The bulk of the criticism directed at my “comics needs Tim Russert” piece is that, well, yeah, it does, but it needs a boatload of other things before such a figure would be of any use at all. A readership that’s aware of and interested in the issues, for example. For that matter, a consensus on what the important issues are. A level of parity between publishers, distributors, retailers, and readers, through which an interchange of ideas might actually have an effect on the implementation of policy. In other words, for there to even be the possibility of a Tim Russert type in comics, comics needs the type of civil-society infrastructure you find in the American polity.

Needless to say, we’re pretty far away from that. (Babar at Simply Comics makes these points quite well–thanks to Dirk Deppey for the link.) But I’m aware of all that–the Tim Russert angle was, in its way, a fantasy based on a theoretical comics industry where such a civil infrastructure exists, where such values are shared and agreed upon, where an interview that exposes an influential figure as honest or intelligent or a bunko artist might actually make a difference to the people who consume the art that figure produces.

(It’s also worth noting that many people have responded by saying that Russert really isn’t so great. (Steven Grant, for example, isn’t a Russert fan, but agrees with the basic point I was making, even if he sees (as I do) how difficult it’d be to create such a figure.) And that’s fine–the point was not that we need TIM RUSSERT, but that a dedicated, intelligent, talented, doggedly determined interviewer seen as a necessary destination by the movers and shakers in the business would be good for said business. You’re welcome to substitute Bob Schieffer, or Georges Stephanopolous and Will, or the people on Fox News Sunday, if you’d like; it’s that Sunday-morning talk-show framework that I’m referring to, not one particular journalist.)

(UPDATE: I also want to state for the record that, obviously, there’s a big difference between hard-news journalism and entertainment journalism, as well there should be. There should always be a place, a big place at that, for hyping upcoming projects and having friendly, fannish interviews with creators. But I think even there we folks who write about comics could do better than we sometimes do; and I think at a certain point we do need to do serious reporting and interviewing, even if this is “just” an entertainment industry. Just by way of a for instance, New Line risked its own bankruptcy by financing a three-film Lord of the Rings trilogy, so in addition to reading interviews with Sean Astin and Miranda Otto, I think it’s an objective good to have interviews with the studio heads explaining what they were thinking. (I also think it’s fair to ask creators to justify the work that they’re doing and the way that they’re doing it; though on a much smaller scale, these are important decisions, too, and I’d think that many creators would welcome the opportunity to talk about them.))

(UPDATE 2: It occurs to me that the parody bits in the original post come across as very harsh toward the folks who conducted and/or participated in the interviews they’re based on, and that really wasn’t my intent. I don’t know them from Adam, so it’s certainly nothing personal, and hell, it’s not even meant as being indicative of the average level of their work. It’s just commentary on what I see as some specific weaknesses of the current state of comics journalism, particularly interviews. I thought I should clear that up.)

On the one hand, President Bush is more willing to put American money & might (not to mention his own political future) on the line to fight for human freedom abroad than I could possibly have hoped back when he was running against Al Gore. On the other, he seems just as willing to restrict human freedom at home as I feared, well, back when he was running against Al Gore. Andrew Sullivan puts it thusly:

I was also struck by how hard right the president was on social policy. $23 million for drug-testing children in schools? A tirade against steroids? (I’m sure Tom Brady was thrilled by that camera shot.) More public money for religious groups? Abstinence only for prevention of STDs? Whatever else this president is, he is no believer in individuals’ running their own lives without government regulation, control or aid. If you’re a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.

Yep.

And that’s without mentioning his asinine attack on the rights of gay citizens. No, he didn’t come out and explicitly call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; as even Pat Buchanan pointed out on MSNBC, said avoidance is shorthand for “shut the fuck up about a constitutional amendment already, you nitwits.” But he clearly felt either obligated or happy (or both) to give a nod and a wink to the anti-gay right, and I simply can’t brook that.

His points on Iraq and terror were razor-sharp and rock-solid. But he spent the rest of the speech coming out swinging on behalf of a reinvigorated, non-reexamined PATRIOT Act, a failed religious-based policy toward sexually transmitted disease,an expanding war on the personal freedom of American citizens and even children in the guise of the “War on Drugs,” and an insult to the decency and moral seriousness of American homosexuals. All this and record deficits, too.

