Marvel’s What If…?, Digging For DB, Reverse Graffiti Artists … and More

After 24 movies and several beloved TV shows, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is taking a step closer to its comic book roots by making the jump to animation. What If…?, which kicks off on Disney Plus Wednesday, is an epically fun Twilight Zone-style anthology series that explores divergent timelines where familiar MCU events played out differently. The show's inspired by and named after a '70s comic series that pondered such weird possibilities as Spider-Man joining the Fantastic Four, Captain America being elected president and Wolverine killing the Hulk. The MCU Disney Plus series captures this spirit, jumping to various points from the movies and tweaking events to create exciting new realities as the cosmic Watcher (Jeffrey Wright from Westworld) offers omniscient narration.

In 1971, "DB Cooper" hijacked a plane from Portland, Oregon and eventually parachuted into the Pacific Northwest wilderness with $200,000 strapped to his body. He was never seen again. The DB Cooper tale continues to thrive in popular culture while sparking a seemingly endless stream of theories about the mystery man's identity, whether he could have lived, and, if he did, his whereabouts. (The FBI stopped their investigation in 2016.) Now, a DB Cooper historian is digging for new evidence, literally. On Friday, Eric Ulis and his team began excavating a 300-square-foot spot on the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington near where in 1980 a young boy stumbled upon three packets containing $5,800 of the ransom money. According to Ullis, authorities never checked this particular area.

The word “graffiti” usually conjures images of people with spray cans illegally making murals or jotting down tags using colorful paints. A lot artistic interventions use other tools and materials, though, subverting expectations and working in (literal and legal) gray areas to create works without leaving a conventional trace. Consider, for instance, the massive deep sea monsters, jungle predators and swamp creatures of Russian illustrator Nikita Golubev that lurk in the grimy shadows on the sides and backs of trucks. Along similar lines, this series of skulls by artist Orion was made by scrubbing car exhaust from an active tunnel. For those looking to deter street art and artists, subtractive interventions like these can be tricky to pin down. After all, Golubev and Orion are simply cleaning vehicles or public surfaces, albeit very selectively.

Lake Powell, which some people consider the most beautiful place on earth and others view as an abomination, lies in slickrock country, about two hundred and fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. Lake Powell, which isn’t actually a lake, is an invention of the United States Bureau of Reclamation. In the early nineteen-sixties, the bureau erected a seven-hundred-and-ten-foot-tall concrete arch dam on the Colorado River, near where it crosses from Utah into Arizona. The bureau named the dam for the stretch of the river that it was submerging—Glen Canyon. Behind the dam, water backed up for almost a hundred and ninety miles, creating a reservoir with the shape of a snake that’s swallowed a porcupine. At full capacity, Lake Powell stores twenty-four million acre-feet of water, enough to flood the entire state of Massachusetts hip-deep.

Researchers have found that around half of U.S. car ads feature dangerous driving behavior. On the Dodge website and social media channels, examples of this are readily apparent. Messaging invites drivers to “conquer the streets of America” with an “aggressive” and “intimidating” fleet. Purchase a Dodge and enter the “brotherhood of muscle.” The company sells cars named “Charger,” “Demon” and “Ram.” But it’s not just Dodge. Consumers can choose, among others, to acquire a “Ford Tough” truck, to purchase a BMW with “design that dominates” or to buy a Nissan because “you deserve a car that thrills you.” While speed and reckless driving sells, it also kills. In 2019, speed was a contributing factor in at least a quarter of traffic fatalities, and there are likely countless more fatalities where lower speed limits could have made the difference.

Discontinuity is best seen from above. The faster change is happening, the more important it is to try to see the big picture. Right now, getting a clear grasp on the big picture is like wrestling an oiled octopus. I’ve done more kraken-grappling than most people, so I’m sympathetic to the confusion most of us feel about both the nature of the crisis we face and how it is unfolding in our lives. This last week, a draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment was leaked. It hit hard. Their latest findings about impacts are unsurprising to folks who do this work every day, but because our public debate about this crisis has failed so comprehensively, their plainly-worded expressions have sent shock waves through the broader public discussion. The ecological and climate problems we face are numerous, complex and chaotic. They interconnect and accelerate one another, in an avalanche of impacts. They are largely irreversible. The dangers are extreme, and we face “systemic and cascading risks.”