La Muse

Like most kids, super-heroes functioned as a basic form of wish fulfillment - an escapist fantasy about, to quote Stephen Grant describing Superman (but applicable to the genre in general), a "Strongman who orders the world by physically imposing his will on it, to the betterment of but not necessarily with the consent of lesser men, and will do with regardless of their authorization." The onset of adolescence complicates that juvenile concept with ill-informed idealism. Young people suddenly became aware of general suffering, and wonder why grown-ups were screwing-up the world. The genre has been operating on this mode since Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee started to appeal to college kids. However the restrictions placed on super-hero universes limit how much real world issues can be raised. La Muse, created by writer Adi Tantimedh and artist Hugo Petrus, is the latest comic to attempt placing super-heroes in a more real world context. The story began online, and can still be read in this version. It's been slated to be released as a printed book later this year.

On a sliding scale between idealism and Alan Moore-style gritty realism, La Muse falls closer to fantasy. The story works the angle that super-heroes would function more as celebrities than as masked vigilantes in the real world (à la Paul Chadwick's Concrete). Susan La Muse is a left-wing political activist who has been captured on camera using her superpowers. Rather than trying to cover it up, she decides to use her sudden fame to further her causes. She enlists the help of her non-powered sister Libby, a Hollywood agent. Libby isn't pleased by all the undue attention her sister is getting, and worries about the consequences of Susan's agenda. This immediately comes in the form of enemies, both personal and political, who want to stop her permanently.


While the problems that Susan confronts are facsimiles of contemporary real-world issues, Susan La Muse offers no realistic solutions to them. This is because her powers function on a magically literal wish-fulfillment level. Global warning? Gone. Third-world hunger? Suddenly there's enough food to feed the starving. Nuclear weapons proliferation? Deactivated with a wave of the hand. It's all ridiculously easy for Susan. When asked by Libby where her agenda leads to, she responds "Just long enough for me to, you know, end suffering."

Susan's mary sueisms start with her extraordinary powers. In addition she's clever, charismatic, media-savvy, socially well-connected, attractive, and the most sexually experimental individual on the planet. She has mind-blowing sex with just about anyone (and almost anything). Sex is presented as a solution to various problems. And like a quintessential liberated woman, she prefers to make love, not war, in order to convert her enemies into allies. Since Susan is a walking deus ex machina, this makes it difficult to sustain any tension, even as Susan's ever growing list of enemies congeal into a vast right-wing conspiracy, mounting ever increasingly deadly attacks against her and her friends. But events in the later part of the story do force her to modify her tactics.

The line art for La Muse is gorgeous and more down-to-earth than the house styles that presently dominate the Big Two, which I find a relief. Despite the webcomic format, the comic conforms to the layout of the conventional nine and six panel grids. I suspect that the work was originally intended for print. The coloring however clashes with the thick, textured strokes of the line art. It feels perfunctory - bright and saturated to help define the subjects, but doesn't help improve the mood or atmosphere. Given the speed in which the comic was regularly updated, I'm impressed with how much was done. But I would have preferred to see coloring that blended more effectively with the inking.

While La Muse doesn't break new ground for the genre, it feels refreshingly new if only because it doesn't try to ape the cliches found in forty year old shared universes. It's the story of someone given the opportunity to change the world - she's actually aloud to do it, and suffer the consequences. A super-hero comic with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Is that so difficult to do?

Ronald Reagan

Les McClaine, Parade of Presidents

Film Nostalgia

My move from film-based to digital photography was not a pain-free one. Of course this would be true for any experienced photographer. Film and digital are different mediums. While they share some similarities, and in theory accomplish basically the same thing inside a camera body, their respective behaviors are different enough that the photographer has to learn a new set of rules for exposure and image processing. And then there's the need to become acquainted with digital technology itself, from PCs to RAW Image software. I'm no luddite, and I've been using PCs since forever. But trying to master digital photography forced me to learn more about how to use Adobe Photoshop than all the time spent dicking around with it in art school.

After four years trying to figure this all out, I'm not convinced my digital photos are any better than my film-based photos. Part of the reason for this is that my transition to digital also marked a move into color photography. Up to that time, more than ninety percent of my photographs were taken with black and white film. I didn't have a lot of interest in shooting in color. But with the purchase of my first DSLR, I felt the time was right to dive into color photography. It was an opportunity to grow. I don't think I'm quite as accomplished with color as I am with black and white, and I've recently found myself missing the peculiar tonal qualities of Tri-X, HP5, and Neopan 1600.