Couple this with the Democrats’ apparent rejection of their own rejectionist extraordinaire in Iowa two nights ago, and the loyal opposition begins to look a lot more appealing.

This oughta be terrific.

Good heavens. What on Earth will dozens of twenty&thirtysomething minicomics artists think of war? Do you think they’ll disagree with the policies of President George W. Bush? Will the topic of oil come up at some point? Is war going to be seen as bad for children and other living things? Perhaps comparisons to Nazi Germany might be made–who knows? The world waits with bated breath.

Prediction: Not since the Comics Journal’s Special Edition on Patriotism will there have been a collection of political cartoons as predictable and inessential as this bad boy.

On both his blog (no permalinks yet; currently the top item) and the Comics Journal message board, Zack Soto weighs in the possibility of altcomix favorites being published in manga-sized digest formats. Like me, Zack thinks it’s a great idea. The big “if” here, of course, aside from whether the creators want to do this, is whether the publishers (like Fantagraphics) can afford it. But I think it’d pay dividends in the long run–this is the format that young readers want their comics in, and I see little reason that these high-quality books wouldn’t appeal to them if presented in that format.

(NB: Blogger Shawn “Silverthorn” Fumo and cartoonists James Kochalka and Colleen Coover offer interesting and enthusiastic responses on that TCJ.com thread. But be warned, the usual signal-to-noise ratio for that board applies here: There are plenty of people yelling, “DON’T SHRINK THE ART JUST TO MAKE SOME MORE OF THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, YOU FUCKIN PHILISTINE!” (And there’s a drunk Tony Millionaire, but what else did you expect?) In all seriousness, shrinking art is sometimes a very bad idea, and I’m well aware of that, which is why I suggested the comics I did: They’d work at that size, without question. But some of those posters are reflexively rejecting an idea precisely because it might lead to the artist and publisher making more money and expanding their readership. (This despite the fact that the material itself wouldn’t change, aside from getting a little smaller, which as I said wouldn’t matter in these cases.) “Artform vs commodity. No good can come of this.” Yes, folks, welcome to the Comics Journal messageboard.)

(Pic courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.)

by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Source: Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968. Found at http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html.)

Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

I’ve been thinking a lot about interviews lately. Actually, I think most people who read about comics online have been thinking about interviews lately. Can you imagine interviews like the kind we see in comics appearing in any other field of endeavor?

* “You’re watching World News Tonight. Sitting in for Peter Jennings is Ben Stiller, because it’s Ben Stiller Week here at ABC News.” “Good evening. We begin tonight with special guest Owen Wilson. Later in the broadcast, Janeane Garofalo will be stopping by. And be sure to tune into 20/20 later tonight, where myself and co-host Jerry Stiller will interview Ann Meara, Andy Dick, and the cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David.”

* “Hello, I’m Lester Holt, and you’re watching MSNBC. Recently I spoke via email to Democratic presidential contender Dennis Kucinich. I asked him some questions–some about comics, others about, y’know, just some kind of neat things about ideas and stuff–and he responded by talking about buttfucking and midget kangaroo prostitutes or something. I will now read you the complete, unedited transcript.”

* “Today on Good Morning America, my interview with President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Diane, any thoughts?” “Well, Charlie, my suggestion is that, when they get into their pseudo-Martin & Lewis routine, just let it roll. Or better yet, try to provide set-ups and puns for them to riff off of. The kids’ll love it. Make sure not to challenge any of their assertions on the success or appeal of their major policies. Actually, try not to even specifically ask about their major policies, at least not the ones involving anything more complex than the controversial new outfit Smokey the Bear is wearing these days. Okay, okay, if you must you must, but remember that “follow-up” is just another F-word. Generally speaking, a nice, simple, “rough year, huh?” will say everything that needs to be said, and if they reply “hell no, it was great,” well, you did your job. If you really want to come off like a take-no-shit kinda guy, press them on something inconsequential and stupid, some obvious failure that got a lot of press a long time ago but then disappeared into well-deserved obscurity–that is, until you dedicated about 40% of your interview to questions about it. Now, occasionally, when you ask them about the strength of the U.S., they’ll reflexively talk about how good our movies do overseas. You’re welcome to gently remind them that movies are nice, but we’re talking about politics–but only after they’ve done this four or five times. And remember, it’s only government! Have fun with it!” “Thanks, Diane. Actually, that was pretty much my game plan to begin with.”

