The Inferno

The best part about discovering an author is researching his back catalogue and finding other great works. I looked up Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’ graphic novel series and just finished reading all twelve of them. What can I say? Alan Moore is a writer of the highest calibre. At first a bit skeptical, as one is wont to be when one rediscovers comics in their mid-twenties, I realized very quickly that these comics were unlike most others out there. Here is the opening sequence of the 11th book in the series.


Observation:
Multi-screen viewing is seemingly anticipated by Burroughs' cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the future to leak through... An impending world of exotica, glimpsed only peripherally.
Perceptually, this simultaneous input engages me like the kinetic equivalent of an abstract or impresisonist painting... Phosphor dot swirls juxtapose; meanings coalesce from semiotic chaos before reverting to incoherence. Transient and elusive, these must be grasped quickly:
Computer animations imbue even breakfast cereals with an hallucinogenic futurity; music channels process information-blips, avoiding linear presentation, implying limitless personal choice... These reference points established, an emergent worldview becomes gradually discernible amidst the media's white noise.
This jigsaw-model of tomorrow aligns itself piece by piece, specific areas necessarily obscured by indeterminacy. However, broad assumptions regarding this postulated future may be drawn. We can imagine its ambience. We can hypothesize its psychology.
In conjunction with massive forecasted technological acceleration approaching the millenium, this oblique and shifting cathode mosaic uncovers the blueprint for an era of new sensations and possibilities. An era of the conceivable made concrete...
...And of the casually miraculous.


All emphases are the author’s.

I just finished the 500+ page comic called ‘From Hell’, the one about Jack the Ripper. There’s a movie starring Johnny Depp based on this comic which turns out to be a pretty faithful rendition. Inked by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, I must say I was vastly entertained. The art is excellent in conveying a feel of London’s sooty streets at the turn of the century. Moore does a good job of creating evocative imagery tha portrays what London really was in the 90s, the dirtiest city in the world and capital of the world all at once.

The comic takes the Masonic route to interpreting the Whitechapel murders. Jack the Ripper is Queen Victoria’s royal physician, who goes insane and is judged by a panel of his fellow Freemasons. I understand that Alan Moore spent years researching the murders and is an excellent writer, to boot. Moore doesn’t shy away from showing the extreme brutality of the Ripper’s crimes or the sordid surroundings of his potential victims. It’s all in here, which makes this a great graphic novel.

Anyway, without further preamble, here is the graphic novel’s cover, be sure to read it if you can.

Here’s the most notable dialogue in the entire book, occurring on Page 31, Ch 9

Sir William: Well? Why have you called me here?
Netley: I-It's just, you say we've got to kill another woman. I thought it was finished, sir. I can't take it. I've 'ad enough.
Netley: I mean, i-it's in all the papers. It's everywhere you look.. I'm only an ordinary chap,sir. That's all I am.
Netley: I-I don't know where I am any more, sir, and that's the truth... That's the truth
Sir William: There, there, Netley. There, there. I shall tell you where we are.
Sir William: We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind, a dim sub-conscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves...
Sir William: Hell, Netley, we're in Hell.

the wretched North American high school educational system. Here is a post from the Scientific American blog:

Wrong Answer

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote a column on February 15 enititled “What Is the Value of Algebra?” Cohen recounted the case of a twelfth grader at a high school in Los Angeles who failed an algebra course six times and finally walked out of school while struggling during her seventh attempt to wrestle with a class that was a requirement for graduation.

Cohen went on to acknowledge that he too flunked algebra and had to retake the course. He discounted any real-life need to know the subject and raised the question as to why it should be a requirement at all for high school graduation. Lecturing the student, he explained:

“You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know–never mind want to know–how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later–or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column or even a thank-you note–or reason even a little bit. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side. But algebra? Please.

Cohen is obviously not alone in thinking along these lines. A lot of Americans agree with him. As a fan of history, Cohen should be familiar with the Biblical phrase “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” A day after his column appeared, the National Academy of Sciences issued a survey of 200 multi-national corporations that indicated that 38 percent were planning to shift an increasing amount of their research to countries like India and China that maintain solid educational systems. Surprisingly, the report concluded, lower labor costs were not the major factor in making these decisions. Instead, their plans were triggered by the availability of high-quality educational institutions and the resulting pool of scientists and engineers.

No one in Hyderabad or Shenzen is calling for getting rid of secondary algebra requirements.

Why? The math is simple:

No algebra=No calculus=No science=No technology=We’re totally *&$#FRTDG!!!!!

"But, apart from killing people, you could die yourself. You could get killed in one of these futile wars."

"Yes, and I could live on, like a battery hen, in one of these futile cities. Filling in futile forms, paying futile taxes to enable futile politicians and state managers to fritter it away on electorally useful white elephants. I could earn a futile salary in a futile office and commute futilely on a train, morning and evening, until a futile retirement. I prefer to do it my way, live my way and die my way."

-Frederick Forsyth, 1974. Yes, not everything around here is intensely cerebral.

- Zdzisław Beksiński, 1975

- Zdzisław Beksiński, 1979

If you liked those here are some links with more of his pictures.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2