Never let anyone tell you comic books can’t aspire toward literature. Works like Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi are proof they can. (If you haven’t read Watchmen yet—a 12-issue limited series I used to assign students in my introductory course on American politics—do yourself a favor and order a copy.) Granted, on a month-to-month basis, DC and Marvel—the comic book industry’s two big legacy companies—generate a lot of product. You’d have better luck finding more artistically ambitious work sifting through titles by independent publishers. Still, even comics starring the superheroes of DC and Marvel can tell stories that are sublime and profound.
No comic book writer working today reaches that level on a more consistent basis than Tom King, whose tales are always a rewarding and thought-provoking read. King—who has won eight comic book industry Eisner Awards, including two for Best Writer—has spent most of the past decade working for DC, the home of Superman, Batman, and many other beloved comic book characters. King gained widespread acclaim in 2015 as the writer of Marvel’s 12-issue limited series The Vision (illustrated by Gabriel Hernandez Walta) which saw the android Avenger move his newly-created android family to the suburbs, where they try to live normal human lives among neighbors who regard them as outcasts. The story, which examines the themes of assimilation, bigotry, normalcy, and family, would win King his first Eisner Award and is considered one of the best comic books of the past decade.
After ending an 85-issue run on the Batman serial in December 2019, King has mainly focused on creating limited series. This week, though, he returns as the author of an ongoing series with Wonder Woman (illustrated by David Sampere). If he can do for that character what he’s done with the likes of Batman, Mister Miracle, and Supergirl, then we’re in for something special.
As an author, King is known for deconstructing superheroes. That’s not new to comics—Moore was doing that with the entire superhero genre way back in the 80s with Watchmen; again, read that if you haven’t yet, and then follow that up with King’s sequel, Rorschach (2020, illustrated by Jorge Fornés)—but King operates more at the level of individual characters. A lot of writers like pushing their characters to the brink, testing their moral codes in morally fraught situations and gauging the toll of heroism, or placing them in scenarios that compel them to rediscover the essential traits that make them heroic. King does that as well, but he’s more interested in breaking his characters down, finding their fault lines and exposing their contradictions to reveal the psychic breaks that must occur when two facets of a serial character’s personality are suddenly at odds with one another. For instance, he’s promising on the new Wonder Woman book to explore the idea of what it means for Wonder Woman to be a “warrior for peace” who essentially loses every time she resorts to fighting. In the process, we may find much of the Wonder Woman mythos is a façade concealing a bunch of cognitive dissonance Diana Prince has struggled to deal with. Or readers may learn how Wonder Woman finds a way to reconcile that contradiction. (For a preview of Wonder Woman #1, which finds the U.S. government placing a ban on Wonder Woman’s Amazonian people after a mysterious Amazonian is accused of mass murder, click here. It will also provide you with a sense for the way King tells his stories.)
The best example of King’s deconstructionist approach to comic books is the 2017 12-issue Eisner-award winning limited series Mister Miracle (illustrated by Mitch Gerads). Many consider it to be his magnum opus. No worries if you’re unfamiliar with the character, as he’s relatively obscure as far as superheroes go. Some background: Mister Miracle, aka Scott Free, is part of legendary comic book creator Jack Kirby’s New Gods universe, which debuted in 1971. Scott is the son of Highfather, the ruler of the utopian planet New Genesis. To ensure the peace between New Genesis and the dystopian planet Apokolips (ruled by the tyrannical warlord Darkseid, the big cosmic bad guy of the DC universe) Highfather and Darkseid swap sons, which results in Scott being sent to Darkseid’s home world. During his childhood on Apokolips, Scott is tortured and abused, but he doesn’t break and eventually escapes to Earth, where he falls in with a circus escape artist, joins the Justice League, and is often called upon to defend the universe from Darkseid and his armies of parademons. Adopting the name Mister Miracle, Scott Free possesses all the super human might of a New God, but has one superpower that distinguishes him from everyone else: He is a master escapologist. (Get it, “Scott Free”?) The cover of the first issue of his 1971 comic book declared “He cheats death! He defies man! No trap can hold him!”
