Category Archives: Article

The Extended Laces; or Drusilla’s Fatal Brochure

Posted on by

The Extended Laces
or, Drusilla’s Fatal Brochure
By Claudia Fonce Earbrass

Author of The Unsprung Trampoline, A Thousand Pins, Why?, The Applecramp Sextet, Did She Remember?, The Fantod Regrets, and A Scent of Cedared Fields

 

Hello to everyone at xL Design Studios. Neil here and very happy we have this chance to work together. So, the title page. Very much suggest central image plays on sneaker and laces, with the laces in advanced state of extension, just sprawling out there. That’s recto. Verso, we have the comic book, and that’s tattered and it looks like it’s been flung wherever it is—pages splayed, whatever. Placement of the title and byline and the “Author of” book titles: entirely up to you. Whatever works, and never mind about using all the book titles – we’re perfectly comfortable with their serving as design elements at your disposal. That being said, Scarlett said to tell you she likes The Applecramp Sextet.

 
Drusilla was left for the day in her family’s unexplored new home.

All right, first page. Think we discussed the kinetics, the set up for the flow we want from page to page. Kieran’s handling that, am I right? Hello, Kieran.

Drusilla, house, car. Car’s taking off, house looms, Drusilla looks at it, her back to the car. Car: mid-’70s vintage Volvo. House: not a teetering wreck, not necessarily a haunted house, but a big pile with many windows and ledges and little roofs, and so on. Drusilla’s look: as discussed. Skirt, sweatshirt, sneakers. Alinor, did you send the studio the character profiles? She says yes, so I expect you’ve got it. If not, text her, she’s on duty to look out for such things.

Just want to reiterate here that Drusilla’s sneakers and laces are in view from the outset and page by page. Always in view, laces always untied and getting longer.

 
Her parents absented themselves to join in a sordid debauch.

Tricky one. We want a very post-hippie, mid-70s feel: longish hair, wine glasses, joints,, jeans, tennis shorts. Perhaps a stereo with speakers out on the lawn, if feasible with regard to panel space. But here’s the balancing act I was talking about. As discussed, we want all that in the idiom of our source artist. At the very least, probably kohl darkening around the characters’ eyes. Anyway. When we see them, the participants are sprawled on the lawn in a sodden tangle. And there’s suggestiveness, what with shorts, blouses, etc., tugged awry.

 
Drusilla set herself to know her new surroundings.

Hi. Alinor here. Neil has to field a thing, so I’ll be passing on his notes and so on. All right. All … is this page 3? All right, his notes say: “inside house, big stairs leading up, dark, Drusilla at foot of stairs, one foot edged to ward them, expression dubious—posture like p. 1, Gilded Bat.” And he has “Period detail, if poss: ’70s again.”

 
There was a box under a bed she did not like to think about.

All right, that’s pretty clear. Bed, box under it. A cardboard box, quote, “as from a liquor store,” but Neil says no brand names, etc. Unmarked box. “Packed full a long time, strained at seams, flaps dented and wrinkled.”

Drusilla looking at box, Neil says: “expression similar to-—“ Oh, sorry, can’t make it out.

 
But its attraction proved too powerful.

Neil just texted to say Professor Bloom very much likes Scent Cedar Fields. I don’t know. I guess you know what that is.

Anyway, Drusilla pulling out the box.

 
The pamphlets she found baffled her understanding.

Now we have the comics, magazines, etc., that are in the box. Neil says, “Tricky, the balance again.” I guess you know what that is. Okay, quote, “suggest no pictures, titles on covers, except House Mystery, H. Secret, 1 of each.” And he says have the comics, quote, “really flung about, a couple small drifts of them.”

 
She read them with an undeniable fascination.

And this is like before, but now she’s on her stomach and reading one. And, because this is triple underlined, and behind her, in the doorway, the doorway’s left side, we see the last bit of a superhero ankle and heel, like, quote, “a superhero was just passing by and this is all we glimpsed.” Drusilla doesn’t see, and that’s underlined too: “Drusilla no idea.”

 
Her parents’ return startled her. Pushed by an instinct she could not name, she hid the booklet.

And now she’s moving about, getting the comics back in the box. Neil’s note says, quote, “Drus’s posture v.v. Gilded Bat. Visual humor from contrast of frenzied activity and elongated, immobile posture. Gilded Bat good reference.” So he wants you to look at Gilded Bat. And the “v.v.” means “very, very.”

 
Henceforth, she regarded the whole matter with misgiving.

Hallway, the doorway, Drusilla. I mean, Drusilla’s out in the hallway and looking through the doorway, and we can see a corner of the bed. Drusilla’s expression, the notes say, her expression is, quote, “the comic, blank foreboding found on G’s children, white faces, slit eyes, features minimal.” And then he has “Wugg-Ump.” I don’t know.

 
Years passed.

Note says “Drusilla. Same skirt, sweatshirt as before, but she’s teen. Dinner table, parents, rec parents from crowd on p 2, the sordid debauch. Refer character profiles.” Okay, and I sent you those, so we should be okay. He has “Kieran: D seated panel right, profile left.” So if there’s a Kieran, I hope you get that.

