Chatter: Dan Slott 1/10/2o13

In speakng about his recently released intense turn of events for poor, beleagured Peter Parker in "the Amazing Spider-Man" writer Dan Slott said wonderful things during his interview in The Village Voice. Here's my second favorite excerpt:

"
"We're a crazy medium where people put on skintight costumes, climb up walls, fly, and shoot things out of their eyes," Slott says. "If there's any part of you that goes, 'You can't do a brain swap!' then you should go read Great Expectations." He rattles off a list of other fantastic story lines from his run on Amazing: "If you say, 'You can't give everyone in Manhattan superpowers!' or 'You can't create a doorway that takes you 24 hours into a future where Manhattan is destroyed!' remember, this is the Marvel Universe. We have mutant children raised by talking cows. We have teleporting dogs. It's fun."
"
~@DanSlott

And it's all true.

P.S. ~ Did you get a load of the issue's awesome cover? [See it up top?] Even more importantly, do you appreciate that the current Spider-Man comic-book storyline and the Spider-Man fanbase's reaction is the subject of the cover story for The Village Voice? It's not about the movies (hardly, anyway) or about the Broadway musical (not really, anyway) or about the rumors surrounding the lovelife of an actor palying Spidey, it is an interview with Slott about his current and ongoing work with the original main 616 Peter Parker character. In other words, it's about SEQUENTIAL ART. Genre fiction sequential art no less.

P.P.S. ~ My favorite excerpt of writing from this interview is more just a great joke about fandoms in general. "Game of Thrones" die-hards are apparently a little crazy.

Quote for the Week: Bart Beaty

Comics scholars receive very little condemnation when we teach Crumb, Spiegelman and Ware (and Satrapi and Bechdel and…). When we do receive raised eyebrows is when we teach  Archie and other works that are “not serious” or “not sophisticated”. The route that the comics world might have taken would have been to fundamentally challenge that ideology. To reject those sorts of claims altogether. If you look at the type of work that we’ve published as scholars and taught as teachers though, we’ve largely failed to do that. And I include myself in that group even as I recognize that this might have been the more productive direction to go.

- Bart Beaty, talking about his new book Comics versus Art, on the marvelous unrealized promise of academic comics studies. 

Quote For the Week

This is Iron Man as adventurer and knight and… oh, let’s just have a quick burst of words. This is hyper-intense bursts of adventure and the future. This is about reclaiming the single issue story in the context of a larger narrative. 

-Kieron Gillen, on his upcoming Iron Man run for MARVEL NOW! If Gillen really can do that, if he can go ahead and carve out a space for single issue stories for one issue comics wholes that are only one order separated from the larger whole of an ongoing series, than it will be a thing of beauty. Of course, he's already managed it on a smaller scale, and I have to believe he'll manage it here, too.

Quote For The Week: Erika Moen

Erika Moen, in a marvelously revealing interview over at Comics Bulletin:

I've had many, many people tell me that my comics helped them come to terms with their sexuality or gender identity or made them feel less alone. That gives me goosebumps just writing it out! It is surprising to me how many queer people there are out there who have gone through almost the exact same experiences as me and received the same backlash and rejection from the "queer community," so while my comics help them feel less alone, their letters back to me make me feel less alone too! 

And, oh god, there has been a hilarious amount of ridiculous and painful criticism of my work. That it is bi-phobic, trans-phobic, privileged, sexist, racist, anti-feminist, advocates rape (yes, really), that I'm not allowed to call myself queer, that I'm trying to force queers to get married to oppositely-sexed partners like I did... Oh my god, the list could go on and on, only increasing in absurdity. It's fine though. People are allowed to project their interpretations onto my work; we're all entitled to do that! Doesn't mean that's the message I ever had in mind when I was making my comics, though. 

When I get hate mail or people confronting me at conventions, I process the experience in the same way that I do when a drunk, crazy, homeless man comes up and yells at me on the street: they're experiencing their own reality and expressing it outwardly, but that has absolutely no bearing on my life or who I am. If anything, I hope my supposedly offensive comics help inspire people to create the kind of comics they do want to read and that do"correctly" portray their views! People can write me angry emails that I'm not going to finish reading before I delete, but wouldn't they feel so much more empowered if they took that same time it would take to yell at me and funneled their anger into something productive, like creating their own comics.