I think that what comics needs, and badly, is Tim Russert.

I don’t know how you folks feel about Russert, but I think he’s the gold standard for interviews with politicians and policy makers. I guess he was a Cuomo operative once, but as far as I can tell his agenda, if he has one, is completely invisible. He’s hard, really hard, on everyone. Those “gotchas” he does with old interviews and video clips are just priceless. When people bullshit him, he follows up just long enough to make it clear that that’s what’s going on, but not so long that it becomes an O’Reilly-esque screaming match that enables his subject to claim that he’s being unfairly attacked. He doesn’t interrupt like Chris Matthews does, either–if you’ve got a point, he’ll let you make it, though he’ll challenge you on the specifics. And best of all, if you want to be taken seriously as a politician or policymaker, you have to appear on his show. You know you’ll get hammered, but you have to sit there and take it, or people will see you, and rightly so, as someone who can’t walk the walk.

I don’t think there’s anything even remotely comparable in comics today, and man oh man, does comics ever need there to be one. The PR-type gabfests that comprise 95% of comics-related interviews certainly have their place, but when there’s an issue of importance on the table, we need something better. When the people talking are the people who truly shape the industry, they need to be called to account, asked the important questions, pressed for the real answers. Moreover, there needs to be a sense of obligation on the part of such people to face that kind of forum. Without the sense that “the road to being taken seriously leads through this inteveriew,” needless to say, no one would even go near it.

Can it be done? I don’t know. There certainly are figures in the world of comics that hold positions of preeminence in their respective quasi-journalistic fields: Rich Johnston is the gossip columnist, Dirk Deppey is the blogger, the Comics Journal is the magazine, etc. A person or entity can be built up to the point where their reputation ensures that they are taken seriously by those who wish to be taken seriously themselves. But none of these figures are directly comparable to what I’m talking about: Blogs are still too obscure, the Comics Journal will always be seen as an elitist propaganda wing for Fantagraphics (mainly, of course, by the perpetually benighted, but let’s face it, there are a lot of ’em), and as good as Rich’s columns can be (except the New Year’s ones, for whatever reason), I’m not sure that anyone feels that their credibility is at stake unless they grant an interview to Waiting for Tommy.

The fact is that comics journalism just doesn’t pay enough to create someone with the full-time dedication, talent, and clout of a Tim Russert. (This is simple enough to deduce: Take the average amount that someone who writes comics for a living will make in a lifetime, and then picture what someone who makes a living writing about that writer might make. And then let me know when you’ve stopped shuddering.) The other fact is that so many comics readers don’t give a flying fuck about reprint policies or payments to freelancers or creator-owned opportunities or the strengths and weaknesses of genre or the need for a forward-thinking Direct Market or whatever that folks in this industry will always be able to get away with murder, Tim Russert or no.

But imagine what it would be like if important figures from across the industry had to put the press releases aside, erase the zany responses to the canned questions, swallow their conviction that the art-snob elitist/mouth-breathing pervert-suit part of the biz was out to get them, and talk straight for half an hour with someone who knew what he or she was talking about–and most importanly, why it was worth talking about to begin with.

Meet the Press, comics industry. I insist.

UPDATE: I’ve posted some follow-up thoughts here.

Today I got an email forward from a friend of mine, one that called itself an “INTEGRITY TEST.” The set-up was that you are a professional photographer covering a hurricane in Miami, and while taking pictures of the raging floods you see George W. Bush ready to go down for the third time. If you put the camera down, you’ll be able to rescue him, but you’ll lose your shot at a Pulitzer for chronicling the last moments of the most powerful man on Earth. And so the INTEGRITY TEST asks you the following, hugely important question:

Would you shoot in color, or black and white?

