Big Media Empire, Small Media Empire

The new Comics Journal is out. The bulk of the issue is devoted to a roundtable on David Michaelis’ Schulz biography, including an enormous essay by Schulz’s son Monte. I haven’t waded through the whole thing yet, but the consensus seems to confirm the general impression I gleaned from the media firestorm around it, viz. — Michaelis is an idiot. Basically, the biographer decided that Schulz and Charlie Brown were the same person and went about cherry-picking facts to show how depressed and oppressed Schulz was. Can I just say, barf? (I did say just that about the Schulz-as-tortured-artist meme in this essay, for those who are interested.)

Anyway,while I’m all for giving Michaelis what-for, I think R. C. Harvey in his review is maybe freaking out a little too much. He worries:

Michaelis’ biography will serve hereafter to perpetuate its author’s jaundiced opinion: A sad and lonely Schulz is only part of what Michaelis sees, but the fragment, by virtue of its sensation, is getting all the notice, and it is shaping popular opinion in a way profoundly at variance with the man Schulz was.

Harvey then goes on to suggest that the Schulz family maybe/possibly should sue Michaelis for revenue that will be lost when people no longer want to read Peanuts because they think Schulz wasn’t likable.

I understand the outrage but…really, just take deep breaths, or read a Snoopy cartoon or something. Nobody’s going to sue anyone; both because we’ve got the first amendment here, and because Michaelis’ book resulted in a humongous, gigantic, media feeding-frenzy, which undoubtedly resulted in a huge mega-bonanza of wealth for the Schulz family — which, in any case, is not exactly hard up to begin with. I guess they could try to get him for pain and suffering (though Monte seems too level-headed to bother with such nonsense) but I can’t imagine that Michaelis actually cost them any money.

Most importantly, the suggestion that Michaelis can somehow permanently damage Charles Schulz is, I think, misguided. Critics can sometimes make or break reputations, it’s true. But Michaelis is not that critic, and Schulz is not that reputation. What Schulz is is one of the two or three greatest artists of the twentieth century, who also happens to be one of the most popular creators of the last fifty years. His work is going to be around for generations. There are going to be lots more biographies over the years, and lots more poetasters who’ll hitch their wagon to his star by saying dumb things about him. You might as well let them; it’s not going to hurt Schulz any. If you’re going to have faith in any art at all, Peanuts is the thing to have faith in. It’s indestructible. Ultimately, Michaelis just made an ass of himself; Schulz and his work will be fine.
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And speaking of poetasters — if you manage to get past the Schulz stuff in TCJ, you’ll find a short review by me of Jack Cole’s Betsy and Me. And this Saturday from 7-8 at Quimby’s I’ll be reading from a new zine excerpting some of the essays from the gay utopia website I edited. They’ll also be some dirty cartoons shown by Alexander Stewart, a banner designed by Dewayne Slightweight, an ode to Robert Mitchum’s genitals by Paul Nudd, an essay about invertebrate-on-ungulate action read by an emissary of the Giant Squid, and more. Plus you can purchase a shiny new zine with a gorgeous cover by Lilli Carre.
So come by if you’re in Chicago. You can find more info here.

Paradigm Shift

Dirk I. Tiede
Paradigm Shift — Part One: Equilibrium
Paradigm Shift — Part Two: Equilibrium

As Kim Thompson, Steven Grant, and others have noted, American comics have long been split between snooty literary art and bottom-drawer super-hero fare. The bread-and-butter genre work that fills most of the market in other mediums is AWOL. As a result, when readers want romance or action (as most of them do) they import it from Japan.

Not that there aren’t creators trying to fill the gap. Take Dirk Tiede’s *Paradigm Shift*. A police procedural/horror amalgam, it’s exactly the sort of professional, entertaining American genre comic that is flying off the shelves in some alternate universe where D.C. and Marvel aren’t run by complete fucking idiots. Tiede assimilates manga visuals — complex layouts, cartoony characters, even stylized hair-dos —with as much grace as any westerner I’ve seen. His craftsmanship is very impressive — the Chicago architecture is painstakingly rendered, and he even uses actual Mandarin calligraphy for some of the dialogue. The book’s action is brisk and engaging, especially in the fight-scene set pieces. And while the plot is predictable enough that even the werewolf surprise isn’t especially surprising, that’s hardly a cardinal sin in this sort of endeavor.

