A Pen-Elayne for your Booze
It’s Wednesday morning and there are no drugs in San Diego. The dealers are hoarding them in anticipation of the convention rush. The Republican convention. Drug dealers can’t be bothered with a bunch of comic book freaks in drag, not when the fate of the next American President hangs in the balance. Word on the street is that the LSD tabs already have Nixon’s face on them. Imagine an entire sheet of Tricky Dicks staring out at you and you can understand why the use of psychedelics has fallen like a rock as we wind towards political Waterloo in November.
Am I forced to a drug-free Comic-Con?
As I sign up for the Comics Arts Conference I notice that I’m no longer the professional I was back in 1984. Now I’m a regular. I still have to pay twenty bucks for the privilege. Also queuing up for the privilege are Kurt Busiek, Paul Levitz, Jessica Abel, Don Simpson, and Peter Sanderson. Haven’t heard of Sanderson? He has possibly the most talked-about job in Marvel Comics. He’s the staff archivist, which means he knows exactly where all the comics are that nobody reads any more.
According to last week’s newspaper-I needed something to wrap my lunch in-Steve Geppi just paid sixty grand for an imperfect Action #1. How does that compare with the entire output of Superman last month? Have we reached the point where a single issue of a comic written seven decades ago is worth an entire publishing run today? Rumors still exist on the net that DC bought Diamond. Scuttlebutt today is that it was the other way ’round: Geppi is now the secret Editor-King of comics and a member-in-training of the Trilateral Commission on Comics Arts.
Continuity and Exhaustion
But you didn’t tune in to hear about politics, drugs, or what other people pay for children’s books. How does Comics Scholarship fare in the Troubling Times now upon us? Last time you read my ravings, Peter Coogan (my spelling checker wants to turn his name into cognac, there’s that drug angle again) was fighting his never-ending battle to keep comics out of the ivory tower of the University and in the back alleys of New York where it belongs. Has he succeeded? In a piss-poor way. At today’s Comics Arts Conference the morning panel outnumbered the audience. At nine o’clock in the morning we were expected to talk about Continuity and Exhaustion. Surprisingly, "exhaustion" didn’t enter in; perhaps it hit too close to home. Paul Levitz, executive VP of DC, Peter Sanderson, staff historian of Marvel, Mark Coale, Bowling Green graduate student, and Randy Duncan, Henderson State University Communication and Theatre Arts Chair, sat behind the table while Peter Coogan, Randy Wood, and myself sat in front. Bob Conklin and Kurt Busiek showed up late in the session, but they don’t count: they (along with Peter Coogan) were also presenters later in the day.
Paul Levitz compares Superman to soul food—comfort food in his Northern slang. Comic book tales embody the Zen spirit that the destination is less important than the journey. We know how its going to end.
Peter Sanderson describes early comics the same way Clinton describes marijuana. Easy to get into, it draws people in and sucks their life away until they know nothing but the powers of their favorite superteam and the date of their next fix. Continuity required investigation in the elder days and this was the hold on fans. Continuity was the gateway drug to comic books.
As long as you don’t inhale. Printer’s ink is death on your lungs.
Mark explains that following continuity is learning the skills of learning. Students who wouldn’t dream of memorizing the presidents of the United States can tell you every member of the Legion, their powers, and their home world. In the old days, Randy Duncan points out, knowledge of comics trivia elevated your self image.
How low was it before, Randy?
Back then, said Paul, there was a defined body of knowledge, and the definition was made by the readers. The readers defined the canon. They decided when the chroniclers—the people who wrote the damn comics—were wrong. Is comics fandom the stillborn precursor to the web?
Today, like everything else in the world, comics fandom has balkanized. We have our X-Men X-Perts, our Spawn Scholars, and our Vertigo, uh, Velodromes.
Alliteration can be hell.
The form of debate is the same in comics as it is in any other art form. That’s an observation Peter Sanderson made when he ventured onto the Joycian discussion groups on the net. The criticisms he heard there were the same criticisms that fill RACM. I hear they even have their own conventions.
