Incognegro

Incognegro
by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece
Vertigo 2008

Hillary Brown: Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece's Incognegro actually came out in 2008, but it's still worth covering, especially considering that "timely" isn't exactly the middle name of this blog. It seems like something more graphic novel-y and less comic book-y--much as I hate to make that distinction--especially for Vertigo, and if I were going to compare it to anything, I guess it'd be something like Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby in its examination of prejudice and historical change that nonetheless is driven by a strong narrative. Incognegro is definitely a good read that way, and I've seen people say it might end up as a movie, which seems like a good fit. It doesn't have to be a comic by its very nature in some ways (for example, the pacing of the plot twists is more classically novelistic or cinematic), but in others, it's hard to imagine it being done realistically as a movie. I mean, it can be done and it has been done. It's just... more difficult. And this is where it gets very difficult to talk about the book without ruining it for anyone, so maybe I should steer away from the whole "how do you adapt it into a movie" thing.

I think it's a pretty well-crafted book, and because it is, and because it's a compelling subject, I feel doubly guilty that it didn't grab me as much as it could have. Sometimes it feels a little stagy, you know? What did you think?

Garrett Martin: Oh yeah, it’s definitely stagy, and kind of predictable. Okay, there are a few major plot twists I did not see coming, but by the end of the first act I could pretty much tell which major characters wouldn’t make it to the end.

So. I don’t want to sound like a mouthbreathing superhero guy. There should be more comics set in the ‘30’s. There should be more comics about normal people. There should definitely be more comics that deal with serious real-life issues without being overly sentimental or narcissistic, and that don’t involve aliens and/or unsightly mutants crying. So I applaud Incognegro’s intent and existence. And it’s not bad, really. But it’s also not what it could have been, what it maybe should have been. Which is a movie. Or a TV show. Or something where the imagery of lynching would be more resonant, more impactful. Lynching photos are the most shocking, bracing, depressing artifacts of American history. They are exceptionally powerful. Somehow that power doesn’t carry over to present-day drawings of fictional lynchings. As disturbing as those scenes are in Incognegro, they aren’t as disturbing as they should be. There’s an immediate visceral reaction to one of those photos, from both the gore and the usually gleeful participants. It’s heightened by realizing that, as a Southerner, those participants could very easily have included some of my ancestors. I’m shocked at how little I felt during those scenes in Incognegro compared to photos of real events. I’m often surprised at how emotional I get over certain comics (see our George Sprott review, or talk to me about Nick Abadzis’s Laike), but Incognegro left me unmoved. Why is that? Who should I blame? Myself? The form? Johnson or Pleece?

HB: I'm really glad you brought up this point because I felt similarly. There's an emotional impact that's missing from this book, and I'm not sure why that is or even if it's a bad thing. Some of it is, as you point out, a hazard of the form, but it may also be Johnson's reticence when it comes to melodrama. His characters aren't the type to freak out over much, or maybe we don't get to know them well enough to get teary. It's not a book that grabs for your heart, though. Its concerns are more historico-political, I'd say. Maybe we're a couple of cracker assholes, but I don't quite think so. It's much, much harder to wring emotion out of something that's already got a lot there, at least when you're hardened by mucho media consumption, as I know I am. It's almost easier to make some pathetic lonely person's simple, miserable life sad than to get the same kind of response to a Holocaust story, and that's not to fault the creators, even, so much as to point to a fact of human nature, which is that we compartmentalize and desensitize ourselves to survive. Photographs of lynchings manage to breach that wall of nonresponse (or do for now; Susan Sontag argues, in On Photography, that one of the problems with photography as a medium is that it exposes us to a much wider range of images, to which we then become desensitized), but I think it's much harder for drawings to do so.

GM: Maybe it's the distance or abstraction inherent in a drawing, and maybe it's Johnson's avoidance of melodrama, but I'm pretty sure Johnson wants to rend our guts and consciences with those scenes. There are at least two two-page lynching spreads with all the details of a photograph, the cheerful white people and their children taking photographs and selling momentos, etc. So even without the melodrama Johnson and Pleece are still aiming for an emotional weight that I just personally don't feel. I'm glad I'm not the only one!

I guess the personal miseries of the George Sprotts and Jimmy Corrigans are more powerful because we can see more of ourselves in them? Or at least their situations? I'm not naive or optimistic enough to say that something akin to lynchings or the Holocaust could never happen again, at least not in the part of the world we were both amazingly lucky enough to be born in, but the possibility feels so outrageously remote that their interest and importance is solely historical. And very little art of any kind can beat actual historical documents when it comes to making us feel like all kinds of shit.

That's kind of why I don't necessarily agree with Sontag. Photographs of lynching might have inured me to Incognegro, but that doesn't mean I don't consistently recoil from those photographs on sight. If she's saying photography desensitizes us to non-photographic images, then yeah, she's maybe got a point.

HB: Well, right. That's where Sontag's argument breaks down or is maybe more of an academic exercise than a broad description of reality. Theory only goes so far, and it deals in generalities. My guess is that I could become desensitized even to photographs of lynchings, but I'm not about to try to get to that place. In the meantime, either I'm desensitized, because of photography, to cartoony drawings of same, or Pleece just can't capture the horror, or something. It's very difficult to be able to get the desired emotional reaction without crossing the line, PETA-style, into just grossness, isn't it?

GM: Johnson could've gotten us there if he made us care more about the characters. Maybe if the book was longer, or a part of a series, with more time to establish and develop characters beyond symbols, Incognegro would've been more successful. I guess it's obvious that the emotional component should begin with the writing, at least in a book like this where you can clearly delineate the writing from the art.

HB: Yeah, I think you're right, but people still might want to read this. Just because we're being picky doesn't mean it's not a worthy topic or a pretty good and speedy telling of the tale, right?

