Alasdair Stuart's Blog

(Note: Clicking on the title of the book will take you to it’s Comixology page where you can purchase it. Clicking on the cover of the book will take you to it’s home page and clicking on a creator name will take you to their twitter feed).

And then. It’s a phrase redolent with meaning, with coiled potential and it’s a phrase that lies at the heart of the five launch titles from Monkeybrain Comics. Each picks up it’s story at the point where most would leave it or skip to the next beat and as a result each feels grounded and contextualized whilst still breaking new ground. Plus, these books have a wicked sense of humor.

This is probably most relevant in Edison Rex, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Dennis Culver with colors by Steve Downer and lettering by John J. Hill. It opens with the last battle between Valiant, the most powerful superhuman on the planet and Edison Rex is his arch enemy. Or, Valiant is a privileged idiot who got handed every single one of his godlike advantages and Edison is a self made genius who has done everything he can to better humanity, only for Valiant to render him irrelevant. Or, Valiant is an alien menace who doesn’t even know he’s a menace and Rex is the only man who can save the world, by persuading Valiant to kill himself. Or, Rex is evil. Or all of the above. The book’s central premise is wonderfully old school but unlike so many superhero comics it never puts on it’s father’s clothes and parades around, declaring how clever it is. The story is played absolutely straight, albeit with some touches of black humor, and by the end of the issue you find yourself not only caring about Rex and his new found responsibilities, but admiring Valiant for making one of the most difficult choices of all. The script is tight, character driven and ideas heavy and meshes perfectly with Culver’s clean, precise lines which are in turn neatly accentuated by Downer’s colors. Hill’s lettering is great too, one of the unsung heroes of the book as it shifts from iconic pseudo-comic title logos to sound effects and some nuanced work that really helps the tempo of the dialogue leap off the page. This is a book with a nasty gleam in its eye and it’s going to be a pleasure to see where it goes next.

That sense of progression lies at the heart of Amelia Cole and the Unknown World too. Written by Adam P. Knave and DJ Kirkbride, with art by Nick Brokenshire and lettering by Rachel Deering it too opens in the middle of what should be the big finish. Amelia, the heroine and a woman with high end magical capabilities is battling a demon on the city streets, a fact she finds particularly irritating because she had plans for that afternoon. Straight away Amelia is established as a smart, pragmatic character by touches like this and the genius idea of her fighting a persuasion demon with her headphones on so she can’t hear the thing speak.

Knave and Kirkbride litter the script with neat touches like this, most notably when Amelia steps across to the other Earth. In this universe, magic takes the place of technology and travel between them is accomplished by nothing more than opening a certain type of door. But now the doors are decaying and Amelia, a woman raised in one world and comfortable in both finds herself faced with a string of impossible decisions. Knave and Kirkbride’s script establishes a complex premise without resorting to info dumping whilst Brokenshire’s art shows a keen eye for both the fantastic and the mundane and his character and design work is excellent, especially on the magical police of the other Earth. Deering’s lettering matches his art work neatly, both clean and precise and there’s a sense, as with Edison Rex of a much deeper world beneath the surface of the issue, waiting to be discovered.

That idea, of the rich and strange world that ours floats on top of is also central to Matthew Dow Smith’s The October Girl. Written and drawn by Matthew, it follows Autumn Ackerman, a woman trapped in the limbo we all fall into in our twenties. She wants to go to college but can’t afford it, wants a better job but won’t get it, wants things to be easier and simpler and knows that will never happen. Until it does, unfolding into a world of complexity that dwarfs her problems at the same time as throwing them into absolute focus. Dow Smith has a keen ear for dialogue and observation and most of this issue is a painfully accurate depiction of twentysomething ennui. This is, superficially, the least fantastical of the five titles and for some people that’s a bad thing but the book absolutely rewards perseverance, especially with a beautifully realized, and deeply unsettling final reveal. Most of us want but we don’t know how to get. Judging by the that reveal in the last few pages, Autumn has just got and the rest of the book will be about what happens next.

Passing the time whilst you wait for whatever happens next is what lies at the heart of Aesop’s Ark, written by J. Torres and drawn, and lettered, by Jennifer L. Meyer, is the most esoteric and yet most familiar of the books. These are the stories the animals on the Ark tell to pass the time, the petty squabbles they have and the sudden bright moments of unity. The rain is still falling, the boat is still rocking and they are in a state of suspension, neither here nor there, the food chain suspended and trailing away behind the ship as it sails. The story sees a tortoise come to a Lion to ask for help with getting her neighbours to pull together and help plug a leak in the ship. The Lion tells them a story about a mule and a donkey climbing a hill, using that to show them the importance of team work and the dangers of leaving their friends behind. Torres’ deft characterization and Meyer’s breathtaking art combine to make this a break out in a line filled with extraordinary work and Meyer’s panel structure is particularly noteworthy, with the first page’s panels slanting to mirror the motion of the Ark and the story about the mule and the donkey told in the structure of the hill they’re climbing. That’s all there is to it, but this is elemental storytelling rather than simply storytelling, something we instinctively recognize.

