n. One who invents possible worlds.
My tentative plan to visit Israel has been scrapped since Avi mentioned here that
Americans, Canadians, and Brits are sometimes taken aback by the lack of availability of comic books when abroad. Israel , as an example, contains only a handful of comic shops.
Sorry, kiddos…
I’ve been sitting on this one a while, as you can tell. Broken up into parts for your convenience.
Against all odds, it seems I’ve acquired a social life.
Last Thursday I had a random rendezvous with a fellow girl geek and, it seems, did not scare her off. We end up chatting till late and I nearly miss the last train home. Friday morning is thus kind of unproductive. At lunch my co-workers and I go out for Vietnamese and I have proper pho for the first time in ages, and also Vietnamese iced coffee (ca phe).
There isn’t much to do that afternoon. I print out the Google Map for fellow Couchsurfer K. Z.’s birthday party in the evening. I’m looking forward to it, but an old nemesis of mine and Jennie’s is going to be in town, and I can’t miss that either. I text Jennie. “Let’s go torment D. J. later on.” We decide to meet up at Holborn, sevenish.
While sitting around in a coffeeshop waiting for Jennie, who’s stuck on a bus in a traffic jam, I doodle idly. The nemesis we’re going to surprise, by the way, belongs to CFI, a rather slick, corporatesque American secular organisation, which happens to be opening a new branch in London tonight. Their schtick about “culture war” and “separation of church and state” and what not sounded irrelevant enough in Canada; God knows what they hope to accomplish here, in Britain, where the official religion is nominally Church of England but is in practice nonchalant agnosticism. It’s so misguided it’s almost funny. With that in mind I hastily sketch out a mocking cartoon, whatever, finish it when I get there. Then I text a mate I met ages ago when gate-crashing a goon meet and arrange dim sum for the next morning.
Jennie and I get to Atheist HQ shortly before a scheduled talk by Simon Blackburn, a British philosopher and Humanist. A CFI bigwig is giving a speech. We scam some food and sit in the front row. Jennie scribbles copious notes and I draw whilst making snarky comments in a stage whisper. D. J. can’t help but notice us, especially since he’s next up to give the standard Go CFI! speech. Yessss.
Simon Blackburn doesn’t show, and doesn’t show. I figure he’s passed away quietly and I’ll read about it on Leiter Reports tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile, Richard Dawkins, who just happens to be in the audience, gets herded up to the mike for an impromptu Q & A. How random is that? He got questions from a surprising number of philosophy majors. I managed to get a stab in about reductionism. A couple women bring up the gendered rhetoric of New Atheism but unfortunately they ramble and nobody much cares. Eventually Dawkins escapes the inquisitive mob. And before we had a chance to show him the comic, too!
Jennie leaves the cartoon on the desk in front of the hall with the CFI brochures. I go off to the loo. When I come back, the cartoon’s gone. She tells me that some guy picked it up, read it, giggled, and ran back into the hall with it. We flee, burning bridges to Neo-Atheism behind us.
So I set off for K. Z.’s party, a couple hours later than I’d intended. Naturally, I have the map of the area but forgot to write down anything useful like his flat number or mobile. So I wander through the halls of this yuppie Tower Hamlets apartment building until I hear party noises. I stumble into a random party, grab myself a gin & tonic, mingle for a while and am beginning to wonder if perhaps it’s the right one when K. Z. appears and we yell respective greetings over the dj.
To my surprise, I’m actually the kind of person who can go to a party full of strangers and successfully mingle and — I enjoyed myself! Go figure.
A Typical Conversation Begins
Me: NICE PARTY EH
Random Partygoer: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
Me: SOUTH-EAST LONDON. THE UNCOOL PART.
Random Partygoer: NO LIKE WHAT PART OF AMERICA
Me: TORONTO! CANADA!! BUSH IS NOT MY FAULT!
[Pause.]
Me: SO HOW DO YOU KNOW K. Z.?…
I remember to, y’know, check the time and once again manage to make it back before the last train. And the next morning — okay, midmorning — okay, lunchtime — it’s back into town to meet up with J. for dim sum like I promised. We stuff ourselves on shrimp dumplings and pork buns and deep fried things and wander out into the city, ending up at Borough Market. Oh. My. God. Spices and ciders and cheeses and breads and all manner of meat and produce and did I mention cheese and fresh fish and chutneys and sausages and I’m gonna have to go back. J. waxes eloquent on mackerel while I covet cheese wheels.
At that point the Tired hits. I excuse myself abruptly and head home, where I take the most epic nap ever. And that, kids, is my weekend.
Next weekend: Angoulême.
