We Come To Praise Him

Pat Oliphant's Ted Kennedy cartoon From the Daily Kos. In a collection of mostly romantic and laudatory editorial cartoons, Oliphant's drawing is notable for being ambiguous and melancholic.

Short Pamphlet Reviews

Pissing All Over The Superheroes


Invincible #60-65
by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Cliff Rathburn, Fco Plascencia

One of the pleasures of reading Robert Kirkman's comic series Invincible is watching him construct a universe through interconnected story arcs that feels both straightforward, but multi-layered. His characters aren't complex, but he manages to balance the ever growing ensemble by deftly switching between the the interactions of main character Mark Grayson a.k.a. Invincible - The son of an extremely powerful superhero who was revealed to be an agent for a world conquering alien race called the Vitrumites, and his supporting cast. Much like the best of the nascent Marvel titles of the sixties, there's an engaging naivete to the cast, and a sense of wonder watching a new world unfolding. But I have to wonder how long Kirkman can keep this up before his creation becomes too byzantine, or too weighed down by its own internalized status quo.

There have been recent moves to connect the title to a larger shared universe that could be said to have culminated in issue #60. Lex Luthor stand-in Angstrom Levy has gathered an army of Invincible's villainous alternate Earth versions and unleashed them on the world. This provides an excuse for cameos from all of Image Comics superhero lineup. Much bloody chaos ensues. The whole thing turns out to be one gratuitous gimmick and a prelude to a knock down drag out fight between Invincible and a Vitrumite soldier sent to keep him in line. The superhero population is largely incapacitated. People die, including an important supporting character. Another's boobs get bigger, literally. But her powers start going all wonky. Half a dozen plot points for future arcs are sprinkled throughout. Mark reaches an important turning point, and suddenly this series has gotten a lot more complicated. Oh boy.


Power Girl #1-4
by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Amanda Conner, Paul Mounts, John J. Hill

And speaking of gratuitous there's Power Girl. Is there any superhero so obviously derivative with such a convoluted history? Female characters possessing superpowers and ample cleavage should be easy enough to sell. Just look at Cutey Honey. But at DC she's ranked lower on the totem pole than Superman, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl. Given how DC sometimes treats even marquee properties like Wonder Woman like shit, what chance does Power Girl have of moving up from being a magnet for puerile big boob jokes? Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray attempt to develop her civilian identity and supporting cast. But the battle between her and the Ultra-Humanite feels indifferent despite the over the top scheming from Humanite. Actually I'm put-off by the attempt to update the classic supervillain with a more distasteful violent origin. More humor is used in issue four, but it's not enough to block-out the bad taste from reading the last three issues.

Batgirl #1
by Bryan Q. Miller, Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott, Guy Major, John J. Hill

Hey, another derivative character. This is a passing of the Batgirl mantle from Cassandra Cain to the often abused Stephanie Brown despite the latter girl's reservations. Meanwhile the original Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, broods as if she's trying to be Bruce Wayne. The issue's pretty confusing as the reader is simply dumped into the story mid-stride without prior explanation. But then, who cares about Batgirl outside of the rabid Bat fans.

Ultimate Comics Avengers #1
by Mark Millar, Carlos Pacheco, Danny Miki, Justin Ponsor, VC's Cory Petit

First, that's not what the title on the cover says. Second, they aren't called the Avengers in this issue. Oh look, they've bought Mark Millar back along with his trademark wit, or what passes for wit in these pages. In fact he picks up from where he left off determined to ignore as much as possible the intervening events. But then again no one seems to care. The Ultimate line hasn't been around that long, but this already feels like a reinstatement of some long-standing status quo.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1
by Brian Michael Bendis, David Lafuente, Justin Ponsor, VC's Cory Petit

This is even more insistent about the return to the status quo. Six months since a massive tsunami submerged New York and things have returned to normal? Then again Spider-Man's public cred has never been higher, so maybe that counts for something. Brian Michael Bendis is still writing the title, and this has given it a consistency not found elsewhere in the Ultimate line. I haven't kept up with it lately, and this relaunch has yet to convince me to return to the ongoing teen soap opera that is Peter Parker's life.