None of this should be taken as sign to return to film, but as an indication of how much I still have to learn. I've recently updated all of my digital equipment, except for my computer, which makes working with 12 megapixel images something of a problem. Images shot since October on my photoblog are all on the new body. I'll be shooting digital for the foreseeable future.

What seems to have prompted my sudden desire to do a bit of film shooting were online discussions of a retro DSLR. I don't expect this to be manufactured anytime soon, but what I really want is a nice retro film body - one that doesn't require batteries to operate. I regret never purchasing the Nikon FM2 or FM3 when they were still being produced, and would love to acquire either one of these bodies as backup for occasional film shooting.

I have this sketchpad in my room which is still relatively brand new as I haven't touched it in over a year. Where did my motivation go?

That's enough personal digression for now.

Watching Kimura Sensei

You see, he is a normal person after all

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Laika

I was too young to have lived through the era of the Space Race, but I do remember as a kid reading about the dog Laika, the first living being launched into space and orbit the planet. I was horrified that she was sent on a one way trip, and imagined her body left to decay in orbit, until finally burning-up in reentry. This was the kind of incomprehensible act of cruelty I thought grown-ups were only capable of. At the time her death was attributed to asphyxiation, which sounded bad enough. Only more recently was it revealed that she died prematurely due to a malfunction of the ships onboard systems.

Laika's story is the perfect hook to get children to read more about history. It's also an incredibly obvious example of how animals are often sacrificial offerings to the greater glory of man. The man in this case is Sergei Pavlovich Korolev - leader of the Soviet Union's space program. The book opens with him just released from the Gulag in the dead of winter. With no food and shelter, he keeps motivating himself to stay alive by repeating "I am a man of destiny. I will not die." Korolev's subsequent success in building the USSR's space program confirm his personal self-belief. But these also generate unrealistic higher expectations, which inexorably lead to him developing the project that would top all others - launching the world's first living space explorer.


While the repressive nature of the Soviet Union is alluded to, author Nick Abadzis concentrates on the personal rather than the political or scientific. As the dogs in the program were strays, there's no way to know the details of Kudryavka's (Laika's original name) background. So Abadzis fashions a fictional story full of the usual cliches about abandoned puppies, abusive masters, and sadistic dog catchers. It's clearly there to evoke compassion for the protagonist. But once she falls into the ownership of the government's space program, the story markedly improves. Several new characters take center stage: Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, the person in charge of animal training, and his assistant Yelena Alexandrovna Dubrovsky. Both Oleg's personal dislike and resentment towards the overbearing Korolev, and Yelena's empathy towards her animal charges express doubt about the program's methods, and give voice to the otherwise mute test subjects. The stress caused by working on the project is further ramped up by the unspoken romantic tension between the two. In contrast Korolev, historically the most important figure, is comparatively less well developed.


Abadzis draws in a shorthand which, depending on readers tastes, is either somewhat incomplete and lacking, or refreshingly spontaneous. He has a tendency to cram as many panels as possible into the pages, especially during the talkative parts. This unfortunately can cramp his artwork, but when Abadzis opens-up the panels, the results can be extremely beautiful.

Laika is a work that wears its heart on its sleeve. It's not difficult to see where the author's sympathy lies. This could easily have wallowed in cheap sentimentality. But the historical realism of the setting, and the compelling characters of the second half of the story manage to keep the story grounded.

Emergency!

Sinfest has been commenting on the current economic crisis.

There's Nothing New

Superman getting smacked complements Superman is a dick and Crying Superman - A long-standing pattern of super-heroic self-mockery. This could be seen as a variation of The Worf Effect.

Kerry Edwards Wants Your Vote

...And he's not afraid to tell you what he really thinks about you.

From Overcompensating by Jeffrey Rowland.

Farewell Minx

While the closure of the Minx line doesn't come as any surprise (Given DC's dismal track record for developing alternate publishing imprints) it's still a great shame that the end came a mere 18 months since it's launch. Minx was created to establish a niche within the expanding market for younger female readers found in bookstores. Despite the somewhat reactionary overtones in editor Shelly Bond's statements, it made perfect sense for a prominent publisher to make an effort to pursue this very important demographic so as not to get left behind. It was a significant sign that DC was sincerely looking beyond their aging direct market audience of largely adult males.

There's been a lot of online commentary about why Minx failed. In the end, the Minx books, despite some favorable reviews, never gained much momentum, nor generated much enthusiasm with the intended audience. In hindsight DC didn't seem to have a firm enough grasp of the market, and didn't publish books that would draw in a large enough readership, to recoup their enormous marketing costs. Minx could arguably still prove to be a success if DC is willing to stick with the process of nurturing the imprint with a more modest budget while paying closer attention to the tastes of their readers. Publishing more talent with a proven track record for attracting female readers wouldn't hurt either. But they've chosen to pull the plug instead, thus ending the company's most high profile attempt to reach past the traditional comic book audience.

