Blogathon 45: I'm Coming Down Fast but Don't Let Me Break You Part Four

[Concluding my discussion of The Programme.]

A lot of The Programme is spent shifting characters around and building to something without getting anywhere. It does eventually, but so much time is taken up with Max struggling against what's required -- so much time is eaten up. I was surprised at how long it took for the Dolls to rescue their creator from the Gulag. I remembered it as happening in, like, issue three when it's much later. They don't hit America until issue seven. The drawn out nature of the pacing isn't as problematic when reading the series as a whole, but when it was first coming out sticking with this series was an act of faith, of trusting Milligan to stick the landing.

Except he doesn't.

The ending isn't a clean one, but it's not dirty enough to really provoke thought. It falls somewhere between the two. Some of the Russians get away and the US is under martial law (which I mentioned previously). What's lacking in the conclusion is an idea of what the larger point of the series was. What was it really about with an ending like that? Max's journey is complete to a degree with him becoming the pawn of the government he was meant to be -- or was going to be before Hinks altered his programming. But, what does this say about America? Or even superhumans? While The Programme reminds me stylistically of Pynchon's writing, that the series never adds up to anything holds it back from that comparison completely.

I've long wanted to discuss The Programme and, getting that chance, I realised I didn't have much to say. I thought when I started to dig in, there would be a lot there. There isn't.

In 30 minutes, I'll begin my last topic: the Mark Waid/Howard Porter/Mike Wieringo Fantastic Four stories "Authoritative Action" and "Hereafter."

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Blogathon 44: I'm Coming Down Fast but Don't Let Me Break You Part Three

[Continuing my discussion of The Programme.]

Max is an argument against the validity of free will. First, he's a liberal hippie type despite that being his programmed personality. Yet, that's who he is, it's all he's ever known himself to be. It's what he defends and what he sacrifices when he realises that it's not doing him any good. When he's reprogrammed, it's like that other Max never existed. He becomes everything that the United States government wants him to be and he keeps on being that, doing things he would have never done before and hate anyone else for doing. He perceives nothing wrong with, though. No matter what they program him to be, that's what he is. It's a recognition that an absence of free will would not actually affect a person; as far as he's concerned, he has free will even if he consciously knows he's been programmed to behave a certain way -- because the programming makes him think it's his choice!

Senator Joe, on the other hand, struggles with his programming quite a bit. He breaks free of it in a sense. His struggle with what he should do, who he should be is never finalised. Even when he shows up to back up Max in the fight against the Russians, there's not a feeling that that's his final choice of who he is. He shows up because he thinks it's the right thing to do. That doesn't mean he sides with the US government ultimately. But, his showing up to fight the Russians is his choice. Too bad he dies in the fight.

The Dolls function in the same way. They were programmed to embody specific ideals and some of them do struggle with it or take those ideals to a strange logical conclusion like Stalingrad's insistance on raping an American woman because that's what the Red Army did. Mostly, they are completely loyal to their maker and their ideals.

Everything is politics in The Programme. It's not necessarily a traditional argument about free will, it's simply about ideology and politics with these constructions as pawns. Max was meant to be the German superman, was taken by the Americans at the end of World War 2 before he was grown, meant to make him the American superman, and, instead, some random guy turned him into a liberal pacifist. He never had a chance, honestly. None of them did. They represent the fictional constructs we have that exist to justify and embody specific ideas. Max is basically a character that is written one way by someone and, then, that writer is fired and his personality shifts to suit the new needs.

To be continued in 30 minutes...

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Blogathon 43: I'm Coming Down Fast but Don't Let Me Break You Part Two

[Continuing my discussion of The Programme.]

The intricate plot of The Programme is one of details that paint a fairly clear picture: when Russian artificial superhumans are discovered, they begin to attack American forces in Talibstan. Really, it's just one, but that leads to the others and they go to find their maker in a Gulag where he lives in constant fear of rape. In response, the Americans decide to bring back to their attempt at creating supersoldiers. Max being their main hope, but his programming was altered by Michael Hinks so he would be a hippie pacifist basically. He doesn't know how to even access his superpowers. There's also another superhuman prototype: a black man that thinks he's Senator Joe McCarthy. When he learns what he is, he runs away, wanting nothing to do with a government that would do things like take his mother and use her to create him. The coming of the Russians gives excuse for some ignorant rednecks to start a race war, basically meaning that, instead of unifying to fight the Russian superhumans, America has decided to tear itself apart. Only Max can save the day... maybe...

