Genius #5

[history79]

"I just read several pages of a comic called GENIUS on one of those nasty piratey web places. It’s written by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman, and illustrated by Afua Richardson. And the idea is so simple and crystal that I could spit.

Every generation has its own naturally gifted brilliant military mind. Some people just have a genius for military thinking. What if this generation’s natural military genius was a seventeen-year-old girl living the gang life in the middle of South Central LA? And what if she had, since she was old enough to fuck shit up, been connecting people and laying plans for the only war she’d ever want to wage?

Next: an extraordinarily large pile of dead LAPD.

I’d really like to read more of this, but it turns out it’s tied into Top Cow’s Pilot Season project, which means people have to go and vote for it. I haven’t read the others — I know Jonathan Hickman has something in play, as does Josh Fialkov. GENIUS just happened to be the one I saw first. Since I always want new comics from Jon and Josh, I may have to beat some people at Top Cow. Because I require more GENIUS, too."

- Warren Ellis

Source: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=6387

Comments

[captainbellman]

Ellis' public persona of an edgy, anti-establishment type just seems even more forced when he uses it to prop up a lesser talent such as Hickman.

[erikred]

Aren't you supposed to couch that in Latin?

"Hickman delenda est!"

[captainbellman]

I like your style, sir.

[halloweenjack]

Ellis' pretensions of being an "edgy, anti-establishment type" disappeared completely when RED--one of a number of miniseries from him in the mid-aughts that failed to live up to his self-generated hype--got turned into a Bruce Willis movie.

[tigerkaya]

Meh.

[informationgeek]

So... the terrorist won? Yay?

[cyberghostface]

You say terrorist, I say freedom fighter! Yaaaay, let's all kill cops!

/sarcasm

[siliconshaman]

And I'd call you a dick..

[cyberghostface]

Rig any cop cars with bombs lately?

[siliconshaman]

Call anyone else a terrorist and murder lately? Or is it just me.

[cyberghostface]

You mean someone who engages in acts of murder and terrorism?

Yeah.

[siliconshaman]

Ok, reality isn't fiction.

So, you know, if you think because I say that the fictional character has a point, given the premise of the comic, and that it has parallels with reality ... that I'm saying I commit murder and terrorism.

Then dude, you have a serious mental health problem there.

or you know.. you're just being a troll and arguing for the sake of arguing.

[cyberghostface]

I never said you actually commit murder and terrorism.

What you did do, however, is saying killing cops would be justified.

Some examples:

On whether or not you would support Destiny in real life: "Considering how corrupt and broken the social system has become.. damn right I would."

or

"You say murder & terrorist, I say protester and freedom fighter."

or

"Yes, it's murder... This does not mean it is unjustified or unnecessary. That depends upon the cause, and the means"

etc, etc

[siliconshaman]

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson

So, yes, sometimes it is justified.

"Rig any cop cars with bombs lately?" -cyberghostface

[cyberghostface]

Yeah I'm just going to let that comment speak for itself.

*backs away slowly*

[siliconshaman]

Ooo I'm a scary terrorist am I?

Boo!

Go on, go crawl back into your bubble-wrap lined echo chamber. If I'm the scary one around here, you really don't want to read the news for a start.

[cyberghostface]

No, I think you're someone who's a lot of talk about how murdering policemen is justified but wouldn't dare to actually pull the trigger on someone.

[siliconshaman]

It's never been necessary.

I have a question for you though.. why does liking this comic, and saying that Destiny might well be justified in her actions, given a corrupt police-force that acts like a gang itself, why does this represent such a threat to you that you cannot bear to hear someone saying it?

Try this thought experiment. Replace the police with Taliban, while not changing their actions and now replace Destiny with a white male teen...

Does that make it less scary for you? Or do you still maintain, that killing is never, ever justified under any circumstances whatsoever. Not even in self-defence.

[cyberghostface]

You're saying that you would support someone who would kill over ninety policemen in real life. That's what I take issue with.

And no, the Taliban aren't comparable to the police. The CONTEXT of the story changes everything. Although if someone did a story like that it would probably be attacked for being 'Islamophobic' and would garner more outrage than this comic did (which is, next to none).

[lego_joker]

I dunno, the Taliban are literally the government where they come from, so they can't exactly claim underdog cred. They also, y'know, spend 90% of their time primarily oppressing Muslims.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah but if you did a story about the Taliban, ISIS and/or related concepts you'd need a disclaimer that not all Muslims follow their ideology and/or a positive Muslim depiction to balance it out and even then you risk getting flamed; see Homeland for example.

[thezmage]

Here's a thought experiment: replace all of the cops with cupcakes and Destiny with that tree from "To Kill a Mockingbird" that Boo Radley put little toys in a hole in, then would you still support the side you've chosen?

[tigerkaya]

Respect your members this isn't comicvine, also read the SD rules.

[siliconshaman]

*sigh*

and yet the obvious troll cyberghostface can get away with whatever he wants.