When we first meet Mister Miracle in King’s series, however, he is lying on the floor of his bathroom with his wrists slit. The escape artist who always cheats death has just tried to escape life. That creates a bit of a paradox.
Released from the hospital, Scott tries to resume a normal domestic life on Earth with his superhero wife Big Barda, but he is far from well. His brother Orion (the child Darkseid sent to New Genesis to be raised by Highfather) shows up to chastise him for his weakness. (Orion has a lot of his real father’s blood running through him.) And Highfather arrives to tell him Darkseid has finally acquired the long sought-after “Anti-Life Equation,” meaning Scott’s help is needed once again to prevent Darkseid from subjugating the universe. Throughout the book, King interrupts the story with all-black panels containing the phrase “Darkseid Is.” It’s symbolic of the depression weighing down on Scott after surviving years of torture, war, and harrowing escapes.
Gerads’ artwork—splotchy and grainy, sometimes out of focus or distorted like a VHS tape that’s been recorded over too many times—adds to the disorienting effect. While Mister Miracle continues to be drawn back into an interplanetary war, another war is waged within Scott Free as he tries to escape the demons that have been eating at him since his childhood. Yet these are probably demons Scott can’t escape, meaning he’ll have to find a way to live with them in a world that is often as ugly as it is beautiful. That will require him to come to terms with his fathers—one who abused him, and one who did not protect him from abuse—as he contemplates fatherhood himself. This isn’t a story that focuses on action scenes (war is often presented as a mundane, yet still gruesome, experience); instead, it feels like we spend most of the time with Scott and Barda in their home as they navigate their way, day by day, to some sort of peace of mind.
War serves as a backdrop in many of King’s books for a very personal reason. King first worked in the comic book industry as an intern, but after 9/11, he joined the CIA as a counterterrorism officer who at times was posted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those conflicts, 9/11, and the trauma of those who have experienced war inform his stories. One of his first series, The Sheriff of Babylon (2015, illustrated by Gerads), is about the tangled web of loyalties an American military consultant finds when he attempts to solve the murder of an Iraqi police recruit. The Omega Men (2015, illustrated by Barnaby Bagenda) follows Green Lantern Kyle Rayner after he is kidnapped by a ragtag group of aliens who, depending on your perspective, are either terrorists or freedom fighters. His run on Batman began with the Caped Crusader commandeering an out-of-control airliner to prevent it from crashing into the skyscrapers of Gotham City. One of his best Batman arcs was a two-issue story illustrated by Joëlle Jones co-starring Wonder Woman, who asks Batman to help her defend our dimension from a horde of relentless invaders so the warrior stationed at the breach can get some R&R. The twist, however, is that mere hours on Earth amount to decades on the front lines. The story is a clever way to depict how soldiers in a warzone experience time and how they pick each other up when they think they can’t go on. King also shows how the stress and feelings of fatalism associated with war can shake people’s moral codes, as Batman, who is engaged to Catwoman at the time, edges toward an affair with Wonder Woman:
King’s best story about war, however, is probably Strange Adventures (2020, illustrated by Evan Shaner and Mitch Gerads) starring the (again, relatively obscure) 1950s-era sci-fi superhero Adam Strange. Strange is an archaeologist transported to the planet Rann, where, armed with a ray gun and a jet pack, he helps defend that world from alien threats. In Strange Adventures, Strange has returned to Earth and published a book recounting his exploits during an epic war on Rann. He is joined by his wife Alanna, a Rannian warrior princess, with whom he had a daughter who was lost in the conflict. Fans are eager to meet the hero and thank him for his service, but at a book signing, he is accused of genocide by a man who is soon found dead, his head blown off by a ray gun. Since Strange is a member of the Justice League, the matter needs to be investigated, so Batman asks Mr. Terrific, an African-American hero known for his superior intellect and sense of “fair play,” to conduct an inquiry.
