Category Archives: Columns

Ghost World, A Slight Return

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I have more to say about Ghost World? I’m surprised, too. It’s all the discussion about whether Enid seems like a real teenage girl or not, and what that means.

You know, people have compared me to Enid since this damned book came out. (McBangle mentioned a similar dilemma in a comment on my original Ghost World post.) I don’t know how many people have started talking to me about it, assuming I must love it, or asked me if they should read it, assuming I must love it, or shared their love of it, assuming I must love it. Everyone is surprised to find out that I don’t love it. I will admit that, as a result, I have a bit of a thing about Ghost World. It makes me touchy. Not touchy as in feely, but touchy as in “Fuck you, you people who think I’m Enid.”

My reaction is a kind of horror, wondering what the hell it is about me that makes people come to this conclusion. Without delving too deeply into the psychology of Kinukitty (because nobody wants that, least of all Kinukitty), I will say that people tend to prefer not being translated into shorthand. I prefer that others at least keep up the social convention of pretending that I am an individual and not the edgy, sarcastic girl dork, perfectly symbolized by Enid and therefore requiring no additional analysis. Yes, yes, this is a bit of an overreaction AND a bit of an oversimplification, yadda yadda. The thing about stereotyping isn’t that it doesn’t tell any truth, though, but that the truth it leaves out is likely to be the really important bit. To the stereotype-ee, at the very least.

I think this speaks to the integrity of the character and thus the storytelling. Others may disagree (and do, in fact), but for me, the point of fiction is to do the opposite of fixing a stereotype. I think the point of fiction is to unveil subtleties and nuances and allow the reader to understand something about a character or situation. It really bothers me when the peaks and crannies go unexplored, as it were. (And, given the sexual aspect of the recent discussion, eewwwww – sorry.) I was about to tie that into how unpleasant it is in real life, too, but the peaks and crannies thing has killed my will to go there.

Gluey Tart: Ghost World Roundtable

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We Hooded Utilitarians agreed to do a roundtable on Ghost World weeks ago. Months, maybe. As if I’d keep track of something like that. The point is that I now have to write something, and I don’t want to.

I don’t like Ghost World, but that isn’t the reason I don’t want to write about it – as everyone knows, few things are more enjoyable than climbing up on the old soap box and bursting forth with a bell-like chorus of disgust or, ideally, righteous indignation. Or, to put a finer point on it, I like to vent. I like to read the venting of others, so long as a certain level of intellectual rigor is maintained. I am comfortable with the negative.

The problem is not that I dislike Ghost World, but that Ghost World makes my stomach hurt. It gives me an icky, slimy feeling. I find it annoying, repulsive, and kind of boring, in more or less that order. It is also ugly, really grindingly ugly.

But not accidentally ugly. This is an important note, albeit a side note, for me. Ghost World intends to be ugly and repulsive. It aims high, and it succeeds. So we will pause to acknowledge this. It is also supposed to be hip and funny and, you know, real, man, and in those areas, I think it fails miserably. Well, I guess it is hip, actually. If hipsters say it’s hip, that makes it hip, by definition. Who am I to argue? I’m willing to give the world at large that point.

What Ghost World is not, however, is funny or real, in the sense of creating characters that seem like fully fleshed human beings. You know, as in real. The supposed humor of this book escapes me completely. I am not a dour and humorless person, by the way. (Just the other day I watched the first six episodes of “Big Bang Theory” and I laughed and laughed. Johnny Galecki! So geekalicious!) Nor am I a Puritan or someone who is too old and uptight to get it. I write porn, for Christ’s sake (well, not for Christ’s sake, obviously) (or not, I guess, but no, it really isn’t), and I was more or less the target audience for Ghost World when it was created. I felt the same way about it then. I pulled it off the shelf in 1997-ish – I have always been willing to consume that which is marketed to me – and I read the first couple of stories, flipped through the rest, skimming dispiritedly, and put the book the hell down, wanting nothing else to do with it.

And that’s pretty much exactly what happened when I tried to read Ghost World again last week. (Hey, I do research. I may not have a real name, but I do have standards.) The main issue, or me, is that I do not recognize the main characters. I don’t recognize them as high school girls, but that is probably secondary to the fact that I don’t even recognize them as human. They are not so much characters as collections of anecdotes that are intended to be cool and ironic. Makes the whole thing fall kind of flat. Here’s the thing. I understand that I might not be quite the right sort of person for this book – I might not have exactly the right background to really feel the characters. Except that a) I should be, and b) it shouldn’t matter. I was a disaffected, oddly dressed and coiffed, shockingly acerbic teenage girl through much of the eighties. I was “edgy.” (God, I hate that word.) So, there’s that. But, whatever. I don’t think it matters. I have managed to appreciate stories about assassins and pirates and brooding nineteenth-century English nobles trundling bleakly across the moors, and I have very little practical experience with any of that. If the characters are well-written, I can work with it. They don’t even have to be human. Dog POV? Panther? Bring it on. Enid? Not so much.