Recognition, and instinct, both lie at the heart of the final book in the launch line. Bandette, written by Paul Tobin with art by Colleen Coover, Bandette is the story of a female cat burglar with a quick wit, a strong sense of justice and an excellent cape. The book is steeped in European style, from the moped chase to the Gendarmerie who arrest the villains and it carries itself completely differently to almost anything else on release at the moment. There’s a sparky, graceful sense of fun to the book as it follows Bandette on a job (‘This is called justice. Or larceny. One of the two.’) at the same time as a local bookseller, Mr Corvid, receives a phone call, and an offer, that his own cat burglar persona, Monsieur, can’t turn down. In turn, the introduction of Mr Corvid introduces us to Daniel, the takeaway moped courier for the wonderfully named Rad Thai restaurant and in turn we see him connected to Bandette through her panic button, a signal system that brings the entire town down on the men pursuing her. There’s a sense of the Baker Street Irregulars to these scenes, as disparate groups come to her aid just in time for her to make a perfect escape and move onto the next problem. This is a book that tumbles and flips as gracefully as it’s lead, and it’s sense of fun is just as infectious.

A possibly misunderstood super villain, a polite young woman with two worlds to care for, another young woman about to enter an entirely new world, the last animals on Earth and a stylish young cat burglar. If anything truly unites these ideas it’s the sense of fun that runs through all of them, a lightness of touch that’s only accentuated by the ‘and then’ approach each premise takes. These books all somehow manage to feel familiar without ever losing their brand new sheen, a collection of five fiercely well realized ideas that entertain completely first and quietly shatter accepted tropes and wisdom second. The future of comics starts here, and at this quality and these prices, it’s a future almost everyone should be able to afford.

Bleeding Cool

A quieter week for me this week, but I got a couple of meaty stories to play with. The first movie adaptation of Lee Child‘s Jack Reacher series of novels has been completed, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and starring Tom Cruise. Given that Reacher is continually described in the stories as being a 6’5 slab of grizzled, death bringing meat, this surprised me a little bit. I talk about the newly released teaser, Cruise, fight psychology and fail to explain a point to the extent I maybe should have, just over here.

I also got handed The Dark Knight Rises press kit to play with, albeit in electronic form. Fun fact fact fans, I was part of the last generation of journalists to receive paper press kits. We used to get a big sheaf of A4 notes, a few black and white glossies from the movie and very occasionally some pens or t-shirts or such. A friend of mine still has the Anaconda press kit with the pop out Anaconda. And yes I’m still jealous. Anyway, I go through the Dark Knight Rises kit and pull out some interesting quotes, as well as some interesting things they’re not saying, here.

SFX

Over at SFX, this week’s Blogbusters is about mash-ups. Well, it’s actually about metatextuality and how you can throw a new light on one text by interlacing it or referencing it with another. Mash-ups are the song version of this and there are entire albums based around the concept, most notably by 2ManyDJs. The movie, TV or book version of it tends to be a little more indirect, with characters or locations being indirectly referred to or riffed upon. My favorite example remains Fringe, very much the spiritual successor to The X-Files, acknowledging it’s past with this gag.  Done right it’s glorious and often hilarious and that’s what we look at this week.

I’m also behind ‘Isn’t It About Time You Gave Blade: Trinity Another Chance?’ this week. The Isn’t It About Time… feature is great fun, and massively difficult, to do as you’re basically having an argument with yourself over something and writing it down. In this instance, it’s the third and by most people’s lights least of the Blade trilogy, although it remains one of my favorites even after being paid to rag on the thing incessantly. So if you fancy reading probably the nerdiest Socratic dialogue written this week, I’m your huckleberry.

Pseudopod

Finally, this week’s Pseudopod is The Rainbow Serpent by Vincent Pendergast, an elegantly tense piece of Australian horror that plays with a couple of my favorite tropes.

Here’s where you can find me this week:

Bleeding Cool

A busy week for me at Bleeding Cool began with interviewing Si Spurrier about Crossed: Wish You Were Here, Avatar‘s second web comic. The first print collection was solicited this week and I talked to Si about the genesis of the series, the very interesting meta-fictional elements of it and how writing a weekly comic is different to his other work. Si’s a great writer, Crossed is a gleefully horrific universe and Wish You Were Here is one of the strongest entries in the series so far.

The San Diego Comic Con hype machine is gearing up and I wrote about an interesting rumor that the Gareth Edwards-directed Godzilla movie is scheduled to make it’s first appearance, of sorts, there. Given some of the other movies debuting there it would make a ton of sense and the production has been suspiciously quiet, even if cameras haven’t quite yet rolled yet.

Atomic Robo is rapidly becoming one of my all time-favorite comic series. The story of an artificially intelligent robot created by Nikola Tesla in 1923 and his adventures down through the decades, it’s a series which balances pulp sensibilities and invention with pitch perfect humor and extremely smart writing. The latest series, Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific, began this week and it was a pleasure both to read and write about.

