If you’ve been a reader of this site, we’d like to say thank you. If you’re visiting for the first time, we hope that you’ll spend some time digging around a little (the subject headings at the top of the page are a great place to get started).

I stumbled upon Gemstone III while exploring AOL’s games section. That was back in the days when AOL presented their online content in curated sections, only one of which was labeled the “world wide web.” Take a drive on that information superhighway, and it was nothing but GeoCities and Angelfire pages for miles. At least it seemed that way. I didn’t much care for it.

Games I could always get behind, though, and soon enough I found myself in Gemstone’s character creator. After getting over the initial shock of seeing nothing but scrolling text on my screen (this was a video game?), I chose my race, profession, physical characteristics, and name. I also placed a limited number of training points into various stats and skills without having any idea of what I was doing. Soon enough, I was thrust into the high fantasy world of Elanthia, dressed in rags and standing in an alley in a frontier town called Wehnimer’s Landing.

Eventually I made my way to the town square, which was buzzing with activity. There were other people here, real people, and they were healing each other, raising the dead, pickpocketing, talking, laughing, passing through. The text scrolling by so quickly was dizzying.

Town Square Central remains a hub of activity today. There’s no better place to drag a dead body, I can tell you that much. It’s still the best place to find both a healer and a cleric on short notice.

Here in Gemstone IV, I step into the Raging Thrak Inn’s barroom, then move west to the trophy room. With some trepidation, I move behind a non-descript thrak hide curtain.

Thank the Arkati he’s still here.

A thrak is a monster in the game, but the Raging Thrak is a human warrior gone to seed, and if a young player seeks him out, both experience and wisdom can be gained from the meeting.

He surprises me by launching into his spiel:

“Well, now,” he starts off, “it seems we have another fresh young face right off the turnip farms come to town to be a hero. Bein’ a hero ain’t all it’s cracked up to be some days, but most of the time it’s pretty excitin’. Now, listen up and I’ll give ya the benefit of my many years of wisdom, gleaned from the farthest corners of the lands and the brightest and best of the heroes of the past.”

I’m level 17, three trains away from titling. I’m a long way from the turnip farms, Mr. Thrak, sir. Nonetheless, I sit and listen to his advice, for nostalgia’s sake. Except I’m fairly sure you can’t have this meeting more than once. It’s a tutorial for new players. Thrak gives several paragraphs of information on game mechanics and etiquette, and quizzes you afterwards. You gain a modest amount of experience points if answer the questions correctly. Could it be I never visited the Thrak with my current character?

Sure enough, here’s the test. I pass with flying colors.

Ha! Level 18! So I suppose I didn’t come to see him this time. I laugh, in real life and in the game, like this:

>laugh
You laugh out loud!
>

I get a little misty in real life. I play it cool in the game.

It’s strange, the things that cause you to look back. Listening to the old warrior tell me to avoid using all caps or multiple exclamation marks when speaking to other players sends me shooting back through time to the age of wearing cutoffs, and climbing trees, and otter pops, and riding bikes. An age of cops and robbers, and my neighbor’s swing set, and my other neighbor’s friendly mutt dog.

An age where this:

>

Meant “What’s next?”

The age of my first MUD. My first RPG, for that matter. My first, but certainly not last, text-based game. Perhaps my first experience feeling emotion while playing a video game. Perhaps Gemstone is a reason I write about video games. Strike that “perhaps.” It’s most definitely a reason. It taught me how to type, at the very least.

To say writing about video games here at The Idler was an honor and a pleasure would be an understatement. It’s only been a couple of months, but the brightest flames burn quickest, they say. Even more of a pleasure was reading the works of my fellow Idlers. I still have much of the archives to comb through. I can’t wait to look back.

But let’s all remember to look forward, too. Here, a parting gift:

>

—

Sara Clemens is an ad copywriter for a book publisher, so every single day she pretends she’s in an episode of Mad Men. You can follow her on twitter at @TheSaraClemens, and find all the things she’s ever written for the internet at saraclemens.com.

The single-issue story definitely helped this process along when I was growing up. There aren’t too many of those today, as readers have gotten older and simultaneously more demanding that every comic be a compelling starting point for new readers, but also continue to reflect everything that has come before it. The done-in-one story (or is it one-and-done? The debate rages.) is largely looked upon as filler, or an interlude, or at worst, a waste — easily skipped over as the main serial will pick-up its next six to eleven part story next month. I love a great serial, don’t get me wrong. The cliffhangers. The continuing subplots. The ability to look back from the end to see the clues laid months ago at the beginning. These are all awesome aspects of storytelling you can’t get in a single 20 pages — to the same degree anyway. But as a kid, nothing made me more happy than having a single book I could read again and again and again, and enjoy a little bit differently each time, without having to track down part 3 of 4, or worry about how Superman managed to be here AND in Justice League of America the same month. He just was.

See how easy that is?

I have a few of these books littered throughout my collection. They often are the single issues I see on a rack or in a drawer at a comic shop and just can’t help myself from buying again. Yes, I know I have two copies already — the ripped up original from when I was 9 and the one adult-me bought to replace it in my “formal collection” — but this one is near mint, people. And how often am I going to be able to relive that flicker of joy that I got from buying it the first time. If even an infinitesimal spark remains, it’s worth experiencing. I just can’t explain the compulsion any other way. So came across my path Detective Comics #526 the other day.