ENH ENH ENH
When I titled that Alan Moore post “Comics Will Break Your Heart”, I had entirely forgotten that it was the epigram of Dylan Horrocks’s comic book Hicksville. It must have crawled into my unconscious years back.
I first read Hicksville in the summer of 2006, about a year after getting into comics. Ben had it on his bookshelf because it was Chris Butcher’s favourite comic, so I eagerly figured it must be full of awesome.
I didn’t get it.
The story was nice, but I could only manage a superficial kind of appreciation and I knew it. Capital-C Comics was still this entirely alien medium – imagine being new to film in general, or music in general – and I was intimidated. It’s not a n00b comic.
Weekend before last I saw it on the top shelf in the Alternative Comics section of Gosh, almost out of my reach and wedged in too tightly to just tip out. But maybe if I could get a few more inches by just stepping on that ledge of the bottom shelf there –
bam! Piles of bagged and boarded back issues fly out on the floor like a catch of rainbowy fish as the shelf collapses. I want to melt into a puddle as a store clerk piles the comics to one side and puts the shelf right. “What book were you after?” he asks, and reaches it down for me.
I couldn’t very well not buy it after that, eh?
So I read it through again, and this time…I got it. Guys, Hicksville is wonderful.
The comic it reminds me most of is Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Talisman, which as Sleep is for the Weak’s NotHayama will tell you anytime, is what indie comics should be like.* I find it hard to explain exactly what McNeil did with Talisman that made it so powerful, but Horrocks does the same thing in Hicksville – a map that in the drawing creates the territory.
(Speaking of maps, I’m also very curious about what Ben thinks about the recurring cartography metaphor…)
Delightful jabs at Todd MacFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and the general awfulness of the comics industry, not just in the ’90’s but pretty much as long as it’s been around. But it’s anything but a snarkfest; it’s about what we do for the love of comics. Horrocks creates this utopic little town that’s populated by people who really, really get it, where this obscure maligned misunderstood medium is the air they breathe, and it’s the most heartwarming thing ever.
If you’re not accustomed to reading comics they can be a little hard to follow at first. My initiation was probably Flight.** It took a bit of effort to parse. But the feeling was simply magic, there’s no other way to describe it. (I’d better stop now before this becomes some soppy love letter…) Hicksville comes closest to re-awakening that sense, and let’s leave it at that.
__________
* As opposed to (as Dirk Deppey said), Joe Worrymope’s Real Life Is Stinky and I Can’t Get Laid for Shit.
** I can hear Lianne Sentar and NotHayama snickering at my cliché indie snobbery already. “She started with Flight! She reads seinen like PlanetES and Dragon Head!”
Alan Moore, arguably one of the greatest comic-book authors of all time, brings new depth and subtlety to every genre he works in, whether it’s historical fiction, horror, dystopia, superhero stories, or plain old porn. His bibliography reads like a list of Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die. He makes Xine use big words like “intertextuality” and “Baudrillardian” gratuitiously. So when I heard that he introduced a Golliwog character in the newest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I knew the odds that he’d pull it off with sensitivity and insightfulness were, oh…
…approximately HONKY TO ONE. Because there is no way for a white dude to appropriate such powerful racist imagery and *not* fuck it up somehow. Has ebogjonson’s blackface flowchart taught us nothing?
Pam Noles has written a very good series at And We Shall March in which she discusses the historical context of the Golliwog, and the treatment of race in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in great detail before describing the comic itself:
It’s an alien.
Its spaceship isn’t a cue ball, it’s more like a Golli eyeball. It’s powered by roses and its exhaust is moonbeam and starshine. Perhaps there’s a unicorn somewhere in mechanism, gently pissing rainbows to keep the gears oiled.
Peg and Sarah, the two Dutch dolls, speak Dutch throughout. From translations cobbled together via various free services on the internet(s), they refer to him as their brave hero, their proud champion of love and an admiral of pleasure. Once they get to the blazing world, other dolls from their world greet him as the fiery pirate of the heart, and say something about either dying of luck or dying of happiness.
Peg also says she volunteered for the Golliwogg’s crew because of his big dick.
So as of this outing, The Black Dossier removes the Golliwogg from its roots in racist ideology while still clinging to the ever so wearying fascination with black sexuality. To evade the difficult fact-based truth of where the Golliwogg comes from while simultaneously affirming the black male stereotype it represented (complete with lustful white women) is quite a trick. Talk about Olympian-level Denial Acrobatics.
And that’s where comics broke my heart.
