You may remember a long time ago, back when Journalista roamed the Earth, a report that the major American bookstore chain Borders was switching to category management for its graphic novel sections. In a nutshell, category management is an industry term for a procedure by which advice is solicited from the publishers themselves as to how their books should be shelved and marketed within the store.

Now that I work at a certain major American bookstore chain that shall remain nameless, I’ve seen what’s in store for the cat-manned graphic novel section, and frankly, I’m pleased. The unofficial split between “manga” and “everything else” will now be made official, with a third category of “superheroes” emerging, leaving “everything else” to include artcomix, altcomix, indies, non-superhero genre books, and so forth. Each category will be alphabetized according to what makes the most sense–superheroes will be in order by character, “other graphic novels” by author, and (I’m assuming) manga by title. (Right now everything’s by author, and despite the wishes of the “we deserve legitimacy!” crowd, that makes it much harder to navigate. You might have to look in four separate places to track down a significant run of, say, Daredevil books; and how many kids can keep track of those foreign-to-Western-eyes Japanese surnames? (Hell, oftentimes the chain will accidentally file a manga book by the author’s first name.))

One final aspect of category management? The graphic novel section will be expanding by 40%-60%. So far, so good.

Of course the work is not just the work. If it were, the whole critical enterprise would be a titanic waste of time, and I don’t believe that it is. There are many cases when critics attempt to armchair-create rather than critique–I think we see this when people go after, say, the Comics Journal not because they’re not reviewing superhero comics, but because they’re not coming to the right conclusions about those superhero comics; or when people go after The Sopranos for a lack of whackings during a particular episode or season; or when people went after Eyes Wide Shut for not giving them enough boners; etc. Sometimes what you want a given work of art to be is not what that work is supposed to be. I’ve fallen victim to this trap myself, or so Tom Spurgeon has told me at least once.

But sometimes what you want a given work of art to be is what it probably should have been. Sometimes authors make the wrong choices in terms of what to show or how to show it. The window they place over the events of the fictional life of a given character is too narrow, too broad, too opaque, too transparent, too open, too shut, or facing the wrong direction entirely. The author can say “No, no, it’s exactly the way I wanted it–it’s your problem if you don’t like the view,” but that doesn’t make it so.

Here in the trenches of blogville, we each of us get raked across the coals on a semiregular basis, being told by a couple-three dozen other smartypantses why our line of thinking does or doesn’t make sense. It would never occur to me to respond “Yeah it does–you just don’t get it.” Well, okay, it would from time to time, but that would very much depend on the person in question and the strength of his or her argument. The folks involved in picking at Demo are some of the brightest in the bunch, and the arguments are all pretty sound, whether or not you agree with them. Which, of course, you are free to do or not do. The work is the work, if you must; but if you must, you must also know that it can be good or less so, and critics can help analyze why.

At any rate, if I were the Demo team, I’d think it’s pretty neat that my work generated as much heartfelt and informed discussion as it in fact has. We don’t get this kind of mileage out of The Art of Greg Horn, you know.

As it turns out Demo #7 is my favorite of the series so far–we seem to be trending upward, which excites me.

(More fascinating Demo talk at Jason Kimble, Dave Fiore, Peiratikos, and their respective comment threads.)

Ah, fuck it.

The blogosphere is getting all Filthy in response to Jim Henley’s theory that Morrison’s latest graphic novel is “a guy thing.” I think it’s an interesting theory, and I probably think it’s more interesting than usual because a) I just got back from a weekend visit to the residential treatment facility my wife checked into for anorexia over the summer, immersing me for a few hours in the world of women with profoundly catastrophic relationships with the needs of their own bodies; b) It occurs to me that at least 50% of the horror images in the book stem from men either being penetrated or being immersed in something vaguely vaginal. Something to think about, certainly.

Everybody hates Bendis. Everybody is wrong, of course. (Take heart, Johnny!) Personally, I feel that objections to Bendis’s dialogue stem from its relatively unique position in comics–its mimickry of the staccato rhythm of actual human speech is familiar enough in motion-picture media (and even then people like Mamet and Bendis’s idol Aaron Sorkin can morph it into an overstylized schtick) but can be quite jarring when it appears in a comic. As for the Daredevil stories themselves, he occasionally has trouble with endings (they just sort of happen, regardless of what has come before), but I’ve found them to be among the most compelling to come along in the four or so years since I began reading comics again. Certainly Matt Murdock’s trajectory has been the most unpredictable of any genre character around. Finally, I think certain critics bring aboard some baggage regarding the “appropriate” depiction of race or gender issues, or even relatively trivial stuff like Bendis’s position as Marvel’s bald golden boy, that affect their perception of his work. (As for people who hate on Alex Maleev–sorry, I got nothin’.) Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, Dave Fiore takes the opportunity to go off on a gorgeous little tangent on the need for realism, or the lack of such a need.

“Hello. My name is Christopher Butcher, and I am a Big-Two-bash-aholic.” Hi, Christopher.

Jimmy Palmiotti has had one experience of graphic novels at major bookstores, and I’ve had another. Both are on display at this Fanboy Rampage post and comment thread.

Dirk is gone. Never forgotten, though, believe me. (And he’s named Kevin Melrose as the inheritor to the throne, by the way. And rightly so.)

