The Wire: Now a Victorian Novel Near You
Longtime blog readers probably remember Joy DeLyria and Sean Michael Robinson’s post reimagining the Wire as a Victorian novel. Well, it’s now a book available on Amazon. Congrats to them both! (And you can read my interview with them at the Atlantic here.)
On its release, Laura Miller at Salon published an interesting piece about the Wire’s relationship to Victorian literature. I’ve reproduced my brief comment below:
Hey Laura. I like a lot of your insights in this review…but the odd thing is, most of them are also insights expressed in the book you’re reviewing. Sean and Joy spend a lot of time talking about how the Wire is *not* like Dickens, and they reference many of your points. That is, they talk about how the Wire wasn’t popular, how it’s pacing if very different form Dickens, how it treats character differently, etc. It even talks about how the visuals affect the storytelling…and suggests that, for example, illustrations at the time for readers were much more important than they are now in our reprinting/rereading.
Again, I don’t think you’re wrong. But it does seem to me that anyone who is interested in the issues raised by this essay would probably also like the book, which explores most of them in greater depth.
TCJ Gets Into Hatefest
Tim Hodler at tcj.com has some interesting thoughts about Suat’s EC comics takedown. (Part of Tim’s contractual obligations as TCJ editor include periodically expressing disdain for HU comments threads, so I was pleased to see him get the chance to do his duty. All in the spirit of hatefest, of course! UPDATE: Tim actually removed the comment about the comments from the post, which is why you won’t see it if you go over there.)
It’s interesting that Tim says he would have “happily published” Suat’s article today if it had been submitted to him. I don’t have any reason to doubt him…but at the same time, it does rather highlight the fact that Suat’s piece would I think be at least somewhat out of place at tcj.com as it seems to have developed under Tim’s tenure (and Dan Nadel’s.) I certainly haven’t read everything published at TCJ over their run, but…has there been any contrarian reassesment of any canonical or semi-canonical figures since they’ve taken the reins? My impression (not changed by Tim’s defense of EC) is that the magazine under their editorship is fairly comfortable with the comics canon, and sees its mission more as appreciation and advocacy of the greats, rather than as pushing alternate narratives.
On HU
…and finally we’ve got this week’s posts.
Our hatefest is still in full swing, and you can check out our index of posts here.
Featured Archive Post: Tom Crippen provides an archive of the work of Robert Binks.
Derik Baman on Dragonlance and the evil ochre jelly of nostalgia.
Steven Grant, on searching for bad comics and finding interesting ones.
Kim Thompson on Spirou and Fantasio, caricature, and racism (or the lack thereof.)
Jason Thompson on why Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Natsume Ono, and Osama Tezuka are all overrated.
Jason Overby presents every Johnny Ryan parody ever.
Ng Suat tong on why EC Comics aren’t so great (and R. Fiore debates him.)
Steven Grant on the crappification of comics, and why it’s still a good industry to work in for many folks.
Mahendra Singh destroys Western Civilization.
Richard Cook on how the X-Men Onslaught crossover cured him of superhero comics.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I reviewed the documentary “After Porn Ends”, about what porn stars do after they leave the industry.
At the Center for Digital Ethics, of all places, I discuss the ethics of allowing anonymous comments online.
At the Chicago Reader I report on the Seminary Co-op bookstore moving its digs.
Also at the Reader I urge folks to buy Lilli Carre’s upcoming book.
And finally at the Reader I tell people to go to the upcoming Afterimage show, which looks at connections between Imagists and current Chicago artists like Paul Nudd, Edra Soto, Lilli Carre, and more.
At Splice Today I talk about rewatching Raiders of the Lost Ark with my son and discovering that it is terrible.
At Splice I argue that the Chicago teachers should have struck a long time ago.
At Splice I review Immolation’s Dawn of Possession and compare death metal to Gerard Manley Hopkins.
At Splice I talk about how the campaign has shown us what Romney is made of.
Other Links
James Romberger interviews Gary Panter.
Robert Stanley Martin with a brutal review of Drive.
Thomas Frank on Obama squandering his first term.
This Week’s Reading
I finished Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Poems, which were sort of disappointing; read Ralph Ellison’s amazing book of essays Shadow and Act, read a few Gerard Manley Hopkins poems, started rereading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and started From the Closet to the Altar by Michael Klarman for a review.
The Wire links both link up to the original article…neither one to the Amazon page. You’re stifling commerce here!
Ah, poo. Here’s the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Hole-unWired-World-Ogden/dp/1576876020
I’ll fix it in the post as well…
Reading: Since I just got home from vacation I got a ton of reading done.
Reread Neaud’s Journals 1,2, and 4 which really are the best comics autobiography has to offer and I am continually amazed at the lack of an English translation (though word was, one is forthcoming). It is both intelligent and moving as well as beautifully drawn.
The Art of Haiku by Steven Addiss was ostensibly a history of haiku/haiga but read more like an anthology with an excess of editorial commentary that ran from the the mundane to the inane. It should have had more images of haiga too, the publishers were stingy with them.
Reread Harry Mathews’ Cigarettes, which instead of commenting on I direct you to 2 essays in the new Harry Mathews focused issue of the Quarterly Conversation: http://quarterlyconversation.com/tch-tch-notes-on-cigarettes and http://quarterlyconversation.com/i-read-it-for-the-plot-the-narrative-artistry-of-harry-mathews-cigarettes
Read the short stories in Camus’ Exile and the Kingdom. Well, I read most of them, some of them I gave up on… a bit letdown by this one. Somewhere something I read recently got me interested in reading them, but now I don’t remember who or what it was.