 
At college she made difficult friends.

Neil, quote: “Spooky, emptied-out coffee shop, student hangout but depopulated. Suggest great elongation, extension of decor—not just an unhealthy-looking rubber plant but one that twists its way higher up than it should and looks like it may collapse of its own sickness. And on like that. Standard items found in a college coffee shop, but seen a certain way.”

Okay, Drusilla and two friends at center but in the background … Oh, hi! Should I …

Hi, Neil, here. Yeah, okay, Ali, thanks for that. All right, page 11. They have the character profiles, right? Okay, two friends as described in the character profiles, use your design judgment as to where they’re placed in frame. But, and this is key, Drusilla’s laces are getting long now. We start to notice.

 
She searched for her creativity.

Drusilla at a performance art piece by students. I mean, she’s one of the students, taking part. Knock yourself out on this, re: costumes. Note: all girls more elongated and slinky than Drusilla, who looks a bit slumped around them. And there’s the laces. By this point, looking at them, one might wonder how she walks without tripping.

 
The childhood pamphlets sometimes returned to her mind, always at unexpected moments.

Right, same performance. Drusilla, foreground and to the right, eyes on one of the tall, elongated girl students striking a mock-Superman pose, a generic superhero sort of thing, with cape behind her, leg flung back, arm flung forward, all this suggesting flight. Nothing else to suggester superness, just the cape, which is blank, and the posture.
 
And there’s Drusilla looking. Laces in view.
 
In the background, as if peeping in from backstage behind the performance art show, there’s a superhero’s gloved hand and the edge of his caped-and-cowled shoulder and side of the head. Just enough so that a sharp-eyed reader can see.

 
Her parents remained irritating.

The dining room table, as in the “Years Passed” picture. Drusilla home from college. Parents older, squabbling, entirely caught up in each other. Maybe D has a Discman on and its playing. Laces longer; we can see one or both lying along the floor like a snake sunning itself.

 
In the city she found a career.

Drusillla, same posture, same place in panel as on page before. Now she’s at an office, computer screen in front of her. The monitor is one of those clunky jobs from the 1990s. Scarlett adds, quote, “Very then.”

 
And spent time alone.

Now in a movie theater. Same posture as last two pages, but now she’s angled toward the panel’s rear, toward an out-of-view movie screen. Empty seats on either side of her, other people spotted here and there in the hall—some couples, heads together. Suggest focus on the thin carpet peeling up at one corner, laying bare cement floor. Certain shabbiness so extreme it’s desolate—think that’s a G sort of thing to do, visually.

 
Her difficult friends became too difficult or too successful.

Drusilla at happening sort of downtown art party. She’s in foreground. One of her friends is there with her, sulking at her. The other is in the panel’s background, surrounded by a crowd of limp-looking hipster types, being lionized. Lot of room here to play with ’90s hipster accoutrements and decor in a G idiom. Want to stress elongation wherever possible, especially upward. A sort of pinched, unhealthy, looking-like-it’s-about-to-topple upward growth in all things, except Drusilla.

 
Parties confused her.

Okay, same party as before, different angle. The two friends still in view but off to the sides, one still being lionized, the other getting chatted up by a dubious type of some sex. Drusilla front and almost at center, looking toward us, face bleak. More with the ’90s hipster decor. Laces.

 
She became a waif.

Now Drusilla, still at the party, same place in frame, same clothes as ever—the sweatshirt, skirt and sneakers—but she’s sitting down with legs stretched in front of her. Still looking straight at us. Laces are distinctly longer than ever.

 
None of her poems were published.

Drusilla in her apartment, facing left—you have that, Kieran?—and an opened letter in her hand. It’s a rejection slip. Maybe a pile of them on kitchen table, but don’t overdo—sparseness important in all things with G. Apartment: sticks of furniture, little portable TV, Discman and scattered discs, scattered posters on wall for Lalique, Russian ballet, Nirvana.

 
She decided to work from home.

Drusilla trudging out of the office, with a box for her belongings in standard fashion. Box is almost empty, though. Coworkers look on grimly, supervisors frown, etc. Really she’s been fired, that’s the message.

 
She endured seeing her parents for the weekend.

The dinner table again, but with angle flipped—D now at panel left, the left end of the table, not the right. Parents older, quarreling harder than ever.

 
She found the thought of her journal burdensome.

Drusilla in her room at her parents’. Notebook and pen in foreground on table, Drusilla in background, to left, sitting by window. She’s trying to look out the window but can’t—her eyes are pulled unhappily toward the notebook.

 
Basic cable appalled her.

Downstairs in the dark, on a big couch. White glow from the screen. D on stomach, one leg folded so foot sticks up in air behind her; laces dangle a long way down. She has chin propped on hands and as she looks at the screen with a blankness that would appal one.

 
She found one of the pamphlets again.

