SF Gospel

The Weird Testament: Crumb's Genesis and the Wolverton Bible

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis Illustrated is now out, and my review is up at Religion Dispatches, in a dual review with the Wolverton Bible.

There is nothing sacred to underground and alternative comics creators. Irreverence has been a defining characteristic of the movement since the 1960s, when creators like R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton began using the words-and-pictures medium to create scathing, sex-and-drug-filled satires of square culture. No subject was safe from the savage pens of these cartoonists, and religion—or, more specifically, sanctimoniousness—was a common target... [However,] far from the sharp satire that one might expect from the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, Genesis is a remarkably straight, even reverent, adaptation.

[...]

Many of the most intriguing images in [Basil Wolverton's Old Testament illustrations] feature outlandish pagan idols depicted with a sense of joy and whimsy that suggest Wolverton's delight in the more outré aspects of scripture. A more gruesomely playful example is a terrifying image of the blinding of Samson: given the demonizing of the "injury to the eye motif" in Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and the Senate hearings on violent comics that it produced, one wonders if this image wasn't a sly comment on the broader cultural meaning of violent art.

The uninformed backlash to Crumb's opus has already begun. The Wall Street Journal quotes a spokesperson for the Church of England's declaration: "I haven’t seen the book but I think trying to sell something by emphasizing the sexual nature of some of the scenes doesn’t seem to be a good way to pass on the message of the Bible." Haven't seen the book, indeed-- Crumb, surprisingly, doesn't emphasize the sex in Genesis; but neither does he Bowdlerize it. This I-don't-know-what-it-is-but-I-don't-like-it kind of reaction is more than a little reminiscent of the demonization of The Last Temptation of Christ.  Both that film and the book on which it was based carry a powerful-- and orthodox!-- Christological message, but that didn't stop protestors who had never seen the movie from ddeclaring it offensive. Some Christian conservatives have backpedaled on Last Temptation (after, y'know, actually watching it), so perhaps Crumb's Genesis will gain some acceptance in twenty years or so... 

Read my full review, and see a few pictures from the books, here.

The Many Pleasant Surprises of Strikeforce: Morituri

When I was younger, I had the first two issues of a Marvel Comics series called Strikeforce: Morituri. I enjoyed them, but I knew the series had been canceled pretty quickly, and so I assumed that it wasn't very good, and never sought out any other issues of it. But I was always curious about where the story went.

And so, when I found a complete run of the entire series for 20 cents a pop, I couldn't resist it. Six bucks was a small price to pay to settle one of the enduring mysteries of my childhood, even if it wasn't very good.

Little did I know I was uncovering one of the hidden gems of '80s comics. Strikeforce: Morituri is not just an enjoyable superhero series, it's also a fine work of SF with great art (under the original creative team, at least). I had forgotten, had I ever bothered to learn them as a kid, the names of the writer and artist who created the book: Peter B. Gillis and Brent Anderson. Anderson is the artist on Astro City, one of the best comics you'll ever read, and you can see the beginnings of his mastery of facial expression in this book. Gillis is probably a less-widely-known name, but I now know him as the author of some impressive stories in the '80s. His run on Micronauts was far more contemplative and intelligent than you'd ever expect a toy tie-in book to be.  And he penned a storyline in Doctor Strange in which the Sorcerer Supreme dumps his long-time disciple-slash-girlfriend Clea because he needs to devote himself more fully to meditation and contemplation. I love the Lee/Ditko origins of the character, sure, but it was nice to see somebody ditching their Silver Age caricature of "Eastern mysticism" for something vaguely resembling the life of real-life mountaintop monks.*

Add to that list of Gillis's successes Strikeforce: Morituri, the story of a future Earth overrun by marauding aliens called the Horde. Not powerful enough to actually conquer the planet, the Horde are content to terrorize its inhabitants with random raids and arbitrary acts of brutality. Humankind is powerless to stop them until a scientist develops a technique that can give ordinary humans superpowers. The only catch is the "Morituri effect"-- within a year, the powers will kill their hosts. The setup leaves a lot of room for the characters to meditate on their mortality, and though at times it can be a bit much, Gillis is strong enough a writer that most of that hand-wringing comes across as honest rather than contrived, in large part because of solid characterization.

