What I've Read in The Second Half of 2023

(First half of the year here.)

I read or listened to most of these books by borrowing the digital copies or digital audio-books from my library. I would recommend you do the same thing. I would also suggest looking to see if you can sign up for local county or for nearby cities’ library cards. Despite not living in a nearby city, I was able to register for a library card; they have a vast selection of content compared to my local library system. While each book cover here links to an affiliate Amazon page, you can also sometimes find the same physical copy of the book you are looking for on Better World Books or Thriftbooks.

The Marching Morons - C. M. Kornbluth

Short story by C. M. Kornbluth. It’s hard to tell if this book was a satire or an actual argument to try to justify eugenics. The way that this idea is unfolded in the story made me think the author was a eugenicist until the rest of the story peels that back a bit. The book could make an interesting discussion for a course on utopias and dystopias. Otherwise Kurt Vonnegut’s quote “we are what we pretend to be” comes to mind along with the fact that a lot of early pulp science fiction can turn out to be complicated.


Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and The Stoning of San Francisco - Alia Volz

A mix being a tour de force of the history of San Francisco and a personal memoir of being raised by hippies from the sixties through the early eighties: told through the perspective of the daughter of the woman who ran Sticky Fingers Brownies in San Francisco. I first heard about this book when the author gave a talk at one of my local libraries.

I would say that there probably is not a lot of new things here in this book for you if you’ve previously read or studied the history of San Francisco or marijuana in the US. The biggest takeaway from this book for me is the quote “San Francisco is a city of mass migrations and collapse”. The author of the book does that thing people in the Bay Area do where they’ll acknowledge that we’re on stolen Ohlone land, and then kind of complain about transplants; she says that she “sees techies as an invading force to colonize and pillage”, all the while she acknowledges that her parents were gentrifying San Francisco.

The author kind of also leans into entertaining the idea that certain characters in the book might be psychic. I dunno man... I was taught to never trust a hippy. Here is a doctor in 1967 basically describing hippies as being incredibly passive aggressive people.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? -  Mark Fisher

When I started this book it felt like a philosophy book written by a Redditor with its references to V For Vendetta, Children of Men, and Fight Club; as I continued reading to book I found myself agreeing with it wholeheartedly, take that as you will. Capitalist realism is "loosely defined as the predominant conception that capitalism is the only viable economic system" - which I’m pretty sure makes the book an investigation of the Zizek quote "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism". At times the book can come off as wordy and pretentious, at one point the author makes an obscure reference to the film Videodrome that would leave the reader lost had they never seen the film. Capitalist Realism reminds me of an assigned reading I would get for a philosophy class where we would have a compelling class discussion about the book for one day and then we’d never discuss it again. It also reminds me of something that the hosts of the podcast Chapo Traphouse would love. Sure enough while I was reading this book, they did a segment on the book. Small world.

Scenes From The Real World - Harlan Ellsion 

Harlan Ellison was a science fiction writer that was revered for his writing, but loathed for his personality. This video gives a good impression of the vibe Ellison gave off. In hindsight, I'm not really sure who should be reading Ellison. Maybe he's for misanthropes who are tired of being misanthropes and are hoping that holding a mirror up to themselves will help them.

The Scenes From The Real World stories come from a collection of short stories called Stalking the Nightmare. I didn’t read the short stories in the book because I don’t want to read any further from the guy that wrote I Have No Mouth And Must Scream and who also vocally resented his audience. Instead I wanted to read about supposed real life experiences from someone difficult like Ellison.

The first story starts with about how his most interesting sexual experience was tying up a woman naked in her living room, leaving her to be found by her mother. I used the cover of the audio book for this one so that you have to look at his face on its cover as you read that. He puts the story first because he thinks that sex is what it takes to get the audience’s attention, but since Ellison has basically expressed contempt for his readers in the past, it’s more clear the story’s intention is to let you know that Ellison very much wants you to know that he can get laid if he wants to. The second story in this chapter gets into how he once got into an altercation with some men who this time he very much want to let you know are black - it comes off with the same “try-hardness” of the first story to say the least. Ellison was known for kicking the asses people in general, so he's probably not making this story up. Again, take that as you will.

