Teratoid Heights, by Mat Brinkman. 176 pages, 5 x 6, b/w. Published by Highwater Books. $12.95. Buy it here.

I’ve never seen a comic like this before.

Cartoonist Mat Brinkman is the most compelling member of the Fort Thunder art collective, which was formed by a group of RISD students in Providence, Rhode Island. He combines the whimsy and chops of FT’s most commercially successful artist Brian Ralph with the weirdness and choppiness of FT experimentalists like Brian Chippendale and Jim Drain. And in his little book Teratoid Heights, he’s created a minor sequential-art masterpiece.

This nearly silent, black-and-white paperback has no real narrative to speak of. Rather, it’s a collection of short adventure stories, in which a variety of monstrous, faceless creatures explore their respective environments with alternately hilarious and chilling results. Like Jim Woodring’s Frank stories, Teratoid Heights uses scary-funny black humor and unexpected surprises as its stock and trade. But it eschews Woodring’s familiar funny-animal tropes for something new, eerie, and original. The art, which simultaneously possesses the starkness of woodcuts and the manic detail of the 60s undergrounds, quite simply looks like a transmission from Another Place. It suggests a mental soundtrack wherein all that can be heard are the grunts and squeaks of these strange beings, and surrounding that, the low whirr of desolate lunar-landscape winds. It’s a means of transport as much as it’s a graphic novel.

The book is divided into several sections, each chronicling the adventures of a particular creature or colony of creatures. The first section, “Oaf,” starts the book off right: An exciting sequence shows the titular giant storming a well-protected tower, but what he does when he fulfills his quest is far from the damsel-rescuing or king-slaying you might have expected. In other, less humorous stories involving fear, danger, and death, it’s truly surprising how well the simply delineated and childlike Oaf is used to convey the pathos and occasional senselessness of his wild world, and how well Brinkman navigates the spaces of that world. The sense of geography you acquire is as clear-cut and visceral as your mental map of the fortress in the climax of The Two Towers (Tolkien, incidentally, being an obvious inspiration here).

These complex worlds are not all Brinkman has to show us, though. The book also features a collection of Brinkman’s “micro-minis,” 16-panel backgroundless showcases for a variety of simply drawn creatures. In “Cloudbank,” a chubby fellow devises an amusingly simple method for curing his ailing tummy; in “Creem Puff,” a marshmallow-man type figure has a jolly time proving that two heads are better than one; in “Dissector,” an arachnid monstrosity learns too late the price of his own curiosity. What’s fascinating about these stories, if you can call them that, is not just how well they hit their respective funny or grotesque notes, but the way Brinkman teases a plot out of the simple mechanics of drawing. Each creature’s actions flow naturally from their own design. It’s almost as if you’re watching a wind-up toy–each event makes perfect, almost automatic sense, yet ends up being totally unexpected. There’s a joy of drawing–one might almost say doodling–here that’s exhiliarating to behold. In “Cridges,” the book’s final section and the only one with written dialogue, Brinkman has similar fun with wordplay. Rhyming, big comic-book-y word effects (“NO”), and a monster-driven pastiche of slacker-dude rock-concert enthusiasm show Brinkman to be as able and witty a manipulator of language for its own sake as he is of art.

The book’s real tour-de-force, though, comes in the section called “Flapstack,” which concerns the subterranean realm of little creatures that look a lot like pulled teeth. That section’s story “Sunk” is, I think, the single best comics sequence I read all year. Three of the teeth creatures, each bound to the other by a length of rope, fall into a winding labyrinth. As they try to navigate this incredibly complex maze, Brinkman intercuts between them as though multiple cameras are involved. The three creatures are indistinguishable but for the corresponding numeral which appears each time they come back “on screen.” Before long we have a sense of exactly where in the maze each creature is, and it’s the intense concentration required to keep up with Brinkman’s byzantine constructions that attaches us to the creatures as surely as their frustratingly short lengths of rope attach them to each other. As they attempt to overcome the obstacles they encounter, the tension is, almost stunningly, an edge-of-your-seat affair. The powerful end to this thriller–which, again, stars three silent and indistinguishable walking teeth–is testament to the power of the medium when deployed in new and sophisticated ways, and to Brinkman for having the vision to do this.

