Tag Archives: Miriam Libicki

FCR 4ish: do men with unisex names write better women?

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Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise was one of the first “alternative” comics I read when I was a teenager getting tired of Marvel (I bought it after reading the preview in Cerebus). I picked up around the middle of “I Dream of You,” I think, so fairly early in the run. I followed the series faithfully all through high school, painted Katchoo on my graduation mortarboard (and got the photo published in the lettercol!), angsted and argued over the characters, and decided with my best friend that she was Katchoo (but taller) and I was Francine (but gayer).

In short, it was the perfect graphic addiction for the kind of teenage girl I was. Later, I grew up, started hanging out with comic snobs (you know, the kind of horrible people who write for The Comics Journal), and found out my SiP love was stupid and misguided and didn’t I know Moore stole everything he knew from Jaime Hernandez?

I have to confess, I never read any bros Hernandez until last year or so, when another comics snob (allright, so I’ll name-drop) lent me the whole run of those giant Love and Rockets phonebooks, two by two, over the space of a year. The comic snobs may have a point with the ripoff thing. Hopey is Katchoo but moreso, and Francine has Maggie’s daffiness, voluption, and super-heterosexuality-with-one-teeny-exception. Both storylines could be called an exercise in fanny, in that they’re well-realized women in a women’s world, created for straight male gratification (at least the creators themselves are clearly getting off on drawing so many and varied hot women). And no one could dispute that Hernandez has it all over Moore in terms of artwork.

But I don’t really know that Moore is just a poor man’s, or middlebrow girl’s, Hernandez. If I had to pin it down, I would say Locas (if that’s the term for the Jaime parts of L&R) is better fanny, but SiP is better chick-lit.

One of the notable things about SiP is that it always had a very large female following, and those women, going by the lettercols and my own experiences, were disproportionately the type who “didn’t read comics” except of course Archie when they were little. Even today, SiP will always be one of the first works mentioned in message board threads of “what comics can I get my girlfriend into?” (of course, responders almost never follow up with “what kind of books does she like to read?” as if women were, you know, individuals, with divergent tastes. But I digress.)

I’m too lazy to google, but I don’t recall that L&R comes up in those threads more often than most popular comics do (because anyone who knows a woman who’s liked a comic, or is a woman who’s liked a comic, will mention that comic, and the list inevitably and logically ends up all over the map). I think the height of L&R’s popularity was before my time, but by the time I was aware of it, its boosters were all Comics Journal reading types who want to educate me about Important Comics.

Now, I never would have read and loved L&R if not for those people, and I am a sucker for anything anyone tells me is Culturally Important. But we run an iconoclastic blog here, and suburban Archie-reading housewives will always win out over comics scholars, at least until Archie moms make up the majority of our readers. So why does Moore capture that demographic better than Hernandez?

Mostly because SiP is a straight-up soap opera, whereas Locas is only an homage to soap operas (of both the telenovelistic and professional-wrestling varieties) among other things. Maggie and Hopey have a semi-fraught relationship, where Hopey expresses frustration and jealousy over Maggie’s straight crushes and Maggie is hurt when Hopey viciously puts her down as a cover for her feelings of love. But those moments are very by-the-way, and usually played for laughs rather than drama. They do fall out and get back together occasionally, but it doesn’t really seem to matter why.

SiP was, what, fifteen years of will-they-won’t-they, while Maggie and Hopey’s sex life is more do-they-don’t-they, serving the cause of male titillation rather than suspense. You don’t ache for the women’s relationship to go to the next level, cause implicitly it has, and it was no biggie…. you just kinda hope Hernandez will get around to drawing the nitty-gritty. You want Katchoo and Francine to have sex because, the way the story’s set up, it will change everything.

Most importantly, SiP is both plot-driven and episodic in exactly the way TV soap operas are. The proportions of love triangles, scheming villainesses and flawed heroines and how they will all be changed forever drives every issue. This is great for getting a devoted, strongly identifying readership. But like soap operas, it gets really boring and repetitive and forced when it becomes clear that the creator is too attached to his characters to let them go. Which is why I quit reading years before, apparently, Francine and Katchoo Did It (and my sister insists that in her universe, SiP ended after “I Dream of You”).

