Guess who's back?
Now, I could be a tad bit immodest and say that it was somewhat because of my ranting and raving that they went out of their way and decided to bring him back, but instead, I'll be a douchebag and take FULL credit for it. Yes sir, you heard it. It was all because of me. My praises.... sing 'em.
Also, belated Eid wishes to all specials and ordinaries alike. Here's a little something I got for the queen of the country:
I know she's into shoes but I couldn't afford any so....
Clever, aren't I? And the best part is that if I get caught, I could as easily say that this was actually meant to be a high five.
No sir. No way could this ever go wrong.
And on that cheerful note:
Hey there, party people!
This, of course, is another Unhinged Mind post, winner of the Most One-Dimensional Blog title award and voted as the Second Least Inspired Name Of All Time (lost to Michael McGillicutty).
And today, for the millions upon millions of my readers, I will finally start reviewing stuff, which admittedly, I promised eons ago, it seems.
It was all because of whachoo call 'em? "Exams" or something. I know, weird isn't it? Someone like me actually going through a somewhat normal phase of life.
Now, seeing that I've burned up quite a lot of web-space (with more to follow) without actually starting the review, I've decided to review something small. It's a little ditty called Master Race which I happen to like quite a lot.
Now I know what you're thinking, "Of all the hate this guy promised us, the first tangible thing he talks about turns out to be something he likes, what are the odds of that happening?". Well, the real reason for choosing Master Race is that I had this crazy great idea that if I start by talking about something I like, it gives me instant credibility when I tear idiotic stuff apart. I know it's nutty, but that's all I got.
Anyways, let's get down to the review, BUT WAIT!!
There's something I need to get off my chest first. I don't know how to say this but, it's just that,
*cue ominous music*
I won't be doing this blogging stuff regularly.
Now don't get me wrong, I love interacting with my readers (both of you!) But there's a couple reasons for this, some are better than the others, but in the end, they're all lousy (kinda like movies in the Twilight series). Here they are:
1) First things first, I am not, I repeat, AM NOT what you'd call "a writer". Always been lousy with a pen in my hand and in all likeliness, always will be. Also, I've never claimed to be a writer and most probably never will. I'm just some hack on the internet who thinks he's got way too much free time. Point being, for a person like me, it's awful hard to collect my thoughts and put them in a logical manner so that they make sense(not that they ever do make sense) . So, that's why it takes more time for me to write these and hence, less posts.
See, I told you they were lousy reasons....
2) By not writing many of these blogs, I'll give my audience......the two people who actually read this drivel, more time to fully digest them (Wow, two jokes mocking my low number of readers in the same post, I must be getting old!) . I know, I know, blogs are supposed to be personal and are written for a person's own satisfaction and all that other stuff, but I can't help it, I care too much about you guys (feel free to drop a letter of thanks anytime).
3) These past few weeks, I've been ignoring my effing studies like a step-child and really do need to get back to them if I want to pass them interviews, whenever is it that the firm folks actually do get around to calling. So, to make sure that happens, my brain and my conscience got together and devised this complex analogy to get me back on track : Studies First - Blogging Second. Rumour has it that before his death, this was what Einstein was working on.
And anyways, it's not like this blog is setting the world on fire or anything. Right?
Anyways, let's get this bad boy on the road, BUT WAIT!!
Since, this is my first review, I'll tell you how things are going to work. Most of the time, I'm, going to do reviews with spoilers and so as a protection from unintentionally spoiling someone's reading/viewing/whatnot experiences, I'll be posting spoiler tags before and after discussing the main plot of the book/movie/story/whatever. Also, the review will be divided into several distinct sections, a background one, one that gives the review, one that gives an overall analysis, and finally one that gives a final score, which will always be given out of 5 stars, to make me look like one of them big shot critics. Lastly, there's going to be one section that gives my closing thoughts. Also, at the end of the review, I might give you the link where to find the stuff I just reviewed. But only if you promise to be nice....... and give me your lunch money....... and not stuff my head into the lockers................... and not call me with any of those horrible nicknames.
*ahem*
And exactly what makes me qualified to be a reviewer? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You don't get a degree to be a douche.
So, if you want to read this story before reading the review, so that your reading pleasure is not spoiled, I suggest you scroll down and check that link out. And don't worry, you can browse the story on the link itself, no need to download.
Now, it should be kept in mind that I suffer from extreme short-term attention span disorder, so it is possible that I may not write any other reviews (or blog-posts for that matter) and move on to the next fun activity kids are into these days (I do hear that there's something called Facebook these days and the whole social networking and stuff, hmmmph, stupid kids!)
And now, that the explosive exposition-laden excitement (boy, that's a lot of ex's, something which I can never ever say in real life) has been taken care of, we can finally start this bad-boy up.
Drum-roll please.....
BUT WAIT!!.....
heh, just messing with ya!
I'm starting it, I'm starting it, don't go, please!
Still here?
Boy, you sure a glutton for punishment.
