Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians: a quirky kid’s comic

Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians by Jarrett Krosoczka

My mom sent me a warming YouTube video, as moms are wont to do.  Unlike some of those dastardly vids, this one was actually pretty great.  If you enjoy hearing about how artists get their start and the important of art education, it’s here.

I’ve never read a book about a lunch lady superhero, but when I heard there was a series, I decided I absolutely had to have it, so I asked Amazon to bathe it and send it to my door, which they did.

This is a kids comic, so it’s quite short.  Lunch Lady, the superhero, fights crime and serves lunch.  Three kids (two boys and a girl) sometimes stumble into the crime fighting and help out.

This time the villains are the dastardly librarians.  Since I had been kind of hoping the League of Librarians was a superhero group of my colleagues draped in capes, also kicking ass, I was rather saddened.  Dangit, librarians can too fight crime!  *shakes tiny fist of rage*  Only those who have had to remove the creepy guys doing unspeakable things in the back stacks know the extent to which the local librarian force keeps the world safe for book lovers everywhere!

Ahem.  Where was I?

Oh yes.  We librarians turn out to be the bad guys.  Which is OK, since I do know there’s some deeply annoying luddite librarian types out there, but still, I’d have preferred us to be a league of secret ninjas.  At least we’re competent villains.

The story is set around a book fair, which as a kid I loved, and there’s some fun librarian vs lunch lady fighting.

Here the librarians release characters from books to fight the lunch lady:

ReleasetheHounds

What really makes this story work for me is the art.  It’s cheerfully inventive.  The funny ideas, like a refrigerator being the portal to the secret lair, and a taco used as a semi-night vision device (except it doesn’t quite work–it just makes everything look like a taco!) were pretty great.  The silliness and the inventiveness remind me of the very first Harry Potter book–a sense of wonder that was utterly delightful and light-hearted.

She’s a superhero who battles evil while wearing kitchen gloves and holding a spatula.  I think it’s pretty great.  As a kid, I’d have loved it.  Definitely recommended for those who enjoy silliness with their capes or to parents who want some fun comics for their kids.

LunchLady

Inspector Lewis and Vom’s little addiction to British cozies

So I’ve been rather under the weather, which means you get more TV reviews.  I managed to blow through all three versions of Agatha Christie’s Marple, as well as the entirety of Midsommer Murders, Murdoch Mysteries, Murder in Suburbia, Rosemary & Thyme, New Tricks, and Inspector Lyndley (the last of which isn’t really very cozy, but I was getting desperate).

Then a friend recommended Inspector Lewis and it was available streaming on Netflix.  She told me “It’s set in Oxford and full of classics references and murderous Dons–you’ll love it!”  For those who don’t know, I was trained as a classicist (that’s the parlance in that field for ‘learned up’).  I’ve read Homer in Greek and Tacitus in Latin and Levi-Strauss in French and in German, I read that Swiss dude whose name I forget who did the lovely and not-too-German German encyclopedia of classics.  Fortunately for my television reviewing skills, I’ve also read Aeschylus and Euripides.  These things are important when watching snooty cozies, you know.

Other fun facts from my overly fancy education: There was an Athenian upper-class gang named the auto-lekythioi.  A lekythos is a bottle used for storing anointing oil, usually olive oil, and auto means self.  So yes, there was a Greek gang named the masturbators, or the self-lubers.  (I think this group came up in our discussion of the destruction of the Herms, but it might have been during our tour of pottery at a museum.  I forget.)  This has been your random classics neepery of the day.  Ahem.

So, when I plopped myself on the couch to watch this thing, I was immediately struck by the title, “Whom the Gods Destroy.”  Aha, I thought to myself, someone’s going to be killed all right, but first they will be hounded to the brink of madness! Excellent!

Being me, I also hoped there would be a sparagmos.  Perhaps even an incident of omophagia!  Why yes, Greek does have a specific word for the ritualistic tearing people limb from limb and then eating them raw, why do you ask?  It’s such a perky, cheerful discipline is philology.

So, this show, Inspector Lewis.

The setup is quite straightforward.  An older, experienced detective named Robbie Lewis is paired with a younger, snarkier, prettier sergeant James Hathaway.  Lewis, the older detective, is street-smart and wise, from a working class background, and finds the Oxford dons somewhat nuts.  Hathaway, the young sergeant, is by turns taciturn and sarcastic, was educated at Cambridge, and was going to be a priest.  Hathaway has a rather metrosexual air, while Lewis has the comfortable lived in face and boring wardrobe of a middle-aged guy who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t give a toss about clothes.  Both have interesting backstories that are explored as the show goes on.

The episodes of Lewis are longer than the usual American TV drama–each one clocks in at about ninety minutes, or movie length.  The character Lewis was the assistant to Chief Inspector Morris on the show of the same name, which I never read or watched, but which is sometimes referenced.  In this show, Morris is dead, and Lewis is the lead investigator, and he begins teaching his new assistant, Hathaway, about solving crimes.

This first episode covers the death of a Dean of an Oxford college.  As the show continues, it becomes apparent that several middle-aged men all belonged to a club.  What club?

Why, the Sons of the Twice Born club (revealed by a deeply tacky ring).

The twice-born being Dionysos.  See, back in the day, Zeus knocks up this pretty girl, but that pisses off his wife (gee, why?), and in the ensuing kerfuffle, Zeus kills Semele by his lightening bolts, but saves the baby by sewing him into his thigh, where the baby ends the gestation period and is eventually birthed.  Hey, it’s about as sane as Wandering Womb syndrome.  Obstetrics has something of a checkered past in classical Greece, sorry to say.  Aaaaaaanyway.