I'm a big fan of not wasting energy on futility (such as screaming into the abyss of the internet) and instead making the content you want to exist, whether it's in the form of a comic, a story, or whatever medium you prefer. 

But then again, some people just like to scream, and that's enough for them.

Quote for the Week: On Phonetic Accents

Kieron Gillen:

When I’m working on a pre-existing character who’s always been written with semi-phonetic flourishes, I follow suit. Normally in a relatively minimal fashion, but enough to recognise that I’m playing in the tradition. The second is when I’m explicitly trying to turn someone into the Other, which is really about critiquing that (She in Phonogram 2.7 speaks in a complete mass of gibberish. But she’s just a voice in Marc’s head, and the story is about the way he viewed her, etc.) And thirdly… oh, there’s ways when someone really is completely and utterly unintelligible. I don’t think I’ve written one, but Arseface in Preacher would be a good example of that particular type. 

But being a guy with his face shot off is a completely different thing than someone being Glaswegian. 

Quote for the Week 3/19/12

In the current marketplace, most "ongoings" are making it to, what? 6-12 issues, no? If you're lucky? I've got a plan and I'm not being shy about planting seeds that I hope to come back to for, you know, exponential awesomeness... but neither am I holding my breath.

Though Carol is an Avenger, there is no Captain Marvel movie coming out this summer, you know? And we talk a big game about wanting female-led books that don't look like gynecological exams, but can the community actually come through with the numbers to back that up? I don't know. God, I hope so.

The problem isn't just that we have to get folks to buy it; it's that we have to get retailers to order it. The failing of our distribution model is that our customer isn't really the reader, our customer is whoever places the Diamond order at any store. So if there's a perception that the book won't sell, it gets under-ordered and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here's a thing that happens to every creator on Twitter on one Wednesday or another: an incredibly sweet reader who really wants to support you, writes to tell you that they tried to buy your book at their LCS and it was already sold out! It's only noon, they say! The shop only opened at 10! Your book must've flown off the shelves!

And then the creator, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, says, "Wow! Thanks for your support — better pre-order the next one!" and then they cry into their coffee. Because, friends, selling out by noon on a Wednesday is not good news. Heck, selling out byThursday is not good news. That means your book was under-ordered — if it was ordered at all. If the consumer wants the product and we can't get them the product, our system is broken.
I hate the pre-order thing. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Ten years ago, I was complaining about it on the WEF — I'm a shopper. I looooove to shop. I will spend money. But I am not going to buy a pair of shoes that I'm expected to order three months in advance and am not able to try on! And that's what we're asking of our readers. It's the dumbest system. No wonder we have problems! Is there another industry that works like this?

And yet, here I am begging you: if you want to read this comic, please, please oh please, oh please: pre-order it. If you want to see more female-led titles from the mainstream publishers, pre-order this book. If you're not familiar with how to pre-order, or you're not sure why it's so important, check in with me on Twitter @kellysue or on my blog athttp://www.kellysue.com — some time in the next couple weeks I'm going to do a step-by-step blog post. Maybe I'll even do one of those Warren Ellis-style pre-order coupons.

-Kelly Sue Deconnick.

Quote for the Week 2/26/12

At the end of the day I have my own, very harsh, often narrow opinions about what makes good or bad work. But I won't draw a line in the sand and say that comics I don't like, done under conditions I don't approve of, are the root of all our problems. I'm not suggesting that anyone endorse Marvel or DC if they don't approve of their methods. The rights of Gary Friedrich or Jack Kirby are separate issues. I'm saying that it is not only possible but it is important to support our fellow artists in their attempts to make a living or contribute to comics culture without making blanket accusations as to their moral intent. Whats worse is that when we do so, we risk endorsing the type of behavior we fear from Marvel or DC. If we want change, all we can do is lead by example and I think the first example we need to set is that we don't eat our own.

 Jason Latour, at the end of a post on creator's rights that you should really go read.

