ORIGIN STORIES: How do people get into comics? That's the question that was on my mind after reading Journalista!'s rant/essay about (what he views as) the rotten state of the industry.
Because ultimately, that's what I think J! is calling for--more people with more kinds of tastes shaping the industry. And when I think about it that way, Dirk's pessimism or somewhat desperate edge seems pretty persuasive to me, even though I agree with Sean Collins (if it was him?) that hosts of awesome comics are coming out right now.
The first problem here is that people think comics are something you need to "be into." It's weird to go to comic shops and browse, and cart comic books around and read them on the bus and in the coffeeshop line, in a way that it's not weird at all to check out the latest movie reviews or browse the new releases at Borders. The medium is associated with a genre, and a genre that gets significantly less respect than it deserves. I'd say the best superhero comics are better than the best mysteries, for example, but get a lot less respect than The Long Goodbye, and even less respect than Agatha Christie (who herself is held in undeserved contempt).
I'm pretty sure that's why, even though I'd read comics all my life, I never thought of reading comics as a thing I do. I read ElfQuest as a kid, and loved it. I'd stay up after my bedtime re-reading ElfQuest by the light from the streetlamps streaming in through my window. (Mom, if you're reading this, please don't kill me!) I think I read Maus in junior high, or maybe early high school? In high school I got into Love and Rockets. But all this time I never even considered figuring out whether there were other comics out there that I might like. When I started getting into movies, or punk music, I just assumed that I would find all kinds of cool stuff out there if I looked; but I didn't even think of the comics I loved as comics. They were just... you know, ElfQuest and Maus and L&R. Oh and Ernie Pook's Comeek. Sui generis, and not really sharing a medium. (Admittedly, EPC really is pretty different from the other three, but still, sequential art and all that.) I'd be interested to find out whether this is how most people who read Persepolis, say, think about it. If it is how they think, Persepolis's popularity won't spill out onto other really good comics.
In the summer of 2000, I needed a quick, "intellectual coating over a candy center"-type article for my college's right-wing monthly. Figured I'd go see the most intriguing of the summer's blockbuster pix, "X-Men." Had fun; wrote a piece about the implications of genetic engineering for that Glenn Loury tagline about how conservatism is "the belief that human nature has no history." Forgot about it.
This past summer, the "X2" hype started, along with the "Matrix: Reloaded" (bleah) hype. It's more fun to be excited about two movies than one, so I figured, what the hey, I liked the first one; I'll see the second.
I didn't like it. Or so I thought. But something about it nagged at me, and I ended up seeing it several times. I think the main attractions were a) I never see new big-budget action pictures, because most of them are guaranteed crapathons, so "X2" is one of my only exposures to all those spectacular SFX and sleek designs; and b) the acting is really excellent. Nobody gets enough to do, but they (almost) all make their mark. Famke Janssen has this one thing she does with her hand, twice in the movie, that's just perfect.
Anyway, for whatever reason, I was interested. Started reading other people's reviews of the movie. This led to descriptions of various X-Men comics. Some of them sounded good. Hmm, I thought. Wonder if I'd like any of these. It was around this time that I started having bad insomnia, so I'd stay up late reading review sites and trying to get together a list of comics that sounded cool, basically in order to kill time. Ended up getting some okay stuff (X-Force; eh) and some stuff I still think is really good (New X-Men). The report is here.
I asked for recommendations, got 'em, and spent lots more up-all-night hours trawling review sites. Read the first Alias book and was just blown away. Started trying to figure out what I liked about it.
I think some of it is that I'm naturally oriented much more toward words than toward pictures. Even in discussing painting or photography, it's easier for me to pick up on the symbolism of the objects or poses in the work than on the composition elements and the way they advance the picture's meaning. I love comics because, like movies, they have enough "words" (dialogue, but also characters and plots) to make the work the composition does obvious to me. So they make me think visually, basically opening up a whole new way of approaching art. I can walk away from a comic, as with a movie, looking at the whole world differently. I love Alias in large part because every inch of every page advances the point of the comic--nothing's wasted. It's tight. And so when I ask myself, "OK, why did this page have such a big impact on me?", I learn how to think visually. Comics stretch my abilities to read, intuit, and convey meaning--while also, like any medium, providing everything from dumb fun (Ultimate X-Men) to genuinely powerful art (A Small Killing).
