More NonSense: SPX 2017 Edition

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Heidi MacDonald on this year's SPX.

Rob Clough on this year's SPX.

Kat Overland on this year's Ignatz Awards.

Matthias Wivel on Jack Kirby’s late foray into autobiographical comics, Street Code.

Tom King and David Finch talk about their creative process when writing Batman.

Seth Simons on the current neglect of The New Yorker’s Cartoon Bank, which licensed cartoons for secondary use. Cartoon Bank was established by Editor Bob Mankoff in 1992, and bought by the New Yorker in 1997:

The Cartoon Bank was a windfall for cartoonists, who in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s witnessed the market for single-panel gag cartoons dwindle from a handful of publications to virtually only The New Yorker. “I remember one particular check early on, probably my second or third check from the Cartoon Bank, was close to $8,000,” said one longtime cartoonist who was involved in the Cartoon Bank’s earliest planning sessions, and who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “As time went on, the returns weren’t as great, but they were still good—they were still two or three thousand dollars a month.” Alex Gregory, a contributor since 1999, described similar numbers. “I would regularly get checks for one or two thousand dollars,” he said. Mankoff, who had a bird’s-eye view of the company’s financials, spoke of cartoonists receiving residual income to the tune of $30,000 to $40,000 annually. The 1998 Times report notes that one cartoonist, Peter Steiner, had by that point received more than $30,000 in royalties for a single cartoon. 

In 2008, Mankoff handed off leadership of the Cartoon Bank to Condé Nast, who, it quickly became apparent, planned to operate the business with a lighter touch. “I consulted with them for many years after I left, urging them to support this business and commit to this business,” Mankoff said. “For their own reasons they decided that they’re not supporting it. There aren’t really any employees left. And those people who used to do those things”—licensing, custom books, original art sales—“have been let go. The people there are absolutely well-meaning, but they have no real idea of what this business is, who the cartoonists are, how you might leverage and maximize it.” 

Over the following years, the well dried up. The cartoonist who described an $8,000 check he received early on said he now sees at most a few hundred a month. Gregory said the same, as did several other cartoonists who I spoke too.

Mimi Pond lists the top ten graphic memoirs.

Matt Furie takes legal action using the DMCA against various alt-right groups.

Steve Foxe explains why Marvel's latest initiative, Legacy, won't save the company from declining sales.

Chris Ware on writing characters who come from a different background from him.

Charles Pulliam-Moore points out that the X-Men and the Mutants are not an ideal analogy for race, something I've been saying for some time now.

David Lewis on Muslim representation in comics.

Hayao Miyazaki and his portrayal of the supernatural.

Kevin Smith profiled by Abraham Riesman. Smith's early films wedded the 90s slacker ethic with unapologetic geeky obsessiveness, foreshadowing our pop culture landscape. However, his particular brand of storytelling hasn't aged very well. But while Smith has fallen out of favour as a film auteur, he's successfully reinvented himself as an online presence.

The Big Bang Theory serves as a continual reminder that Hollywood is committed to perpetuating the geek stereotype. Unfortunately, this tends to highlight some of the more negative aspects of fandom to the television audience.

Anders Nilsen explains why senators should vote NO on "Graham-Cassidy, the latest Republican attempt to dismantle Obamacare and rob people of their health care."

Anyone who follows my work at all closely probably knows that I have published two books about a particular illness and death and its aftermath. In March of 2005 my girlfriend at the time, Cheryl Weaver, was diagnosed with cancer – Hodgkins Lymphoma. Despite an initially positive prognosis the disease failed to respond to treatment, and in November of that year the disease killed her. In my books I didn't delve too deeply into the details of our particular odyssey through the health care system, but one relevant fact is that Cheryl didn't have health insurance. For several months before her diagnosis she had been dealing with a variety of what felt like unrelated, inexplicable, minor health issues. She hadn't gone to see a doctor because, at the time we couldn't afford it. The simple fact is that had she had insurance she may well have had a chance. And her story is far from unique. Lack of health insurance literally kills people every single day in America. Wealth should not determine who gets care in this country any more than it should determine who has access to the justice system or the political process. It doesn't have to be this way.

Lynda Barry has an advice column.

Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on September 28th, 1987. It bestowed upon our pop culture landscape the great Patrick Stewart, the finest actor to ever grace the hallowed franchise. He would immortalize "Make it so," "Tea Earl Grey," "Shut up Wesley," not to mention his patented "Picard Manoeuvre." TNG's first season was pretty rough. And by that I mean it was practically unwatchable. But even early TNG succeeded in expanding the franchise with ideas that would go on to become essential to its worldbuilding.

Inhumans sounds like a crappy show made 20 years ago.

RIP Len Wein (June 12, 1948 – September 10, 2017). The legendary comic book writer was the co-creator of popular characters such as Swamp Thing, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus. Bronze Age creators like Wein were among the first working professionals to rise from the ranks of organized fandom, and their work expressed sensibilities which placed them a lot closer to our modern fan-driven market.

TCJ posts an interview with Len from The Comics Journal #48, August 1979.

Sean T. Collins et al. lists the top ten film performances of the late Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017).

RIP Hugh Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017), founder of Playboy magazine, notorious for its glamour pinup pictorials. But at its height, Playboy also published notable cartoonists such as Jack Cole, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jules Feiffer.

Video: Nemo

Pitch for Little Nemo in Slumberland produced by Studio Ghibli (via Laura Hudson)

The Miyazaki Connection

I watched with my niece Pixar Animation Studios latest animated feature Up yesterday, which she really enjoyed. For my part I thought this was Pixar's technically most accomplished feature. I liked the gorgeous visuals and the pastel color scheme. How could I not be charmed by an old wooden house being held aloft by hundreds of multi-colored translucent balloons? Also pleasing were old style touches such as the black and white newsreel footage and an interlude that summarizes a married couple's relationship which recalls classic silent films. And I think this is the most successful synthesis of classic character design and 3D modeling yet seen on screen. the film's major failing is that the interactions between the lead characters are a bit too finely calibrated. It was pretty clear that the old codger and the overeager boy scout would become best friends by the end of the story, which deflated much of the dramatic tension. But I thought it was an interesting first attempt for Pixar to create a sympathetic senior citizen character in a children's story.

It's been pointed out by some critics that the Pixar house style is in some way informed by the work of Hayao Miyazaki. IMO this is easy to overstate. It's true that Pixar honcho John Lasseter has expressed admiration for Miyazaki, and has produced several english dubs of Miyazaki's features. But I think Miyazaki's influence is more general than specific in nature. Like Akira Kurosawa before him, Miyazaki's successful brand of film making has a knack for flattering Western sensibilities while appearing foreign and exotic. And in Hollywood where animation is dominated by big studio concerns, the individual stamp found in every Studio Ghibli feature is an alternative model for Western animators to emulate. This is what Pixar has arguably more or less achieved with their body of work. Lasseter has become identified with the Pixar style as much as Miyazaki has with the Ghibli style. But Lasseter and Miyazaki possess very different styles as auteurs.

The most that could be said about finding something in common between Up and Miyazaki's oeuvre is that Up shares a similar romantic fascination with escaping the mundane by taking flight, both figuratively and literally. Even here the film's approach is relatively constrained. For a movie about a flying house the flying sequences are all too brief and claustrophobic, especially when placed next to works like Porco Rosso. Even the targeted destination is itself pretty mundane - a postcard view from a generic South American jungle. The closest Miyazaki film I can think of that Up has in common is Laputa: Castle in the Sky, in that it is an adventure story where the heroes prevent a two dimensional villain from raping and pillaging nature (Unusual because Miyazaki's most memorable villains tend to have redeeming qualities). But the character archetypes and plot of Up owe more to classic Hollywood comedies to be directly compared to Miyazaki's environmental fable. Even the ending of Up has to make concessions to Hollywood-style mawkish sentimentality.

What most Western studios cannot or will not replicate is Miyazaki's attitude towards nature. In Up nature is something pristine and innocent for people to admire, or a resource to exploit and destroy. It's a typically Western viewpoint that can lead to a zero-sum game. But in Miyazaki's most memorable stories, probably informed by Shintoism, nature is to be revered. Nature is a dangerous entity that can fight back when pushed to far, and even when battered and buried by the detritus of human civilization (As in Spirited Away) it still possesses great potency. Nature can hide the mighty Ohmu, or ancient gods and spirits. But in Up, nature hides a multi-colored version of the Road Runner.