The whole Fort Thunder crew shows a commendable interest in the physical aspects of alternative cartooning, rather than just the verbal. In a way it’s equivalent to modern-day dance-punks like the Rapture and DFA, who are trying to reintegrate mind and body over on the indie-rock side of things; I’ve also suggested it’s akin to the glam and prog acts of yore, who refused to sacrifice excitement for intelligence. Teratoid Heights is the best thing the group has produced so far. Though startlingly original, it evokes an array of comics that saw viscerality as a route to creativity: Woodring’s Frank, Panter’s Jimbo, Kirby’s New Gods, Ware’s Quimby the Mouse–I myself was also reminded of Mignola’s Hellboy and Miller’s Elektra Lives Again. A deceptively simple book, it packs a wallop you’ll be thinking about long after you finish reading. When the residents of Teratoid Heights finish exploring their own lands, don’t worry–they’ll be wandering around your brain soon enough.

(Special thanks to Chris Allen for pointing out that not enough people know this book is out there. It’s out there!)

Or: Here are Sean’s uninformed opinions on a movie he hasn’t even seen yet, which I guess hasn’t stopped anyone else, so here we go

What to make of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Well, for starters, I’m not buying that it’s anti-Semitic. I’m just not. In their collective rave for the film, both Roger Ebert & Richard Roeper, not exactly bagmen for the right wing, said it wasn’t anti-Semitic at all; ditto for the God Squad, Father Tom Hartman and Rabbi Marc Gelman. That pretty much settles the argument for me, because it would appear that at this point the only people taking offense are professional offense-takers. Hell, on Keith Olberman’s show the other day, Roeper said it actually could be considered more anti-Italian than anti-Semitic. As you might have noticed, I gun for anti-Semitism with as much gusto as anyone around, but if it’s not obvious to two film critics and two religious pundits, I don’t think it’s there.

I think films about Jesus, paradoxically, bring out the worst in people. During the pre-release furor, when people like Frank Rich were lambasting the film without even having seen it (though, to be fair, he wasn’t invited to do so), I couldn’t help be reminded about the similar uproar over Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. How many of the quote Christians unquote who boycotted that movie had any clue what they were actually boycotting? I think that film is one of the most deeply felt and devout Christian statements ever committed to celluloid, and when I hear people say otherwise, I’ve got to wonder what film they saw, or what kind of closed-minded zealotry they saw it with. It seems to me profoundly unfair to prejudge Gibson’s film as being too orthodox, in the same way that it was profoundly unfair to prejudge Scorsese’s for being too unorthodox.

I am not a Christian, but I greatly admire the life and teachings of Jesus, and I think it is important to tell his story. His death, quite simply, is an important part of that story, one that I think most comfy-cozy condemnatory Christians ignore. (For whatever reason, the answer to the religious right’s question “What Would Jesus Do?” rarely seems to be “throw all your money away, dedicate your life to helping every hated lowlife in your area, be rejected and hated by your hometown, undermine the religious and governmental authorities, get arrested, convicted in a kangaroo court, and tortured to death.” Go figure.) This also ties into my appreciation for over-the-top violence in film, and the way the spectacle of seriously hard-core bodily trauma cuts through various layers of distanciation to reveal horrifying truths about the world and the human condition. I can’t think of a more appropriate venue for such spectacle than Jesus’ crucifixion, which essentially served the same purpose.

Okay, those were the pros.

On the con side, Gibson himself strikes me as a fundamentalist whack-job, a person to whom our current Catholic Church is irredeemably liberal (!) and our current Pope is a namby-pamby pinko (God help us!). His refusal to repudiate his scumbag Holocaust-denying father’s grotesque anti-Semitism is offensive. (Listen, I love my Dad too and always will, but if he started saying Auschwitz was a hoax while I was trying to make a movie about a man who died out of love for his fellow man, you bet your ass I’d call bullshit on him.) Of course, Gibson also has made a string of troubling statements about homosexuals, and I’m no fan of that either. Actually, I’m surprised that no one’s pointed out how Gibson chose to make Satan an androgyne, which seems in keeping with his feelings about gays. I also think it’s no coincidence that our commander in chief chose the week this film was released to expand the War on Terror to American gays–I’m sure he figures his whole religious base will have a hard-on for infidels the second they leave the theatre.

