The Negative Zone: Release More Relevant Old Stuff!

Pepe Moreno's Rebel is the kind of junky, murky, skateboard punk future Euro-comic that once occupied it's own hard-to-place subgenre. Neither big, dumb comic book trash nor super-sophisticated art-comic, it floats around somewhere in the middle.

The kind of thing that might be jammed between more recent trades at an older comics store, or stuck in a box with some other oversized comics, water damaged. It'll feel like a relic because the past two decades of prevailing comics trends, be it the 90s adolescent-leaning hero books or the mannered, cutesy, oh-so-serious alt-comix and all that falls between, don't have much to do with something like Rebel.

And it's not like Rebel's all that good even, but the handmade feeling to the art, in contrast to its Escape from New York action comic exterior--you've been taught, by an industry of businessmen and capital-a Artists that there are no grey areas, that something is sophisticated or isn't--will just kinda confuse you in a really awesome way.

The dusty trade you uncovered will either be priced for a non-existent "collector's price" or it'll be falling apart, cracks when you open it, and at cover-price and either way, you'll leave the store without it. But it might be something you think about as it rubs up against most of your notions of comics or "comix" or Comics or "graphic novels" or whatever.

Then, you wander into Barnes & Noble--which has either replaced your local comics store or has a better selection because your local comics store is run by a bitter fuck who ran his business into the ground and curses Diamond and "the internet" for doing it--and you see, IDW's recent re-issue of Pepe Moreno's Rebel.

Or maybe you still live in a town with a good, functioning comics store, one that isn't trying to just coast along, and they ordered from Eurotica, the recent reissue of Guido Crepax's The Story of O--confusing too because it fits into no categories...it isn't the latest issue of Hot Moms and it's not by Alan Moore and priced at $120 either.

Though both of these reissues are exceptions, they're invigorating because they do sorta kinda answer something I've yelled about in my head or to other comics fans, as I see say, the useless work of Fletcher Hanks reissued or the work of Japanese innovators recontextualized as birthing North American alt-comix: Where's all that weird 70s and 80s shit? Why do I have to run to eBay for a Moebius story? Can someone reissue this stuff?!

These two reissues and this over-arching trend of non-mainstream comics shying away from the alt-comix trend of insularity have me excited for how comic books for "smart people" evolve, but it's gotta keep going. These should be as frequent as designed-by-Seth reissues of 60s kiddie comics and a mess of oddities from some never-remembered Golden-Age weirdo. The act of reissuing is obviously complex and weird and often done for fun, not profit, but well, I just hope it can extend to stuff that's even a harder sell than the comics that do get reissued.

But it seems that the reasons for not reissuing something like Rebel are a little more nefarious. Clearly, it's rooted in what sells and doesn't sell and what's available to reissue (rights and all that good stuff) but it's a kind of self-fulfilling thing, wherein trippy, Heavy Metal-era comics aren't what people want and therefore aren't worth re-releasing because they haven't been released.

And worse, they've been sorta kinda pushed out of comic book history. This quasi-erasure relates to three things, all of them industry-oriented:

1. It does not really benefit Marvel or DC to take note of these things because they were either not publishing it all or were publishing it in the past and now, can't work it inside their mythology. That's to say, it isn't Batman or Spiderman, what's it gotta do with making money in 2009?

2. It does not really benefit the smaller companies, especially the tastemakers like Fantagraphics or Top Shelf to try to republish this stuff because their bread and butter is still very much the overtly sophisticted, gets-write-ups-in-the-New York Times type comics, be it personal, arty stuff made now or lost pieces of early comics history.

3. For many of the comics historians and comics thinkers, stuff like Heavy Metal, etc. doesn't fit into the narrative they're constructing in classrooms, at SPX panels, and on NPR or wherever. It takes too much explanation. Even say, Howard the Duck can be turned into a narrative about iconoclastic creators left to do whatever because a growing comics behemoth was totally not growing during the heavy 70s.

Of course, these comics also occupy a weird place in terms of relevance, rights, availability and all that, but those seem secondary to the way that something as not even that great as Rebel fucks with expectations. A company like IDW and maybe even BOOM! or Image if they were to get into the field of reissuing, are ideal because they don't have a dog in the fight like "the big two"--or the tastemaking two or three--and really, it would only benefit them to start dishing out some nice-looking, affordable weird 70s Euro stuff. They'd not only be filling an important gap in comics history, but quietly usurping many of the accepted notions, convenient notions of where certain comics fit. And that's a really good thing.