John Jakala comments on my Battle Royale/fanservice post. What can I say? It didn’t look like she was wearing pants. (Man, if I had a nickel.)

Considering the illuminating conversations I’ve had with both men, I’m excited to see the Eisner/Miller interview book they mentioned to me way back in the summer of 2001 is finally on its way. (Courtesy of Ken Lowery.)

Marvel Comics: Making Zombies Happy Again Since 2004. Sigh. (Courtesy of Marc-Oliver Frisch.)

I haven’t joined the blogosphere’s Losers lovefest, and judging from Steven Berg‘s review of the spy series, which pretty much confirms my first-glance impressions, I’m unlikely to do so.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Milo George, who, in pointing to yet another embarrasing creator freakout on the Comics Journal messboard (I’m not gonna bother to link to it–you’re allowed to kill yourself, but I’m not allowed to help you) and offering pro bono, er, analysis of the Larry Young Phenomenon, proves why he’s the boil on the ass of the Comics Internet Era of Good Feelings. God bless him.

Jason Kimble is one blogyear old! And Rick Geerling is back!

I’ve probably missed the continuing iterations of the Demo #6 debate, but I put in my two Scorsese-influenced cents at the fascinating Johnny B comment thread. Steven Berg keeps on digging, too, even though author Brian Wood wants him to dig in a different direction. The best thing to come out of this whole discussion (aside from offering us bloggers the chance to directly discuss a work with that work’s author, not to mention thereby putting our feelings on authorial intent to the test) is J.W. Hastings‘s masterful post on parsing the difference between meandering, messy, and ambiguous fiction. If you follow one link in this whole monstrous post, follow that one.

(Also, Dave Fiore asked via email for me to comment on the narrative and thematic similarities between Grosse Pointe Blank, a film I hated, and Demo #6, a comic I liked. Yes, it’s true that both works center on a youthful suburbanite mass murderer who, in the eyes of the audience, is presumably supposed to have achieved some (almost completely unearned) redemption by the story’s end, at which point he is permitted to ride off into the sunset with his lady love. But Demo has any number of intervening factors in its favor: the fact that its central character actually has a reason to become a killer, however tenuous (and a one-two punch of institutional racism and animal abuse would piss me off, too; at any rate, though the specifics are different, I remember what getting bullied felt like, and if I could have dneo what he did, I just might have if I got mad enough); the supernatural angle serves as its own impetus for action (that is, Ken doesn’t deliberately choose, as Lloyd Dobbler or whatever he was called in that movie does, to hone his killin’ skills–they are some sort of gift/curse the presence of which likely compels their own use on a psychological or even physical level); it has a compelling fable-esque feel that eschews the “realism” that GPB, as a hipster post-Tarantino action film, is burdened with and subsequently fails to pull off (to me, Demo #6 feels like an “Appointment in Samarra”-type story told from Death’s point of view); in the end, there’s a certain sense of ambiguity about how “redeemed” Ken really is, since we never see anything from his parents’ or his wife’s point of view, whereas in GPB the special lady sees Cusack in full killing mode and decides “you know what? he’s so charming and his taste in music is so good that I’m gonna go out with him again, no matter how many people he’s murdered in cold blood and despite the fact that he stood me up at the prom,” to which Frasier’s dad (he’s in this movie, right?) says “Amen.”)

Finally, What is horror, you ask? That’s a very interesting question…

Despite the outrageous abundance of riveting blogging topics currently making their way through the ‘sphere (horror! The Filth and gender issues! Demo, ambiguity, and authorial intent!) I’m going on a work-related blogging hiatus, probably for the remainder of the week. (Don’t quote me on that if I’m back before then, though.)

I would like to say that this blog is a priority of mine, and it’s a kick in the ass not to be able to write for it as often or as thoroughly as I’d like. My hope is that within the next two weeks or so, things will happen that’ll make that possible again.

In response to one of the issues raised in my post about Battle Royale, bloggers Shawn Fumo and Bill Sherman both wrote in to tell me that the mysterious, camera-less, plot-hole-gouging “reality TV show” angle was not present in the original Japanese comic, and was invented wholesale by English-language adapter Keith Giffen. Which makes the question “why the fuck would you do that?” even more pressing–I mean, half the story revolves around kids secretly trying to overthrow the Program’s authorities and escape. Didn’t Giffen think the readers might wonder how the kids hoped this would happen if it was all being filmed? And didn’t he think we also might wonder where the bloody cameras are? Oh well: Just like Magneto’s resurrection in Uncanny X-Men, the mentioning of a television show is something you can pretend never happened.

PS: Volume Seven is the best one so far. Comics can play games with the passage of time that are exhilarating to behold.

Comics can break your heart.

(Sorry to be cryptic–it’s a “note to self” kinda deal.)

Six volumes in, I think it’s safe for me to declare that Keith Giffen’s English-language adaptation of Takami & Taguchi’s Battle Royale is a frigging mess.

