Dyno-Christ

My brother James coined this phrase after we saw a news item about the Badlands Passion Play that takes place every summer in Drumheller, Alberta. I hope that the irony is not lost on anyone.

I have decided to try to make "Dyno-Christ" (imagine JJ Walker saying it) part of the vernacular, like "jump the shark" or "green washing". What should it mean? How about the marriage of two seemingly divergent ideas? Like oxy-moron, but cooler sounding. Or the exclamation of something ridiculous and obvious at once. Or weird news that shouldn't be... .

James is quite a talented wordsmith and musician (go Lazersnake!) and I will continue to post his quips, as he has decided not to. He thinks fast on his feet and is able to skewer opponents arguments, if not their resolve, with his rapier like insights.

I was on the receiving end of his laser logic last week when I phoned to tell him he was wrong about the Watchmen trailer. He has seen it online and thought it was moody and cheesy. I saw it before The Dark Knight in IMAX and was dazzled by it. (I don't think it would have had the same effect had I seen it first online and indeed, watching it online now is not as spectacular as that IMAX viewing.)

My attempt at good-natured humour ("You were wrong, James. The trailer for Watchmen was freakin' awesome!") was rebuked and instead I was treated to 40 minutes of James' rant against the Alan Moore machine. As I was unable to keep up with his acerbic wit and could barely manage to utter "but it looked cool" and "it is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time". His main argument was that we were all toeing the party line and no one could ever explain to him why Watchmen was held in such high esteem.

Unable to respond adequately at the time, I now choose to respectfully rebut is his arguments with a little help from Wikipedia.

The Watchmen is the only graphic novel to be on to appear on Time Magazine's 2005 list of "the 100 best English-language novels" published since the founding of the magazine in 1923. Time magazine, which noted that the series was "by common assent the best of breed [sic]" of the new wave of comics published at the time, praised Watchmen as "a superlative feat of imagination, combining sci-fi, political satire, knowing evocations of comics past and bold reworkings of current graphic formats into a dystopian mystery story."*

"Watchmen's deconstruction of the conventional superhero archetype, combined with its innovative adaptation of cinematic techniques and heavy use of symbolism, multi-layered dialogue, and metafiction, has influenced both comics and film."*

James also lamented that Watchmen's portrayal of dark gritty violence had destroyed comics in the nineties. And on this he is right. Even Alan Moore has said he regretted penning the work, now that he has seen what it has done to comics. As noted from Wikipedia:

(Moore) also accepted responsibility for the proliferation of "dark" comic stories, featuring classic characters, that followed Watchmen. In his review of the Absolute Edition of the collection, Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times wrote that the dark legacy of Watchmen, "one that Moore almost certainly never intended, whose DNA is encoded in the increasingly black inks and bleak storylines that have become the essential elements of the contemporary superhero comic book," is "a domain he has largely ceded to writers and artists who share his fascination with brutality but not his interest in its consequences, his eagerness to tear down old boundaries but not his drive to find new ones."*

Well James (if you are reading this), I hope that this answers some of those questions that you asked. And hopefully, we can still have stimulating conversations.

*All quotes are lifted from Wikipedia, where there is an exhaustive list of references.