{"id":576,"date":"2009-10-04T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2009\/10\/revisiting-the-2009-tcaf-mainstreamalternative-comics-panel\/"},"modified":"2009-10-04T23:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T04:30:00","slug":"revisiting-2009-tcaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=576","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting the 2009 TCAF Mainstream\/Alternative Comics Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Robin at Inkstuds<\/a> was kind enough to have the TCAF<\/a> panel Frank, Robin, Robert Dayton<\/a>, Dustin Harbin <\/a>and I participated in transcribed by Squally Showers<\/a>. He sent me the transcription a few weeks ago and I finally got around to reading it.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I thought this panel sucked, due to nobody in particular\u2019s fault. But I think most panels are meandering and boring despite having intelligent moderators and participants. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. Anyway, I\u2019m just going to excerpt sections of it here and intersperse it with some new commentary.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure what the point of the panel was and, reading the transcription now, I don\u2019t think anybody<\/em> knew what the point was. If the point was to hear Frank speak enthusiastically about Kirby and Steranko, it succeeded and that\u2019s definitely an enjoyable, worthy reason to attend a panel. No joke.<\/p>\n

But I fear that the panel was interpreted as a statement that \u201calternative\u201d cartoonists having affection for \u201cmainstream\u201d comics is noteworthy or unusual or \u201cnew\u201d somehow. It\u2019s not. \u201cAlternative\u201d cartoonists bemoaning the abundance of boring, mundane mostly-autobio work is a false feeling to me. There are a lot of autobio \u201creal life\u201d stories, but they\u2019ve always been dwarfed by the pseudo-\u201cmainstream\u201d genre work, even outside of Marvel and DC. Look at Oni Press <\/a>and Slave Labor Graphics <\/a>and Antarctic Press <\/a>and Caliber Comics <\/a>and Tundra<\/a> and on and on. Look at the Hernandez Brothers. Look at the wave of alternative comics in the nineties… Zot<\/em> (which somehow looks both really<\/em> dated and also pre-Tezuka reprint boom ahead-of-its-time), Bone<\/em>, Kabuki<\/em> (don\u2019t forget that Scarab<\/em> spin-off series!), Madman<\/em>, THB<\/em> (fucking Escapo<\/em>! still lookin good a decade later,) etc.<\/p>\n

When I was a student at SVA in the early ’00s I was mostly hanging out with the Meathaus<\/a><\/em> guys and almost all of them were doing \u201calternative\u201d sci-fi\/fantasy\/horror\/whatever genre comics. Some later did more \u201calternative\u201d-leaning books for DC or Vertigo. Tomer Hanuka <\/a>did Bipolar<\/em> (the last issue of which was essentially a Bizzaro World <\/em>Aquaman story) and later did the Midnight Mass <\/em>covers for Vertigo. And, of course, Farel Dalrymple <\/a>did the great Omega Man<\/strike> the Unknown<\/em> series after doing his solo, surreal Pop Gun War<\/em> series that, aesthetically, is in the post-Marvel House Style world similar to Jim Rugg <\/a>(Street Angel<\/em> from Slave Labor). Even Thomas Herpich\u2019s <\/a>(who I adore<\/em>) second book was mostly science fiction short stories. Meanwhile the amerimanga artists at Tokyopop and Oni were doing sci-fi\/romance\/fantasy comics.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been wave after wave of \u201calternative\u201d comics with ties to \u201cmainstream\u201d comics from the ’80s to today, unaffected by some horrible glut of boring real-life comics that people complain about. I\u2019m not saying that those books don\u2019t exist (they do). I\u2019m saying that I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been a point where one genre was threatening to extinguish the other.<\/p>\n

Frank Santoro: Is everyone \u2026 I\u2019m going to talk as if everybody knows what I\u2018m talking about. If you don\u2019t know what I\u2018m talking about, please interject at any time. But basically, it\u2019s like Kirby of course created Captain America, the Fantastic Four, but then in the \u201870s, when he went back to Marvel, he was doing these really crazy books like 2001<\/span>, which was essentially based on the movie. But by issue 5 it had nothing to do with the movie. [laughter] What\u2019s really interesting about this comic is \u2026 can you scroll ahead a couple of things \u2026 it starts off as this crazy battle and\u2014couple of more?\u2014and he goes to The Source which is, if you remember 2001<\/span>, the black monolith. I call it The Source. [Robin laughs] Can you scroll ahead one more time? He\u2019s coming out of this battle\u2014one more, one more\u2014and then it\u2019s just like it\u2019s all\u2014keep going one more, a little more, a little more. [murmurs of dissent.] Where\u2019s the locker room?<\/p>\n

