Our intrepid Multi-Media editor MIkkel Snyder has been busy creating custom zines just for our readership, and your grizzled, rattled editor-in-chief forgot to put up the May zine in a timely fashion so NOW YOU GET DOUBLE THE ZINES IN ONE POST!

Download and print the PDF for your mini-zine (s), and/or see what they look like assembled with our slideshows!  

May brought us some candid Instagram moments from Gotham City, and June gets us meta inside panels and bubbles like the comic nerds we are.

New journal issue coming soon; in the meantime, enjoy these pop presents!

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With Avengers: Endgame having finally come out, but also having just come out, any of us who have seen it (see: proper humans and not the troglodytic crab-people that seem to populate comment sections en masse) now find ourselves doing the no-spoiler ballet. Essentially tiptoeing over the thinnest of ice in New Rock boots and hoping to not cause any cracks.
 
And somewhere between leaving-the-theater hype and not-ruining-it-for-anyone-else decency, there is a tightrope to be walked. A needle’s eye to be ducked through, through which we can indeed vent all those feels we spent the last three hours marinating in. We all want to do it. We all want to shout our post-movie exuberance from the mountaintops like we ourselves are the post-credit scene nobody ever remembers to stay in the theater for.
 
So here’s the secret. Huddle up, because I’m about to crack open the social-media GameShark and let you in on how to dance on this precipice and not plummet to the doom of Facebook pariahship.
 
The secret?
 
Pop your ego in the freezer and take a walk.
 
Close the browser, close the app, put your phone back in your pocket.
Don’t post anything about Avengers: Endgame.
 
Surprisingly hard truth: your Facebook friends don’t need your smug vagueries about what does or doesn’t happen in Endgame. Your Instagram followers don’t need your spoilery, dog-whistle memes when the movie hasn’t even been out a week. Resist the urge to flash that I-saw-the-movie badge, and keep your hype to yourself.
 
Now, this may read with all the bile of someone burnt by spoilers. And that’s because I have been. For Avengers: Endgame? Thankfully not, but for any number of other, equally-hyped-and-then-immediately-lumpy-milked movies and shows? Yeah, buddy. We’ve all felt that Durden kiss one way or another, and it ain’t fun.
 
So when Facebook asks you what’s on your mind, just keep scrolling. Find those spaces where spoilery discussions and threads are already happening, and drop your payload of rage/glee in there.
 
But for the love of all that is good, all that is right and just and worth the Avengers’ jeopardized lives...don’t post about Avengers: Endgame.
 
(And yes, this can also be applied to Game of Thrones. The Seven help the person who spoils a single frame of Game of Thrones for me…again.)
 
 
Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in or forthcoming from places like Half Mystic and FreezeRay, Poets Reading the News and Rogue Agent, as well as his newest, nerd-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby.

Print it!  Assemble it!  Dig the social media presence of Metropolis!  #somefilters #freezerated #zineclub #ezine

So Us, the latest gut-tumbler from Jordan Peele, came out this weekend. As of writing, I’m still counting down the hours until I can join y’all in gleefully subjecting myself to its doppelgänger sadism, to the nightmare of black (horror) excellence my goosebumps are already telling me it’ll be.
 
So, in the meantime, I’m thinking on the last time Jordan Peele drew back that undulating curtain and séanced us all (...the willing of us anyway) conscious of something ugly.
 
Get Out, that omen of Swahili whispers and “Redbone”.
Get Out, that brotha nod of awkward garden parties and grit teeth.
Get Out, that black-horror jubilee where everyday racism is made the diabolism it really is.
Get Out, that eviscerant rack of antlers lancing the lie of a post-racial America.
 
The nightmare this movie invited us all into wasn’t familiar territory across the board, clearly, as plenty of people—including the Golden Globes—decided its body-hijacking white supremacy cult landed it more in the realm of satire and comedy than anything legitimate. But, for me, there was no soul-searching needed to realize how authentic Get Out was being with its horror.
 