The second chapter is about how he was fired from his job at Disney on the first day for making rude Disney jokes in front of Roy Disney. This story is worth reading. The third story is about a NASA press conference on Saturn. The fourth story is about dealing with the politics of being a writer in Hollywood, this story is also worth reading and reminds me of certain episodes of The Critic. The last story is about his experience on the road as a carny. Also worth reading.

Killerbowl - Gary K. Wolf

Picked this up because I saw it in the author bibliography of Who Censored Rodger Rabbit, and thought it looked interesting. This book is a good read for someone who thought that the 1975 movie Rollerball was an interesting concept but poorly executed. Had this book come out before the short story Rollerball was based off, of rather than two years after, I imagine the movie rights for this book would have been picked up instead. In fact, some covers advertise that this book is “Deadlier than ROLLERBALL!” It’s pulp paperback science fiction from the 70s. I kept thinking that the author of this book was the author of Of Mice And Men.

I was annoyed by a plot point in the book. Incriminating evidence that is on tape is destroyed. No one thought to make backups. I guess in the 1970s data redundancy was not something many people talked about.

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America - Marcia Chatelain

In the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming To America, John Amos plays a franchise owner of a knockoff McDonalds restaurant. At one point of the book, Franchise paints Amos’ character as a sort of snap shot into the zeitgeist and history of black McDonalds franchise owners, The book chronicles this history strating with McDonalds relying on black franchisees to grow their brand in black communities in Chicago up today.

One of the repeating themes in the book is that the term “black-owned” obscures the systems that keep money outside of black communities, and is a problem that capitalism itself cannot fix. Reading this book was like learning about another level of American class history that I never knew about, akin to reading about how police would lie in wait to beat union workers and steal their money after they had cashed their paychecks in The Riders Come Out At Night.

Mouse Tales: A behind The Ears Look At DisneyLand - David Koenig

This book, published in 1994, is a little dated now. If Disneyland is a topic you’re interested in, you’re better off listening to / watching Kevin Perjurer’s Youtube channel Defunctland; which probably borrows from this book, but definitely borrows from more established Disney History books when doing research. The book starts as a history of Disneyland (which is better covered by Perjurer’s Defunctland) and then goes into a series of uncited stories from employees working at the park. The stories are broken up into chapters such as Cast, Rides, Injuries, Lawsuits, etc. I think I most enjoyed all the ways Disney cast members would play pranks in the park, and learning about the politics around going to court against Disney in the jurisdiction in which it is a major employer.

The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

I’m not in a place to write anything about The Metamorphosis which is new, compelling, or interesting. I picked up a book of Kafka’s stories because in the linear notes on Frank Zappa’s album We’re Only in it For The Money, the track The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny says to read Kafka's short story In The Penal Colony before listening to the track. The track ends up being an avant garde interpretation or approximation of the short story. The short story also has a provocative ending that resonates probably even more today than it did when the short story was written in 1914.

Jesus and John Wayne -  Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Jesus and John Wayne is an admittedly dry history of evangelicalism in the United States and how evangelical leaders slowly culturally aligned their version of Jesus and the gospel with “traditional” gender roles. I put traditional in quotation marks because the book details how evangelicals came to define traditional. Like I said about The Riders Come Out At Night earlier this year, If you’re an American or have been following American politics closely, you can probably drop off of the book from where you ended up starting in real life and skip the last few chapters. You’re probably already an expert on the subject.

NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories - NOFX and Jeff Alulis

Initially all I was going to write for this was: “The first sentence of this book is ‘The first time I drank piss was on the fire escape overlooking downtown Los Angeles.’ ten out of ten, buy this as a stocking suffer for someone you love... or someone you hate”. But after the first chapter, which was probably put there to pull you in with shock value, you find it’s not needed because the book gets dark, personal, and profoundly fucked up real quick. There’s frankly... some messed up stuff in here, with that being said, this book is very good. The way that the book is edited demonstrates that some of the personal stuff band members share is the first time they’ve shared some of this stuff with the other guys. It kinda feels like church confession at times.