There was a crone-looking classicist behind the club (naturally), and some drugs and naughtiness, as one might expect from a Dionysian cult, but not much respect for gender fluidity or the power of what they were dealing with, both of which means that all club members are doomed to come to Sticky Ends.

Right.

There were a couple of different club members left after the initial murder, including one guy who turned out to have been a drunk/drugged driver who killed a pedestrian during a wreck and wound up in a wheelchair.  Lewis and Hathaway are shown doing their best to help this guy, despite his clear evilness, offering him protection and trying to find out who’s behind the string of murders and why.  Each murder is perpetrated in a way so as to cause maximum horror and mental anguish, and when you find out why the murderer committed the crimes, you can kind of see their point.

I won’t spoil the ending, since it’s actually a pretty good show, but I will say that my inner classicist was deeply pleased by the way they arranged the sparagmos and tactfully hinted at the omophagia, without actually ruining their ability to be shown on TV.

It’s a dark episode with a nice twist.  Literary references piled on literary references, and some truly pretty countryside (as is traditional in such shows).

The one thing that is quite different between British television and American television is the number of episodes per ‘season’.  In British TV, you might have anywhere from three to twenty, depending on budgets and actors’ time, and so on.  American seasons (at least on network shows) tend to have twenty one episodes, give or take.  Lewis has absolutely lovely production values and each ep is quite long.  I have no idea if that’s a factor, but the first season (not including the pilot) is only three episodes long.  Episode two is about Lewis and Hathaway protecting a criminal turned author on his book tour and episode three is about a deeply troubled woman’s apparent suicide.

Season two begins with the episode “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea.”  What’s a show about Oxford without an episode about Shelley?

To be honest, this is my favorite episode, although it’s also painfully sad.  A gambling-addict and maintenance man for the Bodleian Library is killed.  Soon after, so is a promising and well-liked art student named Nell.

The episode twists through the chambers of the Bodleian, forgery, what art means, gambling, and ends in a particularly lovely and poignant way at the statue of Shelley.

Other show highlights include the Quality of Mercy, about a Shakespearean play put on by students (includes discussions of Marx and Hegel!); Allegory of Love, which includes lots of wonderful Inkling geekery, Lewis (C. S. and Carroll) references, allegories of fantasy high and low; the Point of Vanishing, with a deeply moving story of love and what it means to be free, as well as explorations of faith, honor, and atheism.

Good stuff.

Sadly, the show also has an unpleasant transphobic episode (Life Born of Fire) which seems to be trying to frown at homophobia, but which didn’t really succeed.  I watch these things to relax, so I fast forwarded to see if the villain was as I suspected (yes), but otherwise did not pay much attention to it, and erased it from my mental canon.

Overall, I’ve been noticing some interesting class stuff going on in this show.  Hathaway, for instance, has upper-class class markers (appearance, musical taste, education) but is lower class.  Lewis is proudly lower class.  Many of the villains are upper class, and the lower class villains often have good reasons for the crimes they commit.  I’m pondering the cozy genre, because it’s, well, it’s just so weird.  But interesting.  If there’s interest, I may try to come up with some thoughts about the cozies in general.

There are, so far, six seasons, and another season is planned.

The Singing Inks: Some Lovely YouTube Inking Videos

I love art.  While I don’t get to play as often as I’d like, I thoroughly enjoy the hell out of it when I can.

One of the joys of committing art is playing with ink and paper.

And if I can’t play with the paper and ink myself, I often like to watch how others do so.  Watching other active artists work is a wonderful learning tool–and it brings me great joy. Of course in the past, one needed to personally know an artist in order to watch their process, but these days it can be possible to see it on YouTube in videos or on DeviantArt in tutorials.

Today I wanted to share some of my favorite videos.

First is Nyek! Video Blog #64

Pencils by Whilce Portacio and Inks by Ed Tadeo.

I find this very restful to watch, actually. I’m always fascinated by which portions of an image an artist chooses to begin working on. Then, which portion they choose to highlight with their tools, and what parts they come back to.

I’ve watched this video several times, and while I don’t always follow the capes, I do have considerable affection for many of them, so this is a satisfying piece for me. There is often a difference between a working artist on deadline (using Photoshop to black things in, for example) and a teacher showing an exhibition piece. Both very valuable. Just different.

The second video is an illustrator, Francis Vallejo, who has made a longer how to video:
 

 

This video is a short series of demonstrations–it’s not a working piece (as in the first video), it’s a demonstration piece. He does several versions-one with pencil, then with nibs, then with brush work, and another with gray washes. It’s useful and interesting.

And while the one below is actually speed painting, not inking, I wanted to share it anyway:
 

 
No, I have no idea what the words say. I think the artist’s name is hatsune miku, but that is an educated guess (Update by Noah: Hatsune Miku is the character being drawn, apparently).  What I wanted to talk about is the approach–it’s interesting and the results are lovely. I’ve never seen an artist begin with a silhouette and then move to the darker to lighter shapes–different and fun. So many ways to reach the end point of a figure drawn and beautiful.

This other next one is also not ink. It’s Liang Yue demoing Corel Painter 9, but I couldn’t resist, because holy shit.
 

 
That one speaks for itself.

