On the State of the Industry (circa 1991)

 "Marvel's only goal, with which honorable men and women in this profession have nothing in common, is to generate as much profit for Ronald Perelman as they can, and to shovel as much shit down the public's gullet as they can get away with. They prey upon the ignorance of children and the stupidity of adults, and if they could wish every sophisticated reader of comic books to become stupid tomorrow they would do so, such is their commitment to art and humanity. They see comics not as art but as product from which the only end to be gotten is profit."
- Gary Groth 

The Comics Journal #146, November 1991

Just What It Isn't

I started reading comics five years ago give or take, it was around the time the Dark Knight was released. I remember because there was a big hoopla over the Watchmen movie, it being based on one of the mediums greatest achievements. Five years ago though i was a different person. That sense of joy of leaving high school for college, that cynicism which told me people sucked but film, books, art, and comics...oh comics...they were better than that. Media couldn't disappoint you, just people.

Its been five years though and disappoint me they have. All that hope in a new form of media, that glee i took in trying to find a new Kubrick has all dissipated. I remember reading Transmetropilation after being told it was like Hunter S Thompson and being so excited, four years later i now realize its not the same...Warren Ellis isn't Hunter he's just a veiled imitation like so many others. It just took me four years before my blinders towards comics wore off. 

I moved a majority of my comics into my attic recently, to free up some space in my room. I had filled five book shelves, with piles of books stacked throughout the house. And that was just over the course of five years. I ended up whittling it down to two shelves. Two shelves of books i wanted to have constant access to. Two shelves i was proud to display in my room. The problem though is those two shelves are made up solely of books I've purchased over the past year. Four years and three shelves worth of trades, singles, anthologies, graphic novels, are to me little more than bound paper now.

I know no one starts reading by being handed Ulysses, but by high school your teachers have at least forced you to read a couple Shakespeare plays and spark notes your way through The Scarlett Letter. So why is it that comics starts you with Dr. Seuss and graduates you to the Hardy Boys. Comics as a community, with the exception of a few critics, actively dissuades you from branching outwards. If you go on any message board or forum and ask for recommendations, the lists generated are so nauseatingly bad if i were to start reading in my present mindset i would brush off the medium as a whole after a days reading. People actively argue that Green Lantern is a better comic than Watchmen for new readers.

Some may invoke the "99% of stuff is shit" principle here, a solid point. But I'm speaking precisely towards that 1% which is so ardently held up as "great". Those three shelves of books i deemed ancillary, those were the books held up as the 1% amongst the mainstream. Those runs "comics people"  call definitive the Y the Last Mans, the Walking Dead's, Blankets, those runs by and large are terrible.

If Jason Aarons run on Punisher MAX has taught us anything, its that their is no such thing as a "definitive run" just a lack of talent to out due what has come before you. And if there is one thing comics has, its a lack of talent, even in its definitive form.

And for four fucking years i read this trash with self imposed blinders on, oh after a while i knew it was bad, no one reads a Geoff Johns comic for a extended period of time without the sneaking suspicion this guy has no clue what writing is beyond yelling and splash pages, but i thought i just didn't get it. Look at the top 10 comics list for 2011 for any website and it will read like a fourth graders favorite book list, books that verge on competency are labelled magnum opus's . When the community as a whole holds up Daredevil and Habibi as the best they can achieve in a year, I have serious doubts about that community.

When I talk to someone who's into movies the conversation is never about Transformers, its about Kubrick, Hitchcock, Kurosawa. Likewise with television its about Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire. But with comics its about who's hotter Black Canary or Supergirl. I wish for the day i come across someone who wants to talk about Ware, Hernandez, Clowes, but i doubt that will ever happen.

I remember asking the guy at my shop if they had Love and Rockets New Stories v4 when it was released, I was told they only special order those books*. That's the industry and culture comics is forced to pander to. Its not that good comics don't exist, people are pushing the medium forward every day, its just that no one is bothering to notice. Comics as a whole has not been able to move past their initial honeymoon period with the medium and finally realize that bitch has a lazy eye and my god do you hate her mother. This year though has been mine... i just hope other people wake up to.

K I'm out of wine and don't care anymore. This is disjointed as fuck but whatever, I'm going to go to go read some Milo Manara comics and try to find some whiskey while the comics zeitgeist jerks off to Power Girl's cleavage. 