Finally, the long-awaited trailer for The Man With The Iron Fists, directorial debut of The RZA and a heady combination of Kung Fu, Western and one of the most eclectic casts of recent years, arrived this week. I pointed out nine things about it.

SFX

This week’s Blogbusters saw me ask the team what fictional city they’d like to live in, as well as, once again, expressing my rank amazement at R Kelly’s unique view of Gotham City. One day I’ll get over that, but not, it seems, today. I really enjoy doing the bumpers for Blogbusters and I suspect this is one of the times it shows.

The second of my reviews of the magnificent Atomic Robo also went up there this week. Once again, this is a comic called Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific and it’s at least as fun, if not more so, than that name suggests.

I also blogged about the Waffles for Stephanie campaign, which has to be one of the politest, most good-natured pieces of fan activism I’ve ever seen. If you’re a Batgirl fan, go, look and consider sending DC Comics some waffles. Steph would do the same for you. Special thanks for this piece also has to go the magnificent DC Women Kicking Ass, one of the best comics sites there is. If you’re a comics fan, especially a DC one, you need to be reading it.

The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse

This week I ended up on the other side of the keyboard, when The Girls’ Guide To The Apocalypse interviewed me as part of their Ask The Experts feature. GGSA is a superb site run by good friends of mine, who, realizing how well prepared they were for the apocalypse (Any apocalypse) decided to pool and share that knowledge with the internet. They are, flat out, one of the best sites out there and it was a pleasure to be interviewed by them. Plus the photo used makes me look just a little outdoorsy.

Pseudopod

Fyodor Sologub’s The White Dog was this week’s Pseudopod story, bookended, as ever by me. Expertly read by Tanja Milojevic, it’s an ice cold story of identity, loss and what it means to fall outside society.

Here’s where you can find my stuff this week:

Bleeding Cool

Free Graphic Novel About The Winnipeg Riots and The Murder of Mike Sokolowski

Graphic Novel Program Helps Young Canadian Offenders Break The Cycle

10 (Ish. Shut up, 3 is illegal, creep! Send him to the isocubes!) Things About The Dredd Trailer

The Upcoming Films of Alan Moore

Pseudopod

Final Girl Theory by AC Wise.

Podcastle

Wane, by Elizabeth Bear. I co-read this with Marguerite and it’s just huge fun. It’s part of Bear’s New Amsterdam series, an alternate history where the Aztec Empire never faded. Picture an unusual, uneasy combination of courtly intrigue, magic and punching.  I got to read a Prince, a Colonial Governor, an Aztec diplomat and a politely vampiric Spanish detective, it was great.

Times Square One

Arriving at night you step out into a world surrounded by huge concrete cliffs and filled with teeming masses of people who are all unique, all have their own stories and all part of a colossal organism. Blood vessels in the veins and arteries of the city they swim in the same direction, bicker at the fact the guy in front’s going slower, laugh, scream, dance and move, constantly building and rebuilding the city through their thoughts and words. This is the world on a grid, this is information distilled and fired straight at you and when you get to Times Square, and it seems that everyone here, eventually, does, that you realise what it really is;

Music.

Time Square has a deep bass note of history, which, appropriately, lies at the bottom of it. The news tickers on One Times Square told the city that Apollo 13 was home safe, that President Kennedy was dead, that Obama had won. They stream constantly, liquid graceful LEDs that set the tempo for the rest of the city, news, sport, gossip all flash by at the same speed, the information super two step that on it’s own would be hypnotic but here, is just the start.

The billboards come in next, high, wide notes of color and aspiration that tell you the lies they’ve told you for years. That this TV show will change your life, that these dangerously skinny supermodels actually drink Pepsi Max. They play with motion, one series showing a single dunk shot executed by five different players, each stage a different man, each stage a little higher, a little closer. Aspiration is hard coded into every image, each one reaching and encouraging you to reach, to try, to tune in, to buy something. Different themes, different notes bounce and roil around each other, all built on the constant, liquid bass of the news ticker. Information. Information, In-for-May-SHUN.

Above them, New Yorker’s faces are projected on a screen six storeys tall as part of a Toshiba promotion. Above that a parade of manga cartoon bombs, all shiny black iron and lit fuses cascade down a screen over and over again. Next to them the Glee cast prepare to graduate, above them the Louvre lights up over and over. This is the New York Ode to Joy, a tenor dripping in neon and concrete amplified by a square where information runs so deep and so fast you feel like you could swim through it. Music that’s miles wide and sixty storeys tall, music that you’re a vital part of and one of millions of identical notes, all crammed into the right place on the page. A million stories in the naked city and they all contain each other, a hotel room in a hotel on a street on a square on an avenue on a grid on an island. An urban fractal, every element contained within every other. A piece everybody plays and everybody listens to.

