Have you actually read "Seduction of the innocent"?

[ctc]

>I'm hoping that the drop in sales this year is simply an adjustment and not a continued downward trend.

I'm thinkin' it's an actual downturn; especially since the companies bringing the Japanese stuff over have started paring down the variety of what they bring. On the up side, I'm thinkin' we're only a few yeras off the first crop of new manga fans producing their OWN stuff, so we may be in for a whole new niche to replace it.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

That’s a very poetic way of putting it. I think the problem here is the fans. Dunno if you were here for the “Judas Priest vs Iron Maiden” discussion a year or two back; but yeah, people need a “winner.” At any given time there can only be one worthwhile example of any genre/style/media, and everything else is poo. Comics have always suffered from this. The superhero fans hate the manga stuff, the manga fans hate the superheroes, and NOBODY considers Archie a “real” comic....
s
My personal belief is that folks should always try something different. The more different the better. It’s healthier for the medium. Back when I was a kid *geezerism alert* we had Archie, Harvey, Gold Key.... as well as Marvel and DC, Warp, Heavy Metal.... variety! And it was all readily available. (I was able to get all that, except the Warp stuff, at the corner store!) Come the late 80's and it was pretty much all Marvel and DC, and it was mostly only available at designated comic shops. Unhealthy for the industry in general ‘cos by the 90's you lost the kid market. Nobody was bringing in NEW fans. (Until the Shonen Jump stuff.)

As always Don, our vision of a healthy and diverse industry and medium are completely aligned, but our interpretation of the current state of execution seems to be a bit out of synch!

You are dead on the money about fans, but I guess I've kind of mellowed around the nineties glut and the Wednesday comic store culture because there are now so many retailers that are adapting the bookstore model and embracing a bit more diversity. It seems to me that the ones that are not adapting are the ones going out of business.

Plus, I know I continue to harp on this point over and over again, the mainstream bookstore market has taken over the newsstands of our childhoods!

DC, Marvel, Heavy Metal and Archie are still around. Gold Key published cartoon and TV adaptations for the most part, which the "Mini Majors" like Boom, IDW, Dark Horse, Dynamite et al handle in great supply, while also filling for the creator owned indy genre stuff that Warp/First/Pacific/Comico used to publish.

As for Harvey... I think Bone and Scott Pilgrim are great contemporary fill ins for that kind of adventure whimsy that they specialized in. If those skew a bit older, then might I suggest our own Mego Milk's wonderful PATRICK THE WOLF BOY as a good stand in for Casper, Wendy and Hot Stuff?
Amazon.com: Patrick The Wolf Boy Volume 4 (v. 4) (9781932796834): Art Baltazar: Books
Available from Amazon with a few clicks of a button!

And we are both in complete agreement about Manga and the likes of Shonen Jump, although I have to admit that Manga seems to have peaked and I'm hoping that the drop in sales this year is simply an adjustment and not a continued downward trend. Otherwise, there would be a real void given the fact that no one else seems to publish comics available to a mass audience that deal with everything from autobiographical homelessness/vagrancy, Wheelchair basketball, and my personal favourite these days... Oishinbo (TWENTY plus volumes about culinary culture, including recipes!).

[samurainoir]

Samurainoir - I think you've got some really great picks in there. Chris Ware and Charles Burns are favorite artists of mine for sure. A lot of those I haven't read yet, I'll check some of them out based on your recommendations. I keep hearing great things about "Asterios Polyp" and "Epileptic" for example. There is some stuff on your list that I probably would never even glance at normally, especially some of the genre stuff, to be honest. Also, as talented as he is I can't get into the extreme romantic sulkiness of Adrian Tomine.

Adrian Tomine is certainly the patron saint of "Emo" comics. It makes perfect sense that he has done illustrations for Weezer. I can't say I actually find "enjoyment" from reading Tomine and Ware's stuff, but there is just such a beauty in their unflinching devotion to Melancholoy. It's a place on the emotional spectrum that others tend to shy away from or simply give lip service to, which makes sense given the amount of escapism that typifies so many comics in the comic store mainstream. I don't think their is a colour lantern in Blackest Night that would choose any of Tomine or Ware's protagonists (maybe Rusty Brown would be an Orange Lantern)!

Regarding the Crumb and Pekar situation, I would argue that it's a situation of making your own luck with Pekar. He certainly knew Crumb, but by all accounts basically steamrolled Crumb into illustrating so many of his early comics. Beyond that, I think it's just forty years worth of tenacity that finally got a huge break from the feature film.