The series examines our craving for war heroes, the myths we want to believe about them, and the stubborn, inconvenient nature of truth and justice. It’s also an indictment of a comic book industry that has glamorized violence and casually slaughtered thousands of monsters and aliens on its pages without considering the humanity of the dead, how such a body count would deform the psyche of the hero, or how such stories end up reinforcing a poisonous colonial mindset. King uses Strange Adventures to show how many Americans are more likely to condemn Black citizens working for justice than they are the “White Saviors” who claim to defend us from “uncivilized” threats at home and abroad while embracing a violent worldview that destabilizes our domestic lives. The series is an excellent complement to Mister Miracle.
Much of King’s work focuses on trauma and how individuals who encounter pain, destruction, and death on a regular basis cope with those experiences. (Yes, trauma is an overdone theme these days, but King at least can claim to handle the theme well.) His most controversial work, Heroes in Crisis (2018, illustrated by Clay Mann), revolves around a mass murder at a retreat for superheroes suffering from PTSD. A recurring segment of the book features various superheroes talking to their therapists:
Few superheroes have been as defined by trauma as Batman, who witnessed the murders of his parents as a child and would eventually don a mask and cape to avenge their deaths. Writers have long explored the ways in which Bruce Wayne is haunted by that formative experience. Some have portrayed Batman as a hero who, unlike his villains, overcame tragedy to become a stable, excellent human being. Others, assuming that only a lunatic would dress up as a bat and chase armed criminals across the rooftops of Gotham City, characterize Batman as a disturbed individual pushed to the edge of his sanity. During his run on Batman, King set Bruce Wayne up as a morose, masochistic hero with a bad case of survivor’s guilt and a death wish, someone who joylessly throws himself into his crimefighting crusade hoping for a worthy demise.
Yet King’s Dark Knight gets his chance at salvation when Batman finally acts on his feelings for Catwoman and asks her to marry him. That turns Batman into a more contented hero who begins contemplating a life beyond crimefighting. The issues depicting Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle’s engagement (Batman #24, #33-50) are among King’s best, not only because they are so sweepingly romantic (King is so good at depicting couples in relationships) but because it’s a delight watching Selina crack Bruce’s defenses and become his emotional rock by providing him, no matter how messed up he may be, with the compassion he’s always lacked. (The supportive female partner who seems to magically save the soul of the superhero is something of a Tom King trope, but he rescues Catwoman from that fate in his Batman/Catwoman limited series [2021, illustrated by Clay Mann].)
Selina would notoriously leave Bruce at the altar in Batman #50, fearing she would deprive the world of one of it’s greatest heroes if she made him happy. Forget the Joker or Bane—it’s that loss that finally breaks Batman, forcing him to reckon with how his childhood trauma turned him into a do-gooder who never feels good himself.
More recently, King has moved away from his focus on trauma to explore other themes and topics. The eight-issue limited series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021, illustrated by Bilquis Evely) is a meditation on revenge that borrows its premise from the western True Grit. Batman: Killing Time (2022, illustrated by David Marquez) is a more conventional comic book story that turns into an examination of why people want power. King won an Eisner Award for The Human Target (2022, illustrated by Greg Smallwood) a genre exercise that draws inspiration from 1960s detective fiction. Christopher Chance is the so-called Human Target, a character that could be called the opposite of a hitman: He’s hired by people who fear they are about to be assassinated so that he can pose as them and draw out the would-be killer. In this 12-issue series, Chance, hired by Lex Luthor, dodges a bullet meant to end the megalomaniac’s life only to learn later that he consumed a poisoned drink intended for Luthor. The poison is slow-acting, giving Chance twelve days to find his own murderer, who is most likely a member of the Justice League International. Greg Smallwood’s artwork, which evokes the 1960s, is fantastic: Every panel looks like it could have graced the cover of a John D. MacDonald novel, and whenever Ice, the series’ oh-so-innocent femme fatale, uses her cold-based superpowers, Smallwood represents it on the page as snowflakes reminiscent of the sparkles of magic from the animated opening of Bewitched:
The Human Target is an excellent example of King’s control as a storyteller. He seems to be working on the same wavelength as masters of “slow” prestige television like Matthew Weiner of Mad Men and Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould of Better Call Saul. His stories always move at a measured, deliberate pace, which allows him to bring depth to his characters and develop themes, motifs, and symbols that fill individual issues and whole arcs with meaning. It’s absolutely gripping because every detail—whether it’s a word or an image—feels loaded with significance.