I was able to get an audio book copy from the San Francisco Library after it had been on loan for months. The audio book is the way to go here, the chapters are read by the band members themselves, and the two early ex-band members of the band’s chapters are read by Tommy Chong and Jello Biafra, both excellent orators. In a similar vein that’s worth mentioning, The Dirt - which is a band autobiography on Mötley Crüe is also an incredibly interesting book about a group of messed up people, each chapter told from the point of view of one of the members. Books like these really go to show ways in which life can be completely awful.

Strangled Queen - Maurice Druon

This is the second book in the French Accursed Kings series. As the cover above says, this series inspired George Martin to write his book series. I read the first book after trying to get my Song of Ice and Fire fix after having finished the books that have been released sometime in the mid-teens. These books are historical fiction based around French kings in the 14th century. The books are about 200 pages each, so they're not as in depth as the ASOIAF books, as a result they kind of feel like Game of Thrones-lite, but that's not fair because these books came first. The first book has better plots and characters than the second book. It's pretty apparent what's going to happen in this book, given the title, especially after you finish the first book. Maybe French people already know everything that their monarchs got up to.

How to Setup an Electric Guitar

Years ago I was looking for someone to show me how to do a guitar setup. My music teacher got me in touch with a guitar tech who told me that if I paid for a setup he'd walk me trough the process and let me take notes, that nobody should have to pay for a setup more than once. He ended up making the notes for me, and sure enough I've never paid for another setup! I get tired of taking picture after picture of these instructions so I'm posting them here for posterity. They've been cleaned up a bit.

These are the original written instructions.

You will need:

• a set of allen wrenches that measure in metric and imperial. Eklind makes quality allen wrenches. 
• a 6 inch empire depth gauge.

Setup Steps:

1. Adjust the neck as straight as possible with the truss rod using the strings as a guideline. (You can check the neck by holding the guitar like a rifle with the body away from you and looking down the neck towards the body of the guitar (using the strings as a guideline)). I go by "tighten for bow, loosen for hump". I don't like thinking visually in terms of clockwise and counter clockwise because I've confused myself before by turning the wrong way when the nut is at the bottom of the neck rather than at the head stock.

2. Adjust the action of the strings at the saddles measure 2/32nds at the 15th fret while fretting the first fret. (Just put a capo on the first fret.)

3. Adjust intonation by checking the notes of each string:

    - If they are flat, move the saddles forward.

    - If they are sharp, move the saddles back (away from the neck).
 

    Once the notes on the 12th fret match the open notes of the strings - you're good to go!

4. Adjust pickups by fretting the last fret and raising or lowering the pickups to 2 1/2 and adjusting by increments of 32nds.

How to Get Therapy or Mental Health Care Under Kaiser Permanente

As Always Avoid Alliteration slowly turns into something more resembling a professional blog, rather than a source of ad revenue, I hesitated to post this guide as there is a stigma around mental heath. I've decided that if being open, honest, and helpful about my experiences in trying to find a mental health provider puts me at risk of not receiving a job offer in the future, I'm better off for it. If this helps one person, then it's all more than worthwhile. The way in which Kaiser Permanente operates is far more shameful than anything I am going to say here. I initially wrote this post as a forum post, replying to someone else who was experiencing the same issues with Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Services. I have somewhat expanded on and cleaned up that initial post. 

If you are experiencing crisis and need to talk to someone immediately call 1-800-309-2131 at any time of day. If you're paranoid you can dial *67 first and this will mask your phone number. You can also call in using a free Google Voice number.

I want to set the expectation with you that Kaiser's mental health system is specifically made to be negligent and discourage anyone who is experiencing mental health issues from actually using their services. In October 2023 Kaiser settled with the state of California in regards to not providing mental health care that they were legally required to provide. Second article. This is also not the first time Kaiser has been fined for this exact same problem. Impacted patients will receive no compensation as a result of this settlement. At the end of the day, there's a litany of reasons why Kaiser Legal has multiple floors of office space in a building overlooking Lake Merritt.

Here are the steps to receive mental health care from Kaiser Permanente. I'd recommend reading through all of the steps before starting your journey:

1. Call the Kaiser Mental Health office local to you (Google your local number).

2. Almost certainly leave a voicemail for an appointment. Kaiser will say that they will call you back in 48 hours. They almost certainly wont. You can kill two birds with one stone by preemptively leaving a bad Google review while you're on hold to leave a voicemail, for what it's worth.