An extra-sized comic (cover-price $1.50!) from May 1983, this issue was billed largely on the cover as Batman’s 500th appearance in Detective Comics, as the Dark Knight made his intellectual debut in the title’s 27th issue way back in 1939. Not quite a round year anniversary, this story stood out at the time, however, due to its gold ink cover accent and square bound size, not to mention featuring the headshots of pretty much every major Batman villain to date swirling around Batman and his crime-fighting colleagues. Good enough for me. And the cover, pretty cleverly designed from my now-art director’s standpoint as well, lived up to its promise. Upon opening, the reader was treated immediately to a congregation of every major criminal the Bat-family had put away in these 500 issues, and a foreboding title, “All My Enemies Against Me!” Seeing these purveyors of purloinment lined up across a theatre stage was a young reader’s dream, as I could finally have one place to count off and name all the baddies that previously remained scattered throughout my memory and piles of books.

And immediately there was controversy! Talia al Ghul was in love with Batman and wouldn’t go along with the Joker’s plans, no matter how many times she’d tricked the Dark Knight in the past. And Catwoman too had recently moved over to the side of the angels, quickly scooting out on her invite to mistakenly fued with Talia later on. Two ladies vying for Batman’s affections! Even the young homosexual in me was a little bit impressed. Or maybe jealous. And frankly confused. If I were Batman, the choice would clearly be the one wearing the outfit and motif that most closely resembled my own. Catwoman was a no-brainer, Bruce. Let’s be honest.

Batgirl’s arrival on the scene to shake-up a constantly brooding Dick Grayson — we were long past the golly-gee portion of Robin’s adventures — was another high-point for me, as the dominoed daredoll was treated with some rare respect in the Batbooks here by prolific writer Gerry Conway. Previously written as having been easily thrown off the trail of the boys’ secret identities, Babs here all but rolled her eyes at Dick’s surprise. She is, after all, a detective. And as the two of them cycled off to track down the parents of young circus trapeze artist Jason Todd (there’s a plot clue in there for the savvy Bat-fan), you could feel that both Robin and Batgirl were not only equals to each other, but growing closer to living up to the example set forth by their mentor himself, the Batman. It was a unique time for all of these characters, long before the family expanded and sons and daughters took turns seeing who could frown the hardest. You feel as if they’re a true family, but one just about to go their separate ways, leaving a significant hole to fill in Batman’s home and methodology.

Enter young (red-haired) Jason Todd, who discovers the entrance to the Batcave, finds a spare costume in a dusty old trunk, and stows away inside the Batmobile as Batman, Talia and Catwoman speed away to track down Killer Croc. In the course of events, Jason hears Croc is responsible for the deaths of his parents earlier in the issue, and newly orphaned, flies into action alongside the original orphaned warrior himself. By the end of this issue (Phew! A lot happened here!), you can see Bruce and Jason walking the grounds of Wayne Manor, a new partner in the making just as his previous one is about ready to spread his wings and leave the nest.

Exactly thirty years later, I can recall every panel, every word of this comic like Watchtower bell-ringers know the Bible. I know this book to such a degree that it even begs the question why I needed to buy another (or any) copy. It’s all right up here in my head, and probably will be until the day I die. And it doesn’t much matter that it was Batman’s 500th appearance, or the first time we got to see Jason Todd in costume. It was so many things and none of them. Maybe it was just the time of my life I read it. Or maybe I was just more open to the experience it promised me than I would be today, amid a flush of other books and comics and papers begging for my attention. In any event, I feel blessed to have the memory of such a unique experience and that it remains today as an important one to me.

I have no doubt my time writing for The Idler will remain much like that as well. Before starting my column here, I was a frequent tweeter, sure, but hadn’t been offered the very generous opportunity to share my words with such a distinguished audience, alongside such a brilliant group of authors. It’s an experience that has opened my eyes to things I never thought about, forced me to be prolific, motivated me to expand my skills, and led me to meet and partner with some absolutely amazing people. So, thanks, everyone, for the memories, and may they live on here in perpetuity for us all to revisit and reclaim just a little bit of that spark every time we do.

And for those who want to read more from me, I will be easily found at Comicosity.com, taking with me the mantra I have since ingrained in my writing (and living) this past year and some months: refusing to apologize for the things we enjoy. May it always be so.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

When I was asked to write for The Idler I was a mess. I’d spent a lifetime perfecting my identity as head-of-the-class straight-A student only to reach a point in grad school where everything I did was wrong. School wasn’t just school, it was a structure, an armor that kept me safe and all of a sudden it had become unknowable, strange, threatening. Ever an anxious person, my anxieties had begun to overwhelm me and inhibit my functioning. I would will myself to write and nothing would come. I’d sit paralyzed before my screen or notebook too terrified to bother the world with another mistake, a poorly chosen word, a stillborn idea. I developed a phobia of email and phone messages fearing that they, like the endless comments in the marginalia of my work, would tell me something awful. Any negative news could further solidify me in my stuckness, could shock me into a state of literal immobility for days, or even weeks. Writing for The Idler thus offered an attractive distraction. The chance to take up my knowledge of pop culture as a writing subject was a welcome one. With less at stake, my pen began to scribble. A semi-professional television watcher, the prospect of writing about something like the themes of Mad Men loosened up my tic-tacking typing fingers again.