Tablet Needs: Macbook Touch

An interesting concept from Yanko Design. I like the idea of a light, foldable, tablet computer. Though it sounds expensive if marketed as a netbook. Link by jkOnTheRun.

Low Moon

Norwegian cartoonist Jason has hit upon a formula that has earned him cult status, made him a critical darling with the mainstream press, but will probably never grant him widespread popular recognition. His clear line style is characterized by sparsely detailed landscapes populated by gaunt anthropomorphic animals. Their blank facial expressions and and communication through long silences are very much informed by the "less is more" modernist aesthetic. It's what's supposed to be read between the lines, so to speak, that matters. With Jason, his uniform-sized panels are the modular units from which can be arranged in numerous ways in order to construct his narratives.

Low Moon marks a change in format. All of Jason's past translated works were self-contained graphic novels. This book is a collection of different tales organized into four panel pages. The title story was originally serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine Funny Pages section. Billed as a "chess western", it shows how Jason's stripped-down approach is used to inform old cliches with wry deadpan humor. Chess matches are treated with the same life-and-death seriousness as real gunfights. Similar clever touches can be found in the other stories of this collection. For example in Proto Film Noir, an adulterous "prehistoric" couple attempt to eliminate the woman's husband. But he keeps returning from the dead every morning completely unaware of what has transpired the previous day.


But every story inexorably ends badly for the participants, usually with some kind of a narrative twist. In Emily Says Hello, an assassin carries out a succession of hits in exchange for escalating sexual favors from his female client. But this ends tragically for the client. In the most convoluted story &, a man burglars a house to raise the money for his dying mother's operation while another man murders all of his rival suitors for a woman's hand in marriage. Both their tales end disastrously, and they end up drowning their sorrows in the same bar.

Jason is an immensely skilled artist capable of manipulating his self-restricted vocabulary to stretch space and time. Low Moon moves in a slow burn as the two antagonists move closer to their eventual showdown. In what is probably the best story in the book You Are Here, time moves more quickly as a father and son attempt to deal with the alien abduction of the father's wife. The father builds a rocket while the son grows up and has a life of his own. Eventually they pile into the rocket, and things end badly, but perhaps a bit more emotionally than with the other stories.



All the stories are informed by a similar absurdist aesthetic. But not all are equally successful in execution or have equal depth or meaning. While the father-mother-son dynamic gives You Are Here a higher degree of emotional resonance, others like & feel more like an empty formalist exercise, while Emily Says Hello comes across as a bit too sophomoric. This book is a useful introduction to Jason's oeuvre. But given their varying qualities while having a similar tone, it's probably better that the stories be read separately rather than in one sitting.

Whatever You Like, Dear Frog

I weep because my golden ball has fallen into the well

Vector Desktop Wallpaper

ELMER

Reading ELMER, the latest opus of Filipino cartoonist Gerry Alanguilan makes apparent how much he is rooted in old-school comics storytelling. His character renditions and particular attention to detail looks like something that compare with the best black and white independent comics. The dark fantasy elements, creeping sense of dread, and punctuated violence, are descended from American comic book's pulp traditions. Even Alanguilan's religious adherence to the nine panel grid structure and heavy use of first person textual narration makes ELMER appear very traditional when compared to contemporaneous efforts.


If Alanguilan's sensibilities seem a bit retrograde, they are not there to draw attention to themselves but to serve the story that he's interested in communicating. In this regard he succeeds in telling a deeply felt and humane narrative. If one takes the premise of recently sentient chickens living amongst humans literally, then certain aspects of Alanguilan's world-building rests on shaky ground. For example, the chicken population's preference to integrate into human society rather than seeking to build their own autonomous culture is an unrealistic representation of real world international relations. But ELMER goes out of its way to avoid specific political allegory. Nor does it show any interest in addressing the science fiction underpinnings of its own premise. Human and chicken sentience are simply presumed to be similar despite their physiological differences. Instead, the human-chicken conflict functions more as a general metaphor for the way people fear what they don't understand and as a source of paranoia for protagonist Jake Gallo. Like most malcontents he's willing to blame outside circumstances, which in his case is a perceived human prejudice against him as a chicken. Jake and his siblings are summoned to take care of their dying father Elmer. His views undergo a change after learning more about his father's mysterious past and his friendship with a farmer called Ben.