3. Repeat this process, playing phone tag until you get someone on the phone. If Kaiser can't reach you on the phone this is where this process ends and you will need to call them back.

4. Once you get someone on the phone, Kaiser will try to offer you an appointment with a Kaiser therapist in three months, or if you're lucky, you'll get an outside referral right off the bat. Ask for one right away if the soonest you can get an appointment is more than a month away.

Optional step: If you get a Kaiser therapist plan to be stood up on your appointment in three months or plan to have the appointment cancelled the day before. In California you need to file a compliant with Kaiser about this before escalating to the state. (In California you have the right to timely access to care.) This requires documenting every phone call and appointment in forms they provide, and then again on forms the state provides. So if you have the energy to file a complaint, start documenting every phone call and conversation you have. Kaiser meanwhile will provide documentation of every single time they've called you and every appointment they've offered. The intention is to paint a picture that you the individual trying to get mental healthcare are the one that has been inaccessible this whole time, not them the giant company with thousands of workers who aren't staffed appropriately to pick up the phone or call you back.  

5. Call the outside referral program and have them find a therapist for you. While they will provide you a list of therapists you can call yourself, they usually know of a few that are actively open to receiving new clients. Around the time I went through this process I literally called over 50 therapists and did not get a single call back.

Optional step: While calling around I got a more than one recordings saying the therapist I called is not accepting any male or cisgender male clients. This is illegal in my state of California. If this happens, and you have the energy, record the recordings and file complaints with your state's mental health board or board of psychology.

6. Repeat steps 1 through 3 with the outside referral program. They tend to be more professional than anyone at Kaiser that you'll talk to and will actually call you back in the time frame that they give you. If you go longer than a week without getting a therapist with the outside referral, Kaiser is pretty good about just giving you a different outside referral once you have one, and renewing your referral once you have a therapist you like. 

 

7. Expect to initially get a few really bad therapists before landing on one that rocks. Plan to continue looking for a therapist again after a few sessions while continuing to see the therapist you have.

As I stated at the beginning: Kaiser's mental health system is specifically made to be negligent and discourage anyone from experiencing mental health issues from actually using the service. Good luck and I'm sorry that you had to read this article. 

Getting Xbox 360 Wireless Controllers and Dongle Working on Windows 10 and 11

In the past you used to only have to install your Xbox 360 drivers from an installer executable that you would either get from Microsoft's site or, if you still have it, from a CD that came with your hardware. This no longer works. The good news is that current versions of Windows now already have the Xbox 360 peripheral drivers ready to go, Windows for whatever reason, no longer automatically recognizes the peripherals when they are plugged into your PC. In order to get your hardware to work on newer versions of Windows, you need to select the appropriate driver from the Device Manager. These steps will also work for a third party aftermarket dongle or controller.

(If you're here because your first party Microsoft dongle died, this Youtuber found a repair, but please note the component that needs to be replaced is a micro component, which is a tricky fix even if your handy with a solder iron.)

You can no longer use the installer, you will need to manually assign the drivers. 

 

 

1. Plug in your Xbox 360 wireless dongle into the PC. If you are plugging in a wired controller just follow these steps for now as well and plug in your controller. 

2. Start device manager. You can start it by pressing Windows Key + R and pasting in devmgmt.msc. You can also type device manager into the search that comes up after you hit the start button. 

3. You should see your dongle as an unknown device. You're going to want to right click on it and select the Update Driver option. 

4. Select the option to Browse My Computer For Driver Software.

5. Select the option that says Let Me Pick From a List of Available Drivers. You should now see a list of available Xbox 360 drivers in the list to select from:

Be sure to select the appropriate driver for your peripheral. If you're installing the dongle you should do this for the dongle first. Let your dongle discover your controller, and then you may need to repeat this process for the first controller you connect once it is also discovered as an unrecognized device.

PLEASE NOTE: At some point Microsoft made it so that the Home/Guide button is automatically hard-mapped to open up a Windows Game overlay. This, probably intentionally, conflicts with using Steam Big Picture mode and the Steam overlay. As a result I would suggest installing the earliest version of the drivers that will work for your Xbox 360 peripherals. You can also try reverting the controller firmware by opening the Xbox Accessories app, then pressing Windows Key + R. and then running:

> xboxaccessories:\\firmwareupdate?legacyDowngrade=true

If for whatever reason your drivers are not available, you can install the drivers from the executable, and then seeing if the drivers are then listed after a reboot. For posterity, I have included a download link the the drivers here since they don't seem to be available at all from Microsoft themselves any longer.