Quote for the Week 2/12/12

"We [Joe Simon & Jack Kirby] discussed this idea, about America. This was at a time when everybody was patriotic... and it was ridiculous not to do Captain America because there was an idea that would have been bought by everybody. So Joe and I did that. Our job was to sell comic-books. And we did.

...

[after being asked about a current Captain America storyline:]
I receive the books from most of the companies... That's their prerogative. Whatever they do with Captain America is their prerogative. If you like it, fine... I say that Marvel has every right to put out the kind of book that they like. That's their business, to sell books."

~ Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, on a panel in Troy, Michigan on the 29th of May in 1988.

This month, @DCcomics announced a series of prequels to Alan Moore's "Watchmen". Moore was quoted in an interview that this is: "shameless". The creators attached to the books defended their involvement in multiple ways including pointing out that Moore himself has used characters created by other people both for corporations ("Swamp Thing", "Superman", "Green Lantern") and in his own projects ("League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", "Lost Girls"). He dislikes the project and stands to make no money from it. (I've already covered this story myself here.) This page on ComicsAlliance.com summarizes the reactions.

Then, Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich was ordered to proffer to Marvel $17,000 he has made in selling his own Ghost Rider merchandise AND refrain from publicizing himself as the creator of Ghost Rider. Commenters have brought up Friedrich's health and financial problems as well as the fact that many, many professional comics artists supplement their careers with simple commissioned sketches of corporate-controlled characters at conventions or by mail. Some say @Marvel should settle with winning the case (i.e. not owing Friedrich any part of the earnings from the first film from 2oo7 or the new one opening this week) and rescind any request for damages or the somewhat ridiculous demand that Friedrich stop referring to himself as the character's creator.

And on top of all of this, original "The Walking Dead" artist Tony Moore is suing fellow co-creator Robert Kirkman claiming a proper half of proceeds from "The Walking Dead" TV show and merchandise has not been sent his way. The two were reportedly close friends who worked together on multiple projects before Kirkman (@RobertKirkman) became a part of the corporate structure of Image Comics (@ImageComics).

Supposedly
money + agreement = fair use of characters
but which part of that equation is more important? The compensation or the permission? And is there leeway for artistic relevance? Financial or health status? Even friendship?

Where do we draw the lines between business and ethics? Why do we draw lines there at all? Who is in the right: the creator or the copyright owner?

In this sudden rush of news in regard to creator's rights, it's interesting to me to remember that some of the most screwed over were also the most respectful. Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sued DC several times. Kirby never sued Marvel. Was Kirby a fool or a gentleman?

~ @JonGorga

Quote for the Week 12/20/11

"... I have more of an emotional attachment for these characters than I thought possible. I don't know what else to say that hasn't been said hundreds of times before so I'll just say thank you. Thank you for revitalizing my love of reading. Thank you for making me see comics as valuable entertainment. Thank you for all the wonderful stories you've given me. And thank you for all the ones you still have to tell. ..."

~ "The Walking Dead" reader Jason Winchell writing in to his favorite comics' letter column Letter Hacks with gratitude for the work of writer Robert Kirkman, printed in the back of last week's "The Walking Dead" #92.

Quote for the Week 12/4/11

"It's got unlimited potential. I mean, any art-form where you can use any word in the dictionary-- all the words Shakespeare used, you know, like, he doesn't have a copyright on 'em, you know? You can use any word you want. You can use a vast variety of illustration styles. They're very comparable to movies. I mean, both of 'em use words and pictures."

~ Harvey Pekar, the excellent late underground comics writer, in an interview recorded in 2oo8 for a documentary about Jeff Smith, available on YouTube here.

Quote for the Week 11/27/11

Some may chuckle at the notion of Maus as one of a handful of truly indispensable works of post-World War II American literature. American literature since 1945 encompasses Nobel laureates Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, along with Philip Roth, who if anybody ever listened to me, would already have his Nobel by now. The period also includes the likes of John Updike, John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, and Thomas Pynchon, to say nothing of more recent authors such as Tim O’Brien, David Foster Wallace, and Louise Erdrich. Do I seriously mean to compare modern classics like Beloved or Gravity’s Rainbow to a comic book?

