Vanessa Davis talks to her mom at the D&Q website. Say, maybe these autobio comics ARE the best form of storytelling!

Rich Johnston, the only journalist in comics, dished up a very tasty rumor which has all the tang of fact:

Sources close to freelancers inform me that DC Comics has a new in house policy for pencillers. Aside from very specific contracted creators (such as Jim Lee), any penciller contracted to work on a monthly book must deliver complete turnaround of 22 pages of work in four weeks. Not a month, four weeks. If that schedule isn’t maintained, they’ll pull pages and assign them to other creators. And you may run short of future work. A reduction in quality is more acceptable than a reduction in quantity.

Specific examples I’ve been given include the recent issue of “Wonder Woman” was half Dodson and half Ron Randall. Also why Koi Turnball was dropped from “Jack Hawksmoor.” And it has been pointed out that there are already three fill-ins on the new “Legion” schedule.

Creators are also being dropped from exclusive contracts over this new regime. Expect certain publishing vultures to swarm.

There’s a lot to be said about this, including the changes in expectations and temperament required of today’s comics artists. It’s not enough to get Dan Spiegle every month (which would be fine with The Beat us, you’d better believe it), you have to get Bryan Hitch every month. But of course what you end up with is often something worse than either.

Former DCU editor Valerie D’Orazio has another take

Looking at the DC creative teams listed in the latest Previews, and noting how many books have fill-in artists or books with the art chores broken up, I can believe this. But I think it’s a mistake. We saw how well this method worked for Countdown. Nothing will kill a book like sloppy, rushed art or breaking up the art chores among several different artists. The other side of the coin is, do you want a book that is late?

[Above, cover to the originally solicited Secret History Of The Authority Jack Hawksmoor #1 by Cully Hamner. ]

Frank Santoro in the comments section of the Comics Comics Cage Match on Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid:

Oh, and I do want to mention that I’m getting a few emails from friends (and professionals in the, um, industry) who are too pussy to post a comment here but all more or less say “PP rules, Dan doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” What is it about comics artists who can’t,won’t, write about their likes and dislikes in a forum like this? Yet privately they’ll say “Oh, no, I don’t like so and so’s work.” Or even have super positive interesting things but feel like they can’t because they don’t want to “upset” people. Or their peers. Maybe thats it. I’m mostly talking about comics creators afraid to tell each other what they really feel about each other’s work.

The Comics Reporter interviews Valerie D”Orazio and she clears the air on a number of topics. The interview also makes you realize how seldom anyone who has worked in the mainstream comics industry in the “modern” era ever talks about it in an analytical way:

D’ORAZIO: When you are an assistant editor — at least from where I sat — your contrary opinion is not encouraged. And, if you’re female, that contrary opinion is not just discouraged — it’s seen as downright gauche. At any rate, you can be replaced pretty easily. You stay because you hope and dream you will be promoted. You see how cut-throat things are and you vow to swim with the sharks and get-ahead. Always there is this fear that if somehow you “screw up” and lose the job, you will never find another one in this small small industry — and that you are only competent to edit comic books. And that, in your sort-sighted view, no job could possibly be as cool as working in comic books. All this fosters a very conservative viewpoint, at least as far as work is concerned.

Technorati Tags: The Industry

Some storytellers on storytelling:

Todd Alcott:

The protagonist of 2001: A Space Odyssey is:

a) Moon-Watcher
b) The Monolith
c) Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
d) Dr. Dave Bowman
e) Dr. Frank Poole
e) HAL 9000
f) The frozen astronauts
g) None of the above

Neil Gaiman:

The oddest moment of today was finding a slip of paper in The Graveyard Book book I’m writing in, on stationary from the hotel I was in in Budapest in June, which listed everything that needed to happen in Chapter 7, including the climactic denouement which I was very proud of having come up with last week. Not sure whether this says something about my rubbish memory, or about the sometimes inevitable nature of storytelling. As in, “Of course it went there, because that was where it was going to go.”

§ Professional wrestler and sometime comics author, Raven:

There is a whole entire range of emotion and body language on the selling scale that could be encapsulated let’s say for babyfaces as simply as 1)no selling, 2) registering, 3) selling a little, 4) selling some more, 5) selling a lot, 6) selling to the point of hopelessness for the fan that you will ever recover, 7)no hope of recovery,8)signs of life, 9)more signs of life, 10) the possibility that with enough fan encouragement, you can possibly turn this thing around, 11)fire, 12) more fire, 13)fighting back, 14) comeback, 15)the post comeback, pre-finish full body fire to signify to the people that you are back in control and the heel is gonna pay. Also, let us not forget, that one’s body should still show how wracked with pain it is from step 8-step 15 and on through the rest of the match. Understand this, just b/c you are fired up and back in control, does not mean you should be hurting any less. It only means that you have found a way to fight through the pain with the help of the fans support. That is why people love wrestling, b/c they feel like they are a part of the show.

