Category Archives: Roundtables

New Yorker Cartoons – A Legacy of Mediocrity

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Peter Arno, “Makes you kind of proud to be an American, doesn’t it?”, September 10, 1960

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The standard line on The New Yorker’s cartoons is that they are the first thing most readers turn to when they get their hands on a new issue. Well, I don’t. I actively try to avoid looking at them, difficult as it is. Peppered through articles of serious journalism, strong criticism, and pieces of often very good fiction, they are meant, I suppose, to induce some kind of alchemical understanding of what it is to be a New Yorker, or — failing that — a New Yorker reader. To me, and I suspect quite a few others, they remain obnoxious non-sequiturs, like tired notch-notch, wink-wink routines insistently dropped into an otherwise lively family conversation by your borderline senile uncle.

The other oft-repeated line about the New Yorker cartoons is that a lot of people ‘just don’t get them,’ with the frequent corollary that this is part of their point, and once you realize it, you feel ‘in’ with those in an authentic New York state of mind, I suppose — you know, those whose worldview Saul Steinberg summed up so incisively in what remains arguably the most famous New Yorker cover of all time.

Saul Steinberg, cover, March 29, 1976


Thing is, if you actually review a substantial selection of cartoons from the magazine’s octogenarian history, the vast majority of them are totally straightforward. You understand the joke. No Mystery. Only in the last decade-and-a-half or so has editorial showed a preference for a certain brand of light absurdity that at times borders on the impenetrable. Nothing wrong with absurd humor, but the problem in this case is that one of the main strengths of cartooning, clarity, is sacrificed in a vain bid for ingenuity.

From this week’s issue: Robert Mankoff, October 8, 2012

This more or less corresponds to the period in which hack cartoonist Robert Mankoff has served as cartoon editor. He has been a hugely successful manager of his part of the New Yorker brand, merchandizing the cartoons through the online Condé Nast Cartoon Bank to the tune of millions of dollars a year, as well as editing the monumental Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (2004), which bundled all 68,647 cartoons thitherto published in the magazine on two CDs. Bonus info: he has had over 800 cartoons published in the magazine.

Mankoff furthermore is the instigator of the popular New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. And far be it from me to suggest we deny people their fun, but the concept is revealing of his editorial philosophy, where the visuals become so generic that they accommodate just about any joke. Absurd or not, the naughts have been the nadir of New Yorker cartoons in every respect, from idea to execution. More than ever, one suspects that the notion that they harbor some elusive brilliance available only to the in-crowd really just euphemistically expresses a general puzzlement about how unfunny they are. As in, ‘can they really be that bad?’

More from this week: Tom Cheney, October 8, 2012

We are, after all, talking about the Holy Grail of American cartooning. The one publication countless cartoonists would hack off their non-drawing arm to be published in. The New Yorker, somehow, has managed to convince a wide, generally discerning and highly cultivated readership that their cartoons represent the acme.

Try as I may, I have been unable to assimilate this View from Ninth Avenue. Reading through several thousand of the cartoons assembled by Mankoff in his 2004 book, I cram to understand it. From the very beginning in 1925, the New Yorker cartoons as a rule have been unambitious, unimpressive, and unfunny. Not to mention frequently sexist. As a platform for cartooning, the magazine has (with a few exceptions, to be addressed presently) been a deadening force at the heart of the art form, smothering the field in bourgeois mediocrity.

Helen Hokinson, December 11, 1937


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In a 1937 article in the Partisan Review, The New Yorker’s bête noire of the time Dwight McDonald — later a significant contributor to the magazine — criticized the cartoons for their “Jovian aloofness from the common struggle”, identifying “…something inhuman in [their] deliberate cultivation of the trivial.” This critique was part and parcel of McDonald’s, and the Partisan Review’s, ongoing criticism of the The New Yorker more generally. McDonald concomitantly described the typical writer for the magazine as having “given up the struggle to make sense out of a world which daily grows more complicated. His stock of data is strictly limited to the inconsequential.”

William Galbraith Crawford, October 13, 1934


This is not the place to enter into the long and complex history of The New Yorker and its critics. Suffice it to say that any institution, cultural or otherwise, that achieves this kind of success and influence will be met with criticism — and indeed McDonald’s words are echoed in those of many a critic of the magazine since. But whatever the problems of ‘New Yorker fiction’ as a phenomenon, of the blind spots exhibited by the magazine’s critics, or of its at times timid or problematic treatment of important political issues — most recently perhaps the 2003 invasion of Iraq — it is undeniably one of the publications of record in all three areas.

In other words, McDonald’s critique, however accurate it might be in diagnosing a fundamental aspect of founder Harold Ross’ vision, does not render justice to the ambition and quality of the magazine, then or now. Where it does ring true, however, is in its characterization of the cartoons, then and now.

Reaction shot: Rea Irvin, December 20, 1941


Reading the introductions to each decade of The New Yorker’s publication history in Mankoff’s Complete Cartoons, each written by a different author connected with the magazine — from Roger Angell and John Updike to Lillian Ross and Calvin Trillin — one is struck by their apologetic tone. They are forced to acknowledge the obvious: that The New Yorker’s cartoonists almost never managed to comment intelligently — or indeed at all — on the important events of their time, be it the Great Depression or the Second World War, the civil rights movement or Vietnam.

An exception to the rule: Carl Rose, December 20, 1941


This was all in keeping with Ross’ sensible if not unproblematic vision that The New Yorker would “not be iconoclastic”, marketing it as he did to “intelligent and discriminating men and women who appreciate fine things and can afford them.” While it would be a fair question to ask why the magazine has shied away from political or otherwise editorializing cartoons, especially when their other content is much less hands-off on such matters, this in itself is not the problem. The point is that choosing gags as your calling does not let you off the hook. Major national and world events belong as much to the social sphere (the domain of gag cartoons), as it does the political or economical. The New Yorker, however, was content with serving up endless iterations of two guys in a bar, desert islands, and bosses and their secretaries — a dull superfluity of safe inanity.

Warren Miller, April 6, 1968

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The gag cartoon is a difficult discipline. The trick, of course, is to make the reader laugh. The joke’s the thing. And there is no accounting for humor, which makes accessing your own in its purest form the noblest avenue of expression for the cartoonist. Not to mention the funniest. It is not so much that there are not a fair amount of fairly funny jokes in The New Yorker, but rather that they are almost invariably of the generic variety, with cartoonists content to act as warm bodies on the mic stand, interchangeable and disposable. Too few of them present a truly original, unexpected, idiosyncratic, intelligent, or imaginative point of view, and judging from just how consistent the magazine has been in this regard, it seems editorial has rewarded them for thinking inside the box.

Peter Arno, April 12, 1930


Let us forego the banal swill that bulks up the bibliography and focus on some of the canonized artists; the best the magazine has had to offer, according to public opinion. First there is Peter Arno, the quintessential dandy cartoonist, a kind of real-life Eustace Tilley, cuffs stained with india ink.

No doubt, Arno is one of the great visual stylists of American cartooning, and arguably the most effortless major graphic contributor to the magazine. His cartoons are master classes in composition and narrative, at times carrying an almost abstract beauty in their distribution of forms, light, and shade. Yet, his visual characterization, while extremely precise and frequently funny, is invariably trite, serving up conservative stereotypes spritzing the safe clichés of the masculine bourgeoisie — from Martini jokes to silver fox slickers ogling chorus girls. Very little of Baudelaire’s flâneur remains in his and his various gag writers’ myopic, self-sufficient perspective.

Charles Addams, December 21, 1946


Another icon is Charles Addams, possessed of a genuine yen for the absurd yet ultimately toiling it in service of warm reassurance. His earlier cartoons boast some inspired ideas and occasionally reach toward the surreally unsettling, but by the time he had established the Addams Family, those lovable munsters in their plush Halloween mansion, he started descending irrevocably into comfy family camp. Worst is the utter lack of visual ambition — one plump Addams character pretty much substitutes for another, any signs of individuality listlessly muddied up in drab wash.