This last one is Ayano Yamane inking her work and then doing watercolors. It’s ever so slightly naughty, so children cover your eyes, and adults, scoot closer. But seriously, Ayano’s inks are absolutely gorgeous. Her pencils, of course, are top notch, but it takes a great deal of control to do this sort of inking because (if you’ve never done watercolors or wet ink a la Dr Martens inks) you need to know that you can’t actually erase on that paper or Bad Things Will Happen (you’ll get all sorts of hideous splotches) and you can’t exactly correct skipping nibs or spatters. It requires a very steady hand, and unlike cape comics, yaoi comics (like shojo comics) require quite a thin line. It’s beautiful, yes, and my favorite kind of ink, but it takes practice and skill.

Ayano Yamane:

 
I hope you’ve enjoyed these.  One of my favorite things about living in the future is getting a chance to watch the creation and sharing of amazing art.

Tink, frog, and purl: Worsted for Wear

I’m guessing Worsted for Wear isn’t a fav comic around here.  Not because it isn’t funny (it is), or because it’s poorly drawn (it’s not), or because it lacks or includes capes (it’s mostly capeless, with the occasional cape walk-on for fun), but because most folks hanging out in the hooded u aren’t big knitters.

But I am.

Knit! Purl! Knit, Knit, Slip Slip, Knit and Pass Slipped Stitches over (Double Centered Decrease, baby)!

Ahem.  Sorry.  I got overexcited for a moment there. Sock yarn lace patterns are as fine wine to me and I get a bit giddy.

So what am I talking about?

A web-comic about knitting.

Worsted for Wear is a well-drawn indie web comic by Josh and Rachel Anderson.  A friend of mine who’s into web-comics (but not knitting), sent me the link.  I was a little wary, because I don’t normally think of knitting as funny.  It’s something I do to relax, and if I’m knitting a sock someplace public, people are usually confused as to what I’m doing.  (Socks on two circs looks odd, if you’ve never seen it.)

But in a weak moment, I checked out WfW and laughed.  Short strip comics are a difficult form.  It’s hard to create enough story to pull off a funny punchline in just a few panels.

I approve of any comic that can make cthulu-hat jokes.

The art is good enough to make it easy to recognize them.  The stories are essentially warm rather than grim.  This is a light comedy, not a grim!dark tale of doom.  Makes a lovely change from the sad arty stuff I sometimes try to read.

The characters are a nice mix–Cam (the main character) has several friends who show up over time.  One of the early arcs is about how Marie, who knit the cthulu hat, adores horror movies.  She knits a baby blanket with an exploding head and eventually the knitting group goes over to her house for movie-knitting night:

The strip is titled “Stabbed Through the Red Heart.”  Red Heart is the name of a very inexpensive, acrylic yarn sold at big box stores.

Most of the stories are one or two strips, but some last longer.  One arc covers that perennial problem–knitting gifts for baby showers.  Cam’s forgotten to make a baby shower project for her sister, and she has to scramble to get one done in time.  It pokes gentle fun at those of who sometimes lose sight of deadlines–and how sometimes friends come through to help out.

The strip is delightfully geeky.  Not only do we get Cthulu hats, we also get that most famous of famous knitting projects, the Dr Who scarf.

Let me take a brief moment to talk about Dr Who scarves.  Who scarves use a pattern called ‘garter stitch’.  That’s using a simple knit stitch on each row and on both sides.  This creates a durable fabric that doesn’t curl at the edges.  (If you’ve ever cut the edges off a tee shirt and watched the edges curl up, that’s because the knit fabric used in most clothing is called ‘stockinette’.  It’s smooth one one side, but curls.)

The big challenge with Who scarves is getting the colors correct and the width of the stripes right.  If the idea of pausing frequently and peering worriedly at the TV is getting you down, do not fear!  There are plenty of places that have these details all worked out.  Try Witty Knitter.

Not sure how long to make it?  Check the scale drawing here.  Want color tips?  Witty Knitter used an OttLite and some pantone strips (yes, really) to get the most accurate color tips possible.  Never let it be said that knitting geeks do not go the full mile.

By the way, I recommend starting with Knit Picks harmony wood needles and some Cascade 220.  All the techniques you need to get going are available on knittinghelp.com.

OK, back to the comic review!

There’s a delightful run where Cam gets (mildly) offended by the crocheters, who have the audacity to meet in her knitting cafe.  Dun dun dun.  As a form of revenge, she cozies them (covers their stuff in knitted items–this is a Real Thing, by the way.  Some knitters have gone around and, say, knit bombed all the seats on a bus.)

In revenge, the crocheters do their own thing!  (Crocheters are know for making small, cute stuffies.)

Is this cheery little comic Great Art?

Oh who cares.  It’s got women who are shaped like actual women, it’s got funny and geeky happy couples, it’s got Star Wars and Dr Who jokes, it’s got small foibles I can relate to, and lovely art.

And for once, it shows the kind of lovely female friendship that I see all the time in the real world but that is too often missing from media:

Isn’t that a great panel?

Now go knit a scarf!  Or a woolly bobble hat!  When in doubt, tink!

A Piercing Glimpse of Pants

I actually like superhero comics.

Since it’s a big genre I don’t love all the mainstream capes, obviously, but the idea of them, the inherent trope of extra-powerful characters helping others, is fun and interesting.