Paul Pope did a cover illustration for local blogger/scifi author Corey Doctorow.
Cory Doctorow About Cory Doctorow

[samurainoir]

Coincidentally, I just noticed CBR has coverage of not only Harvey Pekar, but Fun Home creator Alison Bechdale at UCLA.
UCLA Live: Harvey Pekar & Alison Bechdel - Comic Book Resources

Brazoo and Don, I hope both of you will be at The Toronto Comics Arts Festival this year! It is one of the most positive events I've ever attended when it comes to not only the grown up comics scene representing US and Canada (not to mention local talent), but they have some really great stuff for kids as well. This is also the rare occassion that it's been run two years in a row instead of every other year. A fantastic opportunity to discover stuff that you wouldn't normally have a chance at seeing in many regular comic shops (outside of The Beguiling).
TCAF | The Toronto Comics Art Festival
Best of al... IT'S FREE!

[ctc]

>It's also very experimental deconstructive essay about the hero myth and the super hero genre

Well.... if you’ve been immersed in superheroes for a while maybe; but if not, it’s kinda simplistic. It’s the sort of stuff a non-super fan thinks of when they see a superhero comic. “Superheroes are all neurotic glory seekers with all sorts of interpersonal hangups? Duh.” Characters have more complicated motivation than “must... fight... EVIL...!” but they’re all still one note wonders.

>Don't you think that the book works on two different levels?

Watchmen? No. That was why I liked Marvels so much.... it paralleled the development of the comic FAN as well as the Marvel universe. In the beginning it’s all about the slam, bang action.... a tidal wave wipes out New York! Superheroes storm a Nazi outpost! The public wants more, more action, more thrills.... By the 60's it’s different. It’s about life, problems.... marriages, bills to pay.... kinda like the aging fan. By the 80's things were different again. Supers were dark, feared. The protagonist was working on his book, but even HE wasn’t sure about the heroes. Kinda like the older fan wondering if his friends will think he’s a geek for reading comics.

And in the end he accepts things as they are.... wistfully looking back at the supers and pining for the good ol’ NORMAL days. Which reminds me of the older folks pining for the old, good natured, kid friendly supers.

Don C.

[Brazoo]

Samurainoir - I think you've got some really great picks in there. Chris Ware and Charles Burns are favorite artists of mine for sure. A lot of those I haven't read yet, I'll check some of them out based on your recommendations. I keep hearing great things about "Asterios Polyp" and "Epileptic" for example. There is some stuff on your list that I probably would never even glance at normally, especially some of the genre stuff, to be honest. Also, as talented as he is I can't get into the extreme romantic sulkiness of Adrian Tomine.

By the way, is that Futuristic Tales book by Paul Pope? that cover sure looks like one of his drawings. I like his art a lot.

Personally I like Harvey Pekar, I think he's very talented, but I also think he was extremely lucky to be friends with Robert Crumb - and if I had to pick a hero in that story it would be him.

If you're looking for more great autobiographical comics I highly recommend Eddie Campell's "Alec" if you don't already know it. It's not new, but it has just been collected in a single volume just this year.


Don - I totally agree with most of what you're saying about the distinction between real adult material and a lot of the stuff that gets marketed as being "adult". You've summed it up very well. I also believe that the levels of genuine adult sophistication comes and goes in cycles in all forms of pop culture. Right now I think we're still in a cycle where most pop culture is basically for kids. Using your example, I enjoyed "The Dark Knight" a lot, but I tend to disagree with people who consider that to be a sophisticated adult film. It's one of the reasons I think Wes Anderson's movies are so interesting - his grown-up children characters speak volumes about currant cycle of pop culture to me. I'd argue that "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was my favorite real adult movie of last year - - - but that's a whole other topic. Last year we had 10 Oscar nominations for best film and I really only consider about 3 of them to be grownup movies. Most pop music these days seems excessively kiddie as well - so I don't think it's exclusively a comic book problem looking at the past 10 or so years.

I'm not even the world's biggest "Watchmen" fan, but I think you're short changing it a little by tossing it into the non-grownup category. Don't you think that the book works on two different levels? It's also very experimental deconstructive essay about the hero myth and the super hero genre - almost a perfect antithesis of Joseph Cambell's theories in many ways.

Also, I know you said you were generalizing, but I did wonder what you think of Will Eisner's later work. Which tends to be fairly broad in most ways, especially thematically, but also distinctively adult - at least for me.

[ctc]

>perhaps what harms the "grown up comics industry" much more than any kind of Wertham or ratings movement is that when "regular folks" turn to people who are more educated about comics, such as yourself, should you be so quick to tell them that there are no grown up comics worthy of checking out in the last fifteen years?