For more on the end of Minx, check out Tom Spurgeon and Christopher Butcher.

"Hokusai's Full of Crap"

I can't disagree with the last part. From the hilarious Narbonic by Shaenon Garrity.

Black Lagoon Vol 1

This volume delivers on its promise to deliver nonstop explosive action. There's plenty of John Woo style gunfights, high speed chases, and massive explosions to distract the reader from the paper thin plot and shallow characterization. It's like any Hollywood blockbuster, but bereft of sound and motion. And it's a lot cheaper to produce than film.

Japanese salaryman Rokuro Okajima gets kidnapped by a group of mercenaries piloting a modified PT boat called the Black Lagoon while transporting a disc containing sensitive information for his employers across the South Pacific. But he joins his kidnappers after learning that his company has left him for dead in order to retrieve the disc. He proves invaluable in getting the Lagoon crew out of a very tight spot, and receives the affectionate moniker "Rock."

The rest of the Black Lagoon crew is composed of the burly African American captain Dutch, the boat's mechanic and former university student from Florida named Benny, and the book's cover girl Revy - A sadistic Chinese American killer who functions as the crew's muscle as well as the reader's primary eye candy by sporting a form fitting tank top and cutoff jean shorts in all the fight scenes. As the team's resident hothead and most vocal cynic, she serves as a foil to Rock's basically decent behavior and level headed approach to any situation. Many non-action scenes involve Rock and Revy sparring verbally over ethical conundrums that arise during the Lagoon Company missions.

With the series having been set up, most of the rest of the volume concentrates on the Lagoon crew transporting the scion of a wealthy South American family while being pursued by Roberta - a seemingly unstoppable ex-FARC guerilla dressed as a bespectacled maid while carrying an umbrella machine gun and a suitcase full of weapons. It's a wacky concept that liberally borrows from El Mariachi and The Terminator, mixed with Japanese fetish. It shouldn't come as any surprise who she gratuitously dukes it out with at the end of the book.

Despite the potential for outrageous action found in these ideas, The action scenes are not particularly well executed. Ren Hiroe draws dynamic enough figures, but he obscures them with way too many awkwardly framed shots and flashy speed lines. The scenes are cut to make it difficult to follow the panel to panel continuity or to locate the characters relative location to one other. The backgrounds, when he bothers to draw them, tend to be pretty generic, which is unfortunate since the exotic setting should be part of the appeal of this series. After all the Lagoon crew gets to zip around South East Asia and interact with an ethnically diverse local population. It would be nice if Hiroe showed a little more interest in capturing the local milieu.

Honey and Clover Vol 1-2

I've been meaning to post this for some time. But you know, life gets in the way.

Honey and Clover sticks out amongst the various shojo manga translated into English. Creator Chica Umino draws in a scratchy pen and ink style, restrained in use of screentones and other effects, with minimal backgrounds. It almost like reading a sequentially arranged sketchbook. Most pages deviate wildly from the 4 panel or 6 panel grid - Umino can't seem to draw a normal square panel, as most are either tilted, warped, overlapping, or sent bleeding of the page. Sometimes they can seem overcrowded with many little word balloons and captions. This can look like it might be rather confusing, but fortunately the story isn't particularly difficult to follow. The characters themselves are appealingly cartoony and have an appearance of almost childlike innocence. The whole manga feels like it's set in a dreamlike world, seen through the eyes of an adult looking back on his naive youth. If there's any weakness to Umino's character design, it's that at times they appear to be a little too flat and simplified to stand out from the background.

Set in a Tokyo art school, the reader is introduced to the cast through the point of view character Yūta Takemoto, a second year student. The comic's episodic structure focuses on Yūta's peer group, and the one professor who manages to get dragged along to their various excursions. The comedy is derived from how they deal with the typical worries over money (They're impoverished college kids after all), getting enough protein to eat, partying, getting drunk, dealing with the holiday blues, working on assignments, passing courses, graduating, getting a job after graduation, and falling in love. It's all mundane slice-of-life material. But while the early humor never disappears, the tone of the story becomes increasingly bittersweet as the focus gradually turns more to the love lives of the cast. By the end of the 2nd volume, the two main love triangles are established, which presumably will dominate the proceedings of the rest of the series.

