Greetings, fight fans! For a complete round-up of the “superheroes are good” and “groupthink is bad” memes, I hereby toss this post into the ring.

Kevin Melrose points to a dense and readable interview with DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz, by the Pulse’s Heidi MacDonald. Two things spring to mind upon reading it. One, isn’t interesting how Levitz’s lack of bravado and bluster, which once made him seem like yesterday’s news, now makes him come across like the savvy and erudite voice of the future? Two, as Kevin picked up on in his link to the piece, Levitz breaks down the manga/bookstore debate in a novel and intriguing fashion, saying that in terms of buying patterns, comics that look like books (i.e. manga, trade paperbacks, and graphic novels) sell similarly in both the Direct Market and the bookstores. While that would tend to shore up my belief that book-formatted comics are the future of the industry, Levitz also says that he’s seen little evidence to suggest that manga-formatted non-manga comics will sell to manga readers. That would naturally poke a hole in my “make tankubon versions Sandman, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Love & Rockets!” prescription. However, if book-formatted comics are doing well in the Direct Market but manga itself isn’t, that suggests that there is a market to whom such formats appeal… great stuff to chew on, either way.

J.W. Hastings takes a look at three recent comics by ADDTF favorite Brian Michael Bendis, and contrasts the effectiveness of Bendis’s trademark dialogue-heavy writing style in each. Of the three, I’ve only read Daredevil #57, and I must say that this is one case where I found the constant chit-chat as distracting as many other pundits seem to. Reporter Ben Urich’s intrusive voice-over drained the enormous drugged-up Yakuza fight scene of much of its momentum and tension; going back and re-reading the passage without reading the captions made this clear as a bell. In fairness to Bendis, this isn’t usually his style: When a big, important action sequence breaks out in Alias or Powers, he usually shuts up, giving these silent scenes new power by way of their contrast to the talky stuff that surrounds them. Strange that he’d make this misstep in Daredevil, a book he took several months off of to think through.

Will Eisner, still indomitable at nearly 90 years of age, is taking on world anti-Semitism with his new graphic novel The Plot by debunking The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The New York Times has the scoop. (Link courtesy of a friend who emailed it to me.)

Alan David Doane interivews more altcomix luminaries by Tuesday than most people interview all week. Today’s special: Chester Brown, author of acclaimed bio-comic Louis Riel and seminal (literally, in some cases) autobio comics The Playboy and I Never Liked You.

Christopher Butcher and Scott Robins are back to the Previews Review front. This batch of capsule preview-reviews include raves for Ito’s Gyo and Miyazaki’s Nausicaa, high hopes for the new non-princess oriented arc of Milligan & Allred’s X-Statix, and disappointment in the once-promising but strangely uncompelling Top Shelf work of altcomix fantasist Jennifer Daydreamer.

(Regarding Daydreamer, I wonder why T.S. has been publishing these pamphlety books of hers, which strike one as glorified minicomics, and not holding out for something more substantial–and, I’d imagine, more potentially successful.)

David Fiore didn’t like The Dark Knight Returns, which is unfortunate, but in his opening salvo on the book he’s compared Batman to Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz, which has me salivating like Francis Ford Coppola after three months in the Phillipine jungle. If this is going to be a pan, methinks it’ll be a whole fucking lot more worthwhile than your everday “Miller’s a fascist, Batman is corporate, fanboys are stupid, rinse, repeat” critique. Hooray!

T-minus one issue and counting before the Age of Austenpocalypse, and David Allison is looking at the most recent Grant Morrison New X-Men story arc with an eye towards how, and if, he’ll wrap it all up. It’s going to be a deeply weird and emotional experience for old Sean T., reading the last Morrison X-Men ish when it comes out in a few weeks. This title is pretty much single-handedly responsible for getting me back into comics after several years away (reading only a friend’s copies of Savage Dragon and Acme Novelty Library, and buying whatever Frank Miller produced). This magical mystery tour into funnybookland is why you’re reading this right now, of course. When Morrison leaves, an era will end–and not just for me, as it seems that the New Marvel Renaissance I’ve so enjoyed is winding down, too. Sigh. Anyway, Paul O’Brien doesn’t share David’s enthusiasm about the present arc, while Antipopper (if you can plow your way through the Marxist gobbledygook) offers a reason not to share David’s pessimism about future ones.

Finally, a note to Johnny B.: Deleting some of those sidebar graphics and promising an in-depth look at David Bowie? What, did I win the lotto?

The Return of the King has now grossed more than $1 billion. It’s the second highest-grossing motion picture ever.

If, by this time next week, I’ll be able to refer to “the Academy Award-winning director of Dead Alive,” I think I can die happy.

President Bush is lobbying to alter the Constitution to discriminate against gay people (“gay,” incidentally, being a term he cannot even bring himself to utter).

Andrew Sullivan tears this shameful assault on equality and civil rights apart, as well he should. I, for one, can no longer in good conscience vote to reelect this man.

Which is a problem.

A cursory glance at the last few days of posts by Charles Johnson is ample evidence, in my view, that we are indeed at war for the future of human civilization. Those who insist that we are not–to say nothing of those who think we are, and that we deserve to lose–will see the defeat of President Bush as a vindication of their policies. And I firmly believe that a vindication of their policies will lead us down the road to unprecedented disaster. Even a candidate like the appealing John Edwards, who has refused to tap into the self-defeating head-in-the-sand rage that was Howard Dean’s and is now John Kerry’s stock in trade (honestly in the first case, opportunistically in the second), will be viewed as a savior by the Michael Moores and the Noam Chomskys and the Ted Ralls and the Eric Altermans and the Atrioses and everyone else who thinks that the real catastrophe was not what was done to America on 9/11, but what America has done since.

Our enemies are watching, and waiting, and hoping. What now will they see this November? And what choices do we have of what to show them?

I think it’s going to be a damn heavy blogging week for old Sean T. Consider that a heads-up.

