Just came across this fascinating round-table discussion featuring Rutgers professor James Turner Johnson, reporter/activist (and Seanieblog favorite) Christopher Hitchens, and about a dozen other prominent columnists and journalists about just war theory, jihad, the UN, terrorism, international law, Catholic pacifism, Iraq, and the difference between acquiring information on a topic and becoming educated about it. Long, but well worth your time.

Hey, he said it, not me! According to Newsarama, Marvel has announced that it’s gotten over its reservations about having next year’s Free Comic Book Day take place in May, as it has the past two years, despite the lack of a comic-themed movie to coincide with the event.

For those who don’t know, Free Comic Book Day is an industry-wide attempt to drum up new readership by giving away free copies of (ostensibly) their most new-reader-friendly or mainstream-appealing comic books on a particular Saturday in comic shops nationwide. No one seems to be certain whether or not this has actually been effective: Usually there’s anecdotal evidence of new faces, particularly children’s, in the shops on FCBD, but as far as I know there’s little proof that this has created repeat business aside from the general rise in direct-market comics sales over the past few years, which could be attributable to any number of things.

Personally, I think Quesada is right to want to hold out until a comic-book movie can do most of the event’s publicity for it. Actually, I’m not sure he was even wrong about this year’s FCBD, which he wanted to be held in June to coincide with the release of The Hulk, rather than in May to go along with the release of X-Men 2. In retrospect everyone’s mocking the idea, since X2 did much better in its own terms than Hulk did, but I think it’s important to remember several things:

1) Everyone knows that the Hulk is a comic-book character. The amount of people aware of the funnybook versions of the X-Men is much smaller. In terms of comic-book awareness, the Hulk wins.

2) More kids have off school in June than in May. I know the event’s held on a Saturday, but I think that “summer fever” that kids and teens feel is more likely to get them wanting to experiment with the funnybooks than a mere weekend off might do.

2) The Hulk may have been a disappointment in the long run, but the hype for it that first weekend was completely inescapable, and people forget that the initial reviews from many big critics were laudatory. It wouldn’t have been like attaching a Free Comic Book Day to Howard the Duck by any means.

3) The same weekend Hulk came out, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix was released. I guess there’s an argument to be made that families with kids and teens already earmarked their entertainment dollars for that big huge hardcover that weekend (indeed, some said the Harry Potter hysteria adversely affected The Hulk’s box office), but I think it’s just as persuasive to argue that the Hulk movie plus the Harry Potter book plus free comic books could have equalled a huge pop-culture bonanza. At any rate, it was Free Comic Book Day, so it’s not like people would have to blow a lot more cash at the event if they didn’t want to. Moreover, most comic shops also sold the Harry Potter book. Had they advertised that fact in addition to hyping FCBD while simultaneously riding the Hulk-hype coattails, they might have had a real blowout on their hands.

In the end, I hope FCBD3 goes well, and that publishers avoid Nick “Call to Arms” Barucci’s advice to limit their free offerings to the big-name superheroes. Even though he encourages the big companies to release three or four free books apiece, he wants them all to be the big name-brand spandex books! People, everyone on Earth knows that if they want, they can go get a Spider-Man, Batman, Hulk, or Superman comic book in a comic book store. Why not take this opportunity to show them what the hell else is available?

Wouldn’t “The Widowmaker” be a great name for a really huge bong?

In other news, Amy has been posting a lot. You should go read it.

The BBC seems almost as upset about the deaths of Uday & Qusay Hussein as, one would imagine, Uday & Qusay Hussein were. LGF has a rundown of how the Beeb has carpet-bombed the story with scare quotes. Or the “story,” as they’d want you to believe.

Maybe it’s the comics equivalent of feeling ashamed of yourself (and also a bit chafed) after a four-day orgy, but it seems like there’s a lot of gloom going around today.

Dirk Deppey (perennial gloom purveyor that he is) offers the latest in his Movie Doomsday Theory series, insisting that a downturn in the comic-book-movie blockbuster market could actually spell the downfall of the entire Direct Market if it causes Marvel to go under. I think what we’re seeing this summer (i.e. movie after movie fails to live up to its blockbuster potential–gee, do you think maybe that’s because a new “blockbuster” is released every week?) is as much a Movie Movie Doomsday Theory as it is a Marvel Movie Doomsday Theory. Hollywood’s in trouble just as Marvel is if they’re relying on this obviously faulty business model.