There are other techniques King often relies on as well. He’ll frequently withhold information so that the reader has to actively piece the scene together. He also loves to use repetition, not only in dialogue but in his panel arrangements, so that his illustrators can convey information through subtle shifts in facial expressions or background details. (King’s splash pages really pop next to those multi-paneled pages.) Standalone scenes—even those that last only a page—are complete compositions in-and-of themselves. Just consider this three-page scene from Batman - One Bad Day: The Riddler (2022, illustrated by Gerads), in which Commissioner Gordon interrogates the recently apprehended Riddler. (It helps to know that in the critically-acclaimed 1988 Batman story The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, the Joker showed up at Gordon’s home and shot and paralyzed his daughter Barbara/“Babs”/Batgirl):
Notice how similar so many of those panels are to one another. That heightens the intensity of the showdown and sets the mood. Also, because the scene unfolds over eighteen panels, the artist can avoid exaggeration and broad emotions, allowing Gordon to lose his cool before recomposing himself and retreating, while the Riddler can adopt a laid-back, droogish arrogance. Finally, take note of how that riddle ties the scene together. That’s going to happen anytime someone tells a Riddler story, but it’s also going to connect to other scenes in the book.
If you are interested in checking out Tom King’s work, Batman - One Bad Day: The Riddler would be an excellent place to start. It’s a one-shot that’s the length of about three standard comic books and relatively inexpensive, particularly if you can still find the paperback version at a comic book shop. Since it’s a Batman story, you’ll probably be familiar with the characters, and it will give you the chance to see King working with a character he’s spent a lot of time getting to know over the years. Additionally, all of King’s storytelling tricks are on display here, so you’ll get a good sense for his style. The premise of the One Bad Day series is to explore how a singular event in the lives of different Batman’s villains turned them into criminals. King not only does that, but weaves it into a contemporary Riddler story that should resonate with readers. As the story opens, the Riddler murders a random person and allows the police to arrest him. It turns out, however, that the Riddler has manipulated events so that anyone who tries to hold him accountable will face severe consequences. With everyone afraid of how he might retaliate, the Riddler—a villain who was always considered a joke—is allowed to act with impunity. The question then is how Batman can possibly stop a man who is so insulated that he can stand in the middle of the street (say, 5th Avenue) and shoot someone without fear of punishment.
After One Bad Day, check out The Human Target, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, or Batman: Killing Time to ease your way into King’s catalog. Or, if you want to dive right into the more challenging stuff, go for Mister Miracle and Strange Adventures or The Vision. Or just read whatever sounds interesting to you. When you come to Tom King, you can’t go wrong.
Signals and Noise
A helpful counter from Frank Bruni of the New York Times: “Trump is Really Old, Too” (“To our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term, I’d like to add this question: How would we even notice Donald Trump’s lapse into incoherence, when derangement is essentially his brand?”)
By Sidney Blumenthal for The Guardian: “Democrats Need to Realize There is No Alternative to Biden—and Buck Up”
Nate Cohn of the New York Times examines recent polls and argues Trump’s edge in the Electoral College is slipping despite his resilience in national head-to-head polls with Biden.
Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post argues a big reason “Bidenomics” isn’t resonating with more Americans is that it focuses too much on manufacturing when less than 10% of Americans are employed in the shrinking sector.
Jonathan Last of The Bulwark looks at how Republicans like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina have adopted ridiculous positions just to stay on Team Trump.
“I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective.”—Ron DeSantis, speaking about his Florida constituents (who are not guinea pigs; the shots have been tested) about the new COVID booster shots (which have been proven to be safe and effective.)
This headline by Jonathan Last of The Bulwark sums it up well: “Trump Controls the Republican Party Because He Has the Power To Destroy It”
Don Trump has no idea what the Department of Education does.
