Welcome to Los Angeles
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I went to APE with just a few priorities on my agenda. One of them was to visit the RE/Search Publications table and pick up a few treasures from my long-lost youth. Yeah, I hung out with weirdos, but they were the kind of weirdos whose weirdness you couldn’t accurately gauge by just looking at ‘em. To most people, we looked perhaps a little disheveled, but mostly normal. We wouldn’t be the first to go in a Purge, but perhaps would be saved for the second or third round. Stealth weirdo, as it was.
I was lucky enough to pick up the omnibus of RE/Search #4/5 and the INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK, which had recently been reissued as a hardcover edition. This was back in the days before say, Nine Inch Nails, when being into this stuff was perhaps the equivalent of being in beatnik culture in the fifties (as opposed to the Maynard G. Krebsian sixities). I’d make regular trips up to AMOK books with friends, both in its original location waaay down Sunset and then at the newer location on Franklin (or was it Vermont) closer to the center of the city. Drive up, chew on gas fumes for a couple hours, load up on Tommyburgers and soda right out of the can, hang around and get in touch with my inner freak. Stand next to Tim Leary and try to reconcile his counterculture godhead with the earthbound Leary who left his family and became a jailhouse stooge. Then step outside to the crumbling beauty of the dregs of Sunset (almost Silverlake) before gentrification struck in the 90s. Good times.
Anyways, to V. Vale of RE/Search, thanks for bringing back a little of that to my jaded older self.
Also on the list was grabbing a copy of I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS, the new Fantagraphics collection of Fletcher Hanks’ comic work. I wasn’t familiar with any of this until some scans began to surface last year or so, and were pointed out by folks like Dirk Deppey and I think even Tom Spurgeon. I was simultaneously repulsed and sucked into the work that I saw. Hank’s work isn’t good by most any objective standard. But then that’s the point of Art Brut, isn’t it? Not that Hanks would’ve classified it as such, but then when does authorial intent really figure into how the work is received years after the creator’s death?
I haven’t yet finished the book, but I’ve gotten a pretty good taste of things (and there’s no pretense of story and only the merest plot, so I’m pretty sure that there isn’t going to be an astounding revelation at the end that’ll change my view of the book – though I did skip ahead to the comics afterword by Paul Karasik, which was both sad and revealing.) Hanks’ comics are literally astounding. Every single panel is awash with weird revelation and framed by logic that only could make sense in dream or hallucination. Grotesque anatomy and Old-Testament retribution dress up in Flash Gordon leotards and gaze at one another through telescopic eyepieces. New York is destroyed and rebuilt many times over, within the space of a single gutter at times. Gravity is a mere inconvenience and crime never pays. The jungle is protected by a bombshell blonde with a skull for a face and Stardust (imagine the Golden Age Superman crossed with the Spectre) individually tailors punishment for every miscreant he comes across, simultaneously setting a template for both superhero power fantasy and EC-style horror tracts.
There’s a whole lot of crazy in this book. It’s as idiosyncratic as it is idiotic genius. Not for everyone, but for those who want a taste of the unusual, it comes highly recommended. Every panel offers its own little gemstone of crude, repulsive wonder.
As for APE, I also wanted to stop by at the Allen Spiegel Fine Arts table and take a peek at the new book by Baron Storey which was shipped just this week. Allen seemed somehow surprised that people even knew about it, much less were coming up to the table and asking to see it. Such is the power of the Internet, friends.
And yes, even I succumb to peer pressure from time to time. I bought the second volume of the SCOTT PILGRIM books. I read the first one and liked the cartooning quite a bit, but found the story was a little too much slacker wish-fulfilment for me. But I’m willing to give the second volume a chance.
After a lunch at the Holy Grill (thankfully there’s good food within walking distance of the Concourse now), the “Pagan” cheeseburger with bacon, if you’re curious, and some time to hang out with (ex-)blogger Ian Brill and JK Parkin from Newsarama’s blog (and yes, the omnipresent Mack Daddy G, aka Graeme McMillian) I headed back to get a look at the rest of the show, since I’d only been there for time to head up one of the main aisles. Oh, and as aside to Ian, I’ll be posting my thoughts on VANISHING POINT hopefully this week, so you better watch that toot sweet, as they say en Francais.
Things seemed much busier than in years past, probably the busiest show in the 5 years that I’ve been coming. I don’t know how the merchants/creators were doing at the show, but it seemed to be going pretty well. Of course, there were some pretty big names in both current and “classic” indy comics this year, so that may account for the big turnout. Crowd density on Saturday seemed to be approaching Wondercon-like numbers, and the heat/stuffiness index in the hall was certainly on the order of just about any big show I’d been to. So, anecdotal evidence seems to point to thriving interest for these sorts of shows and the comics, sorry, comix, that they’re showcasing.
