Monthly Archives: August 2009

If It’s Wednesday, I Must Feel Empowered

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I posted a bit ago about Wednesday Comics, and noted that it seemed kind of depressing to have a fairly ambitious venture in terms of form and distribution saddled to the same old content (DC super-hero properties, natch.) Then a couple days ago, I wrote about how much I enjoyed Adam Warren’s Empowered series.

And I was thinking about those two things together a little, and it occurred to me that Empowered would be kind of perfect as a feature in Wednesday Comics. It’s a super-hero story, so it wouldn’t upset anybody’s paradigm. It has excellent art, which wouldn’t look out of place among the heavy hitters DC has lined up. And, best of all, I’m pretty sure Warren could actually do what very few of the Wed comics writers seem to be able to do — i.e., he could write a serialized story, and pace it so that each page had a natural gag/end while still advancing the overall plot. It would be great for Warren, I think; my impression is that Empowered has done pretty well, but that he’s had trouble getting it out there as much as he’d like. And it’d be good for DC, it seems to me, insofar as Warren could, I believe, have an appeal to various demographics (manga readers, possibly female readers) that the company has spastically, intermittently, and ineffectually courted for some time. It’s true that Empowered is R-rated, but I’m sure Warren could tone it down for a short story if he was asked to.

But, of course, it can’t happen. And the reason it can’t happen is basically because comics just don’t work that way. DC and Marvel don’t pick up independent creators and creations who already have a following and put more marketing muscle behind them. Because that would require some sort of negotiated creators rights deal, and, though I know they’ve dabbled with it occasionally, the big two just don’t function on that business model as a matter of course.

I’m sure folks have said this before, but…I think it just can’t be overstated how much work-for-hire is responsible for the insularity and creative stagnation at Marvel and D.C. It’s not just that they’re wedded to their stable of characters — because, after all, they are willing to do do new series as well, like Y-The Last Man and so forth. But their default attitude towards creator rights (basically, there are none) makes it extremely difficult for them to co-opt other’s good ideas — and co-opting other’s good ideas is the way that hidebound behemoths manage to stay relevant (just ask Microsoft.)

I mentioned this a while back, but I think Minx is a pretty good example of this. There are actually comics for girls which have done OK in their niche; stuff like Courtney Crumrin for example. If you wanted to release a line of comics for young girls, why not go with the sure thing, drop some money on Ted Naifeh’s lap, and say, hey, keep doing the same thing you’re doing, just do it for us? You’d have a baseline audience, some automatic publicity, and you could maybe pull in curious readers to check out other products. But, of course, DC can’t do this sort of thing because it doesn’t do creator-ownership — and even if it decided to make an exception, I doubt it would be able to figure out what to do with it. (Does anyone know if the Minx line was creator-owned? The few references I’ve seen suggest it wasn’t.)

I don’t know; I guess DC and Marvel are happy enough churning out stories featuring the same few characters for the same few readers. And of course, quite possibly Adam Warren and/or Ted Naifeh are happier being indie, and wouldn’t want to work for DC anyway. But you know, there are various genre comics creators who I’m sure would sell out if someone were willing to pay them a reasonable price — said reasonable price not including all the rights to their work. And, needless to say, it might be good for comics as a whole if the biggest companies found a way to reach new audiences by working with some exciting young creators.

But it’s probably elitist to suggest that somebody somewhere might want to read about cynical young witches or bondage sitcoms or anything other than zombie Elongated Man. I mean…he’s Elongated. He’s dead. His stretchy, decaying sphincter and soul belong to his corporate overlords. That’s power for the people, that is.

Update: Minx creator Brian Wood says in comments that the line was creator owned. Good for DC, then.

Saucers

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I just read this story by Douglas Lain. Very modern, very socialist, but I liked it. For years I’ve wanted to write a story about a summer in Montreal when a big flying saucer parked itself overhead and stayed there. Now it may be too late, which goes to show.

Here’s a story I did write, and it was published in the same place as Lain’s. Strange Horizons comes up a few times in the Best S.F. of 2006 collection I got at Worldcon, so I gather it’s not a bad venue, though neither is it a rich venue. Writing quirky little s.f. stories seems to be up there with poetry and avant-garde jazz when it comes to worldly acclaim.

