10 Badass Moments from Bosch Fawstin’s The Infidel #2
With David Forsmark’s popular article earlier this month on the 7 Most Badass Founding Fathers, there seems to be some confusion about what it means to be “badass.” Some thought such a word inappropriate or even childish in reference to the very serious military leaders, politicians, and political theorists of the founding era.
It’s time to rescue “badass” from his mysterious origins, dust him off, and send him out onto the main stage where he belongs, as one of pop culture’s best imaginative metaphors for masculine bravado. This is a tool advocates of traditional, classical liberal values should grasp and take with them as they go forth fixing our broken culture.
The concept forever embedded itself within Generation X and Millennial pop cultural consciousness through the most badass character of 1990s cinema: Jules Winfield, as performed by Samuel L. Jackson and created by writers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. The famous “burger scene” in which Jules combines witty lines, tough confidence, and smooth intellectualism (a fictionalized Ezekiel 25:17) before dispensing justice crystallizes the concept. Brains + Brawn + Controlled Emotion = the tools to accomplish one’s mission.
The Badass doesn’t just talk, feel, and think — he combines all three to then create and do. (Hence why the founders in creating our nation were uniquely badass.) Defining manly cool in this fashion has been the task of Generation X’s men for the last 20 years. And we see it across genres, mediums, and even in real life.
Tarantino collaborator and fellow Gen X-er Robert Rodriguez has further helped define the badass in the action genre. The nameless Mariachi in Desperado played by Antonio Banderas captures it in this memorable action sequence where one man overcomes an entire bar full of thugs:
Rodriguez’s Sin City, adapting artist Frank Miller’s graphic novel series, also offers a good definition of the Badass persona:
But Generation X Badass isn’t limited to pop culture and fantasy.
Megan Fox wrote about a recent real-life example of a Generation X Badass last weekend when Wayne Brady responded to Bill Maher complaining that Obama resembled him instead of the criminal Suge Knight:
“So, that means it’s a diss to Obama to be called me because he wants a brother-brother, or what he perceives. Just because you f*** black hookers, just because you have that particular black experience….
“Now, I’m not saying I’m Billy Badass, but if Bill Maher has his perception of what’s black wrapped up, I would gladly slap the sh** out of Bill Maher in the middle of the street, and then I want to see what Bill Maher would do.”
“Now, Bill Maher would call the cops and he would have his lawyer — I’d get sued and lose my house and it’s not worth it for me,” he continued. “But the black man part of me would be so satisfied to slap the shit out of him in front of Cocoa and Ebony and Fox, the three ladies of the night that he has hired … and Fancy, who also happened to be named Tyrique at one point.”
Confronting bullies like Maher is central to being a badass. And doing it by cutting to the core — identifying Maher’s own personal racial hypocrisy — is badass.
In the political realm, one man forever defined Generation X Badass:
As Andrew Breitbart was to cultural Marxism with New Media, my friend Bosch Fawstin is to the stealth jihadists with his chosen medium of graphic art. The second issue of his long-awaited The Infidel is now on sale as digital download for $3.00 here. The first issue is available here.
The Infidel tells the story of twin brothers Sal and Killian Duke who respond very differently to the mass murders of 9/11. One of them, untroubled by the religious motivations of the killers, reaffirms his commitment to Islam. The other, Killian, completes his rejection of his family’s faith by pledging to use his artistic talents to create an anti-jihad comic hero named Pigman.
The Infidel obviously draws from the author’s own life. Bosch is an ex-Muslim and an Objectivist. And he employs a comic technique utilized by other graphic novel auteurs. Just as Grant Morrison made King Mob of The Invisibles resemble himself, Warren Ellis’s Spider Jerusalem of Transmetropolitan mirrored his creator, and Neil Gaiman cast the The Sandman‘s brooding Lord Morpheus as his avatar, Bosch has created his digital doppelgänger in Killian.
I wonder: Is Bosch drawing a character based on himself or is he introducing the world to the fictional character idealization that he strives to be? (Deep down aren’t we all just trying to play a fictional character version of ourselves?)