My last stop at the show was to say hello to Larry over at AiT/PlanetLar, to catch up a bit and congratulate him on his impending fatherhood. Best wishes to both Larry and Mimi. I was tempted to grab the first couple of minis of THE HOMELESS CHANNEL, but those’ll be out in a couple of weeks as a single volume, so I held off. I expect good things from it.
Made a brief stop off at The Isotope to catch up on my monthlies (a smaller and smaller pile as events conspire and I just wait for trades now) and to get a birthday present for my mom (the ALL-STAR SUPERMAN hardcover which just came out, which seems to draw some of its lineage from Fletcher Hanks’ work, or at least you can see it from where Morrison/Quitely stand.) Then it was braving the rains and the traffic and tollbridges as I slid my way back home.
Inspired by recent discussion, particularly over at Dirk's blog. (You know, Journalista!, which you're reading because he delivers the goods in an entertaining fashion on a daily basis.)
Why WATCHMEN works:
1) Story. Really, that's the be-all, end-all of this. Yes, there's issues with the ending. But you didn't care when you were reading it. You didn't care after the year long wait for the final issue. You wanted to see the story concluded, and it did in a way that wasn't particularly more improbable than Dr. Manhattan or Rorschach seeing out of his opaque mask.
2) Storytelling in the medium. Moore and Gibbons didn't hold you by the hand and explain everything away in text boxes. The action on the page unfolded in an almost cinematic way that demanded attention. Moore didn't use text to explain that one side of the Comedian's closet was shorter than the other and therefore Rorshach knew to look for a secret compartment and discover that the murder victim was more than he appeared. Both artists laid it out on the page and let the pictures do the heavy lifting (though to be sure, WATCHMEN is fairly wordy by today's standards, but was sparsely worded by the expectations of 1986, much less 1976.) And that's just the merest example.
3) A mature take on superheroics. Moore's treatment of superheroes was politically mature, moreso than could be accomplished in mainstream superhero books (by and large, given that these books depended on a world where superheroes could run rampant without governmental interference.) It feels like the way that superheroes would have to be treated in today's world (and still compares far better than other, more recent examples of trying to explore the same themes.) It didn't flinch away from adult material, either, and it did so in a non-exploitative fashion (though there's still argument about Moore's treatment of the original Silk Spectre).
4) Artistry, both in the text and in the graphic delivery. Look at any page and you'll see that.
Unfortunately, WATCHMEN was so much a bombshell in the industry that it became an easy mark for pilfering if not wholesale looting. Usually, the wrong things were interpreted as reasons for WATCHMEN's success. Among them:
1) The 9-panel grid. WATCHMEN didn't succeed because of the grid. But still, some folks took that as a designator of quality and ran with it.
2) Dark superheroics. WATCHMEN didn't succeed simply because the superheroes were dark and human and confused. That may have been the main source of appeal in the comics reading marketplace, and it may bet the single most copied trait of WATCHMEN. However, equating bloody decaptiations and limb-ripping with dark superheroics and therefore more mature material is a legacy that's still plaguing mainstream superhero books today.
3) Text pieces. Overbearing text pieces. Text pieces that are there to show how smart the creators are. The text chapters in WATCHMEN filled out some details and illuminated some dark corners. They were not essential to the enjoyment of the story. These can be handled well, usually to give a feel of the period through design/media, but more often than not, they're a distraction or just plain not good.
4) First-person psychotic narratives. Yeah, DARK KNIGHT started it, but WATCHMEN made it seemingly mandatory. Okay, maybe not entirely fair, Wolverine has been doing that since the 70s, but it sure seemed like there were a whole lotta crazy vigilantes speaking in psychobabble through the 90s.
5) Revamping abandoned properties and making them mean. WATCHMEN broke the dam on that one and still it continues. Sure, some are done well. But not a whole lot.
Hmm. The above seems maddeningly incomplete. Perhaps I'll revisit it in a bit. But that's all the time for today, kids.
THE BEAT - Is the pamphlet the future of comics?
Some interesting thoughts here, and in the comments section that follows. I'll post some on this once I get the taxes paid and perhaps have a little lunch.
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Okay, my debt owed to the state is taken care of. For this year. Sigh.
Like I said, interesting discussion above, and it's tough to nail it down to just one subject, because it very quickly dovetails into other issues that are related, but tangential to the main one brought up above, which is that it's difficult, nay nearly impossible to expect a comics artist to live off the advances of a graphic novel long enough to create said graphic novel because there are typically no advances. (For those of you wondering, an advance is "advance paid against royalties earned", money paid by the publisher before the book in question is published, or sometimes even before it's created. And often it's the only money that the author(s) see out of the book in question.
