Gerry Hunt's non-fiction graphic novel (must find a better term for that) Blood Upon the Rose, has just been published by O'Brien, which seems to the Irish publisher interested in comics and comic artists.
There was a patronising write-up in this weekend's Irish Times, of the 'Zap!-Pow!-Comics-aren't-just-for-kids-anymore' variety. Nary a mention of whether or not the book is any good or what the art and writing are like.
Ignorance of the medium might have been excusable in the 1980s, but with every other Hollywood property based on a Marvel franchise, you'd have to be fairly dopey not to be aware of it nowadays. Ireland really is twenty years behind the rest of the world (at least when it comes to comics; and roads, the roads are shit too).
Gerry and BrenB (Hunt's long-time collaborator, and I'm guessing the colourist on Blood Upon the Rose) seemed patient with the witless reporter, but the nerves had to be frayed:
“If you watch a Disney movie when you’re a kid, it doesn’t mean that when you grow up you stop watching movies.”
The very fact that poor BrenB had to point this out made me cringe.
(Read part one of this article here.)
I recently discovered Graphic Smash and Komikwerks, two subscription-based webcomics publishers. While webcomics sites like Comic Genesis or Webcomics Nation are swamped with poor quality work, these sites retain the editorial sensibilities of traditional publishers (in terms of quality control).
While some individuals will make go of it alone, this seems like the future for the majority of comics creators. It is interesting to note that Marvel has concluded Spider-Girl in print and is to re-launch it, next month, as a digital-only title.
I don’t think printed comics will ever wholly go, but given the ragged state of publishing in general at the moment - and with comics and graphic novels suffering falling sales - the industry must make some tough decisions to reinvigorate comics and prevent the medium from falling into obscurity.
As per part one of this article, OK Erok! proposes four ways to revitalise the comics publishing industry:
- Kill ongoing/endless titles:
Ongoing/endless titles, with their increasingly baroque continuities, alienate casual readers and stifle the creativity of writers. Finite/limited titles energise writers and offer more 'hooks' for the reader. Make them the cornerstone of the industry.
- Release/relax copyright on existing characters:
Encourage the current generation of comics fans and creators to offer their own takes on classic characters.
In Japan, a dojinshi culture of amateur/unsigned creators, making professional-quality bootlegs of popular manga, is seen as a benefit rather than a threat to publishers. It's only a step forward from the comics industry's policy of harvesting talent from successive generations of comic readers.
- Crowd-source comics:
Without getting into the debate about whether or not crowd-sourcing is evil - the equivalent of making every worker a scab etc - it may also be a fact of economic life, especially in the 'creative industries'. Zuda is an early adopter of this approach.
"...comic book culture has a higher percentage of productive fans than other groups. Even more significant, the productive fan of comic books can actually get a job writing, drawing, or somehow being involved in making the official adventures of his or her favorite character. Fans of Star Wars don't really ever get this chance." - Matthew Pustz
This is the great, untapped strength of comics culture. Acknowledge the fact that comics fans are some of the most creative fans and build it into the system.
- Anthologise monthly comics:
DC has recently acknowledged the need to provide more content for their expensive products, by lowering their price and adding back-up features to their titles. Despite the failure of CrossGen Comics, which pioneered monthly anthology comics, the monthly book is a relic of another time and needs to be retired.
- Decentralise publishing:
The advantage big publishers have over indie producers is their ability to market and get exposure for their products. Change focus, from doing everything - outsource some of the creative work (as above) - to bringing comics to readers.
The Creative Review blog featured a short interview with Adrian Tomine, last week.
From his earliest work on Optic Nerve, Tomine's delicate linework was always strongly graphic, so it's no surprise that he has to become a regular illustrator for The New Yorker.
Tomine says little in his interviews. I read a really long interview with him in The Comics Journal, ten years ago, which revealed about as much as this one. Tomine lets his artwork do the talking.
(via Scamp)
The battles of a Mexican ape against the legions of Dagon burst from the pages of this offbeat, exuberant homage to Silver Age Comics.
Jack Kirby was a long-time Marvel Comics artist who co-created, with Stan Lee, many of it's most famous characters. 'Beloved' would not be too strong a word to describe the devotion which many comics fans and creators feel about 'the King.' Such is clearly the case with the creators of El Gorgo!
When El Gorgo, the eponymous Mexican wrestler-rock star- superhero, interrupts a human sacrifice by acolytes of malevolent god, Dagon, little does he know what terrible forces he sets in motion.
What follows (with few pauses) for almost the entirety of the first two issues is a relentless royal rumble of smashing, jumping, punching action as El Gorgo teams up with unexpected allies, travels through space and time and body slams bad guys.