Which leads me to some deeper problems not just with the movie, but with the Christian story. I’ve long been disturbed by the emphasis Christianity has placed on the crucifixion. It strikes me as borderline death-worship, simultaneously a celestial stamp of approval for human suffering and a divine invitation to seek revenge for this act. Like Christopher Hitchens and Patti Smith, I’m also horrified at the notion that a man I’ve never met (how could I? he lived 2,000 years ago) was the victim of a human sacrifice on my behalf. I did not ask for this to happen, nor would I if it were an option to me. I’d say “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” but the thing is I don’t believe in sin, either. I believe in doing right and doing wrong, and God knows I’ve done a lot of the latter, but that’s up to me to make right. I would have preferred that this wonderful, loving, caring, fun-loving (yeah, that’s right!), passionate, peaceful, moral, beautiful man of Nazareth lived a full, long life then to die in torment and ignominy for what I’m constantly told are my own wrongdoings. Their my wrongdoings. Please, God, let me atone for them.

Basically, I think a much better symbol than the cross would have been the empty tomb, the stone rolled away. Isn’t the point of Christianity not just that Christ died, but that Christ conquered death? Why is the joy of this essentially ignored in favor of the human sacrifice? I know you can’t have one without the other, but doesn’t it make more sense to focus on the end, rather than the means?

Anyway, those are my thoughts about the film. I would like to see it sometime, but I know the violence will probably keep the Missus away–the violence and the fact that her Christianity is a deeply personal affair, and she’s uncomfortable with communal expressions thereof. We’ll see.

Oh, hell. This seems appropriate too:

Well, a redneck nerd in a bowling shirt was a-guzzlin’ Lone Star beer

Talkin’ religion and politics for all the world to hear.

“They oughta send you back to Roossia, boy, or New York City one,

You just want to doodle a Christian girl and you killed God’s only Son.”

I said, “Has it occurred to you, you nerd, that that’s not very nice,

We Jews believe it was Santa Claus that killed Jesus Christ!”

“You know, you don’t look Jewish,” he said, “near as I could figger

I had you lamped for a slightly anemic, well-dressed country nigger.

No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,

They don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before.”

He started in to shoutin’ and spittin’ on the floor,

“Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore.”

He says, “I ain’t a racist but Aristitle Onaysis is one Greek we don’t need,

And them niggers, Jews and Sigma Nus, all they ever do is breed.

And wops and micks and slopes and spics and spooks are on my list

And there’s one little hebe from the heart of Texas–is there anyone I missed?”

Well, I hits him with everything I had right square between the eyes.

I says, “I’m gonna gitcha, you son of a bitch ya, for spoutin’ that pack of lies.

If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s an ethnocentric racist;

Now you take back that thing you said ’bout Aristitle Onaysis.

No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,

We don’t turn the other cheek the way we done before.”

You could hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor,

“Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore.”

“No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,

They ain’t making carpenters who know what nails are for.”

Well, the whole damn place was singin’ as I strolled right out the door

“Lord … they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore.”

–Kinky Friedman, “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”

Andrew Sullivan weighs in. I think he may have a point with the depiction of Pilate and his wife versus the depiction of the Sanhedrin. But the passage about violence shows me nothing other than the fact that Sullivan doesn’t know a whole lot about film. God help him if he ever watched Hellraiser or Casino or Videodrome.

Shawn Fumo is back from doing frivolous crap like juggling, and is talking about comic books again! He’s got some details and a rave review of the new collections of Miyazaki’s epic fantasy Nausicaa, and I’ll admit I’m intrigued.

David Fiore went to the TCJ.com messboard and lived to tell the tale. Also, more DKR blogging.

Tim O’Neil‘s indipsensible daily links roundup directs us to strong reviews of Craig Thompson’s Blankets (aka “the book you have to voice some big problems with in order to be taken seriously these days, for whatever reason”) and Mat Brinkman’s Teratoid Heights (aka “the best book from 2003 that you’ve never seen”–expect a review from yours truly sometime soon), both from online magazine The High Hat. Check them both out–these are two of the best comics I’ve had the good fortune to read since getting back on the funnybook bandwagon.