GM: Oh, right! Incognegro is well-scripted, well-plotted, and finely drawn, but the lack of subtlety and character development in either the script or art dulls its impact. It's a good concept undercut by a lack of depth.

we3

we3
by Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely
Vertigo 2004

Hillary Brown: Maybe I really just like Grant Morrison books about animals. I didn't even think I liked animals that much, but the week I read this book also happened to be the week I ended up with a kitty cat, and maybe I'm just getting sappier in my advanced age, but it really kind of poked me in my heart. I have some issues with the book, but it's quite effective in a way I can't really put my finger on. It might just be Morrison's attachment to cats and dogs and bunnies, but it doesn't come off weird or preachy. Instead, it's more like Watership Down, only a lot bloodier. I wouldn't say it's encouraging me to become a strict vegetarian or go into animal rescue or even do anything beyond what I'm already doing (trying to be nice to my cat while also training her not to jump on the counter or bite me), but there's an intensity to the way Morrison tells his story that makes it, like, The Incredible Journey meets The Terminator. And the storytelling is interesting too, mostly visual rather than verbal, and the words there are are minimal. I'm not nuts about Frank Quitely's squishy, dark, gory art, but it gets the job done. Mostly, I think this still has flaws, but I liked it better than almost anything else I've read by Morrison except maybe Animal Man.

Garrett Martin: First off, congratulations on the cat!

Secondly, I love We3. You probably expected that. I promise I don't love everything Morrison's done. Just most of it. But We3 is special in that it's probably the best thing he's done outside the realm of superheroes. Still, it highlights how adept he is at elevating genre fiction into something both personal and universal. We3's maybe just another "science run amuck" story, but the animal rights focus sets it apart from Jurassic Park, or whatever else. It'd be easy for a story like this to come off mawkish, considering most reasonable human beings probably don't like to see bad things done to innocent critters, especially domesticated ones. Despite wringing genuine emotion out of me, though, We3 somehow avoids the overly sentimental. The ocean's worth of blood and viscera probably help with that, I guess.

Do you normally like Quitely's art? I was a bit taken aback with the panel structure when I first read We3 (those pages with the dozens of thumbnail-sized panels confused me on a flight three years ago), but on subsequent reads I realized how vital that layout is to the pacing and story-telling. Those rows of tiny panels somehow lend a cinematic flair while underlining the comic form's particular control of time and space. Or something.

HB: I think I normally like Quitely a lot more, but that's because his stuff is open and bright and expansive, not small and fuzzy and dark. I like the panel layout, though, and the complexity of the thought process you have to go through to put it together. That is, it at least teeters on the edge of annoying v worth the work and probably ends up on the latter. Not quite Chris Ware, but in the ballpark. But I'm not really such a fan of all that blood and viscera, and I'm not sure that that's what helps it avoid excessive sentimentality. I mean, maybe it does, but it's the intelligent writing that really does that work, such as the way each creature has its own strange voice. Um, here's a question: do you think the creators of Up have read this book?

GM: I don't know, I haven't seen Up yet. I need to! Maybe this weekend?

As much as I enjoy Quitely's art, and as solid as the overall concept is, I don't think We3 would work all that well without the animals' "strange" voices and personalities. Maybe it's easy or cliched to make the dog friendly and loyal, and the cat all prickly, but anybody who's spent time with a variety of dogs and cats probably knows that, by and large, those cliches are pretty damn true. That struggle between what they are and what they've been turned into is at the core of We3. It fuels a handful of heartbreaking moments that are hard to watch. It's also, again, a fairly unique take on the "man's perversion of nature" schtick. Or at least was, until Up ripped it off, I guess. Where do housepet assassins fit into a movie about a crusty old guy's flying house?

HB: You'll see. They fit in. Or they seem like they do.

Anyway, yeah, the cat and the dog do kind of have standard cat and dog voices (and it's fun to talk in the voice of the cat for your own cat, I can confirm), but the bunny is utterly new. I never really thought about bunnies before and how they perceive things, how their little brains might work. I'm not sure I know any better, but I like that third animal thrown in there. It's something new.

GM: Did the bunny really have a voice? I had a bunch of pet rabbits when I was a kid, and they never really had much personality. They just sat there and ate whatever was in front of them. The closest thing to an emotion I ever noticed from them was fear, especially when one of the cats would stake out their hutch. The bunny in We3 is pretty similar; other than self-preservation, what characteristics does it exhibit?

HB: One-word thoughts. It has the smallest brain of any of them, and yeah, it does seem to be scared all the time. Not much higher-level thought. Desires for food and safety. It kind of tilts you back toward remembering that they're not human, and they're not even close to as smart as humans, without seeing that as a bad thing. There's a real consciousness of our responsibility to these creatures because they need us. Maybe.

GM: Not maybe, that's definitely a major point of the book. Yes!

So, anyway. Thank God this book came around and made me realize how awful it would be to turn housepets into killing machines.

HB: And otherwise I would've outfitted my little kitty cat with a mini-bazooka! Okay, let's talk about something else.

George Sprott

George Sprott
by Seth
Drawn & Quarterly 2009

Garrett Martin: Dudes like Seth and Chris Ware are more brutal than even the bloodiest Garth Ennis war comic. They make a grown man cry, this grown man here. A grown man named me. Seth draws those tears understatedly, though, unlike Ware, who basically hurls onions, lemon juice, and thumbtacks at your eyes ‘til something flows. Whereas Ware offers up non-stop disdain and condescension, Seth treats his characters with respect, no matter how flawed or unlikable they are. Part of the greatness of George Sprott 1894-1975 is Seth’s well-rounded depiction of the title character. He’s certainly flawed, but can’t be summed up as either likable or unlikable. He’s a beast to some and angel to others. So he’s like a real person, then, and not a thinly veiled personification of some mental or emotional malady.