UPDATE: Those looking for the scoop behind managing editor Milo George’s ouster at the Comics Journal are advised to look at this TCJ.com messboard thread, which reposts an email sent by TCJ editor and publisher Gary Groth to the magazine’s freelancers. Groth asserts that George’s firing was not a policy decision, but a personal one: the two of them didn’t get along. (What’s that, you say? A personality conflict between Gary Groth and Milo George? I know, I know, I was shocked too.) It’s probably worth keeping this in mind when trying to predict what changes, if any, will be made under Dirk Deppey’s reign.

The big news of the last few days was that Erik Larsen has replaced Jim Valention as Publisher of Image Comics. This story seems to have more angles than a geodesic dome: The suspect nature of Newsarama’s coverage of the story; Erik Larsen’s subsequent debunking of some of the more lurid aspects of same; Rich Johnston’s round-up of rumored reasons for the palace coup, rumors Johnston claims are likely bogus. The upshot seems to be that Valentino’s ouster was less a matter of policy (i.e. not because of the exodus of independent studios and their lucrative retro tie-in titles, not because really good books are selling really poorly) than a matter of personality (I’ve heard tell that other, unpopular personnel at the company were also on the losing side of this corporate shuffle). Personally I know very little about the inner workings of the company or the personalities of those involved, but I will say that I think Erik Larsen is an extremely bright and forthright guy, whose tastes are more catholic and whose book is more intelligent than most people give him credit for. Now that he’s in control of a company that publishes a stable of titles including Powers, Invincible, The Walking Dead, Rex Mundi, Age of Bronze, A Distant Soil, and Savage Dragon, I’m truly interested to see where the Big I goes from here.

Speaking of Rich Johnston, his column is a strong one today, featuring juicy bits about the future of Marvel under the watchful eye of Hollywood honcho Avi Arad, the lasting bad blood over the execution of the Epic line, stories involving creators like Brian Azzarello, Jim Lee, John Byrne, and more. If you can put aside Rich’s plugs for his upcoming series (unless, of course, you’re dying to read a comic about The American Family by a wise-arse whose research consisted of watching The Sopranos, The Simpsons, The Addams Family and The Waltons), it’s an intriguing read.

Markisan Naso is on the gossip beat as well, chronicling an unseemly meltdown by New Frontier writer-artist Darwyn Cooke directed at Dark Knight Strikes Again writer-artist Frank Miller. My feelings about Frank are fairly well known, so it probably won’t surprise you whose side I’d take in this particular kerfuffle; I will simply say that getting this worked up because Miller apparently didn’t pay Superman and Robin (who, I might remind you, are not real people) the respect you feel they deserve does not bode well for people who are worried that a certain incredibly long homage to the Silver Age is going to end up being more than a little over-reverential. Also, claiming that the reaction to DK2 is going to make DC clamp down on risky creator-driven projects is silly for a variety of reasons, from the fact that DC has been notoriously risk-averse since time immemorial to the fact that, well, they’re in the process of publishing an incredibly long creator-driven homage to forgotten Silver Age characters like the Suicide Squad by a guy whose track record, while strong in a cultish sort of way, certainly doesn’t include things on the level of The Dark Knight Returns or Daredevil: Born Again or Sin City. But hey, you knew that already.

Typically strong Monday-morning action abounds at Alan David Doane’s blog. First there’s a 5 Questions inverview with Mother, Come Home creator Paul Hornschemeier. I finally got the trade paperback collection of that book this weekend, and it’s even stronger than I remembered. The interview is as good as you’d expect, especially when Hornschemeier discusses his view of his audience. It’s a very unique one in this day and age, I think.

Also at ADD’s is a plethora of short reviews, including one of the Chris Ware parody in Batton Lash’s Supernatural Law #39. Lash’s humor book is an acquired taste, but his dead-on rendition of Ware’s neurotically precise style is a real jaw-dropper, made even funnier by how it’s used in the service of a story that’s unmistakably un-Ware. Check it out if you get the chance.

UPDATE: If you’re looking for more punchy reviews, Johnny Bacardi has a swell bunch, including one that’s really making me eye Paul Grist’s Jack Staff. Mission accomplished, Johnny! (But can you cut back on all those graphics in your blogroll? Those things just kill my dialin’-up browser time and time again!)

Bill Sherman continues his invaluable outsiders’ exploration of manga, this time examining the bloggerly acclaimed title Planetes, another book I finally picked up this weekend. Sherman’s chops as a writer seem equalled only by his ability to pick out good manga books for us tyros to read.

N.B.: The artist formerly known as Big Sunny D, David Allison, has taken his fanboy-derived writings to a new group comics blog called Insult to Injury, and it’s a hoot so far. (It certainly contains more information about Grant Morrison & Cam Stewart’s upcoming Seaguy than you ever thought you’d need.) The Sunny still rises.

There’s another new comicsblog in town. called The Cultural Gutter, it focuses on the nerd-trash trifecta of video games, sci-fi, and comics. It’s beautifully designed, akin in spirit to Franklin Harris’s wonderful Pulp Culture columns, and features a swell introductory essay by comics correspondent Guy Leshinski. This one looks good. (Link courtesy of Chris Butcher.)

Kevin Melrose points to an interview with altcomix superstar Art Spiegelman by the San Jose Mercury News. I’m sure you’ve guessed I’m not looking forward to Spiegelman’s book on 9/11 (gee, do you suppose he thinks What’s Happened In America Since Then Is The Real Tragedy?), but his thoughts on the socio-critical acceptability of comics are vastly more optimistic than any I’ve ever seen from cartoonists in his position. I’m even more stunned to find myself thinking, “You know what? He’s right!” Comics are taken for granted as being part of the art/entertainment tapestry by a whole lot of clued-in people these days. I also think that Spiegelman’s fear about comics suddenly losing its Wild West flavor because of the attention of critics is ill-founded–unless, of course, you’re Art freaking Spiegelman, whose Maus has got to be the biggest blessing-curse for any comics creator in history.