I’m not saying there aren’t any grownup books from recent times, and I certainly wouldn’t tell a non-comic person there weren’t. I’m lukewarm on a lot of it; but I recognize that it’s me; some of it I’ve seen before; and some of it is the sort of thing I don’t think is necessarily well-served as a comic. But that’s a personal thing. I’ve recommended stuff I don’t like to others as well ‘cos I thought it’d appeal to them. And I definitely agree that there’s a LOT more variety out there than there has been in a LONG time.... but I suspect this isn’t a permanent situation. Like I mentioned; things move in cycles. The trick is not only producing stuff for different audiences; but getting it to them. As a medium, comics tend to run hot; whatever the current trend is becomes the VERY dominant genre.

>compared to the insular comics community that seems to suffer from such low self esteem about itself and needs to embrace the wonderfully mainstream strides it's taken into the market in the past decade

That’s a very poetic way of putting it. I think the problem here is the fans. Dunno if you were here for the “Judas Priest vs Iron Maiden” discussion a year or two back; but yeah, people need a “winner.” At any given time there can only be one worthwhile example of any genre/style/media, and everything else is poo. Comics have always suffered from this. The superhero fans hate the manga stuff, the manga fans hate the superheroes, and NOBODY considers Archie a “real” comic....

My personal belief is that folks should always try something different. The more different the better. It’s healthier for the medium. Back when I was a kid *geezerism alert* we had Archie, Harvey, Gold Key.... as well as Marvel and DC, Warp, Heavy Metal.... variety! And it was all readily available. (I was able to get all that, except the Warp stuff, at the corner store!) Come the late 80's and it was pretty much all Marvel and DC, and it was mostly only available at designated comic shops. Unhealthy for the industry in general ‘cos by the 90's you lost the kid market. Nobody was bringing in NEW fans. (Until the Shonen Jump stuff.)

....and Wertham-esque crusades are almost always GOOD for a medium. Juts during my life there was the D&D thing, Heavy Metal and the PMRC, Mortal Kombat, Gangsta rap....

>How is he NOT a hero?

What gets me about Pekar is how little he’s mentioned when folks talk about the greats of the industry. He SHOULD get as much notoriety as Moore, Lee, et al; considering how long and prolific his career. But he seems to exist just under the radar. Maybe that’s for the best though.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

They never quite make it to general, lasting acceptance. (If they did, Pekar would be a hero.)

BUT PEKAR IS A HERO!!! Think about it for just one second. DECADES as a file clerk slaving away and not making much in the way of dimes on his indy comic American Splendor other than his 15 minutes of fame on Letterman. In 2003 the American Splendor movie comes out with tremendous accolades and critical attention just as he retires. Since then he's been on the best seller's lists, his collections have gone back into print, and he's become a permanent fixture in the Graphic Novel section of every single mainstream bookseller in North America. Mainstream Book publishers are falling over themselves to publish any of his latest work, and putting their marketing muscle behind it. And American Splendor now has just had it's most successful run with DC Vertigo as two well distributed miniseries that have in turn been collected and are on the bookstore shelves readily available to a mass audience right this moment.

He gets to write about whatever he feels like... and covers such diverse ground as his beloved jazz, global political situations like Macedonia, adaptations of prose into graphic novel form, biography's of other people, as well as the minutia of his own daily existence. All of it is available and in print for well over a half decade now, and looks to likely remain that way for some time.

And by all accounts he's making a decent living on all these books, in his so called golden years.

How is he NOT a hero?

[samurainoir]

Good points Don, but what I was really trying to get at is the fact that perhaps what harms the "grown up comics industry" much more than any kind of Wertham or ratings movement is that when "regular folks" turn to people who are more educated about comics, such as yourself, should you be so quick to tell them that there are no grown up comics worthy of checking out in the last fifteen years?

Particularly when you are in a very unique position to point them to material that is not Blackest Night and Dark Knight Returns?

I know that I have very few friends and family that are as "into comics" as I am, and I've really had to learn that it's not necessarily the stuff that is to my own personal taste that I will recommend to someone (although it helps to have a diverse reading list). My Dad was shocked at the age of sixty to find himself reading comics after I bought him the Lone Wolf and Cub books in the hospital after his heart attacks... because I knew he was crazy about samurai movies as a kid. My spouse always just kind of stood around the dusty old comic shops that I liked to wander into with that "ick" look on her face until I clued in that she likes Lord of the Rings and Disney films so I handed her Bone and voila... she's now browsing (around the clean and well organised comic shops) and discovery and in turn introducing me to stuff like Shaun Tan's The Arrival. Got Horror Movie friends? WALKING DEAD!