In fact I do, and to explain why I need to go back to that community college classroom fifteen years ago. The students in that class were by no means stupid. They weren’t in the least intellectually lazy, either. I find myself annoyed by teachers like the mysterious Professor X, author of In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, who depict their students as lazy, ill-mannered lunks who have no business being in college. This view has no relationship to the reality I encountered in my years teaching in community colleges. After all, those students were giving up their weekends to take an introductory English course. They weren’t saints – I busted a plagiarist in that class, as I recall – but they understood, probably better than the kids in my classes at Fordham University today, that the American dream is built upon education, and they struck me as hungry to get started.

Still, no one in that class was ready for Saul Bellow or, God forbid, Thomas Pynchon. One of the first lessons of teaching literature in the real world is that you have to meet your students where they are, not where you want them to be. In academic jargon, this is called finding your students’ “zone of proximal development,” the sweet spot between what they already know and what they couldn’t possibly comprehend even if you were there to help them. The wonder of Maus is that it fits into everyone’s zone of proximal development. I taught it to those working-class immigrants in California fifteen years ago; I taught it at a third-rate night school in Virginia; and just last month, I taught it in an advanced writing class at Fordham, a prestigious, four-year private university. Every time, in every context, students told me they’d stayed up half the night finishing the book, and then when we discussed it in class, it took the tops of their heads off all over again. Maus is that rare work of literature that speaks to everyone while pandering to no one.

-Michael Bourne, on the importance and power of Art Spiegelman's Maus.

Quote for the Week 11/20/11

"Thing is, I really like comics. Now, when I say comics, I'm not talking about 'sequential art' or any of those other fancy terms folks use when they're trying to be clever about comics. I'm talking about 32 pages of folded paper together with a couple of staples. Comics. Not floppies or pamphlets or any of those other slightly derogatory terms that people use to belittle the format. Comics."

-Paul Grist, on the first page of the first issue of his Image comic Mudman, convincing me to put it on my pull-list even before I've read the damn thing.

Quote for the Week 11/10/11

"I had only the germ of an idea for Lentil. It started out as just a lot of pictures of a boy playing the harmonica. I didn't have any idea whether I was going to have words with my pictures or not. I thought the drawings might lead to a series of lithographic prints, not necessarily to a children's book at all. But once there got to be some words, the words grew and then the pictures grew."

~ Robert McCloskey, children's book creator, in an interview with Leonard S. Marcus as collected in "Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book", page 109.

[Brought to my attention by my friend and collaborator Ellen Stedfeld (@Ellesaur).]

Quote for the Week 9/1/11

"...sixty years of story-lines that make the characters feel old sometimes. ... Let's just take Wonder Woman as an example-who's one of my favorite characters-just because she has been around so long, she feels old even if she's not written old.
...
And they've taken the classic characters that everybody's familiar with and loves and they've fit 'em into a modern time ... and so now we have the chance to have a whole new generation be able to love these characters like we did. And some of this stuff, if we don't change it, it starts to look silly after a while.
...
Even though, I will honestly miss some things that I love."

~ Gail Simone (@GailSimone), in an interview with John Siuntres on his Word Balloon podcast (July 19th, 2o11 episode) [I always enjoy Word Balloon (@johnwordballoon).], speaking about the DC Comics (@DC_NATION) re-launch beginning this week, among which will be Simone's new "Batgirl" series.

I've never seen anyone put so on-point the feeling of these character's legacies affecting the feel of the stories.

~@JonGorga

Quote for the Week 8/16/11

Because comics count more on the reader than most forms, it's that much harder to make a critical point -- you really are reading a different comic than anyone else has. There are people hooked on narratives, and people that only look at the art, and people that hang onto moments, and people that prefer it when the invisible mechanisms of the form hold greater and more obvious sway. There are people that pick up signals and signs related to a certain experience either received or adopted and judge art if it hits all of those buttons or not. They're all quick to tell you that the other people are doing it wrong

-Tom Spurgeon. If you haven't read his post on his recent illness, go read it. Don't bookmark it for later. Don't open it in a new tab. Go.

Quote for the Week 8/8/11

"Call me an old fart, if you must, but ... just because you can do something doesn't mean that you need to. So, if someone said to me: Okay let's figure out a way to treat Mr. Mxyzptlk dark and grim and seriously, my first response is going to be: Why? Why do you need to? That character exists to create a certain kind of tone."

