The following doesn’t necessarily pertain to criticism or critical theory directly, but it has some bearing on the subject, so I thought I’d shoehorn it into a column. My apologies if the very idea of such a thing fills you with discontent and a weary heart.

Last week, Heidi MacDonald caught the news on the Comics Journal message board that the latest volume of the widely acclaimed, Sammy Harkham-edited art comix-anthology known as Kramers Ergot will be priced at a staggering $125 (or about $78 if you order it on Amazon).

Why so expensive? Well, it’s not for the page count, which will actually be considerably less than previous editions — only 96 pages. No, the reason Volume 7 will be so costly is because of the size. This book resemble that of the Little Nemo and Gasoline Alley books that Sunday Press put out recently. Here’s Harkham talking about it in a recent City Pages interview:

“You’ve seen that Little Nemo book?” he asks, hands spreading reflexively to encompass the famous, full-page scope of Winsor McKay’s early-20th-century newspaper strip. “Issue number seven is going to be like that. Big—big—16 by 21! Every artist gets three pages. That’s it. But with that assignment, an artist is going to make work that wouldn’t exist otherwise. I’m so excited.

“The Clowes strip in this? Mind-blowing! Mind-blowing! And it’ll never be shown anywhere else. It’s going to be expensive. It’ll cost around $60,000 to make and sell for $80. We’re going to go to Singapore and watch them print it. But if there isn’t a clunker in the book, it’ll be worth it. I’ve found that anything I find mysterious or exciting, anything really special? People always pick up on that.” (more…)

 

Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer had already proven themselves through their writing, both in the pages of The Comics Journal and in the academic world where they make their daily bread, to be insightful, sharp critics with lots of worthwhile things to say about the comics medium. That they would team up, in blogging form, came, to those who had read their work before, as an inspired decision.

Indeed, the net result, Thought Balloonists, has proven since its inception earlier this year to be one of the must-stop places on the Web for good, meaty critical thinking about comics. What the also offers, however, is a sort of conversational give and take that very few critical blogs — comics or otherwise — seem to have adopted.

This interview was conducted via email over the course of the past month (give or take a few days). My thanks to both Mssrs. Hatfield and Fischer for their time and patience . (more…)

Everyone in my house is ill with high fevers this weekend (except me … so far), so just a quick recap this time on the whole canon issue that I discussed two columns ago.

Timothy Callahan (author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years) used my column as a springboard to talk about his own feelings regarding the subject and attempted to come up with his own master list, dividing his choices up by time period and influence. (more…)

It was Katherine Dacey’s enthusiastic review of Town of Evening Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms that first caught my attention. I was already planning on tracking down and buying the book — so glowing had the critical consensus been up till that point — but I was taken not only by Dacey’s ability to draw allusions to cultural touchstones outside of manga (R.G. Collingwood no less!) but also her passion and sincere enthusiasm for the book shone through but never once turned her prose into fannish mush.

As Senior Manga Editor for Pop Culture Shock, Dacey comes to the comics world from a different angle — having entered through the manga door she doesn’t have the baggage that many of us shoulder when trying to talk about our favorite comics. In other words, she’s got a unique perspective on not just manga, but the comics industry in general that’s worth taking in. That, plus the fact that she’s an incredibly smart and perceptive critic, made this interview a pleasure to conduct. (more…)

Every once in a while I come across a column or essay that makes me sit up and take notice. Usually because every fiber in my being cries out, “No. Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Jennifer de Guzman’s column last weekend for the soon to be no more Comic World News was one of those instances. Not that it was incoherent or poorly written. I just flat-out don’t agree with it. (more…)

Not enough time this week for anything more than a link round-up. Still, there’s been plenty of interesting discussions and postings going on over the past few weeks. Here’s just a few of them.

* I didn’t get his email in time for the last column, but Tom Spurgeon had an excellent pick for best critical piece of 2007.

* Speaking of Spurgeon, he recently took part in a fascinating round-table talk with Dan Nadel and Jeet Heer for the radio InkStuds program about comics and art. That exchange led Tom to wonder about his own critical facilties:

I wonder sometimes if I have a sharp enough, fully-realized enough view of the art form to be as specific and discerning as I need to be when it comes to fashioning an initial take on the comics I’m confronting. In short, I think I may like too many comics. This was an advantage ten years ago when liking a lot of comics allowed one to string together the best works from a lot of places into the most positive face for a struggling art form. It was easier to make those individual distinctions back then because good comics were so much more rare and thus stood out with greater clarity against the heaving background of awfulness that was the art form. (more…)

We’re being innundated with assorted top-10, “best of year” lists right now — and that’s fine with me. I like them. As long as you don’t take these things too seriously (or personally for that matter) year-end lists can be a great way to a) take the pulse of the culture — what they value, what they don’t; and b) force you to reasess your own tastes. What did you like and why? Why exactly do you disagree with Joe Blogger’s preferences?