Sprott hit me hard in my weakest spot: my brains. Particularly those brains that deal with time. History and the passage of time fascinate me, but the more I experience the latter the more frightened and confused I become. Nostalgia cripples me, to the point where a mundane song by Asia still occasionally stops me dead for hours. That constant eternal loss is always Seth’s topic of choice, but with Sprott he doesn’t play it for laughs or self-pity. Seth’s developed the patience and discipline to deal with weighty emotional issues without resorting to stereotypes or navel-gazing, thus producing a genuinely great work of literature. And art. Literart. Fuck it, comic book.

Despair over lost time and old lives can’t just be a dude thing, can it?

Hillary Brown: Gosh, that's awfully harsh on Ware. You know, I'm not sure where everyone gets the idea that he hates his own characters. I'm not sure I've ever seen that tendency in him. He is, however, more depressing than Seth. I really liked this book too. It didn't make me cry, but it is my favorite of the three we've covered. I don't think crippling nostalgia is just a dude thing, but I also don't know of any ladies who have it going on, self included. My guess is that it goes hand in hand with the kind of obsessive personality that seems to be far more common in dudes, the kind of need for completeness in things and, perhaps, a legacy. Is it something to do with not being able to have children? Anyway, I'm not saying I'm not ever a sap, but I don't get teary-eyed too often. I do think this book is rather effective in its evocation of emotion, though, of a whole person in just the way you point out, and it's pretty genuinely touching, even if Sprott might not be the most pleasant person to be around. It's calm and beautiful, too, and all the unreliable narrator stuff is interesting. Did you read any of this when it ran in the NYT?

GM: Never saw any of it in the Times. I'm sure it's less powerful when doled out in chunks. Wouldn't give you a well-rounded view of the man, y'know?

And I don't think I'm being harsh to Ware. I doubt he hates Jimmy Corrigan, but he's such a depressing, pathetic character, and little has changed for him at the end. And there's no question that Ware holds the Rusty Brown characters in complete contempt. Those are the only two things I've read by him, other than occasional strips here and there, and there's not even the possibility of hope or redemption in either of them.

But okay, George Sprott. And Seth. I hate I'm out of town next week; Seth's doing a reading or whatever at Harvard on the 2nd. Is nostalgia related to obsessiveness? I am definitely obsessive about a number of things, and most of them are interests I've had since childhood. Indeed, interests a man should maybe be embarrassed about, and would be just a few decades ago. I habitually dwell on crap from my youth without even realizing it; if that happens because I can't have a kid, does that mean women have children in part to relive their own youth?

I don't really know why this book touched me so much. I don't know why comics hit me so much harder than novels or film. They do, though, when they're done well. That line about how one day you're thirty and you notice a new group of young people, realize you're not part of them, and then everything speeds up 'til the end: that hit me hard. Especially with today being my birthday.

HB: Poor old Garrett. It's not that I don't ever hear time's winged chariot hurrying near, but I guess I don't think about it all that much. Sure, death gets closer all the time, but there's a lot of good stuff in store before that. It's a good line though, and I think it does get at the heart of what's touching about this book. Maybe it's the mix of nostalgia that's already there in the form combined with the specifically backward looking tone of Seth's stuff and then the subject matter on top of it all that makes this a killer? Also, yeah, I do think women have children to have a do-ever. What do you think child beauty pageants are about?

GM: I thought, like conservative talk radio, child beauty pageants were created specifically to disgust rational people.

And your analysis is spot-on. George Sprott is like a perfect storm of things-that-make-me-rue-the-passage-of-time. If it had one of those musical greeting card microchips playing "Heat of the Moment", it'd probably make my heart immediately explode.

Are we really doing We3 next? Can't we just do something about punching?

HB: Nope. Mushy lovey teary stuff. Woo!

Wimbledon Green

Wimbledon Green
by Seth
Drawn & Quarterly 2005

Hillary Brown: Why Wimbledon Green, and why now? Um, it's in the library? That really is part of the reason, but I think I've also been wanting to read more by Seth since It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, and I know you just read his brand-new one, which I haven't yet. Sometimes one really craves minimalistic Canadian melancholy, and it makes a nice contrast with the glorious Georgia spring, meaning you don't get weighed down too much. Also: this is Seth's goof-off book, which he establishes at the beginning in an introduction that talks about how it's more sketchbooks than anything else, something his brain kept working on while he was otherwise occupied. I totally get that, and it's not without its charms, but even with the warning the lack of resolution is a little disappointing. It's almost as though you're just starting to get really into the book, to enjoy it on a level beyond its affectionate tweaking of comic book collectors/nostalgists (and that one evil character is basically Seth, right? or at least the main character from IAGLIYDW?) and to want to know what happens when, poof, it's over and you're left without any answers to the mysteries evoked. You know that J.J. Abrams article in Wired that I linked to on my blog? This is the downside of mystery, and the worry of this kind of evaporation with no pay-off is why I stopped watching Lost. Am I some kind of philistine for wanting answers? I like things with endings!

Garrett Martin: I wouldn't call you a philistine, but maybe a little too literal-minded? What did you think of the ending of, say, The Wrestler (the first recent film with an ambigulous ending to come to mind)?

I like ambiguous endings, but I don't think ambiguity fits Wimbledon Green so well. It's hard to say what does fit a work like this, though, one that's so clearly a goof without a singular, focused style. Green's definitely minor compared to IAGLIYDW and George Sprott (that arrive yet?), but almost anything would feel slight compared to those two. I pretty much love Green for what it is, an entertainingly half-baked lark. And it didn't depress the hell out of me like those other two, which is always nice (seriously--Sprott almost had me in tears on the train the first time I read it). I find endless joy in Seth's art, even when it's rough and unfinished; the character designs alone make me love Wimbledon Green. The extended Barks/Scrooge McDuck homage vacuum seals the deal. And I appreciate that Seth's mockery of collectors is mostly breezy, avoiding the bleak tone of Chris Ware's tiresomely brutal Rusty Brown while still dealing with petty, unsavory men. The self-pity with the Jonah character (yeah, obviously meant to be Seth) is a little heavy-handed, but if that's a straight-up self-critique of IAGLIYDW's navel-gazing, then it's pretty knowing and funny.