Beyond giving me a space to publically admire the entertainers I love (Maria Bamford, Margaret Cho, Louis C.K.) The Idler allowed me to practice, if in a much smaller way, the brave acts of these folks. I’ve used my bi-weekly column to think through art I’ve seen, movies I’ve watched, but it’s also been extremely important to me to employ this platform as a space of self reflection that helps me sort through, question, and understand what I know and feel and how pop culture aids in these processes. My relationships to fashion, Buffy, working out, media, etc. are mediated by a past thick with stories, and I’ve been so lucky to find a place where I can write my way through these connections. Shaking out readings, reviews, and interpretations through the sieve of my experience is what I do, how I think, and if anything has been heartening in the past few years of idling, it’s been the acceptance, and understanding, and thanks I’ve received for sharing what could easily be read as solipsistic journalings.

What I so desperately and intensely appreciate in the work of my favorite writers and comedians is their ability to reroute our paths to the truth. Sharing pain and shame and fear is powerful and instead of pretending to be above or beyond it, speaking at the level of the shit that brings us down has the incredible power of also rerouting our cultural and emotional responses to what is real and how it is perceived. If I’ve created even one teensy droplet of that magical work, attempted that bravery, or at least sold one person on the possibility that such bravery matters, I am contented and fulfilled.

As The Idler comes to a close, I find myself still struggling with the ghosts of depression and anxiety, but I am so very much stronger now. This writing has helped me. Having writing deadlines at all has been useful, finding feedback that is sweet and thoughtful and caring and supportive has been healing. Reacquainting myself with play, fun, and humor again has been a blast but it’s also helped me remember who I am at my core (a Betty Boop librarian in a Parisian salon full of dogs who read books).

So, I just have to say, thank you for reading, sharing, responding. Thanks for the conversations, with a shout out to Bob Hope, thanks for the memories. You could say all of this idling may have been silly, may have “just” been more blogging out into the sprawling interweb maw of a million voices, may have been a stupid distraction keeping me from more important, professional, or better work, but as a wise dude once said, “yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

—

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

The office (newly merged with a business rival), Don (desperate to win Sylvia back), and the country (steadily losing troops in Vietnam) are all slipping and sliding, trying to stand on shaky ground. Beginning with a bang, the show opens with a scene of reckless driving and an automobile crash. Ken Cosgrove fearfully tries to control the wheel but the raucously drunk Chevy clients laugh and swat at him, brandish a gun, cover his eyes. The men question his masculinity because he won’t speed up, and eventually they overpower him, coaxing the car head-on into danger. When we next see Ken he’s injured and hobbling on crutches. He seeks sympathy but his co-workers don’t seem to care.

There’s a ton going on in this episode, but I was most interested in the issues of health and sickness and what it means to be a man. The show’s made an icon of Don Draper — he’s heralded as a mysterious lothario, a sixties “pimp,” and people, men, seem to find him admirable for this. Yet, lately, he’s off his game. His moments of Draper ad magic are coming with less frequency, less pop, and his love-’em-and-leave-’em sex magic seems pretty dried up, too, since he’s become needy, even frightening, in his desire for Sylvia. “The Crash” could be read as his coming down from a Sylvia high — the doctor’s wife acting as his anodyne, his distracting drug. Though we’ve seen Draper use sex as medicine before, something is different about this particular relationship. He places a much higher value on her, spins out of control, is lost and manic when she shuts her door to him.

Speaking of panaceas, things get uber weird when the company higher-ups call in a doctor to basically administer speed to the employees. Injected with a performance enhancing serum (business-man boner pills, anyone?), the copywriters are to gain focus, clarity, energy with one little shot. It seems only men take the drug and almost immediately foot races, and games of strength and fortitude fill the space. With the men turned little boys, the workplace is boiled down to its essence — “I can do it better, run faster, pee farther, than the next guy.” The serum causes quite the frenzied production, not to mention pretty serious side effects and hallucinations, but nothing that could actually count as usable, viable, ideas.

However, it is striking that the serum (and perhaps being on the brink of exhaustion) frees up emotional expression for the Mad Men. After the drug is administered, the fellas ask each other, “can you feel anything?” Though in reference to the serum taking effect, the question hangs starkly in the air. Do they feel? When and how? In the temporary “insanity” of sorts that follows, Don pleads with Sylvia on the phone shouting, “I’m feeling a lot of emotions!” Ken performs a bizarre yet marvelous soft shoe whilst expressing pent up hatred for his job, and Stan reaches out to Peggy seeking sex as succor for emotional wounds. Where this magical medicine is supposed to “fix” these men by creating efficient capitalist output, the episode uses the trip to explore much realer pains and ailments that expectations of masculinity won’t allow them to properly address. Why does my heart hurt? How and why do I work in an abusive environment? How do I grieve?

Don’s pain, of course, is central. For Draper, “The Crash” is about collisions within himself. Physical and mental smash together as his emotional detritus takes on somatic shape. After a particularly painful discussion with Sylvia, he collapses into a guttural cough that at some moments is indiscernible from sobbing — for this high power male exec, his sadness is his sickness. The cough threads us back to his past as Dick Whitman sick with a severe chest cold. His mother, rather than caring for the boy with hot chicken soup (the stuff that ads are made of) banishes him to the basement so as not to infect the others in the whorehouse with Dick’s supposed consumption. Layered with this painful lack of care is an even more twisted knot of memories. A whore takes him into her room, watches over him, nurses him to health, and then uses her power, age, and experience to take Dick’s virginity in what appears to be an abusive act. Yes, this could seem a cop-out backstory for a flawed character, but I don’t think it excuses his behavior, so much as gives it some context.