That’s why so much of this feels so familiar; because it is. Looking out of the 41^st storey window, it’s impossible not to map the city into the obscurity of fiction. Somewhere out there, Detective Mack Taylor’s CSIs are working a new case, whilst at a nearby precinct Detectives John Munch and Finn Tutuola spend another shift dealing with the worst humanity can do to itself. Go up a few blocks and the last place Jack Bauer was officially seen alive echoes with gunfire and the promises of silent, dutiful vengeance.

Across town at Central Park, a time lost Disney princess leads residents in song whilst not a mile away, the original Will Graham runs down the Guggenheim spiral away from the original Dr Hannibal Lecter, a modern artist of murder contained in a museum of modern art. Across on the other side of the park, Peter Venkman talks to the thing that has taken up residence in Dana Barrett whilst a few buildings over, Tony Stark turns to Pepper Potts and asks what she thinks about a mansion instead of a tower. She suggests they talk about it over dinner and on the way they pass through Hell’s Kitchen. A red suited figure plays among the rooftops, keeps pace with their limo for a while, an unofficial honour guard. He hands off to a scrawny motormouth dressed like a spider who dances across the rooftops as Pepper and Tony drive on, past the Cloverfield memorial, past the coffee shop where six new people are starting to come together, past the site for the proposed new Baxter building. All fictional, all fake, all information and all utterly, completely New York. Spidey’s town, Sinatara’s town, Batman’s town, Gershwin’s town. All here, all unique, all apart and all connected, all woven into the movements of concrete and steel, yellow cab and squad car, residents and visitors, fiction and reality. Notes on sheet music, words hammered out on an old typewriter, the endless liquid stream of information at Time’s Square One. This is a symphony in Avenue Major. This is New York.

I’m taking a break from Judo for a while. Not permanently, but I need six months or so away from the mat to get the rest of my life in order. However, I not only don’t want six months away from the mat, I literally can’t have it.

I weigh 324 pounds.

I’ve never been heavier in my life. Not ever. I could, and at one point quite wanted to, talk about why this happened, how it made me feel, what I wanted to do get around it, how upset I was. There’s no point,it’s all pretty much laid out in that sentence. I weigh a cartoon weight. I am the heaviest person I know. I may even be the heaviest person you know.

It’s a shitty, unfair, upsetting start and I hate it so much I can’t say . But it’s a start, and the road to losing weight starts, for me, with exercise. I have a geological metabolism, I can actually gain weight by looking at food. It’s ridiculous, it’s a situation I’ve failed utterly to deal with my entire life and it’s one which I’m bored of. Which is why although I’m taking a break from Judo, I’m not taking a break from the martial arts. That sort of explosive, edge of the red line exercise is very good for me and I want, and need, it to continue to be a part of my life. Which is why I came up with the plan, and the plan looks a little something like this: I exercise every second day. Without fail. It doesn’t matter what it is I do, but I do something, for no less than half an hour at a time. Running, walking, fighting in some form, yoga, whatever I can lay my hands on. The first stage is kickboxing, and I went to my first lesson last night, after two weeks of being too stuffed full of cold to go.

Or rather, I didn’t. I walked 3.7 miles, I know, thanks to Google maps. I actually walked PAST the building, and had to ask directions from several people who were probably a little frightened by the tall, broad, intense looking dude in the WRITER hoodie asking where the community centre was.

I showed up. The class didn’t. Wrong night. I went home, got some food and took some solace in the 3.7 mile walk. But only some, because believe me losing weight is frustrating in a way very little else is. It takes ages, it requires constant vigilance, you start from a position of weakness and live on a thin gossamer thread of success that only ever goes back a week. It takes faith and it takes courage and neither of those are particularly easy to come by. That’s the bad news.

The good news, and yes even I can see that there’s good news, is this. I’ve started. The next few months are going to bring kickboxing, Aikido, Yoga, climbing, any and everything is going to get tried and I’ll find ways to stick with the things that work. It’s not the best start there is, but it’s mine, and I intend to make the best of it. And to keep me on track, I’ll be writing about it here. Next week? My first kickboxing lesson, this time with added kickboxing. It’s going to be great.

Let’s talk about fear for a moment. There was a time when fear grabbed my jacket before I’d even left the house. My pulse would rise, the bottom of my stomach would fall and I’d walk to Judo with a sick feeling. I was the fat kid. No, not even the fat kid, I was the fat, 35 year old nerd who had no business whatsoever stepping onto the mat with chiselled young gods and goddesses with biceps, pectorals and all those other things that I’d successfully buried under a couple of decades worth of chocolate and pie.

That fear, to my tremendous surprise, has faded. I didn’t even notice it go. It left a friend though; the simple fear of reinjuring myself. I go on about this I know, but its been close to four months that I’ve been working with a busted wheel. It’s better, almost completely better but I still can’t kneel properly, still can’t move quite right, still don’t trust myself with the injured knee. There was a twang, and there was a scream and nothing has been quite the same since.