While the comic is meant to be inclusive, Alanguilan taps into his own cultural background for raw material. Many rural people in Southeast Asia in general, and the Philippines in particular, live in close proximity to chickens and other farm animals. But the fighting rooster also plays an important part in Filipino iconography. During the early period of their sentience, some chickens use their cockfighting prowess to terrorize humans. The brutality of these attacks only exacerbates the war between the two species. One doomed character is described in admiring terms by his fellow chickens because of his exemplary sabong performance. ELMER doesn't use the chickens as a stand-in for any particular group. But on some level it plays with the fear of being overthrown by the things we subjugate. Alanguilan's chickens are drawn with far more grace than his stiff-looking humans. But even they pale into insignificance when compared to the richly detailed Filipino landscapes. This could be the influence of my own memories, but there's a sense of nostalgia that permeates ELMER's provincial setting which feels derived from Alanguilan's real life. But any preconceptions of pastoral innocence are violently subverted by the terror of many thousands of suddenly self-aware chickens being led to their deaths.


There is are sentimental and cliched aspects to the domestic drama that threaten to derail the whole narrative as the personal revelations start to accumulate. But ELMER is counterbalanced by many nice little character touches. Chickens have their own standards of beauty as well as a sense of modesty. What seems like one normal looking chicken to the reader is quickly reprimanded for being naked in front of others. They also have varying ethical attitudes. When two chickens taste pork for the first time, one reacts with quiet gusto while another is horrified to having eaten another farm animal. I like how most panels are drawn from a chicken's point of view, so that a sudden human appearance, even a friendly one, can seem quite ominous.


it's a shame that more people won't be exposed to ELMER because of the issues I've mentioned before. This is a work deserving of wider recognition from a creator who's learned to bend the conventions surrounding his craft to tell an intimate story that I think many would appreciate. But Gerry Alanguilan has chosen to work with a threatened species, the Filipino comic book pamphlet.
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This is the first review based on copies purchased at the Metro Comic Con. I'll be slowly going through my small pile of komiks in future posts. In the meantime I've been posting pictures at the photo-blog from the con starting with this entry.

What's Taking Them So Long?

From Amazon. DC doesn't often treat her like one of their Big Three.

Design Classic: Da Vinci War Machines

I caught a bug during the Metro Comic Con, so I've spent the week on my back. During my convalescence I got to see the first episode of the unfortunately titled series Doing DaVinci from the Discovery Channel. In this episode they attempt to reconstruct Leonardo da Vinci's circular battle tank. I've developed a dislike for the channel's over-reliance on documenting build team exercises. It often feels like a lazy excuse to avoid actual educational content. I was hoping for once that the series producers might place these designs within its actual historical context instead of simply repeating ad infinitum how much of a genius Leonardo happened to be. Nope. I guess not.

Metro Comic Con 2009: Pinoy Nerd Prom

Attending a Filipino comics convention for the first time is a curious experience. To begin with they're still relatively new to the comics scene and there still aren't that many of them. Not surprisingly they emulate the American model and draw interest primarily from the local hardcore fanbase. But comic books on the whole continue to be marginalized by the mainstream. This has had a profoundly negative effect on local talent. Unable to support themselves due to a dearth of publishers, most have had to work for the DC and Marvel assembly lines. Thanks to the internet, this form of global outsourcing is easier than ever. Whatever international success earned is being parlayed by some of them too re-ignite languishing interest in local comic books.

The first Metro Comic Con was held last weekend at the convention halls of the massive SM Megamall complex. Most shoppers went about their business probably unaware that it was taking place. It's a bit depressing that the biggest news to come out of the con was the launch of the Watchmen DVD and the Filipino theatrical release of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. But it's not as if anyone who appeared in the movie was there to promote it. The barely manned and fairly large booth which was prominently located near the entrance kept playing a video loop throughout the con.