So I thought for this, the first column of January, I’d turn the tables a bit and ask the tastemakers what they thought was the best piece of comics criticism, either online or off, that they read in 2007. Here’s what they had to say: (more…)

Q: The blog has really opened doors for you. You’ve developed a real loyal following. I remember Dan Nadel at SPX calling you out, and people like Chris Butcher mention you when asked what their favorite blog is. There are a lot of people in the blogosphere, tastemakers who seem to really appreciate your site a lot. Are you surprised by the success you’ve had with it?

A: I hear sometimes from other sources – I heard this more back when I was starting blogging so maybe it was something of a blogging theme – that it was maybe not so healthy to even assume you have an audience or make any concession to an audience at all or believe the audience is there. You should only write for yourself, period. I guess I never entirely bought into that because even in the very earliest months of my site I’d be writing things with no one having any reason to read them, I’d pretend to have an audience. I’d be writing “And so readers” I didn’t think I had any goddamned readers!

It is a surprise. I think people just got to like what they saw. I think a farily big portion of it was I had a pretty regular output, decent stuff coming out pretty often that people found my site as reliable and kept sticking with it, reading it, wondering what I had to say. I’m really, really thankful that so many people say kind things. It’s really flattering to be honest. I didn’t expect the success I had but I didn’t really know what to expect because I’d never done anything like that. I’m really grateful for all of my readers. (more…)

Originally I was going to try to break this interview down into only two posts. Time, family and holiday obligations have prevented me from doing so, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to do this in three parts. Rather than make you all wait another two weeks, however, I’ll simply post part three tomorrow.

Q: You have very broad tastes. Do you feel that gives you a unique perspective? What’s the benefit of having such catholic tastes and is there any drawback?

A: I can think a possible drawback would be you go a little bit toward everything. There’s a risk that you might not know about these things and badly misinterpret things that someone who’s more deeply into these sort of genres or areas of comics would be. You can be very broad and very shallow. That’s very much a risk I think.

The stuff I cover on my site, like I said before, I feel like it’s an expression of my own reading habits. I guess it just developed like that. I just like a lot of different kinds of things, and I think it’s forced me to be very studious. To really look into the histories of these books. It’s a good thing I have the Internet because I can cross-reference a lot of these things besides reading old magazines and flipping through issues of the Comics Journal, which is a valuable pursuit in and of itself. (more…)

One of my first stops on the Internet every morning is Jog The Blog. Jog, or Joe McCulloch, (since that’s his real name) is rightfully considered to be one of the smartest and best online critics working these days, consistently writing about a broad range of comics in an engaging and witty style that really gets to the core of what a particular work is about. I’ll often come away from a book thinking “Yeah, I got what that was about,” only to read Joe’s review and realize no, I didn’t get it at all.

I consider myself lucky, actually, since Joe lives about an hour away from me and works in the same small city I do. It’s nice to have friends you can talk about comics with over a burrito and vanilla latte.

But what’s the use of friendship if you can’t exploit it for the purposes of your biweekly comics column? With that in mind, I called up Joe and asked if he’d be willing to talk about the history of his blog, his own interest in comics and his view of the current scene (if I can use such a hackneyed and overly simplistic phrase). Part One deals pretty much exclusively with his own personal history of reading comics and how the blog came to be. Part two (and three if warranted) will deal with more contemporary and philosophical issues surrounding comics criticism.

I’d like to thank Joe extensively for taking time out to talk. Next burrito’s on me.

Q: Well, the first question I should really ask you, since it seems to be the first one everyone asks whenever they meet you is, how did the alias Jog come about?