HB: Um, I thought the ending of The Wrestler was annoying, a pussing out kind of move, a way of not having to choose. Choose, damn it! Anyway, you're making me remember all the things I liked about the book, especially his washes. I did get George Sprott and we can cover that next if you'd like. I'm weirdly looking forward to it, even though you say it's depressing. I think what frustrates me about Wimbledon Green is that it's so close to what I really want, which is romp and resolution. Carl Barks could do it. Why can't Seth? It's like he's resisting going all the way over into entertainment.

GM: Avoiding entertainment? That's all this book is! I think the lack of a clear ending is more a result of the book's overall lack of planning. Sure, Seth could've come up with something more solid, but he lets you know right from the start that Wimbledon Green is pretty tossed-off. I'm really curious to see your thoughts on Sprott; Seth uses the same scattered, episodic framework, but to a more well-rounded and definitive end.

What do you make of the Jonah character? Extension or parody of the self-disgust found in IAGLIYDW?

HB: Truly satisfying entertainment has a good ending. That's all I'm saying. I feel cheated when I'm really enjoying something and then the ending leaves me feeling unconvinced. And I agree, you're right, that in this case it's because of the lack of planning, but also: who says he had to stop where he did? I think Seth could've kept going and resolved all of the issues he raises. He just wanted to end it. That's a wuss move. I know I was warned but damn it.

Re the Jonah character: I think it's more a parody, and it's nice to see that sense of humor.

GM: Maybe Seth should've taken his time and finished this off appropriately. Maybe it shouldn't have been published at all, since even the creator effectively sees it as being inessential and unimportant. Doing that would've deprived us of some genuinely fun comics, though, and that would've sucked. Sure, a resolution would've been nice, but the absence of one doesn't make me enjoy the Barks homage of "The Green Ghost #1" any less. I do wonder if Seth felt pressure, either from his publisher or his own bank account, to get some product out that year, no matter how unfinished it may have been.

HB: Yeah. "Seth, you big moneymaker you, if we don't have this arty, unfinished book that only old-timey comics nerds will really appreciate in our fall catalogue, we're totally going under as a company!" That's how I imagine the conversation going.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vols. 1 and 2

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vols. 1 and 2
By Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Wildstorm, a while ago

[Ed note: Lord, we are sorry for the delay on this. More stuff coming up soon, including Seth and, hopefully, Lucy Knisley]

Hillary Brown: Ooookay. Sometimes I think I'm going about Alan Moore in a backwards way, being that I feel he really should be approached systematically and yet I've done nothing but skip around here and there in his oeuvre, probably leaving me with a scrambled view of it all. Point being, I just now, within the past week or so, got around to volumes 1 and 2 of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The good thing about this is that it means I've entirely forgotten the movie version, except for a vague taste of garbage in the back of my mouth. The bad thing is that I'm an idiot for not reading it sooner, despite hefting volume 1 in my hand year after year in the store and, eventually, deciding against it. This is not to say it doesn't have flaws, for it has many of the same that Moore's works tend to. He has a problem shutting up, and the backs of both books are overstuffed with extra content, including a lengthy Quatermain story that I'm sure plays in somehow but made me lose my patience. Sometimes I think he'd really rather write the regular kind of novels than the kind that also has pictures, but he's so good at the latter. The other flaw is a strength in some or even most lights: his determination to push the envelope. Most of the time, it results in thrills. Occasionally, it makes you roll your eyes and go, "Oh, Unca Alan. There you go again with your buggery and BDSM tendencies." But only occasionally. I'm sad, in the end, that there's not much more of it for me to read right now. Has any other writer produced so many promising starts to great series that didn't end up panning out? Time for me to put a cork in it and let you go.

Garrett Martin: There's always The Black Dossier, if you need more LXG action. And isn't the next full volume out on Top Shelf soon? It's not like this is gonna wind up unfinished, like Big Numbers or something.

So yes, Alan Moore wheels out his little tropes maybe a bit too often. You can say the same about Morrison, Gaiman, Ellis, Ennis, pretty much any of that class of big-name "better-than-comics" comic writers. Maybe I'm just more in sync with their standard themes, but Morrison and Moore are the only two who consistently write interesting stories even when they're falling back on their normal whatever. But I don't think League is just Moore's normal whatever; it's a little deeper and more thoughtful than the gimmick. It's not straight-up pastiche like 1963 or Tom Strong. And even if you are only looking to spot the reference, Moore will keep you busy.

HB: Right, and I'm sure I'm going to keep seeking out more of this stuff and more of Moore's writing in general. He's too interesting for me not to. I don't see why you're so confident it won't wind up unfinished though. If anything's become clear to me over the past year (not due to this blog but due to other events), it's that anything ever getting finished is kind of a miracle. There are so many opportunities for a work to be left incomplete, whether through fault of the author or not. I'm sure Moore's dangling series owe plenty to his somewhat irasicble personality, but he also seems to have a huge brain and tons of interests, which means he has a lot of projects, even if a bunch of them aren't as expansive as they could be.

So you want to talk about why I like Moore better than Morrison? Because I don't really know. No sodomy jokes!

GM: Maybe it'll go unfinished. It seems weird to say that about this book, though, since the next volume comes out in like two weeks. And even if the series didn't continue Volume II offers enough resolution for me. Ends on kind of a bummer, sure, but the most popular book ever ends in the destruction of all creation, and nobody complains about that.

