The Hooded Utilitarian

A shorter version of this article was published in (I think) June 2006 in the Chicago Reader.

My Romance Is Your Romance

Romance novels are popular genre fiction written for women with literary credibility just north of People Magazine. Comics are a mostly ignored medium which, despite increasing aesthetic bonafides, are still often thought of as being aimed at under-12s. Put them together and you get…romance comics! Air-headed picture stories designed for young girls, which nobody actually reads, but everyone can sneer at.

Or so it was until a decade or so ago. But recently, romance comics have been helped enormously by the fact that they are no longer called “romance comics” at all — instead, they’re called “shoujo manga,” and they’re mostly imported from Japan. Under cover of the new nomenclature and exotic place of origin, femme heartbreak has been gaining in both popular and critical acceptance. Titles like “Chobits” have actually hit the Bookscan best-seller list for *paperbacks*, not just graphic novels. Last year the relentlessly snooty *Comics Journal* devoted an entire issue of mostly favorable criticism to shoujo. And a couple of months ago Columbia College housed a touring exhibit of shoujo manga, which was favorably reviewed in the Reader by art critic Bert Stabler.

Both the *Comics Journal* and the *Reader* focused mostly on the ways in which shoujo differs from occidental comics, Stabler, for example, pointed out that shoujo comics “aggressive search for perfection and macabre sexual energy subtly undermine superficial Western notions of the feminine.” I don’t disagree with that — with its gender-swapping, same-sex love, and ravishing imagery, shoujo can be both disorienting and other-worldly. But it’s also true that a lot of the appeal of these titles is due, not to their alienness, but to their familiarity.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the best-selling shoujo title in Japan, Ai Yazawa’s *Nana.* Nana is Japanese for seven; it’s also the name of the two main characters. Nana Osaki (nicknamed “Hachi”) is a ditzy, needy, materialist, transparent young woman who heads to Tokyo to shack up with her boyfriend Shoji. Nana Komatsu is an ambitious, aloof, street-hardened, secretive young woman who goes to the big city
to become a bad-ass rock star. Through a series of improbable coincidences, the two end up as first roommates and then friends.

Japan isn’t America, and there are many touches to remind you of that in the series. In the first place, as in most manga these days, the art has not been reversed for English translation, so the pictures scan from right to left, which can be a little disorienting at first. And, content-wise, there are lots of cultural references that don’t quite scan. For instance, Nana K. constantly namechecks the Sex Pistols, a reminder that, though punk is dead in the West, no one has bothered to tell the Japanese.

But these are little more than touches of exotic color; overall *Nana* makes perfect sense for a U.S. audience. Ai Yazawa’s designs are elegant, accessible, and always serve the narrative, rather than vice versa, as is sometimes the case in shoujo. Not that narrative is exactly the point, either. Instead, the storyline, while necessary, is not nearly as important as who the characters are and how they interact. As in porn or martial arts flicks, plot is just a way to deliver the goods: in this case, unrequited love, heartbreak, and tearful reconciliation. In short, if you like melodrama, from Georgette Heyer to the O.C., *Nana* should be just the thing.

That isn’t to denigrate Yazawa’s work; on the contrary she is an absolute first-rate romance writer, which is no small praise. *Paradise Kiss*, her first translated series, was a heart-tugging weeper about the fashion industry with a (mostly) lovable collection of idiosyncratic misfits, a fairy-tale ending that never quite arrives, and heaping dollops of bitter and sweet larded out with exquisite immoderation.

By those standards, *Nana*’s first two volumes were a little plodding, but the latest collection gets up to speed with a brutal love-triangle. Nana O.’s boyfriend, Shoji, is attracted by a new girl at his workplace named Sachiko. The set-up is pedestrian enough, but the execution is flawless. Even though Nana is the central character, Yazawa is careful to make both Shoji and Sachiko sympathetic as well: in fact, if anything, whiny, bi-polar Nana is the least likeable of the three. Sachiko, on the other hand, is thoughtful, sweet, and desperately trying to hold onto her self-respect in her role as the other woman. Shoji, too, is hard to hate; Yazawa is a vivid depicter of facial expressions, and throughout the comic Shoji’s face conveys, by turns, horror, despair, confusion, and numb resignation. His main sin is that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone; as a result, he methodically breaks everyone’s heart, including his own.