In my review of Gary K. Wolfe and Archbishop John J. Myers' novel Space Vulture, I mentioned the rarity of low-level religiosity in SF. There are plenty of alternate-universe monks and evil preachers, but very few normal folks who spend an hour a week in a church-- or, if there are, their authors don't mention it. Strikeforce: Morituri offers a nice exception to this in the character of Jelene Anderson, code-named Adept. The Morituri process gives her the ability to comprehend anything, from mechanical technologies to complex life-forms to abstract scientific concepts, if given enough exposure to them. She's also a Christian, and though the volume of her faith is perhaps a little bit louder than one usually sees in the real world (witness the cross motif on her costume), Gillis handles it with much more subtlety than most other writers would. It's an important aspect of her character, but it's not the only aspect of it, and it never becomes a punchline.

As the Morituri effect draws near, Adept's powers go into overdrive, her brain analyzing and processing concepts decades ahead of human science. And as her mind expands to near-cosmic levels, her faith remains strong, and she sees it reflected in all of her newfound understanding. Her final words before the Morituri effect kills her are: "I have seen thy hand in all things, my Lord, and I am filled with joy--" In Adept, Gillis paints a picture of faith blending with science to create a deeply unified understanding of the universe, and her final moments are among the series' strongest moments.

Things got a bit sloppier after Gillis and Anderson departed the book. Their replacements, writer James D. Hudnall and artist Mark Bagley (plus a rotating army of fill-in artists), had a hard time capturing the focus of the series' earlier issues. But there are still some fine SFnal concepts in those late issues, and some interesting exploration of the desire for revenge. The later team made a valiant effort to recapture the strength of the book's first dozen or so issues, but it was a losing battle-- indeed, things were losing steam before Gillis and Anderson left. Still, Strikeforce: Morituri is one of the more pleasant surprises I've found in the quarter bin: excellent superheroics, solid SF, and an intriguing picture of faith and science to boot.

*Gillis's successor on Dr. Strange was Roy Thomas, who had first written the character in the late '60s. He turned in some great stories on his second run, but the speed with which he jettisoned Gillis's monastic approach always bugged me a bit. He very much wanted a Dr. Strange who was both in the world and of it, which is about as far from Gillis's take as one can get.

Superhero spirituality at Cornerstone

An announcement: I've been invited to speak at this year's Cornerstone Festival (in Bushnell, Illinois, from July 1-3)!

"But I thought that was a Christian music festival, and as far as I know you're not a musician!", you say? Well, you're correct. But part of the festival is the Imaginarium, which houses seminars on a variety of topics. This year's title is "Make. Believe. Heroes"—in other words, the religious aspects of superheroes. I'll be giving three one-hour sessions on the morality and ontology of superhero universes under the title "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." The full summary:

Despite the deconstructed superness of Watchmen et al., the original point of superheroes wasn't to make us wish we had superpowers -- though that certainly would be fun! -- but rather to make us wish for the clear moral discernment that allows superheroes to do the right thing. The creators of the most influential superheroes -- immigrants or children of immigrants like Siegel and Schuster or Jack Kirby -- used their creations to imagine a better world where the powerless had a stronger voice. This seminar explores superheroes as champions of the downtrodden, and notions of superhero morality.

Other sessions in the Imaginarium will cover Watchmen, moral grey zones in postmodern superheroics, and saints as superheroes. Check out the full schedule here, and perhaps I'll see you there!

In tangentially-related news, at Comics Should Be Good, Brian Cronin shares his favorite Mid-90s Badass Jesus Comic (to wit: Glory/Avengelyne II: The Godyssey #1).

New "Spiritual Solicitations" at Holy Heroes!!

Over at our comics-and-religion-themed cousin blog Holy Heroes!!, I've just posted a big ol' roundup of ten recent and forthcoming comics about religion. Reverent? Irreverent? Irrelevant? We've got 'em all!

Featured: Oeming's Rapture, the Wolverton Bible, and butt-kicking Jesus!

Check out the full list here.

4 Alan Moore stories that are better than Watchmen

Watchmen is a good, and even a great, comic. But the best ever written? Hardly—and it's not even Alan Moore's best work, either. Here are my picks for Moore stories slightly more deserving of the praise that's heaped on Watchmen.