Also read Tamryn Bennett’s recent dissertation Comics Poetry: Beyond sequential Boundaries on which more later as I get to my next comics poetry post.
! by Tymothi Godek.
Issue 17 of the magazine for typography and graphic design ‘Slanted’ about cartoon and comic.
Alan Moore´s final Supreme story with Erik Larsen and Cory Hamscher (#63).
‘Carnage USA’ by Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain.
Were you watching RotLA on video or movie screen? Maybe that would make all the difference. Nonetheless, I didn’t care for it too much either when I saw it a few years ago of course for the first time since its original release. Nevermind the orientalism, I was just underwhelmed with the enterprise taken as a whole. Maybe if Harrison’s natural cynicism was more up front but I guess Spielberg’s aura automatically cancels that out.
Your remark on “glibness” encapsulates why I hated Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies” film from a few years back. The use of a predator drone as essentially one of the main characters in the movie without even getting into the politics of that device made me utterly despise it.
I recently finished up “The Tempest” and also Barron Storey’s “The Adjustment of Sidney Deepscorn” from Tales from the Edge #1. Forever indebted to Domingos for his covering that one on his blog.
Steven; yes it was on a television (though pretty big screen as these things go.) I doubt I’d like it more in the theater at this point…I saw tintin on the big screen, for example, and didn’t like that.
How can anyone like Tintin in a theater or at home is beyond me.
Oh, and, you owe me nothing Steven. I’m glad you liked Barron Storey’s work. Barron is one of those artists who should be in anyone’s top ten list, but isn’t because, you know?… Popeye is great… or something…
I predict that even you, Domingos, could be made to yearn for the comic strip if you sat through the film.
Can’t argue with that.
This week, I finished gritting my teeth through my Hatefest item reread. I listened to several Elizabeth Peters’ audiobooks, and thought again how cleverly she uses narrative devices and subverts colonialism tropes while also, of course, on the face supporting them. I also read some Xenophon (Life of Cyrus) and poked at the librarians to cough up some papyrii, as a treat. Not sure if they’ll be able to, but I did discover that we’ve got a great Yeats and Rilke collection, so I’ll be making an appointment to put on the white gloves and see if they’ve got anything related to Wild Swans.
Ack! I forgot a book; I reread Laina Dawes’ What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal for a review.
Sounds interesting, Noah. Come to think of it, I never heard of any black woman in the metal genre before…
Domingos, does the much adored comment of yours about Tintin also go for Hergé´s comics?
Nope. I understand why people like those.
Noah, I notice that in your article for the Center for Digital Ethics, you spelled the name of the author of the Slate article as Mahjoo, but it’s actually Manjoo, at least according to his Slate byline. I don’t know if you’re able to edit your article to correct that, but I wanted to point it out just in case.
Aw, crap. I’ll let them know.
I read Clowes’ Death Ray and Kyle Baker’s oddball, not especially successful Iraq war satire Special Forces.
What did you think of the Clowes?
eh, it was okay. I kind of feel about Clowes the way Bert evidently feels about Ware: I prefer his earlier, funnier, bitterer stuff (e.g. Needledick the Bugfucker) to the more recent upper-middlebrow stuff (Wilson aside).
I am reading Game of Kings. So far, I don’t think Sir Francis Crawford of Lymond is that complicated, and I’m not sure I like him enough/am fascinated enough to keep reading. Maybe if the story starts focusing more on other people’s reactions…
I think Clowes’ best by far is still “Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron.” Like Ware, his latter day work lacks the conceptual chops needed to succeed in a more literary mode.
Hadn’t Flex Mentallo taken on some semi-cannonical cachet?
I don’t know about TCJ, nut I think the semi-positive reaasesment of Robin Snyder era Ditko comics at Nadel’s comicscomics was super contrarian.
I think both of those test my rule, but don’t really invalidate it? Grant Morrison is definitely a sacred cow…but he’s not exactly tcj’s sacred cow. Sneering at contemporary superheroes seems like it’s almost de rigeur. By the same token, while it might be contrarian to reassess Ditko’s output positively, it’s hard to see it as quite the same as taking a wrecking ball to EC.
That Flex Mentallo article is quite good, though. I don’t at all mean to say that tcj doesn’t print lots of excellent stuff. They have tons of writers I admire a lot. Their interest in kicking their audience in the kneecaps just isn’t what it once was, whether for better or worse.
“Sneering at contemporary superheroes seems like it’s almost de rigeur.”
Well yeah, but that is if you agree with the thesis that Felx Mentallo is a superhero comic.
I’m a big fan of reviews built on telling people “Hey Mondo Cane isn’t a documentary about the evils of exploitation—it is instead an actual exploitation film”.
Telling an audience that sneers at contemporary superhero books “This Flex Mentallo book that is presented as being a book that uses superhero as metaphor is in fact just a contemporary superhero book” ; isn’t much different than telling an audience that sneers at Blackhawk and Sgt Fury that “EC war Comics share the same cliches as juvenile war comics” ; or telling an audience that sneers at Spencer for Hire hack detective fiction that “The Wire is built on the same clichés with it’s overarching conspiracy-all-connected web, and Omar essentially being Hawk (detective’s superciminal friend who does things outside the limits of law)., or telling an audience that sneers at Omaha the Cat dancer that “Maus is just Dennis ONeal/Neal Adams style social issue comics for furries”.
but this type of argument is actually a hard one to make: you have to actual convince people that their sacred cow =the object of their sneers.