The Rage Diaries

Comics: a powerful medium for storytelling

It's not all tights and flight. Coco Wang has drawn ten comics illustrating stories that have come out of the Sichaun province earthquake. Because they show scenarios in which the very best of human nature rose and responded to a terrible tragedy, these comics are both hopeful and heartbreaking. They are also unforgettable.

Wang said in an interview:

My purpose of creating these comics is that I want to create a forever monument of the victims, dead people, rescuers and volunteers of 5.12 earthquake. A way to let everyone in the world remember this event, remember the sorrow and regrets, remember the love, courage, hope and kindness of every Chinese who was involved in the earthquake. Especially, I want the foreign people to know these stories.

She's succeeded.

The Eisner noms are out!

If you're like, "Stories with pictures? This art form intrigues me ... yet I know not where to start," then you could do worse than use the industry's annual Eisner award nominations as an entry to the comics medium. I only raised an eyebrow at a few of the selections. Others -- like the Best Writer field -- are pretty much a can't-lose proposition.

And if tights-and-flights are never, never going to be your thing, that's your right. The best graphic novel I read in the past year was Nick Abadzis's Laika. I read it in the store, standing next to the bookcase, and for a good ten minutes after I turned the last page, I had to remain turned into the shelves because I didn't want anyone else in the store to see how hard I was crying. (Hell, I'm tearing up now just recounting this.) Laika is beautifully, economically told, and the blank spaces between the lines give each reader's monkey mind the space to ponder the costs of human progress, and at what point the progress overtakes the humanity. Read an excerpt here. (And if you have a dog, give him or her a pat from me, okay?)

It's an interesting coincidence how Laika gets the nod right after the little tempest over the stunt Guillermo Habacuc Vargas pulled, where he argued that his exhibition of an emaciated street mutt -- and a sign made of dog biscuits right above it -- was really an indictment of the people who a) let the dog get to this condition in the streets and b) didn't bother to deface the art and feed the dog. (Read a summary of this furor here.)

Both Vargas and Abadzis make their points about how our treatment of animals essentially boils down to using them as we see fit and ignoring their sovereignty as living creatures unto themselves. But for my money, Abadzis makes this point far more poignantly and less piously -- and that gives it greater affect. But what do I know? I'm a dumb funnybook reader.

The Y in good-bye

Today, the final issue of Y: The Last Man hit my comic book store. I can't claim to speak for all comics readers here, but reading it today was a bigger deal in some ways than finishing the final Harry Potter book or watching the final Sopranos episode. There were always long periods between books or TV seasons, but the longest I ever had to wait between Y issues was a month or two. Although the narration in Y jumps weeks or months sometimes, the fact is that the experience of reading story itself unfolded at a regular pace, easily incorporated into my daily life. Now the story is over. Next month, when I'm looking over my pull list, there will be the nagging feeling that something's gone missing.

Happily, the final issue is a proper, graceful send-off, a little heartbreaking, a lot respectful of the readers' ability to dive into the story and flesh it out in their minds. And, thank God, it's the real and true end; Brian K. Vaughn's gone on record promising that. It's a good end. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Check out Kurt Loder's wrap-up on MTV,

Friday Link Farm: The Harry Potter Fan Crop

This week's collection of links relates to the whole Harry Potter phenomenon -- which I expect will reach its apex at ... TODAY.

Why this minute? Even if a boatload of people are thoroughly spoiled (and thanks a lot for that, FUNKILLERS. What's next, kicking old people for fun and putting the footage on YouTube?), once the spoiler-averse people have the books in their hot little paws, everything will be up for grabs.

I guarantee that at least one person will be like, "I just wasted EIGHT YEARS on this series! I dressed up like Argus Filch at the last six bookstore events for NOTHING! What the -- ? I mean, I can't -- ? No, no, no. Can't speak. Head exploding in outrage."

So let's enjoy the sweet, swiftly fleeting moments of anticipatory promise before the inevitable fanboy/fangirl bitchfest. Have some links!