I won’t spoil the plot — or reveal the provocative cliff-hanger that concludes this installment. Instead, for this collection of some of my favorite excerpts from The Infidel #2 I’ve replicated the style of my review of Dennis Prager’s Still the Best Hope, juxtaposing images and embedded videos along with an observation about how Bosch’s work relates to the concept of the badass.
In preparing to engage with Bosch’s world, a good place to start is this panel from Table for One, his first graphic novel about an individualist waiter making his way in the treacherous, superficial world of fine dining:
Abandon hope all ye moral relativists who enter Bosch Fawstin’s world here…
It’s badass to state your views in your own terms even when you know people will willfully misinterpret you.
Bosch knows that whenever he talks about “hating Islam,” that the empty-headed will immediately interpret that as “racist against Muslims and Arabs.” He doesn’t care. He’s willing to allow for the misinterpretation so that when he’s attacked for it he can smack down the attack, thus demonstrating his moral and intellectual superiority.
It’s badass to take responsibility for your own happiness.
It’s badass to confront people with the evil they want you and the rest of the world to ignore.
Today all that’s necessary to establish the truth of the apartheid, slave-state conditions of those trapped behind the modern day Iron Curtain of Islam’s Shari’ah law? Translate their own TV broadcasts.
It’s badass to learn how to control one’s animal instincts, the primal desire within each of us to kill and destroy. The badass knows how to channel his energy and his talent into a discipline in order to change the world as he sees fit.
The badass has his eyes rooted in the real world, and will bring people’s attention back from the theoretical fantasy lands of the pseudo-intellectuals back to the practical, right-now, day-to-day existence of flesh and blood people.
A truth-based world is badass. Another writer and thinker who has written books challenging jihadists is Howard Bloom. In his most recent book, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism, he lays out his two rules of science:
1. The truth at any price, including the price of your life. 2. And look at things right under your nose as if you’ve never seen them before. Look at things you and everyone around you take for granted as if you’ve never seen them before. Follow your amazement. And track down answers to the questions your wonder throws your way.
It’s badass to set up logical traps for your opponents to stumble into.
And with the ad hominem logical fallacy that everyone from Michael Moore leftists to Ron Paul paleos stumble into in making the stupid chickenhawk argument then the number of possible ways to rebut runs into infinity.
It’s badass to boil the issue down to its root essentials.
My heart is really with the Zuhdi Jassers and Irshad Manjis of the world who want to fight not for a “moderate” but a reformed Islam that rejects Koranic literalism and Shari’ah while embracing separation of mosque and state. But I have to confess that my head remains more sympathetic to the analysis of Islam articulated by the ex-Muslims and more “hard-line” anti-Jihad activists like Bosch, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, and Nonie Darwish. Their case that the roots of 9/11 are in the character of Mohammad (whether he’s real or made up matters little when men make him their model) is difficult to rebut. And their arguments that jihadists aren’t “misinterpreting” the Koran’s calls to violence also make sense.
I’m just not sure how Islam can be reformed when at its root are totalitarian tendencies. Jesus was a pacifist; Mohammad was a warlord with child wives who said it was acceptable to capture sex slaves. While I respect the sincerity and good will of the Muslim reformers, I haven’t yet figured out why they don’t just do what Bosch and others did in embracing a religion or philosophy with less baggage. Guess I should add Jasser’s new book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith and Manji’s Allah, Liberty and Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom to the reading list…
It’s badass to wake people up to the evil that you live with everyday but they have no idea exists.
I think the reason why PigMan is so misunderstood is because so few of us have any idea what it’s like to be in Bosch’s shoes, to live every day as an apostate from Islam, marked for death. Existing full-time in that world I can understand why he’d want to imagine someone like PigMan into existence.
