5 posts tagged “comics”
Because suddenly, there are a lot of them. We are less than two weeks away from:
- The season premiere of Project Runway.
- A new volume of Scott Pilgrim.
- The release of Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii.
But even beyond the short term, there's a new Joss Whedon/Eliza Dushku TV show, Dollhouse, and -- wait for it -- a new X-Files movie with a release date! July 25, 2008. Time to get my suit and flashlight ready.
Pre-ordered today: Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics
So yes, if you like comics, you should preorder it too, hint hint. The Chris Ware / Chip Kidd cover vibe would not really have been my choice, but I'm sure it does hit a certain demographic sweet spot, especially in the book trade, where people continue to believe that Jimmy Corrigan is the greatest comic ever produced. (It is not. At all. Though I'll admit I should re-read it, it's been several years now.)
And while you're buying things, feel free to plunk down some cash for the most ludicrous thing DC has published in a while: Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot Vol. 1
"The Robot And The Dinosaur!"
"Doom Came At Noon!"
"Tidbit For A Tyrannosaurus!"
"Dinosaur Sub-Catcher!"
"Doom At Dinosaur Island!"
"Battle Of The Dinosaur Aquarium!"
"Mission X!"
500-plus pages of absolute lunacy for only $11.55 on Amazon (though if you want to support your local comics store, please do -- $16.99 cover price). You'd be a fool not to. (This one's actually out next week, but we got it in our bundles at work today, hence my trembling excitement.)
Book: What book would you like to see made into a movie?
Submitted by Felipe Anuel.
The Invisibles, as I've said before, is one of the single most personally influential pieces of fiction I've ever encountered. I unquestionably wouldn't be in the comics business today if I'd never read it. The only piece of original comics art I own is from issue #13 of Vol. 2, the first issue of the series I ever read -- it's page 20, the moment immediately before Boy sees Barbelith for the first time. It's hanging next to my computer right now; you may see it every so often when I turn my iSight around (which generally means I don't feel like turning the webcam off but don't feel like showing people what I'm doing, either.)
"We're in the business of preserving life and saving souls. What do you want me to say, Lucille? You saw the dark down there and you overcame it. You saw the face of the enemy and you still didn't pull the trigger. Congratulations, kid. You're ready for contact."
[In case you have no clue what I'm talking about -- the summary I give when asked to describe the series is "Culture terrorists on a mission to utterly destroy reality as we know it, in favor of ushering in the new golden age. At least they think that's what will happen, anyway."]
It's hard to say where it "started" per se. As a child, my house was full of collections of newspaper comic strips -- Garfield, The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County -- and I devoured them over and over from an exceptionally young age. Those latter three especially are probably responsible for 90% of my intellectual sensibilities and sense of humor, if we're being honest. There weren't many seven year olds out there who found jokes about Conway Twitty funny, but I can still picture every panel of that Bloom County gag. (Best Christmas present received this year: at last, the gorgeous three-hardcover slipcased set of Complete Calvin & Hobbes.) Upon reflection, it's hard to tell if they were bought for me -- I assume they were for my brother, who's ten years older than me, but I never saw him reading them. Maybe because I'd horded them all away in my room.
At some point, like virtually every male American who was a child in the late 80s and early 90s, the Ninja Turtles happened to me. I started reading the Archie Comics series, which starred the animated version of the characters and was significantly toned-down from the Frank Miller-parodizing, much more sophisticated original indie books (though collections of those were given to me as a gift at some point during my Ninja Turtles obsession by a relative who didn't realize there was a whole other strain of Ninja Turtle out there; as a result, again, I was one of the few nine-year-olds who knew who Cerebus was). The chronology's a little hazy, so I'm not sure if reading actual Archie comics, in the form of the digests available at supermarket checkouts, pre-dated my Ninja Turtles period or not, but for a long time they were all I read. I was actually given a dog-eared issue of Marvel Premiere, starring Doctor Strange, by an uncle who'd found it in his garage, but it never grabbed me enough to pull me from the world of teen romance.
It was in fifth grade that the superhero comics shift started. I had a lengthy ride to school on the bus, and I found myself seated next to an older boy (whose name was Joel, and who I now realize was a hopeless nerd, but obviously at the time he seemed so knowledgeable and enviable) who was trading Marvel Universe trading cards, the craze of the moment for everyone, nerd or no, with the other kids. For a while I was collecting those without reading the comics at all, simply absorbing the immense amount of trivia printed on the cards' back. But not for long. One night, before dinner with my parents at the mall, I bought Wolverine #69 and Uncanny X-Men #300 (I think there might've been another, but it escapes me). And that, as they say, was that.
Describing what drew me to specific comics, like the X-Men, is largely beside the point in a post like this. It's the medium I wanted to discuss when I chose this topic. To this day, I'm haunted by my application interview to Harvard: no, I didn't get in, and while I'm sure there were plenty of reasons why I didn't, the one that's always stuck in my mind is that, when confronted with a point-blank question -- "What is it about comics that makes them worth pursuing to you as an art?" -- I completely miffed it. I've never been a great extemporaneous speaker -- I think on the page, not on the fly -- but at the time I simply hadn't put the thought into the topic that it, and Harvard, demanded. Have I now? It's hard to say.