There are a couple of problems. Tiede’s characters are so determinedly likeable that they tip right over into bland —not to mention unbelievable (I mean, these are supposed to be *Chicago* cops, y’know?) Similarly, though the story has a fair amount of blood (including some very nicely-rendered mauling victims) it lacks the moral ambiguity, the sex, and even the seediness one usually expects from police procedurals. Tiede all but apologizes in his notes for a mildly revealing shower scene. It’s kind of nice to see a creator deliberately eschew exploitation. But unfortunately, when you remove the pulp, the form tends to seem a little hollow.

Still, despite the limitations of the story, Tiede’s talent as an illustrator and commercial content has allowed him to do fairly well He’s been running the strips online at dynamanga.com for (he estimates) about1000 readers a day. The self-published collections have moved about 800 copies — not bad considering that he doesn’t really have a distributor. As it turns out, people want to read solid genre fare. Only in American comicdom could this be a revelation.

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This review first appeared in the Comics Journal # 285. Dirk Tiede’s comics are online here.

Old Comics For New Bottles

I’ve been reading some of my old, barely remembered comics to my completely super-hero obsessed 4-year old. He loves them all indiscriminately, of course. My reactions are more mixed.

The Super-Friends

I presume some of you have a memory of the animated television series with Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Robin, and the Wonder Twins (Zan and Jayna). Anyway, it was also turned into a comic-book series in the late 70s, early 80s, and I bought a bunch of issues (I would have been 8 or 9 then, I guess.)

I had somewhat fond memories of the series, and revisiting them with my son didn’t entirely disillusion me. Yes, they are insufferably preachy (Superman’s always sticking his chest out, looking down at the Wonder Twins, and intoning some platitude like “…strength isn’t everything to a hero! Sometimes brains are more important!”) And they also strain painfully hard to be educational (when the Scarecrow starts inflicting our heroes with superphobias, Batman and Superman sort of stand around solemnly listing the scientific names of each one “Acrophobia — fear of heights!”) And the art is bland and uninspired (though it certainly doesn’t look too bad by the standards of many modern-day efforts.)

Still, the comics do have a kind of doddering, aphasiac creativity which I find entertaining. In one episode, Merlin the magician shows up, hands a mad filmmaker a magic camera, and then wanders off again. (When asked why he’s still alive, Merlin taps his brow and says “Dear me! I must have forgotten to die!”) In another, a team of elemental themed super-villains are hindered by the fact that their costumes can’t keep up with their super-powers (for instance, the water-villain can’t flow out of her costume — and did I mention that the water-villain is bizarrely able to change into a gorilla?) In the Scarecrow issues, they also randomly claim Wonder Woman changes into a berserker because she’s removed her bracelets (Is that cannon? Where do they get this stuff?) And then there’s the animal-training villain who appears in multiple issues and whose name is… Menagerie Man.

I mean, obviously, you wouldn’t want to read this yourself if you didn’t have to, but my son loves it, and the blundering goofiness is just entertaining enough to keep you from wanting to kill yourself after you’ve read it for the fourth time.

Spidey Super-Stories

This was a collaboration between Marvel and the Electric Company television show (which featured live-action Spidey segments during its run.) Again, I had fond memories of these from my youth. They are pretty cute; less actual stories than a running series of puns and gags, some aimed at the kids, some pitched (kindly) at the adults. I really enjoyed the picture of Thanos (yes, Thanos) piloting a monogrammed helicopter.

In another issue, a villain called Mastermind (not the X-Men enemy) uses his evil soft drinks to battle a Women’s Liberation march. And I also liked the episode where Spidey dresses up in a gorilla suit to do movie stunts for a semi-sentient simian, who is a lot less grateful than you might think. (“How do I get into these things?” Spidey asks. How indeed?)