Helen Hokinson shows some self-awareness: May 1, 1937


Helen Hokinson suffers from similar problems of visual realization. Drawing her characters small and indistinct, it is frequently hard to glean anything significant, relating to the gag or otherwise, from their facial expression or body language. A pity, because her wit (or that of her gag writers) is sharp, if limited in scope — lots of rotund society ladies, lots of hat, dress and jewelry jokes. Her irony cuts a little deeper than that of most of her peers, but dissipates with a dispiriting ‘aw shucks’ fizzle.

Jack Ziegler, November 24, 1980


Of later comers, Jack Ziegler is one of the most prominent, I suppose both for his versatility and consistency in terms of joke content, but also, surely, because he is somehow quintessential. Beyond the shoddiness of his rendering—more complex of course, but essentially no different from the arid cartooning of a Scott Adams — he lacks a core: emotional, personal, what have you. To him a joke is just a joke, and he can be relied upon to makes us laugh and forget, issue after issue.

Roz Chast, December 7, 1998


Then there’s Roz Chast, The New Yorker’s current cartoon fig leaf for artistic respectability. She is to be commended for introducing into the magazine a kind of poetic whimsy previously unknown, and for deprioritizing the punchline in favor of more ineffable humors. Unlike most of her colleagues, she actually has a personal voice, but it is never particularly revealing: a step beyond the imaginative dazzle, it is cute and cosy, keeping anything difficult at arm’s length.

This complacent tone is apparent more than anywhere else in the lazy drawing, which remains unimproved after more than thirty years. The telephone doodle charm only goes so far, because the small, overcrowded, inarticulately composed, and sluggishly washed drawings rarely contribute more than a very general — if persistent — sense of caffeinated giddiness, ending up placeholders for ideas worthy of a more articulate cartoonist. It’s like watching Ted Rall impersonating Lynda Barry.

Bruce Erik Kaplan, September 17, 2012


Next to Chast, Bruce Eric Kaplan is the seeming exception that proves the rule that current New Yorker cartoonists all lack personality. His graphic style is his big draw: everything is drawn as if by etch-a-sketch, centering on a supposedly existential emptiness. It is indeed spectacular in the dull context of the magazine, an easy standout, but it’s a shtick: the cartoons are interchangeable, their links to individual jokes tenuous at best, and the general sense of alienation is unmodulated to fit the content. The same idea executed ad nauseam.

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I could go on, but the point should be clear. These are highly overrated cartoonists, elevated by their august platform. And keep in mind that they are the wheat to the vastly more abundant chaff. One might argue that gag cartooning is simply not suited to the kind of artistic expression lacking in the pages of The New Yorker, that I’m setting the bar too high here, but besides questioning the wisdom of focusing so one-sidedly on gags at the expense of other forms of cartooning, you could point to Mad Magazine — a publication whose cultural impact, however different, is commensurate — as a much more reliable source of quality humor cartooning, despite its own faults. The critically overlooked Don Martin easily trumps any of the above-mentioned for originality and plain laughs. As do a number of cartoonists working in similar formats never — or rarely — published in The New Yorker, from H. M. Bateman and Virgil Partch to Basil Wolverton and Gary Larson.

William Steig, March 24, 1986


In a way, however, the most damning factor is that The New Yorker harbored a few cartoonists whose example — if it had been internalized instead of merely idolized by editorial — would surely have helped shape a truly innovative cartoon platform. One is William Steig, a cartoonist of fertile imagination, a well-honed instinct for portraying the human animal, and — as he matured — a nervous line crackling with personality. One might argue, however, that he did his best work elsewhere, primarily in children’s books.

George Booth at his best with the early “Ip Gissa Gul”, January 20, 1975


A bright spot in the dim latter half of the William Shawn years was George Booth. Although not the most gifted gag writer, his anarchic humor as manifested in his ratty line, and trademark rat-like dogs, is an unexpected delight in the murk that is any given issue’s cartoon selection. At times, he comes off not a little unhinged, not unlike the aforementioned Don Martin. More of his kind would have been a help, but not enough in itself.

James Thurber, March 16, 1935


The true paragons — of course, I suppose — are James Thurber and Saul Steinberg, however. The half-blind Thurber was a natural cartoonist, possessed of a genuinely original vision that included as acute an eye for human behavior as any of his fully-sighted peers, condensed on the paper in sprightly notation. His treatment of his main theme, gender, may initially seem a little banal until one notices the disturbing irrational undertones pushing at the edges — the ex-wife lurking on top of the bookcase, the seal behind the bed, the sudden fencer’s head-lop. Thurber’s is a cold world, and the gleam in his live eye is humor.

The strange thing is how little his approach came to shape The New Yorker’s cartoons. Of course, few cartoonists can be expected to be as original, but he remains an example of what can happen if one admits and nurtures the personal sensibilities of a gifted cartoonist. Although this was initially Thurber’s good friend E. B. White’s doing, Ross clearly grew to appreciate Thurber, who became one of the magazine’s graphic constituents (and literally part of the architecture by way of his graffiti, a piece of which has been transposed into an oblique corner of the current offices in the Condé Nast building). It is hard not to see it as an editorial failure that his example wasn’t followed.

Saul Steinberg, November 25, 1961


Except with Steinberg, one of the century’s great cartoonists. Although just as unique, he became much more central to the magazine’s graphic identity than Thurber, and his influence on it remains much more pervasive, if in all the wrong ways. A cartoonist of brilliant facility and mind, he unassertively situated himself in the continuum of modernist art, but with a distinctively post-modern sensibility, Steinberg was the quintessential meta-cartoonist. He elevated the discussion of what cartooning is and, by consequence, the significance of The New Yorker to the art form.

Now, I must confess to some reservation vis-à-vis Steinberg. It’s easy to appreciate his cleverness and I do love his line, but I largely agree with Tom Lubbock’s critique that there is something too controlled, too detached, too safe about his cartooning, which is obviously witty and intelligent, but neither really funny nor really troubling. This takes us back to the central problem with The New Yorker’s cartoon tradition and how Steinberg validates its ethos, despite his outsize talent: New Yorker cartoons are often witty, if rarely intelligent; they are occasionally funny, but never troubling. They perpetuate an escapist bourgeois utopia, detached, controlled and safe.

What’s frustrating is that it could have been different. The New Yorker could have exerted the same level of ambitions on the part of their cartoons as they developed with regard to journalism, criticism, and fiction. Ross’ project to endow the magazine with a strong graphic identity was smart and it worked, not the least because of the often excellent illustrations and the famous covers. But the cartoons remain a monument to mediocrity, a would-be canonical example of wasted opportunity, were it not so bafflingly extolled as a high watermark. As it stands, I don’t doubt that The New Yorker would have been better off without them, and in my darker moods I feel as if the art form as a whole would have too.

P. C. Vey from this week’s issue, October 8, 2012

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

The Collector

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“Hate the collection, not the collector.”

It’s informal among the young, with no adult to guide or instruct. Myself, I clipped out pictures of the Space Shuttle, articles about satellites and astronomy, kept wine corks, and acorns of unusual size or beauty. But these gave way to more formalized assemblies—Star Wars figures, Transformers–other excuses for a child to amass plastic, aided by my youthful addiction to weekend garage sale scavenging with my father.

When toys lost their appeal my interests turned to print and all of its little reproductive miracles– at first baseball cards, that boyish gateway into non-functional collection, but later more esoteric items, including, in one frenzied weekend, a mania to obtain as many artist business cards as possible from a craft show I attended with my mother.

Comic books found me.