Of course, in comics, we don't usually see advances. That's reserved for "real" book publishers. Let's not even get into the fact that advances are often pretty damn small and not enough to live off of unless you're living out in the desert in a shack with bootlegged power and internet connection. But in comics, we don't even get those, typically. So, asking someone to come up with 120 pages of material and *maybe* they'll get paid at the end of it is pretty crazy. But then sometimes folks do crazy things for love.
My guess is that a lot of this comes from a culture of work-for-hire that the mainstream American comics have lived with for...well forever really. Yes, we've made great strides in creator ownership, etc, but still the underlying foundation was "do the work and you get a check." No advances, but then we're talking about monthly magazine publication, long before the world of the trade surpassing pamphlet sales. The big publishers love monthlies because their outlay is spread out over a series of months instead of being passed out in giant chunks before the book is created. Creators like to get paid on a regular basis, and frankly, I can't blame them. Of course, there's the whole double-dipping thing that allows the same material to meet a greater marketplace for only the price of reprinting it (not unlike manga coming over to the states, only there's the translation issue to deal with in terms of an added cost).
Most readers I know don't like monthlies because they don't deliver a satisfying experience. Generally they're half of an act of a larger story with a twist at the end (at least you hope there's a twist or really you're feeling kind of cheated.) The unit of story is actually the trade (and this gets even mistier with manga, because I've come across volumes of manga that just sorta stop and you're expected to continue in another couple of months when the next one comes out.) But without the monthly to subsidize the trade, the publishers have to work a lot harder and the unit price goes up. An excellent point made by "Anonymous" on the Beat points out that it costs almost as much to print a pamphlet as a trade, when all is said and done. The real cost derives from the intellectual property (ie, the pretty pictures and words on the page -- the raw material cost is pretty much fixed.)
So, just jump in and do pamphlets and not worry about the trade, since it's all a sunk cost. Well, that's great, only in this marketplace, monthlies tend to shed sales pretty regularly (assuming you're an indie, and even if you're one of the big guys.) Of course, you still have to come up with a way to pay for the initial content that you want to print up. Which leads us right back to the issue of paying creators enough so that they can keep the bounty of ramen and head cheese flowing (or tofu if you're vegan...or hate head cheese, like myself). I suppose there's a potential solution in creators simply being offered advances, but the publishers would have to make enough money to actually do that (and really, most of them can't afford even the most basic advertising, he said, looking over Diamond's rate sheets for pages in PREVIEWS.)
But we can't grow the market until we have some money to spend to grow the market. Man, my head's beginning to spin here. Right now, the market is structured such that everything is oriented around the dribs and drabs of outlay that drives the pamphlet market. But folks who don't come into comics stores aren't ready for pamphlets because they're used to reading a book at one time (as opposed to TV, which they're accustomed to watch in episodes). And we're back to the ourobous.
What about internet publishing? Works great for GIRL GENIUS! I like Phil Foglio, and I have for twenty odd years. He's had a long career in print and has a sizable fanbase who know his work and seek it out. You see where I'm going with this? I'm not saying that internet fame can't be translated into a steady paycheck in the real world, it can. Just look at PENNY ARCADE. But they're head and shoulders the exception and not yet the rule. Not saying it won't happen either. However, it's a not a slamdunk and as easy as opening up a website with a tipjar.
The question is what else can be done to change the marketplace? And that also means, how can the presentation of comics be altered in such a way as to appeal to a wider audience. And without financial risk so the big publishers can just shift over to the new paradigm overnight?
Okay, that last one isn't happening. But the others are certainly still up for discussion.
I really wish I had my scanner hooked up. But it’s downstairs in the garage along with…too many boxes of books and comics and various other sundries that haven’t been unpacked yet. Hey, I can see nearly all the carpet in the new place. That’s a major improvement over the last couple of weeks, lemme tell ya.
The reason why I wish my scanner was here is that then I’d be able to share with you the AWE-INSPIRING WONDER that is ESSENTIAL GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. It’s the end, the end of the seventies and Godzilla, for some reason, has roosted in the Marvel Universe. And not just the Marvel Universe, but the Marvel Universe of the seventies, where nearly anything was possible and the impossible was mundane.
Issue one? Godzilla wakes up and wipes out the Alaska Pipeline, which if you are old enough to remember, would be roughly equivalent to say, erasing the Internet today. SHIELD is dispatched to the case and doesn’t send out tanks or planes, but a Heli-carrier and a wing of jet-packed and armor-plated agents. See? That’s panache. Yeah, they break out the death-rays, too.
Of course, they get owned by Godzilla. But it’s the effort that counts.
