conspire to commit one); merely disagreeing with CNN and Google’s top search results is enough for you to wind up on a terrorist watch list. It’s almost like Ilhan Omar wrote this policy herself.
August 3, 2019: Another shooting breaks out, at a Wal-Mart (another “gun free zone”) near the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. There are a lot of suspicious details about this one, including early reports that there were at least four perpetrators.
The Narrative quickly changed to Lone Nut and it’s doubtful you’ll hear about the other shooters again. “There is no John Doe #2. There never was a John Doe #2. Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia. Go back to sleep.” Finally–a white male shooter with a semiautomatic rifle assault weapon!!!! Omar is right! The FBI is right! And there’s even a convenient manifesto Patrick Crusius supposedly posted online detailing his motivations (including a desire for universal health care and universal income–socialist ideals) and, strangely, his weapon selection. Even better: he transformed into a Republican NRA member and Qanon follower hours after his arrest. But before you get all carried away asking questions and scrutinizing The Narrative…
August 4, 2019: Look! Another active shooter–this one outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio (a “gun-free zone”?). Another Lone Nut (Connor Betts) white male with a scary-looking assault weapon and high-capacity magazine, legally purchased. Any minute now, we’ll find out he subscribes to InfoWars, voted for Trump, is an OathKeeper and eats at Chick-Fil-A.
As of this writing, there is no word of another active shooter media event. But by the time you read this, there very well could be. If enough of these shootings occur in increasing frequency, maybe collective emotions will overwhelm not-so-common sense. Trump signed on to the idiotic bump stock ban in the shriekfest after the Las Vegas shooting. Everyone is watching to see if he’ll piss away his reelection by betraying his base again.
Update: Connor Betts posted a “hit list” in the boy’s room of his high school, and evidently had some anger/self-esteem/depression issues. He subsequently “got help” and his sister (murdered in his brief rampage) thought he had adjusted. About the “help” he got:
Update #2: Let’s not forget, either, that there have been people deliberately and specifically trained to become active shooters in these kind of mass murders, but the “justice system” has no interest in stopping them. Their only interest, as should be clear by all the Democrat/media rhetoric being spewed from your TV 24/7, is disarming Americans who are not criminals, terrorists, or murderers.
This recent movie by John Lee Hancock seems like a radical departure from the 1967 counterculture film that elevated Bonnie and Clyde from grotesque criminals to sympathetic antiheroes in popular culture.
Film critics are nearly in lockstep, bleating that The Highwaymen is a step backwards from The Narrative so carefully cultivated over generations. Americans who identify as “conservative” praise the new film because it is more factually based and has a “law and order” slant to it.
Both the critics and cheerleaders of The Highwaymen are stuck in a superficial analysis of the film, seemingly oblivious to how it fits into the context of where we are culturally and politically, and have conveniently missed or ignored hints from the film makers why The Narrative of Bonnie and Clyde has been turned topsy-turvy.
But context is crucial. To understand how both the Hancock and Penn films could spawn from the same cultural Marxist Hive Mind, and yet take such dramatically opposed perspectives, we have to go back to when the Baby Boomers were young radicals spitting on veterans returning home from Vietnam at the airports.
The Boomers were the most pampered generation in recorded world history. They showed their appreciation for the peace and prosperity they inherited by strangling the golden goose, ensuring that nobody else could enjoy the world they grew up in. Pop culture was just one of the weapons in their arsenal.
In the lost America they enjoyed, cultural icons like pioneers, farmers, cowboys, soldiers, inventors, entrepreneurs and fathers were accepted and promoted as role models that children should aspire to emulate. But this infuriated the cultural Marxists, who wanted a society like what we have now, where the “heroes” are degenerate celebrities, drag queens, pedophiles, other sexual deviants, illiterate street gangsters, sleazy lawyers, hate crime hoaxers, infanticidal feminists, grifters, serial killers and treasonous politicians.
They couldn’t get the population to accept such a radical change overnight, though. Boiling frogs requires a gradual long march. You could conclude that Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde was one of the early experiments by the cultural svengalis, to determine just how big a step in that direction American moviegoers would accept. The film attempted to transform some murdering thieves from the Depression Era into sympathetic characters. Long story short: it worked.