In the wake of the Marvel Age, DC envied Marvel’s lack of history. After a ten-year campaign by Gerry Conway the Crisis on Infinite Earths chopped their history away as well. Peter Sanderson’s counterpart at DC, according to Levitz, had to resign under doctor’s orders because of the stress involved when each issue came out.
This was during the Reagan era. Surely he could’ve just said no?
In the end, the conclusion was summarized by Levitz: the story has to make sense to the listener. Comics as oral history?
Criticism in Action!
Peter Coogan, Bob Conklin, and Randy Duncan joined forces to explain to Kurt Busiek what was going on in Astro City. All we needed was Bob Barker to make it The Price is Right.
Overheard while waiting, two men discussing Power Man/Iron Fist, Heroes for Hire. At an office party before he took over the series, he’d had the differences between the heroes explained to him: “Danny is the thinker, Lucas is strong. Danny is white, Lucas is… not.”
“Well, at least they left it open for you. You could make him Asian one issue, Black the next.”
Peter Coogan
Peter’s thesis is that Astro City is ushering in, or is at the vanguard of, the Renaissance Age, and age of refinement, of superhero comics. As opposed to the Baroque Age, which we’re currently in, where embellishment is piled on embellishment and the substance is lost in a thick layer of Mary Kay cosmetics. These names are from Thomas Schatz’s Hollywood Genres; Peter prefers “bronze age” to symbolize the tarnishment of the “silver age” (between silver and baroque). Nothing that a bit of lemon juice and glossy stock won’t fix, though. Here for posterity are Peter’s conversion of Schatz’s stages:
- Pre-Genre Stage: Antediluvian Age (before Action #1)
- Experimental Stage: Golden Age (Action #1, 1938)
- Classic Stage: Silver Age (Showcase #4, 1956)
- Refinement Stage: Bronze Age (Green Lantern #76, 1970), and Baroque Age (DC Comics Presents #26, 1980)
- Reconstructive Stage: Renaissance Age (early 90s)
Unfortunately for posterity the tape was turned off until Kurt began his reply.
Kurt would rather it not be the next age. “I’d rather keep doing something different.”
Stan and Jack’s work was only possible as a reaction against the golden age. Without the golden age, they wouldn’t have had anything to respond to. “What you call refinement, I call stagnation.” When Kurt started in comics it was all a matter of maintenance. The worlds were crowded. Management didn’t know why it worked so they kept trying to do the same thing over again. It’s that Asian philosophy again: the glorious meals of the past.
The prevailing belief was that the comics audience turns over every three years, so it didn’t matter if you re-used old stories. In the previous panel, Paul Levitz had noted that some romance comics were literally redrawn, modifying the hemlines and the hairstyles. “One of the reasons that the romance line died,” he said.
The comics bigwigs have been missing the boat since the early eighties. Because of the direct market, they haven’t had any idea what the general public really wants. When new things came out, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the industry looked, saw that it didn’t fit into their schema, and ignored it or made fun of it. Recalling a parody from an Ambush Bug comic, Kurt notes that rather than throw away the title they should have done something with Big Fat Freakin’ Frogs. “It’s a title that suggests your parents won’t like it.”
We as an industry shot ourselves in the foot in the seventies, and we corrected the error by shooting the other foot. Now at least we limp evenly. As prices for other magazines began to rise in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the industry made the decision that, as these were comics for children, they had to keep the price down. So while other magazines rose in price, comics did not. While this allowed comics readers to buy many more comics than they had under a less inflated dollar, it also meant that the retailer made far less money on a product that took up just as much space as anything else on the shelf. That was the first accidental discharge. In the seventies the comics industry almost went under because there were no outlets. Retailers had stopped carrying the product in any volume.
So the industry developed the direct market. It worked amazingly well. It was literally a lifeboat to the comics industry. But we were so happy to be afloat we didn’t notice that the only people we were selling to were the rest of the castaways. Now, a generation later, we’re running out of readers. Why is that a surprise?