Yeah, I know, uproarious. I got sent this by an Ivy League graduate, who himself received it from another Ivy League graduate. The funny thing about it is that I don’t doubt at all that they’d actually leave Bush to die–and that they’re far from alone in this, too.

So what’s the deal with the borderline-pathological hatred that so many people have for President Bush? I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. As someone whose presidential voting record thus far runs Clinton 96/Gore 00, who supported all of Al Gore’s recount efforts in Florida, and who bashed the Pres. with the best of them up until, well, you know, I still cannot fathom why highly educated and articulate grown-ups across the country (well, across the coasts) literally would like to see him dead. Here are some ideas:

1) The conservatives who demonized President Clinton are reaping the whirlwind. I do think this is a significant part of it all. The bad feelings left over from the Republican Revolution, the idiotic impeachment proceedings, the “trail of bodies from Little Rock to Washington,” et cetera, were absorbed by the country’s most doctrinaire left-liberals, and now they’re just vomiting it back out all over the rest of us, only with a different President serving as ipecac.

2) War. I’d imagine that in the post-Vietnam United States, any war, under any president, will be incredibly polarizing. The odd combination of totally unprecedented war (the War on Terror) and directly precedented war (the Iraq theater of same), making hostilities seem both dangerously unpredictable and frighteningly repetitive, probably doesn’t help either.

3) The election debacle. This is where the tipping point occurred, and the role of “foaming-at-the-mouth partisan loony-tunes” shifted from being played by conservatives to liberals. It certainly was bad to see an election be decided by a party-line vote of the Supreme Court; it was also bad to see it won in a state that Al Gore really did win (although his myopic demand to recount only certain counties would have produced the very Bush win he was trying to avoid). But is the election enough to prevent people from engaging in debate with the ruling party and its President in good faith? For some, apparently, the answer is yes. In a time of unprecedented conflict, when the American mainland has been attacked by a foreign power for the first time since the War of 1812, people are still so angry about the hanging-chad debacle that they’re ready to throw out the electoral college (thus ensuring that only about a dozen states, if that, will ever factor into presidential politics again) and have themselves convinced that new voting machines are part of a Republican plot to steal “more” elections.

4) Bush is a lousy public speaker. To the Ivy League types that form the core of the Bushatred movement, this is anathema. It kind of was to me, for a while, though it was always more funny than anything else. I’ve certainly read little to convince me that behind closed doors, Bush is anything but an agile and adroit manager, very much at the helm of his administration. But his verbal gaffes–even the mere fact that he just isn’t silver-tongue–radiate “UNQUALIFIED UNELECTED PUPPET” to many people.

I happen to think that Bush has done great things foreign-policy wise. My vote is far from being locked up, though; just by way of a for instance, if he ends up lobbying for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, my vote will go to the Marijuana Reform Party faster than you can say Jack Robinson. But I’m not going to begin joking about how if I had my druthers he’d be dead, and I’m probably going to have a hard time taking seriously those who do.

Same deal as the comics one, basically.

1) The Postal Service: Give Up

2) Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism

3) Fischerspooner: #1

4) Rufus Wainwright: Want One

5) David Bowie: Reality

6) Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever to Tell

7) The Dandy Warhols: Welcome to the Monkey House

8) Underworld: Underworld 1992-2002

9) The Rapture: Echoes

10) A Perfect Circle: Thirteenth Step

11) The Mars Volta: De-Loused in the Comatorium

12) The Strokes: Room on Fire

12) Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Out of Season

There you have it. Sorry to Radiohead and Outakst and Deftones and Marilyn Manson and Metallica. And to the White Stripes, but to be honest I don’t understand the fuss about Elephant at all.

I really can’t recommend the Postal Service and Death Cab and Beth Gibbons records highly enough.

Do you think we can discuss comics online without resorting to personal attacks or name-calling or de-linking or multi-blog ersatz flame wars when we disagree?

I’m just askin’, is all.

Haven’t done one of these in a while.