[tigerkaya]

Well no worry a mod will be here to delete both comments so it's all good.

[cyberghostface]

Show me what I did that constitutes as trolling in your eyes.

[siliconshaman]

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/5944064.html?thread=169492224#cmt169492224

[dcbanacek]

This plays out as a really, really over the top extra-curricular activity that is placed on "Destiny's" college applications.

Let's count how this is really wrong

[bencomicgraphics]

Cops have abandoned entire blocks of a city before to crime. Usually when they are tired of getting beat up exiting their patrol car or getting murdered passing a certain road.

The first thing that usually happens is the people living in those blocks complain. They WANT the police back.

Also, it doesn't matter hwo smart 'Destiny' thinks she is. Her 'troops' are gangbangers. Who are known to be:

A) Not disciplined at all
B) Misogynistic as all hell.
C) All act like independent thinkers.

An army is only as strong as it's discipline. An undisciplined, but armed mass of gangbangers will not only not listen to her, but will break ranks whenever they feel endangered or try to cap Destiny at the first chance they think they can be rid of her so the one that does it can fill the power vacuum.

These are actual problems real gangs have: Lack of discipline, infighting, and constant regicide. Having years of documented gang behavior chance because some mouthy girl claims to be the greatest military mind fo her generation is laughable at best.

Re: Let's count how this is really wrong

[lego_joker]

Devil's advocate: but is it any more laughable than Bruce Wayne deciding to become a superhero instead of drowning his grief in expensive luxuries and (when he's older) drugs and sex?

Re: Let's count how this is really wrong

[cyberghostface]

The idea of someone with as much resources as Bruce Wayne being a vigilante like Batman in itself isn't that hard to believe.

Stuff like the underground batcave and fighting villains made out of clay is one thing but you could probably do a film about some rich vigilante who obtains military equipment and goes after criminals and come off as being plausible at least.

Re: Let's count how this is really wrong

[halloweenjack]

Well, it's not impossible for gangs to create and maintain a high degree of discipline and order. You had the Crips and Bloods in LA, or the People Nation and the Folk Nation in Chicago. (One of the explanation for the recent rise in murders in Chicago after a decades-long decline--although it's not actually as big as that in other big cities--is that the police and FBI were successful in splitting up the People/Folk alliances... which meant that you suddenly had a large number of splinter groups fighting turf wars.) It took a long time and a lot of effort to take them down, and for all that they're not even completely down, just split up into a number of competing organizations. The idea of them joining together probably gives anti-gang task force members regular nightmares.

And that's the thing that gets me about this book; there's a potentially brilliant comic to be written about this situation. For all I know, the rest of this comic could have at least a taste of a plausible account of the creation of such an alliance: Destiny getting a toehold in the community by becoming the behind-the-scenes tactician for a minor gang leader, forming alliances, making connections of her own behind the back of the public leader of her gang, getting control of the tech infrastructure, eliminating potential rivals and the guys who are too dead-set in their sexism to consider working with her, etc. Maybe there is some of this sort of thing, and the notably reticent poster of these didn't see fit to include them. All I'm really seeing here is blaxploitation updated with cell phones and drones.

Re: Let's count how this is really wrong

[bencomicgraphics]

That's the biggest problem. We're supposed to buy she's so awesomely awesomesauce she can make the dumbest bangers become organized enough to fight.

IRL, she would've been killed trying to talk to any gangbanger that way.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

My problem with Destiny's acceptance of the fact that her cause is doomed is that it kind of puts the lie to the whole "one-in-a-lifetime military genius" conceit that the story is built around. If this story is about examining the necessity for change on a societal level and the effects of bloody, violent revolution, then the stakes need to be higher than just a few city blocks. Like someone said in the comments for a previous issue, for this to really work Destiny needs to be the new Genghis Khan, a near-unstoppable warlord posing a threat to local, state, heck, even federal government, someone of both keen military brilliance and the charisma to forge an army that genuinely threatens the status quo.

(Granted, I'm not sure how you'd convincingly do this, given that Destiny's making this power-play in a nation that possesses the largest and most powerful military force known to man, but then, I'm not the one trying to suggest that Destiny is a once-in-a-lifetime military genius of unparalleled strategic brilliance and insight either. If you're going to run with that conceit, you might as well run to town with it.)

And if Destiny knows her cause is doomed, then having her sweet-talk her way into a cosy under-government position seems a bit ill-judged; the story's practically crying out for a doomed-but-valiant end where she goes down fighting but her example inspires those who follow her. This all just ends up making her look less like an unparalleled military genius and more like someone who masterminds a glorified riot then manages to wriggle out of it while her redshirts get massacred behind her. Which may have been the point, I guess, to show that Destiny's talk about social justice was just for show and that all she was really interested in was just manipulating everyone to play her own games (which, granted, I think one of the previous issues does kind of suggest), but that completely changes the way we're supposed to look at her. The writers seem to want us to view Destiny as this great liberator and heroic figure when all her actions suggest the exact opposite.