Locas is a weaker soap opera, but ultimately a much more satisfying work to read straight through, because Hernandez doesn’t seem very invested in What Happens Next. He likes the locas, he likes their friends and surroundings, and he likes writing stories about them in all sorts of genres. He creates plot arcs, but he’ll nonchalantly scrap them (Maggie loves Rand Race, Hopey has a baby, etc.) when he gets bored of them, and may or may not revisit the continuity years later (note, of course, that I read all of the phonebooks of Locas together, one time, rather then following each issue over ten years like SiP, and this colours my readings). Background figures become stars and then fade out again, settings and tone drastically change around the characters.

On a superficial reading, it seems like Hernandez is just exploring whatever interests him, but what interests him ends up being more interesting than will-they-won’t-they, will-this-change-everything-forever. On the downside, the sheer virtuosity of Locas, and the people who recommended it to you in the first place, can give you the impression that there must be something else going on, something symbolic, or Literary. Maybe you’re supposed to be Learning Something from the characters, rather than lusting after them.

What a drag, man. Bring on the busty bisexuals in denial.

(disclaimer: i’m all strung out trying to finish drawing an issue, so please forgive all the hysterical italicizing and the Portentous Caps.)

YKK Part 4: desire is suffering

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Like with a lot of manga, YKK had the effect of reminding me how much cultural understanding I’m missing when I come at Japanese work for Japanese audiences. Like she’s a robot: ok, but what’s robotty about her? Not much, except she gets slightly different burn treatment, and, as Noah mentioned, fairly mild food allergies. What does it mean to her, or her friends, that she’s a robot? Not much, so far. She doesn’t look or act different, except for maybe more innocent (but you don’t get a frame of reference for how innocent non-robot postapocalyptic women are, so maybe not). Issues I’d expect, like technology or parts for her maintenance being wiped out, or her not aging in comparison to humans, also don’t emerge and there’s no reason to expect they will.

Why is she a robot? I imagine her robotitude means something to Japanese people that it doesn’t mean to me. It reminds me of P. W. Singer who wrote a book about military robotic weapons, who was on the Daily Show and Terry Gross recently. He used a lot of science-fiction canon metaphors, and I believe he mentioned in both interviews that American sci-fi robots are often implacable monsters while Japanese sci-fi robots tend to be lovable heroes. Maybe it is the Buddhist thing of non-humancentricity, that robots are humans without the destructive ego or dark Freudian drives?

Getting into Buddhist mind was the only way I could begin to appreciate the work, and I felt like I should have a few hours with every page. The art really is that beautiful. And even when it’s a portrait shot of characters, it reads like a landscape. This fits in with the idealization of passivity that is the strongest thing in the book. The characters are at their most beautiful when they’re not acting, or even interacting, but just being. When Alpha enfolds Takahiro to herself at the New Year ceremony, I thought for a second, what does it mean? Is this in or out of the bounds of their relationship? Is he attracted to her? Is she attracted to him? And then I saw the sculpture, the rock formation that their bodies made together, and realized that was the real point.

I’d probably read past the first volume (which was one of our metrics for new manga on the manga roundtable), but I think I’d continue to be impatient, getting in there with my Westernness and my feminism and my meaning-obsessed Jewiness, as often as I could manage to be serene, aware, and grateful like a proper Buddhist.

wonder woman aftershocks

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So, I guess to commemorate Noah’s recent posts, a new Wonder Woman animated straight-to-dvd movie came out. Also, Kate Beaton drew Wonder Woman. I like the seated figure best, both for her speech balloon and her tree-trunk legs.

I’ve gushed about Kate Beaton’s art before, but I’m still amazed how, with such fast-spare lines and zero tones or line-weight variation, she creates the impression that WW’s breasts have weight, and that her swimsuit is supporting that weight. Which very few superhero artists can do (the fact that very few superhero artists have breasts, is, I’m sure, completely unrelated).

i warned you this day would come

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… in the first post I made here. My long-ass con season has just started up again, meaning I’m gonna be at Wondercon in San Francisco this weekend, Artists Alley table 38, and everybody should come see me. It will be my first con as an internet snarkblogger, so it would be neat if someone came over and live-trolled me.