The Negative Zone: Hey! Heavy Metal Still Rules

There's often a tendency amongst discerning-type fans to draw these reasonable though ultimately, fairly arbitrary lines between what's "cool" and what isn't. Now, that's hardly a shocker of a statement--it's the very definition of "discerning", no?--but it's more often than not, rooted in things like image and reputation than hard, critical thinking.

That's to say, something's usually scoffed-at because it "looks" uncool or has been declared uncool rather than first-hand reading or experience. One such example, and a particularly grating one as far as I'm concerned, is the mention of present day Heavy Metal followed by "Uh, you know, the ones with like Moebius were great, not the ones with Barbarians and Julie Strain...". Moebius is cool, Vikings and boobs are not, since when? Both are cool and there's plenty of good, interesting stuff to be gained from picking-up Heavy Metal at least every once in a while.

This has been an ongoing, quiet thesis by this blog and David hinted at it when he discussed the latest piece of Jodorowsky and Manara's Borgia series. There's barely any discussion by anyone really anywhere about the latest issue of Heavy Metal and it's rarely stocked in actual comics stores, which just seems unfortunate.

Especially unfortunate this month, because there's a particularly excellent issue out and it's one that I think even the people making Julie Strain jokes can get behind. Namely, you get Part Two (of Three) of Nathan Fox and Matt Wilson's Fluorescent Black and a ten-page installment of Jim Mahfood's masterpiece Carl the Cat That Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

Mahfood's work gets enough discussion that I'm surprised this hasn't been talked about more, especially because it's a particularly brilliant installment of the strip but Fox (who is currently drawing the also slept-on Dark Reign: Zodiac) is making the kind of series that'll eventually become a graphic novel in a year or two and everybody'll review all excited-like. This is just a slightly less obnoxious version of the people that hold-off on whatever series for six to nine months until the trade comes out. The rest of the issue's fleshed-out with some winners and some losers and some kinda cool and kinda stupid pin-ups and stuff--just like the old Heavy Metal mind you.

A renewed interest, or at least something resembling acceptance of Heavy Metal, would be, in a sense, the last "wall" for comics readers to breakdown between "smart" and "dumb" comics. Nearly everyone is reading superhero comics along with their Chris Ware and Tomine stuff, and there's a recent wave of writers/artists totally breaking down "indie" and "mainstream" (like Fox or Mahfood, but Ba & Moon, Brandon Graham, Vasilis Lolos, Brian Wood, and many many more) and so, the disinterest in Heavy Metal seems more due to the perpetuation that it sucks, that there's nothing worth reading inside, than actual evidence or experience.

Heavy Metal is still, essentially the weirdest and coolest--though notably less weird and cool than it once was--anthology comic going on today. Cheaper and more frequently published and more easily accessible than say, MOME or Kramer's Ergot or whatever, Heavy Metal continues to drop smart pulp every month.

The Negative Zone: THE ISSUE #3 BONER-KILL EFFECT

Something that's obsessed me about comics, especially over the past year as my weekly comics intake's gone out of control--and especially because a lot of good or at least promising series have begun--is how many series I've dumped at issue #3: Kick-Ass, Final Crisis, the "Old Man Logan" storyline, "Batman R.I.P", Glamourpuss, Haunted Tank, probably some others too (interesting that there's two by Millar and two by Morrison on that list...).

The third issue's the make-or-break issue because a writer can rely on the pretty-much-always-interesting first issue and can usually, if they've set the first issue up passably well, ride that wave into the end of #2. By #3, stuff's gotta start happening or ideas gotta start flowing or something, anything. And usually what a third issue does is too-much or too-little. The leisurely pace punctuated by a few "what the fuck" moments is what made "Old Man Logan" and Kick-Ass, and then the third issue of each respectably, stumbled into some sub-plot about Spiderwoman or threw in a little girl who chopped heads and said "Cunt". Okay.

Final Crisis and "Batman R.I.P" suffered for the opposite reasons as they did nothing at all and fumbled further into themselves. You felt all the narrative pieces moving around, being set-up for that big "Woahholycrap" moment but that was the problem...you could feel the moves being made, each weird sub-plot or new character/concept to pay-off later. And the pay-off might be worth it, but I don't read comics for the pay-off, I read them for the evolving, temporal-ness of the narrative that ideally, builds to something actually worth it. I need to feel like I'm in good hands and I'm not in good hands whether the writer decides on a total tone-change in issue 3 or to just continue setting-up fort for some forever-delayed "payoff". Series' like Haunted Tank and Glamourpuss expose themselves by their third-issue for just sort of coasting along, with little interest in changing or even complicating previous issues. They're too confident and as a result, feel obsessively planned-out. No room for complexity or fun or anything to leak in.