Editor Axel Alonso announces some of the upcoming plans for the Marvel Knights imprint–assuming the agent-provacateur role vis a vis unabashed superhero fans from the oustered Bill Jemas in the process. Hee hee! The occasional excess of Alonso’s rhetoric aside, Marvel Knights has traditionally been the petri dish for the types of comics storytelling that helped turn Marvel proper, and indeed the mainstream industry at large, around. The Marvel Knights style (which I once described as “slightly more sophisticated, slightly less continuity-wonky, usually better”) has produced more hits than misses–or at least the hits have been bigger and better than the misses have been lousy flops–and I’m happy to see Marvel sending more of their big (and, not coincidentally, movie-related) franchise characters in that direction. By the end of April ’04, the imprint will include titles starring silver-screen superheroes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, the Hulk (whose book was, as I’ve said, already a Marvel Knights book, in tone if not in name), the Punisher (I think–they’re still doing a non-mature-readers series even while moving Garth Ennis’s Punisher work over to MAX territory, right?), and, if rumors can be believed (and my sources tell me that in this case they can), Blade.

Gee, when you read it all together like that, it’s clear which editor the Marvel bigwigs feel they can trust with the high-profit franchises, isn’t it? Surely it’s only a matter of time before an X-book starring central X-characters makes the migration into Alonso’s stable. Meanwhile, Captain America continues to be the red(whiteandblue)headed stepchild of Marvel Knights: His title has never gelled satisfactorily. However, the Robert Morales/Chris Bachalo iteration of the book is, even after one issue, easily the most promising version thus far (not counting the rollicking “What If the Nazis Had Won?” version by Dave Gibbons and Lee Weeks), so there’s hope even there.

In other Marvel imprint news, Bill Sherman enters the Marvel Age fray, asking defenders and detractors alike to postpone judgement until, y’know, we actually see the books. I’ll reiterate what I said on my last post on the topic: “[Everything] hinges on whether the books are any good, and (to a lesser or greater extent, depending on your perspective) whether or not they sell. But the principle behind the thing is as sound as it gets, in my book.” (Bill also picks up the Velvet Underground quoting baton and runs with it, God bless ‘im.)

David Fiore chimes in on a related topic: the “innocence” of the Silver Age, specifically blogger Alan David Doane’s feelings on same. Responding to Alan’s quote in my post on the topic yesterday (in which Alan described the “innocence” in question as a belief in the happy-family Bullpen model of Marvel comicmaking, subsequently belied by the awful treatment of Jack Kirby and the cynical statements and actions of 1980s Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter), David writes:

Look ADD–as a personal reaction to the history of Marvel Comics, your statement is perfectly valid, and I sympathize with you… However, the problem is that you allow these feelings about “corporate fuckery” and the business/contractual side of the comic book world to seep into every aesthetic judgment you make, rendering your criticism (at least of superhero comics) absolutely valueless….

The point is this–criticism deals with texts! It cannot concern itself with the manner in which the texts are created (or to whom they are marketed). The builders of the Pyramids suffered even more grievously at the hands of their masters than Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko did–we have to put that out of our minds when we’re appraising the works themselves qua works of art… I have no problem whatsoever with editorializing against the slimy business practices of corporations (or Pharoahs)–just don’t let that stuff (or your hurt feelings about Marvel as “bad father”) lead you into making critical judgments that you are unable to support with textual evidence…

This is a not uncommon phenomenon when critically evaluating comics as art. One of the best comics critics I’ve ever read has said to me that the aesthetic enjoyment or enrichment you get out of a given comic should not even be a consideration if the business practices involved in its production were immoral. He wasn’t referring to the Silver Age comics themselves–the years and years of comics derived from them were his target–and I don’t even think he’s necessarily wrong in some cases (how many of us, for example, want to hear whether Frank Miller gives his blessing to a particular version of Elektra before we buy it? Or refused to buy the collection of Alan Moore’s Captain Britain work until it was properly accredited?), but it’s important to remember this mindset when evaluating the work of critics dealing with this industry.

On the other hand, ADD does seem to have a sense of humor about himself, as his comment at this Franklin Harris post makes clear.

