The Digital Divide

I have fallen really and truly behind in my Captain America reading. Every month I buy Brubaker's monthly and somehow, some horrible how, I end up with it at the bottom of my pile and it never gets read. This is a great and true travesty- those Captain America comics are surely among the great comics of our time, as they have been since Brubaker took over the title five years ago. To be completely honest, I miss the Captain a great deal, and one of my comics related new years resolutions was to make sure I read as much good Cap stuff as there is, on time and monthly. I want to do this partially so I can review it and consider it critically (I do, after all, have aspirations towards being the world's foremost Captain America scholar), but mostly because I want to read the stuff; although I've mostly moved away from character based purchasing, in the case of Captain America (and sometimes Iron Fist) I just can't help myself from wanting to read all of it, even the bad stuff (and some of it is really bad). Luckily for me, some of the Cap stuff that's coming out appears both great and essential: I'm trade-waiting Mark Waid's "Man Out of Time" mini, although Gorga has had some great things to say about it, and with the upcoming movie and the character's upcoming 70th birthday, there's bound to be more good stuff to come.

Including, of all things, Jason Aaron and Ron Garney's Ultimate Captain America. Aaron has slowly and sneakily become one of my favorite writers: between Scalped and Punishermax he's written some of the best comics of the last couple of years and has even managed to get me interested in characters as lame as Ghost Rider and as ubiquitous as Wolverine (every time I pass a new issue of the current "Mr. Logan Goes To Hell" arc I have to try really hard not to break down and buy all the issues so far. On that day you will know I have failed, for the cries of joy and despair will be spread across the four winds) and I was pumped to see him write my favorite character. Even better? Ultimate Captain America was going digital day and date.

Some of you might already know this, but back in October I cracked the screen of my laptop by falling on top of it (the story is very short and pretty funny, but I'm not going to speak of the incident anyway) and solved my problem by hooking up my laptop to a monitor on my desk and buying an iPad for mobile use. It didn't hurt, of course, that I could buy and read comics on the thing. I'm not sure I could ever give up on physical format comics (I'm twenty, but I still buy vinyl!) and particularly not at the prices their being offered for at the moment, but I'm always up for trying something new and interesting- it helps that comics look great on the thing, without the limitations of printing and absurdly high-res.

In fact, I was so interested in the way comics look on my fancy new toy that it was inevitable, given my interest in the comics consumption problem, that I would also become interested in the differences between the two formats. I proposed to Gorga that we each review the whole of the series in one of the formats, and use it as a springboard to talk about the pros and cons of each format. I was more excited for this series of posts than I was for the comic itself, and so when the release date rolled around on Wednesday, I was pumped. I booted my iPad, logged onto the Marvel comics app and...

I found that Ultimate Captain America was missing.

And then I realized that Jonathan Hickman and Carlos Pacheco's seriously brilliant Ultimate Thor (featuring Ultimate Captain Britain wearing a lab coat and his costume AT THE SAME TIME!), also announced as day and date, hadn't shown up the last week in December, when it came out in physical stores everywhere. That comic has had some distribution problems of its own, so I wasn't that worried about it, but it hasn't appeared since either. I don't want to speculate too much on why this is, but I'm having trouble believing that Marvel is going back on their day and date announcements, particularly in the wake of the recent news about the death of Ultimate Spider Man. It's too bad, too: starting off their same day digital release program with two minis that were likely to be very popular was a smart move for digital readers, although it may have damaged some relations with physical retailers, but promising something that never appears is a good way to turn readership off of digital comics entirely, particularly given what seems to be a wide preference for comics you can read off of paper and prices that are simply too high for a product that only exists digitally.

I hope to see the minis soon- I would like to read them, after all, and am getting tired of waiting. It's a fast moving comics business and I wouldn't want minis that are deserving of attention to fall in the same spot in my stack as my poor ignored Ed Brubaker Captain America comics.

The Transmogrification of The Indie Comic-Book into The Indie Graphic Novel (Series)

Jason Lutes' "Berlin" has been coming out since 1996 in a slim 30-page saddle-stitched format (that's just fancy talk for: it's a comic-book). But things have changed since 1996. Are "Berlin" and Adrian Tomine's "Optic Nerve" the last of the great indie comic-books?

Chris Ware's "Acme Novelty Library" became a hardcover graphic novel series when Ware began self-publishing the title at issue #16. Los Bros Hernandez' "Love and Rockets" became an annual paperback graphic novel with restarted numbering under the title "New Stories" in 2oo8. Finally, Seth's "Palookaville" jumped ship this year: with "Palookaville" issue #20, the series is now 'hardcover graphic novel volume' #20.

"Acme Novelty Library" changed formats like most people change their clothes but "Palookaville" now exists as nineteen comic-books and one graphic novel-ish thing. Seth is to be congratulated in at least one way: "Palookaville" Vol. 20 is a pretty gorgeous book object but doubts linger in the forefront of my mind.