Both love triangles feature insecure males being drawn to emotionally traumatized females. On the one hand we have nice guy Yūta and talented jerkass Shinobu Morita falling for moe figure Hagu Hanamoto. Some readers are no doubt going to find their attraction to Hagu somewhat disturbing, as this 18 year old looks like someone ten years younger. She even behaves in an infantile way, playing with dolls, talking in simple phrases, walking around with a constantly distracted expression. But this combination of youthful appearance and prodigious talent has isolated her from the rest of her peers, which isn't helped by the overprotectiveness of her guardian, professor Shūji Hanamoto. While Yūta lacks the self-confidence to express his love directly, Shinobu expresses his by simultaneously bullying her into modeling for him while trying to outdo her as an artistic rival.

The 2nd, more "adult", love triangle has senior student Takumi Mayama chasing after older woman Rika Harada while being pursued by Ayumi "Ironman" Yamada. Rika is a widow badly scarred by an accident which also took her husband's life. While Rika is quiet and emotionally withdrawn, Ayumi is outgoing and energetic. She's pretty and intelligent. She's a star pupil with her own instant fan club. Takumi ignores her for Rika, whom he works for part time at her design firm. But this doesn't stop her from confessing her love. Rika, on the other hand, has exhibited little interest in getting involved with anyone since her husband's death.

There are some other threads like Yūta's uneasy relationship with his stepfather, or Shinobu's unexplained absences. It's clear that he's involved in a scheme that's unrelated to the rest of the cast. But the interactions of the students are the central concern of the story. For all the youthfulness of that cast, the overall mood is one of nostalgic longing. Towards the end of vol. 2 Hagu goes out looking for a four-leaf clover. She is joined by Yūta, and eventually the rest of the gang. After an afternoon of fruitless searching, they settle down for a meal with professor Hanamoto. As they eat Yūta looks at the faces of his friends and thinks "I know the day will come...when all of this is past, and it all becomes a memory. But I know I'll remember it, over and over...That blue sky and the smell of the wind and the endless carpet of clover."

Ah, was I ever that ruminative?

Some Thoughts on The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger as The Joker

So I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight yesterday, perhaps this summer's (Or where I am now, winter's) most anticipated movie, partly because of Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. And it's a justifiably praised performance. Overall the cast is generally so strong I didn't mind the weaknesses in the plot some reviewers have criticized the film for. Ledger's Joker is easily the most chilling onscreen adaption of the character I've ever seen. His hunched gait, shy expression, and slurred speech belie the evil this man is capable of - And then he jams a pencil up someone's f@&%. Aaron Eckhart's farmboy good looks complement his performance as do-gooder DA Harvey Dent. Maggie Gyllenhaal is an actual improvement over Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. Returning cast members Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman are all good.

Anton Furst's highly stylized set designs for the Tim Burton Batman films have become so influential that it's something of a shock to see a real city skyline stand in for the fictional Gotham. The Spider-Man franchise was shot in the actual New York City, and that reflects the Marvel Comics approach of setting their characters in real cities. But DC's many fictional metropolises are fantasy fun-houses of adventure that mirror the personas of its super-hero residents. In The Dark Knight, Gotham is shot as a gritty decaying urban environment exuding gloomy elegance. Its muted realism eschews the gothic surrealism of most current comic book interpretations of the city.

Some reviewers, like Douglas Wolk writing for Salon, have criticized this version of Batman for not being brilliant enough. He's supposed to be fiendishly clever - The world's greatest detective and the most dangerous man in the world. Instead this Bruce Wayne/Batman (Played by Christian Bale) depends heavily on Lucius Fox to supply him with technological solutions to various problems, like James Bond does with Q. I find myself not particularly concerned about this issue. Batman's super-proficiency is a necessary compensating trait when working with the much more powerful teammates of the Justice League, and it's what keeps him a viable denizen of the DC Universe after more than sixty years. But I like my heroes (Like the relatively inexperienced character in Batman Year One) expressing some vulnerability. And this version of the DC franchise doesn't have to worry about taking down a rogue Superman, yet.

God and Mammon

Cross Training Jesus 6

Tatsuya Ishida's last few Sinfest strips are deliciously irreverent.