Joey Manley, founder of various and sundry online comics sites, has a pretty depressing take on this year’s Con. I think he’s altogether too hard on pop-culture geeks–guys in stormtrooper outfits are harmless at worst and hella entertaining at best; it was certainly heartening to watch the snobs get smacked down on this Comics Journal messboard thread on the subject–but I’ve often wondered myself about the health of a medium in which such a large percentage of its consumers are “hardcore” fans, if not would-be creators themselves. (Guilty on both counts!)

Me? It’s tough to be pessimisstic about an industry that yielded Blankets, Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Frank Book, Quimby the Mouse, and The Dark Knight Strikes Again in the last year.

I’d like to return the praise of the excellent popculture/comics blogger Big Sunny D. He’s a tremendously effective critic and reviewer with great taste in pretty much everything. If I weren’t writing this blog, I’d want to be writing his.

Please read this article from Time magazine, detailing some of the practices and policies of the late Uday and Qusay Hussein. How does it affect your perception of the phrase “blood for oil”?

Nyuk, nyuk.

Well, I’ve returned–physically, at least; mentally I’m in the kind of ADD nirvana that only a huge honking pile of unread comic books can provide–from the San Diego Comic-Con, basically the biggest pop-cultural convention of any kind anywhere in the United States. This is my third year in attendance, and each year it appears to have doubled in size. (This go-round the con expanded to occupy the entirety of the San Diego Convetion Center, which at the height of traffic on Saturday felt like a small city unto itself.) Each year I buy an ungodly amount of comics of every type imaginable. Each year I’m indescribably tickled by the collision of mainstream comics, art comics, video games, toys, movies, and Klingons. Each year I rub elbows with some pretty ridiculously luminous luminaries. Each year I miss The Missus. Next year I’ll definitely be bringing her, because SDCC is something that everyone should experience at least once.

For those who aren’t quite sure what I’m talking about, SDCC is the biggest trade event in a field that has lots of them. There are panels in which different comics-related issues are discussed, announcements are made by the big companies involving their upcoming plans, pros come to sign books and meet and greet the fans, parties are held for mingling purposes, comics-related and genre-based movies are previewed, and tons and tons of stuff are sold on the enormous convention floor. It’s one of the rare places where a person dressed as Frodo Baggins could meet the actor who played Frodo Baggins. It’s also one of the rare places where Los Bros Hernandez sign autographs not five feet away from Rob Liefeld doing the same. Metaphorically, SDCC is the sublime and the ridiculous getting hammered and screwing on a pool table with a Halloween party full of people watching. (Hat tip to Kevin Smith–who was there, actually–for the imagery.)

Highlights for me were many, and since this is a blog, I can just list them and leave all that structure malarkey for the New Yorker. Here we go:

** Upon arriving at the hotel booked for myself and my companion, one of the A&F Quarterly’s illustrators, we found that both of our rooms had hot tubs in them. At a con where some of the best cartoonists in the world sleep three in a bed, we were basically pimped out.

** Meeting Dirk Deppey, the mastermind behind Journalista, live and in person. He’s just as delightful in the flesh as he is online. Be sure to ask him about anti-Scientology hip-hop bands, and tell him Sean sent ya!

** SDCC is one place where you are allowed, if not encouraged or even mandated, to talk about comics for hours and hours on end. One night myself, Josiah (the illustrator) and Fantagraphics intern extraordinaire Sebastian spent probably four hours drinking beer and talking about every comic we could think of. In the real world it’s next to impossible to find someone smart who’s smart about comics. If you know where to look at SDCC, you practically swim in them.

** Among other insights that such conversations yielded was Josiah’s assertion that the character of Jack the Ripper in Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell’s From Hell was, in fact, a superhero–he’s got extraordinary powers, he receives a mission from a supernatural authority, he’s part of a secretive order dedicated to the betterment of mankind, and he takes action to change the world. I’m pretty much ready to re-read the comic because of this simple recontextualization. That’s the kind of good stuff that comes out when you put smart comics fans together.

** Conversation between myself, Sebastian, and Kim Thompson re: David B’s Epileptic:

SEBASTIAN: How is that, Kim?

KIM: It’s a masterpiece. Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Epileptic.

SEBASTIAN: Is that the whole thing, or is there more?

KIM: He’s working on the second half. It’ll be called Epileptic 2.

SEAN: …Electric Boogaloo? (Too easy, right?)

KIM: No. Epileptic Boogaloo.