Once upon a time, Don Draper could hone the sadness of his past into the shiny, nostalgic, artifice of his work, his ads genius feats of psychological alchemy. In this episode, his feelings and history are overburdening the work. In his frenzied state he confuses work and home life in an unproductive and depressing manner. He spends all his time building an ad for himself, crafting the perfect spiel that will sell Don Draper, will get a foot back into Sylvia’s door. But, he’s also selling something to himself, the narrative that this woman is the key, the mother and lover that he’s always wanted but never had. Hopefully, the viewer discomfort churned up in episodes like this one will allow the audience to rethink Draper’s smoothness and make him a more nuanced character in a complex gender structure. One in which our performances as men and women are constantly negotiating power, expression, and perception.

All the edges of the episode suggest that there is no safety, people lie, there’s no one we can trust. Where early Mad Men revelled in the intoxicating allure of embellishment, this season is dipping into the emptiness and horror that can structure a lie. Peggy, though she harbors an avoidant past of her own, suggests that we have to let ourselves feel painful emotions, that we can’t “dampen [them] with drugs and sex,” but as one can imagine, this advice is not very popular. “The Crash” undoubtedly presents a male desire for care and comfort (coded as feminine) along with freedom from typical masculine roles, but sadly it suggests that truthfully engaging with such desires is a temporary madness that the right ad, right soup, right fuck can cure. It gives a compelling interpretation of the world of men then and now, tender, lost boys in beards and button up shirts, white-knuckling the wheel, holding on for dear life while secretly wishing to be in the passenger seat.

—

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

I pause before answering. Not because I’m torn for choice, but because I don’t know quite what to say. I do know what I’d like to say:

“I’m sorry, ‘cheated?’ You understand why I ‘cheated?’ I don’t think so, Major.

“So I spent some time flirting with you while we served on the Normandy. That is, if listening to you recount how you white-knighted some girl in biotic school by killing your teacher is considered flirting. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like the bastard pretty much deserved it, but whoa. I mean, I watched the slaughtering of my entire family on Mindoir, then watched my entire Alliance unit get devoured by a thresher maw on Akuze, but I never accidentally broke a dude’s neck over a boy I liked. That’s some hardcore darkness you’ve got swirling around inside you, buddy!

“Yes, there was also the night before Ilos, and I’m not going to take anything away from that. Our ragged band of brothers was heading into an uncertain future, and you and I managed a sweet, if brief, moment of connection before it all went down. As if enough hadn’t already gone down. Between almost having to shoot Wrex and losing Ash on Virmire, I was barely holding on. You were there for me, and I was there for you. We’ll always have Ilos.

It was good, but it wasn’t THAT good.

“Then I defeated Saren and saved the Citadel. Do you remember what happened after that? A Collector ship attacked the Normandy, ripped a hole in its side, and I got spaced. And DIED. I died, Kaidan. Dead. Suffocated in space, where no one could hear me scream. Not that I could, due to that whole suffocating thing. But thanks to Cerberus (I know, I know, you’re not a huge fan), I was rebuilt as a regular Bionic Woman and woke back up — two years later.

“And I’ll never forget our reunion on Horizon. Your dramatic entrance from behind those crates, touting me as the savior of the Citadel and a living legend. The awkward hug. Your accusations that I was showing up after two years and acting like nothing happened. Your petulant whining that you thought we had something, something real.

“‘Thinking you were dead tore me apart,’ you said. ‘How could you put me through that?’

“Uh, I was dead, then unconscious for two years? Then I woke up to some serious shit going down, what with those Collectors abducting people from colonies all over the galaxy? Like they did right before you got all up in my face, on the very ground we were standing upon? Believe it or not, things aren’t always about you?

“So all this talk of cheating and the ‘I still love you,’ stuff? We spent one night together, sweetie. Then you (rightfully) assumed I was dead. Then, and I can’t stress this enough, two years went by. I hate to be all Ross about this, but I think we were on a break, at the very least. A reasonable person would assume all bets were off. But like I said, I never accidentally broke a dude’s neck over a boy I liked.

“What do I want? I want you to shoot what I tell you to shoot, or lift the baddies up into the air so I can shoot them. I want you to quit being such a dummy. I want you to stop acting like a sixth grader facing rejection for the first time. I want you to get it together, Alenko.”

I don’t say this. I don’t say any of it. I opt for the kinder, simpler, “I’m sorry Kaidan, but we should just keep it professional.”

Then you make me pay for the lunch you invited me to.

You know what? Garrus is way better in the sack anyway.

He’s a better dancer, too.

—

Sara Clemens is an ad copywriter for a book publisher, so every single day she pretends she’s in an episode of Mad Men. You can follow her on twitter at @TheSaraClemens, and find all the things she’s ever written for the internet at saraclemens.com.

