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Your Pshaw! for the day!

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Your Pshaw! for the day.

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Readers of Comics Comics may know (but more likely don’t) that Frank and I share a fondness for the British cartoonist Brendan McCarthy. Frank reviewed his book, Swimini Purpose, in our first issue. I only knew a little bit about him, but Frank knew and knows a lot, and has shared much. Anyhow, I like McCarthy for some of the same reasons I like Steve Ditko — he combines a nuts-and-bolts drawing ability with a genuinely eccentric vision of human distortion and psychedelia. When he draws astral planes they seem solid, constructed and utterly believable. He doesn’t dabble in flat-planed, cartoony, Peter Max-ian psychedelia (a type I love) but instead sets out to make a “realistic” psych-world. Just like Ditko. That made him the perfect cover artist for Peter Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man and a wonderfully off-kilter realizer of mainstream visions. It also, like Ditko, left him without a good match for his abilities. One needs a special kind of writer (like Milligan or some of the 2000 A.D.) guys to capitalize on those kind of abilities: sci-fi, surreal, and a bit silly. Perfectly British. Like that other great stylist, Steranko, one gets the feeling from reading the occasional interview and his previous web site, that lately McCarthy believes his own hype a bit too much and, as of late is proudly (and depressingly) doing storyboards and the odd comic book cover, as well as a disappointing issue of SOLO. Without strong content the stuff kinda turns to mush (like the drawing above). Remember The Stone Roses second record? It’s like that. So much talent, but not entirely sure how to use it. Anyhow, he has started a blog, and it’s a good way to keep up with his evolving vision. I hope he’ll hunker down, tighten up, and make something worthy of his talents. Presumptuously enough, I have my fingers crossed. It’s a fan’s lament, and not really fair (because who I am to have unrealistic expectations?), but isn’t that what fans are for?

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I spent Christmas with my girlfriend’s family, who very thoughtfully got me a couple of books, not knowing what an ungrateful wretch I really am. I already have (and still haven’t read) the Schulz bio. But I hadn’t even heard of Shooting War, a newish graphic novel by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman initially serialized online. Shooting War is the story of Jimmy Burns, a video blogger in 2010 who finds himself in even-worse-Iraq and, naturally, embedded in a fanatical military unit, kidnapped by a terrorist, and rebelling against the news establishment.

Let me digress for a minute. There are a few tendencies in contemporary culture that seem somewhat deadly:

1) A nerd-driven flippancy that signals: “I know more than you do, and I’m right all the time” (see: most blog-driven magazines).
2) The replacement of actual character-driven dialogue with TV or noir-shorthand. (see: any “adult” comic published by DC or Marvel in the last few years).
3) The inevitable “wacky” appearance by a previously “respectable” celebrity figure, in order to set it all in “perspective” (see: Bill Murray lately).
4) The substitution of photoshop technique for compelling images.
(see: most contemporary graphics).

Shooting War revels in all four of the above tendencies, in the process making the following points:

1) War is dumb
2) The news media is biased
3) Sometimes people need to grow up
4) Corporations are taking over America
5) There are fanatical Christians just like there are fanatical Muslims
6) Some old news guys still have integrity, and we can learn from them!

I suppose that it’s enough for a lot of books make the above points and walk away. What bothered me about Shooting War was, of course, that these points are boring and have been said a billion times on comedy shows, in newspapers, magazines, Doonesbury, etc etc. There’s not a single new idea in the book. It’s all recycled, media-driven stuff. And neither is there an original character. Jimmy is the (now) classic angry nerd typified in current culture–the glib, smart, and resourceful boy-man who learns some important lessons and gains maturity over the course of the narrative. And all of this is in the guise of a “revolutionary” narrative. The worst offense committed is throwing Dan Rather into the mix as a newly bad-ass father figure to Jimmy — Bill Murray in a Wes Anderson movie, or John Wayne in a Preacher comic. It’s all so damn easy. The art by Dan Goldman is equally tough to stomach: an undigested photoshop stew with no rhyme or reason to it. Goldman poses inexpressive figures littered with a ton of marks I suppose could be considered rendering against the most basic photoshop filter backgrounds. Anatomy is out the window, and for a supposedly character driven, issue-focused book, there’s not a single telling facial expression or body movement in the book. It’s all just poses. You can cover up a lot with a wacom tablet and CS3, but Goldman’s flimsy grasp on the most basic drawing and storytelling skills is pretty glaring. All the blur effects and shadows in the world can’t cover that up.

All of this is so much the worse because, if you’re going to do a fiction comic about a new media maverick in a warzone, you have to measure up to Brian Wood’s DMZ at the very least. That comic, while still possessing some of the faux-cool mannerisms of Shooting War, is at least smartly satirical and possessed of multi-dimensional characters. Shooting War is a slick, packaged product. It rails against mass media, while presenting something as homogenized and unthinking as the very thing is criticizes. It’s rebellion in a package — a kind of grotesque reflection of what passes for satire these days. Things like Shooting War are the inevitable byproduct of an increased interest in graphic novels (read: glut), but then again, the culture in general is full of them. It’s fake smart, fake rebellion. Seek out something real, something with meaning, instead.

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After a little wrangling, I have posted the somewhat infamous audio recording of my “interview” with CF at SPX 2007. Check it out here. But please don’t yell too loudly, he’s trying to finish Powr Mastrs 2. Shhhh. Also, remember to send positive thoughts to Obama today. He’s our only hope.

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Magical Mike Reddy, Comics Comics designer, husband, father, and hamburger-lover has released a fab new book in collaboration with The Fiery Furnaces: Blueberry Boat. It’s an excellent collection of illustrated fantastic lyrics for that record. Fans of great drawing and wordplay should not miss this one. You, kind audience, can get it from PictureBox, natch.

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Numerous Comics Comics contributors have wound up on Top 10 lists, and here‘s an unusually nice mention of project close to Frank’s inky heart: the Cold Heat Special, co-created by Jon Vermilyea.

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I enjoyed Rich Kreiner’s review of Comics Comics. It was, as Tim noted, too kind. So this isn’t an argument, thank heavens. In a long parenthetical thought, Kreiner wonders about our criteria for coverage, and also about our seeming fascination with the fact of something existing, as though the effort alone was enough to qualify our interest. I can’t speak for Tim or Frank, but, as for me, well, Kreiner might be on to something.

Sometimes I see things so sublime or so ridiculous that I have to just wonder about them. It’s not that I like them, per se. I don’t like Dave Sim’s Collected Letters, but what drives a cartoonist to undertake such a project is interesting to me because (a) Sim is clearly a man with his own vision and (b) he’s a hugely important cartoonist, no matter what you might think of the quality of his work. And, on the other hand, there are artists like like Steve Gerber or Michael Golden, both beloved Comics Comics figures.

Let me digress for a moment: During the most recent SPX, me, Frank, and Tim went out to dinner with a large group that included Gary Groth, Gilbert Hernandez and Bill Griffith. Gary ribbed us about Steve Gerber, etc., and Frank, in a moment of comics euphoria confessed his love of Michael Golden’s work to the entire table. I don’t think Bill even knew who we were talking about, and Gary seemed duly horrified, while Gilbert smiled beatifically, as if to say, “I love that this guy loves Golden, but I’m not saying a word”. I mean, Gary’s fought for sophistication in comics for 30 years, and now he has to listen to three knuckleheads talk about Golden and Gerber. Oy vey. See, all three of us were formed, in a sense, by The Comics Journal, and to an extent, by Groth’s own sensibility as a publisher and editor. But we also came up at a time when we didn’t (and still don’t) have to choose between art and hackwork. We can like both, and enjoy both on their own merits, precisely because Gary won the battle for sophistication and seriousness. His efforts have allowed us to sit back a bit and examine the things that got passed over, shunted aside or simply spit at. That means that Frank can talk about Michael Golden because he’s fascinated by his figuration in the context of action comics. Frank wouldn’t, at least, not sober, make a case for Golden as an artist in the same way he does for Gilbert. But then again, he did just post about Nexus. I guess what I’m saying is that a central tenant of Comics Comics is a kind of enjoyment of something within its context. Steve Gerber is an interesting comic book writer. That is enough to make him worth examining for us. And, he, like Golden, like Rude, et al, is someone who has willingly labored in a field with few rewards and a lot of creative restrictions. Those “rules” that these guys bump up against make for an interesting friction and can produce, accidentally or intentionally, interesting work. And part of is also that, to an extent, we take the greatness of someone like Dan Clowes for granted. He’s been written about, been hashed over. For us, it’s perhaps more fun to dig through a body of work that has yet to be poured over, and to find artists whose visions carried them into strange places under odd restrictions.

So, Rich Kreiner, yes, we, or at least I, sometimes like things just because they exist in an odd space, and occupy a strange little niche. And while I’ve never been a proponent of confusing effort with merit (i.e. the praise for something like Persepolis is primarily because people were impressed enough that a comic could be about Iran that they ignored how slight the actual content was), sometimes noting the effort is worthwhile. And I thank Kreiner for making the effort to write about us. Now if we can just make enough time to do that next issue….

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I’m supposed to be doing some accounting, but comics is more fun. Just kidding, everybody. Those royalty statements will be right on time. Um….yeah. Heh heh. Anyhow, here is a Basil Wolverton Mickey Mouse strip from the 1940s. I don’t know much about it. Found it in the much-discussed Graphic Story Magazine. This time from issue 12. It’s too awesome not to post. I hope I don’t get sued. Then I’d really have to do some accounting.