Her room. She’s rooting about in a closet and finds a comic.

 
Without knowing why, she sat down to read.

Drusilla same position, same spot in panel as on page 8. On stomach, doorway behind her. Same clothes. But now she’s old and we see it: gray bits in hair, lines near mouth. One leg folded, foot up in the air behind her, and now the laces are spilling everywhere, a life of their own.

 

fin

And as before. Differences: her face isn’t propped up anymore, now it’s flat with the comic; shadows growing everywhere, especially among the folds and tangle of the laces; and in the background we have the fingers of a superhero gauntlet clutching the upper right side of the doorway, and the edge of a superhero cowl in view above the fingers, as if the creature were about to come and get her.

All right, that’s it. The professor just this instant texted to make sure we have all that about the superhero’s hand and cowl. “Job done, Hal, don’t worry :).” And Scarlett texted to say she likes, for the visuals, she likes a, quote, “Clean look, ex. Epileptic Bike, Rem Visit.” So there’s that.

Ali, you sent them the character profiles? All right, I’m off, thanks, looking forward to the magic I am sure you will—”

 
________
… collaborated with the actress and the professor to come up with an appropriately Gorey-like text. “The three of us developed a sort of electronic round robin,” Mr. Gaiman explained. “There was much buzzing of ideas back and forth via pocket devices.”

“The Extended Laces” recreates Mr. Gorey’s drawing style by means of digital techniques. Mr. Gaiman said, “They tell me we have some 15,000 signature lines and curves in the memory banks, and these are recombined.” He added, “It’s a painstaking process and, in the final analysis, really quite like an art.”

… early on the collaborators decided on updating the time setting, which for Gorey was typically Victorian or Edwardian. “Scarlett felt strongly that the 20th century was the new ‘creepy day of yore,’ to use her phrase,” Mr. Gaiman said. “Having spent so much of my life in that century, I could not say she was wrong.”

There is the possibility of a “syntha-Gorey” series, but no products are due to appear beyond “I am a Waif” t-shirts and sweatshirts. These feature the book’s heroine looking dejected and unsettling in the Gorey manner, and with overgrown sneaker laces. “We adamantly rejected the idea of marketing actual extended sneaker laces,” Mr. Gaiman laughed.

“There are these odd moments when one sees around corners,” Mr. Gaiman reflected when asked what attracted him to Mr. Gorey’s work. “I expect everyone has those. Mr. Gorey can in part be described as someone who was always seeing around corners, from one to the other, and who never learned how to stop.” He added, laughing, “If he wouldn’t find it presumptuous of me to say so.”
__________

Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

Ben Saunders on the Inconsistency of V for Vendetta

Posted on by

Ben Saunders left this comment in response to Isaac Butler’s V for Vendetta piece.

Fascinating discussion. I disagree with the main thrust of Isaac’s critique for reasons that the other British commentators here have given. (I’ve been discussing the anti-heroes of 2000AD with Douglas Wolk recently so the topic is pretty fresh in my mind: http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/brothers-of-blood.html)

But as is clear from that interview with Moore, helpfully cited by Ng Suat Tong, V started out as one thing and became something else. It began as a super-stylish pulpy romp, appearing in six-page monthly installments in STARK black and white (without lines around the word balloons, even). It was 1982, Thatcher was still in her FIRST term, and the innovations of the work more than outweighed its derivative or implausible elements. It’s quite hard to recapture, now, the thrill of reading V, then; but I recall feeling the excitement of discovery with each episode, knowing that Moore and Lloyd were pushing at the boundaries of what could be done in British comics, before my very eyes.

But it ended very differently, almost eight years later. By this time it had become the “other” graphic novel by “the creator of Watchmen,” freighted with post-Watchmen levels of expectation, and repackaged according to the normative tastes of a different national audience: a colorized monthly of twenty-or-so pages per installment.

For a project that turns out to be roughly the page equivalent of a year-long 12 part mini-series, eight years is a ridiculously long time from inception to execution, and the creative techniques and attitudes of the writer had obviously transformed considerably over those years.

IMO then, the flaws in V are largely a function of the exigencies of the popular serial form, and the particularly vexed circumstances of V’s significantly interrupted publication history. Depending on one’s perspective, the result is (at best) a damaged masterwork – and (at worst), an occasionally incoherent mess. Personally, I’ve always found the last quarter of the book disappointing (Isaac didn’t mention Finch’s “enlightenment through acid” sequence – surely one of the lazier moments in all of Moore’s canon) and suspect that Moore was simply feeling less inspired by V after the imposition of a five-year publishing hiatus, over the course of which he had developed other interests.

Of course, that is just speculation. But it’s a fact that V was an interrupted project, and I think very few such creative projects could emerge undamaged from such a history. The result, I think, is a book that is really two quite different books spliced together and spray-painted with color for re-sale on the American market in a way that can make it hard to see the join. But that fundamental incoherence is there, and it gives Isaac’s critique some purchase.

