8/30/2014
8/24/2014
More NonSense: Ferguson Edition
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| The Militarization of Officer Joe |
Go to: MAD Magazine, by Desmond Devlin (via Kevin Melrose)
The militarised response to protests over the police killing of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has provoked outrage among many in the comics community. Brett Shenker collects a sampling of their tweets.
On the other hand, Casey Johnston notes how Facebook's tendency to filter for uncontroversial feel-good content makes it more difficult to discover Ferguson-related posts.
Everyone else is linking to this Jon Kudelka cartoon.
Mike Dawson muses on the Kajieme Powell police shooting.
Sean Howe's profile of Frank Miller, who's currently in the spotlight for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, is the best comics-centric summary of his career so far. His portrait of the man paints the rise, fall, and possible redemption of one of the industry's most influential, not to mention outspoken, figures from the last 30 years.
According to Alan David Doane, the accompanying photos taken by Richard Burbridge have generated speculation about Miller's health. Bill Sienkiewicz quashes the rumours. I really admire how Miller has successfully retained his firebrand persona. It's something that animates everything he draws. But my one takeaway from these articles is how much he's weathered as a person and as an artist. 9/11 galvanised Miller in a thoroughly unpleasant way. His divisive rant on the Occupy Wall Street movement exhibits no empathy towards the concerns of people half his age. And that's a little disheartening for even a curmudgeon like me.
Milo Manara's alternate cover to Spider-Woman #1 has sparked outrage for its suggestive pose, dredging up the usual issues of female representation and the industry's systematic failure to attract a larger female audience. Manara's own confused response did him no favours by ranging from the "women are naturally sexy" excuse to mentioning Ferguson, the current Ebola crisis, and Islamic fundamentalism. Meanwhile Tom Brevoort defends the publication of the cover. Tom Spurgeon and Amy Reeder each give a more nuanced response.
The marriage of Manara's sensibilities to American superheroes is actually rather atypical. The resulting image is erotic, but in a freakish rather than a seductive way. I'm not sure if I like it. But if Manara was trying to emphasise the inherent weirdness of superheroes, I think he might have succeeded.
Yale Stewart has put his webcomic JL8 on hiatus after admitting to sending unsolicited photos (NSFW) of himself fondling his privates to two women with whom he was involved. Before that, Stewart was threatened over the phone. He has since apologised for his gross behaviour.
What's interesting is the indirect manner in which the social media firestorm arose in the first place. Ulises Farinas initially accused Stewart of cynically capitalising on tragic events as a means to self-promotion, most recently the selling of his Ferguson desktop wallpaper. This prompted references to the existence of various "dick pics." Now, sending erotically-tinged messages isn't odd in this day and age, but the practice turns ugly when its unasked for. Stewart's actions can't be condoned, but neither should the making of threatening phone calls. Turns out the Web is still a very clumsy tool when wielded as a means to mete out justice. Who'd have thunk?
Only Stewart knows what was on his mind when he fashioned the Ferguson wallpaper, so I'll give him the benefit of doubt. But given the circumstances, employing the military-style Green Lantern Corps to call for unity might not have been the best choice.
Chris Sims on the splendid mess that is "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Even I could tell back then that the motive behind the series was editorial's desire to mold its diverse properties into a much more homogeneous unit. In retrospect, that it didn't succeed wasn't all that surprising. Not that it stops DC from continuing to shoehorn Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman into the same milieu.
I contribute to Twitter Nation.
8/22/2014
8/18/2014
Cartoon: You Might As Well Live
Go to: Darryl Cunningham Investigates (via Brigid Alverson)
You can also listen to this podcast for another perspective on the very same anecdote.
8/15/2014
8/10/2014
The Playboy: a comic-strip memoir
Playboy magazine has been around for so long that its boudoir-inspired aesthetic has practically become the very definition of kitsch. And yet, it’s arguably due to the publication’s historic success that the tale found in a high school memoir like The Playboy isn’t really all that remarkable for the countless number of adolescent males growing up in the suburbs. Sure, the multimillion-dollar publishing empire has dwindled away over the decades. But its legacy continues in the constant stream of moderately titillating, slickly produced, and slightly pretentious imagery of half-naked women now ubiquitous in pretty much all visual media, despite the objections coming from both the more puritanical and the more progressive. It wouldn’t be surprising if this larger societal conflict informed the experiences of a young Chester Brown as he goes through the typical cycle of lust, attraction, anticipation, satiation, emptiness, guilt, paranoia, self-loathing, loneliness, only to circle back to lust. But Brown carves out a small niche for himself by navigating between the more familiar territories of self-flagellation, the blatantly pornographic, the polemical, or the farcical. Brown’s approach is to crystallise the inner turmoil he felt as he recalls his oft-repeated encounters with Playboy during the mid-70s. Everything else recedes into the background.
What’s at first striking after reading TP is what’s being left out of the main narrative. Brown’s minimalist self-portrait effectively converts him into a blank slate, which allows readers to project their own anxieties on to him. They won’t delve too deeply into his religion or politics. His family or friends. Or his love life. But they will be able to gaze at some of his favourite centerfolds. Observe his odd masturbation technique. And identify with his frantic attempts to hide/get rid of his magazine collection. The terse narrative inadvertently functions as a kind of Rorschach test. Some readers might see in it a tacit condemnation of all pornography. Or a confessional about a youthful addiction Brown eventually outgrew. Or a cautionary tale of how Playboy might have irreparably damaged his ability to form healthy relationships with flesh-and-blood women. Some might even remark on how he never makes the transition to more hardcore material.
For my part, I detect no real moral disapprobation. Brown uses an interesting narrative device where his older self from the 90s visits his teenage self in the 70s as a tiny bat-winged figure. The daemonic avatar enlivens what is otherwise a visually monotonous and lonely pursuit. The supernatural appearance works in conjunction with Playboy being viewed at the time as forbidden fruit, but the interaction is entirely one-way. The older Brown doesn’t tempt his younger self but merely provides commentary on his actions while the latter remains completely oblivious to his presence. Older Brown might express occasional frustration with himself, but never any remorse for having possessed multiple copies of the magazine in the first place. And who knows what other forms of pornography he's gone on to consume since he outgrew this obsession? The book only focuses on Brown's relationship with Playboy during a very limited time period. Unsurprisingly, this provoked speculation about his sex life since TP's 90s publication. Brown has tried to address some of them in the 2013 revised edition through copious additional endnotes. This adds another layer of commentary, which complicates the book's overall impact. But this tactic is preferable to making significant revisions to the original comic itself (though he does make several minor changes), as that would have altered its rigorous structure.
The other thing that made an impression on me are the visual juxtapositions. Brown doesn’t come from the realist school of cartooning, and TP is representative of his earlier deconstructed style were the pages contained only a few panels in order to let the negative space dominate the composition. In contrast, he’s remarkably literal when reproducing the magazine's pictorials. The June 1975 issue in particular becomes an important motif as he goes through the act of buying, then throwing away his own copy, only to purchase another on a later date. As a medium, photography takes advantage of the sensuous qualities of light, colour and atmosphere. But when Brown translates the original glossy magazine images into black and white inks with his own awkward style, what ends up mostly coming across isn't the glamour but the artificiality of the poses and facial expressions. Yet when these conscientiously hand-drawn copies are placed next to Brown’s less detailed, wispier, big-headed characters within the book, they transform into something both more static and larger-than-life. After almost 40 years, it's evident that they still have some totemic power over the artist.
8/02/2014
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