I remember how I felt when I discovered Jose Saramago was an anti-Semite. You know the kind – the kind who say they’re merely anti-Zionist, but who somehow can’t manage to express their perfectly sensible and well-thought-out opposition to Zionism without sounding suspiciously like raging Jew-haters. I was in a daze.
And I remember when I was just a wee thing reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time. It’s in The Two Towers, I think, when we first encounter the armies from the east and south of Middle-Earth who are allied with Sauron. They are “swarthy” and “slant-eyed”. Generally, in LotR, anyone swarthier than an inbred Anglo-Saxon is morally suspect; I recall a “sallow” Southerner rousing our heroes’ suspicion in Bree, later being likened to a goblin. Now, because I take after the European side of the family, I generally identify as White; but reading that, I was keenly aware of my Asianness.
If it ain’t literature it’ll be sci-fi or fantasy or comics; they’ll get you every time.
I’m going to go pet the cat. There is nothing happier than a cat getting a good scratch under the chin.
Hypothetical Question
If, somehow, I found a way to get to the Angoulême International Comics Festival, who should I check out/cosplay as/learn more about/say hi to? I depend on your expert wisdom.
So far, I am leaning towards cosplaying as Seth. I will wear a fedora, round glasses, and an expression of profound, nostalgic melancholy.
The health-care assistant dips a piece of litmus paper into the vial of urine, draws it out, and compares the colours to a chart. Glancing up at me abruptly: “Do you have diabetes?”
“Er…no. I don’t think so.” Shouldn’t she be the one giving the answers?
“When did you last eat?”
“Two-ish, maybe?” It’s evening now.
She frowns at the bit of paper again. “Wash your hands.” When I’ve done so she pricks my finger and draws the little drop into a digital thingamabob. The number means nothing to me, but it puzzles her: “Well, blood sugar’s fine.” She tells me to make a doctor’s appointment.
The discrepancy is probably nothing, but alarming nevertheless. Yes, I know that diabetes has gone from an early death sentence to a common, serious but manageable medical condition. But it’s an annoyance. And I like my sweets, damn it all.
I’ll make an appointment tomorrow, before they need me too much at work.
P. S. I discovered, rather too late, that the Angoulême comics festival is coming up in only three weeks’ time. Getting travel and accommodation together in time is a bit of a gamble and I will probably end up just attending next year’s.
P. P. S. Must go, cat wants love.
So a while back I finally made it to London’s geek Mecca, the SF/comics/anime/collecting haven Forbidden Planet. Yes, it is spectacular. Yes, I’d rather have Bakka-Phoenix and the Beguiling any day. (Forbidden Planet’s way of organizing its graphic novels – alphabetically by series title, regardless of genre or author – is particularly annoying as you have to browse through all the Marvel shit to get to the good stuff. Same with manga, where Tezuka, the Blu line, and Shonen Jump mingle indiscriminately. And their stock of pretentious indie shit is most sadly lacking. But that’s what nearby Gosh is for…)
Despite my nerd/snob condescension I emerged with a bagful of good stuff and have been consuming that for the past few weeks. Here’s what I’ve been reading (and what You Should Too):
Suburban Glamour #1 and #2. A fantasy miniseries by Jamie McKelvie, the guy who illustrated Phonogram. And since I find McKelvie’s effortlessly smooth, clean-lined art irresistibly sexy, I must follow Suburban Glamour as well. Premise: teenage girl stuck in dead-end town discovers she’s a changeling. The art is a trifle stiff, but fuck, give this kid some time, he’s gonna be good. Unfortunately, the fantasy plotline is rather paint-by-numbers. We’ll see how the following issues go…
The Family Trade. I liked what I’d read of Stross’s alt-history and post-cyberpunk and decided to give his fledgling fantasy series a go. It’s a kind of girl-stumbles-into-magical-vaguely-medieval-world thing, except the girl is a whip-smart thirtysomething investigative journalist rather than your typical boring prepubescent naïf. And the magically gifted “world-walkers” use their talent for drug smuggling. And there’s less prophecy and more political intrigue. And there’s even a touch of, dare I say, romance novel? The Funhouse girls back home will love this setting, and this novel.
(Also, kudos to Stross for satisfying the Mo Movie Rule in the first ten pages.)
Perla La Loca. “They are wild! They are crazy! They are the women of tomorrow!” The third Fantagraphics collection of Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets stories. (For those not in the loop, there’s another three volumes covering Gilbert’s stories and I should be picking up the most recent one soon.) This volume follows our hero as she goes from punker mechanic Maggie to unlucky-in-love, family-troubled Perla. Punk. Wrestling. Beautiful women. What more do you want?
Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle. Sarah N. lent me this brick of a novel back in the summer and it’s quickly become one of my favourite books. Conceptually speaking, it’s at the nexus of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, and The Lathe of Heaven.* Ash is very hard to explain: it starts off as the adventures of the eponymous female mercenary leader in fifteenth-century Western Europe, with the framing narration being an academic’s new translation of medieval manuscripts. The quirks and inaccuracies in Ash’s story are initially dismissed in footnotes as interpositions of myth, or mere authorial flights of fancy; then, as Ash’s story diverges and becomes an alternate history, our medievalist translator becomes increasingly hard-pressed to explain all this to his impatient editor – and when some weird archaeological evidence turns up, the story gets a lot bigger and stranger.
But Ash is great in the “ripping good yarn” aspect too – Gentle really, really knows her stuff when it comes to medieval clothing and weaponry and illnesses and food and how armour ought to feel and how heavy a sword really is. There’s plenty of foul-mouthed soldiers (“wall-to-wall bastards…oh, ‘ride me sideways’, that’s another one”), camp camaraderie, blood and gore and all that good stuff, vividly drawn characters, and very sharp emotional drama to counterbalance the more transcendent bits of exposition.
My favourite Ash-ism? When Godfrey chides her for telling off a condescending knight by saying, “You didn’t have to make another enemy,” and she snaps back, “It’s compulsory with assholes.”
________
* No, you haven’t heard the last of me raving about Ash; I plan to unpack that last bit. Got working on a little essay about it while in Bruges. Yes, you must all read the book. Yes, it’s over a thousand pages and the proper one-volume edition is only available in the UK. READ NOW
On Nintendo, comics, bigotry and love.
Further to a conversation with Ben about stuff that’s been rolling around in my head recently, and the ongoing turmoil in geekdom in general. Too lazy to link SRY.
I’ve developed a real appreciation for the genius of Nintendo. It’s not that an unusual number of people have a DS – it’s that the DS doesn’t “belong” to any particular demographic. Your average basement-dwelling geek has a DS, but that balding City businessman also has a DS, and so does the middle-aged mom killing time on the bus to Catford, and the grey-haired lady who wants to train her brain, and you get my drift. And not only does Nintendo cater to all demographics, they back it up with innovation. My co-workers, none of whom are the least bit nerdy, are crazy for Wii Sports, because let’s face it, the Wiimote is just plain cool. Boxing! Tennis! In your living room!
Western comics fans will occasionally quit ogling their collector’s-edition Mary Jane statuettes long enough to wring their hands and wondering what it is with the kids and that manga stuff nowadays. For the uninitiate, this is because Japanese (and, to a lesser extent, Korean) comics are kicking Western comics’ ass all over the place. Whatever could be the reason?
Well, as we’ve learned from Nintendo, in the long run – hell, in the short run – making new cool shit that appeals to everyone is going to pay off better than milking your existing fanbase. You can try to wow the jaded Penny Arcade crowd, or you can adopt the philosophy that videogames are for everyone and set about putting that into practice.
The thing about manga is that it’s for everyone. If you’re a high schooler who wants fluffy romance stories, or a pervy twentysomething who likes to read about cute boys making out, or a boy obsessed with giant robots, or a horror fan, or a Buddhist philosopher, or a passionate foodie, there’s entire industries churning out series just for you. There are many long-running series that you can’t just jump into, but with the sheer volume of stuff coming out of Japan, there’s always new series starting up or ones that work as standalones or…on and on.
Superhero comics, on the other hand, are relatively inaccessible. I’m not a fan and never will be, simply because a) they’re too hard to get into and b) superhero stories don’t really appeal to me. Why do you need to know decades’ worth of continuity to really “get” every single issue on the shelves? Why can’t they have a goddamn standalone series? Why, for the love of God, is everyone dressed in fucking technicolor Spandex? Just gimme my Dragon Head and let me read about Japanese schoolchildren running away from a fifty foot tidal wave.
(Oh yeah, and c) the format’s a bitch, too. Issues suck. Trades and tankobon rock. Enough said.)
When fans call the superhero comics industry on its misogyny, homophobia, racism, and general asshattery, snotty-nosed geekboys will commonly leap to its defence with excuses like “But it’s a business decision! That stuff sells!” Sure, kids, and guess what? Feminism, queer-positivity, and tolerance sell too. Catering to diverse demographics sells. Alienating your potential fanbase — that’s the bad business decision.
Are comics for you and your straight white male buddies? Or are comics for everybody? Do you love your boys’ club with the NO GURLZ ALLOWED GO READ MANGA sign? Or do you love comics?
In the end, it comes down to what you love.
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Come for the rock, stay for the klezmer.