Having grown up a mixed kid in predominantly-white spaces, the idea of being the beloved novelty is not some farcical leap in logic to me. The tropes about hair-touching, about melanin envy and tanning jokes, about exoticized blackness and otherhood—those all come from somewhere. And they aren’t harmless dead ends. Because the culture that decided to idolize my difference is the same culture that used it against me when the whim struck. White adults fawning over my curls, their white children--friends even—making me the punchline of racist jokes in the safety of homogeneous playgrounds.
 
But this is how our country built itself, this tradition of perpetually othering its black citizens. In America, to be whiteness’s trophy implies being whiteness’s prey. This isn’t two sides of one coin; this is two eyes in one face. A face still maintaining its ownership of / entitlement to black bodies—to worship or ridicule, to use or destroy. A slavery-nation relic, a never-exorcised ghost thought banished only because of the time we’ve buried it under. But so little has changed. So little has changed, and there are new victims every day. And Get Out was every cell an accurate depiction of what that existence feels like.
 
Now, as for Us, I can’t say on where the movie will go or what Peele plans to do with it. But with Get Out reppin’ at his back...I think we’re all in for something spectacular and scissor-sharp.
 
 
Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in Poets Reading the News, FIYAH, HEArt Journal Online, ALTARWORK, Words Dance, FreezeRay, and others, as well as his newest, geek-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby. Find him on Instagram @thebardofhousewilder.

Three weeks ago news broke that a live-action Nightmare Before Christmas adaptation was sliding its sleigh of carrion baubles across the table. Now, if TNBC has taught me anything, it’s that a sleigh of carrion baubles is 1) “going to be a disaster” (thank you, Sally) and 2) a great way to get your year’s worth of work “blown to smithereens” (thank you, Mayor). So I won’t go into the details on why a live-action Nightmare Before Christmas has me forecasting showers of certified-rotten flotsam, but I will take the chance to point out how on-it this movie stays and how, 26 years later, its leeringest side-eye is slapping grab-handsy whiteness in the mouth harder than ever.
 
If you haven’t seen this movie yet, I’ll summarize: in TNBC, Jack Skellington—Pumpkin King and patron saint of making us mortals shit ourselves—has an existential crisis and goes roaming for something fulfilling to wrap his bones in (a premise several bits of Oscar fodder would call a whole movie and cut to credits). It turns out that the something in question is Christmas Town and, discovering Christmas Town, his gut impulse is to take it, make it his own and chuck deuces to anyone who calls him out on his festooned steamroller of narcissism. And just like _____ (insert name of headdressed/dreadlocked/kanji-inked white person of choice) going viral, it blows up in the Pumpkin King’s face. He and his host of skeletal coursers get shot out of the sky. And that’s what it takes for him to understand how severely unentitled he is when it comes to the culture and customs of Christmas Town. Fortunately, being undead and all, he’s able to piece himself back together and save his friends from the gogmagogical mouth his appropriation inadvertently served them up to. Jack learns a lesson about staying in his lane, and Christmas ultimately comes to Halloween Town anyway. Not by hijack or impersonation, but by Santa himself bringing it to them, inviting them into it as appreciants instead of pillagers.
 
Now, you could say I’m shoehorning a whole jack-o-lantern of ideas into a story that didn’t intend them. And to that I’d say...welcome to fandom, can I get you some more tea? But yeah, that is pretty much what’s going on here (the IRONY). Was The Nightmare Before Christmas conceived as an anti-cultural-appropriation PSA?  I think that’s an easy no. But does it shamble and shriek all the same takeaways as a movie that was? Does the Bone Daddy Christmassacre feel any different from Nicki Minaj’s fetishistic “Chun Li” performance on SNL or Justin Bieber wilin’ with his platinum, dingleberry-looking shits? If Halloween Town had social media, you can bet Sally’d be dragging Jack up and down Twitter the minute she warns him he’s slipping and he puts her on suit duty instead of listening.
 
And that’s the suckerpunch buried inside this movie. The thing’s a sleeper agent of social commentary. Cultural appropriation, while not a new problem, is certainly a more spotlit one today. And I don’t know if there’s another movie out there that dances over its fence posts as elegantly (and accidentally) as The Nightmare Before Christmas does.
 
 
Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in places like FIYAH and FreezeRay, Poets Reading the News and Words Dance, as well as his newest, nerd-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby. Find him on Instagram @thebardofhousewilder.