For all the market dominance by American publishers and the American subsidiaries of Japanese publishers, none of them had set up their own booths. No one from America bothered to show-up if they were invited at all, leaving the convention floor to the local dealers. Of course I didn't expected it from a first-time event. Whatever talent was in attendance was strictly homegrown. This turned out to be beneficial as it did help make the con feel more relaxed and intimate. I had zero interest in the people who work for War Machine and whatnot, but I did derive some satisfaction when indie creators like Gerry Alanguilan and Budjette Tan signed my copies of their books. Most of the unknown creators at Artists Alley tended to draw in a manga influenced style, which felt a little too derivative for my tastes. But I got the impression that business was for the most part good. Given the tenuous foothold Filipino comics have in comic book stores and bookstores, creators are dependent on good word of mouth and their fans showing up at conventions.

Once the convention going crowd increased after noon the exhibit halls became tightly packed for both days,spilling out into the adjacent areas inside the mall. Compared to their American counterparts, Filipino fandom isn't as bifurcated. This could be easily attributed to the small and ostracized geek population. But Filipino comics fans ease with anime can also be explained by the country's position as a nexus of Western and Asian influences. Fans from my generation grew up watching reruns of American cartoons as well as dubbed versions miscellaneous shojo and shonen anime, which included virtually every mecha series to come out of Japan until they were banned sometime during the martial law years. So the super-hero/manga divide isn't as contentious. What is new, and possibly alienating to older fans, are the otaku trappings like cosplaying or console MMORPGs which are being nurtured by the convention circuit. I've probably seen some of the most elaborate costumes from any fan-oriented event this weekend. Conventions have become an essential social outlet for many younger fans. The majority of attendees I saw were at least in their teens and evenly composed of both sexes.

While there was plenty of enthusiasm found on floor of the the Metro Comic Con, no one had any solutions to the problem of the comic book industry's current meager state. The event didn't seem to reach past the devoted fanbase towards a more mainstream audience. Without the help of publishers with a substantial bookstore presence, individual creators will either have to continue with their own efforts to set up legitimate publishing businesses or continue to depend on breaking into the American market.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon

I concede that I cannot match Mr. Marcos when it comes to experience. I admit that I have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying or assassinating political opponents.

- Corazon Aquino (January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009)

Mark Sanford

I’m a bottom line kind of guy I’m just gonna lay it out. It’s gonna hurt and I’m going to let the chips fall where they may...I spent the last five days crying in Argentina

Celebrity Portrait: Mark Sanford

Traditional pen and ink.

Tina Fey

I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers

Celebrity Portrait: Tina Fey

The Direct Market Ghetto

Filipino comics creator Gerry Alanguilan is considering not distributing his ELMER graphic novel through the National Bookstore franchise after learning that they charge a 40-50% reseller fee. National is by a significant margin the largest bookstore chain in the Philippines, so the decision severely limits his ability to attain broad national exposure. His comments encapsulates the available options for Filipino indie comics creators (which is almost everyone): "Within Metro Manila I already have several comic book stores that could carry it for me, and with more comics conventions in a year where I could sell these, I could make reasonable business with this, as I have done the previous individual issues of Elmer."

I'm Going to Change!

Honey Flash!

Cutey Honey Desktop Wallpapers

Design Classic: Macintosh Interface Icons

Anyone who has used personal computers for much of the last twenty five years is already acquainted with the contributions of Susan Kare, whether or not they are familiar with her name. No doubt her multifaceted work on the original Macintosh graphic user interface is her most uhhh...iconic achievement. Designed to fit within a 32x32 pixel black and white grid, these images would continue to evolve and define the understated look and and feel of the Mac desktop environment until they were replaced by the flashier Aqua visual theme. Nonetheless her influence can still be felt among user interface designers of today.