Some weak endings are too happy. I like knowing who the bad guy is but he doesn’t always need to be caught. I like knowing the main character learned something in the course of the novel, or improved themselves, but they don’t always need to be perfectly content. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway did this. The Japanese main character, Shoko, was shunned by her brother for marrying an American GI after the war. She seeks his forgiveness when she finds out she has a fatal heart condition and sends her daughter to Japan to find him. The story is beautifully written, the characters have all struggled in their lives and persevered but the ending was too happy, too mushy; I found it hard to believe. The brother caves and forgives his sister. He has ignored her for decades and in one short visit he lets go of his anger completely? Maybe I hold grudges too well, but I found this ending too sticky sweet, especially after the excellent writing that preceded it.

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok did not have this problem. The Chinese-American characters were struggling and making life-changing choices every day. When I got to the ending I was pleased and humbled. The main character, Kimberly Chang, made choices I don’t think I could have made, choices I am sure many immigrants have been forced to make as they strive for the American Dream. Kwok did her characters justice by giving them a satisfying ending, not a happy one.

Endings really make or break a book for me. I don’t need a twist or a surprise; I just need honesty. Even if a book is set in the most bizarre fantasy world, the characters still have a human integrity that a bad ending can destroy. Science fiction/fantasy books, in my opinion, have the greatest potential for weak endings. Usually the author has created an entire universe to give his characters the exact dilemmas and challenges that they need. When bug-like aliens attack earth and only a child can save the human race, or a small subset of America is kept free of technology while the rest of the world goes crazy with tech power, or an autistic kid is controlled by an evil spirit communicating with him via a plastic telephone anything can happen. These books have the most potential for weak endings because the author isn’t held to the rules of our world. He or she could easily tie up all the loose ends with whatever fantasy world logic that resides there. Every time I read great sci-fi/fantasy I hope that the ending is open enough for me to insert a little life of my own.

I will also say that usually sci-fi/fantasy endings are the best. I feel as though the author spent so much time creating this new world that they know things can’t possibly be completely finished there just because this particular story is finished. I think this is also the reason so many of these types or stories turn into series. Sequels and trilogies aren’t enough when you have a rabid fan base who wants to inhabit your made-up world again and again. Rereading doesn’t offer the same level of immersion that a new story does. We want to know new things about the world these authors have created. Authors like Stephen King give us such rich worlds, intertwined in all of their stories that it is a joy to see a character from one novel play a bit part in another, we get to feel as though we are in on the joke.

Once, somehow, I read a great book and forgot the ending. There was a great twist that I didn’t see coming — let’s face it, I never see the twist — and then I forgot all about it. It was Orson Scott Card’s Wyrms and I got to experience a great ending for the first time twice. I wish that could happen again. Sure, sometimes I forget details from the middle of a book, a characters exact motivations, or a side plot, but who forgets the ending completely? I think it was a once in a lifetime kind of thing.

I have endings on the mind because The Idler is ending. It has become for me a great place to share my thoughts on books and to read about sports and video games. It gave me a reason to read a new book, chose a new author, investigate a new genre. I’m sad to see it go. After leaving the bookstore I felt adrift and now I am cast loose again. But I think all of this reading and writing experience can help guide me to my next literary destination. I will try not to make this ending too sappy, it’s what I wanted to avoid. Horrible outpourings of emotion, who needs ‘em!?

So I will say this: Keep reading if you enjoy reading. Keep playing video games or watching hockey if you enjoy those things. Hell, do all three at the same time if you can. Get others to join you in your pursuits and life will be great.

—

Kelly Hannon worked in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon

My cousin was the only one in the family with a Super Nintendo growing up. I skipped that particular Nintendo console since I was embroiled in an ill-fated affair with the Sega CD, so I was always interested in playing it whenever I went to my aunt’s house. The only games my cousin had were Madden and NHL ’96. I had no idea what I was doing, and my cousin was having too much fun pummeling the noob to stop and give me tips. Thus began my hatred of sports games. I haven’t touched one since.

In the interest of bettering myself, I decided to seek out a sports gamer and get his or her perspective on the genre. Maybe then I could begin strengthening my gaming weakness. Fortunately, my friend Brandon Kelley was just the guy I was looking for, and sat down with me to discuss his gaming history and the finer points of the FIFA franchise.

BK: Do you need me to spell my name for the record?

SC: You’re not on trial here, sir.

BK: We’ll see!

SC: So, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how I have certain holes in my gaming experience, and as a games writer I feel like I shouldn’t have any. But I just can’t get into sports games! You’re the only person I know who plays sports games regularly.

BK: Right, right, and with the first-person shooters you at least try to play them but you’re just not any good.

SC: Well, I’m getting better because of Mass Effect, which is third-person, but I’ve found I’ve been able to translate skills. I’ll never be good enough for multiplayer, but then a lot of people aren’t. But first let me ask you a couple questions about your gaming experience in general: how long have you been playing video games?

BK: I vaguely remember when I was a small boy, for Christmas, my family got the Atari — I can’t remember if it was the 2600 or the 5200 — it was whichever one they stopped making games for maybe two years after it came out. And my dad was really into it and he would play it with my brother and me. My brother’s three years older than me. We’d play Breakout, which you know is very similar to that game everybody plays on their Blackberry. And we also played this game called Bounty Bob or Miner 2049er, and it was kind of a rip off of King Kong where you played this little miner who had a mustache. Or at least it looked like he had a mustache.

SC: Wait, King Kong or Donkey Kong?