§ Steven Grant on thought balloons:

Once practically ubiquitous, the thought balloon has fallen on hard times the past couple decades. While there are old-timey comics fans (and professionals!) who believe thought balloons fell on hard times mainly because the too-cool-for-school “graphic literature” snobs bullied everyone into dropping them so as not to look “unsophisticated,” there were good reasons to stop using them. While no device should be characterized as “juvenile” – they are as they are used – thought balloons were mostly put to idiotic, as cheapjack exposition shortcuts.

Bonus: Jonathan Lethem on “plagiarizing”, via Leigh Walton.

Over at his Boneville blog, Jeff Smith has started a series of posts looking back at the self-publishing movement of the 90s:

It’s been 15 years since I met Larry Marder, who introduced me to Dave Sim. Who in turn introduced me to Colleen Doran. Soon, along with James Owen and Martin Wagner, we created a limited edition print featuring all our characters to sign and give away to comic book store retailers.

We did this at a 1993 Diamond Comics Distributors retail show - - a few months after the industry was stunned by the announcement that six of Marvel’s top artists were forming their own company called Image Comics. The resulting rumors that we might be planning to form our own super group was irresistible. This was the beginning of what would be called The Self-Publishing Movement.

With Smith, Terry Moore and Dave Sim all launching new titles this year, it seems like a profitable time to look back at what the movement meant and where it’s gone. Back then it was all about a lone cartoonist writing, drawing, publishing, promoting and touring. It was a grueling one man (or one woman) show that proved to be too grueling for most people. The good news is that the current economics of comics allow publishers from stalwarts Fantagraphics and D&Q, to newer specialized houses like Buenaventura and Picturebox to pick up the business end of things while still allowing near-absolute creative freedom. The internet and shows like SPX and MoCCA — not to mention distributors like Sparkplug — have allowed an even greater blossoming.

The difference is that the pioneering generation was based around the pamphlet economy — putting out a regular COMIC BOOK was the goal. Nowadays it’s all about the collection. Young cartoonists can get on the map with a single mini-comic story instead of a planned 10 year epic story. Many of the 90s creators were more genre-tinged, as well. It would be just as profitable, perhaps, to look at how the economic switch has changed creative goals and processes.

And yet, see our earlier posting on the genre-more-than-tinged CRIMINAL. Brubaker and Phillips are pretty much doing things the old fashioned way — albeit in a “team” situation, not the lone cartoonist model — and getting a book out this time around involves a publishing deal with Marvel, promotions on a social network owned by Fox, and interviews with comics-loving celebrities. The hard work seems to be paying off — the second CRIMINAL collection debuted at #10 on the Diamond graphic novel initial order chart, a strong showing for a creator-controlled property. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Anyway, this series of postings at BONEVILLE — which will include guest blogs by Colleen Doran, Larry Marder, Paul Pope, Terry Moore, Charles Brownstein, and others — should be good reading.

Jennifer de Guzman looks at the ongoing literary debate and calls for higher criticism.

We don’t see more literary quality in comics being published today because too few critics treat comics as serious literature and art, critically reading and judging them without reference to non-literary works who happen to share the same format. I’m disappointed when I see “cultural critics” like Jeff Jensen, who recently wrote an essay in Entertainment Weekly about his love of comics, elevating the very genre that keeps comics from being taken seriously: superhero comics. (I know, I know, we don’t look to EW for high culture, but, really, was that the best they could give comics?) True comics advocates are not glorified fanboys. If the image of comics in society is that of source material for the latest summer blockbuster, why would anyone who wants to produce something of literary and artistic merit turn to comics as their medium? We’re lucky to get the few creators we have who have looked for and recognize literary merit in comics and endeavor to emulate it. If we’re going to get more of them, we need comics critics who treat the medium seriously, who, instead of glorifying the comics of their childhood and adolescence, know how to read comics and write about from as real literary critics.