Goodnight.

Footnotes

*Keep in mind i live 5 minutes outside a major city and my shop is next to a busy train/bus stop.

On How to be a Lazy Blogger and Such.

This weeks post was originally going to be on the conclusion to Jason Aarons Punisher MAX series, but that post took on a mind of its own so it won't be done till next week. So in the grand tradition of lazy blog posting here are random links / comments and a couple random thoughts thrown in to pad the word count.

Comics Alliance is doing a month long expose on "sex" in comics, most of these posts are little more than jokes about boobs, but two of them (so far) have been quite good.

The always wonderful David Brothers talks about how the over sexualization of female characters has hurt the story telling ability of artists. This is primarily due to, like the over reliance on splash pages and double page spreads, artists creating pages for collectors instead of as devices to tell the story. What strikes me as odd is that most of the artists who spring to mind doing this draw some hideous looking woman. While the more subdued artists, primarily those who routinely draw female characters in the nude, know how to restrain themselves. It's a odd variety of repression afflicting the direct market, if only some artists could draw a nipple every once in a while we may be saved from 20 pages of ass shots.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/16/superheroine-sex-art-story/

On a side note Brothers also wrote a exquisite piece of comic-journalism about who exactly is pirating Marvel comics (which was quickly picked up by dozens of comic websites, who i assume payed him for his article and didn't just run it as "general news")

http://4thletter.net/2012/02/are-they-scanning-marvels-comics-from-inside-the-house-of-ideas/

The other Comics Alliance story which i found interesting was Jason Michelitch piece on Milo Manara. The main thrust of his argument is that Manara's frankness about sexual exploitation is more about confronting the readers own feelings towards sex and exploitation than it is about drawing pretty girls fucking. While Manara is certainty more than simply producing Tijuana Bible's i think this reading may be over-intellectualizing his body of work. There are certainty instances of his work transcending the confines of the genre (that genre being S&M spank books) ,but the vast majority of his work is simply meant to be scene as pornography. Its one of those readings which is used when someone praises 120 Days of Sodom for its brutal use of sexualization and violence to convey a philosophical point about the nature of man, while dismissing entire genre's of exploitative films as trash. If exploitation is read as being art its given a pass on most fronts, while if it not its reviled.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/17/the-honesty-of-exploitation-sex-in-the-art-of-milo-manara-sex/

The Comic Journal featured an old Gary Groth interview with Kevin Eastman (co-creator of The Mutant Ninja Turtles) in a two part interview, the first focusing on the Turtles, and the second on Tundra press. The first section is a great read about their struggle to retain the rights to the Turtles, and how difficult it was to manage a multimillion dollar corporation while trying to follow the tenants of the creator rights movement. The second part of the interview though is an amazing look at how comics as a whole took advantage of Eastman, just inundating him with pitches and please for work, only to take his money and never deliver. The section on Big Numbers is especially fascinating.

http://www.tcj.com/the-kevin-eastman-interview-part-2/

Alex Berry does a great job summing up why Glory may be one of the biggest steps forward for female characters in comics in a long long time. I would also like to add, in addition to not spending 20 pages proving to me Glory has a awesome rack, Glory also features only one splash pages. This choices allows them to parse our the necessary exposition over 20 pages instead of info dumping it in the last two pages following nine double page spreads of ass / tit shots / people looking EXTREME! 

http://www.spandexless.com/2012/02/the-grey-area-glory-23-just-buy-it/

I'm late to the game on this one but Chad Nevett's '28' series of posts is one of the best things I've read in a while. Its not so much a series of reviews as Chad just looking back on how he's changed since the first time he had read these books. Its a level of honesty and frankness that's missing in comic journalism. Also its great reading Chad work through his cynicism towards everything.

http://graphicontent.blogspot.com/search/label/28

I also listened to an old Splash page podcast (episode 22) were they discuss a clip in which someone threatens to punch Tim Callahan in the throat because he didn't like X-Factor. I love the fact that a review, however mundane, could elicit such a reaction. I'm not sure if its that certain groups of fans are easily angered at any perceived criticism of their favorite "thing" or that people just like to punch other people in the throat for no reason. Even more interesting is that a person who would go so far as to threaten a critic, would then tell said critic that they take comics to seriously...i wish it was satire, because that would be brilliant, but i doubt their smart enough for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a25zStutU1o

Well that's about 800 words and required next to no thought. Ill try and have a real piece up next week, which sadly enough will have taken 10x as long and might be 200 words longer.