I am confused by your stance on sodomy. Neither dude is averse to buggery, or at least depictions of and/or jokes about. Granted you don't see that too much in Morrison's superhero epics, but The Invisibles and (remember?) Kill Your Boyfriend should scratch whatever such itch you may have. But man, if that's what you're looking for, then Garth Ennis will probably keep you set for life, right? Anyway, I doubt we could possibly say anything new or insightful about the old Moore vs. Morrison debate.

HB: Downer, dude. I have faith in our ability to say new and insightful things, and I'm not familiar with the debate anyway. How about you summarize it for me?

GM: Okay. Barbelith has a solid thread about this here. Discussions about the two tend to run in circles and eventually almost always boil down to straight-up fanboyism. Basically they are two quite similar fellas with similar interests and skills who, perhaps because of those similarities, apparently don't much care for each other. Morrison's definitely praised and criticized Moore publically, both in interviews and potentially in his own work, whereas Moore (as far as I know) has never really acknowledged Morrison. Anti-Morrisonites might say he's a lesser artist trying to get attention by tackling the master, anti-Moore-isons maybe think he's a crazy old pretentious coot who's entirely too full of himself. Moore's the better writer in a technical or literary sense, but Morrison's comic book ideas are bigger, better, and more comic book-y. Is there a great Moore superhero comic that isn't either total pastiche or cynical deconstruction? Morrison routinely updates traditional comic book ridiculousness for an educated contemporary audience without either ridiculing or eulogizing the past. He's also more optimistic and hopeful, and that's why Morrison barely gets the nod in my book. If Morrison wrote Extraordinary Gentlemen it would probably be unrecognizable and not quite as good; the same is true if Moore wrote Doom Patrol, Invisibles, or X-Men.

Anyway! League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It's about as good as a Victorian-era Justice League comic could ever be. Hopefully Moore and O'Neill finish it before Disney somehow figures out how to copyright all these characters.

HB: How about "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow"? I wouldn't call that either pastiche or deconstruction. Anyway, your larger point is probably right, and maybe it's the way that Morrison's ideas tend to require a little more obsessive knowledge of comics than I have that gets under my skin a bit. I should chill out.

And yes, the book is really kind of great. It's a little long-winded, but the plots are sharp and the characters interesting, and it's just generally a good way for the snake god worshiper to work out his obsessions.

Sub-Mariner: The Depths

Sub-Mariner: The Depths
by Peter Milligan and Esad Ribic


Garrett Martin: We talked about this one before, at least the first issue. We both kinda liked it. Maybe I liked it more? But back in October I typed this thing, as found in that post linked above: “I do hope the series retains that sense of history and otherworldliness”. ‘Cuz, yeah, this book is set in a historical time period of some sort, and is all about some uneasy mysteriousness. To recap: it’s the past, and a famed scientist and skeptic sets out in a submarine to disprove the existence of Atlantis and the Sub-Mariner. Shit gets spooky and said skeptic maybe reconsiders some things a bit. Namor pops up very briefly, but exists mostly as this ominous force that incites fear and much questioning of the self. In using Marvel’s oldest superhero, and the far older legends he is related to, Milligan examines the contentious relationship between science and faith. Or some such shit. I’m just glad that punching and wing-anklets and Imperius Rex-ing were kept at a distance. What do you think of the final product?

Hillary Brown: I think it's pretty good, although it gets a little confusing at the end, and sometimes the muted look of the art makes you strain your eyes too hard (especially when combined with handwriting-style lettering on some pages). I'm not sure that it really has anything to say in the end, though. Don't fuck with the ocean? The Sub-Mariner is cooler than you think? Science shouldn't overstep its bounds? Maybe it's just that I either agree or disagree with each of those potential points fairly easily, meaning there's not much that provokes a lot of thought. My complaints from the first round (art is too soft, too photo-referenced) still stand, but there are some genuinely lovely pages under the sea that really capture something about the limits of vision in a dark place underwater, the way glimpses can frighten. In other words, what seems like a weakness (lack of sharpness) may actually be a strength. But what do I think of the narrative? It's pretty smart, and yet it fails to make me love it. Why?

GM: Maybe 'cuz it's not even trying to say anything? Or maybe because, despite basically being a creepy horror movie about a thoroughly silly superhero, it never becomes especially shocking or outlandish? I'm glad they were able to keep that tone and atmosphere throughout all five issues, but it doesn't provide much in the way of memorable setpieces or dramatic high-points. It's just a smart little piece of genre work, but not in the genre you'd expect from a Sub-Mariner comic. Superhero fans usually reject or inordinately hype superhero comics that aren't really superhero comics (see Unstable Molecules for an example of either reaction), but The Depths is so muted and low-key that either extreme would be hard to justify.

I'm still surprised that I'm not bothered more by the art. It fits this story greatly, but would be completely out of place if Namor was flying around Germany busting up Nazis. So photo-referencing doesn't bother me when a story's not action-based, I guess.

Do you think the comic would be hurt that much if it had been published by another company, without the Sub-Mariner character? Do you think Namor's specific Marvel history adds anything to the story, or could any ominous, unknown presence have fit the bill, narratively?

HB: Well, I'm not super-familiar with Namor, even though I've read some of the early Marvel comics in which he shows up. I'm not sure that it benefits the book as much as it benefits and renews the character, adding some real menace back into someone who's kind of easily pigeonholed as a sea jerk. And, indeed, compared to some stories from, e.g., Creepy, about explorers who encounter the undersea realm and are punished for it/have to keep it secret, this is certainly subtler and better. So, was it overhyped? Or hyped at all? I admit that I recently removed even Tom Spurgeon from my Google Reader (too much noise relative to important signal for me), so I've been even worse, recently, at keeping up with what people are peeing themselves over. Is Sub-Mariner still around as a comic apart from this miniseries? And, going in another direction, do you think Milligan can or will do another miniseries like this with the same scientist but focusing on a different character? Or is the wad shot?