Dueling Fandoms

I've been enjoying Wednesday Comics so far, but it's never even occurred to me that this project would appeal to casual readers. Both the genre overwhelmingly represented and the format used are more likely to either attract DC's traditional fan base or dilettantes like me. If the series does pick-up new readers, then I have the same question as I did for Marvel Divas: Where are they supposed to go to next? Just like its Marvel counterpart, Wednesday Comics adapts an unorthodox approach to old and familiar characters. But it's so different from DC's corporate shared universe that I can't imagine many new readers who liked it sticking around to become full-time DC fans.

While I can't make it to Comic Con, I would like to be there if only just to witness the feared showdown between Twilight fans and traditional comic book fans. As far as I'm concerned, the Brigid Alverson hosted roundtable was preaching to the choir - the fanboys are overreacting to the perceived invasion of their hallowed grounds by hordes of screaming fangirls. Still I couldn't help noting a bit of defensiveness among the participants when the topic of shojo manga readership was brought up. Now in no way are those two reactions morally equivalent. God knows that manga fans and especially female comics book fans have had to put up with plenty of bullshit from the industry through the years. And they continue to do so. I'm just saying that fans sometimes feel the impulse to be a tad overprotective when someone expresses a disinterest in their beloved pastime. Lecturing doesn't help when done in that tone.

Sarah Palin

In the words of General MacArthur, we are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction

Celebrity Portrait: Sarah Palin

Getting back to working on traditional pen and ink.

Design Classic: Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera

The camera used by the Apollo 11 crew was a modified Hasselblad 500 EL with a Carl Zeiss Biogon C 5.6/60 mm lens. The originals were left on the Moon. The accompanying film magazines were modified 70 mm magazines which could handle up to 200 exposures. Those came back to Earth.

An Uneven Trinity

In his series of Wonder Woman related posts, Noah Berlatsky argues that DC's problems with the character stems from their inability to wrap their minds around William Moulton Marston's highly idiosyncratic personal vision. Of course it could be said that other properties like Superman and Batman have also been watered-down from their original conceptions. But it doesn't help that rehashing Marston's contentious brand of gender politics, which Berlatsky considers important to Wonder Woman's identity, would not sit well with the majority of writers or the current fan base.

In his most recent post Berlatsky tackles what I think is a more obvious reason for Wonder Woman's diminished status - Superman. Neither he nor Wonder Woman were originally designed to interact with each other, but are forced to do so within that piecemeal corporate entity called the shared universe. Both characters are meant to represent the highest form of heroism, but when made to coexist in the same fictional plane, one ends up playing second fiddle to the other:

"WW is different than Superman in a lot of ways. But she's the same in that her point is really to be a paragon; the quintessence of heroism...So when you put her in a story with Superman...well, one of them has to lose focus. If it was Marston, of course, that one would be Superman, and it would be all about how men, even superman, have to submit to women, and love their submission, and so forth. But, alas, Marston's dead, and what we get instead is the much more conventional idea that women (even wonder women) are mostly there to serve as supportive figures in male psychodrama."

Which brings me to the other character to be constrained under a similar arrangement. The one that, when he was being published by another company, actually gave Superman a run for his money:


Seeing them stand side by side makes visible the DC habit of collecting characters who are basically embodiments of generic heroism. Wonder Woman's gender at least gives her some level of visual contrast. While hardly the most dignified role, making her a glorified personal assistant, close ally, best friend, potential love interest etc. to Superman at least guarantees her some visibility during the annual super-hero pile-up. DC can also pay lip service to her as the world's greatest female super-hero even when she's not allowed to be the world's greatest hero. That's a lot of BS of course.

Captain Marvel is an idea that seems to have walked out of a child's daydream of what a cool adult should be like. It's not the specific powers that matter because he is power. He's The World's Mightiest Mortal: He's a marvel. He's a superman. That may have been true when he was part of Fawcett's line-up, but what happens when after a long period out of the limelight he moves to DC and meets his rival male counterpart? How do you settle which superman should be the greatest?