Tim O’Neil links to a story of comics being used for a good cause–i.e. to fight against the death penalty in Missouri. (Registration required for this Kansas City Star article; simply use laexaminer@laexaminer.com as your email address and laexaminer as your password.) I think I agree with the skeptical former inmate quoted therein–comics doesn’t seem to be the best way to go about working on this. But then, I’m skeptical that political/editorial cartoons ever accomplish anything but preaching to the converted (Thomas Nast and Bill Maudlin excepted).

NeilAlien reviews the Comics Journal’s Steve Ditko issue, with all the brio you’d expect from the mysterious palindrome. He also mentions my involvement in the issue; I’m working on my own response to that, rest assured.

Rose Curtin and Steven Berg of Peiratikos continue their terrific blogging on Batman and Animal Man–just click on the above link and start scrolling.

Catching up with Ninth Art: Paul O’Brien decries the overwhelming sameness of Marvel’s pin-up covers. While I initially thought this policy was a good one, given how hideous Marvel’s covers were for years and years (and in that sense how perfectly reflective they were of the stuff between those covers), personally I agree with Steven Grant: Any good idea goes bad when no deviation from it is allowed. (See also Bill Jemas’s “No Flashbacks EVER” policy.) Alex Deuben says it’s not superheroes per se but the insularity of the industry that produces them that’s comics biggest concern–a worthwhile distinction given certain untenable opinions being advanced these days. Finally, Frank Smith recounts the career of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. This is a topic tackled with gusto by David Allison at Insult to Injury, too. (I just wish he’d commented on the underlying sense of Lovecraftian “cosmic horror”–that is to say, profound wrongness–that endures despite the comedy and the fisticuffs…)

Finally, Xaviar Xerexes of Comixpedia weighs in with an article about the comics blogosphere phenomenon. It’s a considered and insightful look at the different types of sights and the differing aims of their proprietors, and yours truly is quoted a couple times. However, I’ll admit that I was a little alarmed at the lockstep we all seem to be in regarding manga. What if the Newsarama posters are right, people? What if it is just a fad? Not since the political chattering classes universally predicted John Kerry’s demise in Iowa will so many look so silly for being so wrong!

In his post on issue 258 of the Comics Journal, NeilAlien says a whole lot of stuff, most of which I can’t really comment on because I still haven’t seen the issue. (I have seen my letter and the responses to it; more on that later, except to say now that in a couple of cases, Neil’s not far from the mark about them.) But one thing caught my eye:

There’s a conversation of artcomics people comparing themselves to other artcomics people. Yeah, because that’s not as much of an Outsiders Beware circle jerk as needing to know Hal Jordan’s origin story to appreciate New Frontier.

Uh, no. No, it really isn’t.

I think Neil’s responding to this post of mine, in which I take writer A. David Lewis to task for conflating the overwhelming amount of information needed to understand most superhero stories themselves with the overwhelming number of alternative/indie comics titles. But Neil’s doing a very similar thing here–he’s comparing material present in a story to material compiled as backround on the story-tellers. Quite simply, that’s apples an oranges. A proper comparison to the feature he’s talking about, which I’m assuming is Craig Thompson’s conversation with Gilbert Hernandez, is Frank Miller’s upcoming book of conversations with Will Eisner. Will that book make The Dark Knight Returns and The Spirit any easier or harder to follow? Of course not. Nor will Thompson & Beto’s dialogue make it tougher to understand Goodbye, Chunky Rice or Poison River.

(A fairer comparison would be to say that you need to know a lot about Luba’s backstory to understand Poison River, just as you need to know a lot about Hal’s to understand New Frontier. But Beto’s Palomar opus, which by the way is nearly singular in the whole of altcomix, has the advantage of being written by one man and therefore subject to one man’s vision and rules, rather than constantly being rewritten and contradicted by a rotating cast of characters. I’m sorry, but in terms of comprehensibility, the advantage lies with your average alt-comic over your average superhero tale. Which of course isn’t to say that superhero stories don’t have their own advantages…)

In a film theory class I took my sophomore year at Yale, one of the films on the syllabus was Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. We watched it, we enjoyed it, and that’s no surprise. And when we began to discuss it, we naturally focused on the famous “Vertigo Shot”–that weird camera effect produced by simultaneously tracking back and zooming in, used in Vertigo to convey Scottie’s paralyzing fear of heights. (You’ve also seen it used in Jaws (Chief Brody sees the shark in the crowded water), The Fellowship of the Ring (Frodo senses the Ringwraith coming down the road), the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller (Michael gets zombie-fied), and a whole bunch Nexium commercials (some sap with acid reflux panics while being told about the effects a delicious meal will have on them).)

“What’s going on in that shot?” our professor asked. We weren’t really sure what she was after. I mean, there’s the technical trickery behind it, but other than that, isn’t it obvious? It’s a point-of-view shot that shows how scared Scottie is. “Is anyone here scared of heights?” she then asked; I raised my hand, as did several others. “When you feel vertigo, is this what you see?” Uhh, well, no, not exactly… “Of course not. When you are scared, your eyes don’t suddenly work differently. This image is impossible to see without a camera. It doesn’t and can’t represent anything in nature. And yet you all knew exactly what it was supposed to represent–the terror of vertigo.” And what’s more, she went on to argue, it represents the spiraling chaos of Scottie’s life (connected as it is to the ever-present spiral motif of the film’s mise-en-scene), and his fixation on a point (the zoom/Madeleine) and his inability to actually reach that point (the track-back), and indeed by its very impossibility suggests the fundamental wrongness of Scottie’s life.

All that meaning, all that power, would have been lost if Hitchcock had eschewed spectacle for realism.