There’s something powerful about the mix of whimsy and gravitas in a comic like classic Wonder Woman.  Yes, she’s wearing spangled underpants, but she’s jousting on giant kangaroos and swimming deep under the ocean to rescue planes.  Anyone who spends a lot of time reading classic myths will recognize this kind of storytelling–there may be helpful woodland creatures flitting around your head, singing their adorable eyes out, but there’s also stepsisters getting their toes sliced off to fit the glass shoe of the prince.

Whimsy and gravitas, the stories we tell our children.  Be good, be brave, be honest, be loyal, and you will make the right choice at the crossroads.  You will help the little old lady who’s having trouble crossing the stream, and she is the fairy godmother who will save your butt when you get into a bad wood-gathering Ponzi scheme with your idiotic three brothers.

I doubt many people who wander into comics shops or cons feel like Levi-Strauss wandering around the jungle taking photos of penis sheaths and gathering mythos.

But perhaps they should.

For is it not the same?  Our cape stories take avatar-figures and set them upon bizarre quests.  The Princess in disguise must save the bumbling prince, and when she is back home, she dresses up like a deer to be hunted and ‘eaten’ by her fellow sisters.  The wealthy young scion loses his parents before his eyes–set upon a path of vengeance with the loyal family retainer and the local woodland creatures.  Certainly, these are not fluffy gray doves, but then, perhaps he is an urban scion.  He must battle another winged creature avatar–a bird who cannot fly is bested by a flying mammal who is not a bird.

Right.

So maybe superhero stories are myffic. Fairy stories told in bright crayon colors, yes?

As a kid, I tied a brightly colored towel around my neck and leaped off tall things (occasionally skinning my knee in the process, as one does) and I certainly got some underoos and clothesline and tied my long-suffering stuffed animals to a chair so I could interrogate them with my lasso of truth.

It was fun, and as time passed, as it does, I grew up.

Does that mean that I set those stories aside?  In some forms, sure.  I became too busy, what with college and then multiple jobs, to catch everything.

But I watched some of the various TV incarnations of the Supes.  A friend of mine loved Lois and Clark, and later, Smallville, so I watched them, too.  When Buffy came around, I fell hopelessly hard for the young blond high school kid who was a cheerleader by day and a warrior for the light at night.  I had a regular Tuesday night dinner with my enthralled friends and we watched, open-mouthed and silent, regular as clockwork.

I saw the movies. X-Men was good, and Spiderman OK, and what the hell was Aerosmith doing writing cheesy dreck like that as a soundtrack for god’s sake?   Seriously, Perry, that shit’s beneath you.

Where was I?

Right.  I saw the various Batmans, including Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman (inspired casting, but maybe not as inspired as Eartha Kitt….).  Hellboy.  Fantastic Four.  Iron Man.

I got into Saiyuki, which is another awesomely classic superhero story.  The boys have special weapons, tragic pasts, specific costumes, unique hairstyles.  One’s missing an eye!  Total classic mythic stuff.  Goku even wears a cape!

I read various comics, often shared between friends, in the supe vein.  Some I liked, some I didn’t.  You can see some of the ones I enjoyed here: Batwoman, Spidey, X-Men, Empowered.

I even did a long and heartfelt Wonder Woman fan comic.

The point is: I read this stuff because I like it.

I like the mix of whimsy and gravitas.  I like the juxtaposition of increased power and increased vulnerability.  I like wondering what kind of problems a caped crusader runs into.  I like seeing Good win over Evil.  I like it.

So, for some unknown fucking reason, my various friends and acquaintances kept pushing Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come at me like a drug pusher and a new victim.  This is the shit, they’d say.  I know you’ll love the art!  You have to read this! This is the best art I’ve ever seen, you have to read it!

I demurred.

Finally, one particularly vicious soul bought me the damn thing, or as many issues as were out at the time, and shoved them into my hands.

*

Reader, I hated it.

*

I hated everything about it.  The hackneyed plot.  The continuity porn.  The endless shoutouts to characters I couldn’t remember and wouldn’t have missed if I had.  The dumb as shit use of my state as a stand-in for the common people.

But more than anything else, I hated the art.

*

Fucking hated it.  Fucking hated everything this art stood for.  Hated it with all the passion in my soul.

*

Ahem.

*

Now, someone (probably everyone…) is likely to contradict me here, but I’m going to briefly outline my theory of art and craft.  I believe in craft, see.  A lot of people don’t.  But I do.  And since I believe, deeply and passionately, in craft, a lot of people seem to think that I should just luuuuuuuuuuuv that fucking Alex Ross art, because it is ‘realistic’.

But Alex Ross’s art is–well.

Craft.  What is craft?  Craft is skill, honed with with hard work, talent, and experience, of taking an image (be it a photograph, a live model, a mental imagining) and creating that image in a medium (inks, paper, sculpture, whatever).  Composition, line-width, colors, brushstrokes, etc, are all part of craft.

Certainly Alex Ross displays strong craft, of a certain type.

That type is realist copying to the point of dogmatism.  Copying, you ask?  Copying, I say.  For those who do not paint or draw a great deal, the ability to put an image on paper (or canvas, etc) and have it look exactly like a photograph or still life can seem a skill that is difficult to the point of miraculous.  It’s not, actually.  As an old teacher explained grumpily to us, the surly art class, if you have the hand-eye coordination to sign your name, you too could produce realistic drawings (or paintings).

There are several traditional ways to go about it.  You can use ‘Right Hand Side of the Brain’ method.  You can use photographs to flatten a scene.  You can make a view-finder (popular with the Dutch, back in the day).  You can train your mind to see not faces but slight oblong shape to paint with yellow ochre plus titanium white plus burnt sienna one half inch to the left of a center line.