GM: There's no on-going Sub-Mariner series, but he pops up pretty regularly. And no, this wasn't hyped at all. The mini just sort of came and went, with only Milligan and Namor fans taking note. Unfortunately I don't think there's too many of the former around anymore. And unless the trade sells well, I seriously doubt there'll be any kind of a sequel. Pretty sure it was averaging less than 10,000 an issue by the end, which is well past Marvel's fuck-off threshold. Also, I don't think it would work with any other Marvel character, expect maybe Thor. You'd need somebody of mythic stature whose history predates the superhero explosion of the early '40's, and Namor and Thor are about the only two Marvel characters who fit that bill.

Good point about Creepy, and thinking of comparisons makes me realize that Depths is even more restrained (and, well, better) than most Vertigo titles. Vertigo's kind of the closest contemporary analogue, stylistically, and I'm pissed I didn't think of that earlier. Now that I think about it Depths kind of reminds me of Sandman Mystery Theater, at least the first twenty or so issues of that book. I might be totally off-base here, as I haven't read Mystery Theater in a good fifteen years, but both use Golden Age superheroes to tell stories in a different, but similarly pulp-derived, genre. If you haven't, you should check out the first few trades in that series. I think you'd dig 'em. It was about the only non-preexisting Vertigo launch title that didn't try too hard to be weird or alternative.

And man, yeah, I barely pay any attention to comic news anymore. Too busy with work and video game nonsense. If something doesn't get mentioned at Comics Should Be Good or elliptically referred to in a Tucker Stone review then I probably don't hear about it.

Essex County (Vol. 1): Tales From the Farm

Essex County (Vol. 1): Tales From the Farm
by Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf 2007

Hillary Brown: I've been seeing the covers of Jeff Lemire's Essex County Trilogy for a while now, and their intense colors on uncoated cover stock really catch the eye. They've also been getting good reviews all over the place, including from Eddie Argos. So it's not like I was hanging back out of principle or wariness or anything like that. I just sort of hadn't gotten around to them yet. And I have to say... I was a little disappointed with Tales from the Farm, the first in the series. Maybe I'm a jerk about wanting my comics generally to be more adult (see, for example, my Vertigo love), but I tend to get picky about things that are more young adult than adult proper. I know that developing minds need a gentler approach, and Tales from the Farm is probably oriented even younger than that, but I like stuff that pushes my buttons, and that tends to be either pretty deep emotionally or full of sex adn violence, which, you know, this is neither. I am being an ass. It's beautifully drawn. Lemire's line is incredibly distinctive, and he could probably do quite well writing a book sans words, as his characters convey considerable emotion in their faces and body language. And the writing bit isn't bad, either. It's just not as solid as the art. Your thoughts?

Garrett Martin: Well, I disagree! Especially about the sex and violence, but also about this book in particular. It skews young, sure, but I expected that, and thought it was pretty successful on those terms. It's not as broad or cloying as many YA comics, and although it may not be all that "emotionally deep", its handling of certain matters could be a lot less elegant. There was restraint in the flashbacks that explained how the boy came to live with his uncle. Apparently it's hard to be restrained about stuff like that, considering how other, lesser works deal with similar issues. I'm not referring to comics specifically right there, but movies, books, TV shows, etc. Lemire doesn't embarrass himself.

He also doesn't distinguish himself as a writer, though. No particular problems jumped out at me as I read the book, but everything felt just a bit too nondescript. I do appreciate the leisurely pace and lack of hysterics, but the story itself is familiar territory. He kept things simple and straight-forward, which is nice, and knows when to end a scene, but if it wasn't for the book's brevity and Lemire's craggy, expressive art, I probably would've dozed off a time or two.

HB: I think we're coming from the same place here, or at least arriving at the same conclusion, which, to put it bluntly, is that this book is no Skyscrapers of the Midwest, right? I don't mean it to sound like I'm some sort of desensitized fiend who'd be roaming the streets looking for people to assault in a Frank Miller comic, and Josh Cotter's work manages to push those buttons I referred to without resorting to either sex or violence. It just goes deeper, somehow. You're totally right to credit Lemire for his restraint, and it's appreciated on my end too--it's very midwestern in its own way, in its lack of over-emoting. It's not a movie of the week approach at all. But at the same time, being hypercritical here, this book isn't up to Cotter's level, and while that may be (and probably is) because it's attempting to reach a younger audience, that sort of bugs me. I can definitely praise it for its own merits, but I was expecting a little more.

GM: Right, good comparison. That restraint I mentioned is also why Tales From the Farm isn't Skyscrapers. And I don't mean emotional or dramatic restraint, but how Lemire focuses more directly on the story, generally avoiding the surrealism and fantasy found throughout Skyscrapers. I'd call that a good thing if Cotter hadn't somehow brilliantly walked that thin line between poignancy and pretension. It's weird, I thought of Skyscrapers when I read Farm, but didn't consider it again until you mentioned it in this conversation. Maybe because, even though they do bear many similarities, they're also vastly different?

HB: Right. You could group them, curatorially, with Chris Ware's work (midwesternish, restrained, kind of depressing) as well, and it's tough competition for Lemire to put him up against those two. I could also rephrase this as: Even months later, I'm still realizing just how good Cotter's book is, and it's not fair for me to compare everything I read that's at all similar to it as they're almost guaranteed to look bad in that sort of light. Vastly different might be an overstatement, though. Convince me.

GM: Wait - is Canada Midwestern? Doesn't this take place up there? Is Canada just the setting, and not where Lemire actually hails from? Is it dumb to ask this, when the internet could easily divulge this info to me in less time than it's taken to write this sentence?