I know Giffen’s presence on the project is at least a part of what made this book such a manga gateway drug for Western comics fans like many of us in the blogosphere, but yikes. Simply put, have you ever met anyone–kids, grown-ups, Japanese people, paranoid schizophrenics–who talk anything like this? Does anyone aside from Penthouse Forum writers and the film critic for Hustler use the phrase “a peek of pink”? What in God’s name is a “bad poking kitty”? Also–bear with me for a minute here–left out the subject in this sentence. Makes it seem casual. Sounds informal. See if it doesn’t. (Wait for it…) It doesn’t! Sounds maddening! Maddening like the bad poking kitty! Want my peek of pink! See if I don’t!

The insane idiomatic translation is certainly not all that’s wrong with this ultraviolent manga series. (To start, there’s the fact that it renders all reviewers incapable of discussing it without using the term “ultraviolent.”) While not as hole-ridden as I found the movie’s to be, the comic’s plot is still kinda wonky: If this is a reality TV show, where are the goddamn cameras? And yes, this matters beyond the “maybe they just goofed” factor–much of the plot revolves around various groups of kids trying to do things undetected by the authorities running the show. But if it is a show, shouldn’t everything that’s happening be, y’know, shown to people, especially the show’s very producers? I just don’t get it.

And as with the movie, the conventional action-thriller contrivances leave me completely cold. The film seemed to have been molded in the Simpson/Bruckheimer/Bay mold, while the manga goes the karate-choppin’ kung-fu-fightin’ leaping-forty-feat-in-the-air Dragonball route, but either way, they took a Lord of the Flies/A Clockwork Orange idea and made a Lethal Weapon/Bad Boys out of it.

And, loathe as I am to admit it, there are some manga conventions that I just can’t wrap my head around. I’ll never understand why everything is translated but the sound effects, for example. Nor can I figure out the reason behind the bizarre kabuki-like faces of the lecherous Program director and the mincing homosexual student slash Yakuza soldier (yeah, it’s that kinda book). And I’m sure John Jakala would just call it “fanservice,” but isn’t the impact of the scene in which young Shuuya shows his terminally ill mother his sand-castle sculpture of the two of them with his late, politically liquidated father a teensy bit diluted by the artist’s depiction of the mother’s bare ass? (I guess this is what John Jakala had in mind when he explained the concept of fanservice to me, but still, that’s just weird.)

So anyway, yeah, it’s a big fat mess.

Why, then, is it so awesome?

Yes, I really enjoy Battle Royale, warts and all. Giffen’s brusque, unnaturally direct dialogue has the perhaps unintended side effect of brightly highlighting the most compelling aspect of the book–the relationships between the student protagonists. The intensity of first love, adolescent lust, inter-social-caste idol worship/caretaking, best-friendship, and platonic opposite-sex friendship are crackingly well-depicted–every conversation and interaction is hard-sold by the outrageously staccato dialogue, and I for one am buying. It works. And even putting aside the words, perhaps it’s only when we throw 14 year olds into a contest in which they’re forced to murder each other that we can truly replicate the near-operatic emotional turmoil of pubescence and adolescence. All I know is that reading this book takes me right back to Garden City Middle School.

Speaking of which, would this not be the most fucking awesomest comic ever if you were a fourteen-year-old? Casting the kids in your grade in the different roles would be at least half the fun, I’d imagine. Hell, I could still tell you which lacrosse player from the GCMS Class of ’92 would be Kazuo, and which cheerleader would be Hardcore Souma, and which girl I crushed on would be Noriko. (I’d be Shuuya, duh. My buddy Kennyb would be Shogo, because he owned nunchucks and throwing stars and stuff back then.)

As for the art–well, to use my extremely limited manga reference pool, it doesn’t even approach either the lovely poetry of Planetes or the utter madness of Uzumaki, but then again it doesn’t need to. And thankfully, it steers clear of the glorified stick figures that inhabit a lot of the manga I’ve seen on the racks. It’s clear, realistically detailed when it needs to be, stylized and clever when it needs to be that, and a solid conveyer of plot-driven action at all times. And the violent interludes, when they come, are pitch-perfect. Speaking as a gorehound, that is some fine, mentally sticky, disturbing gore.

And at the heart of it all is a surprisingly effective and affecting story of one kid’s refusal to compromise his morals and his friendships. Actually, as the story expands, we’re now following six or seven kids who’ve made similar deals with their own hearts, and it all makes for propulsive reading. I’ve enjoyed this series a lot (a lot more than I expected to, I think), and as it’s been different enough from the movie thus far to make me wonder if the ending isn’t different as well, I’m truly looking forward to seeing how this one ends up. See if I’m not!

(PS: For past thoughts on Battle Royale, about which I’ve written a surprising amount, go here, here, and especially here, here, and here.)

(PPS: While writing this post I sort of wandered around a bunch of old posts and links and such, and can I just mention how neat it is to visit the Tokyopop website, as it is a comics-company site that doesn’t have the stench of death, desperation, and bilking aging fanboys about it? This just tickled the hell out of me, I tell you. Courtesy of John Jakala. Speaking of whom, how did I miss this? Hilarious!)

(PPPS: Jeebus, did I really used to be this sharp of a writer? Complete sentences, complete thoughts, and hardly an em-dash in sight. Sigh. I guess that’s how one writes when one is gainfully employed as a professional writer, and when one’s ADD isn’t so out of control that one is finally getting a scrip for it, as soon as one can get an appointment out of one’s goddamn general practitioner. Unless, of course, it’s not pro writing but writing on message boards that brings out the best in me… The horror! The horror!)