Moore’s Marvelman/Miracleman (the first episode of which appeared alongside the first episode of V in Warrior #1 – yes, it was an exciting time to be reading British comics) is similarly hamstrung. It is, IMO, both better than V, and worse – better in that Moore’s original conception survives the long, strange, trip that it took to bring out the damn thing, but worse in that he had no consistent artistic collaborator, no David Lloyd to help create the illusion of seamlessness through the nightmarish transitions between publishers and markets. The early six-page installments featured some lovely black and white art by Garry Leach, filled with fabulous use of zipatone, and which adapted even less well to standard US color-monthly format.

Great discussion all round, though.

__________

Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

The Hooded Utilitarian Comics-Hating List of Love

Posted on by

I’ve hated hard in my day. Hated hard and long and hot. Hated all day long in the burning sun and come back to hate some more. Most of all, when they’ve deserved it, I’ve hated comics. I once wrote a sitcom pilot based on my life and entitled it “Hating Comics.” (This is 100% true.) But a while back, hating comics lost its luster. I stopped reading comics blogs and message boards, cut back my comics reading to the stuff I actually liked, and renounced comics hate in all its forms. My chakras are now clear and my heart is simple as a child’s as I meditate upon the eventual ascent of my soul unto the Fourth World.

That’s why, when the Hooded Utilitarian invited me to this roundtable, I responded SHAME! Shame on you, Hooded Utilitarian, for promoting negativity! For promoting divisiveness within Team Comics! Comics blogs lead to anger, anger leads to hate, and so on. Personally, I have evolved beyond such base sniping. I no longer hate comics. I have certainly not ranked various comics by level and quality of the hate produced therein, from those which inspire white-hot sputtering rage to those which merely stir intense allergic dislike, nor have I organized my most hated comics into various little categories. Categories like:

Most Hated Comic Strip. You see, this is how damaging hate can be. There was a time, in my youth, when I was consumed by hatred of Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows. It reached the point that my future husband, when about to introduce me to one of his childhood friends, added, “And please, please don’t mention Frank Cho.” Was this healthy for our relationship? Surely not.

Yes, Liberty Meadows was unfunny, predictable, tidily but lazily drawn, burdened with one of those self-pitying-nice-guy-nerd protagonists I just want to punch until they cry and then stomp on their glasses, and popular only because it featured huge-breasted women drawn in profile, but was that any reason to hate it the way I did? At the time, I didn’t even know about Cho’s “censored” strips wherein his cute-animal characters describe how to perform a donkey punch. My anger was completely out of proportion.

In fact, it was Milo George’s epic takedown of Liberty Meadows in the pages of The Comics Journal, on the occasion of the strip’s reception of an Ignatz Award, that first warned me off the dark path of hate. As an ardent Liberty Meadows hater, I should have basked in sweet schadenfreude, but it didn’t feel meaningful because Milo George hated everything. He’d probably be just as bitchy to Bone. That was my first inkling that hate, when it becomes all-consuming, ultimately loses its power and its meaning.

Most Hated Superhero Comic. Hardcore superhero fans are much better at hating superheroes than I could ever have been, even at my most hate-filled. That said, I confess to being one of the many nerdgirls outraged by DC’s ungentlemanly treatment of Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. Girl Robin. And it all started so well! I’m officially meh on Batman (grim superheroes are just not my thing), but I did always dig the girl Robin in Dark Knight Returns. When, in the mid-2000s, Stephanie “Spoiler” Brown put on the Robin costume and started spunkily kicking ass, I found myself interested in Batman comics for the first time.

So of course Girl Robin got kidnapped and tortured to death.

Then, in an even more hateable and much more bizarre plot development, longtime heroic doctor character Leslie Thompkins took a break from being awesome in the Batman TV cartoons to reveal that she deliberately let Stephanie Brown die in order to teach Batman a lesson. So not only is Girl Robin a textbook Woman in Refrigerator—that is, a female character who is tortured and/or killed strictly to provide the male characters with motivation—the refrigeration was actually engineered in-story. By another female character.

But I don’t hate those comics. Not anymore. I am…irked, perhaps. But hate? Never. Remember how hate can spiral out of control. Keep it down. Keep it way low down.

Most Hated Graphic Novel. OH MY GOD RICH KOSLOWSKI’S THREE FINGERS.

Down. Calm. Down. We don’t hate anymore, remember? We’re past that. Visualize soothing images. Reed Richards entering the Negative Zone. Roger Langridge’s Muppets riding a bus with the Electric Mayhem playing on the roof. Lynda Barry monkeys.

There. Better.

I shouldn’t hate this comic, anyway. Koslowski seems like a nice guy, and he inks a mean Archie comic, and he probably meant well. It’s just that I was suckered into paying hard-earned money for what turned out to be a queasy remake of Who Censored Roger Rabbit with none of the cleverness and deeply inappropriate appropriation of mid-century national tragedies. And having Mowgli from Disney’s Jungle Book as the Toon equivalent of MLK was just a weird choice, and why do I even remember that detail? And then it won an Ignatz Award, which seems to be a recurring theme in comics I hate…

I mean used to hate. Used to. Because I don’t hate anymore. I love. My heart is open and I love comics without judgment or reservation, I welcome all iterations of sequential art into my arms…

Most Hated Webcomic. Okay, I give up. The hate is back. Also? Ctrl-Alt-Del.