You can make them fight for dominance like typical males:

But the outcomes of many of these battles were never in doubt because they're never allowed to unseat Superman's place in the DC Universe. Forget that Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are beings who should be able to exploit Superman's supposed weakness to magic, or any other hair splitting arguments that fans can come up with. What matters is that Superman has been locked into his primary role as the quintessential super-hero. DC initially shunted off the Fawcett characters to their own parallel universe. But even after they were merged into DC's main universe, Captain Marvel has remained a consistent second or third stringer. If anything, separating him from familiar settings and supporting characters has made him more of an orphan within DC. Meanwhile Superman benefits from a universe which treats him as an integral member: He gets to tussle with evil New God Darkseid on a semi-regular basis. He gets outwitted by Batman at every opportunity. He fights alongside Wonder Woman in DC's version of Ragnarok. And it's Superman and Wonder Woman who have Earth-shattering sex while Marvel barely registers as a presence before getting clobbered by Braniac in Dark Knight II. This is not a question of whether this is fair. This is fiction after all, and DC has assigned Marvel a smaller role.

What's unfortunate is that just as with Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel's original qualities tend to get diluted within DC's environment. The essence of his appeal is the idea that an average child could be wholly trusted with the use of godlike power. He was conceived in an era when super-powers were still treated more as a wondrous gift than as an unsought for responsibility. From the Whiz Comics pages that I've read, he possessed a certain goofball charm that hardly anyone today cares to replicate. But I don't think anyone at DC has believed in that premise for a long time. On the contrary, Marvel's perceived immaturity and naivete are sometimes treated as a dangerous liability, and used against him in Post-Crisis stories like Legends and Kingdom Come.


Superman's seniority also leads him to assume a paternal role towards Captain Marvel's Billy Batson identity. In the recent Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder, the still neophyte Billy at first revels in the use of his newly received powers. But when this leads to tragedy, he loses all self-control, forcing Superman's intervention. While the inevitable confrontation between Marvel and Superman doesn't devolve into the usual slugfest, Clark Kent becomes Billy's mentor because the kid obviously needs moral guidance and adult supervision.


It doesn't come as a surprise to me that the recent Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith works very well as a "back to basics" approach, partly because of the noticeable absence of DC Universe elements. But speaking us someone who would on some level find it emotionally satisfying to see The Big Red Cheese upstage the Man of Steel, to most fans the character may simply have grown too old-fashioned, stale, familiar, and that his best days are already far behind him.

Design Classic: Nikon F Camera System

Has it been fifty years already?

Not Another List

When The Comics Journal assembled their list of 100 best comics of the century in 1999, their staff had the good sense to parenthetically add "English-Language" to the list's description. This poll of 187 critics for the 50 greatest films is similar in it's provincialism. The choices are both conventional and lean heavily Anglo-American, especially its top ten. Like any "Best of" list that targets works of art or entertainment, it's a reflection of the biases of the people involved and the context in which it was created.

Jumping Late on The Wednesday Comics Bandwagon

Wednesday Comics is a perfect distillation of super-hero nostalgia. DC's decades-old stable of characters are in themselves enough to evoke nostalgia. But the format used predates those characters and taps into America's rich history of newspaper cartoon strips. It would seem to naturally repudiate the currently favored "decompressed" storytelling style, and it forces the artist to effectively maximize use of the one-page chapter while minimizing concerns about composing coherent long form visual narratives.

Anyway, here are my three favorite pages in no particular order:


Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert
Adam Strange: Strange Adventures by Paul Pope and Jose Villarrubia
Metamorpho The Element Man by Neil Gaiman, Mike Allred, Laura Allred and Nate Piekos

And my honorable mentions:

Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook
Hawkman by Kyle Baker
Wonder Woman by Ben Caldwell
Deadman: The Dearly Departed Detective by Dave Bullock, Vinton Heuck, Jared Fletcher and Dave Stewart

More on The Cult of Moe

Moe Magnet Sasami

"She looks like she has an elementary school girl's head on a woman's body," my father, a child psychiatrist, commented on one of the first pieces of manga art he ever saw. That was 10 years ago, when I'd just started working at VIZ and very little manga was available in English, but if he'd said the same thing in 2009, I could have shown him the elementary school girl's body too.
- Jason Thompson

Jason summarizes the moe phenomenon in his ComiXology article, which he traces back to 70s lolicon and fan art that fixated on the young female protagonists of Hayao Miyazaki, and forward to today's otaku subculture. I first tried to tackle the moe subject matter in my Yotsuba&! post. Whereas I concentrated more on the paternalistic attitudes behind the more "pure" expression of moe, Jason covers the larger issues of traditional male chauvinism, prurient sexual fetishes, the graying of Japan's population, and the wish-fulfillment traits of fandom.