Digression over. Battle Royale is good. The end.

In his recent review of Demo #6, Johnny Bacardi voiced an interesting concern about the series overall:

OK, I understand that there is no overarching theme. nothing which will tie all these individual stories together, that these are just random, one-off looks at different young people with powers and abilities and how they cope (or fail to cope) with them. Nothing wrong with this, but it just causes a bit of a wish, in my mainstream-comics addled brain, that there was a underlying reason (a point, if you will) for all this, and it wasn’t just random instances of “young guy or gal has powers, young guy or gal gets into situation because of powers, young guy or gal deals with powers and faces the future, whatever it may be”.

Interesting, I say, because it literally never occurred to me to complain about this facet of the book. To me, this is not a bug–it’s a feature.

I realized three or four years ago that even the most seemingly anti-authoritarian genre fiction almost inevitably involves a safety valve in the form of a wise old man (or indeed a secret society of wise old men) that explains it all to our at-first befuddled hero. The tormented mutants of the X-verse have Professor X; bullied & abused Harry Potter has Dumbledore and the rest of the Hogwart’s faculty; terminally perplexed Neo has Morpheus and company; bored, sheltered Luke Skywalker has Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda; terrified Frodo has Gandalf; hell, even in the Illuminatus! trilogy the characters have Hagbard Celine and Malaclypse the Elder. No matter how cruel and terrifying the world gets, no matter how bizarre and wondrous your newfound powers are, there’s always someone around to explain the New, Secret, and Real Grand Scheme of Things, and exactly where you fit into it.

In “mainstream,” superhero comics, this can be taken to epic extremes, perhaps paradoxically because of the unruly, hobbled-together nature of the big superhero universes. (DC is famously Frankensteinian, and for all its reputation as a single, cohesive universe, Marvel certainly wasn’t conceived as such, and contains enough disparate concepts to make doing so difficult. I mean, Spider-Man has fought J. Jonah Jameson, the Punisher, the Hulk, Loki, and Galactus, hasn’t he?) The Quintessence, the Earth X saga–these are ways of assuring both character and reader (and writer) that nothing is so weird as to not have a (relatively) rational, well-defined slot to plug right into. Obviously, there’s an appeal to this approach–cohesiveness can be a fascinating thing, if the works cohere in an unexpected, thought-provoking fashion–but I can’t help but feel that some of both the potential for formal inventiveness and the thrill of the truly unknown and unexplained and therefore unbowed and untamed is lost when such devices are employed.

Moreover, I must admit that my own experience of the universe has shown me no wise men, no secret society with all the right answers. Heck, my conception of God doesn’t even gel with such things. As near as I can tell, things happen because they happen, not because of some Plan, not because of the Way Things Really Are as hidden behind some curtain of conspiratorial secrecy which, were I suddenly granted extraordinary powers, my forebears and brothers-in-arms would make themselves known to me in order to reveal. It’s just life. It just is.

I’m certainly not the first person to point out that there’s something extremely and perversely comforting about conspiracy theory. I believe it was Robert Anton Wilson who theorized that the conspiracist mindset is a modern-day replacement for belief in God: “There’s no benevolent All-Father pulling the strings, but there is a top-secret cabal of Freemasons and aliens!” If you don’t believe in the Pope, you can at least believe in the Bildebergers. You see this reflected nearly everywhere, especially in this day and age, where the terrible events of 9/11 and its aftershocks find some people desperate to create an overarching explanation–someone must have known something and used this knowledge to make something else happen–rather than face the idea that, well, we’re all just pretty much on our own. Further, in fiction and in life, some people posit themselves as anti-conspiracy; however, a quick look reveals them to be proponents not of anti-authoritarianism, but of the right kind of authoritarianism. (The comics blogosphere has recently debated whether, say, Warren Ellis is such a person.) Additionally, you see another reflection of this mindset in criticism of “messy” fiction, fiction where not everything is played out in neat little story arcs that tie up all the plotlines in a way that enables the reader or audience to perfectly contextualize all that has gone before–in other words, fiction that’s a lot like life. (My favorite example of this is the vitriol directed at Seasoun Four of The Sopranos. To me, this is maybe the finest work of fiction I’ve ever encountered; to many TV critics, this was a disaster–“Where were the arcs? Why didn’t anything happen?” (Such were the complaints when the critics weren’t busy bemoaning the lack of murders, which I think tells you quite a bit about many TV critics and their real reason for enjoying the first couple of seasons of the show.)) Such outlooks are the metafictional equivalent of comfort food. This is not to say they’re totally horrible, of course–that’s some good food, oftentimes. But it is comforting, a lot more so than the notion that there is no explanation.

In the big fiction project that I’ve been working on for the last few years, this is something I’ve very consciously built the story around. No wise men are forthcoming. No ancient underground group of mind-warriors will swoop out of nowhere to show the protagonists the Men Behind the Curtain. No curtain, no men. Even the de rigeur explanation of “the source of the disturbances”–science? genetics? magic?–is eschewed. I mean, how often do you get one of those in real life?