No emails, follow up questions and comments below please. Thanks.

Sync Windows system time with time.windows.com on startup (all Windows versions)

Here are the steps to sync Windows system time with time.windows.com on startup. I've confirmed that this solutions works on Windows 7 and 10, it should also work on all currently available versions of the Windows operating system:

1. Open PowerShell by typing PowerShell into the search bar in your Windows start bar. 

2. Copy and paste the below line of code into PowerShell:

%windir%\system32\sc.exe start w32time task_started

3. Save As... the file to your Windows Startup folder for all users as "timeSync.bat" or whatever name will help you remember what this file is. It needs to be saved as a .bat file or it will not work.

Where your startup folder is located will depend on your version and installation of Windows, but you can try: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

Please note that some versions of Windows has a startup folder for individual users as well as for all system users. Individual startup folders are located somewhere within the user's folder.

4. After you add the file to your startup folder, I would hit Windows Key + R and run msConfig. From there make sure that the bat file is set to run.

5. Restart your system.

It may take 30 to 60 seconds for this bat file to run after a user logs on. If you have a way to get the script to execute faster please comment below. 

6. If the system time does not automatically update after startup hit Windows Key + R and run services.msc

Make sure that the local service Windows Time is set to Automatic startup type. To modify this, right click on Windows Time and select Properties. Reset your system again.

Use cases for this issue:

I setup a dual boot between Ubuntu and Windows. Whenever I boot up Ubuntu, the system time gets converted to UTC which throws off the system time for Windows. Since websites' security certificates rely on system time to verify certificates I could not access most websites and the system time threw off how the f.lux application worked.

What I've Read Halfway into 2023

Traumnovelle / Dream Story

is the 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler that the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut was based off of. The film is pretty true to the flow of the book with the exception that the film is much more... provocative than the book. I wanted to understand the ending of the film better where the doctor finds the mask on his pillow. In the book it is insinuated that his wife finds it and places it there, rather than it being a mystery. The book ends in that bedroom scene with him confessing what he’s been up to - the toy store scene at the end of the film was added by Kubrick. The title Dream Story also confirms that the use of soft lenses in the film was an intentional choice by Kubrick to give certain scenes a dream-like quality.

Barbarians At The Gate

 

What stood out in this book to me was the extreme extravagance the executive class lived in fifty to forty years ago. As the wealth gap in America widens I can only imagine what that life is like now, reading the descriptions in the book made me kinda disgusted. The book is pretty long and dry, you’d probably get more enjoyment out of watching the HBO film adaption of the book. The film comes from a time where the movie was made to cater to multiple different family members who might watch the film together; there is a small comedy B plot about the family dog taking airplane rides. If you’re interested in the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, I’d recommend reading the individual news articles written by the investigative journalists that wrote this book.


American Kingpin

 

goes into the personal life of the main founder of The Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, up until after his apprehension and imprisonment. The book gets into Ulbricht’s ideology as well as the ideology of the law enforcement personal that are trying to find him. The biggest surprise from this book was how utterly incompetent law enforcement was, and how the investigation had to get all the way up to the Department of Justice in order to stop the crab mentality different law enforcement agencies had when pursuing the founders of The Silk Road.


Inner Work

is one of the best self-therapy books I think I have ever read and you don’t need to read the whole book. It establishes how you need to talk to yourself and how to best use your active imagination to cultivate mental health. I think I would have considered this book a little “out there” if I had not studied psychology in college first. This will be a book where I buy multiple times to give to people I know and I only really read the last half of the book.

When Food Is Love

The gist of the book is that if you don’t have a healthy concept of self-love or self esteem you will repress negative feelings you have. Overeating is one of the ways that this repression can manifest; food is there for you when no one else is. I wish the author spent more time on strategies for building self-love and self esteem rather than talking about themselves. Maybe some people will find the author's personal examples helpful, I did not.