No I Have Not Seen The New Batman Movie

No Room at the Gotham Inn

Manga's Future

I’m not sure that manga readers here are really manga readers and I would even go so far as to say that they’re not even comics readers. There’s a love for the medium, but only within the shojo or shonen genre. They love the anime, and honestly, while I was watching the Le Chevalier D’eon anime, I couldn’t help but thinking “this is cartoons. It’s for kids.”
- Kai-Ming Cha

I am outright terrified that the North American manga publishing industry is going to turn into a mirror of the superhero publishing industry; comprised of adult fans clamouring for vaguely more mature versions of children’s material, operating in a two-company system, growing steadily more insular and inaccessible to the world at large. I don’t think it has to happen, of course, and I’d like to think I’ve discussed a few of the ways in which it won’t, but there’re my fears. Hopefully they’re never realized.
- Christopher Butcher

Kai-Ming Cha is stating the obvious here, although it's something that tended to get lost in the early heated pro-manga vs. anti-manga debate - Most consumers of any form of entertainment have narrowly defined tastes. Only a minority of readers are ever going to possess a broad and deep love for the medium. It's a lot easier for fans to identify themselves in relation to a certain camp, like superheroes, manga, fantasy, or science fiction. I'm reminded of all the hype about how the Harry Potter series got kids to read again, as if reading those books would eventually lead them to seek out Steinbeck and Shakepeare.

His second point is also equally obvious - People's tastes change over time. The young readers who enjoy Naruto or Fruits Basket now are not necessarily going to like them when they become adults. This is one reason behind the arguments for a more diverse market: A wider selection of genres and styles attract a greater demographic range. However Kai overstates his case when he worries that the present generation of readers will outgrow manga, leaving only the next batch of incoming readers to take their place. How is the market's youthful bias different from other forms of entertainment? Most film and television is aimed at the lowest common denominator, so it doesn't surprise me that manga publishers market fantasies to a largely young audience. I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. But one shouldn't underestimate the crossover appeal of some youth-targeted popular entertainment. So to me it's not at all a clear-cut case of manga readers only coming from a certain a juvenile age group.

Nevertheless the recent financial troubles of retail chain Borders Books and publisher Toykopop have shown that the previous period of spectacular uninterrupted growth has ended. The manga boom has gone on long enough that it can no longer be dismissed as a fad, but this also means that a generation has grown-up reading manga. This raises the question of what will happen to that audience. No doubt some will abandon the comics medium entirely. Some will continue to read manga or other comics on a casual basis, and others will become hardcore adult fans. If the manga market starts to hemorrhage readers and doesn't replenish them with sizable numbers of younger fans, then manga fandom will, as Christopher Butcher fears might happen, resemble the aging superhero fandom that made the direct market a dead end in the nineties before manga infused the western comics industry with a much needed dose of new readers. I'm inclined to believe that manga will continue to be mostly successful in attracting new readers, but Butcher is right in saying that publishers and retailers still need to get better at marketing to an adult audience. I'm inured to the crowds of gawky teenagers blocking my path when I wander the manga shelves of my local Borders, but they must deter a lot of would-be adult readers. There's still no real help for the uninitiated to differentiate between the different genres targeted to different audiences in the graphic novel sections of most bookstores. Further complicating the issue is that cultural differences can cause manga originally aimed at a younger Japanese audience to be repackaged as appropriate material for an adult readership, and vice-versa.

Looking at it from a wider perspective, manga is here to stay. Other countries have been exposed to manga and anime before the English-speaking world caught on, and even if the worst case scenario happens and Japanese comics market collapsed in America, it would continue to thrive elsewhere. Like it or not, manga is at the center of the comics world.

Osaka Sparkles (大阪)

Darn pleased ta meet ya, ya'll! 

Yo, how you doin? 

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Glamourpuss #1

"...I want to do photorealism pictures of pretty girls, so that's I'm going to do. The words were an aterthought. Okay, let's stick with that. " - Dave Sim

Dave Sim isn't the first cartoonist who's wanted to spend time drawing pictures of attractive women, nor will he be the last. Not content with compiling his drawings into an art book, he's chosen to engage his audience in detailed discussion about his work. Hence we have a new series called Glamourpuss. This 1st issue contains Sim's attempts to draw his chosen subjects in the style of Alex Raymond, John Prentice, Al Williamson, Stan Drake and Neal Adams, accompanied by comics-style narrative text explaining the results of his efforts. The desire to document his autodidactic obession is combined with an almost equally strong need to instruct and inform the reader. He knows they'll only glance momentarily at each picture before moving on, so he insists they spend a bit more time marveling at the craft involved in order to draw like these old masters of the medium.

It's a curious project to say the least. Dave Sim is an accomplished comics artist - some would argue he's one of the industry's greatest living practitioners. So it's hard to ignore his retro choice of art style to impersonate from. The results are at first glance, very convincing. Sim uses as his reference various unnamed fashion magazine photos, which he draws in the photorealist manner. He also takes panels from the Rip Kirby comic strip out of their original context, redraws them, then juxtaposes them along with his fashion illustrations. Needless to say, the continuity between the pictures is nowhere near as seamless as in a more conventionally constructed comic. But then again Sim seems less interested in telling a story for story's sake than in educating the reader about a bit of comics history. His self-crticism reaches maniacal levels as he attempts to guess what lines to leave in, how to depict certain textures with a brush, or what areas to interpret as pure black.