This, then, is what I find so refreshing about Demo. As near as I can tell there are no connections between its superpowered protagonists. The powers will never be explained, and the characters will never meet each other, nor some old bald guy who’s been running around in the superpower underground since World War II or the Victorian Era or whatever. Whatever meaning the characters glean from their extraordinary situations is just that–gleaned from their own life experiences, not from received truth or prepackaged schematics as to how everything works. It’s all up to them.

How wonderful!

(PS: If there’s a flaw with Demo’s approach, it’s not that no answers are found, but that it doesn’t seem that the characters are searching for them. Personally, I feel that the quest for the wise old man and his bag of explanations is so culturally ingrained in us that were anyone to actually be given super powers, they’d almost automatically being looking for the secret government installation or circle of occult adepts that could help them explain and control their powers, and subsequently enlist them in the battle against whatever it is people with powers are supposed to battle against. The inevitable disappointment is part of the game, you know? But maybe that’s just me.)

(PPS: Demo #6, by the way, is the strongest issue of the series yet. Its horror elements are what grabbed me, as I’m sure you’d expect, and though I’m not sure I was ever “scared” (I didn’t see the Kubrick’s-Shining influence that the artist cited), I certainly remained grabbed. The first appearance of the mysterious skeleton is bracingly surreal, and the shots of the decaying dogs are powerful and grotesque. The added element of genuine oppression, rather than run-of-the-mill suburban ennui, makes the character moments both more believable and more relatable, and gives the horrific events the selling power they need. And Becky Cloonan’s art is at its best, emerging from its influences into its own dynamic, calligraphic territory. And it’s not just the terrifying stuff she nails, either–the protagonist’s bonnie new bride, for example, is refreshingly human and real, a woman you could quite conceivably fall in love with as opposed to the usual Brechtian device connoting “PRETTINESS.” Impressive and unique from top to bottom, if this issue is, as author Brian Wood says, the template for the remainder of the series, we’re in for some very good comics.)

I started blogging outside on the deck, but you know what? It’s hot in the sun.

Let’s kick off this linkblogging entry with links to even bigger and juicier linkblogging entries. Marc-Oliver Frisch reports on Grant Morrison’s newly announced projects (Superman with Frank Quitely!) and solid industry analysis from Rob Liefeld (not kidding!), among other things; meanwhile, Shane Bailey links to basically every goddamned comics-related interview, preview, review, and news item on earth, with a bunch of interesting comic-book-movie-related tidbits thrown in. Have at ’em.

Speaking of Marc-Oliver, he directs us to this Silver Bullet Comics interview with former Marvel whipping-boy Igor Kordey, who’s beginning to rival his own archnemesis Grant Morrison’s penchant for giving quoteworthy interviews (if not Morrison’s penchant for sounding brilliant and not-insane while doing so). After reading this and some of the interviews Kanye West has been giving, I’m starting to think that rampant egomania is the new black.

Courtesy of nearly everyone on the internet comes this Newsarama interview with Brian Wood, taking stock of his Demo project at the halfway point. Newsarama’s Matt Brady makes some similar points to the ones I made in my post on the series earlier today.

Also courtesy of nearly everyone on the internet comes this interview with freshly DC-exclusive Dave Gibbons, featuring a preview of his upcoming Mod graphic novel The Originals. Said preview looks fucking gorgeous, by the by.

Dorian of Postmodern Barney has seen the Ultimate-Universe digests Marvel has quietly started selling at Target in the toys section–so quietly it seems many of the Target employees are unaware of their existence (though that’s to be expected in a big retailer like Target). I’m interested to see that this project, which I first reported about waaaaay back when and have been calling for for even longer, has reached fruition. I’m also interested to see that Marvel chose an oversize format rather than the more compact manga dimensions for the digests. AND I’m interested to see that, apparently, the books have been heavily edited, for space at least, and for content most likely. (Somehow I doubt Marvel left the post-coital Wolverine/Jean scene in the editions of Ultimate X-Men shelved next to the Harry Potter action figures.)

Note to self: If you ever write a comic involving medical procedures or military uniforms, for the love of God, have Scott at Polite Dissent vet it first!

Everybody’s doin’ it! Mike Sterling and Dave Fiore are among the blogvillians who’ve answered the comics-habit questionnaire I took on yesterday.

Otto of Otto’s Coffee Shop fame (with all these new comicsbloggers it’s getting hard to keep track of last names!) has a fascinating post on the public perception of comic books and comic book readers. I’ve said before that I think this perception is tied directly to the floppy format–I know plenty of people who’ll happily read any graphic novel you hand to them, whereas floppies are looked at in much the same way as games of pin the tail on the donkey: fun in first grade, but we’re not in first grade anymore. Anyway, Otto runs down specific reactions and preconceptions from various non-comics-readers in his life. It’s an illuminating read.