"A Bid for Harry Potter's Green Fans" (NYT, Jul 7, 07) -- "As part of a growing worldwide campaign that is prompting a shift in the publishing industry, environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace, are asking Potter fans in the United States not to buy Scholastic's editions and instead to order the new title online from Canada, where the publisher, Raincoast Books, has printed the book on 100 percent recycled paper."

"Five Ways to End Harry Potter" (NYT, Jul 8, 07) -- Read all about it: The Boy Who Died by Damon Lindelof; When Harry Met Davey by Meg Cabot; Made in Hogwarts by Larry Doyle; Hermione Tells All by Polly Horvath; The Last Day by Andrea Dezso

"Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits" (NYT, Jul 11, 07) -- "As the series draws to a much-lamented close, federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along."

"Potter Embargo Could Be Broken" (BBC, Jul 12, 07) -- "Some shops are not expected to keep a written agreement which prevents them selling the book before 21 July."

"TV Cameras Record Rowling's Year" (BBC, Jul 13, 07) -- "The show will give a rare insight into the writer's personal life and show her finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series."

"Harry Potter 'Wrockers' Conjure Musical Magic" (ABC News, Jul 13, 07) -- "Meet Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys, just two of nearly 200 Harry Potter-themed bands -- including the Hungarian Horntails, the Whomping Willows and the Remus Lupins -- who are touring venues across the country bringing their own style of "wrock" -- that's wizard rock -- to a generation that has grown up reading about the magical world of wands, spells and dragons." (Includes link to Draco and the Malfoys' song "My Dad Is Rich.")

"ICYMI: Local News Report Exposes Cruel Injustice Of America’s Wizarding School System" -- Not an article, but a video clip.

"The £10m Charm to Shield Harry's Secret" (The Telegraph, Jul 15, 07) -- "A £10 million security operation featuring an army of guards, satellite tracking systems and draconian legal contracts has swung into action to prevent any leak of details of the seventh and final book about the boy wizard." [Ed note: Read this in conjunction with Time's June 29, 07 "Harry Potter and the Sinister Spoilers."] [Ed note the second: And then wonder if heads are going to roll thanks to all the purported leaks.]

"Harry Potter and the Diminished Returns" (LAT, Jul 16, 07) -- "Amid this avalanche of commerce and pre-publication hype, the book business is ruefully taking note of a startling incongruity: Very few U.S. booksellers will be making big money from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.""

"Was the Boy Wizard the Charm that Made Children's Books Fly?" (WaPo, Jul 18, 07) -- "Ask about Harry's effect on the industry and the first thing you'll hear is that Rowling's books disproved the longstanding belief that hardcover children's fiction didn't sell. The next is that they've caused a vast and lucrative expansion of the fantasy category."

Dropping the cape, picking up the anime

At the end of one storyline in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, a character named Barbie goes to buy a comic book as a graveside offering for her recently deceased friend Wanda. She describes the experience as a humiliating one -- walking into an all-male enclave and having the shop clerk openly ogle her chest. It's one of those sequences where, if you read it in the monthly issue, you probably chuckled, "It's funny because it's true."

However, that issue was written over ten years ago, and things do change. Comic culture is becoming more mainstream -- credit movies, credit animation on assorted cable and movie channels, credit a generational shift. I see a lot more girls in the comic book stores these days -- not just picking up Emily the Strange paraphenalia, but picking up books by Joss Whedon or Brian K. Vaughn, like the latest Buffy or Y: the Last Man.

And that leads to the latest conundrum for comics: despite a decade in which nearly every Marvel hero has had a movie of his own, the big growth is not in the tights-n-flight category. It's in manga, which has its own set of narrative conventions and aesthetic trademarks. The WSJ reports:

[U]pstart manga publishers -- such as Los Angeles' Tokyopop and San Francisco's Viz Media, both closely held -- ... have managed to draw female readers with a mix of girl-friendly content and distribution to both comic book shops and mainstream bookstores. Trade publication ICv2 puts the total comics and graphic novel market at about $640 million last year in the U.S. and Canada, with manga accounting for about $200 million of that figure.