​As much love as I have for The Craft (see: being hexed gothstalgic by a Beverly Hills 90666 wonderland of blood oaths and pre-scenester Hot Topic), there’s a certain stance the movie took that never landed with me. And I feel like it’s this one line in the sand the film chose to draw that keeps it from being the fistful of kryptonite it could be.

The plot points in question: Rochelle and Sarah’s incantations gone awry.

In The Craft, Rochelle casts a revenge spell on her school’s Klan Darling Barbie™ and then finds her going full Brundlefly in the shower. Sarah casts a love spell, gets sexually assaulted because of it, and then villainizes Nancy for ragdolling her would-be rapist out a third-story window.

The fault in both of these scenarios is how the movie doesn’t even have to think twice about sympathizing with its abusers. Broaching the topics of racism and misogyny in this little coven-fable that could was an unexpected victory for black and femme viewers, but one that The Craft almost immediately recants as it shifts its loyalty from the victims of institutionalized abuse to the abusers finally catching the hands due them. Instead of dragging these societal sepses into daylight, the movie’s message becomes the same status-quo shill that prefers its injustices unchallenged and its suffering done in silence.

“Racists are bad, but shutting racists down is worse.”

“When sexual assault happens, look at what the victim did to provoke it.”

Any opportunity for social commentary dissolves when it’s decided that the witches bear more guilt in their insurgence than Laura and Chris do in their respective racism and male entitlement. When holding problematic people accountable for their venom becomes less important than letting that venom continue to course.

And, of course, there’s a monumental difference between social justice and revenge, between reforming ingrained injustices and pushing people out of windows. But within the realm of fiction that is The Craft, that was an unnecessary and unhelpful line to draw. Because if we were already on board for a horror movie about women with vicious, omnipotent godhood hailing their bloodstreams electric, then something tells me it wouldn’t have been much of a hang-up to have those same women justified in what peals of anti-victimizer violence they’d wage. I mean, it sure went in for The VVitch.

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Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in Poets Reading the News, FIYAH, HEArt Journal Online, ALTARWORK, Words Dance, FreezeRay, and others, as well as his newest, geek-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby. 

Valentine’s Day. Or the less cuffing-season-complicit Cacaolebration, if you dig. Regardless of how you feel about the antiquated, semi-pecked box of chocolates we call a holiday, there’s some good to be gleaned from its predatory cherubs and tsunami of you’ll-never-be-as-in-love-as-us selfies. And I’m calling The Crow the best of that good. Not the sequels, not the never-gonna-happen reboot, and definitely not the TV show. But the OG Crow? The gothic swansong whereby Brandon Lee gave love its most uninterrable champion, Eric Draven, poetic justice incarnate set on righting the life stolen from him and his bride? If you’re in need of a new Valentine’s Day tradition, let me redirect your attention to this monument of goth too bursting with sorrow and heart to stay buried in the ‘90s. Because damn, does it rap at the chamber door of these feels.

If for no other reason, the movie makes timely Valentine’s watching because Brandon Lee was born February 1 and revisiting this piece of tragic brilliance is a fine way to remember him. But The Crow is romantic to the core, a love-beyond-the-grave parable calling out to that ache so many of us either burn with or hunt for—a heart full enough to be broken. And heartbreak is this movie’s very marrow, from the bereavement and hope in its score to the slivers of joys past and joys to be, from the Burmecian gloom slicking almost every scene in rain to the anguished way Draven navigates his resurrection. He says “little things used to mean so much to Shelly,” and suddenly all of our tiny pastimes are holy ground. We see him remember every slight interaction he and Shelly had, crumpling under the weight of how much it hurts to have that all taken away, and a highlighter is ran across each of our relationships as if to say “These. Don’t miss these.” And it’s just so rare to have a movie implore something from us, to plead us into mindful love without compromising the strength and integrity of its story. The Crow swooped that brass ring before we even knew we needed it. No dead horses or ham-handed PSAs disguised as drama—just a deadboy given one more night to right the trauma barring him and his lover from paradise, but crafted in such a way that coming away from it unbettered just doesn’t happen. In seeing Draven’s love for life and the living, our own is deepened. When he collapses on Shelly’s grave a mess of cemetery flotsam, and she finally comes to him, finally meets that gaze that has torn through an underbelly looking only to hold and be held again and the score weeps them into their rest—there’s simultaneously no movie I’d rather be watching and no love I’d rather be taught by.