“The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”

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Seeing Gaiman at Worldcon caused me to buy his big short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors. My favorite story so far is “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories,” which I happened to read years back while sitting in the book store. It’s kind of a sideways rendering of Gaiman’s first time out in Hollywood, when Good Omens had been optioned and he and Terry Pratchett were doing the script. I love Hollywood stuff, especially modern Hollywood and the nonacting side, the agents and studio people, so it’s no wonder I like the story. But it’s a good job, too. He captures odd little moments that bring out the disjunction and strangeness in the way these people approach life (or the way that one hears they approach life), and he manages the tricky job of creating a long series of quick but distinct glimpses of producers, execs, flunkies, etc., each person different enough from the others and yet cognitively deformed in the same way.

The inside-Hollywood, studio-idiocy business stays funny but also becomes unsettling. The speed with which it moves, a pace that at first seems wide awake and brisk, becomes creepy; this is the only case I can think of where narrative speed is turned into something like a horror element. (Not a suspense element, which, as I understand it, would involve plot: how soon will that train hit that girl?) You start out by enjoying the contrast between the brisk Hollywood material and the story’s otherwise Gaiman-like air of menacing dreaminess; then the Hollywood material becomes the atmosphere’s key ingredient. Not bad.  

Okay, content. A small-time British writer of quiet horror stories hits it big with a novel and is brought out to Hollywood to do the script. Nobody at the studio or the production company knows what they’re doing, and they keep being fired and replaced and no one remembers that the previous batch was there. Neither do they remember the old stars of the past, and the memory shortage gets more marked as the narrator approaches the end of his string of executives and they get younger.
Meanwhile, there’s a goldfish pool at the narrator’s hotel, and he learns from the pool’s caretaker that the fish have no memory and so they swim about forever and get nowhere and every 20 seconds it’s a brand-new world to them. Which is the Hollywood situation as the narrator finds it.
The narrator starts sketching out a story set back home in England and involving a stage magician in a sad little seaside theater. So he wants to be creative again and get out of this Hollywood bullshit. He writes a poem about the seaside theater, and that’s his creativity giving a sign of life.
In reading up for his story, the narrator comes across two 19th-century stage-magic tricks, both of which involve frames (I think) and thereby prefigure 20th-century show biz and its screen-based entertainment. Okay, but why? To me it just seems like a flourish — here’s a fancy idea! One of the tricks does involve a lady who descends from a painting and tells an artist to buck up, he’s got the stuff, and that is obviously apropos to the narrator’s situation.
To tell the truth, the story doesn’t seem too hard to decipher (except for that business about 19th century/20th century show biz, which may not be just a flourish after all). But it works better if you don’t. 
Still, if anyone has further thoughts on meanings, or whatever, go ahead.  

Well, duh

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Palin’s favorable is down 7 points in Gallup.



Okay, fine. Anyway, we now have WMDs, Bush’s competence, and Sarah Palin. What I hope is that anyone who has been wrong on all three topics might now take a second look at the health care debate. Maybe reform isn’t about killing off old citizens and paving the way for rationed toilet paper (which I suppose would roll down the paved way).

Word Verification for Comments

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I’ve enabled word verification for comments, which I believe means you’ll all have to type a word in to show you’re human when you leave comments. Hopefully this will help deter the Japanese spam, which has sort of gotten out of control.

Let me know how this is working; if it ends up being too irritating or won’t let people post comments, I’ll reassess.

all good things

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The green beans are flourishing, my peonies are dying, and my summer vacation is drawing to a close. Probably also Bill Randall will be returning at some point, so this marks the end of my guest-blogging stint on The Hooded Utilitarian. It’s been fun! Thank you, Noah and company, for having me.

Comics of the Wack and Outdated

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My last efforts in this direction were greeted mostly with indifference and hostility, not to mention the lawsuit from Tucker. So I figured, what the hell, let’s roll.