The manga category is expanding quickly. Total sales of manga books jumped 22% to 9.5 million units in 2006 from 7.8 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen BookScan, which collects point-of-sale information from 6,500 retail locations across the country, including those operated by Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. The manga category in 2006 accounted for about two-thirds (68.5%) of all graphic novels sold in U.S. bookstores, up from slightly more than half (53.8%) in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan. (The figures don't include comic-book stores.)

That fast growth helped convince DC that the time is right to cultivate a significant customer base of teenage girls.

-- "Pow! Romance! Comics Court Girls," June 8, 07

It's a little amusing that DC is launching this whole "comics for girls" thing at the same time that the writers for the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America have handed over the leadership of those groups to Black Canary and Power Girl, respectively. I really wonder why this hasn't been promoted at all. That -- along with Gail Simone's fantastic run on Birds of Prey and her Secret Six work -- would seem to be a great hook for girls of all ages.

Then again, I'm also surprised that Marvel doesn't make more of its fantastic Marvel Romance Redux books. In these, the writers take the old art from romance comics of the 1940s-1960s (such as the one above) and rewrite the dialogue for a crowd raised on MST3K.

Here's the comics story I'd like to see: what do independent artists who have been writing chick-friendly comics for years, such as Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise), think of the new books like The PLAIN Janes?

ETA: Valued commenter and Atomic Librarian Kerry reviewed the The PLAIN Janes in her blog.

Why shouldn't our troops stay on top of continuity?

For any other comics lovers/buyers out there: I wanted to throw you a heads-up to Heroes4Heroes, a nonprofit group that will take your comic book donations and send them on to the troops overseas.

You can make donations online via PayPal, or send goods (comics, CDs, DVDs and video games) to them at:

Heroes4Heroes
9905 Boston Harbor Drive
Aubrey, TX  76227

I wrapped up a box of X-Men and JLA trades, my Neverwhere run and a few other series. The box is going out tomorrow.

(Big ups to my brother for bringing this to my attention.)

What I DIDN'T read last week: the anything with a spine edition

You few, you proud, you selective -- you readers -- I like to imagine that you've been wondering why I have not posted any "What I read last week ..." entries for two weeks now. The pithy and obvious answer: because I have not read any books for two weeks.

Does admitting that mean I've lost my bookworm cred?

It's been a fairly hectic two weeks, what with the usual two-and-a-half hours I spend on the road in rush-hour traffic each day, and ripping the bejeesus out of my yard, and getting the paperwork in order for refinancing the house, and discovering that the mighty Saturn's repair bill is more than the actual value of my trusty ten-year-old car (sob!), and going to Monterey to see their new white shark, and honestly ... I have not really had "time" for reading. Or "working brain cells."

So here is what I have read in the past two weeks: catalogs and comics.

Because I am an assiduous recycler, I do not have the compleat catalog of my bulk-mail inventory, but all the usual suspects have passed through our recycling bin: Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel, Rejuvenation Hardware, Archie McPhee's, Johnnie Boden, J. Crew, Lands' End, Garnet Hill (which, in a shameless display of cross-company leveraging, sold my name to no fewer than five of its affiliates), the Oriental Trading Company, the Sundance Catalog, Design Within Reach, CB2, Uncommon Goods, Chiasso, Title 9 Sports, Athleta, Smith & Hawken, White Flower Farm, Art.com, Exposures, Flor, the Company Store, the Vermont Country Store, the Popcorn Factory, Williams-Sonoma, Sur le Table, Zingerman's, Penzey's Spices, Wireless, Flax Art & Design, Signals, Levenger, Olive Juice, Bas Bleu and the aptly titled What On Earth? And it's true --that's what I exclaimed upon finding it in my mailbox.