The problem (or gift, for any flaw can be a strength if turned on its side like a knife) with these methods is that they are, at their heart, copying.  Is a Xerox machine miraculous?  Yes.  For skill and craft of reproduction, a Xerox machine is pretty amazing.  But it isn’t art.  You can make art by xeroxing–shrinking and reducing and enlarging and cutting and pasting and re-reducing and shrinking and enlarging and doing interesting things with various papers or toners.  But if art happens, it is because of the human element.  The artist chooses what part of an image (or their hand on the scanner, etc) to copy, how to use this amazing tool to create an image that is changed because of the passion and imagination and inner vision of the artist.

If photography is art, it is art because of what the photographer chooses to portray.  What composition, what lighting, what cropping, what juxtaposition between subject and scene.  Or what scene he had made himself with the help of his models, their costumes, their acting, their stylists.

Craft is the skill, the Xerox machine or camera or brush.

Art is the vision, the imagination, the choice of subject, the human element that steers the machine of Craft down the stream.

It is totally possible to be an amazing artist but have limited craft.  That’s like a singer who has a very limited vocal range but makes the most of what she has.  Or you could have a ton of craft and not much art.  That’s an amazing range, multiple octaves, used to sing crappy Barry Manilow tunes.   A waste.  (People, of course, can have both art and craft, or, not much of either.)

I’ve seen great art created by kids who were given disposable cameras and taught about composition and lighting.  If they choose powerful subjects and use the images to tell a story, even a two dollar Walgreens disposable can turn out some very moving art.

But the same camera in other hands could also churn out (and probably will) a dozen red-eyed blurry dog portraits and another dozen photos of drunk relatives at a birthday party.  Not evil, but not exactly a moving artistic triumph we must share with the world at large.

*

So what, you might ask, bewildered by this odd detour into my off-the-cuff art theory, has this to do with one of the most celebrated comics artists?

If the purpose of craft is to portray an artistic vision (in this case a comic story about the importance of superheroes), then we can say art is good when it adds to the story and bad if it takes away from the story.

And by that metric Alex Ross is very, very bad.

*

My friends who pushed Alex Ross on me were in awe of the talent on display in the pages of Kingdom Come.  They believed that the art was good because it was ‘so realistic’.

Looking at any given page in Kingdom Come, I can tell that considerable energy was expended to create the images.  I could tell, even before reading the end pages of my graphic novel release, that Ross had used props, models, and costumes.  To my friends, this was supposed to be impressive.

I guess if you’re not used to seeing the man behind the curtain, it is.

But many fine artists use costumes, photographs, and props.

To me, such preparations are neither laurel wreath nor black mark, it’s just another tool in the artistic arsenal.  My favorite artist, Alphonse Mucha, did many preparatory sketches and photographs, often lovely in their own right.  Other artists, often working in watercolors or Chinese style inks, use none of that kind of thing.

It has often been said that a true craftsman makes art look effortless.

I don’t know that I would say that, but I would say that a true craftsman makes the viewer see the art and not the effort.

*

So what about Ross?  If I like Mucha, then surely I don’t mind realism?  If Ross has some skill and craft, what’s the problem?

The problem, dear Reader, is that Ross chooses to remove every bit of whimsy from the mythos of superhero and replaces it with earnestness in the service of a kind of ugly realism that shatters the edges of the created world until heroism crumbles like a balsa wood model in an earthquake.

*

In the classic Wonder Woman stories, there are many ridiculous plots.  Is there really an island of women?  Do they really joust on giant kangaroos?

Well no, of course not.

In the real world, there are also no sky kangas.  (Alas.)

Superheros are pretend.

*

What Alex Ross does in Kingdom Come is take the mythic story of superheroes and paint them hyper-realistically.

The effect is obviously intended to be Serious.  Superheros are Needed, because Humanity needs to Battle Evil and the Forces of Good Must Triumph.

Except that by using this hyper-realistic style, by shoving a mythic story, with only slapdash revision and poor grasp of art, into a realistic world, Ross shatters the border of that story, again and again, until the frame cracks and every ugly border of the page is shown, every fourth wall is broken, and the superheros don’t project gravitas, but a kind of secondhand embarrassment so strong that I have to keep the damn comic face down on the table.

*

Let’s take a look at Superman, the hero of this tale.

He’s portrayed as an aging, graying, be-chinned older guy.  Which, OK, fine.

If Alex Ross has an artistic thesis in this story, it appears to be to prove, once and for all, that The Big Man’s chest hair is gray.  Gray, do you hear me?  Gray!

All right already.

Now I actually wouldn’t mind having a middle-aged superhero, caped or not, portrayed as realistically aging, but what Ross has done here is not portray Superman as a middle-aged farmer, but as, well.  Look.

There’s one group of people who over-develop their chest muscles and neglect their legs.  They have long hair in ponytails and frankly, more tattoos, but otherwise, Clark is kind of a dead ringer for a guy who’s lived in prison for years.

Farmers and outdoorsmen have built calves and smaller chests, different body types.

The spandex outfits are also a mistake.  What self-respecting Kansas farmer would be caught dead in bright red and blue lycra?  None, that’s who.

Instead of creating imagery that conjures strength and the tenacity of age or using the crayon-colors to create instant pizazz and focus, or hell, even silliness, Ross’s tromp l’oel conjures unpleasant petty realities.