Courtesy of Jim Henley (who’s finally noticed he hasn’t been blogging comics very much lately!) comes this multi-title review post from Nate Bruinooge. His thoughts on Blankets and its position in a beaten-to-death genre offer an interesting look at the mind of a won-over Blankets skeptic. But I am a bit nervous at his threatened linkage of The Sopranos to The Authority, The Ultimates, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II, and the work of Quentin Tarantino: simply put, I don’t think The Sopranos has a thing to do with any one of those, and I like most of them. (I’ve also got a newfound respect for LoEG2 following Jason Kimble’s intriguing exegesis of same, so maybe that doens’t belong in that ballpark either.) I’ve noticed a tendency among a lot of the smarter, academia-rooted bloggers–who are in many cases the discontents of post-modernism, blogs being where they take refuge from their peers–react in an almost, well, reactionary fashion to ugly or “unpleasant” art. It always leaves a bad taste in my Texas Chain Saw-loving mouth.

Speaking of Jason Kimble, he’s announced his intention to spend June–Gay Pride Month–blogging gay issues. (Heck, he even cited my October horrorblogathon as an inspiration! Oh, p’shaw!) He kicks it off with an analysis of the semi-stealthy depiction of homosexual relationships amidst the wider tapestry of Colleen Doran’s sci-fi soap comic A Distant Soil. Good stuff.

And speaking further of good stuff from Jason Kimble, how did I miss his delightful breakdown of the psychodramatic roles of the villians in Bendis & Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man? I’m guessing I skipped the entry because it’s talking about the current arc and I’ve switched to wait-for-the-trade mode on USM, but still, this is well worth reading. I love anything that makes me think “never in a million years would I have thought to put it that way, but that’s exactly how I would put it!”

I’m really starting to jones for Walking Dead, and this interview with writer and zombiephile Robert Kirkman makes me glad I heeded my blogospheric peers and ordered the trade. (Courtesy of Kevin Melrose.)

Finally, is McSweeney’s #13 out yet? Everyone’s talkin’ like it is, but as of yesterday the store where I work didn’t have it. What gives?

Johnny Bacardi (who, like his namesake, gets better and better the more you imbibe) has posted a response-to-cum-defense-against my lengthy ruminations on Brian Wood’s Demo and the larger issues of coherence and explainability in fiction, genre fiction in particular (said post being a response to the opposing viewpoint, as voiced by Johnny B. earlier). I guess the first thing I’d like to say in response to his response to my response (aside from “gee, don’t you just love the blogosphere?”) is he really doesn’t need to defend himself against misinterpretation, because I wasn’t really trying to interpret what he said. I just kind of used his post (which voiced a sense of frustration with the fact that the disparate single-issue stories that comprise Demo aren’t tied together in any tangible way aside from theme) as a springboard an excuse to riff on some ideas I’d been kicking around on faux antiauthoritarianism and closed-system storytelling. In other words, I didn’t necessarily believe that Johnny wanted a Professor X type to show up and whisk the Demo kids off to the Danger Room–I just thought that Johnny’s frustration and the Professor X/secret-conspiracy syndrome evolved out of the same outlook.

Anyway, in his new post Johnny expands upon his frustration, now taking on “ambiguous” fiction generally as a potential refuge for lazy authors. It certainly can be that–I for one remember thinking very vividly, after watching Lost Highway for the first time, “Is David Lynch a genius, or just a really crappy storyteller?” (I think you all know which way I eventually went on that one.) Ultimately ambiguity-as-bad-writing is like pornography: I know it when I see it. Problem is, everyone thinks that, which is why half the world thinks the ending of The Birds is chilling and brilliant and the other half thinks its the biggest cop-out in film history. (Next to sparing the dog in the tunnel in Independence Day, of course.)

The other problem is that if you say you like ambiguous, messy fiction, fiction where it isn’t all spelled out neatly, you inevitably come across as a pretentious git. Every time I defend (here it comes again) season four of The Sopranos, and believe you me I defend it quite often, there’s always a part of me that hesitates–“am I sounding pedantic? ‘You really thought it was boring? I thought it was the best thing that’s ever been on television!'” I assure you that’s not my intention at all. It’s just the way my tastes run. Quite frankly there’s so little of this type of fiction–The Sopranos takes it further than just about anything I’ve ever come across, though Morrison’s New X-Men and Charles Burns’s Black Hole are contenders–that I’m just so delighted to find any of it, I’ll talk your ear off about it.

Ultimately, it’s not going to be to everyone’s liking, and that’s fine, but I suppose my goal is to get people to acknowledge the validity of the approach. (Which is a tough gig, you know. We live in a world where people will tell you in absolute seriousness that Alfred Hitchcock is an objectively terrible director. Common ground on art, even great art, is hard to find.)

So named ’cause Dave G.’s Comic Weblog Update List is down, and I’m as dependent on it as your average Brooklyn hipster is on ironic haircuts and crystal methamphetamine.

Me and my Johnny McB. have been having ourselves a back-and-forth about Demo and ambiguity in fiction–click here for the latest installment.

Fortune Magazine is covering Tokyopop these days. The article is entitled “2004–A Good Year to Get Out of the Manga Business?” Franklin Harris cites some numbers on the manga giant’s revenue and, interestingly, the percentage of same generated by American manga creators; Kevin Melrose highlights information on TP’s selection and translation process.

Bill Sherman takes a stroll down memory lane, remembering an old post in which I pinpointed a unique weakness of horror in comics, in terms of sticking power–those damned panel borders! In fairness to comics, and to Junji Ito’s comics in particular, the works of his I’ve read since Tomie break down those panel walls quite effectively, mentally speaking.