I now see the appeal of "Copy and Paste" journalism.

The Silver Age and Fellatio : The Paradox of Alex Ross

I was listening to old SplashPage episodes recently, as one does, and during a discussion of Kirby Genesis Chad Nevett utters the eternal question, "Does Alex Ross suck Silver Age Cock?" so here we are, does Alex Ross drop to his knees and turn his mouth into a vacuum cleaner? Does he slurp it down like a toothless meth head trying to afford a midnight fix? No, i don't think so, maybe a little, but he defiantly lick that shits prostate clean.

See the Silver Age is known as a simpler time, a funner time, a time when Batman could turn into a baby one week and be abducted by aliens the next. The Silver Age was a time when comics were for kids, and no one cared what was in them.

Well actually someone did care about what was in them, actually a lot of people cared. See all that fun and wackyness of the silver age didn't come from a vacuum, it was the byproduct of censorship. EC Comics the largest publisher before the Silver Age and the Comics Code, producing socially relevant and conscious material making them the industries vanguard. Actually i might be giving to much credit to EC, they primarily wrote 8 page horror and sci-fi strips, which every once in a while would hit on something relevant (primarily when drawn by Wally Wood) but 1 strip in every 100 is still better than the schlock everyone else was publishing. The problem though is that adults don't like their kids seeing violence with repercussions, that's why you can shoot up a school in a PG-13 movie as long as theirs no blood, so enter Fredric Wertham and the Comics Code with their metaphorical baseball bat to kneecap EC and anyone else who dared push the comic medium forward, and thus the Silver Age was born.

The Silver Age was the disneyfication of comics.

So what was a journeyman to do? He had 20 pages due next week and didn't get paid unless it passed the Comics Code, well he made it as wholesome, clean, and non-offensive as possible.

And this is how it went for 30 years, sure Neal Adams would slip something in every once in a while, but your allowed one "Fuck" in a PG-13 movie (so the kids will think its hip) so it wasn't to subversive. Then came Alan Moore and Watchmen, the highest selling and critically acclaimed book DC ever had the pleasure of not fucking up*. Watchmen was a EC comic at its core, socially conscious and overtly political, it even had a dramatic twist ending. And once everyone saw the sales figures the floodgates opened. Journeymen where directed to make their stories "more like Watchmen"; the only problem was that Watchmen was a intricately plotted 300 page serialized novel and not a monthly comic churned out under a deadline. So a cliff notes version was created, just like with EC, the industry latched onto the cynicism and "grittiness" of Watchmen and Frank Millers Dark Knight Returns.

The Silver Age is dead, Long live the Modern Age.

Enter Alex Ross, at the height of the Image boom. See Ross was a child of the Silver Age, and if theirs one thing everyone knows its that everything was better when they were a kid. So Ross began trying to figure out ways to revert comics to his idealized childhood from. The Comics Codes was all but irrelevant, and the government was to busy clamping down on "Rap Music" and "Rock and Roll" to care much about funny books. Ross therefore had to wage his ideological war alone.

You know when you're a kid and you read about the first Thanksgiving and everyone seems so happy? Then you find out how they skipped over the part where the Puritans were religious zealots who burnt people alive for witchcraft, or how they left out the part where the Indians have all their land stolen and are the victims of mass genocide? That's what Marvels is, a Silver Age whitewashing.*

Marvels is the story of the Marvel Universe, told from the perspective of Phil Sheldon a young photographer who "luckily" was present for all of Marvels Greatest Hits. Ultimately that's all Marvels really is though, a greatest hits album.

Hey remember that time Reed Richards slaps Sue Storm and tells her to shut up? No, ohh. How about when Sue Storm was basically turned into a helpless housewife every issue? No, ohh. Oh how about that time Hank Pym slaps The Wasp? No, ohh*. See if you only read Marvels you'd miss all this stuff, all the woman are glamorous models and the men are all brilliant heroes. Marvels make it sound like Stan Lee was being ghost written by Malcolm X on every X-Men issue. In reality the silver age was filled with sexism, racism, and the subtlety of a Michael Bay movie. It wasn't the worst of times, but it certainty was not the best of times.