Comic book–such a strange name for such a potent, humorless object. Graceless pulp perfection, a newsprint narcotic, collectible crack cocaine. Numbered, serial, unrelenting, reaching simultaneously into the fictional past and some fictional distant future. The mania I had for them subsumed my own miseries, buried all of those real, flesh and blood problems in a fountain of faded black and Ben Day, in a river of rising action and explanatory narration and hastily-drawn explosions.

Mr. and Mrs. S___ were friend of my parents. Let us consider them now. The husband, Mr. S____, kept his twin passions of science fiction and comics ordered and concealed in long white boxes on the shelves of his closet, away from the judgmental eye of his wife Mrs. S___. Mrs. S___, meanwhile, had her own enthusiasms, that manifested themselves as an explosion of goose and goose-related paraphernalia. Goose paintings, goose-endowed wicker baskets, goose-embossed cut-glass decanters. Gooses everywhere.

It was Mr. S___ that gave me my first comic book, who introduced me to the monthly pleasures of the newsstand, just as my father had initiated me into the rituals of the baseball card years before. (It was a Star Wars comic, appropriately enough, some “reading copies,” as he was hoarding the pristine remainder for his retirement in the distant future, where they would doubtlessly be redeemable for a condo on the beach or health care, just like government bonds or platinum jewelry.)

O Comic Book. When I left home for college I somehow escaped your orbit, was distracted by Bands and Relationships and Suicide by Degree Program, all of the clutter that entered this thin life only to expand and choke you out until there was no room for you at all.

And I thought maybe that’s part of the process of growing up– like breast feeding, or being carried on your father’s back, one of the pleasures of childhood that we are asked to master and cast off, or to transform into a new, more socially-acceptable form.

Or so I thought until I actually entered the adult world, and found the same mentality everywhere. Wanna-be guitar players hoarded gear, writers hoarded books. Some special few hoarded their sexual conquests, collecting names and photos and various details in the same way they might have traded rookie cards and E.R.A. stats as children. My fellow teachers at the high school beat off the tedium of their lives with a bewildering assortment of afflictions—some under the thrall of Disney, their offices stuffed with various pieces of Mouse-related ephemera, others Christmas enthusiasts, still others obsessed with the paraphernalia of their own past, each trophy or jersey or photograph another bid for their younger, better selves to live on beyond the death of history.

And at twenty-five, as I took my first tentative steps towards being a cartoonist, I found that the collecting impulse in myself had returned, justified through my need for always more skills, more progress, more models that I could analyze, or copy outright. I had always been a stylistic mimic, even as a high school journalism student, able to produce copy on demand in a wide variety of voices. Now, as I built up my cartooning chops, the inclination toward pastiche returned, and every new book, every new comic, was another world to be strip-mined for technique. My collecting, I told myself in unsure moments, had utility.

This is the lie at the heart of every collection.

Jamie– Pez dispensers, Hardy Boys hardbacks, CDs and DVDs, Coke paraphernalia and bizarre furniture and costumes.

“I realized the other day that I’m never going to be able to live with you again, because you’ll never be able to afford a place that can fit all of my stuff.”

Michael C___ –CD’s, DVD’s, records, rock music criticism, books and other ephemera.

“I thought about getting rid of it. But the thought didn’t last long. What would I be without my collection?”

Some Guy Who Lived in West Palm Beach- data hoarder

“So, you have any other CDs I can burn? I’ve got a terabyte collection going now. What? Oh, yeah, you know, I listen to them when I paint.”
Woman Who Lives Down the Street From Me– cats, newspapers

“I don’t understand why they set limits to how many pets you’re supposed to have. There are no limits to love.”

It was five years of teaching for me, five long years of emotional exhaustion, of  a can of Coke every lunch, naps in the afternoon, waking up alone and scared and bewildered; grinding my teeth—and always surrounded by more stuff. Books—comics of all stripes, science fiction, YA novels, the objects of my childhood desires suddenly obtainable through the twin miracles of Internet shopping and a steady paycheck.

Until one day I was ready to be done.

It was only the job at first—the collecting continued on after the income passed, more bargain-oriented but not gone. Not until the end.

Arguments, the kind of arguments where no one wins, nothing is better, and there is no way out but death, or separation. And so they both came. Death of pet. Divorce. Foreclosure. Complete reorientation of goals and expectations and desires for life, a bewildering array of choices and chores and shifting ground and uncertainty.

Because they were the most precious to me, they had to be the first to go. Dissembling the shelves was the hardest part. I felt sick and strange and slow, the feeling familiar even as it crept up my sides and down back and into my stomach. It was the feeling of finality, of loss, that same feeling I felt when we sat there together on the dirty carpet and divided up the things on paper, our lives and everything we’d done a series of numbers in blue ballpoint ink on the back of a torn envelope with my name on the front, in her loopy script.

And, like that final argument, the pain was only eased by the leaving. When the man came and brought the dozen-odd boxes of books from the room I felt nothing but relief, a relief that came, in fact, from the first few gone. A handful of books, the acceptance of that loss, and it seemed the spell had been broken.

But like anything that’s been useful to us in the past, the feeling returned. I wasn’t collecting books anymore, or possessions—it was collecting work, collecting attention. Links to my articles and comics, discussion of them. The negative and the positive were remarkably alike, served that same function—something that reminded me that I existed, that I was alive.

Writing. My own drawings. My productivity.

The stack of publications I’ve created or appeared in. Posters I’ve drawn and designed, boxes of albums never sold. Love letters from people I’ve lost and forgotten, old spirals covered with notes and doodles and hundreds of songs half-finished and abandoned. The heavy box in the upper shelf of my closet, underneath that blanket I still need to give back to my ex, heavy with the first 300 pages of a graphic novel that no one will ever read, a book years in the making that I abandoned at the harsh words of a handful of friends.

Everything I’ve made, I cling to.

I need to bury you too.

 

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

The Color of Hate

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I am a generally happy person. A cockeyed optimist. A Pollyanna. Hell, you know, I’m from the Midwest. I like to like things, and I try very hard to do so. As a self-directed blogger with no editorial mandate to adhere to but my own, I skip merrily through the world of East Asian comics, content to linger over what pleases me. I rhapsodize over the books I enjoy and blow through the rest as quickly as possible—like a panicked sprint through the unexpected cloud of gnats on an otherwise peaceful summer stroll.

For a person like me, “hate” is a fairly nebulous concept, and not all that easily accepted or even understood. For me to hate something—to really loathe a thing—it needs to hit me where it hurts. I can’t vigorously hate a book or a comic or a Broadway musical, say, for simply being incompetent (*cough* Baseball Heaven *cough*). I must be truly, inconsolably offended in order to come even close to real hate.

That said, there are a number of comics I’ve disliked intensely over the years—mainly since I began reviewing things I wouldn’t necessarily choose for myself. Notable objects of my rage have included gender-regressive shoujo manga like Black Bird; creepy, campy BL like Tricky Prince; and the fat-shaming caricature that is Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution. One of these titles even prompted an experiment to discover how often and how thoroughly I must trash a single series before the publisher would stop sending me new volumes (answer: to infinity). The thing is, when I go back and read my reviews of these books, each of which has incited rage, they seem kind of… weak. Despite my wrath, I could never truly commit to hating these comics, due to their lack of serious intent. Nobody thinks Tricky Prince is Serious Business, including Tricky Prince, and it’s hard to work up genuine, lasting hatred over something that was intended to be disposable from the start.

Then came the Color trilogy.

In 2010, I volunteered to host the first manhwa edition of the Manga Moveable Feast. A number of titles were suggested and put to a vote, including some personal favorites, like Byun Byung-Jun’s quirky short comic Run, Bong-Gu, Run!, Uhm JungHyum’s moody romance Forest of Gray City, and JiUn Yun’s sumptuous collection of ghost stories, Time and Again. Unsurprisingly, however, the vote ultimately came down to Kim Dong Hwa’s critically acclaimed manhwa trilogy, The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven, published in English by the lovely folks at First Second. Though I was a big fan of Korean comics in general (and certainly knew of Kim’s series), I hadn’t read read more than a few excerpts myself, so I dug in with verve. And then the hate… oh the hate… it was like nothing I’d experienced as a comics reader before.