When Tim O’Neil argues that there is something inherently silly or stupid or not worth taking seriously about the superhero genre, he’s committing the self-same sin that Hitchcock, thank God, refused to commit. Tim sets up a whole lot of problems with superheroes that are, indeed, problems, and are in fact problems I myself decry all the time–the business-motivated need for “trademark servicing” with characters who have outlived their usefulness and depth, the ossified conventions and continuity that have become impenetrable for the layman, the bizarre domination by the genre of the entire American comics industry, the way talented creators occasionally eschew more artistically rewarding and personal products for phoned-in cash-in runs on supercomics, and so forth. But quite obviously, none of these are inherent problems, as Jim Henley points out, and as such we needn’t go into them here. And as far as those ossified conventions go, Dave Fiore reminds us that all fiction is conventional. No, the real “inherent” aspect of superhero stories that O’Neil identifies is that there aren’t any superheroes in real life. People don’t act that way, he says. And God help us if this is our barometer for whether a work of art is any good, I say.

I understand the root of O’Neil’s critique. One can accept all manner of fantastical contrivances in fiction, provided the patterns of human behavior depicted in those fictions are recognizable to us. This is why, when talking about Star Wars (which I love), the fact that Princess Leia should be paralyzed with grief after the destruction of her entire planet is a much more cogent critique than the fact that you can’t really hear explosions in space. We easily suspsend disbelief on technicalities. We don’t on the fundamentals.

I happen to think that The Superhero (and The Supervillain) isn’t as alien a behavioral pattern as O’Neil and other anti-superhero critics believe. Costume and pageantry have been a major part of human society forever and a day, and have often gone hand in hand with feats of strength and athletic prowess (football uniforms do a lot more than protect the players and enable the spectators to tell the two teams apart), public performance and “stardom” or “idol/hero” behaviors (look at the career of David Bowie and the entire glam movement, just for example), and even actual heroism/crime-fighting/battle against evil (aside from bright red firemen’s uniforms and the shiny badges of the police, take a look at the history of military dress). On the flipside, it’s impossible to produce a more theatrical and ambitious comic-book supervillain than actual, real-life supervillain Adolf Hitler; and as Jim once again reminds us, there currently lives (or lived) a man who dresses up in consciously evocative garb and heads a worldwide conspiracy dedicated to global conquest, and does so, moreover, because God had told him to. And if you want analogous aliases and code names, look at hip-hop. And if you want analagous secret identities, look at intelligence agents and narcs. Quite simply, superheroes aren’t as far from reality as people think.

But again, all this is really just a dodge. Even if you readily accept the use outlandish “unrealistic” powers as standard sci-fi/fantasy devices, and even if you point out the countless similarities of superhero behavior to real-life human behavior, the fact remains, there is no real-life superhero. A character like Batman could exist in our world. There are certainly people with enough money, intelligence, and drive to build a vigilante empire from the ground up, as did Bruce Wayne. But no one has done so. And this, in the end, is supposed to deflate the entire genre.

I say, so what?

In opera, people act in the absolute broadest strokes and sing songs. People don’t behave that way in real life. And yet from opera we receive profound illustrations of love, lust, jealousy, hatred, and despair, that affect us in ways that more realistic theatre cannot. In film, cameras do things that the human eye cannot possibly do. And yet in film we are sometimes able to “see” things that are pefectly true, even if the way we see them is false. In superhero stories, people costume themselves, and fly, and fight for their beliefs as presented in the starkest way possible. And yet in superhero stories, those costumes, those fights, those explosions, those battles, those impossibly high stakes, those impossibly fit and explosive and exploded bodies, those baroque plots of conquest and single-minded pursuits of justice free us from the bonds of quotidian reality and set us on a plane of pure imagination and morality–a theatre of self-sacrifice, vengeance, justice, self-definition, madness, megalomania, duty, honor, glory, loyalty, betrayal, power, impotence, bravery, cowardice, ethics, love of man, denial of self, love of self, denial of man, cruelty, kindness, villainy, heroism.

For those whose imaginations have not failed them, the spectacle can be more real than reality.

As Dave Fiore points out, those who characterize even the best superhero stories as “escapism” miss the point not just of those stories, but of fiction itself. “Real” and “true” are not synonymous, and to claim that a genre is “inherently uninteresting” because it refuses to conflate the two terms is itself inherently wrong. If the school of thought propagated by the Comics Journal, for whom Tim is a writer, will be remembered–and I think it will, mostly for the good–this enormous failure of imagination, given birth when a justifiable antipathy toward the industry’s excesses took precedence over honest and ongoing critical inquiry, will be one of its legacies. And it’s a legacy I am both duty-bound and proud to combat.

I ranted a bit today. Maybe it was something I ate, I dunno. Anyway, there’s very little in terms of bad feelings about comics that new issues of Morrison’s New X-Men and Bendis’s Daredevil can’t cure. And with said issues tucked neatly into little mylar sleeves and resting comfortably on the back of my bed, atop several collections of Love & Rockets and various Ultimate titles, it’s once more into the funnybook breach for me!

It would appear that with Dirk Deppey gone, Tim O’Neil and Kevin Melrose are the linkblogs to watch. Consider that an official endorsement, just like the one Al Gore gave to Howard Dean! No, wait. Not like that one. Anyway, Tim points out this important Arkansas anti-censorship decision, and Kevin guides us to writer Robert Kirkman’s thoughts on rising from the ashes of Epic.

The third member of the linkblog triumvirate, Graeme McMillan, may well be in a snarkier mood than I was today. His running chronicle of the fans’ reaction to the big leaks coming out of Marvel over the past couple of days is priceless. Click on the above link and start scrolling up.

But wait, there’s more! David Fiore, the comicsphere’s preeminent thinkblogger, is doing the linkblogging bit as well! And doing it quite well, actually, pointing to a lovely tribute to Dirk Deppey’s late Journalista blog by Steven Wintle, among other things. (David’s linkblogging entry also has the bonus feature of taking a few well-deserved potshots at Rolling Stone‘s appallingly facile and glib “critic,” Rob Sheffield. However, it loses points for referring to Courtney love without using the phrase “talentless starfucker.” You win some, you lose some, David!)

At last, the dark underbelly of Reed Richards will be exposed! Which is hard to do, because he can, like, stretch it away from you, so it’s tough to lift his shirt up.