So now I think of reading comics as a Thing I Do. I browse comic shops. I read lots of different kinds of comics, comics that have nothing in common except medium, but now I notice the medium, whereas when I was reading ElfQuest and the rest I didn't even know there was a medium to notice.
I think this comes back, again, to the medium-is-viewed-as-a-genre problem: I didn't notice comics as a medium until I was interested in superheroes as a genre. That's an amazingly bassackward way to approach any medium. No wonder the industry has problems!
On a superficial level, I'm exactly the comics reader that DC and Marvel are currently trying to produce, no? I saw one of their big-budget movies and now I read lotsa comics. But in actuality, right-wing movie review + desire to see a popular movie for once in my life + genuinely good movie + insomnia + obsessive Internet usage + blog (thanks esp. to Unqualified Offerings!) + really good advice from one particular comics clerk (at Beyond Comics, which, unfortunately, isn't the better of the two DC stores, but which has superfriendly and helpful clerks) = an origin story more convoluted than the one from the Hulk movie. This is not a chain of events to be counted on!
More on separating medium and genre in the next post.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
THAT'S THE WAY THE KAISER BLOGROLLS: Adding Deeds (working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq), Iraq the Model, Letter from Gotham, The Rat. Subtracting somewhat randomly.
THE PINUP REMAINS EVER AFTER IMMORTAL AS ALL AROUND DIES: Fascinating Slate review of Martin Amis's new book, Yellow Dog:
...These plot lines are all set rolling by the same tragic flaw: the unsustainability of sexual equilibrium for your average male. ...
It is Amis' point that with the digital proliferation (and the widening cultural acceptance) of pornography, sexual equilibrium has become even more elusive. ...
[quoting Yellow Dog:] He knew that the distance between himself and the world of women was getting greater. Each night, as he entered the Borgesian metropolis of electronic pornography--with its infinities, its immortalities--Clint was, in a sense, travelling towards women. But he was also travelling away from them.
As readers of Time's Arrow will remember, Amis is at his most brilliant when exploiting paradoxes like these, those moments when life seems to make as much sense if it's run backward or turned inside out. ...
...Yellow Dog is likely to be least endurable to those most sympathetic to Amis' anguish. Since, in the world Amis creates, casual exposure to pornographic images puts people on a steep and slippery slope, one wonders what he thinks he's doing in forcing such imagery on the reader. Amis' subject matter so raises the stakes that this must be either a moral book or a dirty one. It winds up being both. The book is the equivalent of one of those partial-birth-abortion posters waved around at political conventions. It unleashes more than most intelligent readers can be expected to assimilate--and certainly more than any self-respecting reader should be asked to endure.
more?
...These plot lines are all set rolling by the same tragic flaw: the unsustainability of sexual equilibrium for your average male. ...
It is Amis' point that with the digital proliferation (and the widening cultural acceptance) of pornography, sexual equilibrium has become even more elusive. ...
[quoting Yellow Dog:] He knew that the distance between himself and the world of women was getting greater. Each night, as he entered the Borgesian metropolis of electronic pornography--with its infinities, its immortalities--Clint was, in a sense, travelling towards women. But he was also travelling away from them.
As readers of Time's Arrow will remember, Amis is at his most brilliant when exploiting paradoxes like these, those moments when life seems to make as much sense if it's run backward or turned inside out. ...
...Yellow Dog is likely to be least endurable to those most sympathetic to Amis' anguish. Since, in the world Amis creates, casual exposure to pornographic images puts people on a steep and slippery slope, one wonders what he thinks he's doing in forcing such imagery on the reader. Amis' subject matter so raises the stakes that this must be either a moral book or a dirty one. It winds up being both. The book is the equivalent of one of those partial-birth-abortion posters waved around at political conventions. It unleashes more than most intelligent readers can be expected to assimilate--and certainly more than any self-respecting reader should be asked to endure.
more?
Soon I felt a blogwatch form
Somewhere below my skin...
The Agitator: Can the government force you to advertise for your industry? Right now, yes. The Institute for Justice (cue trumpets) is trying to change that.