Those krazy kut-ups at Fantagraphics!

** Speaking of which, Gary Groth is a really nice guy. He seems truly pleased to talk with you if you’re interested in Fanta books, and the fact that if you wrote something he didn’t like he’d tear you a new asshole in print actually enhances his likeability. He’s honest, even if you disagree with him half the time, and I like that a lot.

** I had a fantastic conversation about Roxy Music and design with The Filth artist Chris Weston and Vertigo Group Editor Shelly Bond. Getting a group of Roxy Music fans in one place is even rarer than getting a group of smart comics fans in one place.

** Just to stake my claim, I was part of the conversation in which Ron Rege & Marc Bell devised a plot to encourage Teratoid Heights creator and master of funny monster one-liners Mat Brinkman to do a weekly gag strip. If it ever happens, you heard it here first.

** Interviewing Blankets author and almost impossibly friendly guy Craig Thompson. He said his next book will be a fantasy of sorts involving drought, adding another intimidating natural feature to his repertoire (the ocean and snowy winters have already been tackled). He also posed for a picture with my wife’s stuffed wombat and went skinny dipping, but not at the same time, much to my wife’s chagrin. But the sketch he did in the hardcover copy I bought for my wife was just phenomenally beautiful, meaning that it suited its recipient, basically.

** The second-best Kim Thompson quote of the con: Chris Ware’s next graphic novel, Rusty Brown, “will make Jimmy Corrigan look like a minicomic.”

** Met some PEFBs. Survived. (Click that link for further details about the PseudoEducated FanBoy.)

** Met Colleen Doran. Was delighted. Not only is she friendly and funny (and, as seems to be the case with most really good comic-book creators, cool-looking), but she brooks no bullshit. Amidst a long debate during the “25 Years of the Graphic Novel” panel, in response to the question of whether changing the terminology would help the form gain respectability, she said, “Sometimes I just think, ‘You won’t read somethin’ because it’s called a ‘comic book’? What an elitist loser! Why the hell would I want you to read my book?’ I wouldn’t treat a ditch-digger the way some people treated me when I told them what I did. Who needs them?” Testify!

** Doran really held her own at the “25 Years of Graphic Novels” panel, and in so doing revealed a pretty big knowledge gap about the real world even amongst really great comix creators. Click here for details.

** Say what you will about Kevin Smith, but the guy is funny. During his very popular panel he told a story about getting walked in on by his daughter while having sex with his wife that was just a scream. Probably not so much for him at the time.

** In the regret column: On separate occasions, being seconds away from talking with Dave Cooper and Frank Miller when they suddenly get up and leave. The ones that got away, if you will.

** Chatting with Grant Morrison about the X2 premiere party in London at Sir Ian McKellen’s house, to which I was invited but stayed home to interview Phoebe Gloeckner instead:

SEAN: How was it?

GRANT: It got so gay so fast!

As is the wont of parties in which Sir Ian and Alan Cumming are in attendance, I’d imagine.

** Also in the regret column: Looking at someone in a costume consisting of a thong and fishnet stockings from behind, then realizing that someone was a man.

** Watching a woman whose “shirt” consisted simply of two strips of electrical tape pose for pictures outside the Highwater Comics booth. Word is sales of Kramer’s Ergot 4 improved dramatically at the time, displaying an unpredicted crossover appeal for Vampirella fans.

** Because it bears repeating, Los Bros Hernandez (Love & Rockets) did a signing about five feet away from Rob Liefeld (Youngblood) doing the same. This is roughly akin to Stanley Kubrick doing a joint appearance with the makers of 2 Fast 2 Furious.

** Blind item: Which prominent Vertigo creator tore me a new asshole not two minutes after first meeting me for the crime of interviewing and liking TV psychic John Edward?

** Josiah swiped Frank Miller’s pint of Guiness at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund party. (Frank had already left, but still.)

** Met Brian Michael Bendis in person. He’s one of my favorite writers, and I was a little bummed that my interview with him was just a phoner. He’s funny and friendly in person, and told me that before he realized I’d sent him a comp copy of the A&F issue he was in, he went to the store to buy it and got screamed at by the teenage clerk for flipping through the book without buying it first. And he gave me a freebee copy of Total Sell Out. Huge!

** I had a long conversation about Fossil watches with one of the women working at Dave McKean’s booth. I walked away with new enthusiasm for my timepiece. (Those flashing colors really bug people out!)