__________

Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

Losing One’s Way in NeverNeverLand

Posted on by

There’s a major comic market in France. Since I don’t know the numbers, I hesitate to claim it’s a bigger industry than the US’, though I’d like to imagine so. My argument: like manga in Japan, comics in France are seen as targeted to a wider audience, and not just to what is perceived as an audience of kids. It’s not quite to the extent of Japan’s market, where there are comics for as many social demographics that exist, but in France, some kid’s grandparents are as likely to read and enjoy the same comic book as their 15-year old grandchild.

I had a period where I was wholly engrossed by US comics, around the age of 12-15, but I had been indoctrinated into comics years before (by Astérix and Tintin and before that, Topolino, the Italian-language Mickey Mouse comics, which is another story of comics transcending the target audience perceived in the USA), and although my romance with superheroes ended in my early teens, my love for the French comic industry in general continues far into my adulthood.

The attitude of French comic lovers from France — where there is a substantial market for manga and US comics, known there as “comics” (to differentiate how the French call their comics “bandes déssinées” or “BDs”) – is that their native-language comics require an immense amount of work and planning to put out… perhaps in unspoken contrast to their perception of how much less work manga or “comics” require to complete, or perhaps not. Sure, it’s part snobbery, part elitism, but take a look at any French comic book and you can tell that at least there’s a more important investment financially in being a fan: Every single BD is hardcover, from the original Lucky Luke‘s to the final volume of De cape et de crocs, and as such cost around 13-15 euros a piece. There are never any ads in any French BD, and there’s a sense that the population in general sees the medium in a more artistic light than how Americans view the comic industry – take a look at most reviews of French BDs on amazon.fr and you’ll get far more florid, well-spoken, nigh-erudite examinations of the artistic merit of the art style, the story pacing, and the cultural significance of a comic series (take Aldebaran as a good example), as opposed to the kind of reviews you’re likely to read on English-language Amazon where people can’t get things like “their” vs. “they’re” straight.

But all this “high” art, with all of its veritable or romanticized artistic merits, does come at a price beyond the financial one: The next issue of a BD series in which you were left with a cliffhanger revelation on the last page of the previous book might not come out for years. In France, it’s viewed as nothing short of a well-oiled machine in the extreme when a BD series puts out a new book every year. In fact, it’s borderline suspicious. Take Christophe Arleston, one of the biggest names in BD from the past 15 years. He’s got his scenario-writing fingers in no fewer than five pies at once, with some of those pies baking a new slice every year, much to the criticism of the French public, who generally believe his work has become about cranking out quantity over quality, and has become rehashed, shallow, recycled. formulaic pulp as a result. In contrast, the superb, highly celebrated series La quête de l’oiseau du temps‘s first book was released in 1983, and 2010 saw the release of only the seventh book, including an 11-year gap between books 4 and 5, and a nine-year gap between books 5 and 6. Compared to that, the release schedule of the next book of a series like “Harry Potter” would seem like the next issue of “Vogue.”

I’ve always wondered how an industry could sustain itself with such a business model; how people wouldn’t get so aggravated or simply just lose interest during the years of wait between books 2 and 3. French comic shop owners point out that there generally aren’t any deadlines on BD creators, and that the industry isn’t quite so successful to allow the creation of BDs as a livelihood to more than a few artists.

There’s even a bigger drag to having to wait, though. Sometimes where a series ends is far different than where it began. The series that will live in the most personal infamy is Régis Loisel’s re-interpretation of the origins of Peter Pan (BD) It took some convincing to read this series, but that it was a darker, more adult-oriented re-imagination of the famous tale, and that it was made entirely by part of the creative genius team responsible for the essential “La quête de l’oiseau du temps” made me take the plunge.

In Loisel’s version, Peter is the bastard son of an abusive, alcoholic whore in 19th Century London. After meeting a fairy in the slum where he lives, Peter manages to escape to Never Neverland, where he ingratiates himself with the fairies and satyrs there. They elect him their leader after he helps fight off the pirate who later loses his hand and becomes Hook. Hook is hanging about in part to find treasure purportedly hidden in Never Neverland. There’s also something to do with Hook having had an manipulative affair with one of the islands fatter mermaids, who’s still in love with him.

Loisel’s first “aha!” creative spin on the tale comes from the origins of Peter Pan’s name. In the story, it is derived from Peter’s own, Christian name, and the name of his short-lived best friend and leader of Never Neverland, Pan (yes, just like the mythical satyr), who is killed during the struggle with Hook. Pan’s death leads to Peter becoming the island’s leader, and he takes on his friend’s name as an homage.

