"If only that Ditko fellow was less subtle and more overt regarding his personal politics ..."
Aug. 28th, 2009 02:38 pm![[identity profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyFor as much fail as it churns out, Big Hollywood occasionally offers some genuine gems.
I can't stand Objectivism, but I find Steve Ditko's treatment of it irresistibly compelling, perhaps because the comic book medium is a far more appropriate venue for such a Manichean philosophy than the thousand-page rape-justifying tomes that Ayn Rand routinely shat out (it certainly helps that none of Ditko's characters ever barfed up a 70-page screed like John Galt, not to mention the fact that Ditko actually managed to create characters who were more believable as human beings than any of Rand's strawmen or Mary Sues, even when his characters were radioactivity-powered superheroes).
The following four pages constitute "In Principle: The Unchecked Premise," a short story originally published in the 160-page graphic novel Steve Ditko's Static in 1988:
As crudely simplistic as it is, it's still better than either reading or watching the "fireplace scene" between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead, but then again, so is getting punched in the crotch until you hemorrhage internally and die.
I can't stand Objectivism, but I find Steve Ditko's treatment of it irresistibly compelling, perhaps because the comic book medium is a far more appropriate venue for such a Manichean philosophy than the thousand-page rape-justifying tomes that Ayn Rand routinely shat out (it certainly helps that none of Ditko's characters ever barfed up a 70-page screed like John Galt, not to mention the fact that Ditko actually managed to create characters who were more believable as human beings than any of Rand's strawmen or Mary Sues, even when his characters were radioactivity-powered superheroes).
The following four pages constitute "In Principle: The Unchecked Premise," a short story originally published in the 160-page graphic novel Steve Ditko's Static in 1988:
As crudely simplistic as it is, it's still better than either reading or watching the "fireplace scene" between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead, but then again, so is getting punched in the crotch until you hemorrhage internally and die.