Hunter Biden was indicted on federal felony gun charges. Wonder how many Republicans will grab the Second Amendment and jump to his defense. (Hunter’s lawyers already are.) Meanwhile, Philip Bump of the Washington Post writes Trumpworld is still trying to come up with a rationalization for how a Deep State that goes easy on DC elites and punishes Republicans ended up indicting the president’s son rather than letting him get away with it.
Sounds like things are a bit frosty between Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Don Trump is speaking privately with House GOP members about impeaching Biden.
Rep. James Comer is likely to be the Republican face of any impeachment inquiry in the House, but he’s prone to stepping in it during media appearances about the Bidens.
Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post writes about how GOP attacks on prosecutors threaten to undermine the principle of prosecutorial independence.
What does it mean that Trump lawyer and co-defendant Jenna Ellis is now saying “I simply can’t support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong”? Is she flipping on him?
“This shows the whole rottenness of the American political system, which cannot claim to teach others about democracy. What’s happening with Trump is a persecution of a political rival for political motives.”—Democracy and political persecution expert Vladimir Putin (Thanks, Vlad)
Kevin McCarthy is struggling to govern again. A routine vote on a defense appropriations bill had to be scrapped when MAGA Republicans refused to get onboard with it. And an attempt to placate right-wing Republicans by inserting language into every appropriations bill backfired when moderate Republicans rebelled.
If MAGA Republicans like Rep. Matt Gaetz make a “motion to vacate” to remove Kevin McCarthy from the Speakership, will Democrats come to McCarthy’s rescue?
Senators of both parties are working together to pass budget resolutions as House Republicans threaten to shut down the government. Some House Republicans are now warning their GOP colleagues they risk losing all leverage in budget negotiations between chambers if they don’t pass something out of the House. This budget showdown increasingly looks like another MAGA self-own.
With Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville holding up hundreds of military promotions in the Senate (including the new head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Norm Ornstein writes in The Atlantic about the Senate’s use of “holds” and why no senator wants to ditch the practice.
While I can think of at least one politician who had a worse night at the theater, Republican Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s night-out to see a Denver production of Beetlejuice ranks pretty high on that list. And it only got worse by the day. All I will say is this:
“You can say the things that we all think. You’re in a position to say things about him that we all agree with but can’t say.”—Mitch McConnell speaking to Mitt Romney about Trump shortly after news broke that Trump had asked Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family in exchange for congressionally-approved military aid. For more on what Romney—who announced last week he would not seek reelection to the Senate—thinks about his time in the Senate, his Republican colleagues, and the state of the GOP (“‘A very large portion of my party,’ he told me one day, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution’”) check out McKay Coppins excerpt of Romney’s forthcoming biography in The Atlantic.
But Philip Klein burns Romney’s legacy to the ground in the National Review. (“Though he may be remembered for his most recent role as a ‘reasonable’ anti-Trump Republican senator, his broader career is one of political shape-shifting. He never had consistent ideological principles, he helped usher in an era of greater government control over health care, and he played a key role in the political rise of Donald Trump.”)
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who had been impeached by the majority Republican Texas House by a vote of 121-23, was acquitted by the majority Republican Texas Senate by a 14-16 vote. Only two Republicans sided with the chamber’s 12 Democrats to convict.
A recent spate of decisions in cases concerning gerrymandering suggests Democrats could regain control of the House in 2024 through redistricting alone.
Weird how Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had the sort of organization that Citizens United would legalize incorporated and ready for business a week before the Supreme Court handed down the ruling in that case.
Zach Beauchamp of Vox digs into the arguments of the Right’s leading culture warrior Chris Rufo and finds them not only exaggerated but an attempt to justify the sort of cultural revolution he condemns the Left for waging, only from the Right.
Andrew Prokop of Vox looks at the politics behind the sudden success of the school choice movement.
Catherine Morehouse reports law enforcement has blamed neo-Nazis and white supremacists for a surge in attacks on the nation’s power grid.
United Auto Workers launched a targeted strike this week against all three auto manufacturers. Workers are demanding a 36% wage increase over the next four years. (The salary of GM’s CEO increased 34% over the past four years.) Other demands include a 32-hour work week, defined-benefit pensions for all workers, and company-financed health care post-retirement. It’s the first time UAW members have walked out against all three automakers at the same time.
