• Home
• FTC/Editorial Policy
• Ed
• Contributors
• The Bat Segundo Show
• RSS

The Bat Segundo Show: Laurie Sandell

Laurie Sandell recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #306.

Laurie Sandell is the author of The Impostor’s Daughter.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Wondering if the coalminer was an impostor.

Author: Laurie Sandell

Subjects Discussed: Chicken recipes, the quest for truth within memoir, how narrative shapes and stretches truth, subjective vs. objective accounts, the essay written anonymously for Esquire, memory vs. concrete evidence, emails from Ashley Judd, how hard evidence enhances a visual diagram, lawyers sifting through evidence, the use of clothing against background, working with a colorist, becoming one’s parents, the use of motion lines, adopting comic book semiotics, drawing from an intuitive part of the brain, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, feeling liberated in comic form vs. restrictions in textual form, maintaining privacy vs. spilling all details to the public, diagramming environment, knowing the lay of the land, static panels, consulting graphic novels, Scott McCloud, arrows pointing to figures, strange stays in five-star hotels, sketching out the book before drawing, taking the story arc from the text version of The Impostor’s Daughter, structure and spontaneity, maintaining momentum vs. contending with painful memories, emotional change and artistic change, whether or not writing is the proper way to exorcise demons, the story of Sandell’s father as a former sense of identity, the ethical dilemmas of narrative seduction, and fearlessness.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I should point out I’m not trying to insist that stretching [the truth] is necessarily a bad thing. I’m merely pointing out that memory, as we all know, is a fallacious instrument.

Sandell: Yes, it is.

Correspondent: It’s been said that memory is the greatest liar of them all. It’s been said — by, I believe Lincoln — that you have to have a great memory to be a great liar.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: So given this conundrum, I’m wondering to what degree you relied on your own memory and to what degree you relied on reference shots. You have, for example, illustrations that crop up within the course of the book. This leads me to wonder about other specific details. But maybe we can start on memory vs. concrete evidence.

Sandell: Well, you know, it was a mix of memory and concrete evidence. On the one hand, I had a lot of concrete evidence because I had interviewed my father over a period of two years and I tape recorded our conversations with his knowledge. This was leading up to the Esquire piece when I had a 300-page transcript. So most of the things that my father said in the book came directly from those transcripts. So he’s telling stories from his past. Those came directly from my father’s mouth.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Sandell: As far as — I’m trying to think. I don’t know. What else?

Correspondent: Well, I could actually cite specific examples.

Sandell: Okay, sure.

Correspondent: For example, the difference between the narration and what is actually spoken in the text bubbles.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: Here’s one example. When you’re working at the office, you have a text box point to the screen: “Have you considered inpatient treatment.” We don’t actually see the email on the screen.

Sandell: Okay.

Correspondent: We actually see your particular perspective.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: And so I want to ask you about why that particular emphasis — I mean, that’s inherently subjective. We’re counting on your subjective viewpoint as to what is on the screen. As opposed to later on, when we actually see what’s on your screen, when you’re on your laptop in your motel room.

Sandell: I need to be honest. The reason you didn’t see that screen was probably because it didn’t fit in that box.

Correspondent: Okay.

Sandell: And so I had to deal with little callouts so you could actually see what was on the screen. But the interesting thing about the process of putting together all this evidence — a lot of it really was evidence — is that there were so many emails. For example, that email was an email, I believe, from Ashley Judd.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Sandell: And I have those emails from Ashley Judd. I have the emails from my father. You know, I worked with a private investigator for two years. So I have all of his information and the lawsuits he compiled and all the various evidence and things written by my father. You know, I think — did you ever read Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy?

Correspondent: No, I never read that.

Sandell: It’s a beautiful memoir. Ann Patchett later went on to write Truth & Beauty: A Friendship.

Correspondent: That’s right.

Sandell: And one of the things that Ann Patchett said in her afterword — after Lucy died, Ann Patchett wrote an afterword to the book — and she described how, at a reading, someone said to Lucy Grealy, “How did you remember all those details about your past?” And she said, “I didn’t remember it. I wrote it.” And people were a little bit up in arms about that. But she was pointing out the fact that this was a piece of art, it’s a piece of subjective memory, and the most important thing is to show the emotional truth of the situation. And I would say that in my case, because I have so much evidence, and evidence that Little Brown asked to say and anytime I’ve done television, they’ve actually asked to see the evidence, I feel pretty comfortable that there’s not going to be any big explosive James Frey situation.