Because it may not be #couplegoals (what with the couple being brutally murdered and all), but it makes major stabs (heh) toward #devotiongoals, toward #lovegoals, toward #iwillcrawloutofthiscoffinandmurderyourmurderersgoals. And for a holiday mostly despised because of its superficiality, a little “real love is forever” could go a long way.


Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in Poets Reading the News, FIYAH, HEArt Journal Online, ALTARWORK, Words Dance, FreezeRay, and others, as well as his newest, geek-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby. Find him on Instagram @thebardofhousewilder.

Confessional time: I didn’t like The Lost Boys the first time I saw it. Now this could be because, as an ’80s-born ’90s kid, I hadn’t yet cultivated enough nostalgia as an early teenager to appreciate a platinum-mulleted Kiefer Sutherland, or a beach-bod sax solo, or any of the other things too soppingly ’80s for my nu-metal blerd to get a grip on. I grew up loving horror and worshiping the concept of vampires, but that aesthetic threw me. I couldn’t believe in the movie’s horror and menace because I was too distracted by all of the leopard print and fishnet. As an early, occasionally-shallow teenager, I didn’t really give horror the room to be about more than its monsters. I had a very straitlaced understanding of what was and wasn’t cool (a rarity among teenage traits, I’m sure!), and The Lost Boys was one of the worst casualties.

Because, revisiting it now, in my early 30s, I am staked to the core by what this movie was and still is doing. Maybe that’s because I’ve now got a couple decades of sipping that millennial brew of angst and existential vagrancy to root me into its narrative, but the concept of nocturnal horrors banding together and calling each other home is pretty much all I look for in pop culture now. To be reflected so sympathetically, to have my wounds illuminated by--not the torches of a mob looking for monsters to burn--but in pink neon instead. That’s a joy through and through.  And if there’s a better metaphor for the poetry community, and for FreezeRay specifically...I don’t know if it’ll ever be found.

Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in Poets Reading the News, FIYAH, HEArt Journal Online, ALTARWORK, Words Dance, FreezeRay, and others, as well as his newest, geek-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests. Find him on Instagram @thebardofhousewilder.

MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana and Baruch Porras-Hernandez, (writer, performer, gay Mexican comic book nerd) are putting out a call to creators for a new Latinx Super Hero project We Can Be Heroes!

We Can Be Heroes will spotlight 5 brand-new LGBTQ Latinx superheroes and YOU have a chance to be one of the creators! We are calling on all queer Latinx folks who identify as comic book nerds to enter!

We invite you to submit your original Latinx queer superhero creation for a chance to be a participating artist on this project. Winning artists get to create a brand-new queer Latinx superhero with us, become part of the We Can Be Heroes project, and receive an honorarium. Winning short stories get published with us and designed by a real comic book artist! All of this will culminate into a large comic book anthology/graphic novel with your character’s story, in which all new queer, Latinx superheroes meet at the end, and save the day!

To submit, simply write a 4-6 page, double-space, prose short story featuring your own superhero creation, along with a character description of that hero. The winning writers’ short stories will be published and be used as inspiration to introduce your character into a team comic book illustrated by a talented artist to be published by MACLA. We will check in with you twice and ask for your input: once with your character’s design and once with your character’s storyline in the graphic novel. Finally, excerpts from the final product will be read out loud, narrated to a live audience at MACLA in San José.

This new project at MACLA is made possible with support from the Creative Work Fund, the Fleishacker Foundation, and the Horizons Foundation and MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana.

Who is eligible?

In order for you to enter for this section you must identify as queer, this includes, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and genderqueer Latinos. You must be Latino, or Latinx, which includes people from Panama, Dominicanos, Mexicanos, PuertoRiquenos, Cubanos, Chicanos, Salvadorenos, Gutemalans, Chilenos, etc.