Also, you should click on my website in the sidebar, because it has been totally revamped and filled with new art, new information, and new financial instruments.

To tie it all together, I’m debuting a drawn essay at Wondercon, which you may also see and purchase at the website, and which I talked about here earlier.

many can wear the big 80s bomber jacket

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[The following rant/reminiscence was prompted by Noah’s set of posts on Wonder Woman as a flawed feminist icon]

I collected most or all of the George Perez run of Wonder Woman when I was a bit younger than Vanessa, Wonder Woman’s adolescent pal. I was into it, especially the young-adult-lit stuff, like the Very Special Issue about teen depression and suicide. But seeing as how that was the first (as well as last) iteration of the character I experienced, I can’t say that Wonder Woman got me young enough to be my feminist superhero icon.

As I’ve mentioned, the mid-80s X books were really the foundation of my superhero (and beyond, if we’re being honest) worldview. There were plenty of well-rounded (by 80s Marvel standards) women in the New Mutants… I consciously identified with Rahne, the meek, pious good girl, but secretly identified with Illyana, because she was so full of rage for no real reason. But ultimately, I think my childhood feminist hero was Rogue.

Her power was, if she had contact with someone else’s skin, they would be knocked unconscious and she would get all their memories and powers. I guess it’s about the power and the loss of control and the terrifying vulnerability inherent in sex, or intimacy of any kind. Who can say what will be unleashed when you touch another person? I think, even as a little kid, I understood that awesome dread.

And the fact that Rogue had to protect herself against intimacy all the time, what did that mean? For one, it meant that technically, her costume was more in line with a man’s costume, skintight but covering head-to-toe, than swimwear/lingerie, like Wonder Woman. Her biggest fashion statement was an oversized brown leather jacket. It signaled both her toughness and her need to shield herself (and maybe as a kid growing up with religiously dictated dress codes, the consciously covering up felt like my reality).

It meant that no one ever ever got to touch her without her permission, or they’d be sorry. And you could say, being as she was created and written by men, that it’s all about straight male fantasies and fears, vagina dentata or whatever, but really. Think of how powerful that statement is for a little kid, who has no power over whether people she doesn’t know will muss her hair or pick her up or worse (I was never molested myself, but I really hated it when adults would be overfamiliar with me. But as a child, especially a female child, there was nothing I could do about it). Not even to mention all the fun when I grew up, where it would have been nifty if random-ass guys who groped me could have instantly fallen into a coma. How’s that for bodily integrity.

It also meant that all her romances were unrequited romances. Which is nice for kids, who know all about wanting, but have no reason yet to be modeling, you know, the actual identity compromises and icky sex stuff of settling down with a prince. That might just have been me, though.

It undoubtedly says something about my current female/feminist identity that the icon I think about is not all Girl! Power! Tough As A Boy! Her great powers were even greater vulnerabilities, and they were centred on her female body. Maybe a lot of the lesson of Rogue was the same lesson I’d pick up in other consciousness-raising works like Cerebus and From Hell: as a woman, you just can’t win.

the sex element: yes, please. eww, not you.

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My parents enrolling me in nude figure drawing classes starting when I was fifteen was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I hadn’t kissed a boy or girl, but suddenly I found out how sharp light reflecting off completely bare human skin was utterly different than any kind of light reflecting off any kind of clothed human. The people were of course a range of ages, sizes, and colours, but every one, every time, was transcendently beautiful, and I mean that literally. Every time a model disrobed, I felt like I transcended my bodily existence and I was getting drunk through my eyeballs, without ever getting acutely physically aroused. If you’ll pardon the smugness, I think it spoiled me for mainstream western porn forever.

When I got around to fooling around with people I was attracted to, well, that was even better, in a whole other way.

Which is to say, I like nudity, I like sex, and if a comic can incorporate these elements in a way I dig, that is a big positive for the comic. I would almost go as far as to say that contextually-appropriate nudity and/or sexuality can be to the benefit of any given comic, in the same way that the best stories have a vein of humour, as different as it may be depending on the story.

Tom said that pictures of hot girls could disappear from comics and he wouldn’t care much. I’d put forth that every graphic work I can think of that incorporated nudity or sexuality well would be a lot poorer without that element. In the Night Kitchen would be significantly diminished without Mickey falling out of bed naked. As would be Diary of a Teenage Girl without the oral sex (well, duh), and Dykes to Watch Out For without the tasteful humping.

