This week has been full of sleep deprivation and adventure, and I am not ashamed to say that the column is going to be a shorter one this week. That’s okay, though, because I have put together a strange gumbo featuring feminism, Batman, and Hollywood musicals. Sometimes it’s awesome being me.
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Books: Sometimes I check a book out of the library that I think is going to be a quick and easy way to pad my numbers on my “How Many Books I Read This Year” checklist, and it ends up being a revelation. Hot, Wet, & Shaking was such a revelation. Author Kayleigh Trace is a queer, disabled sex educator and blogger who has put together a short book about her discoveries about sex and identity in the hopes of educating and enlightening people. It’s also a very profoundly feminist book, which I hadn’t fully realized until I was two-thirds into it and reading a chapter that completely revolutionized the way I looked at the world around me. That chapter struck me so hard that I put it down, placed an order for it on the Internet, and then continued to read the rest of the book, because I knew I was going to want to re-read it and share it and loan it out many times after I’d returned the copy I was holding to the library. Trace is a writer with an incredible gift; she’s funny and crass and also insightful and incisive, and I wish I could write even a small fraction as well as she does. I’m not going to talk about the content, because that needs to be discovered by the reader. I am going to urge everyone I know and respect to read it, though. Because it is that damned good.
Comics: Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth is one of the three self-contained Planetary crossovers that Warren Ellis did for wildstorm in the late 1990s. The first time I picked it up, I was skeptical; clearly shoehorning Batman (the most popular DC superhero) together with Planetary (a team from a boutique WildStorm book) was just a grab for more cash. And in a way, it is, but it’s also more than that. It’s got everything I want from a Planetary story: a fight scene nestled around a big Warren Ellis story concept — a “murderer” in the Gotham City of the WildStorm Universe who is rotating people and things through the multiverse — peppered with sarcasm and one-liners. The murderer’s ability to shift through dimensions allows for the Planetary crew to meet up with Batman, but not just one Batman — a handful of different incarnations of Batman, from a hulking Dark Knight Returns-esque version who speaks in single syllables to a goofy Batman ‘66 type with spray cans in his utility belt to the Batman from the first publication days who carries a gun and is more interested in vengeance than justice. It’s a crossover/team-up the likes of which I’d never seen before nor have I really seen it since. As Planetary is a commentary on superhero books cleverly disguised as an adventure story, Ellis and artists John Cassaday and David Baron smuggle that sensibility into what should have been a crass, commercial throwaway book. Each different incarnation is contrasted with the previous one to show simultaneously how malleable and ridiculous the concept of a Batman really is when you peel back the façade and look at it plainly. This was probably the 10th time I’ve read Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth and it never gets old or stale; it’s still as funny and exciting as I remember it being the first time.
Movies: I find myself in a strange position this week in talking about a movie that I realise is not that great. But that’s the case for The I Don’t Care Girl, a 1953 musical about the life of vaudeville star Eva Tanguay, played by the lovely and talented Mitzi Gaynor. The dialogue is pretty simplistic and the music is hit or miss, but there are some really talented people performing it. Gaynor is an incredible singer and dancer; her performance in the “Johnson Rag” number is exhausting to watch. Plus, it has the wonderful Oscar Levant in a supporting role, who is one of the most unlikely musical stars ever. He sings and plays piano and is loveably gruff in all of his scenes, which are the three main reasons I love watching Oscar Levant. The performances of the two of them are more than enough for me to overlook the fact that it’s a pretty mediocre movie. It’s definitely for serious musical fans only, but if that describes anyone out there, I’d jump on it.
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That’s it for me this week. Until next time, please, please read Hot, Wet, & Shaking. It’s probably the most powerful thing I’ve read all year. I’ll see you in seven days.
