Looks Like We're Stuck Here

Imagining alternative futures with Ed Brubaker & James Spooner

I never feel more powerless than immediately after a school shooting. It’s not because I have a daughter enrolled in college. It’s not because my wife and I went through this nearly ten years ago.

OK, it’s that, it’s all of that, but it’s also because these shootings makes it impossible to ignore the fact that I live in a country that refuses to protect its most vulnerable members, a country that will regulate the hell out of women’s reproductive systems but not weapons of mass murder, a country that cozies up to white religious extremists and disenfranchises BIPOC citizens.

We live in a broken country and I don’t know what to do about it.

My thoughts run toward visions of vigilantism and revenge. The Star Chamber. Project Mayhem. I even wrote a novel where my own crew of dysfunctional vigilantes fight back against a broken health care system.

In times like these, I wish I could pick up the phone and call someone who fixes problems that the government is unwilling or unable to fix.

Someone like Ethan Reckless.

Ethan Reckless and his problem solver

A few weeks ago I wrote about Ed Brubaker’s new series of vigilante noir for the LA Times. I talked to Brubaker about the origin of these graphic novels and what makes them so engrossing. We spent a lot of time discussing how Brubaker’s experiences growing up as a military brat and as a kind in the LA punk scene informs the stories and settings.

We also talked about what it was like to create a character like Ethan Reckless in today’s climate, but that conversation didn’t make it into the piece. Here’s what he said.

“I had just started writing this thing and I kept looking at it and thinking this is too dark for the world. I don't want to spend the next two years writing, what I think will be a good thing, but maybe just a little too dark.”

If you think of all the awful things that have happened since the beginning of the pandemic, the notion of a comic being “too dark” seems almost, well, comical, but I get it. Brubaker wasn’t worried about readers responding to the work, he was worried about his own mental well-being.

Oh shit, skinheads!

Well, look at us now. Turns out Brubaker, and others, have been imagining this moment for some time.

“I used to be part of this sort of secret message board group and I don't know how I got invited to it but I stuck around for quite a few years. It was writers, artists, scientists, just various people discussing a lot of stuff. One of the guys on it was a futurist. This was about 15 years ago or so. One day he was depressed because he he’d come back from some conference at the White House or something. We asked him what the future was going to be like and we all regretted asking. He didn't know for sure that there was going to be a pandemic, but a lot of the things that he predicted—even up to the Russia invading the Ukraine—came to be. He knew what was going to happen because of global warming would lead to a lack of resources and a push to move to clean energy. You’ll have the fossil fuel companies really fighting against all of that and then you'll have countries invading other countries for resources. I remember for a couple of weeks having trouble sleeping. Eventually, I wondered, “How do I make a character who can have some of this in his head?”

Ethan Reckless, that’s who.

When I reflect on all the death and misery I have witnessed up close or been exposed to on the news these last few years, I think that Brubaker is on to something. I think the work I create going forward ought to reflect the darkness of the times we’re going through. Not because it will be therapeutic or cathartic or anything as cringey as that, but because the solutions to the problems we find ourselves in demand it. There are no easy fixes for the mess we’re in. Maybe pining for an anti-hero who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty is just another kind of cop out. Or maybe that’s precisely the kind of hero we need right now…

James Spooner’s The High Desert

Speaking of graphic novels, last weekend I went to Beyond Baroque to celebrate the publication of James Spooner’s The High Desert. The memoir tells the story of James’s teen years of discovering punk while growing up in the Apple Valley area. It’s a moving story that really goes to some vulnerable places.

As I said to James in our conversation, it’s a bit of a cliché for punks to claim that punk is where we “found our people” because along the way we had to eat a lot of shit. We tend to gloss over that part. The High Desert goes to those difficult places where he and his friends take all that rejection and try to turn it into something positive. The High Desert is recommended for anyone who has ever thought of themselves as an outsider, but especially if you fit the category of the memoir’s subtitle: “Black. Punk. Nowhere.”

Introducing Anna the Intern

Incredibly, Message from the Underworld has an intern. How did this happen?

When my wife was teaching eleventh graders at High Tech High, one of the highlights of the year was junior internship: students leave the classroom for a month and work in the community in a profession of interest to them.

Well, somehow I got on the list of “professionals in the community.” (Yeah, I know.) I’ve been turning down interns for the last few years for a number of reasons, the main one being not having my shit together, as in, ever. This year isn’t any different but now that I have a studio that’s slightly larger than a shoebox, I said why not and here we are.

Anna is interested in writing about music and has a passion for punk. Her qualifications for the job?

She read My Damage and liked it. Hired!

Right now her favorite punk bands are Minor Threat, Suicidal Tendencies, and Agent Orange but her go-to is the Descendents. She has a wide range of musical interests that includes Carseat Headrest, Apex Twin, and Modest Mouse. She listens to “Mother’s Little Helper” by the Rolling Stones to get her going and classical music to unwind. She’s also a fan of Loving’s “If I Am Only My Thoughts,” which she says, “Came out in 2020 but sounds older.”

Anna’s first punk show was The Descendents and TSOL and she went with her dad at SOMA in San Diego in 2021. Her dream writing project is to interview “someone I like and share interests with and create a piece that I’m proud of.”

In the coming weeks I’m going to be showcasing some of Anna’s writing here in Message from the Underworld (provided she turns it in on time, we do have some standards here). First up is a review of one of her favorite punk albums: Milo Goes to College by the Descendents.

For her first week at the studio Anna has been organizing and archiving my zine library and is doing a fantastic job. She’s discovered loads of duplicate issues of Razorcake, going all the way back to issue #1. This gave me an idea: the next three new paying subscribers to Message from the Underworld will receive a bundle of back issues. Just be sure to send me your mailing address.

Be well. Stay safe.