The centerpiece of the book is a six page sequence entitled The Self-education of N'atashae. It's composed of a series of full page drawings of one fashion model, linked by heavy-handed narration detailing her thoughts and misguided attempts to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Sim is attempting to simultaneously do several things: He's trying to demonstrate the immense difficulty of constructing a story from disparate sources; Provide a kind of secret origin story for the comic; And he's poking fun at the vacuousness of the fashion industry as well as the shallowness of materialistic western consumer culture. Sim just can't help being didactic.


Glamourpuss is basically a hybrid product - Part black and white comic pamphlet, part illusrated essay, and part fashion magazine parody. Digressions about craft are interrupted by spoof articles and fake ads. While the shop talk will be of interest to history buffs and aspiring artists, the attempts at humor produce mixed results. Dim looking fashion models make an easy target, but Sim's jokes are a heavy blunt weapon he ungainly wields to make his point. One article titled Skanko's Dating Guide might remind people of Sim's past controversial statements.

It's not clear where all of this is headed. While the fashion drawings are beautifully rendered, they also reveal the underlying homogeneity of the source material. There's something cumulatively oppressive about the overall tone of the work that probably arises from the disjointed panels and text's attempts to impress its lessons on the reader. Sim's parody gets a bit tiresome by the end of the issue, but he intends to continue Glamourpuss for more that 20 issues. What more does he have to say? Then again, Dave Sim is the man who delivered on his promise that Cerebus would die, alone, unmourned and unloved after 300 issues. So I wouldn't be surprised if he has a master plan that will gradually reveal itself as the series unfolds.

A Short History of America: What's Missing Here?

Larry Gonick Has a Blog

From Raw Materials by Larry Gonick for the Discovery Channel website. I enjoyed his past strips for Discover Magazine. I'd like to see those compiled.

Poster Design: Explore. Just Protect Yourself

Two posters illustrated by DC cover artist James Jean for a European NGO. I doubt I'll ever see these plastered around Brisbane or Manila. Link by Mark Frauenfelder.

Update:

James Jean explains the creative process involved in the creation of these poster designs in his blog.

Curmudgeon

How not to negotiate with movie studios

In the stories published in the period before the production of the American Splendor movie, Harvey Pekar admitted that he was desperate to sell-out to Hollywood. His living expenses had increased now that he had a foster daughter to take care of. And he finally wanted to retire from his file clerk day job. It seems almost bizarre, but at the time he was even considering an option which would star former SNL cast member Rob Schneider. Pekar finds out that selling-out isn't so easy as it looks. He also started to wonder a lot about his creative legacy. He identified himself with overlooked artists and creators, and probably thought he was going to die in obscurity. The film was eventually made, and won a couple of awards. But it's funny how much worrying about it ever getting made took up so much of his time.

Miss Sakaki! (榊さん)

I will. I won't. I will. I won't. I will...

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Dororo Vol 1

Dororo is a minor work that Osamu Tezuka never got around to finishing. Neither as long-lived as the hugely popular ATOM or Black Jack, nor as ambitious as Adolf or Buddha. But even lesser Tezuka proves to be a very potent read. This was a man brimming with many mad ideas. Dororo may be formulaic entertainment. But it's very well executed formulaic entertainment.

Set during the chaotic Sengoku period, an ambitious warlord makes a faustian bargain with 48 demons to sacrifice his unborn first child in return for greater political power. The baby boy is born with 48 missing body parts. He is left to die from exposure, but is adopted by a kindly surgeon, who later equips him with various prosthetic substitutes (Not bad for a 15th century physician). The child, named Hyakkimaru, grows into an effective demon hunter hoping to kill the demons who stole his body parts, and restore his body. Early on he meets an orphaned street-smart kid named Dororo. They quickly establish an uneasy but friendly rapport, and he joins Hyakkimaru is his quest because he covets the sword blades he carries.


It's truly astonishing how much Tezuka can get away with. The book is filled with so much violence, gore, and nasty supernatural elements, yet feels so thoroughly upbeat. This is in part because Tezuka's art is just so awesome. His monsters and demons are both frightening enough to scare kids while weirdly eccentric enough to amuse older readers. The disfigured baby Hyakkimaru evokes both horror and sympathy for his condition. The adult version makes for a dynamic heroic figure - slashing enemies left and right with katanas hidden inside his prosthetic arms. Tezuka's virtuoso cartooning alone is worth paying the price for this book. Everything from the atmospheric backgrounds to the creature designs are drawn with the confidence of a master comfortable with his craft.

