I’ve got two pieces in; one a review of Ashanti’s new album, and one a brief critic’s choice about Fred Camper’s new show

I just finished the second volume of Tove Jansson’s collected Moomin comic strip. I’m a long time fan of the Moomin children’s books, and the first volume of the comic strips was amazing, but this one…I don’t know. A little disappointing, I think. The goofy stream-of-consciousness wackiness of the first volume seems to have hardened here into a formula; in each story, an outsider comes into the Moomin’s lives, tries to change the Moomin’s ways, succeeds briefly, but is then sent packing when the Moomin’s realize that their quiet bohemian life of domesticity shot through with occasional imaginative flights really is perfect, and they don’t need to become healthier/neater/freer/more moral.

The targest are fine; I’m all for sneering at health nuts and hippies. And there are great moments; The strip where Moomin declares “In moments like this, there is an inner soaring, a will to…” and then cracks his head diving into a sheet of ice is goofily literary in a way that’s almost Schulz-worthy. And the third story is pretty great all through, largely because the outsider here, the violent and mischievous Little My, is granted as much sympathy as the protagonists. But overall, the Moomins end up portrayed as naif moral paragons, and that makes the comic seem kind of smug. Hopefully, though, this is just a blip, and Jansson will be back on her game for the third volume….

I’ve got a short review of a show at the Hyde Park Arts Center online here at the Chicago Reader.
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I’m going to be DJing (yes, Djing!) at Deadtech art gallery for my pal Bert Stabler’s Vulva O’Keefe vs. Angry Goldsworthy show. It’s this Thursday 6/5, and I believe will run from 7-9; click on the link for the location if you’re in Chicago. The gallery show is antagonistic-gender-themed, and so is my playlist, which will include everything from black metal weirdo Xasthur to Judy Garland. So come on by if you can.

Here’s the official press release, hot off the email.

Hey All

didn’t get a chance to see VULVA O’KEEFFE versus ANGRY GOLDSWORTHY, the show Bert Stabler organized at Deadtech?

Come over this Thursday night (June 5) or next Thursday (June 12). See the show, take free stuff from my piece, revel in refreshments and …

GET ENTERTAINED!

this Thurs June 5: NOAH BERLATSKY, helmsman of the Gay Utopia, critic for the Comics Journal & Chicago Reader and secret WHPK guy, is playing music for us. A two-hour set of stuff from Slayer to Judy Garland.

next Thurs June 12: Ha Ha Hell — it’s those guys KILL COMEDY, straight from alienating audiences at every venue in the fair city of Chicago. Also making the scene — NEIGHBORS, featuring the “single gals” of Lil’ Manitoba (yep — me and Meg want to tell you about it).

Doors open, I mean, I’m getting there at 6:30 each night. Performative stuff starts around 7.

There’s work from Kimberley Baker, Davey Ball, Tyler Britt, Matt Davis, Chris Hammes, Taylor Hokanson, Maximillian Lawrence, George Monteleone, Flo McGarrell, Huong Ngo, Andrew Roche, Josh Rosenstock, Chris Santiago, Justin Schaefer, Edra Soto, and Matthew Steinke in this show. You can see a little more about it at Deadtech’s site.

So to recap —

Thursdays (June 5 and June 12)
6:30 – 9:30 pm
at Deadtech, 3321 W Fullerton

Internet-based informations:
http://www.deadtech.net
http://gayutopia.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/holyshitcomedy

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And finally: we did have a zine reading of the Gay Utopia at Quimby’s, which was remarkably well attended (they ran out of chairs!) Paul Nudd read an ode to Robert Mithcum’s scrotum; Dewayne Slightweight read a bit of an interview with Donna Haraway (the part of Donna Haraway was taken by a paper bag/hand-puppet); David Erik Nelson, an emissary of the Giant Squid, discussed said invertebrate’s time in the Gay Utopia; Bert Stabler read from his essay “The Glory and the Hole,” Alexander Stewart showed G-rated and off-color cartoons from the 1920s, and I read the giant-wasp-on-human sex scene from Tabico’s “Adaptation.” Other gay utopians in attendance were kinukitty, Lilli Carré, and, in a surprise appearance, Paul Mack, who drove all the way from Arizona! (Not just for the reading, he assured me.) Pizza was consumed, a lovely embroidered banner created by Dewayne was admired, and we maybe even sold a zine or two.

And speaking of zines, I still have many, many, many of them. You can buy them at Quimby’s, or, you know, email me (noahberlatsky at hotmail) and we’ll work something out.

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.

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.

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?

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.