1. Miracleman*

Much of what Moore does in Watchmen he did first and better with this series. This reimagining of Marvelman, the UK's homegrown Captain Marvel knockoff, is the grandaddy of all "what-would-it-be-really-be-like" superhero stories. Few comics stories so fully embody the concept of superheroes as mythology: the title character is, quite literally, a god; his chief villain, former sidekick Kid Miracleman, is far more demonic than the word "villain" implies. Little surprise, then, that Neil Gaiman's follow-up run (incidentally his best work ever, too) treats Moore's 16 issues as scripture on which to build an exegesis. Add to all that career-best art from the likes of John Totleben, Alan Davis, and Garry Leach, and you've got my pick for the best comic of all time. 

2. From Hell

Moore's meticulously-imagined recreation of Victorian London is far more than a Jack the Ripper story. Using the 1888 murders as a backdrop, the story explores the nature of mysticism, insanity, and evil. Nothing in this story is out of place, and at times—such as when the killer seems to travel through time after one of the murders—the reader gets a glimpse of bizarre transcendence, too.

3. "The Anatomy Lesson," Saga of the Swamp Thing #21

This is the one that really started it all, launching not only Alan Moore's career in American comics but also singlehandedly creating the entire idea of mainstream mature-readers comics. Moore had an inspired way of wrapping up the loose ends of the previous writer's plot threads: he killed the title character in his first issue, and in this, his second, he quite literally rebuilds him from the ground up. Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis—in other words, the last 20 years of comics—owe everything to the model Moore created here. And all that in 23 pages! (DC has made "The Anatomy Lesson" available for free here. Be arned that the coloring is wonky; Swampie is yellow instead of green-and-brown. Maybe they mistook him for the Floronic Man?)

4. "Watchmaker," Watchmen #4

If I have one complaint about Watchmen, it's this: it doesn't live up to the promise of this, its single best chapter and possibly the best single issue of a comic ever created. The rhythm of Dr. Manhattan's melancholy origin story is simply perfect, and in his time-detached reminiscences we get a glimpse inside the mind of a god. Here is a part that's greater than its sum.

Runners-up (or "about as good as Watchmen"):

Promethea: Like Watchmen, the series is a bit too long for its story. But Moore's exploration of his own religious/magical ideas is fascinating, and the art is simply gorgeous. 

Top Ten: Alan Moore has a darned good sense of humor, and this superhero-cop mashup is his funniest. 

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: This "last Superman story" is a great meditation on the nature and meaning of an icon.

A Small Killing: You'd be forgiven for never having heard of it. This collaboration with Oscar Zarate is a character study of an advertising executive who begins to question the path his life has taken. Short and sweet (or should that be "sour"?)

*Some would say "Marvelman," the title under which the series began in the UK. But later—particularly in the Neil Gaiman issues—the term "Miracle" becomes an important part of the setting. If and when the series is ever reprinted or completed, I for one hope they stick with "Miracleman" as the title. 

Oh, and also, I really wish they would stop calling Zack Snyder a "visionary director." 

"Disguised as Clark Kent"? Superman, secret identities, and incarnational theology

In a guest post at Superman blog Say It Backwards, my thoughts on which ego is really alter:

Superman disguises himself as Clark Kent. Right? It says it right there in the opening of the George Reeves TV series. "Disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great Metropolitan newspaper." Kent is the mask, and Superman is the identity.

Or is he?

Read the full post, which delves a bit into Batman, Alan Moore, and Jesus, here.

A month's worth of links

I seem incapable of reading all my RSS feeds more often than monthly, unfortunately. But hey—that means big linkdumps like this one, and everyone loves those!

• SciFi Scanner interviews Ronald Moore about the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica, and roughly half of the interview is about the role of religion in the show. That's the good news. The bad news is this:

The journey is not over, but certainly both sides are suddenly faced with the prospect, "Maybe it's all been for nothing. Maybe there is no God, and if that's the case where do we go from here? What does it all mean and what are we going to do with ourselves?" which I think is a great place to take the characters.

Sure, Ron, it's a good place to take them. Just don't leave them there, OK? 'Cause if the whole point of this occasionally very upsetting journey has been that there's no point to anything... well, let's just say BSG won't be on the list of 14 awesome things about 2009.