Actually, I think this is beginning to be remedied a bit, with regular, consistent and higher-level online comics criticism from the Savage Critic Gang, the ongoing explorations at Comics Comics, Tom’s regular reviews, and so on. Blog Flume has posted some very good in-depth looks at craft, and there are other voices beginning to emerge—I’ll refrain from making a list because I’m sure to leave someone out. As more and more comics come out, more and more people want reliable, informed judgments on these huge piles of comics. It seems the next step is for more trusted authorities to collate these views — or what we used to call editorial supervision.

On a related note, Mark Andrews analyses Dick Hyacinth’s Top 10 over at the CBR blog, and wonders why EXIT WOUNDS topped so many lists:

Well, it’s a great book, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the one I would have guessed would be received as THE GREATEST WORK OF THE YEAR by the critical hive-mind. It’s a different kind of good than the labyrinthian narrative wizardry of Fun Home, or the jaw dropping art of Black Hole. A quiet, distanced story like this one about the small battles played out against the sweeping tide of history feels like a completely different kettle o’ chowdah.

Tell you the truth, I’m kinda stumped why this book is so well received. Ask me again in ten years, when I’ve got some historical background. But, heck, it’s always nice to see really good books being celebrated.

My own guess would be that it’s because the book so clearly embodies the kind of literary qualities that so many seem to be calling for. Everyone more or less reached that conclusion on their own, as opposed to comparing it to some canonical chart, which isn’t a bad thing.

At any rate, this yearning for good criticism that de Guzman exemplifies seems to be one of the major streams bubbling around the water cooler-sphere these days. And many web sites seem to be joining the fray to become new collators of thought. No one has quite broken from the pack yet.

Technorati Tags: Comics Criticism

We have no horse in this race, never having done any print-on-demand, and we’re completely ignorant as to who is the best and who isn’t. However we received a letter from a creator we know well recounting his POD headaches. We’ve edited this down a bit, and it does seem to be more a problem with the process in general than a rip off, but it does seem to be a cautionary tale for anyone who is expecting a speedy turnaround on their books.

Okay, this may be a non-issue for most. Maybe, it’s just happening to me, but it’s starting to turn into a very frustrating nightmare. As far as I know there aren’t to many choices [for print on demand] out there. www.comixpress.com and www.ka-blam.com are the only two I know of, outside of Lulu (and Lulu is just way to expensive ) that offer to sell your comics from their site, (Lulu no do that) which is really helpful.

I signed on with comixpress.com to get the first issue of [my comic] printed, and yes, they did a fine job, but since then I’ve been able to get a reply to my e mails to them once. I have people telling me they’ve ordered my book and haven’t received it. Again, no reply to my e mails. There’s supposed to be a section on their site where you can check your order status, but I’ll be dammed if I can find it.

I’ve tried using Ka-Blam in rebuke, but once I signed on with them, my user name got declared invalid by their system, and it won’t even let me reregister because “someone is already using that info.” My e mails to them also go unanswered and they even have a hot line which I’ve called. Also, no answer.

So, I’ve got potential readers miffed at ME for leading them to order something they haven’t gotten, and small press conventions passing me by because I can’t get a response.

Later this creator wrote that he had heard from someone at Kablam with information on how to log onto the site, and though it hadn’t worked at least they had replied to him.

So, this sounds like ordinary snafus but it’s best to make sure what your turnaround time is when going with a POD printer.

More at the First Second blog.

From the Eric Reynolds interview at The Comics Reporter on the productivity of Mome cartoonists

I feel like we’re in a good groove now, just by widening the pool a bit so people can take an issue or two off, here and there. Most of these folks have jobs, and ten pages every four months is a lot to ask, I can tell you myself.

Is it just us or is that a highly depressing rate of speed?

Grady Klein (The Lost Colony) says it with pictures at the First second Blog.

Ron Hogan at GalleyCat has a report on the Comic Book Club One Year Anniversary which we wrote about earlier, with a fuller report

It was definitely Fraction who said of his work on Punisher War Journal, one of the best mainstream superhero comics I know of right now, “I wanted to make the most metal comic in the whole world. This is a comic you’d paint on the side of your van.” (And it’s true; if I had a van I would totally paint Fraction’s Punisher on the side…unless I’d already covered it with his independent comic, Casanova.)

Ron also points us towards better pictures by Keith Huang, once of which we’ve ganked above. It also reminds us us of an exchange which we’ve recounted to several people since then but negelcted to recount here; this must be remedied.