Reading over that, it actually sounds more entertaining than it is. Part of the problem is the decision to make the language and storylines as simple as possible. It’s meant to be easy reading for kids, I guess, but it’s boring — and, really, there are a lot of books for kids that aren’t, so I fear the language in itself isn’t an excuse. I think the people who did this were probably pretty clever, but not quite clever enough to overcome the reductive concept. I think I really prefer the Super-Friends, which is more clearly created by idiots, but which has a genuine Silver-Age-what-the-hell vibe, for which I retain a soft spot.

Original X-Men
I do like some Stan Lee — the writing in the early Steve Ditko Spider-Man comics is quite entertaining, for example. But, jeez, the Lee/Kirby X-Men is sure a pile of irredeemable crap. A big part of the problem is the Danger Room — every damn issue starts off with pages and pages of tedious “powers testing” for no particular purpose. And the whole dynamic with Jean Grey as the only girl and all the guys (including, ickily enough, Professor X) vying for her attention is unendurably corny.

I guess the difference is that Spidey is all about nerd-meets-world; Peter Parker has to negotiate interactions with folks who aren’t like him (whether guys like Flash or J. Jonah Jameson, or girls like Betty or Mary Jane.) Whereas the X-Men feels like nerd-meets-nerd; the boys’ clubhouse atmosphere is overwhelming. I mean, Magneto and the evil mutants are fun, but they just show up how completely irritating the supposed heroes are. Professor X, in particular, is hopelessly self-righteous. In one sequence, he has the X-Men attack the Blob, and then is surprised when the latter doesn’t want to join his team. So then the Professor mindwipes him. Yay for the heroes, I guess.

I wonder if Ditko just brought more to the writing than Kirby did? I haven’t read too man other Lee/Kirby titles…no, wait, the Lee/Kirby monster comics I’ve read were all much better than this. Maybe the two of them were just tired by the time they got to the X-Men. Anyway, reading these, Chris Claremont looks like a genius. That’s not something I find myself saying very often, but who would have thought anything worthwhile could be salvaged from this train-wreck?

All Your Scandal Are Belong To Us

Finally got around to reading Nana #9 and 10. Volume #8 was probably the high point of the series so far for me, and these two volumes were something of a let down. The most interesting part of the story for me is the realtionship between the two Nanas (or Nana and Hachi), and that takes a back seat here. The two are effectively no longer roommates (Hachi, after getting pregnant, has moved in with her emotionally distant rock-star boyfriend Tagumi) and over the course of the two volumes the two women hardly even meet.

The absence is intentional; for one thing, it allows Nana to start to realize how emotionally (and quasi-romantically) attached she is to Hachi. The problem is, the mechanism for keeping the two separate is a pop band melodrama that I find pretty uninvolving. Basically, Hachi’s boyfriend and Nana’s boyfriend (Ren) are in the same band; the band is trying to avoid tabloid publicity. When Nana and Ren are photographed together, it sets off a media firestorm, giving Nana’s band huge exposure but causing Ren’s band (Trapnest) to run off to London.

Part of the problem here is cultural different, I think. It’s just unclear to me why the media would care that Nana and Ren are dating. Neither of them are married or have any other attachment; in fact they’re childhood sweethearts, essentially. Ren’s a big star, but Nana isn’t. I don’t know, in the U.S., this would be a cute story that might make the front of the book in People on a slow week, but it certainly wouldn’t be a scandal of any sort. Presumably, within the Japanese context, there’s some reason why this would be a big deal (is it that they aren’t married? are Japanese stars just not supposed to date?) But, for me reading the story, it’s hard to get beyond the fact that everybody seems completely freaked out over nothing. Also, I’m just not that interested in this kind of music-industry insider drama. Certainly the “will Nana become a big star?” question is a lot less interesting to me than the “Oh my god, Hachi isn’t going to marry that louse is she?” question. And, unfortunately, over the course of these volumes, at least, the first query seems to be pushing out the second.

Not that there isn’t a lot to like here. As always the relationships are subtle and develop in thoughtful and surprising ways. I especially like the way that the fact that Ren is kind of a jerk begins to occur simultaneously to Nana, the reader, and to Ren himself. Nana’s bandmate, Yasu, continues to be a delightful character; he finally reveals that he loves Nana in a brilliantly low-key scene. Takumi remains a snake, though not one without charm; you can see why Hachi feels some love for him even as you wish she’d dump his sorry controlling ass.