Loisel’s “Peter Pan” first four volumes were released between 1990 and 1996, a relatively brisk pace for the French market. As such, the story is interesting, creative, and most importantly, gives a sense of a well-progressing narrative.

By the time volume 5 was published, five years had gone by since volume 4, and things were starting to take an odd turn. There was a lot more focus on a side story involving Jack the Ripper back in London, and an arc portraying Tinkerbell as a manipulative, selfish, careless creature responsible for the deaths of Never Neverland residents who got a little too much in her way. The story still floated, but the feel that books 1-4 were one entity, and that book 5 was another was strong.

2004 saw the release of the sixth and final volume of the series, which cemented the sense of bewilderment. Now, the Jack the Ripper side story became central, and it was revealed that Tinkerbell had been repeatedly rubbing out her rivals. She never suffered for her actions, though, in part because it turned out that Never Neverland had the effect of wiping clean any inhabitant’s mid- to long-term memory. This meant that no one could remember where anyone came from, why they were there, or how their situation came to be… and that included Peter’s tale and Peter’s own personal recollections. It turned out that the tale of Never Neverland had been on constant repeat since time literally immemorial, and that all of its inhabitants were caught in its temporal memory-loss loop.

It’s not even how the series ends with Jack the Ripper stalking and killing another victim (I seem to remember it being Peter’s mother), or that the entire series took a major emotional turn from a boy’s tale of triumph over adversity and his rise to power. It’s that the story changed tone and content to such a degree that it not only felt like two separate stories, it felt like the author had taken too long to complete his vision, had grown weary of the work he had made in the ’90s, and wrapped it up with some out-of-left-field randomness that felt convoluted, obscure, half-baked and rushed. Essentially, whatever had been built during the successful first 4 volumes had been utterly crapped on in the final 2. The first movement’s mood is of edgy adventure, of progressive storytelling; the mood the reader is left with on the second movement is of depression, that the world is a bleak place with no outcome, that no wrong is righted, all of which is communicated with a strong lack of closure.

Today, in research for this article, I looked up the story of this series online, and discovered an interpretation that Loisel’s intention with the inclusion of Jack the Ripper was to stipulate that Peter Pan and Jack the Ripper were in fact one and the same, which, if accurate, is a major plot point that I was utterly clueless to until having read that (though it helps explain some things). This does little to change my opinion that Loisel’s “Peter Pan” is one of the most irresponsibly wasted efforts I’ve come across in my comic reading life, one whose rampant disregard for its own craft and narrative tone soured my mood for some time after. Considering its horrific procession from interesting work to obvious cut-and-burn job, it is my vote for Worst Comic of All Time.
_____________

Otrebor is a musician from San Francisco whose most notable bands are Botanist and Ophidian Forest.

 
Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

Hating on Season Eight

Posted on by

When Noah invited me to take part in the “anniversary of hate,” I wasn’t sure at first that I would have anything to contribute. After all, I am primarily of the belief that life is too short to waste a single moment reading crap, and therefore either never start comics (or novels or TV shows) that don’t appeal to me or quickly give up on those that soon prove unpalatable. There was one case, however, where my abiding love for the original source material coupled with an excess of faith in its creator caused me to see an awful series through to its conclusion, pretty much hating it more and more as it went on. That series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, overseen by Joss Whedon but written by various folks. Warning: spoilers and fangirl ranting.

In retrospect, I should’ve known right off the bat that it would be bad. The first arc—which establishes the characters’ current whereabouts and the existence of an ambiguous new enemy called “Twilight”—features a certain character that Joss “forgot” was canonically confirmed dead and not dead in a conveniently retconnable way. Not very encouraging. Still, the series was just starting out and, as many fans pointed out at the time, season openers on the show were never his strong suit. So, I persevered and seemed to be rewarded with a strong second arc, “No Future for You.” Penned by Brian K. Vaughan, this arc introduced the very best thing about Season Eight—the growing bond between Giles and Faith—which, in turn, paved the way for the currently running (and superior to Season Nine) Angel & Faith series. (Ironically, Vaughan never wrote for the TV incarnation, but did a better job than those who actually did!)

Alas, my hopes were dashed by the third arc, “Wolves at the Gate,” which continued the Season Eight theme of “bringing back characters you don’t want” by reintroducing Dracula (who appeared in all of one episode) and shoehorning in a backstory about how he consoled Xander after the loss of Anya, all seemingly to make Drew Goddard’s Tales of the Vampires short story “Antique” suddenly canon. As if this weren’t enough to piss me off, there was the righteously stupid cameo by Mecha Dawn and all of the publicity buzz that accompanied Buffy’s one-night stand with a fellow Slayer, which we were assured wasn’t just supposed to be for shock value. Uh-huh.

Volume four, in which Buffy travels into the future and meets fellow Slayer Melaka Fray (who once had a short series of her own) as well as a future incarnation of Willow, sucks less than the others. There are a lot of unanswered questions about what Willow was doing there—present-day Willow insists it couldn’t have been her—but, in general, I don’t have much to complain about. Volume five casually introduces a plotline that winds up changing the entire Buffyverse. Essentially, the populace learns about vampires and is suddenly “go them” and “boo Slayers.” It’s really stupid and seems like it wasn’t thought out very well but it’s something that subsequent writers haven’t been able to just ignore. It’s even cropped up in an issue of Angel & Faith and I am ready for it to go away, like, yesterday.