BK: Uh, Donkey Kong.

SC: Right.

BK: I’m a real gamer.

SC: (laughs) Hey, there could be a game that’s licensed to King Kong that I don’t know about.

BK: Uh, no, definitely not. But the object of the game with Bounty Bob was that there was a course with various platforms and ladders like Donkey Kong, and as your guy walked over the platform it filled in with color. You just basically had to traverse all of the platforms, and then you’d move on to the next level.

So, post-Atari we got our first personal computer as a family. I was about ten so this would have been the late eighties, and there was a game that sort of lit me up called Freddy’s Rescue Roundup. Did you ever play this game?

SC: No.

BK: It was similar to Bounty Bob where you were this little guy Freddy and you’d just make him jump with the spacebar, and you’d have to collect all these pigeons throughout the course. I remember always stealing away to the basement where the computer was to play Freddy’s Rescue Roundup and listen to the radio for hours at a time.

Then there was the Super Nintendo, and that was when I would say you could really call me a “gamer.” The Super Nintendo was bought for both my brother and me for Christmas, but he never played it. I played it all the time. Street Fighter II, Super Mario World, with the cape. I remember the day I got 100% completion on Super Mario World. That was huge.

Leading into sports games, I can remember having two sports games that I played on the SNES: NBA Jam — “He’s heating up! He’s on fire!” — and then there was a game called Super Soccer Champ. Super Soccer Champ was a sports arcade game, as opposed to a sports simulator, which is a distinction that will be important when we’re talking about FIFA. But I’d play that game with my buddy Kevin cooperatively, as opposed to facing off, which was pretty novel at the time.

SC: Did you play sports in real life at all?

BK: Yeah. I played soccer when a little kid in the local township leagues, and I continued to play through high school. I was a letterman.

SC: Nice. So you were good at soccer in real life, then.

BK: Well, I was good enough to play in high school. (laughs) I was passionate about soccer, but I wasn’t good enough to explore that passion through my own athleticism. What’s exciting about getting into the simulation aspect of FIFA is that games like that allow you as a fan and former player to exercise your brain — your tactical sports brain — and see the fruits of that tactical awareness on the screen, when you physically can’t achieve that.

SC: Would you say that the primary reason you play video games in general is to achieve that kind of immersion?

BK: I don’t know. I think with my most memorable gaming experiences, that would not be true. Through high school, the game I played most was a puzzle game called Bust-A-Move 2 for the PlayStation. My favorite thing to do would be to come home from school, fire up the PlayStation and Bust-A-Move, and put on my favorite music CD at the time. I guess it was immersion in that I got to let everything else go away, and I wouldn’t have to think of anything but that activity. I would of course do that thing that you do when playing any game — be it jump rope, hopscotch, or shooting basketballs — I would think, if I don’t get the high score on this level then I’m going to hell.

SC: Then the floor is lava.

BK: Then the floor is lava. Or you imagine that you’re competing for a gold medal in the Olympic event that is Bust-A-Move 2. So I think that maybe that’s me trying to insert myself into the game. But in FIFA you’re able to…

SC: And FIFA is currently your game of choice, right?

BK: Yeah, FIFA is my game of choice. I play the online pro portion of the game where you take a player from a very amateur skill level and compete online with other real-life players, or with your team with other real-life players, in order to improve your guy. As he scores goals, completes passes, runs a certain distance, he becomes a better player.

You can mold this player to physically look the way you want. His height, his weight, his face, his hair, and a lot guys try to make theirs look really cool like World of Warcraft style. But I always try to make my guy look exactly like me so when I’m playing I can imagine it’s me up there.

SC: So then FIFA is totally about immersing yourself in the game you love.

BK: Totally.

SC: So you play online with real people. Tell me a little bit about your. . . club?

BK: Yes, it’s “club.” Right now there are about fifteen players on the team, and of those fifteen probably five would be considered inactive because they never play with us. Of the remaining ten people it’s a constant rotation of four or five that are online at any given time. We usually only play together as a club if we have at least three people online. You play with less than three, and you’re putting yourselves at a disadvantage.

SC: Because AI populates the rest of your team?

BK: Exactly. You have much less control.

So our club, Half Baked FC, called such because the creators of the club are really big into the movie Half Baked starring Dave Chappelle and Jim Breuer, we play in a stadium that is called Mile High Stadium. When I first started playing, our team “kit,” or uniform, was the LA Galaxy uniform because their sponsor is Herbalife. Now I don’t think this is particularly interesting, but if you’re an online gamer you run into a lot of stoners.

SC: Hm. I see.

BK: Most of the guys on my team are stoners. They’ll have to take thirty second breaks to “roll a doobie.” Their words, not mine.

SC: You seem as though you are, perhaps, not a stoner?

BK: I am not, and I’ll have interesting conversations with the guys on the team where they say, “so uh, you don’t smoke weed, do you?”

SC: Wow, they can tell just from your voice?

BK: (laughs) Well no, they ask directly. But their follow up question is always, “so, what DO you do?” Look, I’m the oldest person on this club, so far as I know.

SC: Do you have any long-standing rivals? Every team needs a long-standing rival.

BK: That’s true, but there are just too many teams. There are teams that we come up against frequently, but you know this from playing online, most rivalries stem from various racial epithets being thrown around the headset.

SC: Or in my case, some classic sexual harassment.