Then there’s the fear of getting beaten up. Make no mistake, I am 6’1 and over 300 pounds, but I’ve been frightened of fighting my entire life, for two reasons. The first is that, well, I’m a nerd. I talk, I actually talk for a living on some levels and the idea of solving a problem by beating someone up is something which I find massively unsettling and, well, a little uncouth.

Then there’s the other fear. Because I’m Big you see. I’ve been Big my entire life, a little too big for the world. I break things sometimes, or used to, because my spatial awareness wasn’t great because, well, I’m Big. You have to be careful when you’re Big. Careful and patient and you must never, ever under any circumstances lose your temperature. Because not everyone else is Big and if you lose your temper with someone who isn’t Big you could hurt them very badly.

I’m Big. I’m Clever. The two sometimes feel mutually exclusive.

So I’m scared when I step onto the mat. It makes sense, because fundamentally what you’re doing is learning to hurt people. And they’re learning to hurt you. And sometimes when people learn they make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes lead to twanging. And screaming. And four months of physio.

I do it anyway. This may be bravery. It may be masochism. I prefer to think of it as a healthy respect for my art and my fellow students. And also maybe a little fear.

I’ve been scared recently for a different reason and it’s a slightly embarrassing one. I’m tough. Not in that ‘Can be punched many times without being hurt’ way but rather that I’m difficult to hurt. I’ve been seriously ill maybe three times in my life and seriously injured exactly twice. The first time I broke my arm by literally falling off the ground and the second involved a twang and a scream.

I’m scared of getting hurt again. Because I’m a cynic, and because whilst the black dog doesn’t live at the bottom of my garden he certainly plays there and most of all because I understand story on a genetic level. Now is the perfect time for our hero (Who in ths instance is me) to be seriously injured again just before he completes his recovery. In fact, the only time that’s more narratively smart for me to get injured again is less than a week before a tournament.

Again.

The thing I’m scared of is randori because randori is free practice and that means it can’t be predicted. Someone will turn the wrong way, push the wrong way, you’re as likely to do the same and before you know it it’s back to the bottom of the rehab ladder. So I don’t spar, apart from select circumstances and when I do I’m slow, I’m clumsy, I’m cautious.

Let’s talk about caution and violence for a moment. Caution in any martial art is a good thing. Fundamentally, you’re doing a combat sport, you’re fighting someone, and whilst the ‘storm in and blitz them’ approach works in the short term, it won’t work forever. No one’s Rocky, no one has fists of stone or muscles of granite. Everyone gets tired, everyone makes mistakes and everyone gets shut down when they do. So caution’s good, caution’s your friend, up to a point.

That point is when you freeze up and that’s where our old friend fear makes a return. Make no mistake, Judo is scary. Any combat sport is scary, but for me, at least there’s something visceral and frightening about the loss of control inherent in Judo. Your opponent isn’t just trying to beat you, they’re trying to throw you off your feet, hyper extend a joint until you can’t take the pain, choke you unconscious or just hold you still for twenty five seconds. Fighting hurts. Judo hurts.

So there goes the fear again, as the Doves once sang, and the way you deal with it is the way you deal with all fear. You face it. You look it in the eyes and you prepare for pain. You accept that pain, and the fact it won’t and can’t last forever, you can face your fear.

I sparred this week. More than I have for almost four months. I had two standing fights with no ground work and I lost one and won one. I threw a blue belt with Tai Otoshi, the throw that injured me, and it felt great. I turned, yanked, he sailed through the air in a perfect circle and landed on his back. My knee stung, a little, once.

I sparred on the ground too. Three times. I won two and I lost one. Groundfighting is the closest Judo gets to striking forms for me, because it’s there that things get fast. You and your opponent grapple for position, legs get thrown odd places, arms lock and you roll and turn and struggle until one of you is pinned, one of you taps or you’re both exhausted.

That last one happened. I was sparring with a black belt about six years my junior. I’ve worked with before, he’s a good guy, and like a lot of people cross trains with us and Brazilian Jujitsu. BJJ is Judo without the standing work and it excels at moving your opponent on the ground and locking in a never ending stream of extremely painful holds. I excel at being put IN extremely painful holds so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence when we started and locked up.

He turned under me, locked his legs around my arm and extended. This is an armbar. It’s the thing that, at the moment, former Judo Olympian Ronda Rousey is using to destroy her Mixed Martial Arts opponents as fast as possible. It hurts.

I stood up out of it. Just put my mass behind it and pulled and got my arm clear. I closed on him, put him down, got one of his shoulders on the mat and just ground. I have a lot of mass and I’m not scared to use it anymore so I pushed him into the ground, looked for a couple of holds, never quite got either and he tried his level best to get out of them.

The drill got stopped. I sort of slumped off him and we lay there for a moment before he patted my arm and said something which I think was ‘nice one’. I may have grunted. My heart rate was up. I was gasping for breath, my throat was dry and I’d not won.