Robin McConnell: Oh, it didn\u2019t make it in.<\/p>\n

Frank: Oh bummer. Well, anyway, it\u2019s like a game. It\u2019s basically like, was it Heroesville?<\/p>\n

Dash Shaw: Comicsville.<\/p>\n

Frank: Comicsville. So it\u2019s like a game. It\u2019s like a virtual reality game. So this whole episode in the beginning is just this game but it\u2019s like to me, it was this treatise on Kirby\u2019s idea of what being a hero is or was. It\u2019s a game. It\u2019s like a sport. I think it was transparent about what all his comics are about. To me, this particular comic wraps it all up, I horde this comic whenever I see it in the bargain bins. A lot of people don\u2019t like this late style, but I think this is the kind of style that I think is carrying on. It\u2019s still, I think, very fresh. It\u2019s not like his old stuff. It\u2019s really different. I think it\u2019s really ahead of the curve and I\u2019m running out of steam.<\/p>\n

Robin: When did this come out in comparison to the New Gods stuff?<\/p>\n

Frank: This was after the New Gods stuff. So this is post-DC. He got canned from DC. All of his DC books got canceled. Then he went back to Marvel. This was around the time he was doing The Eternals<\/span>, Devil Dinosaur<\/span>, the Captain America\/Black Panther stuff. Anybody who read that Captain America\u2014Madbomb, those issues. Those are really great. Anybody else want to riff on [inaudible, 2:47]<\/p>\n

Robert Dayton: You know what I find really interesting about his 2001 stuff is it\u2019s almost like a mantra. You buy every issue and as a kid you probably feel ripped off, because every issue goes exactly the same. At the end of the issue, a caveman or someone back in time, meets the monolith. The End. Next issue: Same thing. It\u2019s almost like reading Gerald Jablonski\u2019s comics. It becomes like a mantra. It\u2019s just repetition. It\u2019s kind of fascinating reading each and every issue, because even the series, like basically he did a Treasury edition of 2001<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Dash: Yeah, it\u2019s insane.<\/p>\n

Robert: Which is insane. It\u2019s massive. It\u2019s huge. It\u2019s gorgeous.<\/p>\n

Frank: It\u2019s beautiful. You know those oversized treasuries? Remember those things from the \u201870s? It\u2019s an adaptation of the movie, right?<\/p>\n

Robert: Yeah.<\/p>\n

Frank: But it\u2019s totally different. It\u2019s Kirby-style. It makes no sense.<\/p>\n

Dash: He got some production stills from the movie that you can see that he directly swiped from.<\/p>\n

Frank: Yeah!<\/p>\n

Dash: And then he just connected it with like just Kirby stuff.<\/p>\n

Frank: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

Robert: And Kirby was such a collage artist, too. So in the Treasury edition, there\u2019s all these crazy collages.<\/p>\n

Dash: The sequence right after this where it moves into the reality is really nice, too, because the reality turns out to not \u2026 I don\u2019t know if \u2026<\/p>\n

Frank: Yeah, well see, he\u2019s playing this game.<\/p>\n

Dash: This isn\u2019t real. Like sometimes when I \u2026<\/p>\n

Frank: Like self-heat chicken dinner? He lives in this giant apartment complex and then it\u2019s just this thing. It\u2019s Mountain Air.<\/p>\n

Dash: But that beach scene isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

Frank: So it\u2019s all Matrix<\/span>! It\u2019s like Matrix<\/span>. It\u2019s all \u2026 but like pre- \u2026 whatever, go ahead. [laughter] Go ahead. Go ahead.<\/p>\n

Dash: I was going to say when you flip through a lot of these comics, my first reaction is these are way too wordy. I don\u2019t know. Do you have that feeling?<\/p>\n

Robin: They\u2019re wordy, but \u2026<\/p>\n

Dash: But then in this sequence, you flip through it and you think that \u201cThis is actually real,\u201d but all of the text is about how none of this, \u201cThis isn\u2019t a real seascape\u201d and everything like that. It\u2019s a juxtaposition.<\/p>\n

Robin: Do you find this is one of the more Kirby doing a better job of mixing the two.<\/p>\n

Dash: Well, he wrote these, too.<\/p>\n

Robin: Yeah, but that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying. Sometimes the story isn\u2019t as strong as the art.<\/p>\n

