Cremations from Babylon

So it’s the 25th anniversary of the time the world got a whole lot worse. Terrorism, wars for profit, Patriot Acts, airports permanently sucking, the destabilization of the Middle East, 99% of politicians across the spectrum doing the dumbest shit you’ve ever read and getting away with it, but for the purpose of this blog, pop culture getting smacked across the face and never really turning back. An era when you were expected to watch Jack Bauer and American Idol, when that “I’m Proud to be an American” song played nonstop in school assemblies, hundreds of Bin Laden flash games on Newgrounds, otherwise gaggy newspaper comics trying and failing to be somber for a few panels, and in a very special issue of Amazing Spider-Man, poor Peter Parker got a taste of our side of reality.

Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 Issue 36 by J Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr is obviously of its moment. Intended to be Marvel’s big memorial to the World Trade Center attacks, and now more infamously known for the panel where Dr. Doom cries about the attack of a city he’s threatened numerous times before and after, the more time passes, the more its attempt to make a point about 9/11 becomes overwrought and cheesy, similar to other tries at making sense of what happened like the Robert Pattinson film Remember Me or Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. And admittedly, it’s unfair to negatively judge what’s obviously someone mourning their own. Marvel was based in New York City. NYC bleeds throughout Marvel’s stories that it’s impossible to disassociate the real world location from its fictional one. But you know why this comic is more known for amusing modern-day readers than moving them to tears. Discussion of Peter failing to save a child’s father or any of the actual attempts to grab at the readers’ heartstrings is overshadowed by the aforementioned scene of supervillains helping out, and near armies of superheroes standing alongside police officers and firefighters, talking directly to the reader as if it’s Captain Planet. Less of a narrative and more of a GI Joe PSA but in the 21st century. Scenes that become no different than parodies of 9/11 discourse like the fake Subway “You Will Never Forget This Deal” ad, anecdotes regarding how the Master of Disguise cast reacted complete with Dana Carvey still dressed as his Turtle character, or any of the infamous “Make Mistakes into Miracles” photoshops. Make no mistake, I obviously think terrorism is bad and innocent people don’t deserve to die, it’s just most people already think that, and all these comics, all these shows and songs and films endlessly trying to tug at your heartstrings, it’s easy to wonder “Do you really care or are you just hoping to sell something?” When does tragedy just become an excuse for commerce? Or just an excuse to score brownie points? Because we reached a point where people lied about being 9/11 survivors just to attain clout. No matter the scale of a mass murder, such hollow sincerity becomes an invite to intense irreverence.

I say that because the writer of the comic recently came into some controversy. Straczynski proudly announced he was going to dig up the grave of his mentor Harlan Ellison to make AI addendums of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, right after finally publishing his teacher’s long dormant work Last Dangerous Visions to little fanfare and mostly derision from contemporary sci-fi/fantasy authors, several of whom were oddly and undeservedly named and shamed in the book’s afterword for declining an invitation to write for the collection. All of that coming shortly after he finished writing yet another film adaptation of Watchmen nobody asked for and making a Patreon with no real purpose other than to milk fans of his cult TV series Babylon 5 out of their money. More absurd events came from him saying he considered taking legal action against the internet cartoon The Amazing Digital Circus for vaguely resembling Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, which despite being in the spirit of Ellison due to how he sued James Cameron over smaller issues, the lack of tact was made clear. Even his successes in the last 25 years like the film Changeling and the ambitious, sexually transgressive, often messy series Sense8 aren’t in the public consciousness or in obsessive nerd discussions at the time of this writing. Straczynski, otherwise known as JMS, is in many ways stuck in 2001 but also unable to realize that, talking as if he’s still one of the subversive TV writers of the late 80s/early 90s.

It culminated recently in one of his latest contributions to Marvel, a miniseries called 1776 where Spider-Man and several Avengers are sent back in time to meet the Founding Fathers and fight ghost redcoats in order to maintain the history of the American revolution. They all fight a witch trying to screw over Ben Franklin, Captain America gives a stern speech, the end. And despite how this is obviously meant to be the comic equivalent of those novelty “America’s 250th anniversary” two-dollar bills or commemorative plates shilled during late-night commercials, I’m left befuddled by how this reads like a cheap edutainment comic from 2002, meant to complement shows like Liberty’s Kids instead of warming shelves in 2026. In many ways, it serves as a spiritual follow-up to JMS’ 9/11 comic when it comes to his depiction of American ideals, a didactic soapbox meant to come off as sincere but ends up being twee instead. And I’m not saying he’d have done better if he wrote some anti-American screed as an alternative, nobody wants JMS’ The Boys, but he depicts his love of his former country (last I checked, he’s now living in the UK) with a writing level that I would generously describe as “diet Aaron Sorkin” and cynically view as having the same narrative depth as those picture book biographies with the inflated heads in the children’s section at libraries. And it’s not as if JMS was forced to write this. He could easily do the convention circuit, say “Hey, I made Babylon 5”, and collect appearance fees for making a cult sci-fi show from 35 years ago. But no. Straczynski chose to wade back in the patriotic river and offer the same kind of tact he offered 25 years ago when he had Juggernaut and Magneto look sad when standing amidst the WTC ruins. And again, the problem isn’t that he loves his country, it’s just… what does his love mean? Is it an affection for what American means, or just nostalgia wrapped in stars and stripes?

But that’s a nod to where we’re at, right? Writers who used to pride themselves on being on the cutting edge of genre fiction are now comforting themselves with regurgitated stories about Spider-Man saving America or asking ChatGPT to write essays for them. It might not be as unfortunate a reaction to post-9/11 American political affairs as Frank Miller’s The Holy Terror, but nonetheless, there’s something truly self-coddling about seeing it in writers like Straczynski. And not just him, but so many others. Almost as if countless people are hoping they wake up and it’s September 10, 2001, and the past 25 years were just some noxious fever dream or a delusion from some Demiurge they’re meant to smite. And you do get the sense that’s just how people are living these days, hoping that they’ll just wake up and rewind time instead of processing the now and adapting, and the actual 21st century we hope to reach is so much shinier than the one we have now. No matter how many times that turns out not to be true, they keep telling themselves one day it’ll turn out to be a horrible dream. Just one more day, and they’ll be vindicated.

I’m sure that’s what JMS is telling to his AI Harlan Ellison clone right now.

Hey, remember when JMS wrote She-Ra and The Real Ghostbusters? Go discuss that on the AR Forum!