Woodshed: 2.3.12

Over at the Comics Journal, you'll find a rambling take on the recently concluded B.P.R.D. Hell On Earth: Russia. Look for more of these in the future, or just wait to be told that they've arrived: only you know what your future schedule allows.

Over at Flavorwire, you'll find a list of upcoming comic releases that seemed worthy of spotlight. Most of what's on here won't be a surprise to anyone who ends up on this blog in the first place, so let me just stress two items: Joost Swarte's Is That All There Is and Derf Backderf's My Friend Dahmer are two of the best comics that are going to come out this (or any) year. Don't let them pass you by.

Here at TFO, we've had the regular bubbles of activity--Comics of the Weak continues its sojourn in the deserts of the weird, Nina read the only issue of The Walking Dead she ever will, and then there's some clearing of the throat regarding some books n' such.

In the extended family edition, you can find Joe McCulloch with an excellent essay on Soderbergh's Haywire over at MUBI: don't pass it up, even if (like me), you've yet to see the film. He's that good, that Jog! Meanwhile, fellow trench warfare combatant Matt Seneca took up the Herriman challenge and succeeded brilliantly.

In my other, day job identity, I've been happily piloting this little tumblr for Bergen Street Comics. It's still in the figuring-out-what-we're-doing-with-it stage, but for now, we're pretty happy with it.

In other Bergen Street news, Benjamin Marra has unleashed the details for his upcoming art show, including the poster, which (of course) is totally awesome.

You neglect the badge at your peril, brother.

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My father's uncle lived across the hall from Ben Gazzara for many years, and my dad has a few solid stories about the guy. I wish I could remember a single one of them.

I uploaded some footage of me being a racist and getting slapped by Halle Berry in a television mini-series. It's a torturously shit thing to watch, but hey, I was able to afford a Chevrolet Blazer with the money I got paid, and I remember that being pretty fucking cool.

This flick, on the other hand, looks great. The way its shot brings up memories of White Ribbon, but I imagine using such a hardcore strain of religion will result in a far different film.

 

Like everybody else, I've been a Longreads addict for a while now, to the point where I've started buying magazines off the newsstand for the first time in years, just to keep up with all the great writers they've introduced me too. "The Story of a Suicide" is only the most recent example of the sort of well researched, well written articles that they're plugging. It's really telling how tempted I am to try to and summarize the article's key points into some catchy couple of sentences, as the problems inherent in that sort of of summary (and the internet's love of trafficking in that sort of writing) are one of the many great takeaways to be found. The subject matter (the suicide of a young gay man, and his roommates ensuing legal battles) isn't the most palatable, but that will only be a barrier to the very few.

"I haven’t been on the Internet since the ’90s. Whatever people think is their business, and they can blog, they can be trolls, they can do whatever. That’s their business. That’s their privilege, as they sit alone at 4 o’clock in the morning. That’s their privilege to do whatever they want. I choose not to engage in it. I find it very unhealthy, that environment."- Lucy Lawless, interestingly enough.

I'm sure I'll come up with some boring, shitty jokes about Watchmen soon enough, but right now I just think the whole thing is obnoxious and sad all around. The only non-Twitter reactions I've honestly read about this whole thing are the ones from Abhay Khosla and this one by David Brothers, and while I'm positive that Chris Mautner and many other people will deliver intelligent and/or funny responses on the subject, I think I'll tap out this time around. I'll be hearing what people think about the subject plenty at the shop, and that'll be where I do my penance.

Comics are clearly heading in a direction away from where I would like them to be headed, and that will have to be okay. If this is what people want--and I have come to believe that the industry as it currently stands is exactly what the people want, and I believe websites like The Beat, Newsarama and Comic Book Resources provide plenty of evidence of that fact--then they should have it. I am happy to leave it to them.

Comments

[TimCallahan]

You WERE racist, back in the old days! How old were you in 1920?

Okay, here's a serious question: have comics EVER been heading in a direction that you'd like them to be heading?