J.W. Hastings finishes his long-delayed Moore vs. Miller critical grudge match by comparing the ABC line and Watchmen to Dark Knights 1&2, and believe me, the resulting fireworks were worth the wait. There are so many good quotes that if I were to start posting them I’d end up reprinting the whole damn piece. J.W.’s not going to settle this issue for anyone except himself–this is just one of those questions people will always be asking, akin to “Jaime or Beto?” or “Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards?”–but for one side, at least, he nails it all down. If you like either creator you owe it to yourself to read this.

J.W. (aka the Forager) also puts together a solid syllabus for a course on “Comic Book Politics.” (For the impetus behind this, click here.) Seems to me that you’ve got a couple of options here: You can go with comics that specifically and primarily tackle political crises–by your Spiegelmans and Satrapis and Saccos–or you can emphasize books that use comic-book conventions (primarily of the superhero type) as fuel for satire or cautionary tale–your Moores and Millers and Morrisons. A blend is probably your best bet, and that’s what J.W. comes up with. I’d take his class.

Dave Intermittent submits his two cents about the Brian Hibbs manga/bookstores column which I wrote about the other day. Dave, too, is skeptical of Hibbs’s analysis; he points out that Hibbs uses static information to assess a dynamic entity. Go take a look.

(I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out that a few errors in my piece on Hibbs’s article have been brought to my attention. For example, there are Pantheon-published books in the Bookscan list on which he based his argument–beats me how I missed ’em. Also, it was weak on my part to accuse Brian of superherocentricity, as visitors to his store could likely tell you. In my defense, I’ll say I did it because he started talking about the impact of seriality on sales, and all of a sudden visions of David Fiore began dancing in my head, and superheroes were all I could think about.)

Shawn Fumo points out that manga is now successful enough in bookstores to warrant endcaps (those displays at the end of the shelf that really stand out). Anecdotally, I’ll back this up–in fact, the Waldenbooks in the local mall has their manga endcap on display right at the entrance to the mall, next to the “bestsellers 20% off” one. Could the rumors be true? Is manga selling well in bookstores? (Link courtesy of the suddenly less intermittent Dave Intermittent, who also questions the oft-heard rumor that George Clooney scrapped a Nick Fury movie deal because he was offended by Garth Ennis’s comic-book version of same. You know those Hollywood types–so controversy-averse!)

Last and most definitely not least, Jim Henley writes up a plethora of recent comics releases. Among the books up for review are Farel Dalrymple’s gorgeous and weird Pop Gun War, blogosphere favorite Sleeper, and the frustratingly frustrating Morales & Bachalo Captain America. Cap is a character that continues to vex both Jim and myself–we’re convinced that great things can be done with him, but we’re just not sure how. (For my money, Millar’s Cap is your best bet these days–no, scratch that: Bendis’s version of Millar’s Cap, as appearing now in Ultimate Six, is your best bet, since Bendis lacks Millar’s desire to giggle to his friends, “See, what I did there is I made Captain America an asshole!” Of course, asshole is in the eye of the beholder, as is kickassitude, which I feel the Ultimate Captain America has in spades.) The interesting thing, though, is that while Jim, a dovish libertarian, and I, a bleeding-heart interventionist, are not nuts about the book, J.W. Hastings, who quite comfortably identifies himself as a conservative (I think), really likes the Morales Cap run so far. (Morales lost me in the second issue, when the boilerplate soldiers started talking, as well as when Captain America, who I might remind you is a human weapon who walks around wearing the American flag, expressed reticence about intimidating the enemy.) Diversity of opinion, folks. Ain’t America grand?

1) Rumor has it that the latest issue of the Comics Journal (#258–The Ditko Issue) features my letter about the trouble with News Watch and some other aspects of how the Journal works, as well as lengthy responses from (former, alas) managing editor Milo George, news editor Mike Dean, and other writers and staff members. I’m excited to read it and respond, but unfortunately I have no access to a copy, ’cause I have no access to the kind of comics shop that would have one to sell me. I’m working on rectifying this, but I thought I should note, since people have been asking, that I haven’t seen the ish at all yet. I’ll keep you posted.

2) Readers of Brian Hibbs’s column about bookstores and manga, and of this blog’s and Dave Intermittent’s responses to same, should check out Hibbs’s response to Dave’s response. Brian had actually written a similar email to me about my own piece, but I wasn’t quite sure if I had the O.K. to publicly post it (along with my retorts, apologies, etc., though you can find a couple of the latter here), so I didn’t. His message to Dave covers many of the same bases. (Brian, if it is okay for me to reprint our exchange, just let me know…)

A lot of things floating around Ye Olde Comics Internet today just made me kind of sigh, quietly, to myself.

First, we got a look at the cover for the upcoming Joss Whedon/John Cassaday X-Men book, Astonishing X-Men, and whaddya know, but everything New is old again. Yes, it’s revival production of The Pajama Game for Scott, Hank, Emma, Logan, and Jean. (And yes, I said “Jean.” Looks like they’ll be hitting that big red RESET button on Grant Morrison’s run after all.) To paraphrase Yoda, I guess Marvel must unlearn what it has learned. (Caveat: It’s still a lovely cover, and I’m sure it’ll be a fun book, etc etc etc, but this couldn’t feel more like a step backwards if they’d called the book Stepping-Backwards X-Men.)

Second, there’s this Stuart Moore column, which says among other things that people aren’t in showbiz for the money (I’ll just say he must know of a different class of Harvard Lampoon alums than I did), and the following:

If you like Sleeper or Spider-Girl, the best thing to do is to tell people how great it is and why — not to try and trick the company into thinking it can make a fortune off the book if only it would publish the thing in manga-size paperbacks. The company knows whether it

The comics blogosphere says goodbye and godspeed to its father:

Bill Sherman

Johnny Bacardi

Big Sunny D

Alan David Doane

Franklin Harris

Jim Henley

Eve Tushnet

John Jakala

David Fiore

Graeme McMillan

Kevin Melrose

Tim O’Neil

Tegan Gjovaag

The Comics Treadmill

Sean T. Collins

Now all we’ve got left is Our Mother. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to NeilAlien….