When artists releases their greatest hits they are not trying to rewrite their legacy they're simply trying to cash in. Which isn't a good thing, but at least its not dishonest. What Alex Ross does though is rewrite the history of a entire universe so that others will agree with him. Its intellectual dishonest, and my Papa didn't fight those damn Ruskie's in North Korea for someone to go and Stalanize up my comics. 

"Britania was at war with Eurasia.Britannia had always been at war with Eurasia"

Following his rewriting of history Ross published his call to arms. Kingdom Come centered around a world in which the old hero's (Silver Age heroes) have retired and allowed their legacies to take over. These new heroes though used violence and murder to wipe out the villains to the cheers of the general public*.These new heroes though soon begin to run rampant, ultimately turning into the villains they eradicated (It seems like someones read some Nietzsche "Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you"). Eventually the "real" heroes come in and kick these young wippersnappers into shape, as in 90% of them die in a nuclear holocaust by the hands of the UN. The series ends with Superman promising to earn the trust of humanity again, well that is following his violent rampage which ends when he notices Batman and Wonder Woman didn't get holocausted.

The ultimate failure of Kingdom Come is that it never fulfills its promises. Ross begins the revolution but never follows through, he never makes comics "fun" again. Instead he gives lectures on why the Silver Age is better, and if theirs one thing kids love, besides "fun" its lectures. 

Ross has two other works of note, first was Justice a  rehash of Silver Age JLA stories which accomplishes little besides boring one to tears, and Kirby Genesis an attempt to utilize lesser known Kirby creations in a shared universe. Kirby Genesis though, highlights something unintended by Ross, his complete lack of any "supposed" Silver Age tendencies. Kirby is the most prolific Silver Age creators in comics, throwing away idea's lesser creators would spend issues on in panels (seriously people are still digging through his books for ideas), but the main tenant of Kirby was innovation, his art and mind were in constant motion. Something no one would say about Alex Ross who's panels more so resemble failed failed covers than actual pages. A tribute to Kirby is not to take his creations and tell stale stories with stale art, its creating a completely new universe full of new characters. Ross doesn't seem to understand that much. Even Astro City which Ross creates characters for is filled with derivatives. Rob Liefeld, a creator synonymous with the Image Boom, so much reviled by Ross has greater ties with Kirby than Ross does. Yeah, think about that.

Ross tried to convince comics to return to the Silver Age, but never shows us why they should. Comics are always progressing, even when their not, but what Ross wants is to kneecap the industry like Wetham and drag it back 40 years. The problem is 40 years ago wasn't so great, even if you try and whitewash it.

Footnotes/Citations/Whatnot

* Well until Watchmen 2! Coming to a comic shop near you!

* Im not suggesting the two events are equal, far from it, the former is just a example of white washing.

* Theirs a lot of domestic abuse in the Marvel super hero community

* Various pertencious quotes by Orwell and Nietzsche.
* Get it he's talking about everyone buying X-Force
* I started this off with dick jokes so i get to be liteary at some point.

No time to sleep.......

Caught my Eye

I read a lot of books this week, an excessive amount really.So i figured id share a couple things that caught my eye.

I reread Elektra: Lives Again and what jumped out at me from previous readings was Millers use of layout. Miller was doing things with the art on Daredevil that took 20 years and the talents of Marcos Martin for comics to catch up with. Be it Millers use of Colors (DKR/DKSA) or his use of Manga / European sensibilities (Ronin), Miller has always been ahead of the curve. Maybe in 2032 Marvel will release Holy Devil to overwhelming praise.

I love Kyle Baker, and coloring Deadpool's childhood in homage to Bill Sienkiewicz's Elektra Assassin is genius. Alone its a dynamic use of color, but by tying itself to Elektra Assassin Baker ties himself with the Elektra Assasian legacy, breaking with Marvels and comics as a wholes conceptions of art each book pushes the limits of comics as an art. Nothing has ever looked like Elektra Assassin and nothing looks like Deadpool MAX,which is a shame.