You’ll recall the show is hosted by comics/comics fans Pete LePage, Justin Tyler and Alex Zalben. The guests were Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, Matt Fraction, Brian Bendis and Ed Brubaker. One of the segments involves audience questions and this one was the beloved chestnut “If you had a superpower what would it be?”

The answers started from the comics writer end. Ed said he’d like to have the power to sleep through the night. Bendis said he’d like to be able to spell. Fraction said he wished he didn’t have to eat, because then he’d have more time.

By now the SNL end of the couch was getting the drift here. “You guys need to stop thinking about work!” said Meyers. “I’d like a power that doesn’t come with Word! How about FLYING?”

Of course there was general hilarity, in the audience, but it was also a rather rueful moment. Granted the Marvel side was mentally fried from a day of Summiting, but it was also maybe a little more symbollic. In the world of the freelancer, it’s all about getting the work out, by any means necessary. When you deal with fantasies all day, they become all too quotidian. We’d all like more time to sleep.

Paul Pope blogs at the First Second website:

Each facet of the comics medium is important and deserves its own special consideration, but it’s the writing in comics I’m thinking about right now. I often wonder why we don’t see more literary quality in the comics being published today, why we don’t have a John Steinbeck or Robert Penn-Warren in our medium, authors who can unfold a filagreed theme across an extended storyline and touch on that ineffable shade we call “the human condition.” Where are our Sam Hamiltons, our Willie Starks, our Jack Burdens, our Cal Trasks? It may simply be that good writing is rare. It is also entirely possible that most comics creators are simply unconcerned with developing literary themes in their work, favoring instead sweeping epics of good versus evil, populating their paper worlds with colorfully costumed heroes and villans invested with very little psychological complexity or self-awareness. It may be that most people who are attracted to the medium want very little more out of life than to draw pretty pictures, tell exciting, splashy stories, and get paid for it.

Paging every screenwriter who is eyeing the comics medium: PLEASE READ THIS:

Do you really have to pick shots? Think hard on this one. Do you really have a good sense of what will make a good picture, or do you just feel like you’re supposed to do it because it’s your job? Because it’s not, necessarily. You can almost always tell an artist what really needs to happen in a scene, and she will have opinions on how that should all go down. And she’ll be taking composition into consideration, and balancing lots of visual elements. Can you do that? It’s not really necessary with a good artist, she’ll do it anyway. But if that isn’t a strength of yours, then don’t impose such notes on our artist.

Jill Thompson has a blog, and it’s just as chatty, smart and quirky as the lady herself.

I think the one bit of advice I gave out more than anything else during the 4+ hours of portfolio review was to ditch the pencil, get a ballpoint pen and sit in a cafe and do gesture drawings. I found that the luxury of the eraser doesn’t free up most people’s drawings, it actually limits them. Not every drawing is going to be perfect, especially in school. Skritch out a 3 minute figure and move on to the next one. And draw your friends. Especially their clothes and the folds in fabric. Study body language and gesture and the way clothing moves.
If you want to cheat and look at comics instead of doing the homework-study Jaime Hernandez. Can you get that elegance,body language, flow of clothing, and those subtle facial expressions in the minimal amount of linework? Look at the random doodles of Alex Toth. Pure drawing.

Also included, photos of a tiny owl, and a preview of Magic Trixie, her series of children’s books for Simon & Shuster.

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t like Dave Roman, because if there is, we’ll knock your lamps out. The Nickelodeon magazine editor and cartoonist is back with a guide to being a freelancer that might just be the best advice you will ever read:

What kind of illustrator are you?
For any one assignment there are thousands of artists that could potentially be hired. Why should an editor or art director hire you? You need to figure out what makes your art unique. Because when there are a thousand artists who would all like the same gig, often just being good isn’t enough. You have to have a distinctive voice. It’s not about whether you can draw a bowl of fruit, it’s about how bad-ass, or realistic, or cute you can draw that fruit and convince people that no one has ever drawn it that way before. This sometimes gets confused with “the hot style,” but really it comes down to making art that lots of people find appealing and want to see more of. Figure out what your strengths are and what adjectives people use to describe the way you draw. Is it elegant, surreal, old-fashioned, cute, edgy, hip, classy, pretty, dynamic, dramatic, soft, hard, or all of the above? You may not want to categorize yourself, but to a certain extent you will need to if you want to focus yourself and find the places that will actually hire you.

Much more sense in the link. Bookmark and print out and learn the rules, like “Don’t be a jerk.”

For all the writer/artist types out there, this might be a cool diversion.

A website devoted to pencils of all shapes, sizes and colors.