Steven Wintle touts the upcoming International Read a Comic Book Naked Day. That explains a lot about his blog in recent weeks.

Babar of Simply Comics reviews this year’s APE convention, which, like SPX, seems to have dwindled compared to previous years. Could MoCCA be drawing attendance away from APE, too, despite their being a full season and a full country apart?

Finally, holy crap. (Link courtesy of Graeme McMillan.)

Again, it’s stupid to be talking about this so much until I see it. But regarding the depiction of Caiaphas et al, who probably weren’t swell people in real life any more than religious authorities with temporal power tend to be swell people in this day and age: I’m so used to viewing people’s actions as just that–those people’s actions, not the actions of the collective group to which they belong–that maybe I’m glossing over the potentially anti-Semitic resonance that making these guys into ugly villains might have. I’m so convinced of the stupidity of deriving anti-Semitism from the story of Jesus (if he’d been born in Norway, the Vikings would have killed him; if he’d been born in China, the Chinese would have killed him, etc.) that it’s tough for me to see that other people would draw a different conclusion from these images.

It’s like the “controversy” about the dark-skinned orcs in The Lord of the Rings. To me, it’s idiotic–they’re ORCS, people. They’re not real. They represent only themselves. That’s how I interpret the Gospels, in a sense–they’re AUTHORITY FIGURES, people. Their Judaism (which is shared by Jesus and his mother and father and his disciples and everyone who protests his crucifixion) is irrelevant. They represent only themselves. But the difference between the two cases is that for thousands of years, Christian authority figures have based all sorts of horrifying pogroms and inquisitions and holocausts on that particular misinterpretation. If people were going around harrassing and killing dark-skinned people because that’s how they interpreted LotR, I’d be a lot more wary of that book/those movies than I’d otherwise be. I think that’s why people are so wary of this film/this religion. (The fact that Mel Gibson hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to be pro-Semitic doesn’t help either.)

Okay, I’m done for now.

The big story of the week around the comics blogosphere has been, well, the comics blogosphere itself. This means I’ve been doing a lot of meta-blogging lately, for which you have my sincere apologies. But if it makes you feel any better, at least it’s been about relatively interesting meta topics, like the nature of blogging as a phenomenon and the effect blogging has on the thought patterns of its participants. In the wise words of Joe Quesada, never say never, but let me put it this way: Unless I get Instalanched, I’m never gonna post about, like, how many hits I got today or whatever.

Heidi MacDonald, the writer also known as The Beat, has a particularly juicy column this week on various and sundry scandals: The Marvel leaks, the Valentino ouster, the Deppey ascension (now it sounds like I’m naming Robert Ludlum novels). It also has an in-depth look at some of the top bloggers in the biz, and I’m flattered to say that yours truly was included in that number. This makes it the second article on the comics blogosphere to come out this week. Check it out, and while you’re there, ignore her denials and demurrals and encourage Heidi to start her own blog. (Don’t you think she’d do a great comics blog, in the Gawker/Kicker/Wonkette mode?)

While we’re on the meta-blogging beat, this piece of mine from yesterday has a bunch of links on the superhero debate and the notion of groupthink. Here’s a look at the bloggers who are weighing in on these topics today: Bill Sherman, saying his interest in manga is just reflective of a desire to read good comics; Bill Sherman again, defending the validity of different approaches to writing and reading comics; Rose Curtin, wondering why anyone would expect total diversity in criticism but still hopes to avoid posting simply to say “I agree” from here on out; Johnny Bacardi, pointing out that he has yet to join the manga herd; Rick Geerling, saying that unless he disagrees both strongly and coherently, he refains from writing deliberately contradictory posts; Steven Wintle, touting the diversity of the “Outer Blogosphere,” those comics bloggers who stay away from industry commentary; Dave Intermittent, suggesting that the ability of enthusiastic laymen to pontificate is a feature of blogs, not a bug, but also pointing out that, through the need for link love, blogs can be ideologically self-perpetuating; and Tim O’Neil, who wonders at the role his anti-superhero rants played in this whole kerfuffle, which he basically thinks is a stupid waste of time. We report, you decide!

