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Between working on the 300th issue of the
Journal, getting myself organized for Comic-Con, and prep work for future columns, I was only able to jot down some rather random musings, mini-rants and half-formed thoughts this week. My apologies, but perhaps they'll be able to generate further, and more fruitful, discussion.
Of Course you Know this Means War
I'm very curious about the ways in which people seemingly independently come to use similar phrases, metaphors or similes. As such, I have noticed a few comics professionals utilizing war metaphors to talk about, not necessarily comics, but the comics "lifestyle" or industry (especially in regards to conventions). I do it myself: without consciously thinking about it, I mentally deem people who have no interest, or only a casual interest, in comics as "civilians." (In the instance of conventions, it's somewhat understandable, but I think using war as metaphor beyond that might also correlate with the idea of "fighting the good fight.")
Regarding Wednesday Comics
I found
Wednesday Comics rather hard to read at first: not just because of the sometimes-murky coloring, or overly white word balloons (which completely pull focus from the art), or the sometimes too-tiny panels, but also because of a certain mind/body dissonance. It just
felt wrong to fold it into quarters and read it in the same way I read alt-weeklies since that ruined many of the page layouts, such as the one-page, second
Metamorpho installment (written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Michael Allred). I tried it out a few different ways, but the one that seemed to work best was to spread it open and read it sitting cross-legged, so that not only would I get the full effect of the page layout, I would get an optimal look at the double-page spread, two installments abutting one another. (In issue #2, the Deadman and Green Lantern strips played particularly well off each other visually with their palettes and retro art.) Since the issues are so brief, I read the first two back-to-back in this manner, and I think this is probably the best way to do it, for me. (The $4 price point, I think, is justified by not having to contend with jarring ads every two pages.)
Speaking of ads
1.And now I must mock those Ballpark Frank ads they ran in DC comics, that one that sometimes went on for pages and pages, which featured a young guy with a Photoshopped ARM COMING OUT OF HIS STOMACH, UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE TO HIS INTESTINES — an arm which in turn fed a hotdog into his mouth? Yes, I eat hotdogs and yes, I know what parts of the animals go in them, but showing the digestive-tract circle of life is not the best way to convince me to purchase your product.
2. Goodness knows I make enough typos, grammar and spelling errors myself (it's hard to catch your own mistakes), but for the message boards of the world: it's "ad," short for "advertisement," not "add," which means to do sums. (Special spelling addendum for comics folks: there are no Ds or Ks in Winsor McCay's name, and no Ts in Charles M. Schulz'.)
Culture smugglers?
When I was growing up, or at least, before I had Internet access, my much-braver friend would venture into the Big City and bring back wondrous things … zines (such as
Lynn Peril's Mystery Date), books (such as V. Vale's and Andrea Juno's RE/Search series) and music (and make mix-tapes of songs by bands like Bikini Kill and the Magnetic Fields). (I considered it (a), "culture," because it seemed to be much more so than what I had access to at that time, such as Top 40 radio, and (b), "smuggling," I suppose, because I would sometimes get in trouble if I was found out to have had borrowed it). Are comics media (publishers, critics, bloggers, etc.) now engaged in culture smuggling on a much grander scope? I remember burning with envy 10 years ago when one of my friend's cousins had obtained a copy of Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's
From Hell (How? HOW??!), and now
Sunday Press' oversized Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz, which collects newspaper comics written by L. Frank Baum himself in addition to comics art by W. W. Denslow, Walt McDougall and John R. Neill, is only a few mouse clicks (and a few paychecks) away from my grasp. It's true the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher … but man, what signal.
Image credit:
Sgt. Rock panel from Wednesday Comics #1: written by Adam Kubert and drawn by Joe Kubert. [©2009 DC Comics]
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