The Riders Come Out at Night

 

gives a meticulously researched history of policing in Oakland California and a protracted list of probably all of the known illegal things they have done and continue to do. The book starts with The Riders; who kidnapped, planted evidence on, beat, and tortured citizens of Oakland. From there the book goes into the history of policing in Oakland and San Francisco including the how the KKK actively recruited police officers and sheriffs. The book then chronicles all of the US policing incidents of killing civilians that has happened since. This is a good book, but if you have been on top of the shit show that is American policing, you can probably drop off of the book from where you ended up starting in real life and skip to the last few chapters.

Who Censored Rodger Rabbit

Only picked this up because the idea that Who Framed Rodger Rabbit was derived from an 80s adult fantasy mystery novel was so bizarre to me. It’s a mystery book; I wont give anything away. While reading the book I thought it was silly and I wanted to be done with it, the last page made me want to re-read the book with a new perspective on it. The author Gary Wolf also has mastered the art of the garden path sentence.


The Road To Jonestown

is written in an investigative journalism style and goes up through the life of Jim Jones, and the history of The Peoples’ Temple, up until after the massacre that took place in Guyana. If you’re interested in a first hand account of how a narcissist could manipulate a group of people to kill themselves, this is the book for you. If you’re an American that lived through the Trump presidency, there’s probably not a lot here for you to pick up unless you have a specific fascination in The Peoples’ Temple.


The Minority Report / We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (Phillip K Dick Short Stories)

From Robert Crumb's The Religious Experience of Philip K.Dick

Wanted to read some short stories from Dick since I'm a fan of a lot of his books. The Minority Report and We Can Remember it for you Wholesale are sort of almost half-baked ideas with The Minority Report being the better short story of the two. I watched Total Recall recently after reading We Can Remember it for you Wholesale and it's pretty obvious that they slapped a completely different sci-fi screenplay someone else had written onto the end of Dick's story.


Jennifer Government

As a teenager I played Nation States, which was programmed by the author to promote the book. The consensus of people on the Nation States forums that read the book was that it was pretty good and worth reading. I agree, the book is pretty good and worth reading. It’s a dystopian novel written in 2003 where the world is more or less controlled by corporations. Like a lot of (good) dystopian and science fiction books, as time goes on you start to see the parallels between yesterday’s fiction and today’s reality - which probably makes this book even more interesting to read twenty years after its publication.


Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

is written by Christopher Wylie who was the whistleblower for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This book goes into depth about how they, and eventually Russia, were able to influence American, British, and African elections. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that every person that lives in a democracy should read this book. If you're not going to read it at least take the time to try to create an ad campaign on Facebook or Reddit and take a look at how many tools are available to you to really drill down into the specific person that you can to create ads to cater to. Then keep in mind that you can do that without the phone tracking data and hundreds of data points on individual people that Cambridge Analytica had. Also keep in mind that while there is some oversight over the US collecting data, there is no oversight about them buying it.

The Punisher

I thought reading the original series would give some insight into why police and fascists have co-opted the Punisher logo. There was no answer in reading the original series. The answer is that Chris Kyle, the American Sniper guy, used the symbol during his deployment in Iraq and it picked up traction as he built his personal brand. 

“We all thought what the Punisher did was cool: He righted wrongs,” Kyle stated in his 2012 book American Sniper. “So we adopted his symbol,  a skull, and made it our own."

The quote is interesting because frankly, the only kind of adult that would find the Punisher cool is one who cannot understand nuance even if they are repeatedly hit over the head with it. The Punisher has a complete black and white view of the world and it's shown time and time again that his obsession with his own definition of justice and vengeance is destructive. For example, in the series there is a little girl who is shot due to the main character's obsession with vengeance. He does not stop to help the little girl. Maybe in the future I'll put my German degree to use and write an article about how and why fascist movements co-opt cultural symbols.

This comic book was written for children. There's not really much to it, the thing I liked the most was the color coordination and color layout of the individual comic pages. The hyper violence in the comic clashes with what I assumed was comic code regulations of the time. There's lots of people getting shot and killed but no blood or gore at all. In a way the censorship seems counter productive because the gruesomeness and horror of war-like violence is completely taken away. If you're looking for something in this vain I would instead recommend the original The Mask comic series published by Dark Horse.