The Color trilogy is a coming-of-age story revolving around Ehwa, a young girl in pre-industrial Korea who is being raised by her mother—a widow who runs the local tavern. The story spans Ehwa’s life from the age of seven (when she is first made aware of the existence of penises, thanks to a boys’ pissing contest) through her wedding night (when she gets to know a very special penis on more intimate terms). I choose these parenthetical descriptions purposefully, because that’s what this series is really about: penises and the pursuit of same—that is, when it’s not too busy going on about the lusty beauty of a ripening young woman (yes, these words are chosen purposefully as well).

First, the penises. As I mentioned, the story opens with Ehwa, at seven, stumbling upon a pissing match between two local boys. The boys are deeply proud of their own “gachoo” (chili peppers, also a euphemism for “penis”) and they ask Ehwa to show them hers. This sends Ehwa into a tizzy, as she wonders if not having one indicates that she’s deformed. One of these boys is so consumed by his love affair with his own penis that he will later be portrayed as being unable to take his hands off of it.

(click image to enlarge)

Hey, why should he? It’s a really awesome thing, that gachoo. As Ehwa’s mom explains to her later (after buying a whole lot of ginseng to cook with in order to boost the, uh, energy levels of her traveling suitor known only as “The Picture Man”) when a man’s gachoo comes into contact with a woman’s “persimmon seed” (seriously, this is the kind of language Kim uses throughout the series), something magical happens.

Fortunately, Ehwa gets to experience this magical, floaty, firework-y business for herself at the climax of the book (Get it? “Climax”??), as she’s losing her virginity to her new husband. Though in her case, fireworks and floating on clouds feels more like… a super-phallic bell choir? Mortar and pestle? Um… ?

(click images to enlarge)

Though I joke about this being the “climax” of the series, it actually is just a few pages from the end. Ehwa’s journey really does quite literally span the time between discovering penises and getting to be penetrated by one. The entire point of her existence as a character can be summed up this way.

What happens in the middle is largely waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Both Ehwa and her mother fall for wandering men—the kind who spend most of their time traveling for work or simply out of restlessness, but stop in for sex every few months or so. (I once described this type as “… a big, strapping man who values the freedom to wander, is good in a fight, a stallion in the bedroom, and offers questionable financial security. Another male fantasy?”) While this is undoubtedly appropriate to the period and to these women’s circumstances, Kim spends so much time lingering on the wistful beauty of the lonely woman, it begins to feel like a bit of a fetish.

(click image to enlarge)

Scenes like this are peppered throughout, along with long-winded discussions in which the lonely, waiting women, the wandering men, and generally everything else of consequence in the story are described as various types of local flora and fauna—to the point that it eventually becomes difficult to remember what or whom all the different flowers, insects, and trees stand for. More than anything else, however, Kim lavishes over the beautiful pain of Ehwa and her mother with genuinely lovely artwork and flowery language worthy of Anne Shirley’s Rollings Reliable Baking Powder story.

But while Kim’s obsession with the feminine loveliness of his characters’ longing reads as simply insulting, his fascination with Ehwa’s burgeoning womanhood borders on downright creepy. Kim is quoted as saying that “the process of a girl becoming a woman is one of the biggest mysteries and wonders of life.” And it’s clear from his portrayal of Ehwa that he considers that process to be entirely sexual. Ehwa has no interests outside of sexual attraction and whatever else is happening with her body—not the tiniest thing. In fact, despite being the only child of a single woman running a tavern all on her own, she doesn’t even seem to have chores to take her mind off her dramatic puberty. Growing up mentally, emotionally, or even just practically seems to be of little consequence to Ehwa or her mother (who remembers just as Ehwa is about to get married that maybe she should teach her how to cook). And while I feel vaguely ashamed for wishing that a female protagonist might take some interest in housekeeping, it at least would give her something to care about besides the long-cherished promise of touching a man’s gachoo.

But while personal interests, hobbies or even standard domestic pursuits appear to be superfluous to “the process of a girl becoming a woman,” the relevant items seem to be:

Getting her period.

Learning to masturbate.

And attracting penises butterflies penises.

Yes, Kim Dong Hwa, these truly are the most important aspects of a young girl’s blossoming into womanhood. Thanks for noticing.

Of course, in the end, it’s not Kim’s romanticization of regressive gender roles that really bothers me here, or even his semi-creepy fetishization of womanly “blossoming” (seriously, everything’s got a flower metaphor in this series), not when you get right down to it. I’m a manga fan, after all. I’ve read Black Bird and Hot Gimmick. I survived the first omnibus of Love Hina. I’ve participated in a (not entirely scathing) column on boob manga. What makes me really hate the Color trilogy, is that it’s so widely praised and admired, by male and female readers alike. It is absolutely Serious Business, and that makes it rare fodder for my hatred.

In the books’ endnotes and in Kim’s official bios, he’s referred to repeatedly as a “feminist” writer. He is credited with possessing an “uncanny ability to write from a profoundly feminine perspective.” When, during the Manga Moveable Feast, Michelle Smith and I accused Kim of regarding his female characters’ limited life choices and oppressive environment with “loving nostalgia,” we were criticized in turn for expecting more progressive sexual politics from a period piece. The Color of Earth was published in 2003, yet even Tezuka never treated his (highly questionable) female characters with this kind of rosy condescension.

I tried very hard to like the Color trilogy, but even my most sincere, Pollyanna efforts failed me on this point. In the end, it may be one of the very few comics this midwestern optimist could ever truly hate.

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

A Piercing Glimpse of Pants

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I actually like superhero comics.

Since it’s a big genre I don’t love all the mainstream capes, obviously, but the idea of them, the inherent trope of extra-powerful characters helping others, is fun and interesting.

There’s something powerful about the mix of whimsy and gravitas in a comic like classic Wonder Woman.  Yes, she’s wearing spangled underpants, but she’s jousting on giant kangaroos and swimming deep under the ocean to rescue planes.  Anyone who spends a lot of time reading classic myths will recognize this kind of storytelling–there may be helpful woodland creatures flitting around your head, singing their adorable eyes out, but there’s also stepsisters getting their toes sliced off to fit the glass shoe of the prince.

Whimsy and gravitas, the stories we tell our children.  Be good, be brave, be honest, be loyal, and you will make the right choice at the crossroads.  You will help the little old lady who’s having trouble crossing the stream, and she is the fairy godmother who will save your butt when you get into a bad wood-gathering Ponzi scheme with your idiotic three brothers.

I doubt many people who wander into comics shops or cons feel like Levi-Strauss wandering around the jungle taking photos of penis sheaths and gathering mythos.

But perhaps they should.

For is it not the same?  Our cape stories take avatar-figures and set them upon bizarre quests.  The Princess in disguise must save the bumbling prince, and when she is back home, she dresses up like a deer to be hunted and ‘eaten’ by her fellow sisters.  The wealthy young scion loses his parents before his eyes–set upon a path of vengeance with the loyal family retainer and the local woodland creatures.  Certainly, these are not fluffy gray doves, but then, perhaps he is an urban scion.  He must battle another winged creature avatar–a bird who cannot fly is bested by a flying mammal who is not a bird.

Right.

So maybe superhero stories are myffic. Fairy stories told in bright crayon colors, yes?

As a kid, I tied a brightly colored towel around my neck and leaped off tall things (occasionally skinning my knee in the process, as one does) and I certainly got some underoos and clothesline and tied my long-suffering stuffed animals to a chair so I could interrogate them with my lasso of truth.

It was fun, and as time passed, as it does, I grew up.

Does that mean that I set those stories aside?  In some forms, sure.  I became too busy, what with college and then multiple jobs, to catch everything.