Stuart Moore does the advocacy bit for the “superheroes plus” genre. Saying that straight-genre comics won’t attract a wide readership (gee, why do you think that’s the case?), he argues that by setting superhero stories in a solid genre framework (crime, espionage, science-fiction, etc.) you can draw in an existing readership and, in a semi-stealth fashion, broaden their horizons, leading eventually to a more robust variety of comics. A nice theory–if it weren’t for the fact that this just isn’t happening. Superhero fans now have several years of popular, acclaimed “superheroes plus” stories under their belts–and Stuart Moore’s hard work at Vertigo and Marvel Knights played no small part in this–and yet the Direct Market still shows no signs of being able to sell anything that’s totally costume- or powers-free. It would appear that, as I’ve argued before, the key factor for superheroes-plus stories isn’t the plus, it’s the superheroes. No, straight-genre stories don’t sell, but that’s because of excessive superhero dominance of the market, and is not something that can be fixed in any substantial way by doing more superhero stories, even great superhero stories, of any kind.

Moore is, however, correct in saying that normal “people aren

Eric Spratling just kills with this hysterical beatdown of the astoundingly ham-fisted anti-Bush political commentary in recent issues of Avengers, which Spratling calls “a MoveOn.org ad in disguise.” The straw-man arguments and de rigeur Nazi comparisons the book makes–about everything from 9/11 to Iraq to AIDS–are so fantastically simplistic that you literally won’t believe a grown-up wrote them. (Unless, of course, you’ve read the political commentary of seemingly every other “grown-up” in the industry, in which case this will just seem par for the course.)

I suppose one could make a joke here along the lines of “this is what you get for ever thinking ‘Geoff Johns was a great writer, a wonderful writer, the kind who was doing all he could to [bring] a kind of joy and fun (though tempered with appropriate seriousness) back to mainstream comics,'” but far be it from me to do that.

Tremendous round-table discussion amongst left-liberal hawks over at Slate today. When all is said and done, it will include essays from superstar regime-change advocates Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria, Kenneth Pollack, and more. Fascinating reading, for several reasons:

1) Several of the correspondents seem to be using entirely different sets of facts. Witness the range of opinion on whether or not the Iraqis are happy that we’re there, for example, or if Saddam Hussein was deterrable.

2) They are all able to criticize the failures of the Bush Administration, and indeed explicitly call for him to be punished for them at the polls, without saying the war was a cruel farce waged by a bloodthirsty oil cabal and it was a waste and a mistake and we never should have gone in there and BUSH LIED–PEOPLE DIED! In other words, they demonstrate a moral seriousness and thoughtfulness that’s utterly refreshing and, amongst the administration’s critics, sadly, rather unique.

3) Some of them seem genuinely concerned for the health of “international institutions.” I would say that the fault for the sorry state of (for example) the UN lies with those who’ve allowed it to become a get-out-of-jail-free card for murderous thugs and their sycophantic bagmen, not with the course of action that finally called the institution’s bluff after catastrophic failures ranging everywhere from the Balkans to Rwanda, but that’s just me, I guess.

4) It’s enormously uplifting for a jaded liberal like myself to listen to intelligent, articulate liberals use words like “fascism” and “totalitarianism” to describe the policies of people who aren’t John Ashcroft.

5) While we’re on the liberal-hawk subject, go read Pollack’s reexamination of his own case for war over at The Atlantic, too. Provided you’re not just looking for “I told you so”s to level at the Bushies, you’ll find that the timing involved in Pollack’s conclusion has changed, but the conclusion itself has not.

6) The quote of the day comes from Hitchens’s contribution to the discussion. It regards antiwar forces whose constant predictions of disaster go unremarked upon when, as they nearly always do, they prove false. “How soon they forget,” he says, “but I don’t, and I am keeping score.” And he’s not the only one.

Fellow New Yorkers may wish to view Amanda’s spot-on summary of the WB11 Morning News Team.

MARYSOL CASTRO RULEZ, LYNN WHITE DROOLZ

My cat is snoring.

If you can think of anything cuter than that, I ask you to please keep it to yourself.

UPDATE: A cuteness pile-up. So cute your brain will liquify and leak out of your ears.