If you’re a striking writer, stock up on writing utensils while you have the chance.

Posted by Mark Coale

From this week’s Permanent Damage:

Ultimately there’s no publisher in America today predicated on the idea of letting talented creators go their own way, because no publisher has a coherent plan for capitalizing on that, and that goes for both indie and mainstream. So, really, it falls to creators themselves. Which means there’s “selling out” and there’s “selling out.” To work in as many venues as possible, and to do the most impactful work there to open more opportunities to do the comics you think should be done instead of what publishers and editors should be done, to take the opportunities presented to you and do your best with them and to pry open new opportunities even when it sometimes means accommodating other expectations to get what you want, that’s an okay kind of selling out. It’s only trouble if accommodating other expectations at your own expense becomes habitual and reflexive. Wanting to write “popular material” in the absence of good ideas for that material, that’s not such a great way of selling out.

The Post That Wouldn’t Die continues to captivate the blogosphere, and many of my private conversations. My mom called to say she enjoyed it, which was nice. Eddie Campbell, ties it in with a larger thesis of conservatism breeding homogeniety in comics.

Frank Santoro author of STOREYVILLE, pipes up independently, and I would be overjoyed if his comments were substitued for mine, because he says what I was trying to say in a paragraph:

I feel like I need to be careful here because I’m not saying that I don’t like the new crafty, abstract work that was in evidence this year — I’m simply taking note that there is something new going on. And I like it. The work is beautiful. I do, however, lament the absence of strong characters in this new trend. Whether the comic is well-executed or dashed off what I notice is there isn’t much of a story or any real characters to identify with. There’s no distance, no mediator between the artist’s intention and the reader’s comprehension. I know I’m over-generalizing here. But it’s sort of like abstract painting, which I love, but often leaves me wanting more. Yet the work is usually so visually stunning that one has to hope that the craft and narrative elements will start to balance out. And, ultimately, I hold out much more hope for this approach to making alt comics than the rehashing of every Clowes, Ware, or Tomine story of the last 15 years.

I don’t mean to taint Santoro as an ally — he just happened to notice the same thing I’ve been noticing.

Of course for every person who shares the same concerns, there are the continuing grossly unhelpful over-generalizarions such as the reduction of my argument to “Chris Ware hates storytelling comics” . The worst offender is undoubtedly this guy who, shamefully, actually thinks he agrees with me . No you don’t, and just go away.

Independently, The Comics Journal crowd goes on for 14 pages over Craig Yoe’s yearly lament that “the kids can’t draw.” The Golden Age of comics truly was Roy Crane, and Craig and I probably agree on that.

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It seems that the US version of the cult British sitcom THE IT CROWD has been canned. Perhaps all for the best. This gives IT CROWD (and FATHER TED) creator Graham Linehan the chance to give his advice on how to make the show more palatable to the US audience. It’s MUST reading.

As far as I can make out, even the oddest US mainstream sitcom–’Seinfeld’, say– is rooted in the real world. Mainstream American audiences aren’t used to characters who can cling to ceilings, or sit calmly playing computer games while a fire is raging beside them…all that crap that makes me laugh. I’m not saying they’re incapable of handling this kind of humour, I’m just saying that if you really intend to do this kind of nutty show, you can’t just grab the scripts and slap a few American actors on it. You need to rethink the whole thing, so that people who haven’t seen, say, ‘Blackadder’ about a thousand times, don’t get turned off by all the silly.

Net Gertler reports:

It will be a while before we have the most complete figures on attendance at the event sites, but all told 24 Hour Comics Day 2007 was about as large as the record-setting 24 Hour Comics Day 2006. Despite last-minute event cancellations, there were 80-some 24 Hour Comics Day events in 18 countries, with an estimate of more than 1200 cartoonists taking part. Not all of them completed the challenge to create a 24 page comic book in 24 hours - but what good’s a challenge where everyone succeeds?

Hundreds of cartoonists did reach the 24 page goal. We cannot make a precise estimates until some more page counts come in, but it’s clear that more than 10,000 pages of art were created at these events. Of course, additional stories were created by folks celebrating the holiday at home rather than at an event site.

Several factors kept the event from continuing its significant year-to-year growth. Participation at individual events were limited by severe weather, including snow in some locations and the 65 mile per hour winds around the Jorg’s Coffee event location in Fontana California, which blew out the power repeatedly during the night. Colds run rampant in some communities, understandably discouraging involvement in round-the-clock activities. Perhaps most significant is that this was the first year with no 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights book planned; some event hosts saw the chance for inclusion in that Eisner Award-nominated anthology series as vital bait for bringing in participants.