But I watched some of the various TV incarnations of the Supes.  A friend of mine loved Lois and Clark, and later, Smallville, so I watched them, too.  When Buffy came around, I fell hopelessly hard for the young blond high school kid who was a cheerleader by day and a warrior for the light at night.  I had a regular Tuesday night dinner with my enthralled friends and we watched, open-mouthed and silent, regular as clockwork.

I saw the movies. X-Men was good, and Spiderman OK, and what the hell was Aerosmith doing writing cheesy dreck like that as a soundtrack for god’s sake?   Seriously, Perry, that shit’s beneath you.

Where was I?

Right.  I saw the various Batmans, including Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman (inspired casting, but maybe not as inspired as Eartha Kitt….).  Hellboy.  Fantastic Four.  Iron Man.

I got into Saiyuki, which is another awesomely classic superhero story.  The boys have special weapons, tragic pasts, specific costumes, unique hairstyles.  One’s missing an eye!  Total classic mythic stuff.  Goku even wears a cape!

I read various comics, often shared between friends, in the supe vein.  Some I liked, some I didn’t.  You can see some of the ones I enjoyed here: Batwoman, Spidey, X-Men, Empowered.

I even did a long and heartfelt Wonder Woman fan comic.

The point is: I read this stuff because I like it.

I like the mix of whimsy and gravitas.  I like the juxtaposition of increased power and increased vulnerability.  I like wondering what kind of problems a caped crusader runs into.  I like seeing Good win over Evil.  I like it.

So, for some unknown fucking reason, my various friends and acquaintances kept pushing Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come at me like a drug pusher and a new victim.  This is the shit, they’d say.  I know you’ll love the art!  You have to read this! This is the best art I’ve ever seen, you have to read it!

I demurred.

Finally, one particularly vicious soul bought me the damn thing, or as many issues as were out at the time, and shoved them into my hands.

*

Reader, I hated it.

*

I hated everything about it.  The hackneyed plot.  The continuity porn.  The endless shoutouts to characters I couldn’t remember and wouldn’t have missed if I had.  The dumb as shit use of my state as a stand-in for the common people.

But more than anything else, I hated the art.

*

Fucking hated it.  Fucking hated everything this art stood for.  Hated it with all the passion in my soul.

*

Ahem.

*

Now, someone (probably everyone…) is likely to contradict me here, but I’m going to briefly outline my theory of art and craft.  I believe in craft, see.  A lot of people don’t.  But I do.  And since I believe, deeply and passionately, in craft, a lot of people seem to think that I should just luuuuuuuuuuuv that fucking Alex Ross art, because it is ‘realistic’.

But Alex Ross’s art is–well.

Craft.  What is craft?  Craft is skill, honed with with hard work, talent, and experience, of taking an image (be it a photograph, a live model, a mental imagining) and creating that image in a medium (inks, paper, sculpture, whatever).  Composition, line-width, colors, brushstrokes, etc, are all part of craft.

Certainly Alex Ross displays strong craft, of a certain type.

That type is realist copying to the point of dogmatism.  Copying, you ask?  Copying, I say.  For those who do not paint or draw a great deal, the ability to put an image on paper (or canvas, etc) and have it look exactly like a photograph or still life can seem a skill that is difficult to the point of miraculous.  It’s not, actually.  As an old teacher explained grumpily to us, the surly art class, if you have the hand-eye coordination to sign your name, you too could produce realistic drawings (or paintings).

There are several traditional ways to go about it.  You can use ‘Right Hand Side of the Brain’ method.  You can use photographs to flatten a scene.  You can make a view-finder (popular with the Dutch, back in the day).  You can train your mind to see not faces but slight oblong shape to paint with yellow ochre plus titanium white plus burnt sienna one half inch to the left of a center line.

The problem (or gift, for any flaw can be a strength if turned on its side like a knife) with these methods is that they are, at their heart, copying.  Is a Xerox machine miraculous?  Yes.  For skill and craft of reproduction, a Xerox machine is pretty amazing.  But it isn’t art.  You can make art by xeroxing–shrinking and reducing and enlarging and cutting and pasting and re-reducing and shrinking and enlarging and doing interesting things with various papers or toners.  But if art happens, it is because of the human element.  The artist chooses what part of an image (or their hand on the scanner, etc) to copy, how to use this amazing tool to create an image that is changed because of the passion and imagination and inner vision of the artist.

If photography is art, it is art because of what the photographer chooses to portray.  What composition, what lighting, what cropping, what juxtaposition between subject and scene.  Or what scene he had made himself with the help of his models, their costumes, their acting, their stylists.

Craft is the skill, the Xerox machine or camera or brush.

Art is the vision, the imagination, the choice of subject, the human element that steers the machine of Craft down the stream.

It is totally possible to be an amazing artist but have limited craft.  That’s like a singer who has a very limited vocal range but makes the most of what she has.  Or you could have a ton of craft and not much art.  That’s an amazing range, multiple octaves, used to sing crappy Barry Manilow tunes.   A waste.  (People, of course, can have both art and craft, or, not much of either.)

I’ve seen great art created by kids who were given disposable cameras and taught about composition and lighting.  If they choose powerful subjects and use the images to tell a story, even a two dollar Walgreens disposable can turn out some very moving art.

But the same camera in other hands could also churn out (and probably will) a dozen red-eyed blurry dog portraits and another dozen photos of drunk relatives at a birthday party.  Not evil, but not exactly a moving artistic triumph we must share with the world at large.

*

So what, you might ask, bewildered by this odd detour into my off-the-cuff art theory, has this to do with one of the most celebrated comics artists?

If the purpose of craft is to portray an artistic vision (in this case a comic story about the importance of superheroes), then we can say art is good when it adds to the story and bad if it takes away from the story.

And by that metric Alex Ross is very, very bad.

*

My friends who pushed Alex Ross on me were in awe of the talent on display in the pages of Kingdom Come.  They believed that the art was good because it was ‘so realistic’.

Looking at any given page in Kingdom Come, I can tell that considerable energy was expended to create the images.  I could tell, even before reading the end pages of my graphic novel release, that Ross had used props, models, and costumes.  To my friends, this was supposed to be impressive.

I guess if you’re not used to seeing the man behind the curtain, it is.

But many fine artists use costumes, photographs, and props.

To me, such preparations are neither laurel wreath nor black mark, it’s just another tool in the artistic arsenal.  My favorite artist, Alphonse Mucha, did many preparatory sketches and photographs, often lovely in their own right.  Other artists, often working in watercolors or Chinese style inks, use none of that kind of thing.

It has often been said that a true craftsman makes art look effortless.

I don’t know that I would say that, but I would say that a true craftsman makes the viewer see the art and not the effort.

*

So what about Ross?  If I like Mucha, then surely I don’t mind realism?  If Ross has some skill and craft, what’s the problem?

The problem, dear Reader, is that Ross chooses to remove every bit of whimsy from the mythos of superhero and replaces it with earnestness in the service of a kind of ugly realism that shatters the edges of the created world until heroism crumbles like a balsa wood model in an earthquake.

*

In the classic Wonder Woman stories, there are many ridiculous plots.  Is there really an island of women?  Do they really joust on giant kangaroos?

Well no, of course not.

In the real world, there are also no sky kangas.  (Alas.)

Superheros are pretend.

*

What Alex Ross does in Kingdom Come is take the mythic story of superheroes and paint them hyper-realistically.

The effect is obviously intended to be Serious.  Superheros are Needed, because Humanity needs to Battle Evil and the Forces of Good Must Triumph.

Except that by using this hyper-realistic style, by shoving a mythic story, with only slapdash revision and poor grasp of art, into a realistic world, Ross shatters the border of that story, again and again, until the frame cracks and every ugly border of the page is shown, every fourth wall is broken, and the superheros don’t project gravitas, but a kind of secondhand embarrassment so strong that I have to keep the damn comic face down on the table.