Brandon Graham "tweeted" that the key feature in making pornographic art is  understanding  facial expressions. This panel is from Guido Crepax's The Story of O; in this 200 page tome Crepax proves himself as one of the greatest artists to ever draw comics, porn or not. I stared at this panel in awe of Crepax's mastery of emotion and panel composition, the pain and suffering displayed here is something few artists in any medium could ever hope to convey.

If anyone in comics could replicate this level of artistry I would gladly read a 200 page S&M comic by them, but all we seem to get are overly rendered TNA comics were Batman and Catwoman fuck. 

This is from the Fantagraphics reprint of Blazing Combat, while the 4 issue series is blessed with a stable of legendary artists (Wood/Toth) the highlight is a 7 page short story drawn by John Severin. Telling the story of a "green" soldier sent to the front lines who goes insane after his first scrape with the enemy, this 3 panel sequence though makes the rest of the story seem like filler.

Prophet #21

Every couple years the Big Two go "slumming" in the indie scene, picking a few choice talents to do short stories for their various anthologies (Strange Tales). Most of these stories skew towards humor, avoiding serious takes on the charterers. Every once in a while though someone delivers something special, a work that transcends the genre, Raphael Grampa's Wolverine story leaps to mind and now Prophet. Rob Liefeld took a who's who of indie creators and instead of limiting them to 8 page non-continuity stories had them relaunch his entire line. This is a bold move especially in a industry were the 2^nd largest publisher relaunched their entire line while retaining 90% of their creative staff and called it a unprecedented step in comic publishing. Launching a defunct indie line from the 90's with indie creators is something few publishers would even dream of, but if this issue is anything to go by its was a brilliant move.

Ok now onto the comic itself.

The greatest strength of artists turned writers is their ability to parse out needless dialogue and exposition, allowing the artist to convey all the necessary information on the page. Graham instead focuses on setting the tone of the book. Creating a landscape with futuristic life forms that feel completely organic; A caste society of termites living in a Jelly City? Wolf packs made even more vicious by bonded with a parasite? Sea creatures that scream like kittens? In a lesser book these ideas would fall flat, but under Graham and Roy they become facts of life. More importantly though, these ideas while not delved into deeply look to set up future plot points (the absence of humans outside of various foodstuffs for example). Id be surprised if the guided tour Graham took us on  this issue doesn't inform the rest of the series. 

Graham in addition to world building provides subtle characterization, while Prophet isn't fully fleshed out* we get a sense of his past and present, something much more important than a exposition laden back story. Graham's use of narrative captions to show Prophet as a calculated and dangerous man, but still not completely comfortable with his surroundings, was masterful. 

A major factor in this issue working is the work of Simon Roy who's European style and attention to detail creates a dense and fully realized world. What many artists fail to grasp in futuristic settings is how truly slow time on a worldwide scale moves, while in 2000 years man may be extinct the landscape and wildlife of the Earth will remain (short of a Extinction event) almost identical. Roy takes this into account, creating wildlife that can easily be delineated to their modern ancestors, and  landscapes identical to ours only littered with abandoned man-made technology. The most fantastical element, the Jelly City is given a distinctly alien look to remove any confusion of its origin. These grounding elements allow the plot to move briskly and introduce some bizarre moments without causing a disconnect with the reader.

Prophet #21 is one of the few "relaunch" titles that effectively stand alone, introduce future plot points, and still harken to the past. The DC relaunch could have learned a thing or two from Extreme Studios and Prophet.

Footnotes/Citations/Whatnot

* Its the first issue

I loved the lettering, although I'm a sucker for faux handwriting, along with the coloring.

Just Words on top of Pictures #1

Lettering has become a lost art. The goal of the letterer is never to be noticed, and unless something is seriously wrong they never are. This outlook fails to recognize the importance their craft has on the page, the moment a word balloon is placed the page is irrevocably changed " a page of comics without text has its own personality. But when you add the balloons, it suddenly takes up a whole, new different look" (Moebius). Pages are conceived and crafted without recognizing these new elements "when you’re looking at the composition of a lot of comic pages, it’s like you can appreciate it only if you imagine the page without the word balloons"(Dash Shaw) making even the most well crafted page incomplete. The advent of digital lettering has caused this artistic disconnect to become even more rampant, what was once crafted onto the page by hand (providing some fluidity between the two elements) is now accomplished with a simple copy / paste in Photoshop, removing any connection the letterer may have felt to the work.