That's why Cable is the best series going on right now. It's heavy in continuity and it's circling around itself in terms of time-travel weirdness, but every issue works on its own. The most recent issue, which is essentially Cable and Hope in empty space talking about time-travel continuity shit I register but couldn't regurgitate to a new reader, works because stripping the action comic of its vague action comic connections unravelled deeper things about Cable and Hope's relationship.

That the issue ends with (spoiler-not-spoiler alert) Cable collapsing, both matters and doesn't matter. Matters because the series' bad is gonna go to worse, but doesn't matter because the issue wasn't building up to that "shocker" ending. Of course, it was kinda inevitable that a food-less, water-less Cable would collapse, but you forgot about it because the human interaction was so fascinating in and of itself. Basically, the comic put you in Hope's shoes, so caught-up in the immediate that you forgot about essentials like food and water and as a result, Cable's collapse is as shocking and desperate to you as it is to her.

That's of course what the best "keep-you-reading" or even "twist" ending stories do. They don't pull some tricky bullshit out of their ass two pages before it ends, they wrap you up in the story itself, distract you from greater, scarier issues at-hand, all the while making them pretty obvious and then...BOOM, it's got you. An odd, hard-to-describe mix of in-the-moment storytelling and obsessive story-planning. Giving you more of the same and knowing how and when to subtly flip it too.

NEGATIVE ZONE: eBay-Worse Than Variant Covers and Obama Spider-Man Crossovers

When you're a Comics Reader you become a Comics Collector, but not all Comics Collectors are Comics Readers. The after market of comics starts in comic stores, back issues in long boxes with inflated prices, sometimes ten to twenty dollars more than what the Overstreet Price Guide lists. At one store a back issue of something you'd think no one would want like, let's say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures 2nd series issue #1, would be sold at the book price of $3 while another would have it for $20.

This could happen for a few reasons, the "#1" on the cover, the fact that it's a an older series, or because in some cases it's genuinely rare. The problem with "rarity" is that it's subjective from area to area and from seller to seller. Making a trip to visit North Carolina to see Brandon, it feels like I've hit a gold mine when we go to comic stores, things I can't find anywhere up here in any store I find there at multiple stores for cover price. It's simply a matter of a different area and therefore, a different market.

eBay, however, has no area specific market. When you've been looking for that one issue to complete a series or rare gem that you can't find, chances are someone on eBay is selling it. It's easy and fast, and this way you don't have to spend the gas money traveling to the four corners of your state visiting random comic stores. The "BuyItNow" feature allows you to jump ahead of the pack and grab the auction, and with all of the eBay stores, someone is bound to have what you're looking for.

The reality of eBay shopping is that a lot of times there are reserves on items, BuyItNow prices are too high, and "a little wear and tear" amounts to the back cover missing. Sellers who don't read comics but see it as a way to make more money hold on to that one issue, not selling a series in a "lot" but only individually. Most sellers, fortunately, will work with you but often the ones who have what you're looking for still have it because no one else was willing to pay their prices.

The Collectors' market and lack of knowledge about comics and what they are worth is mostly a product of the 90's, people buying every "FIRST EXTREME ACTION PACKED ISSUE" and foil cover with hologram card they could find. Since they aren't a part of the comics community, they haven't paid attention to the trends in the past ten years, and probably have never even opened their "investments" once. The prices they charge slowly become the standard, since other non-comics reading collectors only check a site like eBay for prices.

While it is a supply and demand issue, the demand comes from the person with the supply. Using eBay as a reference for prices and availability is just retarded, something you're looking for today may be on there tomorrow, and there could be ten of them by next week. Seeing one item doesn't always mean that it's so rare there's only one auction, it only means there is only currently one seller of the product. It far too often just amounts to complete rip-offs and a frustrating experience for someone who, you know, just wants to read the comic.

Now that comics are getting some press, the world looks to our little island and is curious. They still think of comics as something quirky and weird, but they understand some of us are willing to pay a lot of money for our little funny books. CNN reports on comics like The Death of Captain America and more recently, Spider-Man #583 which featured Obama on the cover and in the book, making it hard for us who weekly read these books but do not subscribe through our local comic shop or an online provider to get our new issue. This leaves a Reader without an issue, and a Collector with one more to put on eBay.

Right this moment, I went to eBay and typed in "obama spider-man 1st print". I'm not going to link the auction going for $38.05 with 6 bids, or the BuyItNow seller who's asking $84.99. This comic has a cover price of $2.99, and right now is in multiple printings and fortunately is available for the Readers to get their hands on. The one good thing about this whole Collector vs. Reader thing is that the Reader usually comes out on top, the publishers knowing that more printings means more money, and adding Variant covers on top of that can't hurt either.

