Jimmy Palmiotti has more comic book credits
under his belt than can be sensibly listed in a sidebar biography.
He's done lots. Trust us. We don't lie. Much.
Notable amongst the above mentioned credits
are: Co-creator of 21Down, The Resistance,
Gatecrasher, Ash, and Painkiller Jane. Editor
and founder of Marvel Knights, working on Daredevil,
Black Panther, Punisher, Killraven, and
The Inhumans. Writer/co-writer on Beautiful Killer
and Superboy.
Jimmy is also one of the comic industry's
most popular ink artists, having put his pen to Superman, Batman, Catwoman, Midnight Mass, Codename ; Knockout, Sci -Spy, Punisher, Nick Fury, Brotherhood, and many, many more.
Justin Gray has been extremely lucky in
that he has managed to slide his way into a number of exciting
and interesting situations for which he was distressingly under
qualified. He traveled to the mountains of the Dominican Republic
and mined amber with the local people, spending his nights partying
on the balconies of Santa Domingo. Along with eccentric inventor
Roy Larimer, Justin has delivered previously undiscovered species
of insects to the curator of entomology at American Museum of
Natural Histrory.
Currently Justin is co-creator and co-writer
of 21Down and The Resistance, with Jimmy Palmiotti,
as well as being co-writer of Chastity Re-imagined from
Chaos! Comics.
His upcoming projects include a piece of
sequential fiction for the official Matrix
Movie Website with artist JG Jones.
Excerpted from "The Decline of the English Murder" originally presented in the Tribune (12 February, 1946) by George Orwell:
“One can construct what would be, from a News of the World reader's point of view, the "perfect" murder. The murderer should be a little man of the professional class — a dentist or a solicitor, say — living an intensely respectable life somewhere in the suburbs, and preferably in a semi-detached house, which will allow the neighbors to hear suspicious sounds through the wall. He should be either chairman of the local Conservative Party branch, or a leading Nonconformist and strong Temperance advocate. He should go astray through cherishing a guilty passion for his secretary or the wife of a rival professional man, and should only bring himself to the point of murder after long and terrible wrestles with his conscience. Having decided on murder, he should plan it all with the utmost cunning, and only slip up over some tiny unforeseeable detail. The means chosen should, of course, be poison. In the last analysis he should commit murder because this seems to him less disgraceful, and less damaging to his career, than being detected in adultery. With this kind of background, a crime can have dramatic and even tragic qualities, which make it memorable and excite pity for both victim and murderer. Most of the crimes mentioned above have a touch of this atmosphere, and in three cases, including the one I referred to but did not name, the story approximates to the one I have outlined.”
A few months back a harmless online game made its way through the email system. The game was set up like this. You are a giant with a large magnifying glass. You look down at a populated urban neighborhood of any city USA and, using the magnifying glass, burn out various citizens who rush through their daily lives completely oblivious of their impending doom. In effect you are playing god, a cruel and bored one completely detached from your victims.
The modern “perfect murder” is unrecognizable by Victorian principles on which Orwell’s theory was based. I use the term perfect murder not to glorify, but rather as Sebastian Junger pointed out the “perfect storm” as components coming together in the most destructive way they can. Both Hollywood sensationalism and the crushing impact of modern media on society have altered not only how serial killers are viewed, but also how they operate. Victims no longer fit a specific profile and the victim is simply a tool used by this new killer.
The impersonal nature of last month’s sniper rampage, while shocking, may quickly become the norm. Where most serial killers like Jack the Ripper and Son of Sam profiled their victims for specific traits fitting their psychological problems, the spectacle killer seems less interested in the individuals than the attention and fame heaped upon them by our media. I’m not jumping on the bandwagon that proposes video games and violence on TV create these situations, but I will say they offer creativity to already disturbed individuals that may lack ingenuity.
Obviously we live a celebrity-obsessed culture where people are willing to do almost anything for fame and money. Game shows allow us to watch people eat animal penis, this taking place on prime time television-once the family hour. The latest craze in gonzo pornography is pulling seemingly innocent girls off the street with the lure of cash or fame in exchange for humiliating them during sex and then abandoning them on a roadside somewhere. Indifference to the human condition, something millions of people claimed had seen its end just a little over a year ago, hasn’t budged. In fact its steadily declining.
Orwell said, “(he) should only bring himself to the point of murder after long and terrible wrestles with his conscience.”
Perhaps a more accurate description can be seen in Tarantino’s script for the film True Romance. Virgil, as played by James Gandolfini has this to say…
VIRGIL:
Now the first guy you kill is always the hardest. I don't care if you're the Boston Strangler or Wyatt Earp. You can bet that Texas boy, Charles Whitman, the fella who shot all them guys from that tower, I'll bet you green money that that first little black dot that he took a bead on, was the bitch of the bunch. No foolin' the first one's a tough row to hoe. Now, the second one, while it ain't no Mardi Gras, it ain't half as tough row to hoe. You still feel somethin' but it's just so diluted this time around. Then you completely level off on the third one. The third one's easy. It's gotten to the point now I'll do it just to watch their expressions change.