** Erik Larsen (of Savage Dragon fame) told Josiah he could “draw the hell out of” stuff. Damn.

** I discovered that there actually ARE laugh-out-loud funny comics out there. Marc Bell’s Shrimpy & Paul, Johnny Ryan’s Portajohnny and Jason’s Meow Baby were freaking funny. Now if only I could discover a horror comic that was actually scary…

** Got to see almost half the cast of The Lord of the Rings at a panel presented by New Line. Sean Astin is adorable, Elijah Wood is good looking, Dominic Monaghan (Merry) is surprisingly good looking as well, and Andy Serkis (Gollum, pre-CGI), besides seeming like a genuine badass, appears to be quite blessed in the Li’l Smeagol department, if his tight trousers are any indication. Also, the few clips they showed of Return of the King revealed a scale that simply dwarfs the imagination. The big battle in RoTK features an enemy horde twenty times the size of the one in The Two Towers. Holy moses.

** Further regret: Josiah lost his ATM card, leaving it at the Fanta booth after using it. That’s the kind of thing that would have drove me NUTS if I had done it. He handled it with aplomb, I must say, as it didn’t interfere with him walking across a beach for an hour or so later that night. (Stay tuned for explanation.)

** Went to a fabulous art-gallery show of original comic art by a ton of altcomix heavyweights. There’s something awe-inspiring, in a cult-of-the-object sort of way, about seeing the original drawings from great comics. I was particularly wowed by the two-page spread from Dan Clowes’s David Boring and the comic (my favorite one, actually) from Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl. I also bought the show’s catalog, which as an added bonus came with a baggie full of authentic trash from a cartoonist featured in the show. Mine had Phoebe’s–I recognized the Long Island Rail Road ticket!

** Another item in the regret column: Taking cabs. Almost without exception, every single cab driver we encountered was an incompetent moron. One just couldn’t figure out how to get to 420 G Street, despite getting onto G Street and driving in the direction of the number 420. He actually rolled down his window and yelled for help to other cabbies, who, surprisingly enough, were no help at all. Another couldn’t figure out how to get to 530 Broadway, again despite getting onto Broadway and driving in the direction of the number 530. This winner blew past the hotel, took us five blocks out of the way to get back (he seemed genuinely surprised that the streets in the area were one-way, and who can blame him? he’s only a goddamn cab driver), overcharged us once he got us close enough to drop us off, and then nearly tore the arm off the girl trying to get in the cab after we got out as he drove off with the door open in an effort not to pick her up. (Keep in mind both of the above incidents took place in the tourist-heavy downtown area, where, one would think, a cab driver might be familiar with the locations of major hotels, as well as the existence of one-way streets and the fact that numbers proceed up or down the street in a fairly orderly, not at all mysterious fashion.) But the one who took the taco was the miserable bastard who, when told to take us to Ocean Beach, then after saying “Pacific Beach?” and being told “no, Ocean Beach,” proceeded to take us to Pacific Beach anyway, without telling us he was doing so. He drove us about 15-20 minutes out of our way, dropped us off on the wrong land mass, let alone the wrong beach, and made a killing because it cost so much damn money to get that far away. Since we were looking for a party on the beach, we actually ended up walking the entire length of the shore, about five miles, before we realized we weren’t just dropped off at the wrong place on the beach, but at the wrong beach entirely. We had to get back in another cab (the one good driver we encountered, thank Christ), cross a bridge, and drive for about ten minutes before we were back to where we should have been. Mizzable bastards. I did not handle this well, no sir.

** Beach party fun: Aside from the aforementioned glimpse of Craig Thompson’s bare ass, there was the added spectacle of watching an incredibly inebriated lone party crasher plop down on the sand and drunkenly warble along to her acoustic guitar, while an also-drunk artcomics fan tried to shout her down.

** More beach party fun: Tom Devlin offered his most direct take on EC Comics yet: “Oh, they suck.”

** Doing our good deed for the weekend, we offered two very nice women who were in town to support altcomix luminary Dame Darcy one of our hotel rooms so they wouldn’t have to sleep in their van. No word on whether they took advantage of the hot tub.

** I bought a lot, and I mean a lot, of comics.

Teratoid Heights by Mat Brinkman

Yeast Hoist by Ron Rege Jr.