The Three-In-One: In our dreams we have seen a new Dark Age. Seen all history set back by a thousand years of ignorance and war. Seen, worse than all these, a terrible flaw at the heart of things. How did this happen so quickly?

Wolverine: I guess no one thought Rome could fall, either… those guys had a postal service that could deliver mail across 170 miles in one day. They had indoor plumbing, the women were free, they had art and science and a communications network that spanned the civilized world.

Within a hundred years, it was all debris and lice.

Sometimes ya gotta take care of what you got.

—Grant Morrison, New X-Men #151

Now, I may just be desperate to find a fellow liberal-interventionist defender of civilization against theocratic fascism and nihilist terrorism out there in the great big wide world of funnybooks, but what alternate explanation for this passage by Grant Morrison can you offer?

Andrew Sullivan on the motives of the anti-gay-marriage right:

They think that the most honorable and profound gay relationship is worth less than Britney’s 55 hour marriage. Why cannot they say this? My relationship wth my boyfriend will never be as good as Britney’s to Jason – and it’s worth amending the very constitution to affirm that for ever.

Besides being (obviously) offensive to homosexuals and those who think that homosexuality is neither deviant nor a sin nor an affront to civilization as we know it, this is offensive to regular heterosexuals (your gender is more important to AGM conservatives than whether or not you’re even the least bit serious in your commitment to one another), and to anyone who cares about the state of the Constitution of the United States America (an attempt is being made to amend the document with the express purpose of enshrining discrimination against a group of Americans in the founding document of America itself; an attempt, moreover, being carried out in a desperate quest to beat the clock, as polls and demographics suggest that within a generation or two homosexual marriage will be widely accepted).

Just thought I should bring it up again.

Jim Henley and I had an enlightening back-and-forth over email about the Marvel Age line, which I discussed earlier. After first backing me up on his own blog, he later offered some insight into the uproar over M.A., specifically the manga-style remakes of the classic Stan-Jack-Steve stories:

Some of the loudest complainers are people who disdain superhero fanboyism, but by their complaints about messing with the purity of the Silver Age Marvels they sound like nothing so much as their nemeses (superhero fanboys) bitching about some flouting of The Way Things Used to Be. Why, they sound oddly like John Byrne Message Board posters.

Indeed! This attitude towards the Silver Age is something I’ve spotted before, even amongst the most iconoclastic of comics pundits. It’s understandable, to a degree: Those are some remarkable comics, and the thoroughly lousy treatment over the years of many of the people who created them, by the very companies who couldn’t exist today without them, probably makes us all view them more protectively than we otherwise would. But referring to “the lost innocence of the Silver Age,” as Alan David Doane did back during that whole Seth X-Men cover kerfluffle, implies a belief in some mythical pre-Fallen state of grace for mainstream comics. And as much as I enjoy all the great stuff from that era, I don’t think they bear being treated as Scripture very well.

This is actually something touched upon by David Fiore during that same comics-cover crisis, in a couple of posts: “[T]here is no ‘lost innocence’ in the sixties for Seth to harken back to!” and “Next we’ll be hearing that super-hero comics are only suitable for children, and are best left unanalyzed! Oh, wait, we hear that every day from certain quarters…” No, most of the folks I’ve encountered who are upset about Marvel Age aren’t as far gone as your average John Byrne or Comics Journal messboard crackpot (both of whom treat superhero comics like kid stuff, albeit for very different reasons). But given how indistinguishable Marvel Age is from everything else Marvel does, legally and logically speaking–to say nothing of all the arguments in favor of Marvel doing just such a thing–it seems that the problem is mainly an emotional, or indeed sentimental, one.

In other words, I don’t get the outrage. Well, I get it–it’s just that I don’t think it makes much sense. Marvel Age is different from everything else Marvel does only in the sense that it is literally rewriting and redrawing the Stan/Jack/Steve stuff, as opposed to simply milking it for forty years while the people whose genius made those forty years of milking possible don’t make a whole lot of money from it. Legally, I don’t think this is any more or less distasteful than everything else Marvel does; the original writers and artists are being properly credited, so in that sense it’s even better than things were for ages on end. I think the uproar is a “sacred cow” issue more than anything else, and that’s fine, but it’s no way to run a business, especially one like Marvel in the position that Marvel’s in these days.