El Gorgo! is tremendous fun and innocent - or perhaps just not cynical - in a way that is reminds me of why I liked to read comics as a kid. Not that El Gorgo! is childish, but it certainly recalls that childlike reading space. The sincerity and enthusiasm of the storytelling - with its unlikely combination of HP Lovecraft and Jack Kirby - prevents it slipping into parody or pastiche.
Artist Tamas Jakab draws a pretty good Kirby crackle and writer Mike McGee puts together an interesting cast of heroes and villains. Jakab's artwork is wonderful and evocative. The linework is loose, but meaty - I hope he never loses this raw feeling, which is mostly gone from mainstream comics - and the colouring is bold and full of 'special effects'.
If I have any criticism it's that the comic is a little cluttered, both visually and in terms of storytelling. There is a bit too much text on the page and each issue is crammed with enough incident for two issues. While this ensures that the adventure never lets up, it leaves little room for character development.
But this is early days for El Gorgo! I feel sure that the creators will lengthen their stride as the comic progresses. And if they maintain the comic's high quality it will win a lot of readers.
Excelsior!
Nate Piekos posts a fascinating article about the grammatical conventions past and present of comics. (Okay, maybe it only sounds fascinating to me.) And while lettering is widely acknowledged as a formidable technical challenge, it also demands recognition of the many 'voices' that comics utilise.
For example, consider:
'The use of italics [in comics] is quite varied: Italic dialogue is used for internal monologues, traditional-style locator & time captions, narrative captions, in thought balloons or for any instance where a voice is being transmitted through a TV, radio, communicator, as in a radio balloon. Rarely, you'll see italics used for non-verbal words like "Uh," or "Huh", or in conjunction with someone who is whispering. Italics are also used for non-English words and the titles of movies, books, etc.'
Cheers for that, Nate!
(via Forbidden Planet)
A young woman survives deprivation, war and political machinations in this bleak and charmless work.
‘Black humour’ must be among the most over-used, mis-represented descriptions of creative failure; usually it is heavy on the blackness and low on humour. ‘Political satire’ falls into the same category and few works have the political insight to justify the claim.
The comics industry owes Frank Miller a debt of gratitude. Miller's noir stamp on Daredevil and then Batman, in the 1980s, breathed fresh air into stale franchises and ushered in a new ‘gritty’ era of comics.
DC published Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 1986, the same year as Watchmen. Liberating and fresh, these works seemed to demonstrate the potential of the comics medium to express adult ideas and stories. Unfortunately, the industry's vogue for ‘dark’ and ‘mature’ themes led them to fill their comics with gratuitous violence, cynicism and exploitative misogyny.
These qualities, always nascent in Miller's stories, came to dominate them. Miller's work never again hit the heights of Dark Knight and has increasingly come to parody itself.
Set in a dystopian near future, Give Me Liberty follows the adventures of Martha Washington, a black girl from a violent Chicago slum, who joins the US army and becomes a war hero. Martha's story provides a through-line for the degeneration of the US government and the internal political struggles.
Give Me Liberty is replete with gags. For example, Martha takes her name (presumably) from George Washington's wife. The US Army is renamed PAX - latin for 'peace' - ironically recalling the Pax Romana, the 'Roman Peace', a period of relative tranquility during the time of the Roman Empire.
There is no shortage of ideas - the title comes from Patrick Henry's famous insurrectionary quote 'Give me liberty or give me Death!' - but quite what Miller wants us to take from them, beyond the obvious 'irony' is unclear.
And if Miller’s work is not particularly nuanced or insightful of politics, at times it is very funny. The space-station occupied by ‘Aryan Thrust’ - a group of militant extremists, who assert that ‘the future is white, fascist and gay’ - takes the form of a gigantic phallus. Miller seems to want to say something about men, but what?
Indeed, apart from Martha there are almost no women in Give Me Liberty. With the exception of Elektra, Miller often conforms to the comic industry’s exploitative portrayal of women. Martha is no sex object, but nor is she much of a woman; her value lies in her malleability to the ends of power and her effective use of force.
The world of Give Me Liberty is not quite a Hobbesian war of all against all, but force is the idiom of society, power its highest value. Miller wants to say something about men, but he presents again an assemblage of ideas, without a strong organising principle.
Martha Washington herself is kept in a kind of developmental stasis. We learn little about her, or her motivations, other than her facility for killing and surviving. Martha is the still point, around which the chaos of the story revolves. It is tempting to see this as a kind of Forrest Gump move on Miller’s part; while Moretti, the ambitious military man, manoeuvres himself into power Martha fights and survives his wars.
It seems that Miller wants to have his cake and eat it. Power is shown to cruelly brutalise and instrumentalise, but Miller relishes in the violence which is Martha's sole purpose in life.
On the plus side, the storytelling in Give Me Liberty is expert, in particular the pacing, which moves along slickly. And Dave Gibbon's charismatic artwork evokes Watchmen. If only we could remember the brilliant visual style and storytelling Miller introduced to comics and forget what he has to say.