But I had fought. Five half matches in one session, two good throws, a good solid choke attempt, some welcome tips from higher belts and exhaustion. Together those don’t just add up to victory, they add up to something better. Hope, possibility and the very real knowledge that I’m making progress, that I’ve earned my place on the mat. All of it, the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the caution, all of it is worthwhile because of that.

It sounds faintly ridiculous to say that Judo is a polite sport but it is. There’s none of the overt brutality of boxing, none of the flashy savagery of Thai Boxing where one of the most effective ways to win is to kick your opponent in the same leg over and over in quick succession until they can’t stand. There’s not even any of the frankly intimidating blurs of motion that, when slowed down, are revealed to be the incredibly acrobatic kicks of Taekwondo.

One of the interesting things about Judo, one of the things that draws me back over and over, is that courtesy though. You’re remarkably clothed (None of the shorts and not much else ‘I’m Spartacus!’ aesthetic of Mixed Martial Arts here), you’re not hitting people’s faces, you’re not actually making striking contact at all. Judo, fundamentally is a grappling form meaning you pick your opponent up here and put them down there. Often at speed, but still, the principle remains the same. You have your set of moves, he has his, whoever executes them first or fast or strongest wins.

Well, technically.

Let’s talk about grading for a moment. I’m five months out from my red belt grading and I am getting antsy. I am, to use another military term I’m rather fond of, short. Short timers were people who didn’t have much time left on their tour and I first came across the term in The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford. This is the book Stanley Kubrick would adapt into Full Metal Jacket, and it refers to soldiers who have a small amount of time left on their tour. The phrase ‘I’m so short I can’t even have a long conversation’ from the book has started to float through my mind as the realisation slowly sinks in. In three weeks, two weeks physio plus a week’s buffer I’m going to be able to spar again. Fear and happiness and adrenalin and sweat and terror all mixed into one and barrelling straight towards me at 24 hours a day.

There are two things that are going to happen when I can spar again. The first is I am going to get beaten, a lot. I’m slow, I’m cautious, I’m not moving my left leg much and I’ve not sparred outside about three minutes in the last three months. I’m going to be a training dummy with vocal chords and rudimentary motor skills and that’s fine because I won’t be that forever.

The second thing that’s going to happen is I will cling to procedure and rules like a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood. I know, technically, everything I know how to do and I also know that absolutely no plan survives contact with the enemy. Or at the very least, contact with the guy on the other side of the mat.

So I can either accept this and work through it slowly, or improvise and work around. I know which one I’m going to do. I know which one I want to do. They are not the same thing.

I want to stick to rules and procedure and good form because my form’s sloppy in places. I’ve got a lot, in the last three months, out of going slow. Again, and we are jumping all over the pop culture references here a line springs to mind, this time from Mermaids. ‘You drive like old people make love’ applies a lot to how I’ve been practising Judo recently. Slow, precise, deliberate. Still fun, just takes a little longer.

So I’m getting there, and my confidence is going up but the simple truth of the matter is I’m going to be slow and deliberate and the best I can hope for is fighting to a draw for a while. A draw isn’t a loss, although to be clear? I’ll take losses, I’ll take my lumps and come back with a smile on my very pink, very sweaty face. We learn when we fail, so losses are just bigger lessons, ones you have to have the courage to swallow however bitter they may sometime be.

Ladies and gentlemen, the metaphor for this week’s Judo Diaries has just arrived. Why don’t we all give it a round of applause as it takes it’s seat?

We did grading prep this week and, for the first time, the group was split into three. The white belts were taken off to one side and shown some of their techniques, the brown and black belts were taken off to the other and in the middle was myself, Steve and a red belt I’d never seen before who were set to work on grading prep.

There are three throws you need to know for yellow belt. O Uchi Gari where you sweep your opponent’s outer leg out and push them to the ground, Ippon Seoi Nage where you step into them, grab an arm and throw them in a manner that, shall we say, Captain Kirk would find very familiar and Tai Otoshi.

The throw that hurt me.

Tai Otoshi involves stepping into your opponent so your back is to them, sticking your right leg out and hauling them over the top of your leg onto the mat. Done right it puts your opponent exactly where you need them to be and done wrong? Done wrong your opponent gets to spend three months limping and spectating.

I did it. I was scared, for sure, but I did it and throwing and being thrown with that throw gave me a new perspective on fear. This wasn’t terror, just fear, that bottom of the gut flex where you’re waiting for the shot, the punch, the snap, the hard word. The moment before the fight rather than the fight itself. The fear stayed down there, I made sure of it, but it was there and it was real and this week it turned into something really interesting; the desire to push back, hard.

We were taken for this particular lesson by one of the club’s black belts who’s also a high level coach and referee. He’s unforgiving, to say the least, as I find out when for the first time ever, I got given what amount to a punishment drill. Ippon Seoi Nage only works if you drop straight down your opponent before lifting them off the ground and I have a tendency to bend forward which robs it of a lot of it’s power and crucially, risks your balance. Balance in Judo, in any martial art, is vital. If your balance is shot you’ll over extend, you won’t protect yourself and you’ll be thrown, or punched, or kicked, or elbowed or any other variety of ouch that can legally be delivered.