I miss Rick Geerling.

Shane Bailey wonders if the increased semi-coverage of comics (thanks to comics specialty news media like Wizard, Newsarama/The Pulse, and the blogosphere) have sucked the wonder out of comics. Personally I think wonder is overrated (gimme terror, little stranger), but that aside, the solution’s a simple one–if you feel like reading previews and reviews and interviews is harming your enjoyment of the actual comics, don’t read the previews and reviews and interviews. This goes for other media as well–Shane is right to point out that spoilers for each episode of The Sopranos are online before the episodes even air, but Paulie Walnuts is not holding a gun to your head and forcing you to go to those sites and read them. (In all fairness, though, you do kind of have to construct an airtight media-blackout bunker around yourself if you don’t catch the show when it’s actually airing for the first time. I have been burned so many times (fuck you, New York Post!) it’s not even funny.)

This, however, does not absolve the people doing the previewing and the reviewing and the interviewing from not being assholes about it. I work very, very hard at not having storylines spoiled for me in advance, and yet stuff still slips through, either because a reviewer is being overzealous, or assumes that anyone reading the review has either read the book or doesn’t really care, or (grrrr) is making some misguided pass at being cute. Still, these are relatively few and far between, provided you the reader have made the conscious decision to avoid having things spoiled for you and take the steps (and, occasionally, make the sacrifices) necessary to ensure that avoid them you do.

Clash of the Internerd Titans! Dave Fiore takes on Steven Grant‘s column taking on Jim Henley‘s contention that superhero stories are the literature of ethics. Everyone involved makes some good points–Jim’s original piece argues persusasively that superhero stories boil down issues of self-sacrifice, heroism, and the will to help one’s fellow man to the bare formal essentials; Steven rightly points out that the genre is both bigger and (all too often) smaller than that; Dave justly takes apart Steven’s straw-man argument that Jim was trying to puff up superheroes (or sci-fi) by attributing lofty metafictional ideals to their practitioners. But I don’t think Dave needs to worry all that much about coming to Jim’s defense–I see a lot of Steven’s trademark emperor-has-no-clothes schtick in his critique of Jim’s article. From the de-rigeur questioning of the ethics of superhero behavior (“The civic-virtue stuff they preach is strictly squaresville! Also, they’re vigilantes, don’t you know! Thugs!” C’mon, dude. Paging Mr. Ellis.) to the thinly veiled anti-blog digs (just curious: if we got paid a little for each post, would our lengthy collections of analysis, reviews, and random pop-cultural and political musings be more or less likely to spread those pesky blogmemes?), there’s a lot being said here that’s only tangentially (if that) related to what Jim (or anyone else worth listening to) actually said. On the upside, though, at least Jim squeaked by without being referred to as the Hand Puppet. (Maybe, since he’s the guy who provided bloggers with our New Reality, he’s the Puppeteer?)

I feel like I’m in some sort of holding pattern. At least I’ve still got listing comics links going for me.

First of all, thanks so much for all the birthday/anniversary wishes, folks! Laura, Neil, Bill, Johnny, Shawn, Kevin, Dave, and whoever else I missed–you folks are swell.

Second of all, a hearty welcome back to Alan David Doane! He’s returned to the ol’ comics internet by reviving his news & commentary site, Comic Book Galaxy. He’s even got a new blog, the first entry of which features several spot-on reviews & previews as well as an interesting Q&A about his comics habits. (He makes it abundantly–some might say unnecessarily–clear that he doesn’t dig most superhero comics, but hey, that’s our man Alan!) Seriously, it’s great to have ADD back in the proverbial game. He’s a lodestone for this stuff.

It’s nice to see the unsung heroes of corporate comics get credit where credit is due, especially in light of how much merely workmanshiplike (if that) work is done in that arena. So it warmed the cockles of my heart to see Darwyn “New Frontier” Cooke give colorist Dave Stewart a major tip o’ the hat. (Courtesy of Graeme McMillan.)

Artbomb has the scoop on several fascinating upcoming releases, including the collected Sequential (an early experimental anthology series) from Paul Hornschemeier, an alternative-superhero anthology called Superior featuring work from Jeffrey Brown, Paul Pope, and Farel Dalrymple, and The Art of James Jean, the tremendously gifted color artist for Fables and other DC titles.

Sometimes, parody is self-parodic. Christopher Butcher has the scoop.

Johanna Draper Carlson calls glam/fashion manga Paradise Kiss a comic worth reading. Alls I know is that she had me at “influenced by Velvet Goldmine.” Now that I’m more or less caught up with Battle Royale, Planetes, and the work of Junji Ito, I think this is the next modern manga on my list. I even like the cover design. (Courtesy of Shawn Fumo.)

Kevin Melrose, the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Dirk Deppey” of the modern comics blogosphere, has branched out. He’s co-founded a writer’s resource site called Scryptic Studios, featuring comics-centric advice and such for aspiring scribes and pros alike. It’s, like, professional-looking. I, for one, am impressed. Impressed and likely to utilize the site. But don’t take my word for it: Larry Young, the best PR man K-Mel ever had, calls it “a rich and entertaining site, sure to bring out the hate in the usual snarky observers of the scene.” Snark? In comics-observing circles? Whaddya talk?