• I knew Richard Dawkins was a humorless bastard, but this takes the cake: he suspects fantasy novels might have an "insidious affect on rationality." The best part? This whole discussion takes place in the context of Mr. "Do-Not-Indoctrinate-Your-Children" announcing that he's going to write "a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking." 
• Also in the Humorless Bastards Department, the Fourth Annual Christian Filmmakers Academy will focus on the theology of SF film—and not in a good way, from the sound of things. Founder Doug Phillips states: "The popular genre has been responsible for persuading American thrill-and-chill- seekers that fictional speculation is reality—especially in regard to the creation of the universe, life on earth, and the 'certainty' of extraterrestrial life." This is pretty much the same anti-SF stance given by James A. Herrick in his polemical book Scientific Mythologies (review coming within a month, really!). One wonders what these anti-SF evangelicals will say when bacteria are (inevitably) found elsewhere... Oh, and to give you a sense of just what kind of Christian filmmakers make up the Christian Filmmakers Academy, they've declared Ben Stein's histrionic and generally dumb Expelled to be one of "the year’s most groundbreaking films." Yeeeeeaaaah.
• In the wish-I'd-thought-of-it category at Holy Heroes, Elliot explores crucifixion imagery in the work of Grant Morrison. Man, I love that Animal Man cover...
• The Crotchety Old Fan reviews... SF Gospel! Well, not just me. He's reviewing every site that was included in that ginormous SF Book Reviewers meme that started a few weeks back (and has been turned into a song—I'm in the last verse.) COF goes into a bit more depth on SF Gospel than on some of the other sites. On his comments I say: 1) Oops, you're right—Klaatu didn't speak to the UN in the original; 2) I'm aware of Wise's opinion, but I stand by my interpretation (particularly since Wise didn't write the screenplay); 3) I hope you won't disagree with everything here, and in fact I can guarantee it right now: The original The Day the Earth Stood Still is a darned good movie. See, we agree on at least one thing.
• Auxiliary Memory takes a look at Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End with an eye to its religious overtones—including a comparison or two to the aforementioned The Day the Earth Stood Still.
• As soon as I have time to play video games again, I'm getting this: "The You Testament," an early church simulator by indie game designer MDickie in which you play one of the first disciples of Jesus. You get to wander around Israel preaching, praying, and possibly getting crucified. 

14 awesome things about 2008

Some genre-related, some religion-related, many both. This isn't a top 14, just the first 14 that came to mind, so, in no particular order:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

It's a shame there haven't been more SF books about monks who live in a giant clock, because Stephenson's masterpiece has ended that particular subgenre. All else can't help but be an imitation. So if you've got a monks-in-a-giant-clock manuscript kicking around... well, I'm really sorry. My review is here.

Rapture Ready by Daniel Radosh

I'm always intrigued by the delightful weirdness of evangelical pop culture, and Radosh's book sums up why. Check out the online multimedia appendix for clips from Bibleman and Ultimate Christian Wrestling. (If I were smart I'd put together something like that for The Gospel According to Science Fiction.)

Doctor Who Season 4

"The Runaway Bride" was hardly my favorite episode, so I wasn't the only one who was... disappointed to hear that Catherine Tate would be returning to Doctor Who for a whole season.  Imagine my surprise, then, when Donna Noble ends up one of the most interesting companions in the 45-year history of the program. Billie Piper's Rose casts a long shadow, but Tate successfully made the show hers—in a very good way. And the finale is pretty much a blueprint for how to make geeks feel happy. 

Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris

I surprise myself saying this, since Brian K. Vaughan's other series have often left me cold, but this is one of the best comics coming out right now. My favorite moment of the year occurred in #33, in which Mayor Mitchell Hundred has a vision of the word made concrete: God as an embodiment of New York.

Cloverfield

I'm a big kaiju fan, so of course I was anticipating seeing this view-from-the-ground of a giant monster rampage. I thought it might lose some of its luster on second viewing, but I recently watched it again and I'm glad to say it didn't. Can there ever be a better fake-found-footage-documentary? I doubt it. My review appeared on Religion Dispatches.

Wall-E

I didn't make that big a deal of it or anything, but yeah, this was pretty great. And all about Plato's cave!

"The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's, February 2008)

An amazing parable about love, fate, and alien artifacts. I reviewed it here. I'll be brief: this story deserves a Hugo. Come to think of it...

Asimov's in general

Sheila Williams has really, really good taste in stories, and the last year of Asimov's was nothing short of amazing. Check out my choices for the 2008 readers' poll to see some of the reasons why. Here's a tip: quit reading blog posts about the decline of the science fiction magazines and subscribe to this one. You'll be very, very glad you did. 