Issue two? Seattle reduced to smoking rubble, SHIELD blowing up the only power plant leading to the city, playing bait-and-switch with the big green guy and finally using ten-ton blocks of concrete shot out of cannons to throw him into the ocean. No wailing about civilian casualties, no heavyhanded rhetoric, nothing getting in the way of utterly improbable action.
And it only gets better.
Issue three has Godzilla setting his eyes on San Francisco where he not only has to contend with SHIELD, but The Champions. Yeah, I know. A total mismatch. But Hercules manages to throw Godzilla off his feet and into most of Pier 39 at the same time (nevermind that it’s on the wrong side of the Golden Gate) in a full splash page of mayhem. But it gets better. SHIELD and The Champions are at odds with one another (of course) with one side representing the well-oiled machine of law enforcement and the others the reckless vigilantes taking matters into their own hands.
Hey, wait a second…
While SHIELD tries to drop electromagnetic nets on Godzilla, Hercules takes a giant chunk of the deck of the Golden Gate and tosses it right towards our favorite lizard.
Who DUCKS it. You heard that.
The missile hits not Godzilla, but the Helicarrier, which goes headfirst right into San Francisco Bay. Two splash pages in a single issue! INSANITY.
Issues 4-5? Dr. Demonicus and the Isle of Lost Monsters. MONSTER ON MONSTER ACTION, finally! Goofy Marvel villains and giant mutated creatures, two great tastes that taste great together! And for a special bonus, Issue #5 is inked by one of the best in the business, who’d go on to a critical run of a seminal superhero book, and would ink one of the most influential books of the 80s (for good or for ill). That’s right. Klaus Janson inked Godzilla, chunky blacks and all. And oh yes, we get the clunky exclamations of “Freeze, Black Man!” not only once, but twice. I guess Dr. Demonicus didn’t see the memo that SHIELD was taking strides in diversifying (as did the cast of the book, which featured ethnic Japanese and Chinese in relatively non-insulting roles – Jimmy Woo of the late AGENTS OF ATLAS included.) But really, the psychotic mix of Marvel superheroics and Toho monstrosity is the star here.
Issue 6-8 feature the debut of Red Ronin, the Shogun Warrior/MAZINGER ripoff piloted by a renegade 12-year old, build by Stark Industries to keep the world safe for Democracy and out of the hands of elemental reptiles. It also features a NEW helicarrier called the Behemoth piloted by none other than… Really, this was unbelievable. I had to put the book down for a moment and absorb the enormity of the genius unfolding before me. Yeah, it was that good.
Howard Hughes circa 1942 piloted the Behemoth. It wasn’t a mistake. Fedora, pipe, loosened tie and all. Just…sublime.
And did I forget to mention that nuclear Armageddon was about to be unleashed from a Godzilla-torn military base in San Diego? Really, I didn’t even know that they had a missile base there. Guess it was hidden from all the NIMBYs or something.
Later on, we get Godzilla in Vegas in a story that could only be told in comics (and even if it’s a little flat, shows more understanding of the medium and what it can do well, than most mainstream comics of the time seemed capable of.) Can’t forget the sight of Godzilla surfing through downtown Vegas on a wave spawned by the collapse of Hoover Dam, either, can we? Then Godzilla versus the Biggest Bigfoot of all—YETRIGAR! And where do they fight? In the Grand Canyon, of course! It becomes the “world’s biggest arena”. Pure awesome. Beta-Beast and the MEGA MONSTERS FROM BEYOND (a story so big it took three issues to tell, and featured perhaps the single most amazing decapitation scene in all of comicdom – has to be seen to be believed.) Godzilla versus cattle rustlers? Yep, got that.
I mean, Godzilla versus cowboys. Who doesn’t love cowboys with a touch of unexplained cattle mutilation thrown in?
Then we get a little Hank Pym love with Godzilla being shrunk down to the size of a cat. Yeah, it doesn’t last forever, but it lasts long enough for Godzilla to get lost in the New York sewers, fight rats, then grow up a little, dress like a hobo (with the help of the 12-year old kid who’d formerly piloted Red Ronin), thwart his own mugging, make paleontologists swoon, fight the Fantastic Four, fight in a tank of sharks (SHARKS!), hurtle through time to fight with and then alongside Devil Dinosaur (aww, tell me you didn’t see that coming – double page splash and all) to end with a titanic confrontation with the FF and the Avengers in downtown New York after returning from his time travel escapade.
Are the comics good? Eh. Who cares about structure and depth of character when you’re reading this stuff. This isn’t meant to be analyzed. It’s just meant to be enjoyed while you fight off the post-moving sniffles and try to put things back in order.
But if it’s imagination that you want, go no further. So give me an AMEN and crank up the Blue Oyster Cult. Godzilla is back, at least for a limited time (don’t bet on this one getting reprinted again.)