Frank: Well, I think the story is equally as strong as the art. I mean \u2026 go ahead.<\/p>\n

Dash: Well, I don\u2019t think he would do this the Marvel style if he was doing it for himself. Right?<\/p>\n

Frank: Right.<\/p>\n

Dustin Harbin: I would have thought with the wordiness that this was in the Marvel style. Because the story looks so clear with that page layout and then all these words were kind of scotch taped on top of it. Which is kind of the Marvel style \u2026<\/p>\n

Frank: Well, he wrote, all of Kirby\u2019s stuff, you look at the originals in like the Kirby Collector<\/span> or whatever, all of his stuff, he has all of the dialogue written in the sides or the back and then Stan or whomever just kind of cleaned it up a little bit. So I think that he\u2019s still doing it in that style, in that way, because I think Mike Royer edited these also, so he helped clean them up. But for me, this was a real gateway comic\u2014just to go back to the main thrust of the panel. It\u2019s like, I was really into Kirby but this was way out there. I didn\u2019t like his \u201870s style. I thought it was really wack and I hated it for a long time. It took me a long time to get into it. But to me, this starts heading into this alternate world. I don\u2019t want to say alternative comics, but it\u2019s just so different from what he had been doing for the 20 years previous that, like I feel like this is what ends up influencing the current generation. So \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to read this and not think of Mazzucchelli<\/a>, both since Asterios Polyp <\/em>came out recently and he\u2019s one of the kings of the \u201cmainstream\u201d\/\u201dalternative\u201d fusion artists. Polyp<\/em> has some stellar examples of this. My favorite sequence in the book is when Polyp, the \u201cpaper architect,\u201d builds a tree house. I told Mazz I loved this scene and he said: \u201cKirby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Or how about this Steranko-esque film still-like panel of Asterios and Hana at the beach, pausing in silhouette, below. I like the melodrama of it. It\u2019s ballsy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Frank: The Escape Artist. Yeah, so Steranko, after Kirby\u2014Kirby was a big deal in the \u201960s, but then in the late \u201860s, there was this guy who was really kind of like the new regime was Jim Steranko, James Steranko. He took Kirby\u2019s style and made it really design-y and really modern.<\/p>\n

Robin: Deco pop, almost.<\/p>\n

Frank: Deco pop is a good way of describing it. This particular story on the right, this is Bernie Krigstein from the late \u201850s and this is a Steranko story from the early \u201870s and a horror comic from Marvel. Can we click ahead one? And you can see he\u2019s doing all these really wacky layouts and stuff like that. It\u2019s not very \u2026 like this face is very Kirby to me and a lot of the figures are very Kirby, but as Dash likes to point out if you think Kirby\u2019s anatomy is messed up, Steranko\u2019s is even more messed up. He\u2019s just doing it. So a lot of these figures are really cut-out figures and stuff. But he\u2019s doing a lot of things with time that hearken back to what Krigstein was doing in the \u201850s.<\/p>\n

Dash: The Krigstein comic is “The Master Race,” that Spiegelman likes so much to talk about. He did an article in The New Yorker<\/span> about it.<\/p>\n

Robin: Yeah. I think he first did an essay back in [inaudible, 11:14]<\/p>\n

Frank: See, this is the subway going by and all the figures going by fast. He\u2019s breaking up the time like way differently. I mean, this is \u201959 \u2026<\/p>\n

Robin: This is earlier than that.<\/p>\n

Frank: Really?<\/p>\n

Dash: I want to hear Frank \u2026 you called this cinematic before, those panels. I\u2019ve heard that used a lot. I don\u2019t know if you used it.<\/p>\n

Frank: Did I say that?<\/p>\n

Dash: Why do you think people call those kind of panels, tall \u2026<\/p>\n

Frank: Oh, the tall panels. Because it breaks up the time differently. I think it\u2019s a way of like Kirby is all about it\u2019s not instantaneous moment to moment. It\u2019s more like every ten seconds or something. You see the punch, then you see the reaction. But he\u2019s doing every \u2026 this is like five seconds or whatever. This is like an instantaneous thing. Cinematic \u2026 I think so, but it\u2019s just more like \u2026 Steranko\u2019s cinematic in the sense of his framing, I think. His framing is way more \u2026<\/p>\n