That’s why superheroes are the only major comics genre left. Because superhero fans were a tenacious lot. “We discovered we can still get people to buy economically stupid packages if we put superheroes on it. The solution is not to try and get women and children to buy better economically stupid packages.” The solution is to find an economically better solution that retailers will carry. Back before we reduced the comics size to keep the price the same, the successful comic was a big thick anthology that competed economically with other mass market magazines. Go look in other countries: in Japan and Europe, comics are still successful. What are they? Bit thick anthologies that compete economically with everything else on the shelf.
But back to Astro City—this is a panel about Astro City—when Kurt sits down to write an Astro City story, “if I know how to write the story, I write a different story.” Anything he already knows how to write isn’t for Astro City.
Bob Conklin
Bob Conklin’s thesis is that Astro City’s success is due to its “realism”. The realism is provided by the first person narrative, a realistic background filled with ordinary everyday things, and a realistic foreground juxtaposed to the totally unrealistic characters. Kurt has an automatic bad reaction to the word “realism” but basically agrees. He prefers to call it “verisimilitude,” probably because the fans can’t pronounce it. Perhaps he should stay over for the Republicans. He could have just as easily made a career in politics.
“Verisimilitude” is summed up as “believe the moment”. The N-Forcer is a high-tech hero who first appeared in 1959. Yet the technology of the average person hasn’t changed. He’s not asking the Moorian question of “what would it be like if it were real,” but “what would you be looking at if you were in it?” Thus providing the realistic background and foreground.
Kurt learned the power of the first person narrative from the movie “Singin’ in the Rain”, (echoing Mark Evanier’s belief in comics as musicals, see issue 3 of Fear and Loathing 1993). The comics format allows the writer to lie and still let the readers know he’s lying.
Randy Duncan
Randy took the view that Astro City is both atypical and archetypal, and examined the archetypal aspects from the perspective of Ernst Bohrman’s fantasy analysis. There are stages of world view development in the development of “rhetorical communities”. These communities build up archetypes in things, phrases, and images. These archetypes evoke much larger ideas and emotions. Using these archetypal “people, scenarios, and scenes” allows for a sort of “instant continuity”, just add water.
Excuse me, I need more tea. (Note: Work not written chronologically. See last section.)
Kurt’s response expanded on that: he’s trying to separate the genre from the formula. “I don’t think it’s a narrow genre, I think it’s been narrowly explored.”
His characters often resemble other characters because they’re based on the same archetypes. Superman and Samaritan are both Christ figures. “That’s why he’s called Samaritan, that’s why he’s got a dove on his chest.”
One of the things he’s finding out as he investigates these archetypes is that “all of the good names are not taken.”
Lunch
There were fewer people in Buffalo Joe’s than there were at the conference, so I was able to wolf down a bbq pork sandwich in relative quiet and organize my notes. I was surprised to learn that bathroom “magic” condoms are up to seventy five cents, and temporary tattoos are seventy five cents extra. I guess I’m showing my age, I remember when you could walk into a bathroom and get a condom for a mere quarter. I guess they’re not marketing for children anymore either.
What Makes for Good Comics?
Jessica Abel and Donna Barr fell under the thumb of Peter Coogan for an hour long discussion of what to discuss when discussing comics. Certain things that make good comics, of course, simply make good art. They’re the same across mediums. But are there any comic-specific issues? Is there anything specific to comics that makes comics “good”?
Part of what makes a comic “good”, then, is that it makes use of the potentials of the medium. He pulls from Bob Harvey’s idea that a good comic requires words and pictures that are interdependent, and pictorial styles that mesh with the stories.
An audience member (we actually have a few now) makes the point that the author should get their intent across. Is effective communication what makes a good comic?
“It depends upon the reader,” says Donna.
Part of the problem is the definition of “good”. Who decides? If it comes down to trusting the critics, we then have to decide, well, what makes a good critic?
Probably someone who knows good comics.
In the end, Peter makes the best point of all: “I know what the problem is, I’m pushing the wrong button.”
He was talking about the tape recorder.