Anyone who wears polyester underpants that tight during a workout is just asking for a yeast infection.  Not to mention the chafing once he starts to sweat.  I hope there’s a good portion of CoolMax in that fabric.  Did he at least put on some runner’s nipple guards for men?  Maybe he’s getting free samples of Body Glide?  I hope so, because otherwise, ow.

And what about those red boots?  Surely they’re made of rubber.  A man that age needs decent arch support especially if he’s active.  Fancy wellies with no real soles just seems ill advised.  I hope he’s got decent arch inserts.

*

This is the problem with hyper realism that takes itself too seriously.

*

In a normal fantasy story, there are some rules from our real world and then a few extra laws added that, within certain constraints, allow the storyteller to bring us something new and special, something greater than a story that is mired in the muddy reality of the day-to-day.

Tolkien called this a piercing glimpse of joy.

*

If you establish rules in a fantasy world, you have to follow those rules or risk shattering the world.  It’s also important, as an artist, to understand and honor the fact that it’s a fantasy.  Kangaroos can’t really take Amazons to the outer rings of the galaxy, but, wouldn’t it be cool if they could?

(Answer: Yes!)

*

Kingdom Come tries very hard to portray its fantasy hyper-realistically.  The problem is that it obeys only some of the rules and pokes holes in the others, all while taking itself incredibly seriously and obviously expecting its audience to do the same.

I have mentioned more than once that I’d like to have a broader range of ages and types of characters.  An aged superhero could be really cool.  But you can’t just age Clark Kent by giving him hyper-realistic chins and then bloat his shoulders like he’s an ex-con.  You can’t give Batman a metal exo-skeleton because of old injuries and then expect me to believe he’s got the same bull biceps of Clark Kent.  Where’s Bruce’s chronic pain pallor?  The weight loss caused by narcotics?  The shakes from  muscles that fail or from neuropathy-focused meds?

And if everybody else packed on a paunch so that their underoos are tight, why the hell does Diana have a teeny waist as if she’s got on an invisible corset?

Oh, because she’s a reward for the guy with the big red S on his chest, how silly of me to forget.  *rolls eyes*

You know what?  A woman who’s a warrior would not have a teensy waist.  (Nor do most middle aged ladies, but I digress.)  Nope.  If you look at practicing swordsmen of either gender, such as those who practice kendo, they have a broad belly, not one that is super-sucked in.  That’s because they have a low center of gravity.

You can see the same thing in those who practice a lot of yoga.  Amateurs tend to think that years of practice will lead to a six pack, but it ain’t so.  What it leads to is to a broad deep belly.  Why?  Diaphragmatic breathing.  Breathing into the lungs is nice, sure, but warriors (especially dare I say it Amazons) breathe into the lungs and all the way into the belly.  Lots more power.

If you want cheesecake, that’s fine.  Nothing wrong with the occasional cheesecake.  But don’t pretend it’s real.  Don’t expect the cheesecake to add to the feel of reality if you’re mixing sixteen year old photoshopped bellies willy nilly with older-woman bad hair day. Let Diana have a deep belly and and middle aged face and still be cheesecake.

Er, sorry, I got somewhat sidetracked.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Hyper realism and seriousness and gravitas.

Right.

The problem is not the aging of the characters.  The problem is the patchy slapdash application of the aging rule.  Clark’s got gray hair and a flippy old dude pony tail, but Diana’s got a girlish figure and the same hairstyle she had in the forties?  Uh huh.  Batman’s managed to invent an exo-skeleton for his broken body, but–

Look, in the real world, young guys wear spandexy football uniforms or whatever, but grown men normally do not wear  bowling-ball shaped glowing green armor.  Especially with a, what the hell is that anyway?  Some kind of black satin loin cloth?  Panty apron?  I don’t know, but it’s weird.  Weird and unattractive.

And loud.  Really loud.

It looks strange.  Sad.

In more abstract or symbolically painted comics, we’re not obsessively shown the seams of the spandex costumes.  We’re not shown the exact way a piece of green armor fits unpleasantly against a human body and then be expected as readers to believe it’s functional as a warrior’s uniform.

If you’ve ever seen a beat cop or an armed member of the military, their bearing changes when they’re wearing their gear.  I’m not talking about the shoulders back and head straight (although there is that), I’m talking about the way those heavy belts full of maglight/walkie-talkie/cuffs/gun/stunner/notepad impact the way those people move and stand.  Their elbows sweep differently.  They don’t bend at the waist in the same way.  Their hand will automatically move out to keep a truncheon or tool out of harms way if they turn quickly.  You can tell they are aware at each moment of the items they’re carrying, that these items have purpose, that it’s an important and serious uniform built on utility.

People wearing full and immovable body armor do not slump in a chair with their legs spread to reveal their black shiny panty crotch cloth!

They just don’t.  It’s not believable.  And why glowing green?  Yes, someone from continuity porn ville will be sure to point out endlessly why I am wrong wrong wrongity pants, but come on.  No self-respecting warrior would wear day glo green bowling ball shaped armor with a black loincloth in this day and age.  I mean, lol WHUT.  No.

It’s embarrassing.

Which is kind of a problem.

Every time I look at this page, I think, “Put on some pants!”