Dash: If you scrolled, those long horizontal things like this.<\/p>\n

Frank: Oh this. Yeah. Well, I think that\u2019s cinematic because in the late \u201860s, everybody went panorama in the \u201860s, so it\u2019s like your eye, I think, is going across these panels.<\/p>\n

Robin: It\u2019s kind of like the whole Orson Welles \u2026<\/p>\n

Frank: Deep focus.<\/p>\n

Robin: That long \u2026<\/p>\n

Robert: The pan. You know what I was thinking? I was looking at these and speaking of cinematic, I was really thinking that Steranko\u2019s a lot like Brian De Palma. That\u2019s because both De Palma and both Steranko, for a lot of reasons, actually, they both use a lot of genre tropes. Like this is an old dark house kind of story. Also, De Palma would always make you conscious that you were watching a film and I think Steranko makes you really conscious that you were reading a comic. That\u2019s what the framing\u2014I mean, De Palma would use a lot of split screen and you see the way things are divided up here. Also, the way that they acknowledged the old masters: Steranko acknowledging Krigstein and Kirby and De Palma acknowledging Hitchcock, most especially.
<\/span>
Something that Jeet Heer touched on previously on CC<\/em><\/a>, and was also asked at the TCAF panel, was how necessary it is for readers to track or be interested in artist\u2019s influences.<\/p>\n

Audience member: [inaudible, 45:45-] I mean, there is value to knowing stuff. It\u2019s okay, but if you just want pleasure and it doesn\u2019t matter to you and you\u2019re getting the pleasure and something\u2019s hitting the pleasure button and you don\u2019t know that it\u2019s just a third generation knockoff, then it\u2019s okay. At the same time, if you want to be an informed reader \u2026 [continues]<\/p>\n

Dash: I think if you\u2019re coming to this panel, you want to be an informed reader.<\/p>\n

Audience member: \u2026 reading the best work \u2026<\/p>\n

Robin: The main thing is you enjoy comics. Let\u2019s see what that person enjoyed.<\/p>\n

Robert: If you like this, you might like this.<\/p>\n

Robin: That\u2019s exactly it. Without being commercial thing like DC\u2019s, \u201cYou like Watchmen<\/span>, here\u2019s the next thing to read.\u201d You like Brandon Graham? Read Moebius, you\u2019ll love it if you haven\u2019t read Moebius. That\u2019s kind of the conduct of people who love this stuff and reading it is rather important. There are so many comics to read, and people don\u2019t really know that. And good luck at finding this stuff for an affordable except for the horrible Incal reprints that are re-colored.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Personally, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary for readers to be informed about this stuff. It\u2019s only of interest to people who care. But, I think the big \u201ctrickle down\u201d effect IS interesting. I care. Not for an \u201cI know who\u2019s ripping off of who! Ha ha!\u201d annoying reason, but because it\u2019s telling a wider story about the psychology of artists. If you\u2019re someone who\u2019s interested in that, it\u2019s worth tracking what was coming out when, or who was reading what when, because the \u201ctrickle down\u201d effect over time is more exciting, to me, than holding a romantic belief that everyone\u2019s working in a vacuum devoid of influences. All of the artists struggling to reach that \u201cvacuum\u201d\/influence-less state are revealing in their own way.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I don\u2019t think people should feel that artists are handed a menu of what came before them and starting ordering things (\u201cI\u2019ll have a little bit of Kirby sprinkled with Sol Lewitt, please\u201d), and I don\u2019t think people should feel artists are necessarily having a conversation with other artists exclusively (\u201cWare did this, so I went the other way.\u201d) The motivations are a tangled web encompassing a million things. It\u2019s the whole psychology of the person. If you\u2019re happy never reaching a conclusion, just bouncing around reading comics history or whatever, then it\u2019s a journey worth making. Or at least a panel worth attending.<\/p>\n

Huge thanks to Robin again and Squally Showers, Robert Dayton, Dustin Harbin and Frank.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a random Gray Morrow <\/a>Edge of Chaos<\/em> spread, because it rules. Show n tell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robin at Inkstuds was kind enough to have the TCAF panel Frank, Robin, Robert Dayton, Dustin Harbin and I participated in transcribed by Squally Showers. He sent me the transcription a few weeks ago and I finally got around to reading it. Frankly, I thought this panel sucked, due to nobody in particular\u2019s fault. But I think most panels are meandering and boring despite having intelligent moderators and participants. Maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[327,429,661,999,1014,1264],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-mazzucchelli","tag-dalrymple","tag-rugg","tag-panels","tag-pope","tag-tcaf"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}