This is currently the only comic I’m getting regularly, I think, and it’s certainly still worth buying. I just hope the next few volumes give us a bit less band, and a bit more Hachi.

Reviewing the Post-Human

I go back and forth on Tom Crippen’s “Post-Human Review” column in TCJ. I think Gary Groth referred to it as not only the best super-hero column ever, but the best super-hero column possible, and I think that that’s about right — not that it *is* the platonic super-hero column, but that it’s what Gary would think a platonic super-hero column should be. It’s smart and thoughtful and there’s a definite appreciation of super-heroes. But there’s also a fair bit of contempt, and it’s all wrapped up in nostalgia; super-heroes tend to be seen as a metaphor for lost youth, especially lost male youth. Basically, super-heroes are converted into personal agonistic male drama — also known as art comics. It’s done really well (better by far, for example, than Paul Karasik does it in his coda to his Fletcher Hanks volume). And, as I said, it’s done with real affection for super-heroes. Except for Crippen’s foray into literary fiction (which I identified with a shudder in about the first paragraph) I read it in every issue. But still, it makes my teeth hurt a little.

Anyway, in the most recent issue, Crippen talks about Superman. He writes:

got an e-mail with the subject line “Be Superman in Bed.” I knew what they meant. You could say “Play Pool Like Superman”; I would understand that too. Superman would play pool as fast and as well as possible, and everything would be a blur that stood in for the idea of a performance of that sort. Superman is an abstraction that exists because of other abstractions. He exists because of ideas like most, fastest, best. There is some simple grid of measurement underlying our sense of the universe, and Superman exists to represent its top mark. Without him the universe is not the same place; it just doesn’t look the same, we don’t feel at home.

My immediate reaction to this is, “what you mean ‘we,’ white man?” I may or may not feel at home in the universe, but my status as alienated other or stable patriarch doesn’t depend on the handful of mediocre Mort Weisinger titles I read as a child. Crippen’s made a common mistake in pop-culture criticism; just because the pop culture detritus has something to say doesn’t mean that the culture and the pop detritus are one.

It’s too bad that Crippen feels the need to make Superman responsible for all our sins, because when he actually analyzes the character, he’s fascinating. Connecting Superman’s multiple identities and factory-like feats to modernity is pretty brilliant. And the idea of superness as the abstract, mysterious technological quality of modern existence is also nicely done.

So, yeah, still on the fence here. I like Crippen’s ideas and his writing. But I just don’t think it’s necessary to make Superman some sort of central figure in a universal agonized male coming-of-age drama in order to talk about him.

Antique Bakery

A Matter of Taste

My knowledge of manga is far from encyclopedic — for all I know, bakery yaoi could be an entire, hugely popular sub-genre in Japan. In any case, if it isn’t, it should be — as Fumi Yoshinaga’s “Antique Bakery” demonstrates, the rabid consumption of pastry works perfectly as a background for a shoujo tale of semi-sinful, semi-infantilized, polymorphous desire. In Yoshinaga’s series, lust is as idiosyncratically arbitrary as a passion for strawberry tarts, and vice versa. The main characters are all defined, in more or less equal measure, by their relationship to sweets and to sex. For instance, Yusuke Ono, the Antique Bakery’s pastry chef, is a “gay of demonic charm” — if he is attracted to another man, homosexual or otherwise, that man will succumb to his advances. Ono’s romantic talents are matched only by his culinary ones — in fact, his sexual exploits seem, if anything, less orgasmic than his almond-flavored-sponge-cake. People who eat his pastries thrash and shriek and moan in ecstasy. Eiji, the straight assistant chef, offers his body to the cook after sampling the white-chocolate-flavored-mousse (Ono refuses; he finds Eiji unaccountably unattractive.) The only one nonplussed by the glorious desserts is the shop’s owner, Keiichiro Tachibana, who has no sweet tooth — he prefers savory dishes. By a narrative, if not a thematic, coincidence, Tachibana is also the only man on earth immune to Ono’s “demonic charm.”