It may just be a problem with the after market of comics themselves, no Readers or Collectors can really say what something is worth. With more and more older comics being republished online, some back issues may go down in price, the Marvel Masterpieces and DC Archive collections also collect older issues. Dark Horse and Fantagraphics have taken it upon themselves to collect many old, lost, out of print series into hardcover books making single magazine issues that were once impossible to find completely accessible.

With these collections becoming more and more popular with Readers and allowing people new to comics to get caught up, one day the Collectors' market will be just that, for Collectors'. All the Readers will have the issues they want, albeit not in issue form and not in a white box but on a shelf, and all the Collectors can rip each other off.

The Negative Zone: Lay Off Von Furstenberg's Wonder Woman Line!

The er, Dave Sim-like level of vitriol aimed at the fashion industry--and implicitly, women at large--because of fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg's for-charity line of Wonder Woman clothes and accompanying comic book is pretty silly. Not that something being for charity makes it not subject to criticism, but falling back on the "fashion's silly 'cause it costs too much" trope that fucking comic nerds that wear JC Penney Pocket Ts in earth-tones and plain-ass Reeboks every day of their life invoke when mocking fashion is especially wrong-headed here because well, the 25 dollar comic book is priced that high because you kinda expect to pay more for something going to charity. Same with the $46 shirt and $165 bag.


The equally misguided and condescending response to this line is directed towards Konstantin Kakanias' really strange art for the project. With a focus on the way Kakanias eschews conventional anatomy and proportion as if it's not an artistic choice. What's interesting about the art is how it looks nothing like contemporary comic book art and doesn't even have much to do with Silver-Age comic art either. The main influence here is clearly Pop-Art and Roy Lichtenstein and it's almost as if the art's giving you some weird backwards, inside-out speculative comics history where it wasn't Lichtenstein swiping from comics but if comics swiped from Lichtenstein. Out of its current context, I'd say plenty of comics fans would give it the benefit of the doubt and see the weird too-big heads, angular necks, and Pop-Art signifiers as just some crazy interpretation of Wonder Woman and nothing more.

The nit-picky argument against the art's especially frustrating because one could easily argue that the clothes aren't that good or interesting and certainly be onto something. Again though, maybe that has to do with maximizing their appeal so more people buy/donate, but it also has to do with the sort of populist intention of the clothes and the yes, message. A message that yeah, is a little played-out and obvious and is nothing more than loose platitudes about female empowerment, but is exactly what wearers of Von Furstenberg's clothing would want and more importantly, is a powerful and still-important message for the people benefitting from the charity: victims of domestic violence.

A problem with people ignorant of fashion and the fashion industry is lumping all designers and clothes together, as if there's not a different between Von Furstenberg's clothes which are found in a place like NORDSTROM and like, serious, couture-ish high-end fashion stuff, which the shirt and bag from this Wonder Woman line most certainly aren't.



To be real, while domestic violence certainly is not relegated to the middle and lower-class, it's effect on women of that social strata is significantly greater--financial dependence or inter-dependence is a big reason why women stay with abusers--and in a sense, these are clothes for that kind of women, but slightly better-made and slightly nicer.

The Negative Zone: Why You Shouldn't Idealize Charles Crumb

This piece from the blog 'Spurious' titled "Saint Charles Crumb" has been making the rounds on quite a few comics sites of late-especially odd as it was written in April of this year. Dirk at Journalista (who's been linking this blog like crazy lately, thanks!) called the entry "fascinating" and over at Comics Comics it's "a pretty amazing reflection".

With such glowing words, it seems all the more important that I do the thing that even in assholey "negative zone" posts I'd rather not do: Shit on the actual writing before I even get to content. One can't help but slog through too-curt short sentences that yell out "this is serious and thoughtful" and think of how way too many people'll be duped into thinking this means something profound or serious is being said.

Additionally, two glaring errors about the movie Crumb become obvious and kinda absurd because the writing's so fucking serious. Charles' bully was not called "Hutch" but "Scutch" and Crumb's father wrote a book called Training People Effectively and not "How to Manage People" (the latter being a title too terrible even for a son and wife abusing dumbass like Crumb's father to settle on..).

And outside of the reverse-purple prose--which is so Palahniuk-ian it becomes purple all over again--that cries out "I'm writing reeeaaallll serious here", there's little left but the problematic idealization of a person that really shouldn't be idealized. In the world of visual art and especially in comics, there's a obsession with suffering and pseudo-honesty that's every bit as adolescent as reading about buff-as-shit dudes fighting big-titty bitches with big guns.