Great as the central drama is, it’s only a small part of what makes the volume so compelling. Yazawa’s story unfolds in a leisurely manner, but it’s filled with details, subplots, asides, and minor characters. The world she creates seem real, and new developments and emotional subcurrents have time to arise naturally out of what has come before. For example, we know from Volume 1 that Nana O. is so emotionally volatile that she falls for just about every third guy she sees. Her (mostly) platonic crush on the charismatic Nana K.in Volume 3 is, therefore, entirely believable. Nana K.’s response — a mix of exasperation, affection, and good-natured exploitation — is also in character. The scene where the two kiss is one of the funniest moments in the book.

There are lots of other great scenes as well, but they’re difficult to describe succinctly, in part because, like the kiss, they’re all as much about the slow build-up as they are about the climax. Attention to detail is a hallmark of shoujo in general, and of Yazawa’s work in particular. From her careful plotting to her lusciously painted covers, from her gorgeous renderings of clothing to her seamless transitions between emotive close-ups and cartoony slapstick, everything in Nana screams craftsmanship. And it’s this craftsmanship, rather than any nuances of content, that really separates shoujo from most romance on the market today — or, indeed, from most Western comics.

It is possible to find similar combinations of high caliber skill tied to affairs of the heart in the West if you go back a bit, of course — Jane Austen’s novels come to mind, or even the screwball comedy films of the 30s and 40s. Nana isn’t necessarily that good, at least not yet. But there are 15 volumes and counting in Japan, and the series has been getting better as it goes along. It’s certainly worth sticking around to find out. And if you just can’t wait till Volume 4, you can try tracking the story chapter by chapter; it’s currently being serialized in Viz’s anthology title ShojoBeat.

I was looking at Douglas Wolk’s essay on Grant Morrison, in which he says, among other things:

“Fortunately, Morrison makes it easier for our own vision of The Invisibles, as readers, to be multiple, too. Return and begin again with what we asked earlier: who’s telling this story? Who’s making it possible to see? The Invisibles is comics, not prose: the creator of its images is, to a significant extent, the person telling the story. But various sections of the series are drawn by roughly 20 artists, and there’s no single “true” or “correct” representation of any character. The climactic storyline is drawn “jam”-style, with everyone taking a few pages, including the one Morrison himself drew. Morrison nonetheless has a prior claim as the image-maker, since he’s the one who directed the images via his own use of language.”

In other words, Wolk argues that the inconsistency/multiplicity of the artwork fits into Morrison’s themes of multiple identity and identity indeterminacy.

Okay…but this ignores a major point. The Invisibles’ artwork sucks. In fact, in virtually every title Morrison’s worked on, the artwork sucks. I know some people like Frank Quitely, and, by contemporary super-hero standards he’s not bad…which is to say, if you’re not grading on a curve, he’s pretty lousy. Moreover (with the possible exception of Arkham Asylum) Morrison hardly ever makes an effort to collaborate with his artists. You don’t get the sense with Morrison (as you do with Alan Moore) that he chooses people he wants to work with based on a particular project. At the end of Animal Man, he noted that he had yet to even communicate with his artist, if I remember correctly. In the recent “Grant Morrison: The Early Years,” when asked if he gives any consideration to his artist, he responds, basically, by saying “no”. “I just write what I feel the need to write and expect my collaborators to be professional enough and creative enough to interpret my stuff to the best of their abilities.” He notes that some artists interpret his ideas better than others…but it never seems to occur to him that he might be inspired by particular artists, or learn something from them in a back and forth creative process. Nor does he think visually in his writing. Where Alan Moore (for better and sometimes worse) experiments with layout and panel transitions and different looks for his comics, Morrison clearly couldn’t care less — which is why so many of the comics he works on are, visually, either boring or desperately cluttered.