BK: Right, and I don’t condone any of it at all! Though I’m not above trash talking.

SC: There’s a difference between trash talking and harassment, though. What would be a choice trash talk from Brandon Kelley?

BK: I like a good “yeah, bitch.” (laughs) It depends on the situation. If I’m trash talking in the instance where I got the better of the other team, then I’ll deploy the “yeah, bitch.” If I have to get involved in trash talking when I have been on the losing end, I’ll only do it if they did, in fact, best me. There will be situations where the other team won either through computer error, or they just got lucky. Then I will have to tell them.

SC: (laughs) You will have to inform them of this.

BK: “I’m sorry, but there was a CPU error. The artificial intelligence really needs to be improved in this aspect of the game, since it was the only reason why you were able to score a goal.”

SC: And you do it in this calm, reasonable manner, I’m assuming. That’s really helpful of you.

BK: My actual favorite trash talk right now is when I do something that’s really great, I’ll do the McDonald’s theme song: (sings) “Boo do boo boo boo, I’m lovin’ it!” I especially like that one because my Polish teammate is also really into it, so he’ll do it too. Then of course there’s the old standby: “You mad?” The one I’ve been trying to work in that I don’t think is going to work is, “Google me.”

What’s interesting about my team, is that we have been playing together for about two years, but I don’t know anybody’s real name. So, Hairy_Bud: everyone calls him “Hairy.” Maybe his real name is Harold, I don’t know. There’s a Marine, and his PlayStation screen name is USMC and then some four-digit number that has some significance to him. So we call him “US.” I think his name is Ryan? They call me Kelley, because I chose my screen name without fully understanding the world I was getting into and used my gmail address. (Sara laughs) Yeah, I’m pretty close to just having my social security number be my handle. But then somebody calls me “NYC” because they know I live in New York City.

It’s sort of like being in the military, where everyone goes by a nickname like “Tex.” And I absolutely feel camaraderie with these guys. Particularly when new people come into the team. They are expected to defer to the founding members of the club and to those who have been around for longer. It’s very comfortable when I log on with these guys. There’s no awkward interaction. There’s a rapport that’s already been established.

SC: So it’s like playing on a real-life sports team.

BK: Yeah. These are guys who you would be comfortable enough around to say, “Man, I had a shitty day.” And you can sort of let off some of that tension.

SC: That’s awesome. So what was the last non-sports game you played that you really enjoyed? Just to prove you have breadth in your experience.

BK: I really enjoyed Journey.

SC: Perfect game. I hesitate to call any game perfect, but perfect game. That and Portal.

BK: I definitely wouldn’t dispute that.

SC: Thanks for chatting with me. Maybe sports games don’t actually “suck hard” as twelve-year-old me would say while suffering through Madden. Any parting words?

BK: Google me.

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Sara Clemens is an ad copywriter for a book publisher, so every single day she pretends she’s in an episode of Mad Men. You can follow her on twitter at @TheSaraClemens, and find all the things she’s ever written for the internet at saraclemens.com.

It is surprising that we often feel very strongly about the need to defend and justify our beliefs about these underappreciated cultural works. In doing so we are not only defending the things in question but also our own tastes and in some way our validity as social and cultural commentators. It matters to many of us that our friends and colleagues respect our opinions and understand why we believe what we do. Which is why this column is about my appreciation of All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder. The often-delayed Frank Miller and Jim Lee ten issue series is almost universally despised by both critics and comic book readers alike but I have a strange affinity for the story. Reviewers generally praise Lee’s artwork but despise Miller’s storytelling. I, on the other hand, appreciate both creators’ work, and find that the two mesh together to create something unique and exciting, the likes of which I have never seen. The narrative showcases a nearly psychopathic Batman who seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity as he drags a twelve year old Dick Grayson into his war against crime. There is nothing likable about this Dark Knight, he’s extremely violent, overly profane, masochistic, and bordering on sadistic. He is not a good guy and may not be a hero. He is a deeply troubled man who tortures criminals, kidnaps little boys, seems to be devoid of empathy, and is only concerned about himself. He is a highly unsavory character who displays many of humanity’s worst traits and is a role model for no one.

The logical question to ask at this point is; if this Batman is truly so unpleasant why do I like the story so much? In truth it is because this version of the Dark Knight has little to no redeeming qualities or social value. To my mind this Batman is the logical extension of many of the Caped Crusader’s traits taken to the highest degree. Batman has often been portrayed as disturbed, violent, arrogant, and pompous. These characteristics were soft-pedaled or muted by other more desirable qualities in past stories. This book enhances the Dark Knight’s core self and displays how unbecoming such a hero truly would be. I read it as a commentary on society in a post-September 11th world (the first issue was published in 2005.) The narrative asks the reader to consider what price is he/she willing to pay for security and what amount of freedom is he/she willing to sacrifice in the process. I find the effort to be bold and rather forward thinking. It follows the tradition of Miller’s own Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen in presenting the negative aspects of superheroes but it does it at an intensity never before seen in a story featuring one of the comic industry’s best known characters. I can understand why some readers are repulsed by the effort but I believe that such feelings are the point of the story. We should be repulsed, the idea that a mentally unstable billionaire dresses as a bat and violently fights crime would bother many of us if these events happened in the real world. I understand that Batman is fantasy and that escapist literature provides an avenue to flee reality for awhile but isn’t Miller’s notion of a maximized Batman something worth considering?