I’m happy to report that the passing of Journalista hasn’t stopped the blogosphere from cranking out some pretty damn strong material over the last few days.

Tim O’Neil gets a Purple Heart for Blogging Bravery: He’s stepped into the void created by Dirk’s absence and churned out a ton of newsworthy links. Tim, my only suggestion is to note the name of the publication you’re linking to when you’re writing up the link, but otherwise, terrific work.

Among the stories Tim links to is the good news that Michigan’s Attorney General has opted to refrain from enforcing the state’s censorious regulation regarding the display of “adult” publications in stores until the case wends its way through the courts. On the bad-news front, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft continues his quest to make sure that no one ever gets randy in this country ever again by bringing an outspoken anti-porn activist into the Justice Department. (And y’know, I was just thinking that what this cash-strapped, militarily engaged, angrily divided country really needs right now is a good old-fashioned culture war!)

Tim (yes, the guy’s on fire) also weighs in with a substantial critique of Milligan & Allred’s X-Statix. I think the series’ high-quality days lasted longer than Tim does–for my money it was great up through and including the point when Guy came to terms with his feelings for and grief over Edie and finally got together with Venus; that’s kind of the end of the story, though, I think–but it’s still worth considering what Tim’s got to say about the book, and whether the aborted Princess Diana storyline would have been any better had Diana actually been in it.

Kevin Melrose also seems intent on working the link-fu. Just click on the fella’s name above and scroll up.

Steven Berg continues his compelling Dark Knight Returns blogging. His two most recent posts focus on Batman’s relationship to his ubervillains–especially the Joker and the ersatz nemesis the Mutant Leader–and how they enable Batman/Bruce Wayne to operate on a transcendental plane of pure justice. Oh, it’s much smarter than I’m making it sound–go check it out.

Steven’s coblogger Rose, meanwhile, goes after the editing, or lack thereof, of Craig Thompson’s Blankets. Personally, I neither noticed nor (therefore) minded any typos or grammatical errors in Thompson’s book, but there is a point to be made here: James Joyce had an editor, but many alternative cartoonists do not.

J.W. Hastings, aka The Forager, looks back on a year of blogging, and tosses in a promise to finally post the essay on Squadron Supreme he promised ages ago. I’m still waiting, J.W.!

J.W. also hands in a slew of tight little comics reviews, including one of the new Marvel Knights Fantastic Four series 4. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if this is an accurate assessment, but it’s tough to argue with this Forager quote:

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has bought into the myth that what makes the FF special is that they are a family. No: what makes them special is that they are a family who have been granted super powers by cosmic rays and spend their time travelling to other dimensions and defending the world from nasty, God-like aliens.

Testify!

Speaking of killer quotes, submitted for your approval is Chris Puzak‘s lengthy critique of how much sense it makes that, in the Marvel Universe, superpowered mutants are hated and feared, whereas everyone else who can fly or light on fire or throw cars around is a-okay:

But let

This is awesome. Adults who love one another and are serious about their commitment to living a life together are getting married. Call me crazy, but somehow the threat this poses to Civlization As We Know It escapes me.

Here’s a question: What does it say about our society that loving couples getting married is an act of civil disobedience? I don’t think what it says is very good, that’s for sure. But it speaks extremely well for the bravery and spirit of the couples themselves, who realize their love is important enough for them to seize their right to legally enshrine it.

You largely go through groups thinking, well this lot’s alright but it only uses major seventh chords and I want to be in a group that uses ninths and then you get in another group and you’re thinking ahead to a group that uses thirteenths, but this group uses everything that I know about music. That’s great, but on the other hand there’s no one left for me to work with after this one and the logical step is not to be a musician after this one, which is frightening. So hopefully it’ll go for a long time.

There’s a number of groups, fewish number, but a number of groups that are on the precipice in a way, beyond which there’s a blackness, a kind of void, and they’re peering into it hoping that it may go this way, but knowing that it may not go this way at all, it may be completely wrong.

I feel that King Crimson now is one of those groups.

–Bill Bruford, drummer, King Crimson, as quoted in the liner notes to KC’s 1973 album Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

This is not the kind of thing you hear from members of Good Charlotte.

Sorry to keep bothering you about this annoying nuclear-proliferation thing, but I thought it should be pointed out that China was involved at the most fundamental levels, too.

So that gives us a nuclear smuggling ring involving Axis of Evil members North Korea, Iraq, and Iran, AofE junior auxilliary members China, Pakistan, Libya, and Syria, “moderate Muslim nations” like Dubai and Malaysia, and amoral companies from Old Europe, created and successfully executed under the “watchful eye” of international institutions like the UN and IAEA. Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but could those bumbling, tragically disaster-prone and wrong-about-everything neocons actually have been, y’know, on to something here? No, you’re right, that’s crazy talk. Back to talking about Vietnam, everyone.

I spent my Valentine’s Day alone. Actually, I’m spending the whole weekend alone. Amanda is visiting her family in Colorado and I stayed behind to work on things here on the homefront.

What I’m trying to say is that I miss my wife a lot!

Now that Dirk is gone, who’s around to respond to articles like this?

In Brian Hibbs’s latest column, the reknowned and respected retailer attempts to debunk the optimistic appraisal of comics’ success in bookstores, and of the power and potential of manga. Without even going in-depth into Hibbs’s numbers, I found quite a few points that simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.

1) The Bookscan sales-stat list from which Hibbs derives much of his argument doesn’t have a single book from Pantheon on it. Not even Persepolis, for pete’s sake, which I can’t imagine did worse than, say, Death of Superman that week. To me this throws the entire number-crunching enterprise into question, not to mention Hibbs’s specific point about artcomix not doing well in bookstores–a point which most artcomix publishers would be happy to refute.