*

Let’s take a look at Superman, the hero of this tale.

He’s portrayed as an aging, graying, be-chinned older guy.  Which, OK, fine.

If Alex Ross has an artistic thesis in this story, it appears to be to prove, once and for all, that The Big Man’s chest hair is gray.  Gray, do you hear me?  Gray!

All right already.

Now I actually wouldn’t mind having a middle-aged superhero, caped or not, portrayed as realistically aging, but what Ross has done here is not portray Superman as a middle-aged farmer, but as, well.  Look.

There’s one group of people who over-develop their chest muscles and neglect their legs.  They have long hair in ponytails and frankly, more tattoos, but otherwise, Clark is kind of a dead ringer for a guy who’s lived in prison for years.

Farmers and outdoorsmen have built calves and smaller chests, different body types.

The spandex outfits are also a mistake.  What self-respecting Kansas farmer would be caught dead in bright red and blue lycra?  None, that’s who.

Instead of creating imagery that conjures strength and the tenacity of age or using the crayon-colors to create instant pizazz and focus, or hell, even silliness, Ross’s tromp l’oel conjures unpleasant petty realities.

Anyone who wears polyester underpants that tight during a workout is just asking for a yeast infection.  Not to mention the chafing once he starts to sweat.  I hope there’s a good portion of CoolMax in that fabric.  Did he at least put on some runner’s nipple guards for men?  Maybe he’s getting free samples of Body Glide?  I hope so, because otherwise, ow.

And what about those red boots?  Surely they’re made of rubber.  A man that age needs decent arch support especially if he’s active.  Fancy wellies with no real soles just seems ill advised.  I hope he’s got decent arch inserts.

*

This is the problem with hyper realism that takes itself too seriously.

*

In a normal fantasy story, there are some rules from our real world and then a few extra laws added that, within certain constraints, allow the storyteller to bring us something new and special, something greater than a story that is mired in the muddy reality of the day-to-day.

Tolkien called this a piercing glimpse of joy.

*

If you establish rules in a fantasy world, you have to follow those rules or risk shattering the world.  It’s also important, as an artist, to understand and honor the fact that it’s a fantasy.  Kangaroos can’t really take Amazons to the outer rings of the galaxy, but, wouldn’t it be cool if they could?

(Answer: Yes!)

*

Kingdom Come tries very hard to portray its fantasy hyper-realistically.  The problem is that it obeys only some of the rules and pokes holes in the others, all while taking itself incredibly seriously and obviously expecting its audience to do the same.

I have mentioned more than once that I’d like to have a broader range of ages and types of characters.  An aged superhero could be really cool.  But you can’t just age Clark Kent by giving him hyper-realistic chins and then bloat his shoulders like he’s an ex-con.  You can’t give Batman a metal exo-skeleton because of old injuries and then expect me to believe he’s got the same bull biceps of Clark Kent.  Where’s Bruce’s chronic pain pallor?  The weight loss caused by narcotics?  The shakes from  muscles that fail or from neuropathy-focused meds?

And if everybody else packed on a paunch so that their underoos are tight, why the hell does Diana have a teeny waist as if she’s got on an invisible corset?

Oh, because she’s a reward for the guy with the big red S on his chest, how silly of me to forget.  *rolls eyes*

You know what?  A woman who’s a warrior would not have a teensy waist.  (Nor do most middle aged ladies, but I digress.)  Nope.  If you look at practicing swordsmen of either gender, such as those who practice kendo, they have a broad belly, not one that is super-sucked in.  That’s because they have a low center of gravity.

You can see the same thing in those who practice a lot of yoga.  Amateurs tend to think that years of practice will lead to a six pack, but it ain’t so.  What it leads to is to a broad deep belly.  Why?  Diaphragmatic breathing.  Breathing into the lungs is nice, sure, but warriors (especially dare I say it Amazons) breathe into the lungs and all the way into the belly.  Lots more power.

If you want cheesecake, that’s fine.  Nothing wrong with the occasional cheesecake.  But don’t pretend it’s real.  Don’t expect the cheesecake to add to the feel of reality if you’re mixing sixteen year old photoshopped bellies willy nilly with older-woman bad hair day. Let Diana have a deep belly and and middle aged face and still be cheesecake.

Er, sorry, I got somewhat sidetracked.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Hyper realism and seriousness and gravitas.

Right.

The problem is not the aging of the characters.  The problem is the patchy slapdash application of the aging rule.  Clark’s got gray hair and a flippy old dude pony tail, but Diana’s got a girlish figure and the same hairstyle she had in the forties?  Uh huh.  Batman’s managed to invent an exo-skeleton for his broken body, but–

Look, in the real world, young guys wear spandexy football uniforms or whatever, but grown men normally do not wear  bowling-ball shaped glowing green armor.  Especially with a, what the hell is that anyway?  Some kind of black satin loin cloth?  Panty apron?  I don’t know, but it’s weird.  Weird and unattractive.

And loud.  Really loud.

It looks strange.  Sad.

In more abstract or symbolically painted comics, we’re not obsessively shown the seams of the spandex costumes.  We’re not shown the exact way a piece of green armor fits unpleasantly against a human body and then be expected as readers to believe it’s functional as a warrior’s uniform.

If you’ve ever seen a beat cop or an armed member of the military, their bearing changes when they’re wearing their gear.  I’m not talking about the shoulders back and head straight (although there is that), I’m talking about the way those heavy belts full of maglight/walkie-talkie/cuffs/gun/stunner/notepad impact the way those people move and stand.  Their elbows sweep differently.  They don’t bend at the waist in the same way.  Their hand will automatically move out to keep a truncheon or tool out of harms way if they turn quickly.  You can tell they are aware at each moment of the items they’re carrying, that these items have purpose, that it’s an important and serious uniform built on utility.

People wearing full and immovable body armor do not slump in a chair with their legs spread to reveal their black shiny panty crotch cloth!

They just don’t.  It’s not believable.  And why glowing green?  Yes, someone from continuity porn ville will be sure to point out endlessly why I am wrong wrong wrongity pants, but come on.  No self-respecting warrior would wear day glo green bowling ball shaped armor with a black loincloth in this day and age.  I mean, lol WHUT.  No.

It’s embarrassing.

Which is kind of a problem.

Every time I look at this page, I think, “Put on some pants!”

“Put on some pants” is a strong, visceral reaction but it’s the wrong reaction.  For the purpose of the story, I’m supposed to be feeling sadness or worry or fear for the characters and their plight, not slapping my hand over my eyes and thinking this is just like the time I went to an ill-advised Star Trek convention and got hit on by a man three times my age who was wearing some kind outfit made of what appeared to be bits of colored pantyhose, OK?

Just about every page has a panel like this.  I’ll just get into the story and begin to believe and then a panel will shove the impossibility of this story ever being even remotely true into my face.  Again and again and again.

Here we see a kinkster in gold PVC, dial-a-naughty lady in a super girl outfit from Cirilla’s, the big man in underoos, a strange man in armor holding a shield that makes him look pregnant, and their obviously baby-oiled personal trainer in boxing boots.

And you know, that’s fine.  It’s not great, it’s not ideal, but–

The whole damn book is also ugly.

For the main theme of the book, Ross chose a complementary color scheme.  Since the colors are opposite, they’re jarring.  I have no doubt that Ross intended this jarring effect to increase the feeling of conflict.

Only problem?

He chose red and green.

Welcome to Christmas in comic town, boys and girls!

But enough.

The craft, the talent, the skill, does Ross have that? He can make images that have distinct features, sure, but according to Vom’s Theory of Art, he has failed.  Failed because each of these effortful, carefully crafted images betrays instead of supports.  The tone, the story, the essence, the theme, all of them are subverted instead of supported by the art.  I have no worry for the characters on their quest or joy in the characters’ triumph.

I just want them to put on some normal pants.