“Put on some pants” is a strong, visceral reaction but it’s the wrong reaction.  For the purpose of the story, I’m supposed to be feeling sadness or worry or fear for the characters and their plight, not slapping my hand over my eyes and thinking this is just like the time I went to an ill-advised Star Trek convention and got hit on by a man three times my age who was wearing some kind outfit made of what appeared to be bits of colored pantyhose, OK?

Just about every page has a panel like this.  I’ll just get into the story and begin to believe and then a panel will shove the impossibility of this story ever being even remotely true into my face.  Again and again and again.

Here we see a kinkster in gold PVC, dial-a-naughty lady in a super girl outfit from Cirilla’s, the big man in underoos, a strange man in armor holding a shield that makes him look pregnant, and their obviously baby-oiled personal trainer in boxing boots.

And you know, that’s fine.  It’s not great, it’s not ideal, but–

The whole damn book is also ugly.

For the main theme of the book, Ross chose a complementary color scheme.  Since the colors are opposite, they’re jarring.  I have no doubt that Ross intended this jarring effect to increase the feeling of conflict.

Only problem?

He chose red and green.

Welcome to Christmas in comic town, boys and girls!

But enough.

The craft, the talent, the skill, does Ross have that? He can make images that have distinct features, sure, but according to Vom’s Theory of Art, he has failed.  Failed because each of these effortful, carefully crafted images betrays instead of supports.  The tone, the story, the essence, the theme, all of them are subverted instead of supported by the art.  I have no worry for the characters on their quest or joy in the characters’ triumph.

I just want them to put on some normal pants.

__________
Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

By your jawbone, shall we know ye: The Glades

Gators.  Caymans.  Smuggled newts.  Stolen generators. Ex-cons.  Cons.  Moonshine.  Diamonds.

This is a strange little show.  It’s another of Netflix’s recommendations, and I’m not sure why I’m so enchanted with it.

Maybe because I believe Florida is basically one dangerous, violent swamp?

Anyway, the premise is quite straightforward.   Jim Longworth, snarky Chicago homicide detective, decides to move to Florida.  He teams up with the resident Chief Medical Examiner (aka coroner), Carlos Sanchez, and, after a bit of wrangling, he also teams up with a nurse, Callie Cargill.  Callie is a single mom–her husband’s in prison for armed robbery, she has a teenaged son, and she’s paying the bills and going to medical school to become a doctor.  The team is rounded out by Daniel, a hardworking and geeky young grad student.

The episodes are a mix of ‘ripped from the headlines’ hot topics and strangely endearing, cracked out Florida-specific crimes.

Fer instance, in the pilot, they identify the victim by finding the gator (excuse me, cayman) who ate her.  The Detective shoots the cayman and hauls it into the coroner’s office.  Dr Sanchez, hilariously cranky and appalled, initially refuses to autopsy a gator.  But it’s lying there on the slab, little lizardy arms stuck out T-Rex-like, so Carlos gives in.  The grad student, Daniel, happens to be a herpetologist, and when Carlos initially pulls out only a box turtle and some trout, Daniel explains about the long digestion time.

So Carlos digs around in the innards and eventually finds the (partially digested) jawbone.

Which is how they identify the victim, and thereby, the killer.

You gotta admit, that’s kind of awesome.

It’s usually semi-plausible, in an insane kind of way, but sometimes the plots are a bit too recent news headline for me.  I skipped the episodes about kids getting guns on the black market (and yes, shooting someone by accident–too damn depressing) and I bailed out of the ‘chronic pain clinics are a drug haven’ because it was mostly just wrong.  (I have a chronic pain condition, so I know a lot about it.  Most pain clinics don’t prescribe narcotics at all, and those that do are extremely strict about it.  Yes, there is a booming black market in pain drugs, but the show got all the details wrong.  If they wanted to have a doctor in a clinic over proscribing, they could’ve tried botox injections (yes, really) instead of talking about the black market trade in fentanyl.  Fentanyl comes in patch form only, outside hospitals, and it’s nearly impossible to misuse because of it.  You can’t drink it, smoke it, or ingest it to get ‘high’, although if you do put it on and then take a hot bath you can OD and croak.  This has been yet another nitpicking brought to you by the resident cranky person.)  Ahem.  Where was I?

Oh yes.  The Florida specific episodes.  See, there’s a lot of nice worldbuilding in this series.  One episode is about a mermaid who washes up on the beach.  In Florida, there’s apparently a booming business in mermaid shows.  Attractive young women dress up in latex mermaid tails and swim around.  One of these women shows up on a beach, in a tail, dead.

The plot involves synchronized swimming practice (harder than it looks–I used to do synchronized swimming), the strange things people do for love, and the intricacies of a sibling relationship.

Another episode covers a Papa Hemingway contest/festival, complete with moonshine subplot, and a very attractive black sable German Shepherd named Bo.  (What?  You don’t see black sables very often, and they’re my favorites.)   It also involves a hipster with a degree in marketing from Tulane.

My favorite episode is the one about NASCAR.  I don’t actually follow NASCAR, but we have a track here, and it’s a highly specialized fandom with its very own rules, royalty, and fans.  I thoroughly enjoyed all the car chases and the details of how the villains did what they did and why. I’d tell you more, but it would be a spoiler.

Some of my other favorites are about the famous Florida town of psychics, the exotic bird (and newt!) smuggling ring, the town of circus freak descendents, the guy who believed in aliens, and a private island.

The characters are all well-rounded, and sometimes individual episodes focus on a particular character.  There’s a relationship between the main male lead, Jim, and the main female lead, Callie.  Unlike most shows, the two don’t tumble into bed first thing.  She’s married and while yes, her husband is in prison, she’s too moral for that.  So they wait!  Until she gets a divorce!  Weird, huh?  Weird, but cool.