Art by Photoshop has become the industry standard, while many pencilers still work on paper, the artwork they produce will never leave their studios; these pages are scanned and emailed off to their editors, colorists, letterers, and inkers. Now i want to focus on lettering here, but every element of the page effects one another, the negative space of word balloon effects the overall color, the font is another line that must be accounted for by the inker. The word balloon brings together every aspect of the page, but few letterers grasp its importance. 

Font is only used to differentiate the crazy character (who's word balloons are scratchy) from the artsy one (calligraphy), word balloons are colored not to match the color scheme, but to allow the reader to understand which of the 23 characters is speaking in a voice over.

Coloring the Bubble

The godfather of comic lettering is without a doubt Todd Klein, winner of 16 out of 19 Eisner Awards for lettering losing only to Chris Ware, David Mazzucchelli, and Stan Sakai, pretty solid company. So why's Klein such hot shit? Well lets look at his magnum opus (if a letterer can be said to have a magnum opus) Sandman.

Klein provides each member of The Endless with a unique word balloon design; utilizing different colors, fonts, and balloon structure to complement each characters personality / aesthetic. This allows for easy character recognition, a common problem in books with large casts . More importantly though, these balloons create a cohesion with the color few books have ever achieved. Each member of The Endless has a unique color makeup (Dream is draped in black, Despair is a blob of white, Delirium drips of color)  if Klein's word balloons were not present, to create balance on the page, each cast members appearance would wreak havoc on the pages.

Delirium's word balloons allow her "fantastical" color scheme to blend with the surrounding environment, creating an overall cohesion. Without this color scheme, Deliriums neon hair would be impossible to balance out on the page. The above image is a prime example, dramatic color shits occur between each panel, the pink of Delirium's dress, the yellow sun, Destruction's red hair, green mountain ranges,these changes in color though are all incorporated and balanced out by Klein's balloons.The drab brown wall found in the first panel i even taken into account. 

Few letterers are able or competent enough to do this, the best example I could find is in the coloring Tour De Force Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker. The first clue that thought is going into the word balloons is their placement, The Absolutly's balloon is a full quarter page away from "him", this makes sense when you look at the coloring though. The Absolutly's (figure on the left) word balloon balances out the dark wreckage scattered on the ground (hence its extreme distance), by providing a equally dark aerial object (this is done on the opposite side of the page by a darkened smoke cloud) the pages color symmetry is kept intact. Jihad Jone's (figure on the right) word balloon is used as a transition between the sky and the glow of the  fire, his blue font and red word balloon, placed right where the two colors meet provide a bridge.

So who else out their is providing fantastic lettering? No one i can find* but i thought it prudent to point out an artist who's been able to get around this fact. Daniel Acuna (both the penciler and colorist) devises a interesting way to remove the effects of word balloons on his panels. In dialogue heavy panels Acuna leaves the background white, this allows word balloons to be placed anywhere (and not blocking his wonderful backgrounds) while not affecting on his overall color scheme. Acuna, unlike many artists is able to compose the page with the word balloons in mind.

Sadly, even the most competent artist/colorist will eventually have to face facts, in the "age of Photoshop" no matter how you lay a page out and how subtlety you color it, once in the hands of a incompetent letterer its over. Francesco Francavilla given a "talking heads" scene draws the hell out of it, but word balloon after word balloon are thrown on until the page is ruined. These white holes burn through the page, removing all the craft and thought of the pencil/color. 

Citations/Footnotes/What Not

1- Color in word balloons may have appeared before Klein (i don't know 100% and im to lazy to look) but his use of it to complement the coloring on the page was a breakthrough.

2- Eddie Campbells article on Exit Wounds discusses letter far better than anything i could ever come up with http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-n-exit-wounds-rutu-modan-gives-me.html

3-Theirs some Indie artist doing hand lettering thats supurb but my main point is that the mainstream has no-one. 

Images From: 

http://kleinletters.com/BuyLSBW.html

Sandman

Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker 2

Avengers 18

Captain America and Bucky