I'd say they're vastly different in terms of structure and technique, if not theme. Tales From the Farm is a straight-forward story, with an easily diagrammed plot. The fantasy elements are less integral, not narratively, but visually. In Farm there's only, what, one scene that's not clearly set in the real world? Skyscrapers is more surreal, a bit stream-of-consciousness, and those're the most memorable and important parts about that book. Maybe I should've written "these two are vastly different despite having remarkably similar subject matter", much like I'll hopefully be able to say about that Seth Rogen / Jody Hill movie that looks far too much like Paul Blart?

HB: I wouldn't say Canada is technically midwestern--clearly, parts of it exist much farther east and west than that--but doesn't it come off that way? Everyone is so unassuming and polite.

Anyway, fair enough on that last point. They're similar and they're different and people should maybe read both of them, although we agree that Lemire's work skews younger and less complex.

GM: I remembered that guy was a hockey player and realized this had to be Canadian. And it is. Yep!

The Adventures of Blanche

The Adventures of Blanche
by Rick Geary
Dark Horse, 2009

Garrett Martin: Rick Geary's obviously big on history, but Adventures of Blanche promised to be a slightly different project for him. Instead of focusing on infamous events or important people, Blanche is supposedly based on letters Geary's grandmother wrote to her family when she was a young woman. It seemed like a more personal work than the J. Edgar Hoover book or the Victorian murder series. I took that set-up at face value, and looked forward to seeing if Geary could turn what I assumed would be a relatively normal life into a comic interesting to anyone other than his fans and early 20th century history geeks. Well, either Geary's grandmother told some tales in her letters, or else Geary fictionalized some or all of her life, as this is pretty obviously not the most factual story in the world. How much of this do you think actually happened?

Hillary Brown: That's a good question to start off with, and one that I'm really not sure of the answer to. Despite Geary's general trend toward focusing on scholarship and research (and not to say that this book doesn't have some of those--he's clearly interested in historical accuracy and in teasing out sociological trends), he's an odd bird. I also recently read his Gumby comic, which is strange and fairly druggy and terrifying for a book that's, um, supposed to be for kids, and it kind of illuminated or prepared the way for this book. I came to it with the same impression as you, an impression Geary takes some trouble to give, and I'm still not sure if we've got a Fargo situation here or something that's much more based in reality to begin with and only later departs into unheard of realms (seems like it's something in between, according to this interview). All that established, I think it's kind of nice for Geary's imagination to have a chance to stretch its wings, and he comes up with some interesting stuff, complete with a weirdly reiterated theme of perilous dangling from elevated objects. My favorite of the three stories is probably the first one, due to the particular turn it takes into occult creature worship and the beautiful panel layout of the space between the walls, but I certainly enjoyed all three, not a little bit because I had no idea where they were going.

GM: Right, it definitely kept me on my toes, rarely going in any of the directions I was expecting it to. I really enjoyed this book, even if it's a little slight and Forrest Gump-ish (or at least would be if Blanche was an obnoxious simpleton). And as far as the "grandma did some crazy shit" school of fiction goes, I'm pretty sure this is the only one to feature DW Griffith in a hot-air balloon. Yeah, Blanche regularly bumps into real-life historical figures, but thankfully Geary mostly avoids some of the more obvious ones from these various eras. Blanche doesn't go on a blind date with a young Adolf Hitler or talk smack about minorities with Woodrow Wilson, or anything like that. It's more thoughtful than that. Also, I don't know if Geary did any touch-ups or editing jobs, outside of the new intro, but this book's surprisingly consistent, considering the three chapters were published individually over the last 18 or so years. You've read far more Geary than me. How does this compare to his other works?

HB: I think it's not quite as good as my favorites in the Treasury of Victorian Murder series (and the one entry in the Twentieth-Century Murder series so far), but it might be on par with the weaker entries. This isn't to say, though, that it's weak Geary. I'm not really sure that exists yet. I'm just complaining that there are fewer maps. And fewer murders. Basically, as you're picking up on, the dude is remarkably consistent, quality-wise. No soaring highs matched with sad little lows here (although I haven't yet read the book about ants that he illustrated and I picked up for a dollar last year at Heroescon), but instead a nice, even keel that's rarely boring. I really like this blind date with Hitler idea, though... Maybe you should email him?

GM: How much of that consistency comes down to him rarely writing new material? No slight on him as an artist whatsoever, and he obviously has a good head for research and picking fascinating events to craft a book around, but it's got to be harder to fail when you're not trying to tell original stories, right?

HB: No, that's a fair point to make, and I guess that trend in his work may come out of his illustration background, but it doesn't bother me. I think he does an excellent job shaping reality to the stories he wants to tell, to some extent, although it may just be that I'm kind of a history nerd. I think his first book, Housebound, is original material, but it's one of the few I don't have. Anyway, yes, he's slightly ghettoized himself, but I don't know if anyone's better at what he does.

GM: I agree.

Dark Horse Presents #20

Dark Horse Presents #20
by Kate Beaton, Kristian Donaldson, David Malki, and Chris Onstad
Dark Horse / Myspace 2009

Hillary Brown: Is this the only thing MySpace is even good for anymore besides streaming music? Even if so, it's a good enough reason for it to continue to exist. I really need to mark my calendar to go check this stuff out every time Dark Horse posts it. This issue (is that the right word?) is solid top to bottom, corner to corner. It's like an awesome mini anthology that doesn't have any restrictions on page count due to maximization of printing efficiency, and so people can either go long or go short, and there's no reason for weak-ass shit to sneak in. I saved the Onstad piece ("Achewood: The Garage Sale") for last, to do that whole delayed pleasure thing, but the other three were almost as good and comparably amusing. "Ann Romano, Gossip Whore in Gone Dishin'," illustrated by Kristian Donaldson is breezy and sharp; "Wondermark: The Catch," by David Malki, is quirky and funny and surprising; and Kate Beaton's "The Origin of Man" is a great two-page goofball gag. I'm not really sure if I even like Onstad's contribution the most, which is really saying something for the rest of them. Okay, maybe I do, but the other three are all new to me (although Beaton's stuff looks familiar). Do you read these MDHP (MySpace Dark Horse Presents) things regularly? Are they always this good from start to finish?

