More on SPX, including an -ahem- spirited take on a certain political cartoonist, from The Missus.
Jim Henley on Blankets. A pretty even-handed, largely negative take. Jim, I think a lot of your confusion over whether this is supposed to be read as autobio or fiction stems from the “novel” appellation on the cover, which was a marketing tool and not a creative decision; there’s also the general reluctance of many altcomix autobiographers to label their stuff fact rather than fiction. (If you think Craig Thompson’s been evasive on the issue, you should try Phoebe Gloeckner on for size!)
Big Sunny D on reading right-to-left manga. Personally, I thought that my occasional lapses in properly reading the book actually enhanced my appreciation of the overall page layout structure–you take in the totality of the page, rather than a panel at a time.
Eve Tushnet reviews a whole bunch of comics, including Alan Moore’s oldie dystopian-hero epic V for Vendetta and more recent super-cop dramedy Top Ten.
Eve, I think a goodly chunk of the appeal of Top Ten is how very different it is from pretty much everything else Moore has done–from both his capital-S Serious work like Watchmen, V4V and From Hell, and his seemingly endless string of goofy hyperreferential superhero pastiches, including all his work for Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, and the bulk of his own America’s Best line. (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though more complex by virtue of its encyclopaedic references to Victorian genre fiction, is in a similar vein.) My advice would be to pick up Volume 2, which is really just a continuation of Volume 1 and should have been published in a big edition with its antecedent as Top Ten: The First Season.
As for V for Vendetta, I think the problem here is the same one that, for a lot of people, besets Blankets–where do we draw the line between the opinions of the author and those of the protagonist? The line could be seen as blurrier for Blankets as it is an autobiographical work, but I think we all know our feelings and beliefs can change radically between high school and post-college; the extent to which Craig the Author currently holds the same “she was an angel” beliefs that Craig the Character attests to is something we’re all forced to puzzle out. Similarly, I find V for Vendetta’s “all fascism is bad, but some fascism is less bad than others” endorsement of kidnapping, murder and terrorism provided it’s against The Man to be somewhat troublesome. In that regard I suppose the book could be seen as an immature work, especially compared to the more considered exploration of the use of violence to affect the flow of history in Watchmen and From Hell.
Courtesy of reader Shawn Fumo, here’s an intelligent post on the Comicon message board about What a Manga Fan Wants. The writer emphasizes storytelling, characterization, and price, while (rightly) advising against American attempts to imitate manga art and (wrongly) discounting the impact of the manga format. The thing is, of course, that without the efficient book-style format, the price that the writer touts wouldn’t be achievable.
Courtesy of ADD, here’s cartoonist Scott Mills telling his critics that they’re right about his work, and announcing that he’ll be taking something of a sabbatical in order to hone his skills. I’m unfamiliar with Mills’s work, but I’ve seen him held up by many people in many places as the example of Team Comics boosterism enabling well-connected cartoonists to produce weak work. I’ll echo Alan’s sentiment that this was an impressive bit of self-evaluation to undergo–much less to post about on the message board that’s been the prime source of hostility towards the self-evaluater.
Finally, Dirk Deppey produces one of his best rants yet about the sad state of the Direct Market, this time focusing on its inability to cater to or even accomodate non-traditional comics fans (i.e. anyone who isn’t male and white) and responding to DM retailers’ cries of abandoment by companies who offer their wares elsewhere by saying “What the hell else did you expect?” Dirk’s right, as usual, about the DM in both regards. As far as the latter goes, I’ve definitely heard complaints first-hand from folks who feel betrayed by comics companies, anime distributors, even toymakers who–get this–are taking their products to where the customers are–namely record stores, video stores, electronics stores, Hot Topics, and other stores that one could find in malls (you know, those places where people go to shop a lot).