A: It’s really served me well I think, because I get a great feeling in my heart when people greet me in real life as Jog. This happened at a library recently. You can just hear them pronouncing the quotes around “Jog.” It’s good when you hear quotes being pronounced. (more…)

I’m too sluggish from all the turkey to offer anything remotely resembling an intelligent opinion today. Thankfully, there have been enough thoughtful reviews and essays out on the comics blogosphere over the past few weeks to make up for my lack of loquaciousness. (more…)

I’ve been talking quite a lot in this column about the problems in attempting to write in a knowledgeable and understandable fashion about what makes a comic work or not work. One of the memes floating around the blogosphere these days, as I noted previously, is that most comics critics don’t discuss the art work very much because they don’t have the familiarity or background necessary to do so. They lack the sort of vocabulary that say, your average art history major, would be able to provide.

I’m not 100 percent certain that’s true or not, but either way, it, to my mind, begs the question: do we need our own unique vocabulary? We borrow a lot of terms from film criticism and other forms of criticism, but is that cheating? Are we merely slapping terms that don’t really apply to the books we’re attempting to describe? Comics are a unique art form, do we need to start creating and applying our own unique critical terms in reviewing and describing them? If so, how do go about doing so in an organic, applicable fashion (i.e. not just make up a bunch of words at random)? Has this sort of vocabulary-building already happened, and if so how? Or is this a really asinine question and not something any sensible person should spend their time worrying about?

Rather than attempt to form my own half-baked opinion, I decided to put togehter another roundtable and ask various intrepid bloggers and critics what they thought about the issue. Here’s what they had to say:

(more…)

Hey there cool critiquing cats and kittens. I know you’re all eager to see what I’ve cooked up for this week’s column, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait another seven days. As of this week, EaC is starting a biweekly schedule.

The reason is simple. Putting together the interviews and roundtable talks involve a bit more planning and forethought than I had initially anticipated. Since I regard those features as being the bread and butter of the column, I thought it best to add an extra week. Plus, I need the breathing room, as work and family have been crowding around me lately.

But lest I leave you empty-handed, here’s an actual, god-honest “obscure comic” review courtesy of Derik Badman, who decided to take on Nabiel Kanan’s out of print book, Exit.

See you next week everyone.

Like the title says, here’s a loose affiliation of stuff that’s been rumbling around in my noggin over the last few days:

You never call, you never write.
Well, Obscure Comics Month was a complete failure. I’m not terribly surprised to be honest, nor am I all that upset. I couldn’t even manage to write my own contribution (and I had a great one too, all about the genius that is R.O. Blechman), so I can imagine how difficult it must have been for those of you who were interested in the proposal as well. Getting kick-started is always tough. (more…)

Originally I was going to attempt to transcribe the comics criticism panel from last week’s SPX. However, since I seem to be incapable of operating a simple tape recorder, you’ll have to instead settle for me tearing into Heidi MacDonald’s now-infamous post (If you want to read about the panel, Sean Collins has a nice write-up here).

The post I’m referring to, of course, is her highly derided/regarded “Can’t Anyone Tell a Story?” jaunt (as well as the obligatory follow-up). I doubt it will surprise anyone here to find me decidedly in the “derided” camp. I found Heidi’s piece to be confusing, rambling, inaccurate and just plain off-base at best. And, even though you’re probably sick of the debate by now, I’m about to go into great detail to explain why.

A number of folks have already commented on it in depth, but there’s a couple of points I want to focus on, some of them actually dealing with comics criticism, some of them … not so much. I apologize in advance for the latter, and also in case I end up repeating what someone else said, just not as well. That’s been known to happen.

OK, let’s take it point by point: (more…)

Before we get to the second half of my interview with Tom (the first half being here), I just want to put in another plug for Obscure Comics Month. Don’t forget to send me your links (cmautneratcomcastdotnet).

And with that, here’s Tom Spurgeon:

Q: Tell me about some of your influences. What critics do you admire both inside and outside of comics?

A: That’s a really good question because it’s one I don’t really have an answer for. I’m not horribly well read in comics. The people that I like that write about comics — there’s nothing that connects them. I always loved Bob Fiore when I was a kid because he really mean and really to the point and really funny. There’s something really impressive about a guy who can be that consistently right on and write well, in a smooth, pleasing style. I wish that Bob had written more over the years. How many people can you say that about? It’s not many.

I really like Donald Phelps, who did Reading the Funnies, and he has a really baroque, almost aggravating prose style. But the quality of his insights, how he sees a comic is so refreshing and so out of left field that I feel it’s always worth chopping through whatever he’s put in front of me in terms of sentence structure in order to get at those wonderful insights.

I really like Bob Levin who worked for the Comics Journal.

Q: He did The Pirates and the Mouse, right?

