Girl in a Cage

Vers un architecture pornographique

Lest you think I spend all my time reading comic books, I came across this article in Good magazine. (I dunno--John Hodgman was on the cover, and I've been thinking a lot about what I personally can do to not fry the earth. So far I'm unplugging my cell phone and laptop chargers when they're not in use and annoying everybody about turning the lights out. Also not eating meat and getting most of my summer food from a local organic farm. 'Cause I'm so la-dee-da).

Anyway, the gist of the article is that the era of the skyscraper is over, but people are building a lot of them because there's always a frenzy of activity in a dying culture, or they want to build big penises or something.

To which all I can say is, okay, but what, then, do you make of the big box retail stores, surely proliferating at a greater rate than skyscrapers? Are the cities, the preserve of male ambition, sprouting phalluses, while the suburbs, domain of the soccer mom, grow gigantic wombs?

Or are the big boxes some kind of feminist critique of the skyscraper? Your gigantic phallus, they seem to say, can never match my big box! Sure, your size is impressive, but no one can pull a car stereo from your womb! No longer will we bow down to your erect form--no, rather, all Americans, male or female alike, will eventually make their way to the big box!

Or, is the frenzy of skyscraper and big box construction a sign that some kind of colossal mating ritual is about to take place? Will the skyscraper and the big box get it on? And if so, what will their offspring be? Should we be hopeful or afraid?

Why I Love Comic Books

Okay, so I've been reading DC's Tales of the Unexpected, which is not the horror anthology comic I wanted it to be, but rather, features the adventures of The Spectre, a character I used to like as a kid. This part of the comic is pretty dull--there's a dead cop who becomes The Spectre and kills murderers, and so far it's all very Law and Order-y and repetitive. But in the back, they have the adventures of Dr. 13. In the latest issue, Dr. 13 is riding with a vampire in a flying cursed pirate ship through the French Alps in search of his daughter, who was kidnapped by yetis. They find a jungle outpost there in the alps, and battle a batallion of talking Nazi gorillas. I did not make this up.

So when I got to this panel--the monocle-wearing, Nazi-uniformed Gorilla beating his chest and saying, "Yeteez? Ve'ere Nod Stingink Yeteez! Ve're----DAS PRIMATE PATROL!" (big red letters on that last part)--I laughed a little laugh of joy and thought my entire love of comics can probably be summed up in this one panel.

And the whole reason why most other adults of normal intelligence and social skills don't read comics is probably summed up in the self same panel, but oh well. Unlike most adult comic readers, I'm not going to plead for this art form to be taken seriously. I would trade the entire output of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Frank Miller too for one blissful panel with a monocled nazi gorilla screaming "DAS PRIMATE PATROL!"