From the mind-bogglingly problematic term "outsider art", to re-releases from kinda talented weirdos like Fletcher Hanks, to any number of self-loathing, super "honest" (and rarely just honest) comics and 'zines, us comics reader just love the fucked-up and weird and long ago, mistook it for artistry and honesty. Now certainly, it can be art--look no further than Charles Crumb's uh, brother Robert!--and indeed, some of Charles' work is fascinating and good art (not outsider art, just art) but to fall into the trap of not only idealizing Charles and semi-seriously "Sainting" him, but to present his life and times as somehow more tragic and uncompromising than the rest of us is just silly.

Yes, Charles is a sympathetic character and in a lot of ways, the most interesting and affecting part of Crumb and the title card that tells you of his suicide brings tears to my eyes every time I watch the movie, but it's because he touches on some adolescent, acting out, goofball fantasy that of continuing to be a weirdo, book-reading fuckup that a lot of us sensitive, artsy-fartsy types have and not because he's some special, rarified individual.

Indeed, that's sort of the point of Crumb or one of the like points you're supposed to ponder...how Robert, who grew up in essentially the same household, who has his own group of horrible stories (Dad broke his collarbone on Christmas anyone?), ended up fairly well-adjusted and successful. Plenty of people grew up in worse places than Charles Crumb and plenty were beaten worse by their fathers or school bullies and didn't end up mumbling sardonically in their book-filled bedroom. Those are the people to celebrate and adore, the ones that forced their way through it and found some way to keep on fucking living (actually living) after whatever tragedy(s) took hold of their body and mind and kinda wouldn't ever really let go.

The Negative Zone: Comics Readers Need to Grow Up

Over at Comics Should Be Good!, the Curious Cat question for Sunday was:

When was the last time that a creator’s take on an established comic book character has made you like that established character when you did not like the character before said creator began working with that character?

There's a ton of comments and some interesting ones, a lot of love for Fraction's Iron Fist and plenty of examples of a popular or auteur-like creator working on a lame character (say, John Byrne on She Hulk) but as I went to comment, I realized I couldn't really answer this question because a) I don't read comics specifically connected to certain characters and b) I'm not an idiot so I don't have a silly knee-jerk dislike of certain characters.

Certainly, there've been times when I picked up a book because an artist or writer made it look more interesting, but say, the recent Marvel Comics Presents story about Machine Man just sort of nailed the character perfectly, it wasn't like before that I was thinking "Ugh...Machine Man?", if anything I was waiting for someone to do an awesome Machine Man story.

Or you know, Spiderman's sort of a fag but there's a ton of Tangled Web issues in my collection and Spiderman: Reign pretty much owns. I'm more apt to scan the week's new issues and trade re-releases and everything else and if a title seems really interesting or a writer or artist whose work I've enjoyed is writing the series, I'm apt to pick it up, not simply because it's a comic starring a hero I actively like.

For example, this week in addition to the monthlies I'm usually reading, I'll pick up the re-issue of Grant Morrison's Doctor Who, not because I'm this big fan of Doctor Who (again, because I have taste, even if I was this Doctor Who fan, it wouldn't mean I like every single incarnation of the character) but because Grant Morrison's a fascinating dude and his early work's pretty much all excellent. The other thing grabbing my eye is Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves not because I'm a huge fan of either hero but because the whole thing seems absurd and has the potential to be really weird and interesting or really terrible, and that's exciting. Apparently, this isn't how most comics readers read comics.

In many ways, the "character" is more like the genre because the character confines what and how something can happen in the comic. Disliking a character is the same willful ignorance found on Match.com profiles that say they listen to "everything but rap" or the same goons who refuse to read any Manga or "film buffs" that don't like Science-Fiction.

Marvel-only readers and DC-only readers boggle the mind--although a dislike of DC is more justified as pretty much any fan could feel burned by their shenanigans--as do readers over the age of say 12, that are not only partial to certain heroes, but actively dislike others. I mean, every hero's origin is interesting--this is why we end up with so many origin issues, they're almost always fascinating--and every single comic has potential. That so many comic readers flout their closed minds and silly biases is depressing.

There's also a self-defeating masochism to conventional comics readers as they slog through the latest story arc they hate just because they've been reading Batman for fucking ever. Comics fans love to complain way more than they love to celebrate comics. Seriously, when's the last time you heard a conversation less than surly going on in a comics shop? Think a little harder everybody. Pick up a book you might not read and actually try to dig it, don't pick it up to crap on just so you can say, "And I tried to read "Silver Surfer" dude, it sucks." Grow up comics readers.