Only a Movie by Jordan Crane

Shrimpy & Paul and Friends by Marc Bell

The TCJ Library: Frank Miller from the Comics Journal

Meow Baby by Jason

Ripple by Dave Cooper

Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware

Cages by Dave McKean

Alec: How to Be an Artist by Eddie Campbell

A Distant Soil Volume 1 by Colleen Doran

The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot by Frank Miller & Geof Darrow

The complete Martha Washington series by Frank Miller & Dave Gibbons

The Buenaventura Gallery Show Catalog by various and sundry awesome cartoonists

I also bought copies of Craig Thompson’s Blankets, Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl and Jim Woodring’s The Frank Book for friends. Yes, I’m a giving sort.

** Finally, a veritable orgy of namedropping, as much to indulge my ADD-derived love of listing things as to brag (though believe me, I’m bragging). Huge thanks to all the comics pros who talked with us, drank with us, gave us freebies, signed our books, invited us to parties, or otherwise made our lives enjoyable at the Con: Mark Alessi, Axel Alonso, Brandon Badeaux, Marc Bell, Brian Bendis, Shelly Bond, Charles Brownstein, Peggy Burns, CB Cebulski, Jordan Crane, Dirk Deppey, Tom Devlin, Marshall Dillon, Colleen Doran, Shawna Ervin-Gore, Tim Ervin-Gore, Gary Groth, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Jason, Erik Larsen, John Layman, David Mack, Grant Morrison, Dan Nado, Mike Norton, Mike Oeming, Ron Rege Jr., Jamie Rich, James Robinson, Johnny Ryan, Gareb Shamus, Craig Thompson, Kim Thompson, Brett Warnock, Chris Weston, and everyone else we hung out with.

Thank you also to The Missus, for being patient with her husband the geek.

Stay tuned for reviews of the books that I got. Maybe even reviews of all of them. I’m feelin’ productive!

The most dangerous threat to comics is not the unreconstructed fanboy (i.e. the people who keep writing Pete Milligan and asking him to bring back the original X-Force cast), but the pseudoeducated fanboy, or PEFB. I spoke with one or two in San Diego, and it was a chilling experience, all the more so because they honestly mean well. These are the people who think Udon Studios is manga, that Alex Ross is the best artist in comics history (“I mean, they look like real people!)”), and that Liberty Meadows is an alternative comic. These people are aware enough to understand the “Team Comics” concept of getting comics out to the world at large, but not aware enough to realize that what passes for “different, out of the mainstream” works in their comics cosmology is insipid manipulative middle-of-the-road crapola. People who watch Martin Scorsese and read Kurt Vonnegut will be handed a Chuck Dixon CrossGen book as an example of something similarly great and groundbreaking by the PEFB. I think it’s difficult to underestimate the kind of damage such egregiously bad standards can do if their proponents remain such a vocal part of the comics-proselytizing movement.

That’s why Gary Groth’s recent jeremiad in favor of much more rigorous critical standards is so important. As he and others like him have long argued, it’s impossible to justify holding up, say, the Speedy-does-heroin storyline from the old Green Lantern/Green Arrow book (regardless of how forward-looking it may or may not have been in the context of the superhero comics of the time) as some sort of masterpiece of the form when Robert Crumb was working at the same time. Similarly, I’ve been hard on Mark Millar’s teen-geared Trouble at least in part because, as a professional writer, he should know better than to hold it up as some sort of instant classic in a medium that also produced genuine teenage-oriented masterpieces like Ghost World, I Never Liked You, The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Blankets.

There’s just no excuse for mediocrity in a medium capable of greatness. And there’s even less of an excuse for confusing the former with the latter.

At a panel celebrating 25 years of the graphic novel (the fat book-like format that’s become the preferred way to package “good” comic books), I saw an interesting glimpse into how damn difficult it’s going to be to get comics into the genuine mainstream–i.e. libraries. Colleen Doran (the incredibly cool cartoonist with the splendid Southern accent who writes and draws the immensely readable fantasy series A Distant Soil) spoke of her (pretty selfless) attempts to get comic books into the hands of librarians and library-system buyers at Book Expo, the regular-book publishing industry’s big convention. Speaking of the obstacles to this process, she said the one complaint she hears most often from librarians is that simply not enough information is given to them about a comic book or graphic novel for them to be able to make a decision about buying or shelving it. Often times the publisher just hands them whatever they wrote up for the comic-shop guide Previews, and in the real world, “Corsair makes a startling revelation to Cyclops, but can the Starjammers save either of them from Omega Red?” isn’t very helpful. Also, they don’t put age levels or grade levels or the other standard things that go on books headed for young-adult sections in libraries.