This is the stuff of Supergod. Superhumans created to solve problems and fight wars, not treated as gods but programmable tools. One is screwed with to be a bleedingheart and the other is made to think he's Joe fucking McCarthy. On the Russian side, they're full of Marxist and Leninist ideas. One of the strangest moments is when the powerhouse of the group begins to rape a woman, not because he wants but because he's been programmed with the knowledge that the Red Army that defeated the Germans was a rapist army. And, yet, it's perfectly logical.

That sort of twisted logic is apparent through The Programme. Never mind that lives are in danger, Max, worry more about your girlfriend cheating on you. When he finally decides to join the fray, he gets his ass handed to him because he doesn't know how to fight. He has the power but not the knowledge. He actually has to request reprogramming to save America. Whereas Senator Joe is talked into abandoning the cause by the man who created the Russian 'dolls' and eventually helps only because he can't shake his patriotism.

Ultimately, it's a battle of ideals that come off as bad jokes. Old ideas come back to haunt us. Old conflicts, both internationally and locally. That a race war actually starts is one of those moves that complicates the plot further and makes you wonder what the fuck Peter Milligan is doing until it pays off in the end when the Russians and the race war are used as an excuse for the new president to enact martial law, using the newly programmed Max an his enforcer. The man goes from hippie to facist in no time flat... he saves America so it can be everything he used to hate.

To be continued in 30 minutes...

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Blogathon 42: I'm Coming Down Fast but Don't Let Me Break You Part One

[Beginning my discussion of The Programme.]

When I read The Programme, I'm reminded of Thomas Pynchon's writing. I had that feeling ever since the second issue where Michael Hinks recalls what turned him from a cog in the American military industrial complex to a liberal peaceloving anti-American. He was at a party and met a woman that changed his whole perspective on everything. She introduced him to drugs, free love, and opened his eyes to the facist state he lived in. So, in his duties as a member of the project to build an American superhuman, he reprogrammed Max to be just like him, effectively ruining the program. While not really like Pynchon's story "Entropy" in content, the feel of the two struck me as similar. There was something about the mixing of '60s counterculture, the military, black humour, and a myriad of plots that all weave together in the past and present that seemed to connect the two.

Stylistically, CP Smith draws The Programme the way I imagine Pynchon's novels would be illustrated. They reflect the sometimes obtuse nature of his writing. You can see what's happening, but it's not entirely clear. Some things are obscured. Things don't exist in realist terms. Colours are skewed to match the mood and tone of the scene. A panel in the first issue where Max, our failed superman who doesn't know he's superman, is telling his therapist about his failure to get an erection and his girlfriend's reaction is absolutely how I'd picture something in Pynchon's work: a shot of her coloured in a pinkish red with pale green cucumbers on her eyes as she says, "MAX, YOU ARE ONE WASHED-UP IMPOTENT OLD FART! BOY, YOU MIGHT JUST AS WELL BE A EUNICH ALL THE GOOD YOU ARE TO ME!"

It makes sense that, if there was an influence on The Programme it would be Pynchon. Of all the writers to look to if you were doing a comic book about the consequences of superhumans created during the Cold War now active and looking to live out the reason they were created, and the various bits of black humour that come out of a complicated plot like that, Pynchon is your man. The absurd comedy of Gravity's Rainbow is set against the backdrop of World War 2, offering a mixture of reality and surreality that's both remarkably touching and slightly offputting.

The Programme isn't as grand as Pynchon's work. It isn't as big or as deep or as funny, but the influence is there. After all, where else would you expect to find a hippie superman, a black superman who thinks he's Joe McCarthy, and a group of four Russian superhumans whose existence causes a race war in America?

To be continued in 30 minutes...

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative! (Details in this post.) After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]