What's interesting is how successfully the cult of moe has been mirrored outside of Japan despite manga's relatively late popularity in the West. My own first recollection of moe would be with fan reactions to the female cast of Tenchi Muyo!, in particular the prepubescent Sasami*. For others it may have been Sailor Moon. While others might claim Neon Genesis Evangelion as their first encounter with moe. Whatever the case, the current success of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Moon Phase, et al. demonstrates how much the concept has been embraced by Western fans. That would seem to indicate that despite the Japanese origins of the term, the underpinnings of its appeal are no longer purely Japanese. It could be explained as a response to recent common trends/social changes found within industrial countries. Or perhaps moe simply reverberates with something older and more traditional? It's not as if paternalism and chauvanism are exclusively Japanese attitudes.

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*Referred to at the time by Carl Horn as The Sasami Effect

Macheads Use Ubuntu

Only a true master can understand the CLI

I missed this, but the second chapter of Ubunchu! has been out for a bit. The original manga by Hiroshi Seo has been "open sourced", like its subject matter, into different language translations. It's pretty accessible, with the characters mostly conforming to type. The Windows guy is a cranky gamer set in his ways. The Mac user is an open-minded but naive comic book fan. And the Linux guru is smart, but a Command Line zealot. Krishna has also been touching on the same topic in his recent strips. This chapter contains the only attempt I'm aware of to explain the command pipe to laypeople in comic form.

Keith Knight is a Big Fan

The K Chronicles

Old vs. New Azumanga Daioh

The original Azumanga Daioh yonkoma published by MediaWorks are on the left. The 10th Anniversary Edition versions published by Shogakukan are on the right. As the side-by-side comparison shows, the redrawing of these comic strips are very thorough. The stylistic changes are also pretty clear-cut.

Greek Street #1

Greek Street is a typical high concept Vertigo book that self-consciously draws from and blends myth, fantasy, horror, and genre pulp fiction. These books are in some ways the mirror image of the super-hero universe titles that DC (and Marvel) maintain. Both fetishize violence and power in their own ways. And both can take too much pride in regurgitating their respective traditions. Vertigo's serials just prefer citing the likes of Lovecraft, Brothers Grimm, Sophocles or the Bible to Julius Schwartz or Stan Lee. This reinvention can certainly work. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman have built their careers on it and have written some brilliant comics in the process. But over-reliance on any formula can also be used to mask a lack of originality or narrative weaknesses.

Set in modern-day London, Greek Street starts off on an unfortunately pedantic note when a stripper fends off the unwanted attentions of a patron by revealing that history is composed of "eternal recurrences" and people are like "Medea and Agamemnon...still playing at the temple of Dionysus." The scene shifts to the main protagonist and Oedipal figure as he reconnects with his long lost mother. Their story is a complete reversal of the classic myth in that the hero knowingly tracks down and manipulates his mother before their blood relationship is revealed. But after accidentally killing her, he becomes a latter day Orestes fleeing to Soho's Greek Street, but unable to escape his guilt over his dead mother.

The decision of veteran Vertigo writer Peter Milligan and artist Davide Gianfelice to reinterpret ancient mythology as noir fiction is on the surface a pretty self-evident choice. There's plenty of sex, violence, and general brutality in those old stories that can be easily transposed to the present, not to mention that the themes of murder causing an endless cycle of revenge make for great drama. But the compelling power of these myths have more to do with the immortal works that convey these stories than the basic ideas found in them. Greek Street contains some rather effective and disturbing imagery. But their impact is blunted by dense plotting and a brisk pace that leaves that little room to develop the dozen or more supporting characters that are thrown at the reader. Most of them only get to occupy a few panels before the story moves on to the next character. The action isn't actually helped by the Vertigo preference for moody monochromatic coloring or the interchangeable grimacing faces. As this is a first issue, it is mostly set-up for the rest of the series. But the overall impression I get is that of Milligan trying to cram in as many Classical references as he could within the forty pages of the issue. The resulting narrative doesn't quite mesh.

