Tombstoned: Appendix A
The Last Gatekeeper
The gatekeeper. Is there any more pathetic creature in fandom than this self-appointed arbiter of who is and who isn’t a true fan?
The middle-age mom who has seen every single Star Cars movie in the theater, but who hasn’t watched all of Yugo Wars, read Timothy Khan’s General Impala Trilogy, or played Shiner Cars of the Republic on the PS5? Truth be told, she doesn’t even know those things exist.
The life-long fanboy who insists the animated Batmensch: The Mark of the Phantom is better than the entire live-action Batmensch series simply because a character in the cartoon uses the F-word?
The six-year-old kid who bought a Baby Grout doll at the Hall Monitors of the Universe rollercoaster gift shop at Dismay World, renamed it Shruk, and reads it bedtime stories every night?
No, says the gatekeeper. These people haven’t devoted their lives to Star Cars, Batmensch, and Hall Monitors of the Universe, slavishly shelling out immeasurable amounts of money with the desperate gusto of an evangelical TV watcher hoping to secure their place in prosperity gospel heaven with each and every GoFundMammon donation.
The problem is this: Star Cars isn’t a replacement for having personality, much less a purpose or, gasp, a religion. Neither is Batmensch or the Hall Monitors of the Universe. Each one is a piece of corporate IP, and the studio executives who paid to produce those respective products don’t give a hot, steaming pile of bandar fodda about your feelings.
But more than anything, the gatekeeper is a sad, silly little basement-dwelling beastie because he is blind to the bars around him. For him, the object of his fanboy affection is a shining pocket universe on the hill in which only he and other diehard fans inhabit. He doesn’t see these objects for what they truly are: carefully calibrated corporate IP.
It doesn’t matter what the particular property is -- whether it’s Star Trucks, The Incredible Choad, or My Randy Stallion -- it is impossible to escape the influence of these IP behemoths. They are legion. And their numbers grow with each sequel, each spin-off, each reboot, and each roll of branded toilet paper.
Which brings us to the latest bit of genre pop confectionery to become all the corporate IP candy store rage: ShondaVision.
On paper ShondaVision doesn’t sound like it would work: Dismay’s mutant hero the Seafoam Witch and her astral projection lover Mirage are trapped in an apparent pocket universe of their own, one in which each episode is an homage to one of Shonda Tyme’s steamy, soap-opera dramas. And yet this odd combination of superheroics and soap works -- whether it’s in the form of political intrigue (Controversy), medical drama (Grave’s Surgery), or courtroom drama (How to Get Away with Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome).
But why does it?
Let me explain: When the Seafoam Witch delivers a Melanie Grave-esque monologue over the closing montage that ends Episode 2 of ShondaVision -- the one in which she reveals she has trapped all the characters in a Shonda Tyme fantasy world, the witch included -- comic and soap fans rejoice because both speak the same common tongue: corporate IP.
Like Mirage and all the others under the Seafoam Witch’s spell, we didn’t choose to live in this world of spandex-clad Greek gods. It was wrapped around us. And while it felt like a blanket at first, it quickly became a cage.
Hungry for a common culture, something that feels distinctly American when so many things that once seemed so are shown to be false, we devour corporate IP as quickly as a starving man will eat a half-empty can of dog food, as well as any maggots contained therein.
And few have feasted as greedily as Wyatt Duvall. The result: his epic poem Tombstoned.
It is less a narrative than it is a violent regurgitation, an attempt to expel the sickness that had turned the author’s insides into a war zone and revealed coprorate IP itself to be a war crime.
Knowing what we know about Duvall’s childhood, any discussion of superheroes in Tombstoned must note Duvall’s familiarity with those who love corporate fiction; one might even surmise that Duvall had once sought refuge in the world of comics and other corporate IP himself. Perhaps even Star Cars.
Be that as it may, there is no escaping the fact that Duvall believed the genre gatekeeper, much like the Seafoam Witch herself, is trapped in a self-made, corporate-owned fantasy world and the only solution is an exorcism, the likes of which the star of ShondaVision would certainly approve.
Cue another one of Melanie Grave’s classic montage monologues.
There will be screams.
-Sally Field-Ferguson
(Published in “The Occidental Review, October 9, 2023)