It’s not an original thought, but I believe sexuality in comics is appropriate in all sorts of cases: for titillation, anti-titillation, pushing a story forward or revealing character. Cerebus would not be Cerebus without the Astoria rape scene, and the girls’-school-ravishment scene was the perfect way to introduce Moore’s Invisible Man (the former I found horrifying and the latter hot, but I’ve heard the opposite from others).

That said, when the sexual element is done badly (by, say, people who come off as having watched a lot more porn than they’ve seen naked people) it’s unbearable, just like the worst parts of the worst novels are often the sex scenes. Given my abovementioned warped formative experiences, I’m most attracted to the bodies that call to mind naturally-occurring human forms and am mystified (at best) by obvious anatomical exaggeration, be it fashion-illustration manga-style or rubbery and brokebacked like the porn Noah praised here (I can get behind (hur hur) Aubrey Beardsley women (though not Aubrey Beardsley penises), because I have seen women who in the actual nude look like they’re wearing invisible corsets, with the wasp ribcages and beer guts).

In conclusion, I am for sexy comics but hate the porn aesthetic. And as a feminist, I get uncomfortable with a lot of the male-gaze-issues (I love-hate Frank Cho, for instance, and some of the straight male jobnik fans I’ve met), but I wouldn’t know where to start with talking about that.

imaginary comics, part 3: “portnoy’s complaint”

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I guess it’s not surprising that Philip Roth is the latest literary darling to jump on the trend of adapting his work to comic-book form. Perhaps inspired by David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik’s City of Glass or Asaf Hanuka’s Pizzeria Kamikaze, or in a bid to seem relevant amongst younger Jews-about-town like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, Roth has commissioned a graphic novel of his 1969 opus Portnoy’s Complaint.

What is surprising is his choice of artist. Rather than R. Crumb or Art Spiegelman, artists with similar enshrined statuses in their fields and somewhat Rothy down-and-dirty semi-confessional aesthetics, he tapped prince of the pretty-boys Craig Thompson.

Portnoy’s Complaint the graphic novel is a fairly slim volume (it was apparently drawn right before Thompson began the final pages for Habibi) coming out next year from Houghton Mifflin. I was of course able to get a galley due to my mad connections in the jewy/comicky/academic world.

Thompson’s drawing style fits the narrative seamlessly sometimes; his swoopy expressionism sets off the various flashbacks well, and the scenes set in the psychologist’s office show Alexander Portnoy (Good Bye Chunky Rice style) adrift on his couch in a swirling sea, while Spielvogel looms like an impassive, wooden dock. Thompson also has had a lot of practice conveying acute shame on pious young boys, which make the bar mitzvah lesson scenes and the liver masturbation scene even more tortured and memorable than in prose.

But in the adult flashbacks, there’s a real tension between the approaches of the two authors’ literary personas: Roth the great misogynist and Thompson the rapturous girl-worshipper. Despite a lot of similarities one can draw between Thompson’s oeuvre and Portnoy (flashbacks, childhood trauma as a key to adult dysfunction, outsized sexual longing), I got to wondering if Roth chose Thompson for the book just to watch him squirm.

The squirm of the artist is practically palpable in the oral sex scenes (man do I wish I was allowed to scan and post those). And when portraying the shallow, illiterate supermodel lust/hate object known as the Monkey, Thompson, without veering from the text, makes her a lot more human than Alexander can see (maybe as a working class small-town Midwestern boy himself, Thompson identified with her more than the protagonist).

Sometimes Thompson goes too far in trying to pretty everything up; the Portnoys mostly seem like nice, vaguely ethnic people rather than the “Jewish joke” Roth described them as. But the mis-fit of Thompson and Portnoy makes a really fascinating text and counter-text (or second text) interplay. Thompson foregrounds the fight that is often overlooked in the text, by embodying with his art style the Nice Jewish Boy masking the Dirty Jew-boy inside.

It’s a bit rocky in places, but I think it’s my favourite Roth creation, and just might be my favourite Thompson creation as well. You should look out for it.