Steven Greenhouse in The Atlantic wonders how long Democrats will be able to balance the interests of union and environmental activists. For instance, the production of EVs requires 1/3 fewer workers than gas-powered vehicles.
As Sara Morrison of Vox put it, the DOJ and Google headed to court this week in an antitrust case with the future of the Internet and antitrust laws at stake.
An advisory panel to the FDA voted 16-0 last week that phenylephrine—the active ingredient in many popular cold medications like Dayquil, Sudafed PE, and Tylenol Cold + Flu Severe that earn over $1.7 billion in annual revenue for its producers—is ineffective, a fact many pharmacists have known for years.
As pandemic aid expired, poverty in the United States soared from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022. Yet the official poverty rate for Black Americans dropped to the lowest on record (17.1%).
Rising gas prices drove inflation slightly higher in August to 3.7%. Food prices remained steady over the year.
Tensions between the United States and China has resulted in one big winner: Mexico, which is now the US’s leading source of imported goods.
Fifty years ago, Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces, with images of helicopters evacuating personnel from the American embassy becoming a symbol of a war the United States ultimately lost. This past week, President Biden agreed to increase military cooperation with Vietnam as both nations look to counter China in Asia.
The New York Times reports Russia has overcome Western sanctions and expanded missile production beyond pre-invasion levels.
Top 5 Records Music Review: Guts by Olivia Rodrigo
It’s been far from a cruel summer for Taylor Swift. Her massive Eras Tour, which had fans scrambling for $1000 tickets, felt like a coronation. It also felt like a culmination, the celebration not of a new album but of an epic career whose every phase—mile-marked by Easter eggs and ex-lovers—has led up to this triumphant moment. (The phenomenon is about to reach an even wider audience, with a concert film set to hit cinemas on October 13. I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor and her Swifties power the movie to Barbie-level numbers at the box office.)
The question now is, how can Swift ever follow that up? Not only will it be hard replicating that tour, but the clock is probably working against her, too. I have a theory of pop music that asserts once an artist gains purchase in the pop cultural universe, they have 10-15 years until they burnout/fade away. Doesn’t mean they can’t launch a comeback, just that when they do come back, they won’t return to the cultural heights they once claimed. For example, the Beatles lasted eight years. The Rolling Stones had a good nine-year run. It’s hard to gauge Stevie Wonder because he started so young, but once he broke free of the Motown assembly line, he had a solid 10+ years at the top of his game. Elton John? Six years. Prince? About 9-10 years. Same for Mariah Carey, a year or two less for Madonna. You might stretch some of those peaks out a few years: One can argue the Stones made it sixteen years while Madonna made it seventeen, but then you’d have to count distinct lulls in their careers as well (the mid-70s for the Stones, most of the 90s for Madonna.) The only exception to the rule? Beyoncé, who’s still going strong at twenty years.
Maybe Swift can match that, but let’s note she released “Love Song” from Fearless fifteen years ago to the day I wrote this (September 15). She’s still relatively young at the age of thirty-three, but while she keeps getting older, the ranks of fifteen-year-olds are continuously replenished. Eventually, one of them will make fun of a classmate for still liking their preschool wiggle-break anthem “Shake It Off”, or realize their mom digs Swift as much as they do, and then it’s all downhill from there.
Or maybe Olivia Rodrigo will just dethrone Swift as the reigning queen of pop. It certainly feels like we’re long overdue for some new royalty, and Rodrigo fits the bill. Like Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and many others before her, the nineteen-year-old Rodrigo got her start on the Disney Channel, starring in the oddly-named shows Bizaardvark and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Her debut album, Sour, featuring the hit “Driver’s License”, came out in 2021. Its follow-up, Guts, was released two weeks ago.
Like Swift, Rodrigo’s songs are confessionals, public airings of the thoughts she’s scribbled into her diary. They mainly chronicle a young woman’s romantic turmoil (for a prime example, see “Vampire” in Exit Music) burning the boys who break her heart while boasting of the ways in which she toys with would-be suitors. She isn’t old enough yet to be wise, but there seems to be a lesson learned from every relationship and incident she sings about. Rodrigo is also often her own worst enemy, a form of anti-hero you might say. In an era of social media, she’s over-exposed, but she also shares too much. Even though her songs don’t send fans scrambling to figure out which celebrity has earned her scorn, Rodrigo is obviously descended from the Swift school of songwriting.
