Second dates are tough. It’s challenging to show up again and reaffirm to someone ‘Hey, I’m great’. See, the first date is actually easy, it can be a performance; it’s a slice of you. You get to carefully choose what to show and how to show it; a tactile manicure of your existence deftly presented to a prospective…whatever: lover, fling, validation, ego boost – up to you. It’s why Social Media is such a complete and utter disaster to the human race. Everyone is projecting their carefully manicured existence to the world which will neverrr replicate or indicate the truthful persona of that filtered projection. Maybe that’s why Social Media is ironically so anti-social? Since people are never going to live up to the idea that they’ve created online they have to hide behind it far away from actual in-person human eyeballs. Eyeballs that would dress down the augmented thought to its hum-drum reality.
Humans will also look back at Dating Apps as one of the most puerile destructive creations ever installed into the natural mechanisms of love, romance and sex. The fantasy of endless choice and brutal disappointing realities of failed expectations in relation to a selective photoshopped slideshow was never going to make anyone truly happy – and yet we all gleefully went along with it; the Devil’s convenience fooled us once again.
One of the main pitfalls of online dating was always ‘Am I actually talking to someone real?’. ‘Is the person in the photos actually the person I’m chatting with or is it someone else?’. I knew I had to delete all dating apps on my phone when I was doing more and more reverse image searches on my phone to check if the profile photos of my ‘match’ were authentic or pulled from somebody else’s profile (celebrity or model). Nothing will beat vibe. Period. Vibration is everything and cannot be manifested over technology or over the meticulous choice of phrases and emojis within a chatbox. I think that’s where we’re headed with art unfortunately. As AI proliferates into our conscious world we’ll find ourselves asking ourselves over and over ‘Was this article/book/painting/video/comic real or was it created by AI?’
It’s already begun. AI is encroaching slowly into our lives; a pas de deux between the human and the machine that seeks to be human. I don’t see this ending well. I don’t trust nor believe in the honest intentions of those who ostensibly are ‘in charge’ of the AI. Think about the moment when a gun was first created. Whatever you feel about guns I think it’s safe to say they haven’t been a blessing unto this world. If you could go back and just delete that idea from manifesting from our consciousness into reality I’m sure we would all have been a lot happier over the previous centuries. That’s where we are with AI. If we’re not careful AI will turn into a weapon far more destructive than any bullet could ever have dreamed of. And yet here we are, chatting with it online like it’s a teddy bear filled with gumdrops.
I bring all this up in regards to Scott Snyder’s ‘Clear’ because the ‘First Date’ of this comic was a magnificent performance while the ‘Second Date’ felt like it was written by AI. It felt like Scott roped us in with a grand premise and world in Issue 1 and then handed it off to ChatGPT to complete the journey. Obviously I doubt that actually happened but having flipped the last page over to this issue I feel like this story just catfished me. The first issue’s execution and hook were brilliant: A futuristic post-apocalyptic world where augmented reality ‘veils’ are the norm that dropped into a ‘noir murder mystery’. Then, what, did Scott have better things to do and just asked ChatGPT to write him a solid follow up to the first issue that will compel readers to then pick up the final installment despite its mediocrity?
What fell short in this issue was I lost the sense of this wild technological dystopia along with the mystery of how these ‘veils’ actually worked and got a bunch of standard stereotypical ‘Noir’ devices.
1. The Hot and Bothered Wife visited by the Detective at her glam pool
2. The Detective is shot but survives due to a bad guy actually being a good guy
3. The Detective gets framed for a crime/murder he doesn’t commit
4. The Detective on the run from his own police force
5. The Detective hanging by one hand from a cliff as the real villain threatens him
Oy vey. Like, where was Jayne Mansfield telling our lead dude to ‘Come up and see her sometime’? I mean, Snyder should’ve made us a Spotify playlist of a droning saxophone with a empty tumbler of ice rattling in the background. Did he download a PDF of ‘How to make your Noir Story super Noir’ and then upload it to his AI program?
Look, from now on, I am hereby calling for a full moratorium on all HEROES HANGING BY ONE HAND ON A FUCKING CLIFF! How many fucking times can stories have lit-er-al cliffhangers?!?!? Can someone actually do a study on how many actual cliffs are available in the world to have a hero hang from so we can astutely the assess how low the probability is for this ridiculous feat to happen. From now on, if you’re a writer, you’re not allowed to put any of your frikkin characters hanging from a cliff until you yourself have actually gone to a cliff, hung from it, and realized how batshit impossible it is to do any of the moves that your heroes supposedly do.
While we’re at it, if you’re going to write in a scene where a dude is holding onto a chick who’s dangling from a cliff with one arm then it should be required that you take a couple bags of groceries to a cliff and see how long your spindly nerdy ass can hold onto just a couple bags of groceries before all your containers of Oatly go tumbling onto the tumbleweeds below.
Yeesh.
Anyway, Francis Manapul’s art is flat out gorgeous. There’s a lot of amazing new and upcoming artists out in the comic book universe doing wonderful work. Now if only the writers could match their spectacular efforts we’d be in geeky heaven. As it stands, Snyder reverts to form from his previous three issue drops and poops out a clunker. I mean, it really wasn’t a clunker it just wasn’t nearly as ‘Wow’ as the first date. Now I’m roped into a third date because I’ve already shelled out for two dates and have barely gotten a smooch out of it.
How much you wanna bet Synder’s last issue of ‘Clear’ puts me in the friend zone?
Rating: 7.0
Verdict: Pull. [Grumble]
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