There was a slew of films glorifying criminals and other “antiheroes” in the wake of Bonnie and Clyde. (You could argue that the trend never really stopped.) Some of the copycat flicks, like George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) not only made the criminals sympathetic, but presented as almost non-human the people who attempted to serve justice. The Pinkerton agents tracking down the protagonists of that film are disposable, interchangeable empty suits, insignificant except for their employment by an “oppressive system” to harass the very human main characters portrayed by popular actors. They are nameless, faceless drones working for “the man.”
The movie critics, now foaming at the mouth because the Texas Rangers in The Highwaymen who stopped the glamorous bankrobbers are portrayed sympathetically, gush in masturbatory praise over the trailblazing, romantic, revisionist Bonnie and Clyde from 1967.
The makers of The Highwaymen are also fans of that Arthur Penn cinematic whitewash.
What has happened in the USA since 1967? To put it simply: the inmates took over the asylum. The communist agitators have been running our government for quite a while now, though they are considered “moderate” or “liberal” by the talking heads on Cux News because they have shoved the Overton Window so far left since taking power.
The “anti-establishment” radicals from the 1960s ARE the Establishment, now. Those who encouraged others to “question authority” now are IN authority. They have been for a while. Those who sought to destroy our institutions now CONTROL those institutions. Those who once complained about the messages in Hollywood movies now DESIGN Hollywood’s messages.
In a 180 degree turn from the Arthur Penn flick, Bonnie and Clyde were almost non-persons in The Highwaymen. Their treatment is shockingly reminiscent of the faceless Pinkertons in Butch Cassidy. Parker and Barrow’s brutality was emphasized, but nothing else was revealed about them (except a little backstory on Clyde’s history of thievery). We didn’t even get a good look at their faces until the end. To put it another way: they were just faceless murderers for nearly the entire film.
That about-face from the Vietnam-era counterculture antihero schtick might be confusing to some.
Know what else could be superficially confusing? The revisionist history on Clyde’s homosexuality. That was intentionally left out of the old movie, because society wasn’t yet conditioned to accept sodomy as normal or preferable. Even a lot of lefties at the time still considered it perverse.
But now homosexuality is ubiquitously promoted as normal and moral–and you better not speak against it or you’ll either lose your job, be fined out of business, or in some cases, jailed. Audiences wouldn’t bat an eye at seeing Clyde depicted that way today, so why wouldn’t the film-makers ram it down our throats as usual, to perpetuate their familiarity-conditioning? They insert it absolutely everywhere else, even when it’s not relevant or necessary, let alone historically accurate. What a curious artistic decision, my dear Watson.
It all makes sense if you look at the cultural landscape today and how different it is from the Vietnam era. Again: the counterculture then is the Establishment now, and vice-versa. Now the ruling class must be presented as noble and heroic, while the everyman proles must be depicted as suspicious, unwashed, and dangerous. Outsiders, dissenters, and anti-establishment rebels need to be feared, doxxed, ostracized, demonized, financially ruined, and, the very moment it is acceptable to popular opinion: riddled like Swiss cheese by armed government goons.
Like free speech and everything else, the fringe left’s position is opposite what it supposedly was before they secured ironclad institutional power.
As an adjunct of this, the film makers had to rewrite Clyde as heterosexual or they just couldn’t have brought themselves to show him for the murdering thief he was.
The Vietnam-era Bonnie and Clyde were stand-ins for the likes of Saul Alinsky and Jane Fonda, while the nameless, soul-less G-Men were stand-ins for Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater. The current-year law men (played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson) are stand-ins for Eric Holder and John Brennan; while the faceless, soul-less bankrobbers are stand-ins for the likes of Donald Trump, Roger Stone and the average deplorable in Flyover Country.
The Highwaymen screenwriter John Fusco is another fan of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, and himself (in the interview linked above) implies a connection between Trump supporters and Bonnie and Clyde, confirming the reason for this paradigm shift.
We are back stateside, and the nationalist superteam has decided they need to win hearts and minds by fighting crime. Hammer and Rebel are teamed up on patrol to keep the streets safe.
But the tension continues to build, and the artwork has improved again. There’s an interesting story arc taking shape–and building (I hope) towards an epic showdown between the European and American superteams.
Get Alt Hero 5 here.
Read the review of Alt Hero 4.