The series gets off to a slow start with a passel of confusing flashbacks and a couple of maudlin and unmotivated episodes in which Yoshinaga seems to be struggling to figure out what she’s doing with the concept. By the end of the first volume, though, things start to hum along nicely — chef Ono transforms for the first time from gawky, geeky, female-phobic nerd to slick, fashion-conscious gay predator; owner and wannabe ladies-man Tachibana prances around clutching a counter-girl outfit; and we get the first of many extensive and meticulous lessons in pastry making (freeze your strawberries before making compote, kids.) From there, the series spirals off into ever more refined realms of goofiness, accelerating with the introduction of the looming Chikage as semi-competent counter-staff, and probably reaching its peak in volume 3 with the debut of two top-heavy newscasters who begin their television segments by singing a theme entitled “Big-Busted Female Announcer Unit Haruka and Tammy!” Yoshinaga’s layout and design are sparse by shoujo standards — she uses basic grids, and often dispenses with backgrounds altogether. But she has a delightful knack for facial expressions — when Tachibana launches into his sales pitch, for example, he looks almost indecently smarmy. Her command of body language is also first rate. I think my favorite picture in the book is a cartoonish image of apprentice-chef Eiji as he’s about to head out for his French language lesson — with his eyes reduced to pinpoints, his legs slightly bent, and his skinny arms hanging helplessly, it looks as if his overwhelming dejection has actually swallowed up the surrounding art, leaving him hanging in space with only his bookbag and a pitiful high-school letter jacket to keep him company.

Of course, the series isn’t all just passion, gags, and baking tips. There is also plot, and – more problematically – plot arcs. Yoshinaga’s short-form sitcom set-ups can be perfectly entertaining. Tachibana dresses up in a Santa suit to make deliveries, and discovers that the only people on his route who care are the middle-aged drunks — children are terrified. Or, two women come to the bakery; one wipes cream off the other’s face and licks her finger, causing Tachibana to erroneously assume that they’re lesbians. Or, Ono and the clueless Chikage go for a sensual dance in the rain and then almost kiss.

Unfortunately, Yoshinaga is not satisfied with fluffy, frivolous good times; she also wants to give her characters Inner Lives. As a result, everyone in the ensemble is methodically saddled with a meaningful backstory, replete with childhood trauma and emotional obstacles to overcome. Chikage’s mother was abused; Eiji is an orphan with abandonment issues. As an adolescent, Ono discovered his mother having an affair with his schoolteacher; this, we are expected to believe, led to both his fear of women and his player lifestyle (though not, mercifully, to his homosexuality). But the most melodramatic past goes to Tachibana, who was abducted as a young boy — and who was so traumatized that he remembers nothing about his kidnapper except that the man forced him to eat cake. He has established the bakery, Yoshinaga implies, in a semi-conscious effort to catch his still-at-large abductor.

The pop Freudianism is depressingly ill-advised — the book is charming in large part because the characters are all id, and trying to explain in psychological detail why Tachibana strikes out with women, or why Eiji is devoted to Ono, is a lot like trying to explain why you love chocolate and I love vanilla. It’s pointless and, if taken too seriously — as it often is here — annoying. The transparent effort to add emotional heft by gratuitously dragging the bodies of young children through the eclairs is even more ridiculous — and not in a good way. Toward the end of the book, a serial killer with a sweet tooth and a thing for boys shows up. Is it Tachibana’s old abductor? Will the store owner overcome his past trauma? And is there any reason that this whole exploitive, brainless storyline shouldn’t piss me the fuck off? The answer to the third question, at least, is no — in fact, the cynically earnest drift into true crime almost ruined the whole series for me.

Almost, but not quite. Even at her most maudlin, Yoshinaga retains a keen sense of the silly — the detectives investigating the killer, for example, are obsessed with the bakery’s foodstuffs — and the denouement is just anti-climatic enough to relieve a little of the heavy-handed weight. Most importantly, though, the covers of each volume in the series are scratch-and-sniff…a detail I find inexplicably irresistible.

This review first ran in The Comics Journal # 285