Don Simpson
The lights were off and I don’t write in the dark. Don gave an overview of his Fiascoverse. Impressions:
“Photoshop is an addiction—it’s like heroin.”
“A whole generation of us as artists are trying to replicate the Marvel Universe on our own terms.”
“Howard the Duck was a pivotal event in comics, because a generation of artists became wary of surrendering work to Marvel.”
“I’m one guy trying to do all this and that’s stupid.”
“The Bible: 2,000 years of Kurt Busiek.”
And that’s the end.
Registration
Registration was organized this year. Someone screwed up. At five o’clock, right on time, the line started moving. Within twenty five minutes I was done and out, even though the line stretched for a block in front of me.
The goodies bag was a disappointment. Thinner than a cheap condom it is unlikely to hold the massive number of mid-seventies (bronze age?) I typically try to stuff into it. I guess I’ll have to follow James Brown’s advice and get my own damn bag. Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN is coming to HBO in 1997. Is a crossover with Superman far behind?
The production values and the amount of art are both down in the souvenir program book. There’s not even a table of contents for the artists, probably because it isn’t necessary. There do seem to be more articles, possibly because talk is cheap.
And that’s it. The souvenir book and one measly advertisement from a television show that doesn’t even have a web site listed. Will I awake tomorrow and discover that everything was a dream, and I truly am the only comics fan in the universe?
The Party
It’s one in the morning, I know no silver age trivia, and I can’t hear the ocean for the damn birds singing. No drugs? Two slices of poppy-filled kringle and an extra-strong cup (is there any other kind?) of Russian Caravan tea ought to get me through the last of this report.
The hat went over well. No one noticed the shirt, or were too polite to point it out.
Tyg arrived around ten and claimed that he needed to leave early. At 12:30 I left Tyg, David Goldfarb, and Sidne, among others who remain nameless because I only just met them and when you’re off as many drugs as I wasn’t using tonight, names take a low priority on working brain cells. Officer ID and the telephone number for “King” bail bonds rank much higher.
Met Johanna for the first time. Could’ve sworn it was Lois Lane in her secret identity. She apologized piecemeal—various parts of the sentence throughout the night—for not doing X because of Y, and that I needed to volunteer for Z. I think the Friends of Lulu meeting is at the same time as the Friends of Lulu web site demonstration—which makes no sense, but this is still the San Diego Con—and that I get to demonstrate it because that’s the easy job, seeing as it isn’t completed anyway. But I’m sure I missed something over the din of hoarsely yelled greetings and falling dinosaurs and there’s nothing to worry about.
A young girl named Ann who doesn’t read comics was worrying that if she ever managed to meet Tori Amos, she’d think Ann was a complete dork. This among the union of comics geeks and Internet geeks of which she was only a part because of her dad. New news out of medicine yesterday is that genetics can be overcome. All it takes is the right amount of radiation.
When the party spilled into the hallway, security spilled up the stairs. Rather than kicking us out, however, the Clarion offered us a room of our own with a real balcony wider than my shoe size. Giving us more room to stack the food and homebrew, and decreasing the chance of Ann slipping over the side and following the dinosaurs to the pavement. Her addiction to dihydrogen monoxide was getting the better of her as the night wore on.
Mike Meyers is the same Mike Meyers on Alt.Drugs who sold me the DARE parodies, “I turned in my parents and all I got was this lousy shirt.” It is unlikely that Tyg is going to make another run of the Suicide Squid shirts, but anything is possible.
As the night wore on the party became trivia training ground for the RACC Avenue Irregulars, leaving the children and security wondering what language we were speaking. I left some of the poppy seed kringle for the cleaning crew and gave a couple of pieces to the parking attendant. Hopefully they won’t have drug tests anytime soon.
The tea definitely did its job. I should market it to the Con on Sunday.
The damn stuff’s gone cold on me now. I’d throw it on the birds but they’d probably end up staying up all night.
Actually, even the nightbirds have gone to sleep. Au Revoir
More Information
- Alt.Drugs
- Deprecated in favor of rec.drugs.misc, it appears to be fairly active still.