PANZER KUNST:
There are some things that are difficult to pull off visually in comics with convincing effect and beauty. One is the car chase and the other is a fight scene. For decades American comics fell back on the one-two punching style of the classic western bar brawl. Exaggerated right hooks have been a mainstay. Even in martial arts based comics the physical fighting styles have been less than creative. Having trained martial arts and observed many different techniques, I'm always looking for some variation in comicbook fist fights.
It should be no surprise that Manga has some of the best. I've been a fan of Yukito Kishiro's art for a number of years. His book Battle Angel Alita, published by VIZ is both simple and complex, much like his artistic approach. If you're unfamiliar with his work, a new and possibly final series telling the origin of Alita is on stands now.
-Justin
News From Planet America
I hate to say it but it is business as usual. People kill people, other people report on them and they become more famous every day. No one remembers the victims. Where is the story of the life of some of these sniper victims? Not a paragraph in a local paper…a whole special on TV about how wonderful these people might have been, what they did in their life times and what is next for the families. A celebration of their lives, not a 60-minute special on the killers. Why would I give a shit about these two screwed up loser, sniper assholes? I was hoping the whole time they were being hunted, they would miss a person and a store load of citizens would pour out into the street, pull them out of their pathetic death mobile and hang them from a shopping mall lamp post, then let the remaining loved ones of the people they killed, take shots at the bodies. I don’t care who they were or how they did it…they are the lowest form of life on this planet.
I think this kind of crap has been going on forever in the world…we just recently have been reporting it a lot better and as media opens up doors to the world outside our own, we are learning more and more how truly screwed up the human race is and where we naturally are headed into the future. Serial killers are everywhere, and their shitty parents are there as well. Future shitty parents are being formed more and more as we speak. Look around…how many times do you catch people, in public, smacking and cursing at their kids? Me…I see it all the time. When and can this change? Well…speaking about serial killers and such, the subject of parents always comes up…and this may have something to do why it is taking me sooooo long to want to bring a kid into such a self serving greedy world. Let me explain.
I live near a high school. Not going to say which one, but its in Brooklyn. There are 4 police cars outside it each day in the morning and in the night. Obviously they need them there because of past occurrences. When they are let out of the school, these kids resemble a pack of animals. They terrorize local people, graffiti on everything, including private homes, and hang out till the late hours of the night on every corner. Why should this bother me? No one cares, that’s why. What kind of parents do these kids have that they don’t look after them, make sure they are home or even give a crap what they do. Let me tell you. Reading scores are horrible, teachers complain and no one hears, and then to make matters worse, they are underpaid and the parents expect them to baby sit their kids as well. I look at this and think…well, the parents don’t care, the teachers really don’t have the time and resources to look after them, and as a group, they don’t treat each other with respect because they are brought up with no values, so instead of treating the problem, we use cops to put a band aid on a shotgun wound.
We are creating vapid, burned out little next wave citizens that really, unless they can play basketball, or rap and sing like jlo and snoop, they have nothing to live for. They have kids so they can take their crap on them. They listen to whatever next hot thing is fed to them, and they follow trends like people used to follow religion. You don’t have those $300 sneakers…you are not cool. You want to play an instrument? Sorry, we cut music from school. The wheels are turning on the proud and the stupid. We are reveling in stupidity and becoming trend followers. Look around you, the new hot DVD is “ whatever” so everyone must head to the store to get it…and they do. In packs of brainless zombies force fed by a barrage of commercials during their episodes of their evening babysitters, TV.
I try to find a foreign movie or low budget movie in a local theater and it is nowhere to be found. I have to travel into Manhattan to see that. Bookstores? Got to go to another neighborhood, no one reads here. Comic book stores? There is one near here, but the owner only orders dc and marvel or whatever new trend is hot. Music? If it isn’t at the wiz, I have to make a trip or special order,” we only carry the top 100 albums they tell me.
Maybe you can understand my frustration. If I have an individual mind, and do not make my choices based on what is “popular” I am going to have to pay for that. If I want an album that isn’t popular, I have to hunt. If I want to see a movie that isn’t “Hollywood” I have to travel…and if I want to read a comic book that isn’t a superhero comic…well. For the time being, there are a few, but taking a good look at the top 300 comic from diamond, that too will soon be gone.
The next generation of grown-ups are in trouble of not being creative. In trouble of repeating every bad thing their parents taught them and making it 10 times worse. Sure there are some that break out, but the numbers are getting smaller by the day. Look around, you are different. You are on line actually reading an opinion that is not the norm. You read and enjoy a graphic medium that is suffering unless it becomes “hip” really soon. You have a creative mind, and like everyone that reads comics, you have a voice that wants to be heard. I commend you for this and offer up the challenge that each of us free thinkers need to do. Change and affect the person next to you, share the personal glimpses your films, books and art offer with them. Turn them on and get them to take a side street to the freeway that their life has become. The life you save may be your own.