Amy Welborn: "Anyway, if you were going to explain the Immaculate Conception to someone who didn't understand it, what would you say?" Lots of good stuff in the comments. More here--and again, check out the comments. Also, take a quiz!
Camassia has quite a bit of interesting stuff: Presents are Christian too!; why does the scapegoat escape?; the Harrowing of Hell.
And: Fixing San Francisco's homelessness crisis. NYC and Philadelphia as models. Via Sursum Corda.
Somewhere below my skin...
The Agitator: Can the government force you to advertise for your industry? Right now, yes. The Institute for Justice (cue trumpets) is trying to change that.
Amy Welborn: "Anyway, if you were going to explain the Immaculate Conception to someone who didn't understand it, what would you say?" Lots of good stuff in the comments. More here--and again, check out the comments. Also, take a quiz!
Camassia has quite a bit of interesting stuff: Presents are Christian too!; why does the scapegoat escape?; the Harrowing of Hell.
And: Fixing San Francisco's homelessness crisis. NYC and Philadelphia as models. Via Sursum Corda.
Monday, December 08, 2003
DEFINING TERRORISM DOWN: Must-read piece from the Denver Post on how the Bush administration is fudging the terror-conviction numbers. Excerpts follow:
In the two years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the federal government has dramatically increased the prosecution of crimes it says are related to domestic or foreign terrorism, and more than tripled its rate of convictions for those offenses compared with the two years before the attacks.
But the median sentence for those convicted of international terrorism during that time is just 14 days, while some convictions the government has labeled as related to counterterrorism resulted in a sentence of community service or drug rehabilitation, according to government data to be released by a private research group today. ...
[Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse] data shows that convictions in cases the Justice Department says are related to international terrorism jumped 7 1/2 times compared with the two years before the attacks--from 24 to 184--but the number of individuals who received sentences of five or more years actually dropped, from six in the two years before the attacks to three in the two years that followed. ...
In what authorities describe as a strategy of prevention, potential or suspected terrorists are being charged since the 2001 attacks with minor nonterrorism crimes to get them off the street or out of the country. ...
In a prominent case in Denver, for example, three men who allegedly attended an al-Qaeda training camp were charged with an immigration offense--lying on a visa application. Although the men are not being prosecuted for terrorism, the FBI considers it a terrorism-related case.
But that discretion has also led to a terrorism classification for crimes that have no apparent terrorist link....
more
Via Hit & Run.
In the two years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the federal government has dramatically increased the prosecution of crimes it says are related to domestic or foreign terrorism, and more than tripled its rate of convictions for those offenses compared with the two years before the attacks.
But the median sentence for those convicted of international terrorism during that time is just 14 days, while some convictions the government has labeled as related to counterterrorism resulted in a sentence of community service or drug rehabilitation, according to government data to be released by a private research group today. ...
[Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse] data shows that convictions in cases the Justice Department says are related to international terrorism jumped 7 1/2 times compared with the two years before the attacks--from 24 to 184--but the number of individuals who received sentences of five or more years actually dropped, from six in the two years before the attacks to three in the two years that followed. ...
In what authorities describe as a strategy of prevention, potential or suspected terrorists are being charged since the 2001 attacks with minor nonterrorism crimes to get them off the street or out of the country. ...
In a prominent case in Denver, for example, three men who allegedly attended an al-Qaeda training camp were charged with an immigration offense--lying on a visa application. Although the men are not being prosecuted for terrorism, the FBI considers it a terrorism-related case.
But that discretion has also led to a terrorism classification for crimes that have no apparent terrorist link....
more
Via Hit & Run.
BOYCOTT PLANNED PARENTHOOD--the website of the Austin, TX campaign to organize construction contractors to refuse to help build a Planned Parenthood clinic there. Includes links to other sites that will help you organize a similar boycott in your town. If you're pro-life and you work in the building trades or know pro-lifers who do, check this site out.
Via E-Pression.
Via E-Pression.