Every time a progressive goes off trashing Ayaan Hirsi Ali, comparing her to Lady Al Qaeda, or some blogger unloads his politically correct bigotry on Bosch as a “racist Islamophobe,” I wish I could reach through the screen and shake them awake: “How can you be more outraged by a comic book’s harsh words than the fact that the man who drew it has to live every day of his life looking over his shoulder, worried that some lone-wolf jihadist will do what Islam has commanded needs to be done to all apostates? Real people’s lives are in jeopardy here.“
I wish there really was a PigMan to fight for the ex-Muslims living with a gun under their pillow and the closet-secularist Muslims terrified to leave their oppressive religion once and for all.
****
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Seven Images That Will Make The Occupiers Cry by Bosch Fawstin
More on Comics from Duane Lester:
‘Who Is Thanos?’ And 10 More Post-Avengers Comic Book Movie Rumors
Which of the 5 Avengers Prequels Is the Best?
The 10 Worst Comic Book Movie Casting Blunders (And 5 That Nailed It)
And from Hannah Sternberg:
I’ve seen Bosch Fawstin and his artwork here and there on the internet. Is it really true that he’s an ex-Muslim? I never would have guessed that.
rickl: Yes, he was raised Muslim. Here’s his Daily Show appearance from December:
http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2011/12/pigman-on-daily-show.html
G-d, I miss Andrew Breitbart. The baddest of all badasses of our time, indeed. We didn’t deserve him.
Aside, I’m more interested in the culture of comics than comics themselves (all of it, as far as I’m concerned, is a footnote to Will Eisner), but it is interesting to learn that the Mary Sue seems to be at the heart of some of the more complex and personal ones. It actually makes a lot more sense than the rampant Mary Sueing of too many supposedly “realistic” novelists (Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell, etc.)
“this memorable action sequence where one man overcomes an entire bar fool of thugs:”
so…whatsa “bar fool”?
( i suppose i might’ve been one back in the day)
- a -
Typo corrected, thanks.
Ah, ojectivism’s central hallmark, clear thinking, is delightfully illustrated here.
Those of us who took the philosophy to heart were, in a way, heartbroken to see it bottled up and put on a shelf. Instead of taking Rand’s quotes in their proper context and understanding them as they applied to their times,
many so-called objectivists used them as a drunk uses a lamp post, something to lean on rather than for illumination.
I think Bosch, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, may be one of those heroic people who is very VERY aware of reality’s terms and cannot countenance the propagation of a lie.
For years I read comics. Ditko will always be in rarefied air, but I’m liking this Bosch fellow a LOT.
I think Bosch, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, may be one of those heroic people who is very VERY aware of reality’s terms and cannot countenance the propagation of a lie.
Say, wan’t it Ms. Ali who publicly stated that Islam could be fixed? She’s no hero of this proud and unapologetic Islamophobe.
This: Check it out. She knows PLENTY about the realities, I promise you.
‘In a long interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rogier van Bakel of Reason Magazine brought out her best with some excellent questions. Ali was raised as a Muslim in Somalia, and has since become an outspoken atheist who is now marked for death by Islamic fundamentalists. She is sharp and bold and straightforward. I am excerpting parts the article here. If you have the time, it will be worth it to read the whole article: “The Trouble Is The West.”‘
Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times? Slavery in the United States ended in part because of opposition by prominent church members and the communities they galvanized. The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the Jaruzelski puppet regime. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?
Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.
Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
As Andrew Breitbart was to cultural Marxism…
Ah, cultural Marxism. A very real thing that’s involved in how every person forms an opinion on something, but that almost nobody knows about.
G.S.E.R.S.S. = Globolist-Socialist Environmentalist Racist Sexist Secularist, which goes by the nickname Geezers, a term that containing the six bubbles of fictive reality, covering all that we see, hear and act in our everyday modern lives. Turn on the TV and you’re bound to see each in action before too long, burgeoning with turnspeak, wielding influence on opinion formation in subtle ways, and almost always resulting in bad art.
Islam is the most evil ideology ever created. I just read John Daniels new book, ‘THE COMING: A TRUE STORY OF HORROR’@ Amazon.com and it blew me away! He actually proves that Islam is the Beast. Everyone should read this book.