Well, this last bit caused quite a row amongst the participants of the panel. Graphic designer to the stars Chip Kidd angrily snapped “Why don’t they just read the books and decide for themselves what their about and who should read them?” The obvious reply, one which was shouted out by librarians in the audience, was that believe it or not, librarians do not have the time to read every single comic book in the world. They want to stock graphic novels, but without some help from the publishers in terms of explaining what they’re about and who they’re geared toward, it’s hopeless. But Kidd and some of the other panelists, namely Craig Thompson and Will Eisner, continued taking umbrage at the suggestion that age-levels be placed even in the catalog listing or promotional copy let alone on the back of the book (as is done with, oh I don’t know, every young-adult book in the world).

I don’t necessarily fault these important creators for having their positions, at least from some standpoints. They come from a world in which they’re constantly doing battle against a two-headed dragon: One head being the notion that comics are for kids, the other being that we must institute codes and censors and guidelines to make sure that all comics remain for kids, under the threat of hauling people off to jail for selling adult comics to adults. But this simply isn’t the reason why librarians want these things–it’s so they know where to put the books on the shelves, so they know who to recommend it to, and so they know (believe it or not, this isn’t such a bad thing) not to hand an eight year old a copy of The Filth.

My point is not to find fault with Kidd et al, but to point out this enormous blindspot in their ability to accurately and effectively market their books to libraries. A simple difference in trade-dress culture literally prevents comics from getting into libraries.

Comics are climbing, but let there be no doubt that even at their best (i.e. Kidd, Thompson, & Eisner) they’re still climbing uphill.

Still playing catch-up with work and email. But you can expect recaps, reviews, reminiscences, revelations, and reprimands of the events of the San Diego Comic-Con all coming in the next few days. I’ll probably even talk about some non-comics stuff at some point. ADDTF Fever–catch it!

Note to Jim Henley: Yes, Brian Bendis will be creating “a whole new cast of supervillains.” In his Marvel panel at San Diego he said this will happen after he comes back on the book following David Mack’s fill-in arc (issues 51-56). So get psyched!

Note to Bill Sherman: No, Brian Bendis won’t be ditching comicsville for Hollywood. In that same panel (and, actually, in the interview I conducted with him some months ago for the A&F Quarterly), he said that after writing the pilot for MTV’s Spider-Man series (doing which got his name on every single episode), he hasn’t spent a single second working on the skein since. He’s instead chosen to work on a project closer to his heart, namely his newborn kid. So he’s still all ours!

More like this coming soon…

Before I get to the San Diego goodness, here’s another comics-related post.

Recently I was asked by All Too Flat extended family member Dov to recommend comics to him. He’s a complete newbie who got hooked on Bruce Jones’s current (excellent) Incredible Hulk run due to the 25-cent promotional issue Marvel offered during the release of the film, and wanted to know what else he might dig. I wrote him a long message, just recommending a whole bunch of my favorites, and it occurred to me that this is the sort of thing I should put up on the old blog, too. Hopefully the choices will illustrate that there really is something for everyone in comics today. And I’m not doing this as Team Comix boosterism, honestly–I just feel like otherwise media-savvy people who don’t read comics are driving down the art highway on only three wheels.

Here, then, are some of my favorites, all of which should be available at Amazon. Any one of them is a great way to start your comics-reading career.

We’ll begin with some of the current crop of ongoing superhero monthlies:

NEW X-MEN w: Grant Morrison a: various–This is the best ongoing superhero series around, and maybe even ever. The hardcover collection of the first 12 issues or so is fantastic, but it’s also available in smaller softcover editions (the first of which is called E is for Extinction). Morrison is a real visionary, very Burroughs or Pynchon or Dick. His ideas are just huge.

DAREDEVIL w: Brian Bendis a: Alex Maleev–another fantastic superhero comic, close in spirit and execution to the current Hulk series. Very pulp stories, with beautiful art; Bendis probably has the best ear for dialogue in comics today. Lots of collections of this creative team’s run are available; the first is called Underboss.

ALIAS w: Brian Bendis a: Michael Gaydos–Bendis also writes this very dark look at the underbelly of the Marvel superheroes. It’s a mature-readers book that’s actually mature, which is saying something. Gaydos’s art hooks you like nobody’s business. It’s about a private detective who used to be a superhero before some unnamed incident traumatized her. Again, you can find collections of this, the first one of which is I think just called Alias Volume 1.