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

Why I Hate Watchmen

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When Noah announced this hate-fest, I knew immediately that I’d write about Watchmen. What was less clear to me was why—what is it about this book that irks me so much? Why do I silently roll my eyes every time someone starts waxing poetic about Moore’s genius?

The truth is, I should adore Watchmen.

It’s a comic book-loving English major’s wet dream—multi-genre, intertextual, metafictional. So much of what people identify as masterful in Watchmen matches up nicely with the things that gives me incredible intellectual joy in other books, the kinds of thing I try to get my students excited about in class.

Plus, it has superheroes in it. Despite the entrance fee to the comics scholars club being a complete disdain for all things superhero, I really love a good superhero story well told.

So, Watchmen should be a perfect storm of all things that fill me with geeky, intellectual joy. The only problem? I really, really dislike this book. So much so, that I’ve never managed to read all of it, despite numerous tries.

My husband bought Watchmen for me the first year we were married. Comic books moved into my house along with my new husband. I was hooked, powerless to resist the heady combination of new love and Spidey angst. While I would eventually develop my own comic book preferences (I quickly began to favor alternative, autobiographical, talky, snarky books), my comic reading tastes have been forever shaped by the books my husband loves best — Marvel’s superheroes. He loves Spider-Man; so do I. He adores Avengers; so do I. He thinks Kirby is a genius; so do I. He finds the X-Men insufferable; so do I. So when he, and every fanboy I knew, said I should read Watchmen, I fully expected to love it.

But I didn’t. Not even a little. I figured it was me, that there was some context or history or secret code I just wasn’t getting that prevented me from liking the book. But each time I’ve tried — when students ask about it in class, when the film came out, to write this piece — I have the same reactions.

I find Watchmen dull, flat, and, above all, pretentious. And I say this as a person who regularly tries to get students to see how funny Melville’s “Bartelby, the Scrivener” can be.

First, it is ugly. So ugly. I get that aesthetic and artistic quality are in the eye of the beholder. I love Jeffrey Brown’s and James Kolchaka’s styles, and wouldn’t call them pretty at all. My students and I regularly have arguments about whether or not Charles Schulz could draw well. So, yeah, I get that we can enjoy comics drawn in a bunch of different styles. But, c’mon, people. You can’t really enjoy looking at this book. It’s visually crowded, the people are unattractive, the colors are weird. And yes, the visual style is working actively to help tell the story of the ugliness of the world. I get it. But it doesn’t make this book any more pleasant to look at it.

I could let the ugliness slide, though, if the characters were in any way interesting. I feel no connection to these characters. I don’t care enough about Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl to trudge through his ornithological articles. Laurie Juspeczyk and Dr. Manhattan’s relationship fails to induce any sympathy. Rorschach and Ozymandias are just dicks. I don’t have to like characters to enjoy a story, but I do need to care something about the narrative arc they travel. And in Watchmen, there’s no single character whose life I care enough about to carry me through to the end.

And don’t get me started on that fucking pirate comic. Good god, people!
 

 
Most of all, though, I find the books seeming raison d’être, a critique of the superhero concept, to be just plain annoying. I just don’t buy that superhero stories are necessarily fascistic, that enjoying a superhero story makes you necessarily suspect, that we should always be suspicious of do-gooders. The cynicism of the story, and, frankly, the cynicism of many of its fans, is just plain tiresome — not artful, not clever, not profound, just tiresome. Like the hipsters slouching in the corner, smoking American Spirits, harshing on the squares, I find Watchmen guilty of trying way too hard.

So, let’s make a deal: I promise to nod politely whenever you to start to gush about this book, as long as you don’t expect me to join in.
__________
Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

I hate you because I love you: Shonen Jump boys’ club edition

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Seconding other contributors that I don’t go out of my way to read comics I don’t like, so for this roundtable I had to reach back – way back – to when I’d read anything.

You know how it is: you read comics with your friends, and you’re all willing to spend more time on the things you don’t like – maybe because you haven’t worked out how to tell yet, within the first couple chapters, when a series is going to the dogs. Or maybe because you’re students or underemployed, with more time to spend on stuff that’s bad (in an interesting way) as well as on stuff that’s good. Or maybe because your friends are like me and mine, a bunch of fanfiction writers who are drawn to flawed art like wolves to wounded prey.


Not this kind of wolf, obviously

In any case, I don’t hate these flawed comics (or manga). Rather, I am fond of them: because they were good enough at the time, because even the bad ones were entertaining, and because I read them as a part of a community that didn’t expect perfection – and actually, probably, preferred some flaws in the first place.

So why read something you hate – I mean really, truly hate? Because you didn’t know you would hate it? Because other people – the in-crowd, the public – love it? Because the people who matter – your friends, critics you respect – love it? Or maybe because in another lifetime, you might have loved it too?

Though there are exceptions, it seems to me that very often, to hate something you also have to love it. A series you “hate” in this way is a series you would have loved, if it wasn’t for this one, specific, terrible thing that you hate. That’s the kind of hate I’ll be talking about in my article about Bakuman.

Bakuman is the second manga series by writer-artist pair Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, who previously worked on Death Note together. Death Note was a mess by the end – and morally challenged from the beginning – but I have fond memories of it since it was the first manga series I got really into with other people on the internet.

There was so much bad faith moralizing in that series. A single sociopath high school student was going to make the world a better place by killing already-apprehended criminals, who were waiting in jail for their sentences to be decided, using a magic notebook. This would deter other criminals from committing crimes, leading to a better, crime-free world. Because it’s the countries that have a transparent, (semi-)functioning justice systems and active, (semi-)free cultures of journalism, that report on crime and imprison criminals according to the rules of law, that are the worst off, am I right?


You tell ’em, L!

The thing is, while Death Note did a pretty good job of painting Light, the megalomaniacal serial killer high school honors student who lucks into the possession of an instrument of mass murder, in a negative light (because power corrupts and only the corrupt seek power), it didn’t really have many characters who were much better – who were morally upright and competent. When a character with brains and morals did show up, s/he was first brought down below even Light’s level (supporting torture, for instance), or else shown up by Light, and then killed. And more importantly, Death Note never really questioned whether Light’s “plan” to become “God” of the “new world” would work. If you are smart, you are better than the system, but when you exercise that superiority, you become a monster, the series suggests. The System eventually catches up with you and kills you, justice is served, the end.


It’s not a spoiler because the series had to end this way.

But I don’t hate Death Note. In its own way, it’s an interesting morality story, or at least an interesting look into Ohba’s twisted mental landscape. It’s also a work of the zeitgeist, tackling – among other themes – Japan’s 2004 shift from trial by judge to trial by jury (see below) and whether torture can ever be justified. You can also, if you squint, see some questions about memory and identity, as Light becomes a very different person during the brief period when his memories of the Death Note are removed.


Japan’s shift to a lay jury system was also tackled by absurdist Nintendo DS series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, now a live action movie directed by Takahashi Miike

We don’t know very much about Death Note author Ohba, other than that he – or she – is a bit OCD, draws him/herself as a woman on the album sleeves, and is rumored to be a well-known novelist when not moonlighting as a rookie manga author. Obata, meanwhile, is a very well-known artist, having previously illustrated Yumi Hotta’s critically acclaimed manga Hikaru no Go and worked as an assistant under Nobuhiro Watsuki on fan-favorite Rurouni Kenshin. Death Note’s success, as a comic and not a vehicle for Ohba’s wacky ideas or convoluted plots, is no doubt down to Obata, who reportedly handled most of the character designs and, especially in later volumes, the page layouts. In a comic where everyone either agrees with the hero or is hopelessly naïve – or is pursuing a private agenda – Obata’s distinctive character designs help to make every character unique and identifiable.


And he has great fashion sense, too

Flash forward to Bakuman. In an Ouroboros-like plot, this is a manga about making manga. The protagonists, childhood friends Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi, are an artist-writer pair just like Obata and Ohba. They share a dream, of being published in Shonen Jump (the magazine that serialized Death Note and Bakuman), coming in #1 in the reader popularity polls, and having their comic adapted into an anime, at which point Moritaka’s childhood crush will be cast in the title role and they can finally be together.


Moritaka and his future wife have a pure love. There are no Freudian implications here at all.

It’s exactly the kind of thing I really like. As in a lot of other exaggerated, but ultimately (mostly) non-fantastical shonen manga, you can learn something by reading Bakuman. In this case, you are not learning about bread, or wine, or shougi, or go, or American football; rather, you are learning how to become a famous mangaka for Shounen Jump. There’s a lot of actually very good behind the scenes analysis in Bakuman, covering topics like: how the popularity poll results are counted, how to submit work to a contest, what kind of work sells for what reasons, how to work with an incompetent editor, and how to hire and work with assistants. Just like in Hikaru no Go, you don’t get the sense that the protagonists are “ordinary” or that their rise to the top is easy. In Bakuman, Moritaka and Akito live and breathe manga. At one point Moritaka – still in middle school – is hospitalized for overwork, proving he is off to a good start in his professional career.


Adhering to the friendship! hard work! loyalty! Jump formula, with a few notable twists: two middle school boys in pursuit of their dreams

Just like in Death Note, the plot is fast-paced, with the first three volumes already covering three years. Ideas come fast and thick and in this case, have a natural outlet, as Moritaka-Akito work on countless series and toss out countless ideas that mostly all sound like they could be pretty good B-titles or short films. Other mangaka come on the scene, each with a separate and plausibly developed title. It’s a good showcase for Obata, who uses a different art style for each series-within-the-series, with his signature, realistic style reserved for the pair’s main series about an eccentric inventor, a hapless child, and a punishing female authority figure. There’s a bit of the “Theory of Mind” that was on display in Death Note – characters either agree with and support the main pair, or are irrational – but again, as in Death Note, the character designs are distinct and memorable, leading to an interesting and entertaining main cast.


Obata uses his signature realistic style the most when drawing the protagonists’ own manga

It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s a perfectly serviceable diversion, especially if you like inside-baseball comics about the business of making comics. The main pair are also immensely appealing as a pair, the kind of BFFs who have each other’s backs in business as well as in romance, and can finish each other’s sentences. Who doesn’t want a partner like that?


Brainstorming session

Then there’s the thing I hate: and that’s that Bakuman is really, really sexist.

You can sense the hand of an editor, somehow, in the introduction of the martial-arts-loving writer’s girlfriend, who karate-kicks him whenever he does or says something particularly outrageous. Subtle, no! But effective, yes! Women are, after all, 30% of Shounen Jump’s readership, so it wouldn’t make good business sense to insult them too much.


This is a panel from early on before, I suspect, an editor intervened to stem the damage. Or alternately, here’s Jog’s excellent analysis, including speculation that the sexism in this series is somewhat knowing.

It’s something, but it’s not enough. A partial list of Bakuman’s sexist and misogynist plot points might include:

–Marrying your girlfriend so she will shut up about the other girl who likes you (and whom you might like a little bit, too)

–Training a female mangaka in the art of catering to men: only in this way can her work be validated/successful

–General insistence that girls’ opinions don’t count, that only pretty girls matter, but that smart and pretty girls who don’t cater to men are actually “dumb” and unattractive

–To even out the balance, there is a plot arc involving the repulsiveness of a fat, slovenly, otaku male mangaka, who ignores his cute geek girl assistant to focus on a woman who is way out of his league. He gets what he deserves when both women reject him.

And on and on. While really bottom of the barrel guys have their characters dragged through the mud, too, there’s a clear, obvious line between the basic decency and grooming required of men, and the flawless beauty and sainthood required of women.


I’m just gonna like… leave this here.

The funny thing about this is, while a lot of shonen manga series are passively sexist, in that they don’t have any strong or interesting female characters, Bakuman, because it is actively sexist and misogynist, paradoxically includes a lot more strong female characters – very beautiful, very smart women we are supposed to dislike for their “bad personalities” unless and until they prove they are willing to abase themselves to men. Thus, Akito’s karate-loving girlfriend is eventually tamed, and puts Akito first in everything. Once he is engaged to her, she can’t question his feelings for other women, and she can’t have goals beyond the promotion of his career.


Perhaps true love means accepting me even when I am a jerk to you?

Or there is Moritaka’s future wife, a pure and distant paragon of virtue, who proves her goodness when she turns down an offer to undress to further her acting career. Or Aoki Ko, the female author of a respected shoujo series, who for some inexplicable reason submits herself to the boys’ club at Jump. She’s smart, pretty, and humble, but she can’t be any good until she learns how to pander to the male readers.


Although OTOH, the idea of being “trained” in the manly art of drawing panty shots is admittedly pretty funny.

The thing is, a bunch of these issues are real issues for women. When’s the last time you saw a boys’ comic address rampant sexism within the industry (and within the voice-acting industry, as well)? Or the struggles of women in a sexist society?

These issues are addressed in Bakuman, but not from a place of love and understanding. More from a place of contempt and loathing. I haven’t read until the end of the comic, so it’s possible that the series does turn itself around. But I doubt it! There are just too many clues that Ohba and/or Obata really mean it.

In the final analysis, Bakuman is one of those series I would really love, if it wasn’t for this one specific thing that I hate. I think that makes it a pretty good candidate for this week’s roundtable.

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

Matthew Brady on Kirby, the King

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Matt Brady left a stirring defense of Jack Kirby on Domingos’ recent post. I thought I’d highlight it here.

I love, love, love me some Kirby, and “Himon!” is one of my all-time favorite comics stories (it’s the one I wrote about in the Team Cul de Sac zine), so I feel like I’ve gotta argue against this piece somehow, but I doubt anything I say will have much impact or change anybody’s mind. Still! I feel like every argument against the King here is a reason I like his work so much, and I see complexities and fascinating art where Domingos sees loud, violent simplicity. The take on good and evil might be black and white, but there’s depth to it, a reflection of how Kirby saw the world. Darkseid is more than just an evil dictator, he’s THE dictator, the very face of Fascism, wanting to subjugate and control everyone and everything. Mister Miracle is Kirby himself, learning to live through oppression and escape to inspire others, and his love for Barda is what keeps him going. Orion (a counterexample to the good=pretty, bad=ugly divide, given that he hides his Apokaliptian visage behind a Mother Box-created facade) is the warrior struggling to use his power for good and fight the evil that spawned him. Yes, it’s all loud, brash, explosive, but it’s pitched at the level that suits the conflicts, stirring the heart with the primal battles of good and evil.

And there’s more depth in the use of violence too. A scene in which Orion loses control and savagely beats an evil fiend to death while laughing maniacally is powerful in its evocation of the way the urge to violence can be seductive. In “The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin!”, a regular human gets in the middle of a fight between Orion and another New God, and he is nearly beaten to a pulp, the damage to his frail body evident and monstrous, a horrible reminder of the way war chews people up and spits them out. This stuff isn’t just punches and explosions for kicks; Kirby examined the meaning behind his bombast and made us feel it on an emotional level as well as a visceral one.

Even the glorification of technology is far from universal; most of Kirby’s cosmic machines were impossibly huge contraptions that loomed over characters and landscapes, frighteningly incomprehensible in their functions. As much as he might have reveled in the coolness of futuristic machinery, Kirby demonstrated how it can and will be used for control and death.

I dunno, I hope Charles Hatfield or somebody will show up and mount a better defense of this stuff than I can. I agree that most superhero comics can be dismissed as “corporate-owned dreck”, but not Kirby. He’s got so much more going on than black and white morality, simplistic characters, technological fetishism, and glorification of violence. I might not be able to do it very well, but I’ll defend him to my dying day.

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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.