Hyakkimaru and Dororo are easy enough to empathize with. Both are victims of the violent era they live in, and both are looking for ways to rise above their humble beginnings and find personal redemption through hard work. In certain ways they're the template for many shonen heroes that would come afterward. The author's voice clearly sides with the commoners against the samurai class, who are treated as the root of all misery in the world. The protagonists themselves have a lot or reason to be resentful to the samurai class, while enjoying the freedom that comes from their rootless lifestyle.


The parts of the volume that don't deal with the characters back-story focus on episodic action-adventure. The first involves a frog monster/faced-shape tumor that has enslaved an entire village. The second is about a warrior forced to kill by a cursed sword. Tezuka doesn't shy away from presenting the carnage. In fact this book is a useful example of how he mixes serious drama with slapstick comedy, oftentimes in the same panel. By this time Tezuka had already developed an array of quirky comic techniques: characters breaking the fourth wall, cartoon self-portraits, anachronistic asides, and cameos by characters from other comics. Thankfully these gimmicks don't distract too much from the main story.

This isn't Osamu Tezuka at his greatest, but it works very well for what it is. Kudos to Vertical for the beautiful paperback packaging. I eagerly await for the rest of the series.

Secret Origins

This latest strip from the brilliantly sardonic A Softer World reminded me of Mr. Glass from Unbreakable. Yeah, I too think that M. Night Shyamalan is a hack who doesn't understand comics.

Ah Sakaki! (あ 榊)

Where can I go find a real cat?

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Something Old Something Classic

I saw the new Iron Man motion picture recently, and I actually enjoyed it. Most of it had to do with the light touch applied to the plot. Most recent comic book film adaptations have tried to imbue their subject matter with a certain gravitas: The hero is encumbered by a tragic past, has some kind of identity crisis, or is on some kind of quest for revenge. Usually there's some tedious moralizing that accompanies the story. Not that this movie doesn't have a message, or that Tony Stark doesn't have a sense of purpose. Those are staples of the genre. It just doesn't dwell on those bits. There's this unavoidable geopolitical element arising from Stark's career as an arms dealer. And he goes through a conversion experience that leads him to try to rid the world of war, or at least try not to add to it. But incessantly hammering the anti-war message would only heighten the contradictions built into the story. It's about a guy who tries to end war by building the coolest weapon in his private workshop (It's great to be rich). Still the simplistic message has obvious resonance for Americans looking for easy answers. Just don't look at the film too closely.

Then there's the the anti-corporate populist stance presented. Obadiah Shane is the typical evil capitalist who puts the bottom-line before ethical considerations. He berates Tony for not giving his personal creation to Stark Enterprises so the company could profit from it. The irony of the message (no pun intended) comes from the fact that the Iron Man character is a corporate property owned by Marvel, but was the creation of individuals like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and Larry Lieber working in the 60s. They gave up the rights to their creation to the publisher, and Stan Lee gets to have cameos on all the films.

I also finished watching The early 90s Cutey Honey OVA. I haven't had much prior exposure to this particular Go Nagai creation. This is the Japanese equivalent of a project meant to attract older fanboys, only without the continuity-porn and shared universes that plague American superhero comics. I didn't have to watch the 70s anime or read the manga to see that the OVA was basically a homage to those earlier works. A popular argument in favor of the appeal of Japanese comics is that creator ownership has meant that serials eventually end. But if you're like Nagai, turning your creations into successful ongoing franchises is a perfectly sensible option. Cutey Honey is one of those long-lived properties that has never been successfully transplanted to the English-speaking world. It's a bit too classic for most younger western anime fans. From what I understand she is the original transforming superhero of manga. While transformation is used by some American characters (The original Captain Marvel to name the earliest precedent), transformation has become a staple in tokusatsu and magical girl stories. The transformations in Cutey Honey work on one level as empowering fantasies, and on another as voyeuristic entertainment. Every new form is supposed to imbue Honey with new abilities, and she clearly revels in every one of them. But like most superhero costume changes, they seem more aesthetic than functional. That's the fun part of the anime. No two transformation sequences are the same. They're drawn exquisitely with an obvious sexual component.

This is more about exploiting the character's retro charm than about storytelling. The plot is pretty weak. An arch villain is introduced in episode one, but is defeated halfway through the series. The rest of the OVA is composed of disconnected episodes that leave the narrative arc unresolved. Perhaps there were plans for future episodes that never came through. There's definitely a decline in animation quality towards the end. Whatever the case, it feels incomplete. But as someone who grew up watching late 70s anime, the sustained use of a generally light tone and the refusal to update a classic character, or inject adolescent angst and Freudian analysis is much appreciated.