He’s a objectivist. While he’s focusing on Muslims, objectivism is opposed to all religion or altruism. Voluntary charity is an abomination before Rand, as is any devotion to a higher power or belief in the supernatural. I appreciate his opposition to Islamic Supremacism, but objectivists / randroids are only allies of convenience.
Objectivism is opposed to faith, true, as it recognizes that Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality, only means to knowledge. As for your claim that Rand saw *voluntary* charity as an abomination, that’s false. Charity is an optional issue for individuals, not a moral issue. But Forced charity, as in the government forcing tax payers to pay for things that they may find morally repugnant, that is indeed an “abomination” and Rand and Objectivists are opposed to that.
My heart is really with the Zuhdi Jassers and Irshad Manjis of the world who want to fight not for a “moderate” but a reformed Islam that rejects Koranic literalism and Shari’ah while embracing separation of mosque and state
I was with you until this sentetence. A reformed Islam is about as absurd as a reformed Nazism who is no longer antisemitic.
It is not merely about separation of mosque and state or Shariah. It ais about the whole of Islam.
1) Islam sets no moral rules. Consider the five pillars of Islam: Shahada (telling there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet), prayer, pilgrimage, Ramadan and Zakat (giving 3% of t your revenue to the poor and only if you can afford it). From these pillars only one, Zakhat, could more or less (note the restrictions and also that charity is not for non-Muslams) has any semblance of moralitry or in trying to make a better world. There is no “Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lift false testimony”. There is no “Don’t do to others…” They, more or less exist, (usually applay only for deals between Muslims) but not in the five pillars, in the secondary>/b> teachings of Islam.
2) Islam declares itself at war with the rest of the world. A war who is supposed to last until the end of times. And that is centric. In fact you can kill, rape, steal Allah will forgive you evrerthing and will automatically house you in the highest of the seven circles of Paradise provided you shed blood or give your own in Djihad. That is why Mohammed Atta and his men went to night clubs and drank alcohol: they could do that: whatever sins they did these or far worse ones would be forgiven . Djihad is not accessory to Islam. It is told to be the Sixth and more important pillar of Islam, the latest and thus most importente sura the one who overrides all others is the “Sura of the Sword” and Muhammad did nothing but promise hell to those he called “hypocrites”: Muslims who neither went to jihad nor helped to fund it or to feed the families of jihadis.
3) Islam at its core tells women are inferior to men, it tells they aren’t allowed to say no (the hottest part of hell is not for murderers or child molesters but for women who had “headaches”), that men have the right to beat them. Women rarely go to paradise and only to its first circle, the one who is farthest of God. It also tells men are allowed to sexullay use their slaves at will. Islam at its core tells Muslim have more rights than kafirs, that when a Muslim kills a kaffir the punishment will be half than for kiling a Muslim and cannot be death no matter how gruesome the crime, no matter who was the victim. Islam at its core allows slavery and sexual use of slaves at least when slave is not a Muslim.
4) Do I need you to remind you what kind of man was Muhammad: a highway robber, an ethnic cleanser, a murderer both of captives and of political opponents, a raper, a paedophile, a man who had people tortured in order to make them tell where were their riches. And this is the man evry Muslim; is supposed to try to imitate in everything and that this is the man your reformed Islam would still have as messenger.
Imagine a religion saying there is “No God butr God and Adolf Hitler is his propet”, having Mein Kampf as sacred book and then imagaine someone telmling he is for reformed Nazism, one who would be peaceful and reepectful both of untermenschen and of Jews all while still holding Hitler as the messenger of God and Mein Kampf as its sscred book. You would laugh at it isn’t it? Well it is equivalent to your assertion about Islam.
Dreaming of a reformed Islam assumes Islam has some usefulness for mankind, contributes to a better world. It hasn’t and it doesn’t. What we should dream of, what we should strive for is not for a reformed Islam but for its disapperance. For having Muslims massively leaving it (can be Christianism, can be Budhism that is not the problem) until the day even in Saudi Arabia no mosque remains open and the number of its followers becomes equal to the number for the greek religion: zero.