In fact, my major reaction to Enid is WTF? I mean, some of the details ring a bell. We’ve all slept with gross losers for reasons that were, and remain, fairly obscure to everyone. And who doesn’t enjoy Satanist-spotting? A while back, I was partaking of a high-fat Indian buffet with a friend, and we noticed the people at the next table were doing an interview for a music magazine. The reporter said – quietly, gently – “It must be hard for you sometimes.” And the metal guy, who was eating samosas double-fisted, as if the reporter was perhaps buying lunch, said, “Yeah, man. It’s hard to be a Satanist at Christmas.” Golden, right? See, I have random things in common with Enid, but she never gels as an actual character for me. Dan Clowes might or might not be pleased to know that Enid and Rebecca remind me a little of the tertiary disaffected youth characters in Lost Souls (who probably have names but are only there for atmosphere so no way in hell am I looking it up). I’m referring to Poppy Z. Brite’s vampire book. I know what that means to me, but I’ll let you make of it what you will.

Here is when I should tie everything together and, ideally, make a point of some kind. Cicero’s rules for rhetoric demand it, and you, having followed me this far, deserve it. Sorry about that. I’ve shot my wad. I think Ghost World is unpleasant in a way that winds up being pointless because there’s no there there (since I’m referencing the classics). I don’t mind rolling in the gutter, but I want to get something out of it. Understanding. Comfort. Titillation. Something. I get none of that from Ghost World. All I get is irony, and straight irony, not even chased with Diet Coke, just kind of makes me feel dirty (not in a good way) and irritated. I do look forward to reading the posts about why people like Ghost World. And, even more, I look forward to not thinking about Ghost World again for another twelve years.

Update by Noah: The entire Ghost World Roundtable is here.

Sequential Surrender Monkey: Le Petit Vampire fait du Kung Fu!

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Le Petit Vampire fait du Kung Fu!, Joann Sfar, 2000, Guy Delcort Productions
or, if you prefer,
The Little Vampire Does Kung Fu!, Joann Sfar, 2003, Simon & Schuster
(because, despite the offensive roundtable title, we at the Hooded Utilitarian are all about ensuring your happiness and comfort)

I started reading French comics in high school (which was eons and ages ago, I will freely admit), at the suggestion of my French teacher. Magazines, too. Asterix and Paris Match. I haven’t picked up the latter in a while (although as a sheltered Midwestern teen in the Age Before Internet, damn, it did help to open my eyes to a few things), but Asterix, written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, certainly holds up. I have a small stack of French comics that I love, but I no longer read French very often, or very well. I do love me some Paris Vogue, but the secret to fashion magazines is to do the opposite of what you do with Playboy and never, ever read the articles, because that will make you want to kill yourself and take everyone you can reach with you.

So, approaching this roundtable, I had to do some thinking. I hate that. There are a couple of Little Vampire books I prefer to this one (although it does feature nunchucks, the eating and subsequent disgorgement of a small child by monsters, and a bizarre Jewish Zen parable, so I obviously do like it quite a bit), and there is a less amusing but still palatable Le Grand Vampire series, and there’s Donjon, an awesome series by Sfar and Lewis Trondheim. (You are, perhaps, noticing a theme in my post-high school French comics reading. Vampires and dungeons. I will also admit to suffering a certain amount of Goth-damage.) I am writing about the kung fu book, though, rather than any of these other books, because I had an auxiliary English copy of it that I could actually find. I have auxiliary English copies of a number of the vampire books (vampires both big and small), but they have vanished. Poof. Perhaps they flew out the window one windy evening to fly into the dark night sky and skulk around the dense and forbidding Carpathian forest with the wolves, remarking about the children of the night and the beautiful music they make. I wish them well. Fly and be free, big and little vampires!

It is only a minor setback, really; the sort of small frustration we all deal with every day. We do have the kung fu book in English, which means I can figure out what’s going on without getting out my dictionary, and it is in fact a pretty neat book, so off we go.