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Secret Six #1
Gail Simone
Brad Walker/Jimmy Pamiotti

My favorite thing about this comic is that the North Korean prison camp is supposed to be this horribly evil place because they kill your family and your baby and everything. But I happen to have just read a bit about North Korean prison camps, and you know, the thing about them is that there aren’t actually families, because people spend their entire lives in them, and the jailers more or less put couples together, and the kids never actually really know their parents. In fact, they don’t even necessarily know that there’s a world outside the prison camp at all. Which just goes to show that you think you’re being evil and cruel, and then it turns out you just haven’t really done your research. But fuck it, North Korea is really just there so that the anti-heroes can look good in comparison, like how we all love Ronald Reagan because of George W. Bush. Of course, it’s maybe a little callous to use the horrific experiences of actual people as a way to make your boring baddies seem soulful, but hey, the North Korean prisoners probably aren’t allowed to read Secret Six anyway. Their loss; nothing cheers a bleak, brutalized existence like a largely incomprehensible mish-mash of portentous pithy proclamations leavened with continuity porn. I can just see that North Korean child now, beaten to a pulp, bloody snot dripping onto each page, shivering to himself, and then getting to the last panel, smiling with joy because….

…it’s a guest appearance by the Mad Hatter! That makes it all worthwhile.

Wolverine: Worst Day Ever
Barry Lyga

This is a book, not a comic, and it’s actually pretty good. Barry Lyga has simple ambitions — he wants to be mildly touching, he wants to be amusing, he wants to have a story with Wolverine in it. And hey, mission accomplished; young mutant narrator Eric, whose mutant power is that nobody notices him, is both funny and winsome. He’s lonely because, well, nobody notices him, but he’s also sufficiently acid to notice that, for example, Professor X ‘s penchant for covering everything in the entire compound with Xs reeks of egomania. And there’s also lots of Wolveirne…being noble, being tough, fighting Sabertooth, singing “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” and drinking strawberry milk. Perfect.

Oh, and the book also provided me with multiple epiphanies.

1: Wolverine is, like, Han Solo and Chewbacca at the same time. No wonder everybody loves him.

2: I fucking hate Wolverine.

Cry for Justice #2
James Robinson
Mauro Cascioli

I haven’t actually read this. I’ve just seen that one page everyone is up in arms about:

cry for justice

And yeah, I have to say I’m pretty offended too. Let me count the ways:

1. Ollie and Hal (can I call you Ollie and Hal? Aw, thanks.) are totally out of character here. Because…hello? They’re dead. Dead, dead, dead. Even if they hadn’t been wiped out multiple times in various storylines, they started, what, 50, 60 years ago? If they’re not dead, they should be in wheelchairs, not posing like plastic action toys and making frat boy jokes about who put his green wiener where. Those wieners are old and shrivelled, fellas. A mountain of viagra, even abetted by ridiculous facial hair right out of Look At This Fucking Hipster, isn’t going to get you up out of your underwear, much less onto that rooftop.

2. Man-Bat is completely out of character. Last time I checked, he was a doting family man, who would cover his ears and emit high-pitched squeaky noises if anyone started to tell him an off-color story. Besides, he’s way too busy trying to subjugate the mammals to his reptilian will to hang around swapping locker room….

Or, wait, is that the Lizard?

Anyway, whoever he is, he’s out of character, and it makes me sputter.

3. James Robinson is out of character. Continuity has clearly established that he doesn’t even know what women are, much less how to surf to YouPorn for plot points.

Also, he’s lent his toupee to Hal, and it looks ridiculous.

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Also, as long as I’m mangling poor Tucker’s zeitgeist, I might as well point out that I noted an error in his last column.

He wrote:

“Abstract Comics is a tremendously random (as opposed to “diverse”) collection of graphic design pieces and black and white sketches, only a few of which might conceivably have a place in Kramer’s Ergot or one of those other anthologies people look at but don’t read. The rest are in the same category as the Buddha Machine, or Rafael Toral’s Space series–a specific, niche creation for a specific, niche audience. The only real difference is that the guys who make the Buddha Machine don’t start calling people idiots when they say they’d prefer a little more music with their purchase of sound.”

But what he meant to write was:

“Abstract Comics is boring, except for those two pages by Noah Berlatsky! Man, when I saw those, my cynical eyes beshat themselves, and my hectoring anus voided salty tears. I was such a mess I had to use leaves from the book to clean myself…but, fear not, for I saved those two pages by Noah Berlatsky! I have stapled them now to the visage of my true love, that I may contemplate them whenever I see her, and know that, even in this fallen world, beauty and truth are not forsaken.”

So, there. All fixed now.