In volume six, Slayer central has come under attack by Twilight, who has tracked them by their magical signature, and since the public hates them Buffy decides to go off the grid and essentially invade the bucolic existence of the one person they know who’s managed to divest himself of magic: Oz. After bringing a huge battle down upon his peaceful life, complete with some random goddesses that kill indiscriminately, Buffy discovers she can fly. Whee! About this time I decided that what I was reading could no longer be considered canon but somebody’s convoluted fanfic. And if I’d thought what I’d read before was mind-bogglingly dumb, I was not prepared for volume seven, in which a random prophecy that we’ve never heard of before suddenly comes into play. It states that a Slayer and a Vampire (here embodied by Buffy and Angel) will engage in boffing of such magnitude that it births a new universe for superbeings. No, really. See?

To stop the formation of the new universe and the destruction of the current one, Buffy and friends return to the Sunnydale Hellmouth in volume eight and destroy “the seed of wonder,” which is the source of all magic in the world. Betrayal ensues. A beloved character dies. Thus endeth Season Eight, pretty much, except for a glimpse of Buffy’s life a few months later.

I’ve griped primarily about the plotting here, but lest you think my hatred stems solely from that quarter, I assure you that I’ve got issues with the way the characters are treated, too. While Xander is consistently one of the bright spots of the series, Willow is severely underused, and Dawn doesn’t get much to do, either. Buffy mucks things up in a colossal way, which isn’t out of character for her, but she is depicted as being so desperate for male attention that I found it offensive.

First, she decides that she loves Xander by virtue of him being the only guy around. Then Angel shows up and she boffs the heck out of him, never mind that he’s been revealed to be the Big Bad responsible for the deaths of over 200 Slayers. Now, true, it’s possible that the universe coerced her into having sex with him, but if that was the case, then why would she later tell him “You gave me perfection and you gave it up. That’s not just the love of my life. That’s the guy I would live it with”? Oh, and one issue after making that statement, she’s fantasizing about doing Spike. I don’t begrudge a girl a healthy sex life, but please don’t make Buffy appear so brainlessly boy crazy.

So, to sum up: I hate the plot. I hate what this does to Buffy’s character. I hate the unfunny gimmicks and the various attempts to shock the reader. I hate Georges Jeanty’s art. I hate it because I wanted so much to love it.

I advise Buffy fans to avoid Season Eight like the plague. Season Nine is better, but it’s already showing signs of the “shock ’em and then back away” style of storytelling, which is disappointing. If you’re really curious about the Buffy comics, go read Angel & Faith. The story is better, the art is lovely, and so far it hasn’t made me gnash my teeth once.

__________

Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

From Habibi to Tezuka, With Ono In Between

Posted on by

It’s rare to get an invitation to complain about comics, so I’m going to jump in with enthusiasm, although I don’t intentionally try to read crappy comics so I can only pick out a few comics which disappointed me.

Although it’s already been dogpiled on Hooded Utilitarian, I want to talk first about Craig Thompson’s Habibi, one of the most frustrating books I’ve read in the past two years—partly because of its high level of artistic skill. It’s not that Thompson uses every cliché about Arabs and the Middle East (child marriage, prostitution, harems, slavery, despotism); this itself is par for the course in Western pop culture, just a difference of degree, not essential type, from thousands of representations including Christopher Nolan’s terrorism-themed Batman trilogy with its civilization-hating, don’t-call-them-Muslims League of Shadows. What’s frustrating about Habibi, instead, is its relentlessly pedagogical nature, alternating these stereotypical representations with its “real” storybook-Bible lessons about the Quran and the Arabic language. On the one hand Wanatolia is an Orientalist fairytale land, and yet thanks to these lessons, it’s also the “real” Middle East—it’s like suddenly getting “educational” segments about Christianity in the middle of one of those fantasy manga set in an otherwise generic Medieval Europe, like Claymore or Berserk. Thompson is obviously attempting to use his positive book-larnin’ about Islam as a counter for the negative images of Arabs, but as a result, Habibi just falls into the tired idea that “Islam in the answer” to everything in the Middle East, a belief shared, ironically, by both right-wing Western Islamophobes and right-wing Muslims. Thompson does introduce a postcolonial element with the late-in-story discovery that evil white men are behind the evil powers of Wanatolia, but on the whole the series does nothing to counter stereotypes of the Middle East, even when Thompson’s trying to show the good side. People who think that “Arabs were savages before Islam” might find confirmation for their beliefs in Habibi. Even the supposedly uplifting idea that “Islam, Christianity & Judaism have the same roots” can’t be embraced by any really secular liberals or leftists, since it expels atheists, as well as members of every other religious tradition, from the common tree of humanity. In reality, Habibi, like Thompson’s other works that I’ve read, is more than anything about male sexuality. This is where it really succeeds in expressing its theme, although unlike in Blankets and Carnet de Voyage (the obvious prequel to Habibi with its sidelong sketches of veiled women in Morocco) there’s no one “Thompson” figure—rather there’s two, Zam and the Sultan.