The plot is bland and soothing, like blancmange. A little boy, Michael, is visited late at night by his friend, the Little Vampire, and the Little Vampire’s posse, three monsters (my favorite is the Frankenstein-ish Marguerite, who loves poop). Michael explains that he’s being bullied at school by a loutish brat named Jeffrey and says he wishes the kid would die. Then the Little Vampire whisks Jeffrey away to his haunted castle so they can visit Rabbi Soloman, the kung fu master. Rabbi Soloman tells Jeffrey he’s left his kung fu book tied to the back of a dragon on top of an Angkor Wat-like temple, just through that door at the end of the hall, and that if Michael will bring him the book they’ll be set. Off Michael goes, getting his butt kicked repeatedly by monkeys, the temple itself (it is hard to climb and he keeps falling off), and by the dragon itself. Eventually, Michael gets smarter and better and he gets the book. Which of course says, “If you have managed to steal this book from the dragon, you are very skilled at kung fu. This book will teach you nothing more.” Because, you know, the only Zen on the mountain is the Zen you bring there. Anyway, now that Michael is all confident and proud and ready to take on the world and shit, he and the Little Vampire find out that the monsters went off and ate Jeffrey.

Zut alors!

The Little Vampire does what anyone would do when faced with this situation – he makes the monsters cough up all the Jeffrey bits, and then they sew him back together. Then they go off looking for a magician to reanimate him. That doesn’t go entirely smoothly, as anyone who’s ever read any cautionary tale about magic would predict. But the ghostly pirate dude who’s kind of in charge takes pity on the boys and lets them off with time served. He gives the little boy, little vampire, and variously sized monsters the means for fixing Jeffrey. This involves what is without doubt my favorite panels of the book:

little vampire]

Moo!

The next day at school, Michael, now a kung fu master, picks a fight with Jeffrey, who remembers nothing of the previous night’s romp. And Jeffrey kicks his ass. It all works out, though, because the girl Jeffrey has a crush on beats Jeffrey up and nurses Michael’s wounds. So, the moral of the story is that it’s better to be an overconfident idiot than an actual martial arts expert. A lesson for all times, really.

Now, I know what you’re saying. “That’s a bit gluey, isn’t it? I can’t read that much treacle; I have blood sugar issues.” Fair enough. The bit at the end makes me gag, and not in a good way. I think the parts are better than the sum thereof, though, and some of the gags are worth the cutesy ending. The monsters coughing up the little boy they ate, for instance – that’s the kind of priceless I’m after. And the cow. God, I love the cow. So, there you go – the other side of Joann Sfar. (Assuming you read Vom Marlowe’s post Monday on The Rabbi’s Cat.)I hope you are moved to go forth and consume French vampire comics, in the language of your choosing.

Gluey Tart: Archie’s Double Dip

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Before anyone becomes horribly disturbed, this is not a yaoi title. I just gave in to a fit of sentimental whatsit. I’ve been doing that, lately. I also bought People magazine’s tribute to Farrah Fawcett. I loved “Charlie’s Angels” when I was little. I collected pictures of Farrah, and I recognized every one of the ’70s pictures in the magazine. Reading this magazine was a very emotional experience. Cathartic. I’m feeling a little verklempt, just thinking about it.

So, when I was at the comics rack at Borders the other day, desperately pawing through it to try and find something suitable for my young son, I paused dramatically at the Archie titles. Because I loved Archie comics when I was little, too. Even more than Farrah. So, overwhelmed with nostalgia, I picked up Archie’s Double Dip, evidently a Very Special Issue (the 200th, according to the excitable little yellow burst on the cover). I was curious about this, and alarmed. Because apparently, Archie Comics Online and Its Affiliated Companies have decided Archie needs a Dynamic New Look. The classic Dan Decarlo look, degraded as it has become, is apparently just too distinctive. Archie is being mainstreamed.

Woe!

It’s just the cover and the first story. It isn’t a no-going-back kind of thing; I imagine they’ll dump it as a failed experiment if people hate it. Or they’ll usher everything into the Borg collective, if people love it. Hard as that is to contemplate. Because, good grief, look at this. Here’s the second page.

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The artist is Norm Breyfogle, and I’m thinking he should have maybe turned down this gig. I’m not intimately familiar with his work, but he’s done a lot of Batman, and let us just say he seems much more comfortable with the pointy ears and the swishy capes. That’s Betty’s dad in the middle panel, apparently having an epileptic seizure. It’s as if drawing the drama of dad stealing some cake is so ordinary we’re maybe overcompensating a little. I love this ad, too.

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Betty: “Is this really goodbye forever?”
Archie: “Holy shit, is that a centipede on the ceiling? It’s enormous!”

And, here.

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What the hell happened to Archie’s chin? And Betty looks like a sex doll with the head put on askew. Is this what the kids are into, these days?

I realize it’s a desperate attempt to sell more comics, by any means necessary, and not a dark plot to indoctrinate girls into the ugly that is mainstream comics art. At least, I assume that’s the case. I guess if it is a dark plot, that’s actually kind of cool, although I sort of hope it doesn’t work.