Which is why I found myself standing straight against the wall of the dojo, arms up simulating the throw, bending my knees and keeping my back straight so only my buttocks touched the wall. Apparently, twenty of those every morning and evening will give me perfect balance. I’ll let you know.

Bitter Pill One

We ran through all three throws and then, we took a left turn. You see, it turns out there are two ways to work in Judo, the legal techniques and the techniques which are legal enough. Make no mistake these aren’t anything overtly nasty, no cheeky punches in the nose or knees to the groin. These techniques are grease to the wheels, ways to get your opponent where you want him to be or off you faster or so uncomfortable the only thing he can think is to get you to stop doing that right now.

Case in point; your opponent has you in a side chest hold? No problem. There is absolutely no contact with the face in Judo. None. However, there’s no problem with the throat. So you push your hand, thumb first into their neck and you keep going. They will feel so uncomfortable they’ll move their head down. At which point you pop your legs up over their shoulders, cross your ankles, close their airway, turn them and you sideways and scoot down their body before putting them in a different nastier hold. All legal, all nasty. Or you can push them down, put them in a side hold and yank their arm into a full on arm bar. As was done on me. As was done on me hard enough to make me cry out when the elbow was over extended. Which was greeted with me being gently but firmly berated for not tapping out faster.

Bitter Pill Two

Later the same lesson, we were shown a genuinely impressive transition where you try each of these throws, your opponent steps out of them and you finish with a modified O Uchi Gari where you sweep one leg and yank the other up so you’re only standing on your left leg as you fall. Or, my injured leg, as I like to think of it. We were working through this and, for the first time in months, my inner smartarse came out. I smiled tightly at Steve and said ‘Why don’t I get this wrong first?’ and started in on it. I got it wrong. Of course. So did he. Needlepoint work with needlepoint balance and my left leg is still four inches shy, four inches rusty.

Bitter Pill Number Three. And no water in sight.

Everything we tried wasn’t good enough and it was starting to open a door in my head. A door which led to three months of pent up resentment and fear at the thought of being left behind by my compatriots. There was resentment there too, and a lot of it; about missing the tournament, about being injured, about having to explain my injury over and over, about the pitying looks I’ve caught from time to time, the nagging sensation that other people think I’m sciving. And you know what? If anyone thinks that, they can say it to my face. Because I’ve turned up, damn near every week, when I can’t kneel right, when I can’t throw at speed, when my rhythm is off and I can’t spar and I’m scared to move my left leg. I’ve kept coming, I’ve kept moving, I’ve kept trying because I’ve waited five damn months to get my yellow belt and nothing, not a bad knee, not lack of connection with lessons, not lack of focus, nothing is going to stop me from getting there.

Nice speech isn’t it? It’s also pointless. I’m a red belt. It’s my job to be told how to do it right. My job to shut up and listen and my job to try harder, to fail better next time. Besides, my resentment at being nitpicked so much came at least in part from the fact that these techniques felt…sneaky, a little too close to pushing my luck. I’m hard pressed at times to remember the correct technique let alone the back door cheeky work around to it and it felt, a little, like taking a shortcut. Having spent three months with a bum leg, shortcuts are something I know I don’t get to take.

Until we got to the Kame Shiho Gatame variant we were taught. Kame Shiho Gatame is a hold down where you lie at ninety degrees to your opponent and hold down their opposite shoulder and thigh. Unless you grab their opposite shoulder and underside of their knee and pull your hands together until they cross. Hard. You hold your opponent down and compress their chest, hard, basically choking them with their own leg and neck.

The first time I tried it my partner tapped out.

To me. With a bad leg, three months of resentment bubbling over in my mind and a burning desire to get gobby with an instructor who was frustrating me.

All three bitter pills just slid away.

I still have things I’m good at, straight out, in Judo. Most of them are standard techniques, some of them are modified ones, where my big arms and upper body strength work in my favour. As I realised that, another door opened. One with a yellow glow behind it and the promise of getting back everything I lost and more. I’m still there, I can still do this, I’m still travelling. An hour of being told I’m wrong and how to fix it is a pretty cheap price for realising that.

I’m scared of the big mat. There’s a good reason for this, and one we need to talk about. My Judo club is laid out on a balcony in the Railway Institute. There’s a sprung floor, two mats wide, some gym gear and an endearing and very small kitchen. Oh and a rack of water bottles with a sign beneath it saying

Lost Water Bottles. Are these yours?

Which appears to have been there a lot longer than I have. It’s not big, but it’s compact, neat, well put together.

The big mat is a different story. On the ground floor of the Railway Institute, where trains were once built and repaired, there are nine Badminton courts. The big mat, when it’s laid out, is laid out across a couple of these courts. It’s commonly used for tournaments, laid out so there are two competition areas with an alleyway between them. That’s the first problem. The first time I saw the big mat was as a spectator, sitting watching the tournament I’d prepared to compete in for close to a month happen without me. The big mat, right then, became something that I could see but not touch, somewhere I was allowed to be but not as anything other than a spectator.