What we need from you:

YOUR BIO, or ORIGIN STORY: Who are you? Please tell us as much as you can about yourself as a writer, person, and as a superhero comic book nerd. Not a comic book nerd, but love super heroes? That’s fine! This contest is open for all queer Latinos, so hey, go read a comic book, challenge yourself, you might write a story with a Latinx character so good, we will have to choose you!

STATS: Your writer’s resume, or C.V., if you got it. Or just a list of publications with links will also work. Being previously published is not a requirement, but if you have been published, tell us about it! Please also include links to your website if you have one, or Instagram page, or blog if you happen to have a superhero blog, or a social media space where you nerd out with other fellow comic book super hero nerds.

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION: Describe your character as much as you can. Height, appearance, hair, attitude, costume, superpowers, how do their superpowers work, what they do, do they have a catchphrase? Do they fly? How do they identify in the queer spectrum? Bi, queer, lesbian, pansexual, trans, non-binary, etc.?

SHORT STORY: Submit a 4 to 6 page (double-spaced) short story about your brand new original queer Latinx superhero. The main focus of this contest is the writing (aside from the art, the colors, and the fancy and/or sexy costumes). Great writing/storytelling is what has carried comic books as far as they’ve come, into our souls, into the mainstream, and even onto the Broadway stage. Make this story as creative as you want. We want to push the boundaries, we want you to have fun, and we want a new hero to inspire us all. Show us the action shots, bring us right to the splash page of this new hero’s story, show us the queer Latinx superhero we need.


Rules:

Origin Story must be included somewhere in the narrative. Does not have to be the main part of the story. How did this character get their powers? Was it cool? Was it an accident? Okay to make your character just be born with their powers, but tell us about it.
Character must speak about their Latinindad at one point in the story, or throughout the whole story. Totally okay to make your character monolingual Spanish speaker, or a Latina American who does not speak Spanish, immigrant, undocumented immigrant, third or sixth generation, etc.

Character must have a super power. We challenge you to create something new! Or adapt/innovate an already existing superpower to make it more interesting. We just want a good story. If you write a character who can control the weather (That’s Storm, she’s African, already exists, already world famous) or a Latina who has metal claws and is short and grumpy (that’s Wolverine, he’s Canadian, and says he’s good at what he does and like most white men won’t shut up about it) it might not catch our eye.

Character’s queerness must be present in the story and their actions. Pero, like, they don’t have to fly around with the rainbow flag, but also we’re interested in out loud and proud queer characters. There are not enough queer superheroes out there, especially not Latinx ones, (go read America Chavez, it’s GREAT!). Help us bring a new Latinx queer superhero to the world. This is a sex positive project, though the comic book will not be able to be too sexual, or show naughty scenes, show us some queer love, how do two queer superheroes find the time to make out, hold hands while they are flying, or how does our hero hold sit next to her girlfriend or partner to watch “One Day at a Time” on Netflix after saving the world?

Winner must either live in the San José/San Francisco Bay Area or be able to travel to MACLA to work on the project throughout 2018/2019 and be present at all three performances Aug 16-18, 2019 at MACLA.

Winner understands that their short story is just the beginning part of the project and will work with Baruch Porras-Hernandez on edits and rewrites to come up with a finished story together before it is published and handed over to the artist.

Participating creators understand that we are not adapting your character from your short story into a comic book of their own, we are including your short story as inspiration to introduce your character to the other heroes when they meet in the final graphic novel. Participating artist will have input in how their character appears, is designed, and drawn, but the participating artist understands that the final decisions on the characters will be made by the lead writer Baruch Porras-Hernandez and MACLA.

Submission deadline is on FEB 11, 2019.

All submission must be entered via Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/XBe65yQCDSNdiQ5b2


Check list:

YOUR ORIGIN STORY
YOUR WRITER STATS
YOUR CHARACTER’S CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
YOUR SHORT STORY.

Questions? Contact sharon@maclaarte.org

Artwork by Zip Alegria https://www.patreon.com/zipdraw
For more info, the MACLA page can be accessed RIGHT HERE!
The Facebook event page is RIGHT HERE!