It’s hard to think of a most overrated manga, because most manga gets no mainstream critical coverage and most manga fans are completely fine with that. One exception is Natsume Ono, who has received a lot of Western press for her minimalistic art style and indy-comix-ish stories. To her great credit, Ono has engaged with her overseas fans in return, appearing as a guest at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in 2011. Which makes it unfortunate that, beneath her breezy art, most of Ono’s stories are so conventional. Not Simple, her first work published in English and also set in America, is typical. Ian, the adult survivor of child abuse, is a bishonen Christ figure, giving his body up to the desires of evil men and deserving women without ever expressing any desires of his own, except for family (to find his sister). Some critics seem to have taken Ian’s childishly innocent demeanor as a serious depiction of the lack of affect suffered by abuse victims, but it’s really shojo-manga-esque wish fulfillment, a male figure who’s just a handsome doll who needs a hug. Even the conflation of the American setting with homosexuality and broken families follows a formula established in ’80s manga like Banana Fish and Cipher, where such hot-button issues are depicted as ‘Western’ ills. Ono’s fascination with nonthreatening guys is also evident in Ristorante Paradiso and its sequel Gente, about an Italian restaurant whose waitstaff is composed entirely of handsome, glasses-wearing men in their 50s and 60s. Nicoletta, the 21-year-old protagonist of Ristorante, gets a crush on Claudio, a sweet, gentlemanly 50ish divorcee, who’s too physically weak to resist her advances—if only he weren’t still pining for his ex-wife! Although Ono attempts to write some real character interaction between Nicoletta and her mother, the male characters in Ristorante all lack any inner life or any flaws (apart from ‘cute’ flaws). The result is lots of eye candy and dojinshi bait, but Ono’s resourcefulness in finding and exploiting the oyajicon/meganecon fetish market does not a great manga make. I simply haven’t read an Ono manga yet which believably depicts any serious emotion or character development, which is why my favorite Ono manga is her very first one, La Quinta Camera, a slight European apartment-complex comedy manga which can basically be summed up as Ristorante Paradiso without the romance; here, Ono’s whimsy and Western-exoticism is pleasantly on display, unburdened by attempting to get ‘serious.’

This writeup also wouldn’t be complete without critiquing the halo that perpetually surrounds the work of Osamu Tezuka. It’s not that Tezuka is bad; even his lesser manga, like Swallowing the Earth, The Book of Human Insects (a character portrait so sexist Dave Sim could have written it) or Message to Adolf, provide hours of entertainment, twisty storytelling and visual invention. (Incidentally, Tezuka feels like a strong influence on Thompson’s Habibi.) But, like the way that American comics critics used to deem Lone Wolf and Cub the only manga worthy of serious consideration, it’s frustrating to see the “God of Manga” get so much attention, and so many new translations, while so many other classic mangaka linger in obscurity. What about Leiji Matsumoto, Go Nagai, Riyoko Ikeda, George Akiyama, Sanpei Shirato, Shinji Wada? Yes, we now have translations of Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Kazuo Umezu, Hiroshi Hirata and Shigeru Mizuki, to the great praise of their publishers, but what about so many other classics, like the ones described in Takeo Udagawa’s Manga Zombie? Must Tezuka always be the William Shakespeare of manga, with everyone else from his period in his shadow? Does the Tezuka name really = reliable $$$ from manga buyers? Admittedly, one of the reasons publishers license Tezuka is that he liked to create self-contained works of only a few hundred pages, switching from project to project rather than the “draw the same comic for 20 years”, 1000+ page tactic of newspaper strip creators and many manga artists. Also, it’s a BIG help that Tezuka Productions, the rightsholders to Tezuka’s work, are very eager to work with licensors despite the small size of the American market; the extreme example of the opposite is Riyoko Ikeda’s famous Rose of Versailles, which, it’s an open secret in the manga industry, has never been licensed because Ikeda’s company wants a ridiculously large licensing fee. But my point is: I want to see more from other classic creators.

 

As for the mainstream comics industry, my biggest complaint about it is, of course, that it’s become nothing but a license farm for Hollywood, producing movie pitches in easily digestible comic form. This doesn’t just apply to Marvel and DC, but to all the companies trying to follow in their footsteps. The glut of miniseries, the desperate chase after movie options (which destroyed Tokyopop), the prevalence of noir and superhero themes…it all adds up to an incredibly boring comics market from which the real action has long ago moved on to Kickstarter and self-published webcomics. Convince me otherwise.

 

*******

 

Jason Thompson is the artist of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories and the author of King of RPGs (with Victor Hao). He also wrote Manga: The Complete Guide.

 

__________

Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.