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Until Dollhouse—and possibly even after that—TTSCC is the closest network TV is going to get to Buffy at the moment. It's not perfect, sure, but it has moments of brilliance, chief among them the first season finale's robot-versus-SWAT-team battle set to Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around." For a for-instance, here's my review of the season two premiere.

Alien Nation: The Ultimate Movie Collection

A couple years ago Fox put out a DVD set entitled Alien Nation: The Complete Series. The problem? It wasn't: it excluded the five TV movies Fox aired over the eight years after the hourly show was canceled. Alien Nation had the potential to be one of the best SF shows of all time before Fox killed it (sound familiar?), and the release of this DVD set (which originally came out last year, but only as a Best Buy exclusive) means that the whole thing is finally available for real. 

Iron Man

I was not that into The Dark Knight, which struck me as relentlessly cynical (and a bit nonsensical, too). After its ridiculously huge opening weekend I feared that we were destined for a few years of "grim n' gritty" antisuperhero movies wherein the good guys are really bad guys and everything is sad. And maybe we are. But Iron Man offers a glimmer of hope that there might still be some superhero movies coming up that are made for people who like fun. 

Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti

Thomas Ligotti is probably the best horror writer since Lovecraft, but he has a very hard time keeping his books in print. Many of his best stories were only available in expensive small-press hardcovers and even more expensive out-of-print omnibuses. Virgin Books has done us all a favor by releasing an affordable trade paperback of Teatro Grottesco, which includes many of his best stories (such as my favorite, "Gas Station Carnivals"). Anybody for some existential despair?

The Wrestler

I just reviewed this, so I needn't say much here. Just... wow. Good movie.  

TV on the Internet

Hulu's only 9 months old, but dang, it's hard to remember the Internet without it. It's got a slew of good genre shows both new and old (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the not-as-bad-as-you'd-expect Total Recall 2070) and some not-entirely-great-but-hey-it's-free ones, too (Swamp Thing, Lost In Space, and even the freakin' Time Tunnel). Netflix's Watch Instantly stepped up this year as well, lifting time restrictions for most users and allowing them to watch as much as they want—which allowed me to watch Quantum Leap in its entirety this summer. Who needs DVR? 

***UPDATE***

Wow, I totally forgot to put Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on here. Oops. So let's call it 15 awesome things. Well, you probably already know why it's great—and if you don't, why not just watch it? 

Heroes and mythology; Grant Morrison on religion and God

Over at Religion Dispatches, Nick Street argues that Heroes is a prime example of American squeamishness about homoeroticism in mythology. The result is a "half-baked assimilationist version" of the heroic archetype: the characters struggle to rid themselves of difference instead of transcending their old lives by embracing their difference. In short, they're desperately striving not to be liminal figures.

The unsatisfying muddle of the current storyline calls for a Promethean figure, someone unafraid to heed the call of departure from conventional life as well as from the audience’s expectations. What Heroes needs is another Zack, unbound—a heroically transgressive character who will steal fire from the gods and illuminate the path that will lead us out of our present dark age.

Which is kind of what I was saying a couple weeks ago: Heroes doesn't get superheroes, and continually stops its characters short of the transformation they need. 

And how did I miss this one? At Newsarama, Grant Morrison talks about religion, spirituality, and God. It's a bit annoying, frankly, mostly because he starts out with this:

I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely.

But it soon becomes clear that when Morrison says "religion" he means "church." Unsurprisingly, he doesn't like hierarchy, but he most certainly does believe in transcendence.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf just close your eyes and say hello: "god” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

Which is, in my mind,is pretty spot-on. It's an old idea called panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism), and it's been appearing in writing—religious writing—for centuries. What are process theology, Kabbalah, and Sufism if not religious? Morrison, it seems would call them "spirituality"—and he argues that "Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex."

I've always found the distinction between "religion" and "spirituality" unsatisfying. It's like people who argue that they hate science fiction, but that they love Orwell (for instance), or Margaret Atwood. 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale aren't SF, and why? because people who aren't SF fans like them. Their picture of SF is a caricature, just as the picture of "religion" as a cruel hierarchy is a caricature (and a mostly outmoded one at that. The most politically conservative churches have no hierarchy.) 