Comics have always seemed to be mostly targeting a different audience then me, and when there are comics I really, deeply love, I see that as an anomaly. Sometimes there are a group of anomalies, but most times there are only one or two.

Right now, there are fewer than most. I actually read less comics than I did a few years ago, but I look at a lot of them.

[David Bitterbaum]

Noooooo, you have to comment on this whole "Before Watchmen" nonsense! Everyone has! I spat venom at it myself but can never equal your absurdist-neo-intellectual style of writing which I adore giving a read whenever a post is made here. Tell me how to FEEL about all this, Tucker; tell me because all the snark and LOLCats on the web have made me kind of forget what emotions even are.

Also, I got the "My Friend Dahmer" comic long ago when it was a short one-shot comic. Is this new publishing full of more content or just the same (albeit very interesting same) stuff?

[tucker stone]

I'm actually pretty happy with the status of the content right now. A lot of my favorite cartoonists are people who are currently producing excellent work (Huizenga, Hernandez), and more than a few of my favorite comics (Gasoline Alley and Krazy Kat) are in the process of being re-released. There's a ton of great comics coming to English for the first time--Tardi, Tatsumi, Tezuka, other people whose names also start with T. There's some good shlock to read, at least one or two things every couple of weeks if you keep your eye out for it.

When I say comics are heading in a direction--I guess I'm just not as cynical on this one as you. I do think that there was a time where comics people were a lot less horrible to one another, a time when creators seemed to have other concerns beyond the purely financial--this is pure feeling, i'm not trying to create a post or ideology or any strict rule. I didn't used to feel like I was the odd man out for thinking that Kirby got a raw deal, or for thinking that Siegel and Shuster got hosed. Nowadays I do. Nowadays it feels like the industry's target consumer is a hyperconsuming lunatic fringe, and the rest of us can fuck right off.

I never expected the majority of this field to be the "comics as art" kind of thing--and I don't think it would be any better off if it were--but it sure seems like there's a huge Not Welcome sign being put up for anyone with the temerity to think that it might not be a great idea for comics to adopt all of the worst aspects of corporate culture.

I don't know Tim. You're closer to this than I am, you've probably thought about it a lot more deeply. I take a look at the things going around right now, the excuses and arguments being made--it all feels like a massively toxic environment. I don't think that it always was like that. If there was some huge financial rewards being reaped on the behalf of artists, it would be one thing....but that isn't the case, is it?

[Leslie Fontenelle]

This release of Watchmen prequels is an implicit admission of creative bankrupcy. They’ve run out of new ideas because nobody wants to bring their new ideas to DC, and nobody wants to bring their new ideas to DC because nobody likes getting screwed. So DC is left scraping the bottom of the barrel, “relaunching” low-selling books and old copyrights while claiming that they’re really relaunching the whole line – a false claim that only survives as long as nobody mentions Batman or Green Lantern’s books. Let’s try to make something out of that old Kirby character we have and some bloggers love so hard, let’s see if we can dupe someone into buying that old Ditko concept again by bringing in Rob Liefeld, let’s see if we can bring back those books that Moore and Morrison made respectable back when DC still took chances, the leftover prestige of the previous series may attract some attention. No new ideas anywhere, just old copyrights being thrown at the wall and let’s see what sticks. At this point DC is as creative as my microwave, they’re both only good at reheating frozen properties.

The creators involved will doubtlessly get a respectable paycheck and since Alan Moore doesn’t want to play ball he’s being dismissed as a cranky old man, in a defensive reaction disturbingly similar to the fan outcry that was raised against those bad bad greedy heirs of golden-age creators who threatened to take our preciousss Superman away from non-greedy-at-all DC, thus jeopardizing comicdom’s regular fix of substandard Superman comics.

It’s just so sad. And I honestly hope this project doesn’t sell.

[Chris Jones]

"At this point DC is as creative as my microwave, they’re both only good at reheating frozen properties."

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