You know, reviewing that list makes me feel like I've left some catalogs out. The Fright Catalog, maybe? Cuddledown? Fine Cheeses of New England Monthly? I have every confidence that if these catalogs haven't already arrived and been recycled, they'll be waiting for me today.

And then there are the comics. Last week, I picked up and read Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall along with my usual stash, and gosh, is it gorgeous and sharp. James Jean's art in story is simply charming, all whimsical lines until the first panel where they skew, horribly and suitably, into jumbled confusion. Tara McPherson's art is similarly beguiling; I have adored her work on Thessaly and The Witching (one of the covers over on the left), so it was great to see her here. The Fables hardcover will be of the most use to die-hard Fables readers, because it provides juicy backstories and little continuity call-outs, but it's a nice stand-alone read if you are a collector of alternate fairy-tale interpretations.

This week, I picked up the final issues of Seven Soldiers (only six months after its promised release date!) and Planetary, which I am sure I have been reading since the Bush I administration. Or maybe it just feels like it since the issues don't come out on what could be called a "frequent" basis. Of the two, I think I enjoyed the Planetary finale more, despite having to haul out a crib sheet to remember what plot callbacks came from where. The Seven Soldiers wrap-up was ... well, it was Grant Morrison, so it's not like I wasn't warned, but I still feel a little deflated. Morrison has J. Michael Straczynski's problem -- great set-up, tremendously detailed fictional words and backstories, and weak denoument.

But now that those comics are done and my recyling bin is full, perhaps I can redirect my attention to something where there are more words on the page than pictures. Maybe. Tune in next week ...

And the weblog lives up to its name for once

Before I begin with the bitching, a disclaimer:

Any time "the mainstream media" is invoked as the cornerstone of an argument, I almost always end up dismissing the whole thing, because that little phrase -- or the acronym MSM, which lurks like a kitty turd in the middle of the blogosphere's sandbox -- is invariably a warning flag. "Intellectual laziness ahoy! Here there be no honest analysis!"

However, here I am, hours after reading pieces in the LAT ("Behind Batwoman's Gayness," Jul 15, 06) and Salon ("The Riot Quiets," July 17, 06) and I am tempted to start squawking about the MSM. However, that's not constructive. Let me carp instead about this: the unfortunate punditry trend in running pieces that manage to misread reality in a bid to make A Bigger Point About The Grievous State Of Women Today.

What I read last week: the "They're graphic novels" edition

Let's get one thing straight: I think there needs to be more mainstream coverage and criticism for comics. Any form of media needs coverage and criticism; how else are we to become literate in its narrative conventions and understand how they work? And any form of cultural transmission needs coverage and criticism.

Yes -- any. Although I don't agree with many of the premises in Chuck Klosterman's "The Lester Bangs of Video Games" [Esquire, Jul 06], I do find this statement relevant: "If nobody ever thinks about these games in a manner that's human and metaphorical and contextual, they'll all become strictly commodities." Just substitute the word "comics." See?

Girl, wonder

For last year's "TWoP Staff Special Achievement Awards," I gave the show I was recapping this award:

The Women In Refrigerators Award
Not that CSI doesn't kill people of all genders with impunity, but this season was pretty heavy on the lady victims dying in horrible ways for stupid reasons: appearance-obsessed matrons who drink their own pee, adulterous women killed by jealous stepdaughters, serial killers raping people with soft-drink bottles prior to killing them, mail-order brides stuffed in suitcases...the list goes on. We're awaiting the appearance of an actual woman-in-refrigerator victim next season. -- Sobell

The title comes from Gail Simone's Women In Refrigerators, a site she created when "it occurred to me that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics." I was struck by the parallels between CSI's M.O. and the comics, and couldn't resist making the connection.

Amusingly, my doing led to extremely short-lived Internet speculation that I might not have actually known the origins of the phrase. That there was even speculation led me to wonder: Is it automatically assumed that I'm unfamiliar with either comics or comics culture because I'm a chick?