Background:
Now this is one of those stories that really needs a background. During the mid-1950's, EC comics (publishers of this little gem) were ruling the comics business. They were putting out best-selling horror anthology titles left, right and centre (some of them are well-known even to this day, Tales From The Crypt instantly comes to mind.) Super-Hero comics were in a BIG slump thanks to EC. The real reason for the success of EC was that their tales were self-contained and required no long knowledge of character continuities and the stories themselves almost always ended with a twist ending to further hook the readers.
But beginning from the mid-1940's, the comics industry had started facing a backlash from child psychologists and parents alike that comics were ruining the minds of children. To protect the industry, The Comics Code was introduced jointly by all major publishers of the time, to make the parents feel safe that what their children were reading was not causing any juvenile delinquency as was claimed by comic detractors. This backfired on EC when the code put out such edicts that were custom-made to hurt EC sales and put them out of business (Such as, no comic can have "horror" or "terror" in its title, when EC's two biggest selling comics had just that in their titles).
This story was published in the first issue of Impact comics, a comic that lived on to have 5 whole issues and was canceled when EC finally realized that no matter what they did, they would still be on the wrong side of The Comics Code. Thus, EC canceled all their horror and war titles and kept only a single comic, MAD. Which was later turned from a comic to a magazine to escape the clutches of the Code. MAD, a satirical magazine, which has survived to this day, has kept EC in the business and has become one of the most inspiring success stories in American publishing history.
If this minstrel show is a success, I'd like to see what a miserable failure is........
Probably this
AAAHM just messing with ya, MAD! You're still my favourite magazine. After all the fun you've poked at all of us, I should at least pay some of it back. Anyways, I hope all of you were awake through the history lesson (I certainly wasn't), because it was hard as hell trying to look up the data and even harder to write it in a somewhat non-boring way.
Anyhoo, the thing Master Race shows us is how far EC was able to push the envelope during their run publishing comics. The stuff this story deals with was not fit to be discussed in public for a long time, yet EC did it. The Holocaust is still not something that people are comfortable discussing. This story brought to notice of the American pop culture, the crimes that were done to the Jewish people during the Nazi regime. Not surprisingly, all of the creative staff involved were Jewish. Master Race was written in 1955 by Al Feldstein and pencilled by Bernard Krigstein, according to the introduction to my copy of the story.
The Review:
Now, since the story is only 8 pages long, I figured I'd do the review page by page.
Page One: We open with a man descending down the stairs of a subway station, the voice of the narrator (in second person narration) calls him Carl Reissman and tries to remind him of his past. Carl buys the ticket as the narration tells him about his escape from his past that is somehow connected to a concentration camp and that no matter how much he tries, he cannot move on from the past. He waits for the train and we see the train slowly stopping when it arrives. The visual of a moving train is pretty good here.
Page Two: When he tries to get on the train, Carl is startled by seeing someone get off. Narrator (we'll call him Nari from now on) voice reminds him that his nerves have been shot ever since he came back. He starts reading his paper as the train starts moving forward. Carl is shown as looking around the passengers and being afraid of something. The train stops again and Carl senses someone getting on. The new passenger looks weird and unsettling. The final panel shows Carl making a panicking sound when he sees who just got on.
Page Three: Carl thinks to himself that it can't be "Him", as Nari reminds him that he knew this person ten years ago. A panel is shown of the moving train and the story flips to a flashback. Hitler is shown (only his back) giving a hate speech to crowds in front of him. The narrator caption reminds Carl that he was a part of this crowd and he and most others found Hitler's speech to be disgusting and nauseating. The final panel sees Hitler giving an order to his armies to "Let it begin". Hitler's face is shown in this panel and if the artist wanted to convey Hitler as being a frightening figure here, mission accomplished.
Page Four: This page basically shows the tortures and the horrors that Nazi Germany brought. There's panels showing people burning books, people stealing from shops, people invading homes. And this really is the stuff considered inappropriate (for that time period) that I spoke of. Then, a panel shows people with almost dead faces standing behind barbed wire fences as the voice tells Carl that this was his first exposition to a concentration camp. This panel is pretty famous but we'll get to that later. Then in the final two panels, gas chambers and human ovens as shown as the voice tells Carl that this was what was happening to his fellow countrymen. The final panel is pretty graphic in the sense that it shows people on the other side of the concentration camp walls moving away from the ovens while covering their noses. This type of exposition is still not discussed comfortably, even these days. EC was really all the way with this.
Page Five: More horrors are shown as there are doctors experimenting on "Human Guinea Pigs", for the alleged advancement of medical science. A party is shown (this is Hitler's final appearance in the story), where the lamps are made of human skin. The real horror is that the lamps are shown in such a matter-of-fact way that they're just in the background, while the subject of the panel is Hitler himself. All this is being reminded to Carl by the voice. He remembers guards taking away EOS's and burying them alive, laughing as they do it.
Page Six: More destruction is shown and the voice reminds Carl of the look that the man who is sitting across from Carl had when they all found out that help was on the way, the Russians had arrived. The voice tells Carl to remember that the last thing that the man sitting across Carl said was that he'll "get" him one day. The voice tells Carl how he escaped from the camp and lost himself in the streams of refugees and made his way to America. Now, suddenly the man takes a glance at Carl as Carl makes a gasping sound. The man calls Carl by his last name and stands up.