"The expansion into hardcover from pamphlet is a parallel that illustrates Seth's growth ... into a book designer, hobbyist, editor, essayist, and installation artist."
~ "Palookaville" #20 (marketing writing on the book-band)

A slightly different tune from Seth himself (a slog of text yes, but worth it):

"It's not like I wasn't aware that the comic book format was coming to an end. A shift had occurred (this last decade) in the sales of comic books and people simply weren't buying 'alternative' comic books any longer-- they were waiting for the book collections instead. Books were the current 'healthy business model.' ... I was torn. I have a deep and abiding love of the old pamphlet form of comics. I grew up with them, and it is the most simple, austere and unpretentious format you could invent. ...

all the great alternative comics were gone ... Hate, Yummy Fur, Eightball, Yahoo, Dirty Plotte, Peepshow, Jim/Frank... they'd all vanished. Even Love and Rockets had turned into a large squarebound book. Only Optic Nerve seemed to be strongly carrying on. I hadn't truly realized how much of a dying breed we were. Was I leaving now too? It seemed a minor betrayal of something to quit the format. ...

It's difficult to do a long story all at once and putting it out a bit at a time was a method that worked for me. There was an era when the comics reader was more willing to go along with this approach ... Then they'd buy the book collection as well. I appreciated that too. I guess that day is done. ...

In fact, the less constrained page count would actually allow me to present larger chunks of the long story as well. ... I suspect that this format change itself will influence how my next long story is told. ... So, goodbye, comic book format. It was good to know you. I leave you with no regrets."
~ Seth from "Palookaville" #20: Introduction

So where does the 'comic-book' end and the 'graphic novel' begin? Well, somewhere in the middle of the 'graphic novella' I guess? At over 100 pages? Other than that I'll be damned if I know anymore.

Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's "Lost Girls" was an indie comic-book slowly released over several years. The series was canceled and eventually finished when published as a bound book set and then a single volume "graphic novel". If the only way to get the entire story is to buy the trade, does that lend credence to the concept of a serialized graphic novel?

"I suspect that this format change itself will influence how my next long story is told." Of course it will. If I gave anyone alive one page a day to write something, the writing would be different than if I gave them 100 pages at once. Artists, like all humans, are adaptable. They expand or truncate to fit the space they're given. This affects the way these stories are told and if ALL indie creators switch over like this I fear we will begin to see an English-language paper-marketplace with very similar comics. I am working on a review of "Berlin" #17. Will my review of "Berlin" #18 (in 2o13 or whenever) be of a hardcover book? In which case, webcomics-in-print may become the new go-to source for a variety for voices who wish to do something in short formats without a superhero in it (not that there's anything wrong if there is) at a comics shop or box chain bookstore. Truth is: webcomics already rival the indie comics in that regard. Turn on your computer, type "recommended webcomics" into Google and you may be amazed at what you find.

But should not the talented creators of limited financial means be also given credit for surmountting the problem Seth clearly stated: "It's difficult to do a long story all at once"? As a creator of limited financial means (who believes himself to be talented) I myself know that to be true. Time, food, money. These are troubling obstacles to sitting at a computer/typewriter/drawing board/lightbox all day long. I believe those who do so, indie or otherwise, without immediate recompense and publish their hard-fought work all at once, are creators who deserve the term graphic novel.

In the end, I have little doubt that just as digital comics will take off, people will find a use for paper comics; so too, as the ongoing graphic novel series becomes more common, people will find a use (most likely an entirely original and unexpected one) for the comic-book.

Here's looking forward to whatever that may be.

~@JonGorga

In the Beginning Was the Image... (And the Word came later. Trust Me.)

"God gave us His Word, i.e., the Word of God; NOT a picture book!  The Picture Bible is very dangerous to children today, because it effectively inoculates them from the true Word of God, and leaves out critical teachings in the Scriptures."
~ "The DANGERS of The Picture Bible" by David J. Stewart

Those are the opening words of a rather strange essay about "The Picture Bible" I stumbled upon while researching Bible comics recently. David J. Stewart is a vehement believer in salvation through guilt, i.e. fear of the punishment from a vengeful deity. And he believes the "ecumenical" Christians, i.e. just about all the Christians not sitting on his particular branch of the tree, are as certainly wrong as he is certainly right. He has made this quite clear in his essay. I don't believe I am going out on a limb of my own intellectual tree to say that the kind of narrow-mindedness Stewart displays essentially discriminates against those arms of Christianity that disagree with him when he states that "The Picture Bible" is invalid because it excludes certain phrases he finds central to his religion. (Although he does make it clear that this is probably acceptable for those other arms of Christianity). AND discriminates against those who process information and learn visually instead of verbally. Few people in the America I know and grew-up in would disgree with that.

I do not 'believe' in the Judeo-Christian God. God with a capital G. I do not believe god should be capitalized because god is not a person or a consciousness or an intelligence or even an ideology. We capitalize Josh Kopin because Josh is real person, we capitalize Santa Claus because Santa is a fictional person, but god is neither of those things. We don't capitalize the word gravity either, and that's a force that keeps us alive and exists everywhere and anywhere too.