~ Marty Pasko (@MartinPasko), former writer of Superman - Word Balloon episode August 4th, 2o11 - "The DCU Past Present and Future".

Quote(s) for the Week 8/2/11

Josh (@IamJoshKopin) and I attended a panel event held at the Whitney Museum here in New York City when he was in town a few weeks back. The panel itself was made up of Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware; moderated by John Carlin. The subject of discussion was, ostensibly, the art of comics.

"Where I used to strive for movement and restlessness I now attempt to sense and express the complete total calm of objects and the surrounding air."

~ Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), comicsmith, painter, musician and caricaturist, translated & quoted in the 2oo4 textbook "Expressionism" from Taschen books

The panel event was held in conjunction with an exhibit at the Whitney Museum (@whitneymuseum) exploring the work of the man who wrote that, one of the Twentieth Century's first comics creators: Lyonel Feininger. He was both a comicsmith and a traditional painter who was intentionally brought into newspaper comics in order to bring some legitimacy to the medium. Feininger had the luxury of coming into comics from a fine art perspective as a result. So a search for stillness seems to be right in line with his other work: painting, a single image static art. In fact, there's no way to know exactly which discipline he was speaking of when he said the above quote but its implications for comics are just as interesting as its implications for painting. If not more so.

Here's why:

Eddie Campbell, the excellent comicsmith, comics publisher, and comics artist, said this in a 2oo6 interview with Tom Spurgeon of ComicsReporter.com:

"... all our theories about how comics are put together are invariably about time. The duration of a panel's action and the duration between one panel and the next. We haven't added very much to the Eisner-Steranko concept of 'sequential art.' And if the form is to say something important, rather than just involve itself in the kinetic thrill of drawn characters chasing each other, then we have to think harder."

Motion seems to be more exciting than stillness. More sexy. Things moving from point A to point B over time open the reader/viewer to be captivated and one might be tempted to think that motion was a requirement for narrative in comics, as it might be in film, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I myself once wrote on this blog that the medium of comics...

"exists frozen forever in snap shots, yet feels animated in sequence... moves without motion and speaks without sound"

but perhaps it would be best to embrace the stillness of the comics page. To "think harder" as Campbell implores and do as Feininger suggests: find "the complete total calm of objects".

~@JonGorga

Quote for the Week 7/25/11

Is there anything I can do, as a cartoonist? I wish there was a drawing that made people think "Hatred doesn't work?! Shit, what do I do now? Ten years down the toilet..." It would turn terrorists into meek accountants. There is no such drawing. The crying superheros, the Statue of Liberty with a tear in her eye, drawn after 9/11, I don't think they achieved that much. So these are just words. They're nothing, they're not even on paper. But I felt the need to write something down - it doesn't make me feel any better, but there it is.

- Norwegian cartoonist Jason, reacting to last week's terrorist attacks in Norway.

Quote for the Week 7/21/11

...he was simply a master draftsman. To draw is to understand, and his work revealed the depth of his knowledge, not just of anatomy, but of human interaction and perception. He could draw the human body from any angle--but he didn't--he chose the perfect one to tell the story.

~ Paolo Rivera (@PaoloMRivera) on the passing of Gene Colan, from the latest "Daredevil" artist to the greatest, in the tribute section on the last page of the new "Daredevil" #1 from Marvel Comics.

~@JonGorga

Quote for the Week 7/14/11

"As a child, when you're pretending you're different superheroes, Green Lantern was the easiest because all you needed to light the fire and the imagination was the ring... With Superman, you need a cape; Spider-Man you need, like, a full-face mask. That wasn't tough to come by in a winter town like where I'm from, but they're just hot to wear in the summer. So to be Green Lantern, all you needed to do is suck a Lifesaver down to the right size -- and to make sure it's a lime one -- slip it on your finger and you were good."

~ Nathan Fillion, in an interview about his work voice-acting as Hal Jordan for "Green Lantern: Emerald Nights".

Believe it or not, it came from this awful-looking magazine:


~@JonGorga