In a post on an upcoming animation-style Batman comic, Johnny Bacardi takes a moment to savor the absence of colorist Lee Loughridge from the book’s black-and-white preview art. The frustrating thing about Loughridge is that you know he’s capable of better things than his usual palette of hideous browns and greens would suggest–his work on Kingpin #1 was tremendous, I thought. And yet the muddy, acidic colors he most often relies on are enough to keep me away from books I think I’d otherwise enjoy, like Y: The Last Man. Last night I finally read through the first trade paperback of Brubaker & Phillips’s Sleeper, which was great, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever have bothered reading it had it been released under Vertigo rather than WildStorm, and therefore had been given the imprint’s trademark Wall of Brown treatment…

Gaiman defeats McFarlane! Dewey defeats Truman! The Giants win the pennant! The British are coming! It’s a cookbook! (link courtesy of ADD courtesy of Mike Sterling.)

The following two threads on the Comics Journal message board make the Journal, its writers, its readers, and alt-comix fans in general look like __________. You have five seconds to fill in the blank with a word or phrase utterable on broadcast television. Ready, set, go! (Links courtesy of David Fiore and Christopher Butcher.)

Finally, David Fiore returns to The Dark Knight Returns. Today he argues that the book suffers for a lack of a Marlowe to offset Batman’s Kurtz. But David, what about that pivotal section in Book Three, when Batman nearly disappears and the story is told through the men on the street

Last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model featured appearances by the RZA and the Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Could that show get any better?

Issue #258 of the Comics Journal is apparently a pivotal one. I say “apparently” (and I’ll say it again) because I still haven’t seen it. But Christopher Butcher has, and his description of it indicates a magazine on the verge of

Happy blogday to you

Happy blogday to you

Happy blogday, dear NeilAlien, pioneer, progenitor, Mother of All Comicsbloggers

Happy blogday to you

It’s a not-so-Secret War in the comics blogosphere! Tim O’Neil’s Comics-Journal review of Grant Morrison’s The Filth and his subsequent anti-superhero blog post have inspired an array of erudite and passionate responses. Yesterday, in the process of writing my own response, I pointed to Dave Fiore, Dave Fiore again, and Jim Henley. Today, we’ve been joined by Dave Intermittent, who refutes the argument that only a character’s creators have interesting things to say about that character and that personal taste should not be confused with objective standards; J.W. Hastings, who looks at the role that superhero-scapegoating plays in the comics-culture heirarchy; and Rose Curtin, who points out that demands for allegory often cannot and perhaps should not be met, and emphasizes the strengths of metaphor instead. Tim himself is too busy doing his stellar replacement-Deppey job to respond at length, but is happy to have started a discussion. I’m happy, too: The blogosphere has emerged as a source of intelligent writing on comics that serves to balance the heretofore prevailing view that “intelligent writing on comics” and “open to taking superheroes seriously” are mutually exclusive propositions. (Sure enough, a thread on this topic started by blogger Dave Fiore in a bastion of that viewpoint has already been suicide-hijacked by the usual suspects suspect.)

Ironic, isn’t it, that as the comics blogosphere rises as one to defend the validity of the much-maligned superhero genre, said blogosphere’s most well-respected proponent of said genre accuses said blogosphere of groupthink!

And the thing is, NeilAlien’s not wrong. Taking the time to carefully self-refute the most potentially incendiary and inaccurate aspects of this line of thought–that we’re not diverse enough in our aesthetic and literary preferences (we are), that it’s bad that we all link to the same things (it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which is a problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh, no. No, it really isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I say, so what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The comics blogosphere says goodbye and godspeed to its father:

Bill Sherman

Johnny Bacardi

Big Sunny D

Alan David Doane

Franklin Harris

Jim Henley

Eve Tushnet

John Jakala

David Fiore

Graeme McMillan

Kevin Melrose

Tim O’Neil

Tegan Gjovaag

The Comics Treadmill

Sean T. Collins

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