There’s some complications to the love life that bored me (just leave them together and get on with the show already!) but I can put up with that.  They’ve got a habit of including implausible beach-bunny super-high heels on people who, in my experience, would not wear them, but whatever.  I’m mostly in it for the gators.  Who wouldn’t be?

 

Adventures in online manga reading: eManga

I’m taking a brief break from compulsively consuming British mysteries on TV (have recently blown through all of Agatha Christie’s Marple, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Vera, and most of Blue Murder) for a bit of comic reading.  I used to buy a lot of manga. Because I’m a librarian, I feel duty bound to acquire things as legally as possible.  The recent death of many manga publishers killed off a big chunk of my reading habits.  When Borders closed, I stopped being able to wander around and check out new titles.

As much as Amazon enjoys bathing books and delivering them to my door for my pleasure, I’m afraid I suck at finding new-to-me manga on their site.  Non-fiction, sure.  Random food items and socks?  Yes.  But manga?  No.

The only major manga publishers that I could think of were Viz and DMP.  I knew Viz was probably still mostly focusing on mainstream stuff (they published Bleach, I think, although if I’m wrong I’m sure a thousand fiery fans will correct me…) and I’m pretty sure if I slouched over to Barnes and Noble, I could peer moodily at the shelves to see if anything of theirs would appeal.  But DMP now, DMP I’d heard had bought most everybody else’s back catalog and also done…some kind of odd deal with scanlation groups or something.  Not that I know any scanlators.  Or even people who know people who know scanlators.  Ahem.

Anyway, I have often enjoyed DMP books.  Barnes and Noble never really carried them, which is another reason I shopped at Borders.  So I decided to do a bit of Googling to see if what I’d heard was true and that I could lawfully buy my manporn online.

And lo!

It is true!

For at least some titles, anyway.  Which is why I immediately thought: I must tell the whole world about this!  Readers of HU must know immediately!

But first, I had to test it out.  For science!  The things I do for this blog, seriously.  My heart is deep and wide.

So I trotted over to DMP’s site, Digital Manga Publishing books.  Although let’s be honest.  DMP/Akadot have a bunch of related sites, and I’m not that great at keeping them straight.  But this one seems to have all of DMP’s various imprints together, both regular titles (many of them with waaaaay more camel toe than I care for, thanks) and yaoi-themed.

I surfed around the different new releases and all the Vampire Hunter D stuff (it’s always bored me, sorry).  I kept noticing a little green plus sign that says eManga.

So I wandered over there.  It’s another DMP-run site and it has lots and lots of titles.  A couple hundred at least.  Some old manga that I’d enjoyed in the past and some new stuff I hadn’t read before.  I poked around until I found a title that looked promising.  (Blue Sheep Reverie Vol. 1 by Makoto Tateno, in case anyone cares.)

 

photo of desktop image of emanga Blue Sheep

This is the basic screen.  Yeah, pretty straightforward.  On the regular monitor, it was nearly readable, but on my laptop (a fancy 17″ by the way, not a small netbook) it was hopeless. I’m ridiculously nearsighted, even with my glasses.

I tried zooming, and that works OK, but it made it hard to read the whole page, because you have to move down and up and then forward, blah blah blah.  Easy in book form, harder in electronic.

They’ve got a neat feature that takes care of that, though.  It’s in the upper right corner where it says 1 page.  You can also read 2 pages (yeah right, with my eyes?  please) or panel.  When I picked panel, I discovered it grays out most of the page, and moves the clear, brighter (and larger, if you zoom) panel in the center.  When you click ‘next’ it moves to the next panel and ‘prev’ moves back.  It’s smart about the right-to-left and panel top to bottom, too.  Very cool!

But this wouldn’t be HU if I didn’t complain bitterly about something, so I thought I’d say that while I enjoyed the preview, I was irritated to discover that one of the titles I’d seen on the DMP site with the eManga link and then tried to buy is not actually readable/purchasable on eManga.  It’s there, yes, but you can’t buy it.  Color me cranky.

If it’s coming soon, say so.  If I can only purchase it in paper, tell me that.

Some of the titles available on eManga are from Harlequin.  At first I thought it must just a similar name, but the colors are the same and it’s got that weird diamond thing going on.  Startling.  But whatever.  I wouldn’t care except the copy-editing on the covers is off.  The Amalfi Braide for the Amalfi Bride.  In what appears to be Arial font.  Yes, OK, it’s gotta be actual Harlequin because I recognized some of the authors from their romance titles.  Do a better copy-editing job and get some nicer covers.

The other (small, honest!) complaint I have is that the books list ‘points’ beside them.  At first I thought this was an ill-advised savings/coupon thing–you know, like buy so many books worth so many points and get a free read?  No, turns out not.  You buy “points” and then you spend “points” to read various titles.   There’s probably good reasons for it (cut down on credit card fees, maybe) but it was odd to see it that way.

But overall, I’m glad to see this site.  DMP is a company with a history old enough that I’d buy from them.  They have a way to preview titles, and they’ve got a decent track record of actually continually to put out titles until a series is finished (bitter, who me?).  I noticed that a couple authors I’ve enjoyed have a series there.  I’ll definitely be getting some manga and enjoying them.  I hope it’s a successful venture and that they’re able to make more titles available soon.