The most common defense of comics I see bandied around is a simple one-liner, generally attributed to American Splendor's Harvey Pekar: "Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures." It's true, of course, and they do offer aesthetic possibilities that other mediums can't match. Just one example: in comics, space and time can be conflated in ways that no other art form can match. How a moment or a storytelling beat is conceived intellectually and emotionally by the reader is directly connected to its status as an object, as a form in space, printed on paper: in the rudimentary sense, a big panel equals a big moment, but when linear panel structure is abandoned that relationship can be made infinitely more complex. And as a content distribution system, they're immensely satisfying to tinker with: serial storytelling? Graphic novel? Webcomic? One-panel gag? Each of those formats changes the artistic toolbox a creator draws from in ways it can take a lifetime to master. Comics are generally lauded (or derided) for their "simplicity," for their easy readability, but to go beyond readability and into serious aesthetic accomplishment, a skillset must be developed that rivals a director's eye or a novelist's discipline.
We're finally getting to a place where comics as a form can be separated from comics as content in the historical sense: comics have traditionally meant lurid stories, with superheroes dominant and pulp-themed genre material as the only secondary market, but years of smart, creative people who were raised on the ambitious comics of the 70s and 80s are finally growing into their roles as cultural tastemakers who can counteract those stereotypes, either from within the medium or from outside in other art forms. I couldn't be happier about this: comics are not just about superheroes in the same way novels aren't all about lawyers (thank you John Grisham), and I feel profoundly blessed to be part of a generation who can read comics and not have to deal with that ghetto mindset their entire lives. But there's of course no denying the charm in comics' humble roots, and the unique sensibilities that grow out of a childhood steeped in intense fantasy, be it superhero or otherwise. It's the same for any nerd subculture, I suppose, but I'm proud of (many) comics nerds: they're passionate people who value, well, fun, and people who value both fun and artistic expression are always going to be my tribe. The almost infinite detail of the shared super-hero universes, the dream-logic that holds their rickety parts together, the berzerker imaginations that created them... there's a lot to love there.
Which is not to say a lot of reprehensible traits don't get bred into some comics fans. One of the things that continues to drive me absolutely batshit is the simply despicable sexism that still pervades just about every level of the industry and the culture: from the oftentimes questionable treatment (and costuming*) of too many female characters, to the social organization that excludes girls and women who read comics from the "club" (currently visible in the profound disconnect between the predominantly female-oriented manga market and the still-phallocentric American market), to the institutions that have kept female creators and other professionals from equalling male influence. It's most visible in the mainstream, but the art-comics scene certainly isn't blameless either.
But again: that's just what's been built on top of the medium, the art form. And while I do have an immense (if occasionally misplaced) affection for the comics industry, and the comics culture, and while it's becoming increasingly evident that I'm going to try to spend my entire professional life immersed in both, it's important to me that my experience of comics never stop simply at those, that I always continue to read comics with an analytical eye, with a focus on teaching myself how to make great art with these tools, or how to even come close. As I've said before, it could take a lifetime, and while I'm well aware of the fact that I'm immersing myself in something that so very many people will never see, or benefit from, or even understand, I believe it's right for me.
*OK, here's a mini-rant for you, which was perhaps more relevant in the mid-to-late 90s then it is now, but which sadly still needs to be said. In a universe where every pornographic image you could ever desire is available to you for free, on the Internet, in the privacy of your own home, then why in God's name would you want your titillation delivered to you in the form of drawings of half-clothed women? I mean seriously, what's hotter about a superheroine in a thong and thigh-high boots, with an anatomy -- from the breasts right through to the length of the torso -- that couldn't ever possibly exist... what's hotter about that than about a real woman having real sex, even when filtered through pornography's concept of "reality?" I'm sure I know the answer to that question, but it's such a depressing answer. Is even the suggestion of a real human being -- even a still photograph of one, robbed of all context -- really too frightening? Is an infinitely compliant drawing the only thing the sexual imagination of these people can properly engage with? I mean, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with comics characters being attractive (here's looking at you, Cyclops, Connor Kent, and Kyle Rayner), or incorporating a sexual dimension into their characters. Sex is great, sex is awesome, sex will be a topic in this essay series later. But please, please, please, can't it have SOME bearing on the kind of sex and bodies that exist in the real world? Can't it be about sex, and not something so far removed from sex that it ceases to be a recognizable or even semi-healthy social or emotional experience?
What is the greatest compliment you've received?
Submitted by Maraschino.
Not the greatest, but the most recent one I remember: an artist just told me that I take "perfect" reference photos. (Yes, I am being drawn into a comic book; no, I can't tell you which one or by who yet. Maybe once the announcement's made.)
Though come to think of it, I think I did just receive the greatest compliment I can remember several weeks ago, but it's not fit for reprinting on a family weblog. Nor do I want to toot my own horn, though I guess I've just done so obliquely. (If one of my coworkers was here, I'd tell him I tooted his mom's horn obliquely, and it would be funny. Well maybe not too funny. But funny.*)
* My department has a running gag, instituted by a coworker from Georgia, of making outrageously convoluted and distinctly ridiculous your-mom jokes, which he makes as "your ma'am" jokes. I gather it's a Southern thing, but he's got all of us saying "ma'am" too.