THE ULTIMATES w: Mark Millar a: Bryan Hitch–an ultra-modern take on the superteam that consists of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk, this has probably the best art of any superhero book out there and is really unpredictable and large in scope. There’s only one collection to date, but it’s a killer.

Now moving on to altcomix and classic graphic novels:

JIMMY CORRIGAN w/a: Chris Ware–This is the best comic ever made, bar none. It’s about this sad middle-aged man’s journey to meet his father, which runs parallel to his grandfather’s recounting of his own trouble childhood. The art, especially the incredibly complex layouts, is just unbelievable. The Citizen Kane of comics.

DAVID BORING w/a: Dan Clowes–Close in tone to the Coen Bros’ darker movies, or David Lynch’s less over-the-top, this is a strange noir tale about a man’s sexual obsession with a woman during a tense period of terrorist attacks. Clowes’s art has this creepy 1950s feel that works perfectly for the story.

WATCHMEN w: Alan Moore a: Dave Gibbons–Supercomplex, realistic, and incredibly involving story of a group of superheroes whose time is almost at an end. Conspiracies, mysteries, politics, sex–it’s the highwater mark of the genre in many, many ways. Probably my third-favorite comic ever (after Jimmy Corrigan and…)

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS w/a: Frank Miller–My favorite comic. Batman returns from retirement to a world that doesn’t want him anymore but needs him more than ever. Incredible art, searing satire, heroism on the grandest scale. This book is a juggernaut. The old saw is that if Watchmen performed the autopsy on the superhero genre, Dark Knight is its brass-band funeral. It’s awesome.

FROM HELL w: Alan Moore a: Eddie Campbell–The movie version was okay, but it was the equivalent of making a movie of Hamlet that consisted of Hamlet and Laertes training for the duel at the end. The book, on the other hand, is this hugely complex examination of the Jack the Ripper killings, Victorian England, Freemasonry, patriarchy vs. feminism, the occult, and god knows what else. This will really challenge you.

SIN CITY w/a: Frank Miller–beautiful black-and-white comic noir about a huge loser’s quest to avenge his lost love. Miller’s art is rarely better than it is in this, and the story’s got an almost primal momentum. Another favorite.

ARKHAM ASYLUM w: Grant Morrison a: Dave McKean–another genuinely beautiful book, this one is painted and uses remarkable collage techniques. It’s a psychological horror story about Batman entering into the insane asylum where most of his big villains are kept. A really chilling examination of abnormal psychology, again rife with the kind of huge occult-influenced symbolism that Morrison specializes in.

HEY, WAIT… w/a: Jason–Translated from Norwegian, this book uses cute-animal characters to tell a really painful story about loss, grief, and regret. This guy’s one of the best on the scene, and this story will haunt you.

THE FRANK BOOK w/a: Jim Woodring–Essentially they’re the creepiest, scariest cute-animal stories ever. Frank is this sort of cross between a cat and a beaver and a mouse and a bear, who wanders around this hallucinogenic dreamscape getting into adventures and being pursued by various miscreants. If you like twisted children’s stuff like Willy Wonka, this will appeal to you. Woodring’s a hell of a cartoonist and has imagined his whole own cosmology with this book. Some of the material is available in much cheaper (but smaller) softcover editions.

BLANKETS w/a: Craig Thompson–I talk about this all the time on the blog, but to recap, it’s a coming-of-age autobiography involving the parallel finding and losing of first love and religious faith. Elegantly illustrated and stirringly told. Damn, it’s good. And sweet.

DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL w/a: Phoebe Gloeckner–Another one I talk about a lot. This is a combination thinly-veiled autobiography written in journal form with autobio comix and illustrations, telling the story of the brilliant but deeply troubled teenager Minnie Goetze as she navigates the free-wheeling San Franciscan 70’s. I challenge you not to be deeply moved by this book.

Each gets my full recommendation. Happy reading!

I’m back from San Diego. Expect some postings soon.

Assuming the submissive role, as once can conclude is his wont, Jim Treacher follows my suggestion and blogs about his favorite band. Well, technically, he blogs about song-poems, but good enough.