A: He did the Pirates and the Mouse, and Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers and Pirates. I worked with him on those books. I edited those, probably very poorly, but Bob’s a very – again, it’s the quality of his insight. There’s a notable and idiosyncratic point of view on all of these artists. And he has wonderful taste on who he seeks to explore. He wrote this thing about Jack Katz that’s wonderful and one on S. Clay Wilson that’s great. And this kindness that he has towards the act of creating art makes Bob a really great critic. He really holds artists in high esteem and I think that shows through in his work. He really admires someone who sets out to make art and to communicate that way and has to go through what society will dump on them. That’s something I’d like to emulate in my own writing.

Anyone younger than that? All of my peers? I hate them. They’re all talentless hacks.

(more…)

I hope all of your are busy working on your selections for Obscure Comics Month. Remember to send me links if you do decide to take me up on the challenge (cmautneratcomcastdotnet) so that I can post them here for all to read.

On to this week’s interview.

If you can’t stand my writing and wonder what in god’s name made me think that I could ever write halfway decently about comics, blame Tom Spurgeon. It was thanks to him that I got a freelance gig writing reviews for The Comics Journal, and his friendship, advice and honesty about my writing (good and bad) over the years has always been a source of encouragement to me.

So, yeah, I owe the guy. Doing a lengthy interview with him doesn’t really offer much karmic payback, but I’ve always considered him one of the smartest folks in the room where comics are concerned, so it’s always worthwhile to hear what he has to say on the given subject. Plus, he’s pretty funny.

Q: This is for the critic column, so we’re going to be talking about comics criticism today.

A: Oh great.

Q: Don’t sound so enthused.

A: I’m fired up man. C’mon!

Q: In preparing for this, I realized I don’t know much about your background before you started working at the Journal. So tell me a little bit about your biographical details and how you got into this crazy gig.

A: It’s exactly like Batman, except that it’s food and fantasy geek activities instead of exercise and criminology. And my parents weren’t shot to death. But other than that it’s exactly the same.

You want my background up until when?
(more…)

I interviewed Tom Spurgeon earlier this week for the column, but I’m way behind on transcribing our talk, so you’ll just have to put up with more of my meandering ditherings for another Sunday. The interview will be up next week for sure though.

One of the things Tom and I talked about was how a lot of the online comics critics/bloggers currently in production come from the same background or entry point. In other words, most of us got introduced to comics through Marvel or DC via our local newsstand, drifted over to our local comic book shop and, as we got older, branched out into other genres and styles (or didn’t as the case may be).

As a result, I think we tend to do the sort of Monday-morning quarterbacking that Jeff Lester talked about recently. That is to say, we all end up discussing and reviewing about the same “hot” comics the day after they come out, offering endless contemplations on whether they worked or not. That’s not inherently a bad thing. In fact, it can be a healthy discussion, as well as a useful tool to gage trends and mores within the comics community. But there’s a lot of other material that gets pushed to the side as a result, and I’m not necessarily talking about the latest graphic novel from Fantagraphics or D&Q.

One of the things that Tom does that I like a lot is he’ll frequently post reviews of older comics, either from his collection or that he’s picked up at your local book sale. He’s not the only one of course. Jog’s been going gangbusters with his Choked With Comics column, Shaenon Garrity’s got her Overlooked Manga Festival, and Dick Hyacinth has been offering a great critical re appreciation of Rob Liefeld of all people. And then there’s the great Dave’s Long Box.

Still, it seems as though many comics critics/bloggers (croggers?) are stuck in the now, and not providing enough of a critical reasessment of past artists and books. I’d like to see more of the latter. I want someone to make me jump out of my chair, into my car and go pouring through the back bins of my local shop. I want an excuse to go vainly searching through Alibris.

With that in mind, I have a proposal. Sometime within the month of October, I want you, assuming you blog about comics regularly, or hell, even if you don’t, to write about a long-lost comic book, series, graphic novel, artist, writer or whatever that you feel is criminally underrated or ignored (preferably the latter). The more obscure the better. Genre doesn’t matter, nor does if the book comes from your collection or not, though I would like to see folks pick something a little out of their comfort zones for this.

No prizes will be awarded, though I will link to any and all who decide to rise to the challenge. No, you just have the satisfaction that comes with providing the Internet with some intelligent critical discourse. Oh, all right, I’ll see if I can dig up a prize of some sort. Don’t get your hopes up too high though.