The other reason that I like All-Star Batman & Robin so much is in many ways the opposite of my above way of thinking. This Batman story takes place in the same universe as Miller’s most notable Batman stories: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. When combined these stories create a dense narrative that presents the Dark Knight at the beginning of his career and at the end. This progression is fascinating and allows the reader to see how the Batman from The Dark Knight Returns was created and how he changed. It provides insight into numerous plot points and story details that were before unexplored. Miller has created a sinister universe in which not only Batman has become a super-enhanced version of himself but so too have other heroes like Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow. Like Batman, these characters’ core qualities are maintained but are taken to their furthest logical extent. All-Star Batman & Robin rewards readers that follow along closely and connect the dots from previous stories. The narrative also contains numerous Easter eggs from throughout DC Comics history and encourages the reader to consider Batman’s mythos and how the character has progressed since 1939 when he began as a hardcore vigilante.

So, that’s my overall spiel. I doubt I’ve convinced many of you because I imagine a large number of readers find the story to be too distasteful to stick with and also because I didn’t give any concrete examples from the book. The problem is that I don’t think I have room to fit any good illustrations into this column. To remedy this I am going to use future columns to review individual issues of All-Star Batman & Robin and give tangible examples of why I think the narrative is so good. Imagine me as the guy at the party who is trying his best to convince you to rethink something you have written off as inferior. Feel free to argue with me, I’d like the input and relish the challenge. Hopefully the hors d’oeuvres are good, the beer is plentiful, and I don’t have spinach in my teeth.

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Jeffrey Johnson is an avid reader of comic books, watcher of television and film, and an annoying fount of 1980s and 1990s trivia. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and has written numerous journal articles and book chapter about popular culture. His latest book is entitled Super-History: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present. He currently lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.

So the Nook is dead, long live the Nook. I’m thinking of buying a new one. The main problem with this plan is that the damn thing is so sensitive. One hard drop on the bedroom floor and the screen saver was broken. Instead of cycling through different authors it stuck with one face until I woke it up to read, then a new face would appear. I was taking the Nook to bed in what turned out to be a much darker room than I anticipated. Bam, I ran into the bed, dropping my phone and the e-reader. The phone is fine by the way. I have dropped my iPhone about a million times and every once in a while I can only hold conversations over speaker phone but the next time I drop it, it fixes itself. This is the kind of technology I need. Self-healing.

The Nook is not self-healing. I got used to seeing one author for days at a time. Sometimes I would wake up the nook just to change the face, Gertrude Stein is a little too handsome of a woman for me to have staring at me from the coffee table for days on end.

The next time I dropped, it the results were a little more destructive. You think I would have bought a case for it after dropping it the first time. Not me. It was fine, therefore it was tough enough to survive my lifestyle. Things end up on the floor a lot in my life. I think I can pick up just one more thing and everything goes crashing down to the ground. I was carrying the baby in one arm; his change of clothes, a cloth diaper, and the Nook were all tucked under my elbow. Things started to slide and so I tightened my grip on the baby and kept walking down the stairs.

Not the best plan.

Obviously holding the baby above all else is good. But I should have stopped, rearranged, set something down. The Nook fell, hit the wood floor, slid, fell down four steps and landed on the slate tile entryway. I thought nothing of it. It had survived the first fall. It was initiated into my way of life. I scooped it up and went on my merry way. The screen had two vertical stripes through Kurt Vonnegut’s face. No big deal. They were only slightly darker than the surrounding screen. They were a little more noticeable when I turned on the backlight but, let’s face it, I deserved it for not buying a case.

But it was more than lines. The backlight turned on, but nothing else did. I pushed buttons in vain. I couldn’t even turn it off and back on again, my go to electronic fixing move. I held down the power button for over two minutes. Nothing. Finally the battery died. My husband charged it for me but it never turned on again. The Nook was dead.

I decided I didn’t care. I didn’t really like the thing in the first place. I was old school. I liked paper books. I could totally read them while I held a sleeping baby. I went out and bought a new book light that was way too bright and had no dimmer switch. I missed the soft glow of the nook a little. I pushed the thought out of my head. Things would be fine.

The baby kept fussing due to my awkward page turning. My hands are not big enough to hold a 400 plus page book in one hand. I broke a few bindings. My mom spilled juice on a book. The baby kept waking up and turning his head toward the super bright light skinning down on him. I finished a book while holding him and had nothing else to read. I started to miss the Nook in earnest.

Plus there was that book I was in the middle of. I downloaded the Nook reader for my computer after a chat with the Barnes and Noble help crew. I immediately hated it. There is too much going on on my computer for me to be able to read a book. Plus there’s glare. And I can’t snuggle up. The screen is too bright and the battery is dying. I need a new Nook.

This time I’ll be smart. I already picked out a cool orange stripy case. If it isn’t sturdy enough, I’ll hit up Barnes and Noble in the mall and buy something giant to protect it. I’ll buy a screen protector and actually apply it, unlike the screen protector for my phone, which is still in a box somewhere. I’ll carry fewer things down the stairs. And next time I’m holding the baby and the Nook and the Nook starts to slide I’ll be able to let it go, knowing I’ve done my best to protect it. The Nook of course, not the baby.

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Kelly Hannon worked in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon