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Because we got a little off-schedule this week, I’m not going to make the big Shazam reveal until tomorrow (sorry, I know). But since my last post may have come off as a little more strident than I intended, a little brief clarification may be in order.

First, I wrote that only one superheroes-grown-up story has ever worked, but to be fair, I might well have missed something or other. (I’ve never read Rick Veitch‘s Bratpack or its sequels, for example, and for all I know, they’re brilliant. And Alan Moore’s early Miracleman comics worked to at least some extent.) And once you’ve got more than one “exception that proves the rule”, maybe the exceptions don’t actually prove the rule so much as they disprove it. So there’s that.

Second, I also kind of gave the game away when I brought in Ursula K. Le Guin. Once you take away the capes and underwear, there’s really no reason that a story with super-powers can’t be successful (and “adult”). Books ranging from Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination to the New Testament have proved that a super-powered protagonist isn’t necessarily a liability. It’s the costumes that cause most of the problems. (But they’re big problems. Green Arrow yelling, “My ward is a junkie!” is bad all enough on its own, but when he’s dressed like Robin Hood while he’s doing it, it’s all over. Wearing that outfit, reading the 9/11 Commission Report would seem ridiculous.)

That’s all, I think, since I don’t want to get too deep into the nerd weeds. I still think my general point was valid, but consider adding these grains of salt, please.

Unrelated bonus: Since Dan brought up Jerry Lewis comics, here’s a memorable comic book moment that’s been making the internet rounds lately, for those who haven’t already seen it: When Jerry Met Kal-El.

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I stumbled on Kevin Huizenga’s blog this morning and was glad to take it all in. I’ve enjoyed Kevin’s comics for a while now, and his recent issue of Or Else, number 4, was absolutely thrilling. It struck me as a humble attempt to explain the entire world in just under a hundred pages. Kevin digs deep spiritual holes and then lets the rest of us peer in. He reminds me a lot of Ben Jones in his philosophical concerns…it’s just that they each exited through a different door or something. I’m glad he’s able to communicate what he does, because it’s the kind of exploration so often lacking in comics. Kevin is after the universe, I think, but through a macro lense.

Anyhow, onto the meat of this post. Seems as though Tim is covering this week’s historical business, so, hey, have you ever seen the Royal Trux comic book? It’s pretty amazing. It was published by the band’s record label, Drag City, in 2001 but I only just got a copy today. The band itself, meanwhile, is long gone. So there’s a time lag. Maybe this is history today after all. Well, the Trux comic is written by guitarist (and occassional writer on comics) Neil Michael Hagerty and drawn by Doreen Kirchner. It’s like a metaphysical stroll through the Royal Trux universe. I like a bunch of things about it: one, the idea of a band as a universe that could produce a comic book. Two, Kirchner’s art is all coloring book-bold outlines, and unexpectedly off kilter compositions. And three, Hagerty is wonderfully verbose, maxing-out speech balloons on nearly every page. It’s an unassuming comic in the same way, say, a Jerry Lewis comic from 1960 (one of my finds last weekend) is unassuming. It’s yarn-spinning without any goal besides a certain kind of entertainment. Check it out if you happen upon it.

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Superheroes and social issues usually don’t mix well. Whether it’s Superman crying because he’s unable to prevent famine in Africa (which actually seems like the kind of problem he could solve if he really wanted to), or the Justice League coming face to face with the fact that being raped by a supervillain can turn a woman into a psychopathic killer (for those who don’t follow superhero comics, that story was actually published, just last year, as DC’s flagship title), their engagement with complicated “adult” problems is generally puerile, hystrionic, and more likely to belittle the issues involved than to clarify them.

This kind of superficial treatment of complicated ideas in superhero comics saw its apotheosis in the 1970s, when writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams (who currently moonlights as a plate tectonics skeptic) teamed up for a series of Green Arrow/Green Lantern adventures, with the heroes joining forces to confront such social ills as racism and drug addiction.

These stories are still celebrated in some circles today as somehow breaking important ground, though they are basically the embarrasingly dated equivalents to the “very special episodes” of bad sitcoms.

Basically, the quest to depict superheroes as “all grown up” is just a bad idea at the outset—so far, to my knowledge, this artistic strategy has worked exactly once. (And no, I don’t consider The Dark Knight Returns to be “grown-up”; that book works best when the reader is fifteen years old. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.) Superheroes are the vehicle for adolescent power fantasies, more or less by definition.

Which is not to say that the superhero story is a bankrupt genre or that its tropes are incapable of being used to great effect; it’s just that like any other genre, superhero stories have built-in limitations. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s early Spider-Man stories do a remarkable job within those limits, as do Frank Miller’s later Daredevil comics, at a slightly more sophisticated level.

(More obliquely, Chris Ware has shown that the iconic value of Superman can be used quite effectively to very different purposes in his early Jimmy Corrigan stories, and more obliquely still, Ursula K. Le Guin has shown the very complicated and profound ramifications of power fantasy in her original Earthsea trilogy, despite the fact that it features wizards instead of super-powered aliens. (Anyone interested in the potential triumphs and pitfalls inherent to fantasy for young adults should pick up a copy of her essay collection The Language of the Night posthaste.))

I’ve rambled on far too long already, so I’m going to end this here for now. So far I’ve just been leading up to what I really want to talk about, a sixty-year-old superhero comic that deals extremely successfully with a grave political problem. On Wednesday, I’ll reveal the masterpiece in question. If you can’t wait (and I’m sure most of you can’t, this is so exciting), I’ll leave you with a one-word hint: Shazam.

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Ok, there were some real material benefits of MoCCA besides the aches and pains described below. I picked up two excellent comics (and some other really good ones, but these stand out).

First, Knitting For Whitsun by John Bagnall. Bagnall is a British cartoonist who has been around since the ’80s. He tells particularly English stories with a smooth, sinewy line that’s somewhere between psychedelic and, as he puts it, ‘musty’. His attention to the particularities of Englishness brings to mind vintage Kinks songs; it’s all in the carefully chosen details and dry, bemused wit. He has some fine features, like “Disappearing Phrases”, about exactly that in British culture, as well as reprints of weekly comic strips that, Ben Katchor-like, examine Bagnall’s urban English terrain. Bagnall has something to say and a lived-in voice that makes these tales a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.

And second, Kim Deitch was sitting down the row from the PictureBox booth selling his wares and dispensing wisdom. I picked up a copy of BANZAI!, a 1978 title by Deitch and underground peers Roger Brand and Joel Beck. Kim wryly told me that he’s the only living artist of the three; Brand and Beck apparently both lived a bit too hard for their own good and passed away in 1985 and 1999 respecitvely. Anyhow, this comic book contains a couple of stories by each artist. Deitch’s central piece is a hilarious romp about a porn store robbery and features one of his more arresting images (it involves a bullet and a blow up doll). Beck’s stories are amusing anecdotal yarns, but the real surprise here are Roger Brand’s two stories. Brand was an assistant to Wally Wood and it shows. One story, “In More Innocent Times” documents Brand’s youthful excesses in Berkeley in fine lined Wood detail. Another story, “The Longstain Taint”, is a Faust-like story of compromise rendered in thick brushstrokes reminiscent of (that other icon of comics) Harvey Kurtzman’s best 1950s work. It’s compelling reading and Brand seems engulfed by it. The stories are verbose and densely rendered, reeking of a kind of desperation you don’t feel much anymore. They read like stories that had to come out. I never thought much of Brand, but these two tales make me want to explore him a bit more. I often forget that much of the underground was about telling stories of all kinds and packing as much into a short story as possible. It’s a ’50s comic book model, rather than than a literary one; constrained by the boundaries of the comic book genre at the time. The ambition was in the work at hand, not the career. BONZAI! is a great glimpse at some fine work by the still-top-of-his-game Deitch and two underground talents that never quite made it.

Finally, I got to spend some time with PShaw, the Boston-based cartooning enigma. I highly recommend all of PShaw’s comics (particularly his Strings book), and was lucky enough to have a look at his original art as well. His meticulous lines and ink washes are miracles of cartoon imagery. We hope to feature him further in an upcoming issue of our little mag.

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In this week’s issue of the trade newspaper Advertising Age, “Media Guy” Simon Dumenco has astutely chosen this publication as his current “Pop Pick”.

‘Comics Comics’ ($5 by Internet order) is a new mini-mag that “aims to document contemporary and past comics, from a pluralistic, affectionate, but critical standpoint.” If that sounds a little heady, well, it is–and things get equally quasi-scholarly at comicscomicsmag.blogspot.com, where you can find loving meditations on the artistry of greats such as Scrooge McDuck father Carl Banks [sic]. But you don’t have to be a comics nerd to get inspired by the beautiful art. … Comics Comics shares creators and contributors with The Ganzfeld, an art annual … that shares a similar passion for thinky illustration. Check out theganzfeld.com and roll your mouse over the letters of the logo to view a supercool animation by Flash genius Patrick Smith. And then amuse yourself further by visiting his web site, vectorpark.com

Now we just sit back and wait for the flood of advertising requests from Courvoisier and Aston Martin, anxious to get in on this whole “graphic novel” craze everyone’s talking about. (Actually, come to think of it, if we were really that smart and marketing-savvy, we should have called the magazine Graphic Novels Graphic Novels.)

Also, sometime soon we will begin presenting actual, not just self-promoting material again. We felt like we needed to give you a chance to catch your breath and rest your mind a little first. We’ll start learning you again but soon.

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Dan hit the big time this weekend, finally recognized for his “comic book guru” status by that noted cartooning periodical, The Washington Post.

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But now we’re pretty tired. Comics Comics was launched with only one actual gun fight along the way. Here is contributing editor Ben Jones’ cartoon impression:

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You’ve read the blog, you’ve absorbed the hype, now it’s time to actually see what Comics Comics is all about. Could Dan be the new generation’s Art Spiegelman?! (Wha’!?) Only one way to find out – come out this weekend and buy all his junk!

This weekend, Comics Comics will debut at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York City’s Puck Building. Stop by and pick up the premiere issue, t-shirts, and the latest PictureBox releases. Many great artists and cartoonists will be at our table throughout the weekend, including Paper Rad, Frank Santoro, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Gary Panter, Matthew Thurber, David Sandlin, Taylor McKimens, and Jonathon Rosen.

Besides the magazine, PictureBox will be releasing:

Two new comic books: Cold Heat #1, by Ben (Paper Rad) Jones & Frank Santoro, and Incanto by Frank Santoro.

Two new books: Gore by Black Dice and Jason Frank Rothenberg, and Me a Mound by Trenton Doyle Hancock.

Jessica (Paper Rad) Ciocci’s limited run artists’ book, Pig Tales.

A series of large offset “posters for your dorm room or crash pad” by Brian Chippendale, Gary Panter, BJ & Frank Santoro.

And of course, Dan’s amazing new anthology, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969, just published by Abrams.

If you can only pick one day to attend, make it Sunday, as Dan will be presenting a slide show based on his book at 4 pm.

(Personally, if I didn’t have to be at the convention all weekend, I’d spend Saturday at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in Madison Square Park or the Phil Karlson double feature at the Film Forum. You can do whatever you want.)

Then, this Saturday night, between 7 and 9 pm, join us for our magazine’s launch party at Participant Inc in the Lower East Side.

Beer and other beverages provided.

PARTICIPANT INC
95 Rivington Street
NYC, NY 10002

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Bryan Munn was recently kind enough to link to this site, and he had some kind things to say, for which I’d like to thank him.

He also took issue with my invocation of Robert Louis Stevenson in the post about Carl Barks:

Barks did manage some interesting social satire and his storytelling and dialogue are very sharp, but Robert Louis Stevenson? Maybe it’s just because one of my old perfessors was an editor of the Complete RLS, but I don’t see the complexity of plot or theme in the decidedly adult work of Stevenson mirrored in Barks. Now when we compare Stevenson’s drawing to Barks…

I have two quick things to say in response.

One, I did write, “in some ways”…

And two, I did not intend to compare the complexity of Barks’ work directly to Stevenson’s, which is why I wrote, “In some ways, Barks’ place [italics added] in comics is similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s in English literature.” Meaning that the grace and apparent ease they display in their story-telling leads many to misunderstand or underestimate their work.

I certainly didn’t want to imply that Barks’ duck stories are as complex as Stevenson’s writings. Though I’m not altogether sure that they aren’t. I’d have to think about it a lot more than I have heretofore.

In any case, generally, I’m not sure if it is really wise (or fair) to directly compare the work of two artists working in such different media. Making comics is different than writing prose, and the techniques involved (and the responses generated) are probably too divergent to make a one-to-one comparison. What they are trying to accomplish is simply too different. Likewise (to use a different art as an example), it would probably not be very fruitful to take, say, Goya’s war prints, set them side-by-side with Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War stories, and proclaim, “Goya’s more complicated”, or vice versa.

Well, it’s all too complicated for a quick post like this one. Food for thought, as they say, and thanks again to Munn.

UPDATE: No one say anything about the (unwise, unfair) Hergé/Tati thing below. I don’t want to hear it. Just pretend it never happened.

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In alphabetical order:

Apocalypse Nerd #3, by Peter Bagge
I know a lot of people have been disappointed with this series, but I’m really liking it. Definitely an improvement over his last effort, Sweatshop (though I liked that, too). The first issue was a little lackluster, but that was mostly scene-setting, and so can perhaps be forgiven. With this issue, Bagge seems to have really hit his stride, and it’s interesting to see a cartoonist who’s mostly dealt with kind of “slice-of-life” social satire (for lack of a better term) change gears and deal with a more fantastic premise. If you don’t like Bagge in general, you probably won’t like this, but if you do, and gave up early, this is worth giving another chance.

The Comics Before 1945, by Brian Walker
I started reading this mostly out of a sense of obligation (what with having to find things to talk about for this blog and all), but have ended up enjoying myself a lot more than I anticipated. I’ve only gotten through the “Turn of the Century” section so far, but this is a really nice anthology and history. Even Outcault clicked with me this time, which has never happened before. After I finish this, it’s back to the Blackbeard books.

The Great Comic Book Heroes, by Jules Feiffer
I just re-read this actually—it only takes an hour or two. If you don’t know, it’s a very insightful and pointed, if too short, essay on Golden Age superhero comics. Feiffer’s take on Superman was somewhat infamously stolen by Quentin Tarantino for a David Carradine monologue in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Which is kind of interesting, considering what Feiffer writes about the high prevalence of swiping amongst comic book artists back in the day. (I’d hate to think the practice still goes on.) Probably fodder for a blog entry of its own, even, comparing attitudes about swiping between filmmakers and cartoonists. If I felt a little sharper, I’d write it.

Tintin in America, by Hergé
This, too, I picked up as homework. I’ve read very little Hergé (just a few albums about a decade ago) and decided to try again, starting at the beginning (or at least as close to the beginning as I could get without visiting eBay for out-of-print books). The conventional rap is that Hergé didn’t really get good until a few volumes later, but I found this pretty terrific. Gangsters, cowboys, Indians: all the great American tropes of the 1930s, seen through a slick, Continental style. Somewhat reminiscent of Jacque Tati‘s films, only actually funny, instead of just theoretically so.