In addition, he brings it to our attention that somewhere there exists a mash-up of Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and the Sugababes’ cover of Adina Howard’s legendary ode to the congress of the cow, “Freak Like Me.” Holy shit, people. For the record, I hated the infamous “Smells Like Teen Spirit”/”Bootylicious” mash-up just as much as Amanda did, but Numan and a paean to doing it doggystyle? Please tell me if you think that’s anything but two great tastes tastin’ great together.

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!

“ELVIS PRESLEY EYE COLOR AND PENIS SIZE”

When have I ever talked about Elvis Presley, or eye color, or penis size on this blog, let alone all three in tandem? Ah, the vagaries of Google.

While we’re on the subject, if Google’s being a bit slow, may I suggest All Too Flat’s Google mirror?

In other odd news, I’m going to visit a psychic tonight. This will mark the second time this week that a member of the Collins household has visited a psychic, but only the first that a member of the Collins household has visited a psychic who isn’t also Tori Amos’s psychic. This is the world I live in, folks.

(I know, I know, this blog has been very heavy on comics lately, but Comic-Con is coming, and I got comics on the brain.)

When most people think of comic books they think of the thin, staple-bound, flimsy things you used to see on racks in drug stores. In comics-biz parlance they’re called pamphlets. A Comics Journal messboard thread about the slow demise of this format led me to post the following:

The problem with pamphlet-format comic books as I see it is that they denote throwawayability to the average Joe. Most people aren’t in the habit of saving and rereading magazines or newspapers, two periodical forms that comic books most closely resemble. If people still think that “comics are for kids” (and not in a good, Harry Potter kind of way, but in an annoying, Double Dare and Garbage Pail Kids kind of way), I think we can blame the association in grown-ups minds between comics and the easily beat-up and torn-up and soaked-through and discarded pamphlet format they may remember leaving strewn around their bedrooms as children.

Now, even superhero creators are writing and drawing with an eye toward a lasting legacy: improving paper quality and cover stock and coloring techniques; writing in multi-issue arcs geared toward collection in more durable paperback and even hardcover formats; and in some cases a rise in the overall quality of the art and writing itself (though that, of course, is a more controversial position to hold). In light of these developments, to say nothing of the obvious qualitative and aesthetic reasons the superheroes’ alt-comix counterparts have for appearing in graphic-novel form, clinging to a transitory, far less durable format like pamphlets seems especially anachronistic. The need to get away from pamphlets only increases now that the huge up-and-coming comics-reading audience–teen girls and guys who read manga–have been weaned on book-sized, book-shaped, and book-bound collections.

Yes, there are practical reasons (both in terms of economics and of critical feedback) for the pamphlet, even in alt-comix land, as detailed by many of the posters in this thread. But much of the childlike joy it engenders in comics fans (both of the superhero and alt-comix varieties) is offset by the aversion it apparently produces in the general populace. As Dr. Frank N. Furter might put it, pamphlets have “a certain naive charm–but no muscle.”

Big Sunny D, in a repost of a conversation he had with a fellow comix fan, inadvertently but correctly notes that the maddeningly infrequent output of most alt-comix titans makes the alternative/indy scene a lousy candidate for “saving the medium/industry” despite its inarguable superiority content-wise. How often does Black Hole or Eightball or Acme Novelty Library or Weasel come out these days? Twice a year at the absolute most often. People like Crumb and Spiegelman publish actual comics even less often. And even though I happen to dig the cartoony low-key Highwater/Fort Thunder/used-to-do-minicomics style (into which, I suppose, one could lump Kochalka and Hart and various other 3rd Wave luminaries), most of them lack the financial security, the grand ambition, or (in some cases) the talent to regularly publish the kinds of comix that take the biz by storm.

Instead, the alt-comix world revolves around one-time-only “event” books like Blankets or Diary of a Teenage Girl or Safe Area Gorazde or Persepolis which, by definition, cannot come out with any sort of regularity, or on “event” collections like Jimmy Corrigan or David Boring or Boulevard of Broken Dreams which are wholly dependent on the completion of the infrequently published series from which they draw.

As an alternative to this feast-or-famine publishing model (one which nearly bankrupted Fantagraphics due to their inability to accurately predict which one it’d be), alt-publishers might try the Japanese manga model: publish big fat compendia of work by all their top creators for cheap, so that people can get a wide sampling of what’s available, then go seek out the individual issues or collections of the creators they most enjoy. The problem here might be the wide variety of formats and sizes that alt-comix folks work in. It’d be pretty damn difficult to figure out how to publish a book that contained a full issue of both Eightball and Acme Novelty Library.