Serial Madness

Mar 27

comics, imagination, pop culture, sci-fi No Comments

And so it came to pass that two of the greatest modern pieces of popular art came to an end in the first few months of 2009. Accuse me of hyperbole, but that’s the bottom line with Battlestar Galactica and 100 Bullets. I stand before you accused of being a nerd, evidenced by my consumption of comic books and sci-fi. I humbly plead guilty.

To quickly catch up those in the dark: BSG is a sci-fi TV show that starts off with humanity facing extinction at the hands of their robotic creations. When looking into the deep dark eyes of Despair, how would we respond? The show has been heralded for its commentary on contemporary polarizing issues – the motivations of suicide bombers, the uneasy alliance between religion, military and government, or the hatred that fuels blatant racial discrimination. Producer Ron D. Moore presented such a nuanced view on what drives people to act in desperate situations that he (along with some of the cast) recently shared their opinions at the United Nations.

100 Bullets is a comic book series that began with a simple premise: if you’ve been wronged and have irrefutable proof that someone was responsible, what would you do with a gun, 100 rounds of ammunition and carte blanche? If a mysterious man gave you absolute power and control over someone’s life, what would you do? Writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso takes this concept and sends the reader spiralling into a shady world of conspiracies, crime families and shifting morals. A hundred issues later, a complicated story leaves me wondering about responsibility, the consequences of your actions and the notion the true colour of society is grey.

I really wanted to write about how sinking your teeth into either of these long-running serials will shatter your perceptions on the potential of sci-fi and comic books, about the unique ability of a storyteller to create fictional worlds that exist on the edge of reality, of the communities that sprout and inject new layers of understanding and knowledge. I’ve got pages of half-started thoughts and unfinished sentences as I struggle to extract some deeper meaning about the media that I have spent days of my life reading, watching and analyzing.

But you know what, sometimes a TV show about a rag-tag space fleet and a comic book about revenge just entertains, allowing you to escape into the mindscape of master craftsmen. At the end of the day, it’s really about losing yourself in some serious storytelling.