THE CAPITOL HILL PREGNANCY CENTER REALLY NEEDS YOUR MONEY. This great, great pregnancy center, where I volunteer once a week, is going through financial difficulties. The center sees about 1500 clients a year, mostly from DC; it offers parenting classes, post-abortion counseling, maternity clothes, and childcare products (kids' clothes, diapers, bottles, baby powder, formula, toys, books... etc.), as well as, of course, free pregnancy tests and counseling for women who think they might be pregnant. Please consider giving them money this year. You can call them at (202) 546-1018 or send a check to
713 Maryland Ave. NE
Washington DC 20002.
THANKS.
713 Maryland Ave. NE
Washington DC 20002.
THANKS.
Ask not what you can do for your blogwatch;
What's your blogwatch been doing to you?...
The Agitator: Frogs made out of pork. For the bulging "Politicians Are Insane" file.
Journalista!: Ranty column on what's wrong with the comics industry. I have some rambly personal stuff to say about this later, but for now I'll just say that the first half of the essay really interested me because it details the emergence and collapse of a monopoly in the absence of government manipulation of the market. Really nice econ case study, I should think.
Krubner: Why can't conservatives get the courts they want? (good question); and he comments on a good piece by Virginia Postrel, about "relationship capitalism" (basically, the small-town model) and how it holds people and countries back.
Mark Shea: Recommend children's books! I've already linked to my Crisis magazine piece on the subject ("Outside Narnia: Christianity and children's fantasy," about how the non-Christian fantasy books I read as a kid influenced my conversion) in his comments box.
Noli Irritare Leones: Several helpful and informative links on the Terri Schiavo case and its repercussions; excellent post on men, women, and divorce, in which Lynn smacks some very silly things said by Wendy McElroy. Marriage-movement-type people should definitely check that post out.
Tushnet: Yes, my sister also blogs. Intellectual-property law, copyright, trademark, and assorted whatnot, plus sense of humor. Click now and beat the rush!
Unqualified Offerings: Lots of posts about cover songs (here's an old list from me and here's one from Kesher Talk); good, basic, growly "where are the WMDs?" post taking down stuff said by a former Iraqi lt. col.
What's your blogwatch been doing to you?...
The Agitator: Frogs made out of pork. For the bulging "Politicians Are Insane" file.
Journalista!: Ranty column on what's wrong with the comics industry. I have some rambly personal stuff to say about this later, but for now I'll just say that the first half of the essay really interested me because it details the emergence and collapse of a monopoly in the absence of government manipulation of the market. Really nice econ case study, I should think.
Krubner: Why can't conservatives get the courts they want? (good question); and he comments on a good piece by Virginia Postrel, about "relationship capitalism" (basically, the small-town model) and how it holds people and countries back.
Mark Shea: Recommend children's books! I've already linked to my Crisis magazine piece on the subject ("Outside Narnia: Christianity and children's fantasy," about how the non-Christian fantasy books I read as a kid influenced my conversion) in his comments box.
Noli Irritare Leones: Several helpful and informative links on the Terri Schiavo case and its repercussions; excellent post on men, women, and divorce, in which Lynn smacks some very silly things said by Wendy McElroy. Marriage-movement-type people should definitely check that post out.
Tushnet: Yes, my sister also blogs. Intellectual-property law, copyright, trademark, and assorted whatnot, plus sense of humor. Click now and beat the rush!
Unqualified Offerings: Lots of posts about cover songs (here's an old list from me and here's one from Kesher Talk); good, basic, growly "where are the WMDs?" post taking down stuff said by a former Iraqi lt. col.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
HYMN WEDNESDAY: Instead of poetry, one of my favorite hymns, for Advent.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.
King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lord in human vesture,
In the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.
At His feet the six-winged seraph;
Cherubim, with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the Presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry,
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord most high.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.
King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lord in human vesture,
In the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.
At His feet the six-winged seraph;
Cherubim, with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the Presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry,
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord most high.
HODER FOR IRAN. "Welcome to Iran, where, based on the latest election regulations, no one can stand for parliament elections unless he or she acknowledges the Islamic regime, the rule of Islam (one must be a practicing Muslim), and the concept of unlimited power of its supreme leader (or simply Wilayat Faqih). ...
"Now imagine when people couldn't express what they really want, they would come out and say it publicly. In other words, suppose that thousands of Iranian announce their symbolic candidacy for the parliament elections, as I already did, and publicly show what they think their plans would be, no matter they'd be accepted as a qualified candidate or not.