I haven’t even had a chance to read the last release from the maestro of men’s adventure fiction…and he’s got another one out. Here’s the press release:
GRIP OF DEATH, another all-new novel by Len Levinson has just been published by Rough Edges Press, it was announced today by Jennifer Lawrence, new president of the Len Levinson Fan Club, during a press conference beside the outdoor swimming pool in the sprawling backyard of her Malibu Beach estate.
Ms Lawrence recently replaced Scarlett Johansson as president of the Len Levinson Fan Club. Ms. Johansson was forced to resign due to term limits, much to her regret. “I don’t see Lenny nearly as much as I used to,” she complained bitterly during a recent interview on the Jimmy Fallon Show. “I miss him terribly, his wit, astute advice and stimulating presence.”
In attendance at the press conference were the usual eminent literary critics, distinguished journalists representing major and minor outlets, celebrity porn stars, and delegates from the National Book Awards and Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ms Lawrence explained charmingly to the esteemed gathering that GRIP OF DEATH is set in New York City during the first year of the Civil War. Someone is murdering prominent Wall Street financiers. Is the culprit one or more disgruntled investors? Insane Marxist revolutionaries? Or possibly a Confederate conspiracy to destabilize the Union banking system?
To complicate matters further, a crime wave engulfed New York City following the outbreak of the Civil War, as if that conflict loosened the darkest passions in the hearts of men and women. Robberies, burglaries and assaults were commonplace, including garrotings on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight!
The Detective Precinct is under political pressure to figure out who is killing financiers, but the best detectives have enlisted in New York regiments.
Out of desperation, Deputy Chief of Detectives Timothy Flanagan hires a former army officer wounded at the Battle of Bull Run (only three months ago), and a former Southern Belle stranded in the great Empire City. Flanagan calls her his secretary because women can’t be detectives, but she carries a revolver and does actual detective work.
The ex-officer is a staunch outspoken abolitionist, and the ex-Southern Belle hates abolitionists, blaming them for the invasion of Dixie Land. Naturally they loathe each other on their deepest levels, but must work together to solve the crime.
Their investigation takes them from Fifth Avenue mansions to the dangerous slum called Five Points, from Gramercy Park to Battery Park, from fashionable men’s clubs to elegant and not so elegant whorehouses, gambling dens, the glittering Broadway theater district, the colorful Bowery, and the Peyster Street docks where a man’s life isn’t worth a dead fish.
Along the way the reader will encounter actual historical figures such as banker J.P. Morgan, Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer, newspaperman Horace Greeley, Chief of the Union Intelligence Service Allan Pinkerton, Confederate Senator Robert Barnwell Rhett, real estate tycoon William Backhouse Astor, Archbishop John Hughes of the New York Archdiocese, young Billy the Kid, artist John Frederick Kensett, poet Walt Whitman, a not-very-succesful actor named John Wilkes Booth, members of a criminal gang known as the Dead Rabbits, and the controversial mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood.
Will the Detective Precinct solve the case? They dare not fail. The future of the war and fate of the nation is at stake!
“This is Len Levinson’s great American Civil War novel,” declared Ms. Lawrence. “One could say it is his GONE WITH THE WIND. It is suspenseful, reads smoothly and replete with interesting oddball characters like any other Len Levinson novel. I hope to play the Southern belle in the film version but so does Scarlett Johansson and every other actress in Hollywood.”
Ms. Lawrence pointed out that Len now is author of 85 published novels. He has been acclaimed a “Trash Genius” by THE PAPERBACK FANATIC magazine, was subject of an extensive interview in PAPERBACK PARADE magazine, has been described as “the gold standard” and “the king” of pulp fiction on various Facebook posts, and was introduced as “a legend” at a panel during the 2017 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention.
WEB OF DOOM is now available as an ebook and trade paperback on Amazon.
WEB OF DOOM, Len Levinson’s first all-new novel since 1997, has just been published by Rough Edges Press, it was announced today by Scarlett Johansson, president of the Len Levinson Fan Club, on the veranda of her Beverly Hills palace.
In attendance were eminent literary critics, celebrity journalists representing major and minor outlets, distinguished porn stars, and delegates from the National Book Awards and Nobel Prize for Literature.
According to a press release distributed by members of the Len Levinson Fan Club, WEB OF DOOM is a hard-boiled crime melodrama set in New York City during the 1990s, about a tough ex-NYPD cop accused of the brutal murder of a beautiful socialite in a Times Square hotel. He’d never even met the victim but circumstantial evidence points directly to him, and he must solve the crime or do the time (lethal injection is not out of the question). Needless to say, he is highly motivated to identify the perp, and not averse to busting a few heads of those impeding his investigation.