This holiday has grown impressively in the four years of its existence, and may be hitting the limit of what can be achieved by the strengths of About Comics, the one-man company that founded 24 Hour Comics Day and built it to this point. There are clearly a lot of opportunities left for growth; consider, for example, that in all of New York State there was only one official 24 Hour Comics Day event with space for just 8 cartoonists (although that event, at the Manhattan branch of Jim Hanley’s Universe, was quite an affair, with guest-appearances by 24 hour comics inventor Scott McCloud and by Neal Adams). Contrast that with individual events elsewhere that had as many as 70 people, and its clear that there are enough willing cartoonists out there for many more venues. There is also still much that could be done to better publicize the event and build interest in the cartooning community. As such, About Comics is very interested in hearing from groups that may want to take over the organization of the event, to grow it while maintaining its spirit.

Still, that’s a small matter compared to what has happened this weekend. Please head over to the 24 Hour Comics Day blog to see plenty of pictures, videos, and descriptions at what went on at event sites around the globe. The blog’s sidebar has links to the blogs of individual 24 Hour Comics Day sites and participants, as well as links to some of the 24 hour comics drawn this weekend.

<a href=”http://24hourcomics.com/”>THE IDEA:</a>

On October 20th, 2007, cartoonists around the world will face the 24 hour comics challenge. To help these cartoonists, some comic book stores, educational institutions, libraries, businesses, and comics clubs will host special 24 Hour Comics Day events. They’ll provide cartoonists with a space to work, access to food and drink, and camaraderie.

Meanwhile the 24 Hour Comic  Day Blog is covering all the action…and there is a lot of it.  Check in frequently to hear the goings on around the world — if comics have a worldwide holiday, this is it.

I’m as sick of you-know-what as you are, but thoughtful responses keep rolling in that deserve some link love:

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Whoa! What the heck! Based on the level of opprobrium aimed at me in the last few days, you’d think I’d come up with a plan for health care or something. Instead, I just posted some ideas and hoped for debate. Well, I got it! I guess the internet works after all.

As regular readers may note, I have been away for the last few days so have not been able to keep up with the lively debate here and elsewhere. For the record, I had most of the ideas for the Best American Comics 2007 post (I wouldn’t be brazen enough to call it an essay) when I first read BAC 2007 two months ago but never had time to put it on paper until now, and obviously still haven’t had the time. For those who accused it of being rambling and vague, well it was because it was a BLOG post meant to inspire debate, not (unfortunately) an essay that I worked on for months and months. In hindsight, perhaps I should have given it a few days to mature, but I felt it was better to get it out before I left for SPX and was seduced by the charm and sincerity of the kids and forgave everything. It definitely could have used some tightening up, but I do stand by what I said.

That said, here are some responses to the responses, and before anyone gets upset or brings out a water cannon THESE ARE RANDOM RESPONSES WRITTEN IN MORE OR LESS REAL TIME AND NOT A TIGHTLY THOUGHT OUT ESSAY. You got that?

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As part of my duties as co-editor at PW Comics Week I edit our occasional “Loudmouth” feature, which is, more or less, our editorial page. Opinions, the more opinionated the better. Funny thing. Everytime I ask for topics potential contributors would like to write about, the one that comes up over and over is talking about all those crappy autobio comics. I actually already assigned that one, to A. David Lewis, very early on, ’cause he asked first, and it got a bit of comment going on the blogosphere. Lewis actually backed off pretty quickly, for the usual reason: he didn’t want to hurt any feelings by naming names.

Understandable. But then WHY does this topic keep coming up? It was also the topic of a recent Tim Hodler/Noah Berlatsky blogument in which the Hatfield-McCoy dichotomy of “your either for us or agin us!” was raised. The superhero people are always picking on the arty types, and the artoonists are always picking on the long underwear types. Praising one seems to be damning the other. Talk about polarizing. This makes the US Senate look like one happy family.

But is that really the problem? I don’t think so. The problem is that both sides are squeezing out the middle ground. I’ve covered the hegemony of the superhero pretty well here at the Beat, so as I head off to SPX, one of my very most favorite shows of the year, to hobnob with snotty indie cartooners, perhaps it is time to look at the other side: the hegemony of the shoe gazer. And there exists no finer exhibit to document this than The Best American Comics 2007.

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