Hey guys. I know this comics stuff is boring you to death. But hey, you might find out something neat, so do read it, won’t you? I’m telling you all, that Blankets book is fantastic.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled comix news and views roundup:
First of all, the Pulse offers a overview of tomorrow’s San Diego Comic-Con, to which Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat will be sending a representative or two. It’s really, really big, if you want the nutshell version.
While we’re on the SDCC tip, the best summary of the experience that is this enormous comic-book convention comes from Scott Tipton of Movie Poop Shoot. (Amy, I’ll bet you like that website name.) It’s an excellent piece–go and read (after you finish reading this whole post, of course).
Speaking of Blankets, Newsarama has an interview with Craig Thompson on his soon-to-be-released magnum opus. It’s interesting to see how, a la Phoebe Gloeckner, he’s almost hesitant to call it “autobiography” due to the liberties he takes with the facts of his life for the sake of the story. (He has a sister?) It’s also an interesting glimpse into how an altcomix creator pays the bills.
Jess Lemon, Pulse’s designated fly in the fanboy ointment, takes on Mark Millar’s Epic teen book Trouble. Ouch. As I said, when there’s not adamantium skeletons and black ops and pop-culture references to kick around, Millar’s a bit, shall we say, limited in the dialogue department.
Bill Sherman reviews Iron Wagon, the new murder mystery by Norway’s mononymed master of incredibly sad cute-animal comics, Jason. This is Bill’s first Jason comic, and it’s an odd one to start with, as it was adapted from a turn-of-the-century Norwegian novel by Stein Riverton, and as such is unrepresentative of Jason’s usual musings on life, death, and loneliness. But Jason’s thematic preoccupations show through to a surprising degree, particularly his effortlessly chilling depiction of the haunting power of death over the living. The ending, also, is more powerful than it perhaps has a right to be. Excellent work.
In a long roundup of his own, Alan David Doane scoffs at fans’ objections to the way Darick Robertson draws fan-fave character Wolverine (namely, like a knee-breaker for the Teamsters). Why? What’s the objection to making this dangerous, mysterious character a sexy one as well, instead of depicting him the way an eight-year-old might? ADD’s gloating about the uproar seems like kneejerk contrarianism rather than a thought-out response to a controversial aesthetic decision.
Johnny Bacardi (“always interesting”? aw! right back atcha!) has some thoughts on my pamphlet post of yesterday, and points out that many long-form collections of initially serialized books seem to drag on after a certain point. I’d argue that that’s a strength of collections, not a weakness–separate the wheat from the chaff and all that.
Eve Tushnet (who probably doesn’t remember that I lived next door to some of her friends at Yale freshman year) offers a non-fangirl take on some comics she bought on a whim. She has good things to say about Grant Morrison’s and Pete Milligan’s X-books, unsurprisingly. (Link courtesy of Jim Henley, who shouldn’t worry about ever coming off my blogroll. I second his recommendation of books by Brian Bendis, by the way.)
When I post some hype for my day job at the Comics Journal Message Board, this is the kind of thing that happens. It’s actually a lot more civil than I thought it’d be, and is slowly turning into a fairly interesting discussion of pop-culture philosopher Slavoj Zizek. All this because of a clothing catalog, folks!
Finally, I was surprised to see copies of the Comics Journal issue with Gary Groth’s pro-criticism essay in it. Having read it in its entirety, I’ll say that while I still agree with it generally, it’s a flawed call to arms for a couple of reasons.
First of all, Gary never really develops his theory of why criticism (by which he means negative criticism, as well as simply well-written and well-informed positive criticism, which is also in short supply these days) is a dying breed. There’s a lot of complaints about corporate this and corporate that, and a few potshots about invading Third World countries thrown in for good measure, but ultimately the death of criticism indicates that critics anywhere, not just at corporate-owned publications, are in short supply. Why does no one want to grow up to be a critic? Are schools or the academy simply not preparing people to be critics? Has the corporate boosterism mindset (or, on the other side of the coin, the po-mo aversion to value judgements) infected writers’ mindsets during their educations? These interesting and vital questions go unexplored in favor of windmill-tilting heated rhetoric–admittedly Gary’s forte, but still, I was looking for something I could sink my teeth into.
Second, Gary appears to conflate rah-rah’ing critics with the infamous Team Comix mentality of artists. It seems ungenerous to me to demand that artists become critics themselves. While there are certainly cases where luminaries in one dabble in the other, and in some cases even thrive in both, it’s really not one artist’s job to pick apart the failings (or to praise the strengths) of another. Much of what Gary interprets as an appalling lack of critical faculties (or of backbone) on the part of today’s alt-comix in-crowd may simply be seen as a desire to avoid talking shit about people when that’s not what they’re being paid to do. Historically, Gary Groth has had an admirable immunity to fear of being seen as an asshole. Not all artists were born with this sort of bulletproof willingness to tell otherwise nice people that their comics are for shit, and not all artists should be expected to do so. If they set themselves up as “critics,” have at ’em, Gary, but don’t fault people for not wanting to pick fights at parties over whether James Kochalka’s Sketchbook Diaries were any good.
Well, folks, that’s probably the last round-up for a while, as the Con is almost upon me. Don’t know what the computer-access situation will be in sunny San Diego, but I guess we’ll find out together, you and I. Let us join hands and walk into that future together!