During Ms. Johansson’s exciting announcement, protestors gathered on the street outside her palace and chanted anti-Len Levinson slogans. Many represented the anti-gun lobby who expressed dismay about gun violence depicted in the novel. They were joined by numerous anti-sex activists enraged by several steamy romantic scenes which the activists considered far beneath standards established by decent snobs everywhere. Also protesting was a small but extremely noisy contingent of pacifists opposed to the novel’s random brawling and one stabbing described in lurid detail.
Len now is author of 84 published novels. He has been acclaimed a “Trash Genius” by THE PAPERBACK FANATIC magazine, was subject of an extensive interview in PAPERBACK PARADE magazine, has been described as “the gold standard” and “the king” of pulp fiction on various Facebook posts, and was introduced as “a legend” at a panel during the 2017 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention.
WEB OF DOOM is available as an ebook for only $2.99 and trade paperback for only $12.99 on Amazon.
“This is a major international literary event,” declared Ms. Johansson. “Len Levinson obviously is the future of quality literature on this planet and possibly even our solar system in general. I urge everyone everywhere to purchase his novel, so that Len can afford the mansion next door and be close to me always, for he is my mentor, my inspiration, and yes, my very reason for living.”
It is rumored but not yet confirmed that a film version of WEB OF DOOM starring Len and Scarlett is in development at MGM.
In Issue #1, Chuck Dixon introduced us to the city of Avalon, via two of the heroes working to keep it safe: Fazer and King Ace.
The moral dillema introduced in the first issue was not spread out…as I first suspected it would be…a la Iron Man’s battle with alcoholism back in the day. It was wrapped up pretty quick.
I can’t completely blame Fazer for holding a grudge, either. Having him thrown in the can for not donating the ill-gotten drug money to some random charity was excessively Boy Scout IMO. In any event, Chuck Dixon has effortlessly sucked me into the Avalon he is building. And there’s a good chance he may prove my theory wrong, too.
I didn’t like a lot of the art–not ready for Prime Time. But the story makes up for it, and there’s a general trend of improvement across the Arkhaven titles, so I’m sure the art will improve with it.
Meanwhile, Arkhaven is working on their first of a five-part series based on the Q phenomenon. Fun times…in some respects.
Arkhaven Comics is already making a name for itself. Granted: it couldn’t have come along at a time when the competition was less formidable. Still, they’re doing a lot of things right, and may just revive an interest in the medium from someone other than obese gamma basement-dwellers looking for something to do in between LGBT parades.
I don’t want to evoke the old post-Watchmen/Dark Knight Returns “grim and gritty” ideal…but to describe my impression in one sentence, I would say this: Avalon reminds me of the early Astro City comics, only darker.
The art strikes me as somewhere between classic Kirby and some of the ’60s Charlton work. As for the story…it seems Dixon is laying the groundwork for a character-driven saga that might border on deconstructive.
Forgive me for all the analogies (and I’m not going to assume Dixon’s goal is moral ambiguity), but Issue #1 strikes me as how the Cohen Brothers might attempt to tell a superhero story. A certain character pontificates on ethics, appointing himself to define the moral code all masked vigilantes should abide by. Meanwhile, some glaring chinks come into focus on his own shining moral armor.
With understated irony Dixon has no doubt honed to a fine point over his prolific career, this same character warns his crimefighting partner not to breathe in the cocaine dust kicked up by a fight with some bad guys. “Don’t want to get a taste for it,” he says. This comes just after a series of panels documenting his own (presumably first) moral failing–for which he will probably develop a taste.
Then again, will it be considered a moral failing in this narrative? I can’t predict for certain.
Another vigilante guns down some unarmed individuals–a couple in bathrobes–who have a child locked in a cage, waiting to be used in some sort of child pornography. As much as I cherish the Bill of Rights, the last thing I want to hear (read) is some speech about due process and how it’s wrong to become judge, jury and executioner, blah blah blah.
I suppose I’m jaded by the criminal “justice” system that occupies reality. Maybe Dixon is, too. It will be interesting to find out as this story weaves out.
The Detective Precinct is under political pressure to figure out who is killing financiers, but the best detectives have enlisted in New York regiments.