If we want an mature medium with a diversity of material, then we need to be the advocates for those around us. Wertham and the Christian Right (who are trying to ban BONE!) are just paper tigers compared to the insular comics community that seems to suffer from such low self esteem about itself and needs to embrace the wonderfully mainstream strides it's taken into the market in the past decade. Now more than ever before there is some kind of graphic novel out there for anyone... I mean COOKING MANGA is now available at Indigo/Chapters! I think I've finally found something for my mom to read!

[ctc]

>So what is it about these particular titles on your recommended reading list that makes them more grown up than anything that has come out in the past 15 years, or even the last few years, such as the titles I've provided above?

You've got a lot of good ones there; but there's a few I've never read.... so I can't really comment too much. To generalize my take; I think you've got to watch for themes and what I call "circumstance." The latter being the sort of obstacles that come up for the heroes. A grownup book looks at stuff that bothers a grownup mind.... which tends to be the minutia of living. The sort of obstacles that come up for the hero tend to be more subtle; the sort of stuff that hangs in the mind of an older person. That's why I don't count stuff like "Watchmen" or "The Dark Knight Returns" as grownup books; they've got more gravity and more consequence than the average super, but they're pretty heavy handed about things, and deal with issues in charicature.

Which is why I only KINDA endorse stuff like Mars or American Flagg. Both had a lot of good stuff you could wrap your head around, but Mars was pretty heavy-handed about religion, and Flagg never worked if Chakyn wasn't doing it 'cos everybody else seemed to slip more into the titilation than the underlying reasons behind it.

>there is more choice, diversity and accessibility to comics aimed at an adult audience in North America than any other point in the history of the medium!

I don't disagree; not at all.... but I don't think they've quite made it over the hill. Every so often more mature stuff catches on for a while; but I think a lot of that is novelty. They never quite make it to general, lasting acceptance. (If they did, Pekar would be a hero.) Eventually it slides back into a superhero thing; probably 'cos of how much money is tied up in marketing. So for example: it's the 70's again, and the last time the 70's happened there was a superhero boom. But it was a MARKETING boom, and accordingly the books themselves got more kiddified so's to facilitate toy sales. I thinkwe're seeing that now; considering the amount of kid-safe supers coming out, and the underlying tide of "no; comics IS fer kids!!!" you see from the older fans. Sadly, I suspect that'll spill over to comics in general. Like it has so often before.

For a while.... then THAT group of juinior fans will get older and crave more grownup material....

Don C.

[samurainoir]

So what is it about these particular titles on your recommended reading list that makes them more grown up than anything that has come out in the past 15 years, or even the last few years, such as the titles I've provided above?

As far as I can see in the bookstores, comic shops and online sellers such as Amazon (not to mention the explosion of web comics), there is more choice, diversity and accessibility to comics aimed at an adult audience in North America than any other point in the history of the medium! Every year there is literally an avalanche of new material being produced, and much of it is available from any mainstream bookseller.

>Which grownup comics are in your longbox/bookshelf/recommended reading list Don?

At the moment, none really. If you want to go back in time a bit I'd recommend:
-DeathNote
-Albedo
-Lone Wolf and Cub
-http://www.onemanga.com/Vinland_Saga/

....and a couple that are salient, but puerile:
-Trashman
-Mars (which I think WOULD have developed amazingly had it continued.)
-American Flagg. (The first 20 or so, anyhoo. After Chakyn lost interest it went downhill fast.)

....and if you HAVE to add some superheroes, I’d go with:
-Marvels. (Which I consider to be pretty much the ONLY grownup superhero comic.)

And Harvey Pekar deserves some sort of award! The dude almost singlehandedly created the “slice-of-life” comic!

Don C.

[ctc]

>Which grownup comics are in your longbox/bookshelf/recommended reading list Don?

At the moment, none really. If you want to go back in time a bit I'd recommend:
-DeathNote
-Albedo
-Lone Wolf and Cub
-http://www.onemanga.com/Vinland_Saga/

....and a couple that are salient, but puerile:
-Trashman
-Mars (which I think WOULD have developed amazingly had it continued.)
-American Flagg. (The first 20 or so, anyhoo. After Chakyn lost interest it went downhill fast.)

....and if you HAVE to add some superheroes, I’d go with:
-Marvels. (Which I consider to be pretty much the ONLY grownup superhero comic.)

And Harvey Pekar deserves some sort of award! The dude almost singlehandedly created the “slice-of-life” comic!

Don C.

[samurainoir]

2007


2009


2008

[samurainoir]

2007


2009


2009


2007


2010


2008

[samurainoir]

2008


2008


2007


2009