Page Seven: The train stops and Carl, afraid of the man, gets off and starts running on the platform. The man says that he swore that he'd get Reissman. Nari tells Carl to run like he ran from Belsen. Carl tells the man to have mercy. The narrator says that the man chasing Carl is the personification of millions who couldn't do what Carl had done, how they were jailed and killed in gas chambers and burned alive in ovens, while Carl wasn't. The voice says that this man chasing Reissman was a survivor of Belsen camp, a camp that Carl Reissman ran! Yes, in a huge plot twist, it is revealed that Carl had been the bad guy all along. The final panel really hits this point home as the camera pan shows Carl from bottom up, which is always a sign of distance and separation between the subject and the reader.
Page Eight: Carl is shown running and while running, he suddenly slips (in a pretty unbelievable way) and falls on the tracks and immediately run over by an incoming train. The train stops. People get off. They ask the man about what happened. He lies and tells them that Carl started to run for no reason and slipped and got killed. When asked if he knew Carl, the man lies that he had never seen Carl before in his life.
End Of Spoilers !!!
Overall analysis:
Wow, the plot twist absolutely blew me away, loved it. No matter how much people say that it was telegraphed early on and that they saw it coming a mile away, I love it all the same.
The ending, not so much. I just wish they could have translated the twist into a more meaningful death for the guy. Like I said in the above section, I have some reservations with how the story ended. Now, I know that the it needed to end with a death but I think it should have ended with a somewhat plausible way for the death to happen. Now, it really isn't possible to watch where you run when someone who's threatening your life is chasing you (trust me, I know from experience, librarians are really volatile around closing time.) but still it does seem pretty far fetched to me that a person falls that way. I'm willing to let this slide because the Golden Age comics were full of coincidences like this, and this type of occurrences were the staple of the comics from that era. Also, the motion of the guy on the last page when he was trying to hang on was pretty much spot-on.
Also, it really is poetic justice for someone like a former Nazi with many heinous crimes to his claim to die without any sort of retribution from people he ran afoul with. Sort of like the pure remain the pure and the bad guy has one more death to his credit. Other than that, after the powerful and unnerving narrative throughout the story, the dialogue at the last page seemed really tame. Although, the last line of the story truly rocked!
But that's just two minor squabbles other than which I loved this story to no end.
I particularly enjoyed Hitler's appearance in this story, even though he was in the story for a mere three panels, had no dialogue and only had his face shown in a single panel, he looked as menacing and sinister as anyone would him him to be portrayed as. Hitler has been made appearances in comics before, most commonly in Captain America in the 1940's, but his showing right here tops all of them put together, in my opinion.
The famous panel from the fourth page that I mentioned is actually inspired from Margaret Bourke-White's Life magazine photograph which was shot when a concentration camp was evacuated. the panel is almost drawn the same way as the picture was taken, with cold life-less eyes staring from across the barbed wire.
I spoke of how motion of the train was shown in the story. It really is hell trying to portray motion in comics and this story does it brilliantly, introducing a new way to show movement of a passing train by drawing the same objects repeatedly to give the illusion of motion. I know it sounds confusing, but makes sense when you see it. This way has been in use since.
Finally, the moral of the story, I believe, is also top notch, that sometimes the people that blend in the crowd, the everyday-joes are not as squeaky clean as some might believe, and just because someone is standing out of the pack does not make him out to be the bad guy, or something like that (It's been a long night, people!). And the dichotomy of the protagonist and the antagonist is also one to behold (actually, it's not, I just wanted to show that I knew those three words).
Final Score:
Mystery and Intrigue, a tight narrative, a good moral, historical context and a nifty twist ending thrown in the mix, all within a span of just 8 pages makes this one an absolute no-brainer. Full five stars and deserves every bit of it. Highly recommended!
Okay, I know I promised a link for the story but it seems that now that link has been taken off. Really sorry! But on the flip side, I didn't get any of your lunch money either, so there.
Joking, here it is :
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11609889/Bernie-Krigstein-Master-Race-Impact
I know it's been a lousy review, so if it's any consolation, here's the link to an excellent essay written on Master Race by Martin Jukovsky:
http://www.jukovsky.com/masterrace.html
Okay Martin, I plugged your site, I expect a cheque in the mail by Friday.
Final Thoughts :
Look both ways at least three times before crossing the road, you never can be too careful.
I can see that I'm going off the deep end now, so let's keep it till here.
That's it for the review, folks!
See ya next time.
I can wish, can't I?
My name is Umar Ahmed and this has been the unhinged review of Master Race.
Umar Ahmed often uses humour when put in uncomfortable situations like discussing the holocaust. It never works though, the last time a girl asked him the way to the principal's office, he responded with, "That's what she said.". He loves the fact that he can chalk up any factual inaccuracies contained in the above post to his mind being unhinged. He also feels that it's okay to say "millions upon millions of my readers" because a million upon a million equals to one.