"So before I start to talk about my own agenda, a few friends and I have decided to build a website in which everyone can easily make a webpage including his or her name, picture, biography and their agenda. ...
"This way, we can show the world that how different is our expectations and plans from those of Reformists who think are representing the majority of people."
more
sort of via InstaPundit
"Now imagine when people couldn't express what they really want, they would come out and say it publicly. In other words, suppose that thousands of Iranian announce their symbolic candidacy for the parliament elections, as I already did, and publicly show what they think their plans would be, no matter they'd be accepted as a qualified candidate or not.
"So before I start to talk about my own agenda, a few friends and I have decided to build a website in which everyone can easily make a webpage including his or her name, picture, biography and their agenda. ...
"This way, we can show the world that how different is our expectations and plans from those of Reformists who think are representing the majority of people."
more
sort of via InstaPundit
I'LL COME SPEAK: Do you attend or work at a Catholic university? Would you be interested in hearing me speak on same-sex marriage? (Pretty much any aspect thereof.) If so, please get in touch with me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com. Thanks!
(Here's a roundup of a bunch of stuff I've written on SSM.)
(Here's a roundup of a bunch of stuff I've written on SSM.)
Is this the sweet sound
that calls the young blogwatch?
The voice might be one and the same...
BlogAfrica: Tons of African blogs. Via InstaPundit.
Dappled Things: St. Aelred, intense male friendship, and homosexuality: "Gerard posts this letter from the Abbot of the Trappist Monastery of the Genesee on the question of St Aelred of Rievaulx and homosexuality, recently mentioned by Andrew Sullivan in the context of same-sex love.
"The passages that are often pointed to by gay activists (one of which is quoted by Sullivan) are of the sort that would tend to make 'red-blooded American males' squirm. They may well be homosexual in origin, or they may simply be intense expressions of same-sex affection coming from a heterosexual, as the Abbot of the Genesee points out is not uncommon in some other cultures. ...What IS, however, clear is that they are not statements in favor of gay sex. Let heterosexuals, then, read them as affirmations of same-sex affection, spiritual friendship, and the need to step away from overly-rigid judgments about what is and isn't manly. Let homosexuals read them as affirmations of the dignity of all people, the need for chaste love in Christ, and the importance of sound and true friendship for flourishing in life."
more
and Sed Contra comments here.
Oxblog: More on the Federalist Papers in Arabic.
The Rat: She's back! (I guess finals week brings out the blogger in her.) Lots of crazy stuff: Cellini's mad castellan, the memoir game, Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, narrativity.
"Rush Limbaugh in the Confessional."
that calls the young blogwatch?
The voice might be one and the same...
BlogAfrica: Tons of African blogs. Via InstaPundit.
Dappled Things: St. Aelred, intense male friendship, and homosexuality: "Gerard posts this letter from the Abbot of the Trappist Monastery of the Genesee on the question of St Aelred of Rievaulx and homosexuality, recently mentioned by Andrew Sullivan in the context of same-sex love.
"The passages that are often pointed to by gay activists (one of which is quoted by Sullivan) are of the sort that would tend to make 'red-blooded American males' squirm. They may well be homosexual in origin, or they may simply be intense expressions of same-sex affection coming from a heterosexual, as the Abbot of the Genesee points out is not uncommon in some other cultures. ...What IS, however, clear is that they are not statements in favor of gay sex. Let heterosexuals, then, read them as affirmations of same-sex affection, spiritual friendship, and the need to step away from overly-rigid judgments about what is and isn't manly. Let homosexuals read them as affirmations of the dignity of all people, the need for chaste love in Christ, and the importance of sound and true friendship for flourishing in life."
more
and Sed Contra comments here.
Oxblog: More on the Federalist Papers in Arabic.
The Rat: She's back! (I guess finals week brings out the blogger in her.) Lots of crazy stuff: Cellini's mad castellan, the memoir game, Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, narrativity.
"Rush Limbaugh in the Confessional."
GAY IS THE NEW BLACK: That's what we're discussing on MarriageDebate--the frequent comparison between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. Come join us.
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