Rather than being some sort of pomo strength, I think Morrison’s indifference to art is his signature weakness…and not coincicdentally, a major weakness of super-hero comics in general. Its says a lot about the field that the person who is, in many ways, its most thoughtful and intelligent proponent has no discernable visual aesthetics. I’ve actually read a couple of Grant Morrison’s straight prose stories (in an old series of erotic horror anthologies) and they’re great. It might really have been better if he’d stuck with that, though it pains me to say it. I love Animal Man and Doom Patrol, and have enjoyed Morrison’s other work as well. But, and alas, no matter the care and genius he puts into the writing, even his best efforts look like shit.

This is a review of Johnny Ryan’s work in general, and of Angry Youth Comics #10 in particular. A shortened, less snarky version of this article was published in The Chicago Reader in March 2006.

Comics: They’re Not Just For Pompous Blowhards Anymore!

After a long and painful struggle, comic-books have finally made themselves more or less indistinguishable — in subject-matter, in marketing, in content, even in length — from just plain books. Whether it’s Dan Clowes or David Foster Wallace, Art Spiegelman or John Updike, you hear the interview on Fresh Air, purchase the tome at the local chain bookstore, open it with the solemn joy of a humble seeker, and close it with new insight into the profound humanness of our shared ineffability.

And then there’s cartoonist Johnny Ryan’s latest effort, Angry Youth Comix #10. Fifty pages of filthy one-panel gag cartoons in the worst possible taste, this is critical comicdoms drooling, atavistic doppelganger. You can’t get it in bookstores, you can’t even talk about it on NPR without violating FCC regulations, and the whole thing takes about ten minutes to read. There are no deep meanings (unless you count scatalogical double entendres) ; no poignant autobiographical details (unless Ryan’s private life is exceedingly peculiar); no redeeming social value (unless you consider mocking Art Spiegelman to be some sort of philanthropic act.) Instead, Ryan’s comic is composed entirely of dick jokes, tit jokes, fag jokes, abortion jokes, racist caricatures, blasphemy, and the occasional stupid pun.

If that sounds like Ryan is just some snotty shock-jock — well, sure he is. But what’s wrong with that? The fact is that comics has always been a uniquely snotty and shocking medium. Wilhelm Busch’s 1865 “Max and Moritz” — often considered the first comic-strip — featured two naughty prepubescent German pranksters who inventively brutalize all and sundry until they are captured, dumped in a flour mill, ground to bits, and eaten by ducks. The gore and goofiness wasn’t necessarily Busch’s fault: comics just seem to lend themselves to over-the-top imagery. Most of the greatest work in the medium — Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, the EC comics horror titles, Jack Kirby’s super-hero art, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat — rely on slapstick or the macabre or hyperbolic violence or some combination of all three. Sure, today “comics for adults” may denote politely edifying creators like Craig Thompson or Jessica Abel, but it wasn’t so long ago that that same phrase referred to R. Crumb, Robert Williams, and other underground artists whose work overflowed with giant reproductive organs, hideous epithets, bizarre sexual conglomerations, and gratuitous everything. And in case anyone had forgotten, the riots which greeted the publication of Danish gags depicting Muhammad reminded the world that nothing offends quite as thoroughly as a really offensive cartoon.

Political cartoons can be plenty dull and predictable, of course: as a non-Muslim, my reaction to the Danish cartoons was basically, “eh.” Still, it’s hard to read anything by Johnny Ryan without feeling that comic-books lost something important when they opted to largely abandon the sight gags and overblown obnoxiousness to the editorial pages. Sure, you can use comics to chronicle either a Bildungsroman or an endless fight against evil if you want to. The truth, though is that those kinds of stories could really just as easily be novels or films. But in what other medium (other than comics’ bastard step-child, animation) can you show, as Ryan does, the moon using some poor unfortunate as a tampon? Or a dead baby in the park with a kite at the end of its bloody umbilical cord? Or the tragedy of brain-piss? In fact, many of these cartoons are so bizarre they can’t even be effectively put into prose — one gag with the caption “Oh, don’t mind me!” involves a man, a woman, a blow-job, and a discontented bystander, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out an economical way to describe the exact mechanics of the scene.