2) I have never, ever, ever before heard a businessman say “the secret to success is ignoring the desires of teenage consumers,” yet this is what Hibbs is telling us. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. I suppose teenagers are “fickle,” but tweenagers and teenagers are also the people responsible for rock and roll, hip hop, blockbuster movies, and the Harry Potter publishing phenomenon. And we’re supposed to say “Hey, let’s not put all our eggs in this basket”? What basket are we supposed to put them in–the dwindling, ageing, insular, 20-30-40-50something superhero audience?

3) Hibbs haphazardly conflates manga format with manga stylistic tropes. For a while, he starts acting like the pro-manga people in the biz want to see big-eyed Superman comics, which simply isn’t true–Marvel’s ill-fated attempts to duplicate manga style seem to have put paid to that notion. Moreover, I don’t think citing ElfQuest stats is an ironclad barometer of what manga-formatted American comics can sell. What if those really good, perenially strong-selling American books Hibbs touts as proof that manga/bookstores aren’t where it’s at–Sandman, Ultimate Spider-Man, Love & Rockets, Transmetropolitan, Bone, and so forth–were put in manga format and sold in bookstores? I doubt sales would decrease, that’s for sure. And naturally Hibbs doesn’t mention the true advantages of manga format–looks more like a book, you get more story for your buck, kids are already used to buying comics that way. This has nothing to do with Asian fetishism–it just makes good market sense. (This mish-mash argument also gave rise, I think, to Hibbs’s dodge of the issue in saying “well, why don’t we ape Calvin & Hobbes instead?”)

4) Hibbs constructs everything as an either/or proposition, when no one is saying “we must abandon the DM for the bookstores right now!” or “we must abandon western-style comics for manga right now!” Even the late, great Dirk Deppey repeatedly said that he wants the DM to succeed, because if it crashes, the whole of the American medium crashes. I mean, duh. Bookstores and manga may be part of the salvation equation, but we’re talking about methodical expansion into these markets, not abandonment of the existing model altogether. Hibbs is arguing with a straw man.

5) Speaking of straw men, who besides the PR people at DC and Marvel actually go around saying that movie successes increase comics sales?

6) Hibbs also ignores the biggest point, I think: Comics have been a sizeable sales phenomenon in bookstores for only three or four years, whereas the DM has been around for decades now. I think it’s safe to say that in terms of non-superhero comics in the DM as it’s currently run, we’ve hit the ceiling years ago. There is a potential for growth of other genres and types in the bookstores that the DM simply cannot match, and as evidence we can cite years and years and years of DM behavior towards artcomix, manga, eurocomics, and non-superhero genre comics. No one is saying bookstores are a sure thing, but it seems safe to say that as it stands now, the DM is an un-sure thing for anything but the spandex set. Also, no one is saying bookstore sales dwarf that of the DM in terms of American comics–quite the opposite in fact. Of course American comics sell better in the Direct Market right now–decades of existence have taught comics fans that this is the only place to go to find them. But that’s right now, and most publishers and creators who aren’t the Big Two aren’t happy with their DM sales. Bookstores have only seriously been selling comics for a few years, and already they’re on a comparable footing on many titles. The point is that there’s room for expansion there, and there quite simply is none in the DM as it stands right now.

7) When Hibbs coyly starts doing the whole “is it a fad? too early to tell” thing, he ignores that unlike other comics-industry boom/busts, this one is content driven, not speculation driven. No alternate covers, no series that come out with one or two single issues and then disappear, no one scrambling to buy the first issue of the next Spawn or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles–these are people (teenagers! kids! female teenagers and kids!!!) buying comics in order to read them. Yes, I suppose that could still be a fad–there’s an unmistakeable element of Japanophilia that strikes me as being faddish–but when kids are actually reading the books, instead of just looking at them and filing them away, these “fads” tend to last. Look at the fantasy boom in young adult literature in recent years. His Dark Materials, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and of course Harry Potter have essentially reinvigorated the entire book industry and created a generation of readers. It’s shocking to me that a leading retailer in comics is telling us that it may well be in our own interest to ignore a comparable surge in legitimate interest in this art form.

8) As for the anecdotal evidence Hibbs cites that says manga sales are akin to periodical sales, well, this hardly merits a response (beyond “oh yeah? Well, I have anecdotal evidence that says they’re NOT! So there!”). But it strikes me as being an unmistakeable product of supeherocentricity. I suppose the logic is this: Since many manga series end at some point, after that ending no one’s interested in buying the books anymore. On the other hand, superhero series go on and on and on forever, meaning that there’s always a new audience getting into new issues of the series and tracking down old collections. But what real relationship is there between the ongoing Daredevil series, say, and the Frank Miller/Bill Sienkewicz collections focused on that character? Do current issues of Superman fuel purchases of John Byrne’s Man of Steel? Moreover, Maus and From Hell and Watchmen have been “over” as series for years and years now, yet people are still buying them. Hell, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and The Lord of the Rings have been “over” for years, and people are still buying them. Ditto Cheers, Monty Python, The Family Guy, Buffy, etc., and yet people are still buying their DVD collections. The point is, manga is a periodical only in terms of its publishing schedule. The information contained in manga does not rely on timeliness for its impact–it’s storytelling, like any other comic. As long as people are able to take a look at the book and say “hmm, that looks interesting,” people will buy that book. I’m sure sales are better when the books first come out–for this we should stop the presses? This is true for nearly everything at this point in this front-loaded entertainment-industry world. Anecdotal evidence from comics retailers about their audience–not exactly indicative of the rest of the world, in case you hadn’t gathered–is insufficent to write off an entire nation’s comics output as, basically, a temporary sales blip, or a flash in the pan.

Whoa.

