Any close reader of the Loop Hole (and there are many) has probably come to appreciate the fact that my decisions to cover things are somewhat based on my ability to come up with a wordplay adjacent title that pleases me. It's not the only factor, but it is certainly a prerequisite. So today, after years of living as a satisfying phrase in my head, I have found a use for the pun, Canon Fodder.
My concept for Canon Fodder is a low effort investigation into silly questions and concepts within fictional lore. Like, for example, does [REDACTED] love the music of [REDACTED]? Or why do all the people in [REDACTED] seem to only drink [REDACTED]? Oh, sorry, I don't actually have enough of these ideas planned to burn a bunch of them as examples. This will just be a specific flavor of Anyhoos, and I don't have some kind of specific plan or schedule for them. Every so often when I would be tossing out a random Anyhoo nugget, I’ll give ya some Fodder instead.
So that's the idea, but given that Canon Fodder is such a dynamite title for this thing, I felt I had to check and ensure that somebody else hasn't already eaten my lunch on this. Well, it turns out they have. There are other Canon Fodders out there, of varying degrees of legitimacy. So to square this circle and pay my respect to those that I'm now ripping off, the subject of this inaugural entry of Canon Fodder is: Canon Fodder(s)!
The Canon King - 2000 AD Comic Series
Canon Fodder is a cool guy. He is, seemingly, Judge Dredd but a priest. He exists on 90 comic pages total and if they can be found digitally I plan to look at all of them. He dispenses justice(?) in a post-Judgement Day apocylapse where the world is filled with undead and he’s the only living member of the priest patrol. I would go on, but if I wrote like 4 paragraphs about this comic I would basically just be rewriting its entire wikipedia page. Suffice to say, it sounds like just the kind of ridiculous dumb shit that scratches a permenantly fifteen-year-old itch in my brain. Judge Dredd plus Preacher with a dash of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Who am I to deny that? Some wiki gems:
It then cuts to a flashback with Dr. Watson discovering that Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty have killed themselves in a suicide pact, in order to go to heaven and kill God for not appearing on Judgement Day. Fodder and Watson recruit Mycroft Holmes (who is portrayed as a psychopath similar to Hannibal Lecter)...
Canon Fodder is the last surviving member of the Priest Patrol, which also contained Deacon Blue, Father O'Blivion and Cardinal Syn. He was judging the 'Miss Purity 2000' pageant when the others were (allegedly) investigating the League of Anabolic Atheists and sucked into another dimension.
Runner Up Canons - Some Theology Site and Halo Stuff
For this particulare exercise I suppose I have two metrics: Who makes the best and coolest use of the phrase ‘Canon Fodder’? And who has the SEO game on lock with it?
Canon Fodder prime (above) obviously has total dominance on Item 1. But on Item 2 the biggest games in town are a Christian theology site and an officially sanctioned blog that’s all about Halo lore. In short, they’ve essentially taken my Canon Fodder concept but then narrowed it down to two equally important fields that I know equal amounts about. If you want to know more about the New Testament or why Master Chief is so uniquely suited to shooting alien guys, these both seem like great resources.
Also Can(on)s - Mostly Complaining About Canon Lists
By far the most numerous entries under this title go to show what a great (and dissapointingly obvious) bit of wordplay Canon Fodder is. Anybody who’s ever wanted to spend a thousand words complaining about lists of books or music or movies (but mostly books) has thought of this title for their essay.
The biggest genre of these essays are complaints about canonical book lists being too heavy on dead white men and complaints about contrary book lists going out of their way to feature fewer titles by dead white men. But there’s also a very long essay from Paul Schrader about what the 20th century film canon should look like, which I’d like to take the time to read. Basically, anyone who has thought about the concept of a cultural canon and then thought of a pun and then felt like writing an essay, that’s what we’re dealing with. And also a weird fan fiction-y novel that just seems to be cramming Joe Protagonist into every piece of media imaginable.
So what have we learned? Not much. Puns are easy and I’m not that clever. Ridiculous post-apocylaptic authoritarians with guns are enjoyable even if they’re maybe bad for culture? Mostly it’s clear to me that people are way too into fictional media and spend too much time thinking about it. But I guess that should also be bevalidating, because that’s exactly what I’m up to here.