Sukeban Chiyo Mihama (すけばん 美浜 ちよ)

That's Mihama-Senpai to you!

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Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol 1

When dealing with any long running comic book franchise, one tends to remember only the highlights - particularly the attempts to shake-up the status quo in order to reverse creative malaise and flagging sales. DC's marquee female super-hero Wonder Woman, seems especially prone to this re-jiggering. Her mixed attribures and fantastic origins tend to inspire conflicting interpretations. She's perhaps even more of a cypher than her male counterparts Superman and Batman. Is she a diplomat, warrior, princess, an innocent abroad, dominatrix, or a feminist symbol? Possibly the oddest effort to redefine her came when writer Dennis O'Neil was given the chance to overhaul the character. What he and collaborating artists Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano did was ditch almost every familiar element and recreate her from the ground-up. Their attempt to modernize Wonder Woman failed commercially, and was eventually retconned out of existence. But DC has republished these issues in two paperbacks. Volume 1 contains issues #178-184, which mainly deal with Diana Prince battling the arch-villain Doctor Cyber.

This period of Wonder Woman's published history is sometimes fondly referred to as the "I-Ching Era." O'Neil and company's basic idea was to remove her mythical powers and turn her into a late 60s definition of a modern woman - essentially a comic book version of Emma Peel. When her beau Steve Trevor is arrested on murder charges, Wonder Woman's testimony at his trial ironically leads to his conviction. Diana undergoes a fashion makeover in order to appear more trendy and discover the true murderer. She soon solves the case and clears Steve's name.


However, in the next issue, Steve goes undercover in order to infiltrate Doctor Cyber's criminal organization. Paradise Island is then moved to another dimension in order to recharge its store of magic. Diana chooses to stay on Earth in order to find Steve. Cut-off from her source of power, she quits her job at military intelligence, opens a boutique, and learns karate from I-Ching, a blind Chinese monk whose temple was destroyed by Doctor Cyber. Even without her Amazon abilities she becomes an accomplished fighter within a relatively short span of time.

None of her newly developed skills help save Steve's life when she finally finds him. With his death, Diana has lost the person who first motivated her to leave Paradise Island. She has no love life, no powers, and no double identity. She no longer uses her golden lasso or wears a costume, but dresses in an ever changing wardrobe of fashionable outfits. She drops out of the super-hero community altogether, choosing instead to work with I-Ching in her quest to bring down Dr. Cyber. The new Wonder Woman's world-spanning adventures in this paperback volume fall mostly into the high action/thriller mode of storytelling, but suddenly shift gears to temporarily return Diana back to her mythological roots towards the end of the story arc. It's a curious mix of genres that attempt to expand the limits of Diana's horizons and show the creative staff working hard to find a new direction for her.


Not surprisingly, some elements that may have seemed a novelty in 1968 appears rather dated today. The attempt to capture contemporary youth certainly feels quaint, especially the hippie counterculture, street lingo and the overall psychedelic color scheme. The mystique of Asian forms of fighting was on the rise at the time, and lends credulity to the many hand-to-hand combat scenes. Diana is able to dispatch any number of human and non-human opponents with relative ease. I-Ching is the stereotypical wise oriental dispensing stern discipline and cryptic statements in sometimes broken English.

Despite her proficiency, Diana is depicted as an emotionally fragile person, just like a woman. She tolerates all of Steve Trevor's insensitive remarks, even to the point of blaming herself for his shortcomings. After Steve's death, she develops the habit of falling for the wrong type of guy. There's a lot of weeping when they inevitably disappoint her - hardly the image of the strong, independent modern woman. It's not even the more confident and sexually charged figure from creator William Moulton Martson. Sekowsky's art is just as competent, and his faces just and wooden, as it was during his run at Justice League of America, except he gets to draw Diana Prince in chic clothes while performing faux martial arts poses, ready to execute a "karate chop." To be fair, his ambitious staging of action sequences shows the influence of the more dynamic Marvel Comics in-house style of the time.


In hindsight it's easy to see how this depowered Wonder Woman failed to capture the public imagination. This is as radical a re-imagining of the character as possible - One with the most tenuous connection to her past. But turning Diana into a martial arts sleuth that barely interacted with the rest of the DC Universe didn't sit well with established fans (Which included Gloria Steinem). Still it says something about the character's unpopularity that DC was willing to let Wonder Woman be re-tooled so extensively. And this is an audacious, and in in it's own right noteworthy, undertaking that's highly unlikely with today's continuity-obsessed market.