Obviously there are aesthetic arguments about redrawing Kirby or Ditko and rewriting Lee–I’ve heard it compared to the remake of The In-Laws or, God help us, Psycho–but I think that in intent it’s a lot closer to Peter Jackson’s upcoming remake of King Kong. The point in both cases is to take a great story and make it accessible to generations that are no longer comfortable with the storytelling and film- or comics-making conventions of yesteryear. Fine by me. (The goal is also to make a lot of money, but that’s also fine by me.)

For those of us who simply can’t get past the perceived lack of respect being shown to the legacy of Lee, (and especially) Kirby and Ditko, please keep in mind that even a revamped, redrawn, rewritten version of a classic Spider-Man or Fantastic Four yarn would be a hell of a lot closer to the originals than the manga kids would otherwise ever get. Furthermore, those kids would certainly be a lot more likely to eventually seek out the original Stan/Jack/Steve stuff than they are now! I don’t think I share Jim’s confidence that Marvel might even, get this, “try to sell them the originals” if they like the newfangled versions, but it would make a lot of sense, and again it’d be a lot more likely to actually work thanks to the exposure to the material made possible by Marvel Age.

All of this, of course, hinges on whether the books are any good, and (to a lesser or greater extent, depending on your perspective) whether or not they sell. But the principle behind the thing is as sound as it gets, in my book. And my attachment to the great works of the past doesn’t stop me from seeing the need to adopt, adapt, and (as far as accessibility goes) improve, for the present and the future.

UPDATE: Alan David Doane writes:

…I definitely think there IS a “lost innocence of the Silver Age.” Whether it was actually DURING the SA or was how we later readers looked at it, specifically up to the early ’80s before the truth came out about how Marvel screwed Jack Kirby and the Shooter “Little Fucks” era is debatable, one supposes. But there was a time when even the most informed comics reader could believe at least some of the myths about comics in general and Marvel in particular, and Seth’s piece evokes that era. In a time, now, when you have to pretty much have NO interest in comics NOT to know such trivia as Joss Whedon’s contractual machinations or Ellis’s online sex-farce, I’d say that innocence is gone.

In other words, when he’s talking about “lost innocence,” he’s not referring to the comics of that era, but Comics of that era–the industry/medium/art form. That does make sense, in terms of the readers and our view of the business side of the Silver Age and its aftermath: Ignorance truly was bliss.

The English press has subjected Shawcross’s apparent rightward turn to searching psychological and cultural analysis (finally inheriting the family estate; marrying a ”socialite heiress”; cozying up to the royal family; re-enacting his father’s own political pattern, etc.). Since ”Allies” is silent on this subject, it’s more instructive to consider the possibility that Shawcross has remained true to his principles, but that a morally driven foreign policy looks very different after 9/11 than it did before.

Emphasis mine. From James Traub’s review of William Shawcross’s Allies, in the New York Times. Link courtesy of Jeff Jarvis. And there’s more:

Shawcross is scarcely the only liberal or leftist to see the war in Iraq as the consummation, rather than the contradiction, of his principles…Shawcross notes that while the neocons are considered “radical” for their insistence that evil regimes have sacrificed their absolute right to sovereignty, these arguments “sound close to mainstream liberal internationalist thought.”

I do like to think, from time to time, that I have basically the same politics as I did on September 10th, and that it’s all my former fellow travelers who’ve lost their way.

Franklin Harris responds thoughtfully to my bafflement over the libertarian arguments for isolationism. Naturally, I’m still unconvinced–deficit spending seems a small price to pay for, you know, ending mass graves and so forth; and World War II and the Cold War are fairly strong arguments for the efficacy of an aggressive foreign policy in promoting the growth of liberty abroad without sacrificing it at home–but I’m pleased and grateful that Franklin took the time to explain them to me. All the points he raises are one that hawks should remain vigilant about, at any rate.

(Regarding the Founding Fathers, my guess is that an unwillingness to be drawn once again into hostilities with the most powerful empire in the history of the world accounts for at least some of their reluctance to get entangled in alliances…)