If you’ve followed the comics blogosphere at all (and presumably you have, or you wouldn’t be here), you’ve seen first-hand how influential, invigorating and inspiring the work of Dirk Deppey has been to those of us following in his footsteps. (Or toiling in his shadow. Or picking at his leftovers. Hey, whatever works.) I’ve said repeatedly that it took Dirk’s relentless and comprehensive blogging to give the comicsphere a focal point, and enable it to reach the level it’s at today. I’ve got no idea what things will be like without a daily visit to Journalista to tie the whole enterprise together, but I’m sure we’ll be the poorer for his absence. Free speech issues here and abroad; editorial cartoon kerfuffles; mainstream-media successes and disasters; manga and its discontents; the bookstores and the direct market; legends and up-and-comers; the Big Five and the SPX set; brilliant and thought-provoking reporting and op-ed pieces; the desire, and the talent, to give comics the journalism it deserves–such was the beat of Dirk Deppey, blogger. He’ll be missed.

The only consolation is that now the most prestigious comics magazine in the country will be in his eminently capable hands.

But for that to happen, Milo George had to be fired, and that’s a bad thing. Milo and I have had our differences over the past few years: As a young upstart making my bones on the Journal’s message board, I found his rhetoric unnecessarily confrontational, occasionally dismissive, and sometimes downright abusive–which was a shame, since it reflected public perception of the magazine all too well. But in time I got to know Milo pretty well. As he explained his decisions and policies to me, I grew to like and respect him and his work more and more. I should have known this might be the case, though, considering I enjoyed the hell out of every issue I bought during his reign. Even where I still disagreed with his approach or vision for the magazine, I appreciated his passion for the medium and his desire to produce the best magazine possible despite an array of uncontrollable and adverse conditions. He tended to be on the right side of Comics Journal conflicts, and I think that the issues produced during his tenure will serve as a testament to this for a long time to come.

I hope that Dirk will be able to build on Milo’s successes, and that he’ll be given the freedom to change what needs changing (and there’s still quite a bit of that). I’ve got a lot of confidence that he will, of course–he’s one of us.

Good luck, fellas!

Do Josh Marshall and his big-media counterparts have any idea what a bunch of petty buffoons they look like pecking away at the “Bush in the National Guard” story day after day after tedious day? Hint: As much of a bunch of petty buffoons as the people now going after John Kerry for being “inconsistent” about Vietnam, or for being in a photograph with Jane Fonda, or whatever.

There are several offensive things about the way both sides are now gleefully rehashing Vietnam, the most offensive being that we are currently at war, for Christ’s sake. That’s an order of magnitude more important than endlessly battling over the fact that–shock! horror!–two guys may have behaved in a way that would indicate they were less than enthusiastic about the Vietnam War 35 years ago.

It’s also offensive that people are still behaving as though there was a right and a wrong side to that war and the culture war it engendered. Look, it was a difficult time. I wasn’t even there and I could tell you that. Provided you weren’t giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or conversely deliberately mowing down civilians, I pass no judgements on your conduct way back then. Everyone did what they felt they had to do. If in your heart you felt it was your duty to go and to fight, good. If in your heart you felt it was your duty to protest, good. If in your heart you felt you didn’t really want to do either, good. If you used your connections to get you out of the issue entirely, good. If you told the draft board you were physically unfit and spent the next few years skiing, good. If you went to fight and won a ton of medals and then came home and told people the whole thing was a disaster, good. If you went to college in England and thanked your local government in writing for getting you out of the draft, good. If you went and fought and came home and thought you were doing something good for America and the world, good.

Obviously, in a perfect world, the people and armed forces of the United States would have enthusiastically supported a popular democratic resistance to a Communist invasion and guerilla insurgency, and defeated it, and Vietnam wouldn’t have to have suffered under Communism for decades. But neither the people nor the military were supporting the war, and the regime we were fighting on behalf of was not democratic, and the Vietnamese people (in the main) supported the Communists, and in response we blew the hell not just out of North and South Vietnam but every other country on that peninsula. In the present time, ignoring the horrible fate of that country following the Communist victory is a mistake. But so is recharacterizing the War as some sort of noble struggle for truth, justice, and the American way, all of which were in incredibly short supply during the length of the conflict. The war was not fought in such a way that it was a clear-cut battle between totalitarianism (them) and freedom (us)–it was more like a battle between improbably popular but self-evidently murderous and eventually disastrous totalitarianism (them) and well-intentioned but mendacious and horribly executed and eventually deliberately destructive rule by force (us). The fact is that as far as everyday people are concerned, I can understand nearly any viewpoint espoused or tactic taken by American citizens during that time, with only a very few exceptions. It was complex, extremely complex. And more importantly, it’s now over. Let it be over.

And what makes this even more offensive is that the Left has suddenly “discovered” its admiration for military service and begun making hay out of draft-dodging accusations. The hypocrisy is simply breathtaking, considering how they (rightly) defended former President Clinton and former fruntrunner Dean by saying that such accusations were stupid, pointless, divisive, and wrong. (For evidence, look at how stupid the Republicans look for calling Kerry a pinko due to his anti-war activities pre- and post- his tour of duty.) In fact, this is the kind of thing that has led me to refer to the Left as “they” rather than “we,” which not three years ago I would have said, and proudly.

I’m just sick of schadenfreude trumping integrity and ethics in politics. Any kind of attack is unfair, until attacking the other side in that manner will score you some points, at which point anything goes. Whether it’s Vietnam, or affairs, or the way opponents of the Drug War fell all over themselves saying Rush Limbaugh should have the book thrown at him, we’re embarrassing ourselves, and we’ve got bigger things to worry about.

Enough, enough, enough.

My computer melted down the other day. It’s okay now. I’ll be back shortly.

Remember how I just said that the Bush Administration is pitting liberal hawks’ liberalism against their hawkishness?

“BUSH TO DEFINE MARRIAGE: President to endorse constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.”

“Lawmakers who want to appear to be tough on broadcast smut aired on TV and radio also are likely to push for amendments to Upton’s bill. There is talk of amendments that would bring cable programming into the broadcast indecency rubric…” (talk which FCC chairman Michael Powell just echoed during his address to the Senate hearing committee.)

Had enough yet?