But Rodrigo’s music is distinguished from Swift’s in a few important ways. Most obviously, her songs are rooted more in rock, specifically the alternative rock and retro-punk of the 1990s. “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” (a song about oppressive feminine beauty standards) sounds like an 80s synth-pop song played by Smashing Pumpkins and polished up with My Bloody Valentine’s brighter tones. “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” seems to channel Garbage, whose lead singer Shirley Manson is a clear influence on Rodrigo’s vocal style. (“Pour your misery down on me,” indeed.) Album opener “All-American Bitch” (the title comes from Susan Sontag) starts off as an intimate, lilting acoustic number (think Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries singing the opening verse of “Dreams”) before exploding into a Green Day/Blink-182-style retro-punk rocker in the chorus. The contrast between soft and loud is a very 90s move and a bracing way to signal to listeners this is an album that should be pumped through speakers, not earbuds, and played loud enough to get on the neighbors’ nerves.
Also, as one might expect of someone who enjoys listening to her parents’ 90s CDs, Rodrigo’s music comes loaded with angst. Perhaps that’s a sign the times are changing. Swift offers her listeners a fairy tale, an escape to the Taylorverse, an ideal. She’s a striver, someone who has it together for the most part, and is only really foiled in her aspirations by the patriarchy, foolish boys, and Kanye West. Even if she’s not the cheer captain, she’s still in the bleachers, the diamond in the rough, living a life that comes close to charmed. When she screws up, its mostly just awkward; she’ll either shake it off or turn it into a million dollar song. Our heroine will come out on top.
On Guts, Rodrigo sounds like she’s coming to us from the teenage wasteland, a Zoomer trying to make her way through a messed-up, lackluster world. The times deserve her apathy, disillusionment, and fury. Optimism is passé. To be clear, she’s more Avril Lavigne than Johnny Rotten, but the outrage still feels earned and primal.
For her part, Rodrigo sings as if she’s damaged goods, the gloomy girl-next-door with a tempestuous inner life. Just listen to her constantly shsh her s’s as if singing through a sneer. Unlike Swift, swearing comes very natural to her. On the power-pop song “Get Him Back” (the closest she gets to a Red/1989-era Swift pop single, particularly with the way she throws in that offhanded “maybe I could fix him” line) she careens between emotions, unsure if she wants to rekindle a romance with a boy or exact revenge.
“Love is Embarrassing” she observes, not awkwardly endearing, telling those listening, “Just watch as I crucify myself/ For some weird second string loser/ Who’s not worth mentioning”. (Of course, she still can’t avoid writing about him.) On the riot grrrlish “Bad Idea, Right?” it’s clear she knows better, but neither possesses the self-discipline nor cares enough to make a good decision. The issue isn’t that she might screw-up but that she is a screw-up, so whatever:
I know we’re done, I know we’re through
But, God, when I look at you
My brain goes, “Ah”
Can’t hear my thoughts (I cannot hear my thoughts)
Like blah-blah-blah (Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah)
Should probably not
I should probably, probably not
I should probably, probably notSeeing you tonight
It’s a bad idea, right?
Seeing you tonight
It’s a bad idea, right?
Seeing you tonight
It’s a bad idea, right?
Seeing you tonight
Fuck it, it’s fine
I should be clear I’m not trying to pit Taylor Swift against Olivia Rodrigo. There’s no reason to assume they’re rivals or to think they ought to be. I’m just wondering if Rodrigo might be signaling some sort of cultural shift away not only from the fairy tale comfort of the Taylorverse but the cerebral, blasé, and muted sounds of contemporary pop as well, perhaps to something messier, more raucous, and more confrontational. That wouldn’t be a new sound, but it would be different enough to alter expectations. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream,” Rodrigo sings on the final track of Guts. If that’s the case, what does she offer her audience instead?