Johnny Bacardi offers up a particularly sharp batch of reviews. The Astonishing X-Men review has a deliciously “oooh” line. Good stuff.

Dorian at Postmodern Barney didn’t mean to go off on a rant here… but he does, in entertaining fashion, about the X-Men relaunch, Marvel’s retailing policies, the Dirk Deppey-helmed TCJ (haven’t seen the new ish yet, myself), and the wisdom of putting out manga-sized digest versions of American comics. Dorian thinks its a waste of time and resources–if the stories and art aren’t reminiscent of manga, says Dorian, format won’t matter. But I can tell you from experience that format does matter. At my store, which I imagine is representative of the rest of the chain, the difference between getting shelved with the enormous, fast-sell-through manga section and the tiny, messy, “yeah, but where are the graphic novels?” ask-the-kids shelves of American comics is solely based on size. Dorian’s certainly right to point out that manga fans are unlikely to dive right into the Big Two’s respective slush piles, but they’re a hell of a lot more likely to do so if the books are formatted in such a way that said fans actually see them. It’s not a panacea, and it’s not supposed to be–it’s simply a question of removing unnecessary obstacles to readership. (Courtesy of NeilAlien.)

Finally and belatedly, I want to wish everyone, particularly those for whom the holiday was created, a happy Memorial Day. You’re braver than me, and I thank you for it.

Memes are fun! This one finds its way here courtesy of Johnny Bacardi. Alan David Doane did it, too. So why not?

1. Do you tend to go to the nearest store, the best store, any store, or does it matter?

If I can get into the city, I go to Midtown Comics. They’ve got the second-best selection in the city (after the amazing Jim Hanley’s Universe), but they offer a 15% discount for regulars, and the employees are very friendly and helpful. If I can’t get into the city, I go to a mainly-models/toys shop next to my gym, or use my employee discount to buy graphic novels at the bookstore I work at. And if it’s an alternative comic I’m really fiending for and Midtown’s all out, I’ll go to Hanley’s. (I do try to get there every so often, because it’s awesome.)

2. Ladies, what books do you tend to purchase, or what kind would you like to purchase (if you are a male please leave blank or supply what a girlfriend reads)?

The Missus likes Craig Thompson, Jeffrey Brown, Phoebe Gloeckner, Paul Hornschemeier, Jordan Crane.

3. What one thing would you add or change about your most frequented store (i.e. What is the worst thing about the store)?

It’d be nice if Midtown had a deeper backstock in terms of alternative comics. Their online reserve service can get you anything provided you’re buying it the week of release, but after that, you’re sort of on your own. Hanley’s has a much wider, deeper selection overall, and I love the way it’s organized, but the lack of a discount and occasional surliness make it a special-occasion-only type thing.

4. What one thing would you not change (i.e. What is the best thing about the store)?

The discount and the online reserves.

5. Do you read any small press comic books currently? Which one(s)? (examples: Lone Star Press, Avatar)

Well, of course. Fantagraphics is the tops, I think.

6. What back issues do you buy?

I’ll occasionally play catch-up with series I missed out on if I’m particularly anxious to read them, but thanks to trade paperbacks that’s usually unnecessary.

7. How do you decide what comic book to buy? Writer, artist, character, word of mouth, etc?

All of the above, except perhaps character–my favorite character is Batman and I’m not buying any regular series starring Mr. Wayne’s alter ego. I’ll probably be buying Astonishing X-Men for the characters, but that’s for what Grant Morrison did with them and an interest in seeing what the new team does to follow up more than it’s for some love of the platonic ideal of Wolverine or the White Queen.

8. Do you buy strictly current age comic books or do you buy older comic books? What kinds?

I guess it depends on how you define “older”–reprint collections are a big part of my collecting habits. (Several of my favorite books of 2003 included Palomar, The Frank Book, and Squadron Supreme, just by way of a for instance.)

9. How do you feel about graded comic books?

Who cares? To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, spending $20,000 on some super-duper shrinkwrapped copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 is God’s way of telling you you have too much money. And as for anything newer or less important than that, you gotta be kidding me.

10. What comic book related merchandise do you buy?

Not much anymore–I’m a married man. I gotta maintain a respectable home. T-shirts is probably as far as I’ll take it these days, and it’s been a while since I even bought one of those.

11. What do you read if you are not reading comic books?

Comics blogs, obviously. Rock magazines. I was on a non-fiction kick for a while–books on warfare, crime, and terrorism, mainly. I also like reading books about scenes (glam rock, freeform FM rock radio, Saturday Night Live, funk, and so forth), which is funny because I hate scenesterism. I enjoy rereading favorites–every year I read Lord of the Rings, and there’s plenty of Clive Barker and George Orwell and old Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk and suchlike that finds its way onto my nightstand on a regular basis. The Master and Margherita has been on my to-do list for quite some time, and hopefully it’s ready to be done.

12. What do you buy at comic book conventions?

Tons, and I mean tons, of comics. It helped that it wasn’t so much “me” that was buying them as it was my Uncle Abercrombie, that’s for sure. But if you’re not gonna buy comics at a comic book convention, where are you gonna buy ’em?