Now with all of that religious 'here's what I believe' claptrap out of the way, let's talk about sequential art: what makes this essay of Stewart's important for our purposes is that in equal measure to his religious discrimination he is discriminating between modes of communication and thou must embrace variety in mediums of communication or thou shalt be poor in variety of messages indeed. That is also what I believe.

David C. Cook Publishers, the producer of "The Picture Bible" proudly describe their 800-page product thus: "For years, The Picture Bible has delighted young and old. ... Though the full text for 233 stories is provided, children can follow the colorful pictures and storyline without having to read every word." That's often the mark of good comics: clear visual communication.

To believe that visual narrative, as Stewart states, "may be more entertaining, but it cannot cut to the heart, cause GUILT, and bring the conviction of the Holy Spirit like the genuine Bible can" is to ignore the art and communication produced previous to the written word and over the large majority of human history and insult all visual artists, sequential or otherwise.

Indeed, if "The Picture Bible" truly can communicate the stories of the Bible clearly without text it does the 'Word of God' a proud service in transforming and adapting it to the 'Sequential Image of God'. (Not to mention shun guilt and fear as spiritual teaching tools in the process.) No small feat.

~@JonGorga

P.S. ~ You can read more about "The Picture Bible" and Cook Publishers at the page devoted to them on Christian Comics International.org.

Happy New Year!

A happy new year to y'all, and I come bearing a little bit of a new year's treat.

My co-blogger, friend and all around good guy, Jon Gorga, made Quotes on Comics!

Isn't that a sweet way to start a new year?

Comic Biblical Book-Endings (Or Lack Thereof)

"Amazing Tales of the Bible: Noah's Ark" by Zachary Kanin in The New Yorker Nov 1, 2010: The Cartoon Issue; pgs. 84-87 (Viewable, with digital subscription, here.)

Humor and imagination can get you a long way.

I've always loved The New Yorker, both for its prose and its cartoons and, increasingly now, comics. They both have the ability to tickle your funny bone and wrinkle your brain. And Zachary Kanin is among the new talents to draft and draw in the footsteps of Peter Arno and Charles Addams as a New Yorker cartoonist.

It seems that since R. Crumb can make a comics adaptation of the book of "Genesis" and get pages of it published in The New Yorker so can any sequential artist. The New Yorker released the first preview the public ever saw of Crumb's "Book of Genesis" project in their June 8th issue of last year: the Summer Fiction issue. (Truthfully, I suspect that it was because of Crumb's successful adaptation of Biblical material that this new work even exists. "If it worked once...!")

Furthermore, comics adaptations of the Bible are hardly a new concept: "The Picture Bible", everything on this site, the SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING. That list goes on forever. That is surely why the title includes "Amazing Tales of the Bible", as an in-joke about the existence of so many crude Bible comics out there.

All that said, Zachary Kanin's short and jocular adaptation of the story of Noah and the flood is far from bad. It's light and fun material and any fan of either Bill Cosby's or Eddie Izzard's hilarious stand-up bits recounting the story of Noah will find much to enjoy here. Kanin packs a lot of great stuff into four pages. Stuff like the two panels in which Noah is revealed to be a nose picker and the narrator declares "Well, not totally righteous" followed immediately by a panel where God says: "But good enough!" The effect is a bit of humanizing while poking fun at a Biblical figure.

The best moment is unquestionably the 'cut-away' image allowing us a peek into the ark, jam-packed with pairs of animals, all squished up against each other. Cartoon reality: bones of all kinds are flexible and pliable in all directions!

Why the damn comic ends with its worst moment I'm sure I will never know, because I'm sure Kanin doesn't know: The story takes a left turn and Noah meets another strange speedo-wearing (hispanic?) vassal of god on the high seas who asks Noah if he wants another wife, because on this other ark there's a surplus. Noah doesn't answer. Then I turned the page... and discovered there was no more to the comic. (Nonsensical and sexist?)

The art is simple cartooning, to its benefit, with subtle grey washes. The simple alterations in the lines of Noah's face giving us a look of determination as he decides if he is to get all his mating pairs he MUST PUNCH OUT A RHINO is a deft use of the tools in the cartooning toolbox. The first panel on the fourth page where Noah's eyes are so large as to be out of proportion to the rest of his face... not so much.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?

"Amazing Tales of the Bible: Noah's Ark" is hilarious with hit or miss art.

The problem is that, like a lot of New Yorker cartoonists, Kanin just doesn't seem to care about giving his work an ending. He leaves without finishing. It's a problem seen literally a few pages previous with the only other comic in this Cartoon Issue: "Self Effacing Man" by Alex Gregory. It, too, has no ending, but it is a vignette. A short series of three thematically related moments in time. "Noah's Ark" is a series of gags and that's totally fine, but it lacks a final punchline.

A good comic, like any work of narrative art, should have a beginning, a middle and

~ @JonGorga

See what I mean?