It got worse when I came back and trained for the first time too; I spent a miserable training session down on the big mat not trusting myself, my leg, my skills, my memory or anything else. I remember getting changed for that session and being genuinely excited as I pulled on my new knee braces and ankle guards, promising that I wouldn’t spar, that I wouldn’t push myself. It didn’t matter. The knee brace irritated my skin, the ankle braces were basically socks with the toes and heels cut off and I was slow, lumpen, frightened. I was failing, worthless, being left behind and managing to do that on a larger mat, in front of even more people than usual.

I have a problem with the big mat.

James Brown, however, does not have a problem with the big mat. The godfather of soul may have long since been ushered off the mortal stage, a cape around his shoulders, but it turns out he has a fondness for the gentle way. Or at least, the gentle way has a fondness for him.

Warm up routines at Judo are a variable feast. Sometimes they remind me exactly how unflexible I am, sometimes they’re an exercise in terror as we do endless forward rolls and occasionally they make me feel like a large man who’s getting larger in the right way, fat turning to muscle, flexibility replacing stiffness.

They’ve never made me laugh before though.

We were on the big mat, being taken by a gentleman with a red and white striped belt. This, in Judo, marks him out as an official grownup. You’re assessed for belts up to brown and from there, when you start earning black belts you can either earn them by gaining points for fighting existing black belts or you can earn them academically. The first is harder, the second is slower, they’re both on my list of things to look at because my plan with belts is very simple; I turn 35 this year. I want to have my black belt in time for my fortieth birthday.

Once you have your black belt, of course, it’s not over. You go from 1^st Dan black belt to 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and so on. Once you get to 6^th Dan blackbelt, you’re awared a red and white striped belt, white standing for purity and red for the intense desire to train. You get this far? You’re in the top couple of percent of people who’ve studied your art. You get higher than this? Well, there have only ever been 15 10^th Dan black belts. The company gets rarified the higher you go.

Which is why this gentleman, whose name I didn’t catch, coming out, pressing play on his laptop and leading us through an aerobic warm up to ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown was so surprising. Ne of the things that has always attracted me to Judo is the refreshingly low amount of macho chest beating bollocks but hand in hand with that is a certain seriousness. You’re learning how to throw people, choke them, break their limbs, knock them out by punching them in the body with the ground. It’s fun, there’ve been very few sessions that someone hasn’t laughed in but underneath all that is the knowledge that this is a very serious, brutal, efficient way of fighting.

James Brown clearly got that memo and decided to rub some funk on it.

You see, it’s also perfect Judo. It disarmed us all, instantly, put us on our mental backs and gave us the licence to relax. As the lesson went on, we broke down into pairs and focussed on driving the big bus. De ash barai is a throw where you drag your opponents’ arms around to one side whilst simultaneously sweeping their outer leg out. It’s two movements, done in perfect combination and done right it’s a fight winner. You put them down, land on them and pin or choke until they tap out and you win.

Done wrong, it’s embarrassing. Step, step, step pull sweep becomes step, step, step sweep miss or step, step, step sweep ankle kick or step, step, step sweep thin air. It all comes down to rhythm and pacing, and knowing to start the throw on the step before the step you throw on.

I hated it. Partnered with dour Scottish Dave we walked up and down the mat and I missed it every, single.time. Every permutation of failure fell out of my ankles and my hands as I failed to do three basic movements in order. I got frustrated, I got embarrassed, I remembered why I hate the big mat. Because I’m injured and weak, because I have no flexibility and speed and confidence, because I’m scared of moving my left leg.

And that, right there, was the breakthrough. We walked through the throw at quarter speed, and Dave, who is as boundlessly patient as he is cheerfully ruthless, pointed something out. I wasn’t landing the throw for two reasons; firstly because my pacing was ever so slightly off and secondly because I was pulling my left leg back instead of leaving it in place and using it as a platform for the throw. Four inches. Four inches lost through three months of pain and psychological trauma, and fear.

In a month it’s going to be three inches. Then two. Then one. Because fear is something you can negotiate with, and sculpt. Fear is something you have to have a dialogue with, bend to your will. Fear is something you wrestle with, and wrestling, these days is something I know a little about.

We got to start that particular fight too, as the instructor very pointedly called all the white and red belts out to demonstrate the technique. We’d all been partnered with high belts, all been nurse maided and were all given the chance to shine in front of the class. None of us landed it right first time but we all did it, all walked out and made the big mat our own for a minute.

The lesson rounded off like it began, classic funk and soul underpinning a Simon says game that taught me, to my tremendous surprise, that my forward rolls are on the way back. Then, the Godfather of soul, who in my mind was of course wearing a gold lame gi (With a cape), bowed, did that splits thing he did, and shimmied off the big mat. He’d made it his own and shown me I could too.