Garrett Martin: Issue? Installment? Prog? I don't know. I've never checked this out before. I don't remember if I even knew they existed before last week. I'm glad I do now, though, because yes, this particular collection of strips is very good. Especially Beaton's piece, which might be only two pages, but has a great set-up and an even better punchline. This is the first thing I've ever actually read by her, which is pretty dumb on my part, because I've been hearing great things for months now. Guess I've been too busy reading Booster Gold or something. But I love her drawings, how they're maybe a little sloppy and both relaxed but reasonably detailed. And, y'know, like we said, she's damn funny, too. The Onstad was good, no doubt, but maybe rambled on a bit. I kept thinking every page was the last, and the true finale was no more or less final than any of the other possible endings. Maybe it's in the presentation, the expectations you bring to something defined as a single specific strip, but this probably would've worked better as a week's worth of Achewoods. Now, Malki and Donaldson I'd never even heard of. Had you?

HB: Well, there was a previous Onstad that involved Taco Bell and food criticism and was just, you know, brilliant. I'm pretty sure that was a DHPMS number. This garage sale one isn't quite up to that level, and the way that it relates to garage sale stuff that was going on in the strip is a little confusing, I suppose, but, having been raised to stop at the mere hint of someone's worldly possessions laid out for perusal, it all rang quite true. You're right about it not having a lot of structure, but I'm not sure Onstad's stuff ever really does. You make a good case for the Beaton piece being the best of the bunch, and I have to at least consider that it might be. I've also been thinking over the past few days, and I know I've come across her work before, probably just linked all over the internet. The other two, though, no. Not even an inkling that I might know who they are. How do you think Dark Horse picks people for this feature?

GM: Two dudes you know plus two dudes you don't. The former's the draw, the latter hopefully the draws of the future. But then maybe Malki and Donaldson are hot-shit young squires of the underground comic world, and we're just total ignoramuses. Ignorami. Looking at their wikipedias, they've probably got higher profiles than Beaton. I also now realize that I'm familiar with Donaldson, thanks to his issue of DMZ and the book he did with Brian Wood, Supermarket. Haven't read that, but I see the cover every time I'm in the shop, and it looks intriguging. And Malki's strip is kinda familiar, though nothing I know by name. Anyway, if Dark Horse was like, "hey here's free stuff by Malki and Donaldson", who knows how many would click that link. Onstad and Beaton plus two (or, honestly, just Onstad + whatever) has a better ring, marketing wise. Plus that Goon cameo has a touch of bet-hedging about it; that's like the Dark Horse equivalent of a Wolverine appearance. (Ever read The Goon? I don't like that book as much as I should.)

I don't want to short-change Malki or Donaldson, of course. Wondermark is pretty damn hilarious, and I thank Dark Horse for bringing it fully to my attention. And I'm loving Donaldson's art; it slightly reminds me of both Cliff Chiang and Paul Pope without looking too much like either. Great stuff!

Bride of Bordoom

Bride of Bordoom
by David Yoder
2009

Hillary Brown: In some ways, I feel like you should be the one to kick off this discussion of David Yoder's seven-page mini, "Bride of Bordoom" because it draws so heavily on the kind of golden-age comics stuff you're always reading, but then again, I'm the one who's always boosterizing for Yoder, so maybe it should fall to me. Anyway, I'm really happy he got into the Center for Cartoon Studies because it means he's always Live Journaling up his homework assignments, i.e., new work, and that's what this is, rather than an extracurricular project. I don't really know what kind of context that puts it in, but I guess it's worth supplying, and I happen to think the results are pretty hilarious. Yes, it's far too short, and I'm sure you can point out all kinds of shortcomings with it as far as its apery goes, but I like the herky-jerky quality of the story, which is all: THIS bit of dramatic narration. AND THEN.... THIS bit of dramatic narration. It's a style I happen to find particularly amusing, and Yoder's lumpy, cartoony figures also make me laugh. I almost feel it's crazy to be discussing this, but it's important for us to cover a wide variety of stuff, and it takes so little time to read that people really should bother, right?

Garrett Martin: Yes, people should bother, because "Bride of Bordoom" is one thoroughly pleasant comic. It's definitely more entertaining than any homework I ever had to do. And it'd be silly to point out "shortcomings" in its "apery"; it's so simple and straight-forward that any such complaints would look completely ridiculous. It's got everything you'd expect from an old monster comic (an awesome Kirbyan name, science as both the cause of and solution to the problem, a president, etc.), depicted about as economically as possible. And yeah, Yoder's art is charming, and, y'know, whimsical. Obviously qualities we like around here. I like extremely minimalist encapsulations of entire genres, and this here is one of those, for real.

I'm dumb. We've talked about this guy before, haven't we?

HB: I've mentioned him (in this post) because I'm a big fan, but he's still really young and not much published. He usually shows up at Fluke, Athens's indie-oriented comics thing/convention, but I haven't, like, gushed in person. Nor shall I, most likely. At any rate, it's a very cute comic, and while it's not really adding anything new to commentary on Golden Age comics, it's nicely done, down to the paper in the background, which is a touch I'm particularly fond of. Mostly, people should add his LiveJournal to their readers. There's a children's book up now too.

GM: Cool. He is an artist worth talking about, for sure. I gotta make it down to one of those Fluke things, too. When is it this year?

HB: April 9th, at Tasty World in Athens.

GM: Maybe I can do that. Probably not. If only there was some way to have a Fluke on Twilight Saturday. Or maybe some way for me take an entire month off work and stay down there for all of April.