While it's always premature to judge the success of a series on reading just the first issue, Greek Street's #1 seems a bit too aware of its ancient predecessors to stand-out as a work worthy of being regarded on its own merits. The series might eventually prove to be better than this premiere suggests, but I doubt it will be turn out to be a particularly memorable achievement for Vertigo.

The Marvel Divas Problem

Marvel Divas, the latest female-oriented comic series from Marvel, has had virtually all-negative press coverage since it was first announced. There's that unfortunate title, awkward advertising copy, and that embarrassing cheesecake cover which has been roundly, and IMO justifiably, criticized on the web.


But this is pretty much par for the course at Marvel Central. And it's what their male-dominated fan base expects. Unlike DC with its numerous imprints, Marvel makes comparatively fewer attempts to publish material outside of their super-hero universe. They're consistent that way. But I don't see how anyone with half a brain at Marvel could have seriously believed that the cover would work with the Sex in The City crowd. This looks more like a disingenuous move to get fanboys to pick-up a title they would normally avoid.

The interiors are a different story altogether. The art by Tonci Zonjic and company isn't striking, but it's perfectly matched to the content of the story. And It's far superior to the solicited cover art. The characters look real, down-to-earth, and clearly delineated from each other with distinct faces and body types. The dialogue centers on the lead characters bonding over their particular problems balancing their professional careers and personal love lives. Hardly groundbreaking material, but different from the usual Marvel fare.


This raises the question of what is the point of setting this kind of series in a shared universe in the first place. The women here are mostly second stringers currently not involved with any super-hero teams. Their minor character status gives writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa more room to develop them in this particular direction. But they're still Marvel Universe super-heroes. It's only a matter of time before they're appropriated by another writer. Given how different in tone Marvel Divas is from the rest of Marvel, any newly acquired readers are unlikely to stick around. In the end the series seems less an attempt to attract more female readers than as a way to placate accusations of chauvinism among super-hero publishers. But this little experiment has no chance of appealing to most of Marvel's traditional fan base. So enjoy it while it lasts.

What The F#@k is Going On in Pyongyang?

Pyongyang by Guy Delisle

North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast Saturday in a show of military firepower that defied U.N. resolutions and drew international condemnation and concern. It also fired four short-range missiles Thursday believed to be cruise missiles.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency -- citing a South Korean government source it did not identify -- reported that five of the seven ballistic missiles landed in the same area, indicating their accuracy has improved.

- KELLY OLSEN Associated Press

Culinary Curiosities: The MOSDO and POTEDO

Mister Donut MOSDO menu モスド and ポテド

Here's the kind of fast-food fusion tailor-made to bring-out my inner Homer Simpson. The MOSDO is the brainchild of a partnership between popular doughnut chain Mister Donut and Japanese burger franchise MOS Burger. Each company makes its own product under this common brand name (A portmanteau of 'MOS' and 'Donut'). The Mister Donut variety is a doughnut burger - Burger on the outside but doughnut on the inside. The accompanyinng POTEDO (A portmanteau of 'Potato' and 'Donut') are french fry shaped doughnut sticks. Christopher Butcher enjoyed this inventive fast-food combo. Now I really want to go to Japan.

MOS Burger MOSDO モスド

The MOS Burger version has a traditional looking burger patty with a doughnut hole in the middle filled with wasabi mayonnaise. Mmmmm spicy. While not as clever as its Mister Donut counterpart, it still sounds like something that could only come from Japan.

Farewell Kodachrome

I've never personally used Kodachrome, as the film was already falling out of favor by the time I began experimenting with color photography. There just weren't many labs that could process it. But the discontinuation of another classic product marks one more step on the march towards an all-digital future. Ars Technica has a nice article about the film's landmark importance to the photographic world. And Kodak has put up an online gallery of Kodachrome images mainly from National Geographic photographers.