To Grant Morrison, to all those who draw a line between religion and spirituality, I say: it's okay. "Religion" is bigger than you think. There's room in here for lots of ideas. Just as the universe, in a panentheistic system, is part of God, spirituality is part of religion.

He talks about All-Star Superman some, too, and whether or not Superman is a Christ figure. Read that segment of Newsarama's 10-part interview here.

Focus on the Family vs. real dystopias

The latest Republican attempt at scaremongering John McCain into the White House co-opts the form of science fiction. Last week Focus on the Family issued a 16-page piece of dystopian fiction, a letter from "A Christian from 2012" detailing society's descent into chaos following 4 years of an Obama presidency. From terrorist attacks the end of the Boy Scouts, FotF's letter paints a ludicrous picture with the specific intention of getting young evangelicals, many of whom support Obama, to change their votes. The letter is a ham-fisted attempt at the genre of dystopian SF—a genre that has been pretty solidly left-wing since its inception. Here are just a few liberal dystopias that are both more plausible and better-written than the 2012 letter.

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, by Octavia Butler

Following a broad economic collapse caused by a laissez-faire government (sound familiar?), America has descended into total anarchy. The first volume depicts some of the chaos—the middle class living in walled forts; roving gangs of anarchists. In the second volume, a reactionary movement called Christian America promises a return to order—one that requires concentration camps for "heathens" like the novel's agrarian protagonists. Maybe it's just me, but I find it much easier to believe Christian America as an heir of Focus on the Family than the 2012 letter's world as an heir of Obama.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

In Huxley's definitive dystopia, capitalism is no longer just an economic system, it's an object of worship (with Henry Ford standing in for God). In 1958, Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited, a book of essays that showed further pessimism about the world's regression to assembly-line living

The prophecies I made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would... In the West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane.

V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

I don't think I can say anything better than what Alan Moore wrote in his 1988 introduction to this story:

Naiveté can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England towards fascism... It's 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century... The tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore.

Thankfully Thatcher's prediction of permanent Conservative leadership didn't come true, and Alan Moore still lives in Northampton. The 2006 film version wisely does away with the nuclear war angle, instead depicting England's adoption of a Bush-style government as the cause of all the trouble.

Southland Tales, written and directed by Richard Kelly

In Richard Kelly's whacked-out apocalypse, the fate of the world depends on the result of a presidential election. Southland Tales isn't afraid to get specific in naming the affiliations of its bogeymen: Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Bobby Frost is the head of US-Ident, the military contractor that won the task of strengthening and streamlining the surveillance state. In this film, Republican victory means solidifying the bond between evil government and evil business, which somehow opens a black hole above Los Angeles. Or something. It's hard to follow, but one thing is clear: Richard Kelly doesn't like Republicans.

The Tower, by the Legendary Pink Dots

British artists really didn't like Margaret Thatcher, did they? The Tower is a tour-de-force concept album about the bleak direction in which the Conservatives were leading the country. Against a synth-driven background of demented circus music, the lyrics are a litany of brutality, repression, and intolerance. Unlike Alan Moore, the Dots weren't sticking around to see how things turned out; they packed their bags and moved to the Netherlands soon after the album was released. The final song on the album, "Tower Five," is a less-than-fond farewell: "You wanted easy answers / You want a tidy end / Don't you know you've got a lot to answer for? / You wanted shining heroes. / You wanted sparkling knights / BUT THEY'RE GONE. / You chose your grave. / Lie there." [Lyrics and samples here.]

Children of Men, co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Children of Men's Britain has become a police state as a result of anti-terrorist and anti-immigrant paranoia. As in the film version of V For Vendetta, it's a direct result of adopting George W. Bush-style policies, and the film is rife with images intended to remind us of American policy: Guantanamo-style detainees held in cages, media obsession with "illegal immigrants," and, most chillingly, the words "Homeland Security" above the entrance to a bleak refugee camp.

The Book of Revelation, by John of Patmos

As I've long argued, John's Apocalypse is a revolutionary book that's been co-opted, in recent years, by reactionaries. Its most moving passage describes the destruction of a Babylon, depicted in Rev. 18 as a proto-capitalist dystopia: "The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud, 'Alas, alas, the great city, clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! For in one hour all this wealth has been laid waste!'" (Rev 18:15-17) How's that for a religious picture of a world on the brink of collapse?