Part of the reason it’s hard to imagine many of these gags as anything other than cartoons, though, is simply because it’s hard to imagine anyone but Johnny Ryan thinking of them. His subject-matter may be limited, and his black-and-white line art is efficient rather than dazzling, but there aren’t many artists in any field who can match Ryan for sheer surreal creativity. His longer strips suggest a filthy hybrid of the Marx Bros. and Monty Python; the full-length story in Angry Youth Comix #9 included a single sequence in which a bald man is blessed with a wig made out of shit, propositioned by a passer-by, has his penis inconveniently detach, obtains penis-glue, loses his shit-wig, asks a passer-by to defecate on his head…and that’s just the set-up for the punch-line. The single panel jokes in #10 don’t match that level of manic intensity, but they have their own virtues. The best gags, in fact, seem like humor’s distilled essence; middle-school, smart-ass witticisms raised to a sublime and unsurpassable height. There will never be a funnier super-hero parody than Fucked-Up Man, whose main power appears to involve intercourse with a duck. Nor will there ever be a funnier penis joke than Ryan’s gag about the Salem Dick-Witch trials.

It’s not like I’m the first person to rave enthusiastically about Ryan’s work. He’s been praised by lots of comics luminaries, from Robert Williams to Ivan Brunetti to Dan Clowes to Peter Bagge. And yet, the critical enthusiasm often seems to come with a certain nervous backwards glance over the shoulder. His comic is put out by Fantagraphics, one of the most important independent comics publishers — but both owners of the company have publicly expressed reservations of one sort or another about his work. He gets a fair number of positive reviews in the comics press— but those reviewers hasten to notify their readers that Angry Youth Comics isn’t necessarily for everyone. Ryan readily admits as much himself, but I’m not quite sure why it has to be stressed. After all, whose work is for everyone, exactly? Chris Ware’s?

I don’t wish on Ryan — or on anyone — the clouds of hagiography that hang about Ware’s cranium like some sort of oleaginous shroud. But I do think AYC deserves better from comics taste-makers than a slightly embarrassed pat on the head. Ryan’s work is smart, crammed with ideas, and so funny it will melt your retinas. Moreover it seems to me that whatever the limitations of its appeal, it would be immediately accessible to a huge number of people— fans of South Park, for example — who don’t necessarily read comics.

That’s important, because the audience for American comics right now is vanishingly small, and only likely to shrink further as imported manga from Japan snaps up more and more shelf-space and attention. In the face of vast public indifference, super-hero publishers have basically given up on marketing comics altogether, and have instead shifted their attention almost entirely to selling their properties to Hollywood. Meanwhile, smaller publishers — like Fantagraphics — concentrate most of their limited promotional oomph on relentlessly snooty releases like the anthology Mome. When Ryan has managed to get mainstream media coverage, it’s generally been quite positive: he was featured in Rolling Stone’s annual Hot List last September, for example. But given comics’ low profile, and his own industry’s ambivalence, it’s going to be a long, long time before Johnny Ryan becomes a household name. As it is, you’ve got to make some effort if you even want to find his stuff. He does have several excellent trade paperback collections, though I’ve never seen one in a bookstore myself. As for AYC # 10, It’s available online at fantagraphics.com, and, to the best of my knowledge, at only two stores in Chicago: Quimby’s Queer Store and Chicago Comics.

[I contacted Fantagraphics, and they corrected me: AYC is also sold through Alternate Reality, Inc. (couldn’t find a website) and Comix Revolution.]