Correspondent: Well, to what degree were they asking for the evidence? Because we’re talking about transcripts. We’re talking about investigative reporting. This is all text right now. And here you are. You have a visual document here.

Sandell: Yes.

Correspondent: You have to construct something from the text here. So it’s a wonder that evidence even means anything if it’s a visual result.

Sandell: I think it does. I mean, the visual result is obviously my memory. It’s the way I remember the situation.

(Image: Brantastic)

BSS #306: Laurie Sandell (Download MP3)

The Publishing Industry: An Economic Thought Experiment

Case Study 1: During Presidents Day Weekend, the software company Valve tried out an experiment. Valve, the company behind the successful Half-Life franchise, temporarily halved the price for Left 4 Dead, a cooperative first-person shooter title, from $49.99 to $24.99, over the course of a few days through its centralized Steam client. The results exceeded Valve’s wildest expectations. Sales rose 3,000 percent, and the revenue generated over the weekend dwarfed the game’s sales during its launch. By temporarily offering the game at a price point that was affordable to everybody, and making the game instantly downloadable, not only was Valve able to breathe life into a four month-old game, but they were able to get more people attracted to the product. Valve’s DRM policy is fairly straightforward. If you purchased a game, you can download the game on another computer, should you login as that user. (This was, incidentally, how I was able to redownload Half-Life 2 last year after a move, when I had accidentally deleted my Steam files and couldn’t find the original disc that I had purchased. One overnight download and I was back in action, happily fragging alien creatures.)

There are a number of important points here.

1. Unlike the Kindle or the eReader, there isn’t an expensive entry point here. You don’t have to pay $400 to get started on Steam. You can download the client for free on the hardware you already have and just pay for the games. The cost is minimal and affordable.

2. Unlike the Kindle, the DRM rights aren’t limited to the device or a singular computer (unlike last year’s Spore DRM controversy). If your hard drive goes kaput, then you can download the game again on another computer. Simply identify yourself through your Steam ID, and you can download the game on as many PCs as you want.

3. By offering a variable price point that considered what the general (and probably out-of-work) consumer wanted, Valve was able to generate more interest in the title than they anticipated.

Case Study 2: For seven years, the comic book industry has offered Free Comic Book Day. The idea is this. The general consumer goes into a store, gets a few free comic books, and is reminded why comics are great in the first place. The consumer divagates through a store and purchases more titles. And the whole thing gets considerable media attention.

The smart retailers, like Mike Sterling, spiff up their stores and offer additional in-store sales: 10% off graphic novels, four for the price of three on manga. (And in Sterling’s case, the graphic novel sales alone paid for the cost of the FCBD floppies.) You get the community involved by making celebratory cakes. You get to find out what titles get people excited. You get to form relationships with potential new customers. You move product. (For Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find owner Shelton Drum, FCBD is one of the top three sales days of the year.) You get to demonstrate to people why they need to keep going to a comic book store. And, like the Valve experiment, there’s no expensive entry point. Plus, the consumers will walk away from the store with something.

Case Study 3: Board game manufacturers are now considering something that worked very well during the Great Depression. If you offer an American family a reasonably priced form of entertainment that will last for a long time, they may very well set aside $20 to buy the product during lean times. (According to a Hasbro spokesman, board games and puzzle sales rose 2% in 2008.)

Case Study 4: Soft Skull had a surprisingly profitable year in 2008 because the efforts here were focused on (1) knowing the audience and (2) working hard to connect the audience as intimately and personally as possible. (In other words, if you treat your audience like some dopey general demographic, why on earth would they bother to buy your product?)

* * *

So what do we take away from all this? How did these successes emerge during a recession? In each case, the individual’s daily realities were respected. There probably isn’t a lot of money to go around in the household, but there was just enough cash for a micropayment. The individual wasn’t asked to invest money she didn’t have in some fancy-schmancy technological doodad before purchasing an affordable form of entertainment. The individual received an affordable long-term option that would keep her entertained or occupied for many hours. The individual did not have to deal with invasive DRM that suggested she was a criminal. The individual was listened to and treated with respect by the retailer. And the retailer never assumed that it would make a sale. But the retailer likewise had opportunities to listen to what the audience wanted and to find out what it may be doing wrong.

So if there is a modicum of money to be made in a limping economy, why aren’t today’s publishers and book retailers accounting for these realities?

Most people who are now out of work cannot afford a $30 hardcover, let alone a $400 Kindle. And yet corporate arrogance keeps these units at prices unreasonable to someone unemployed who needs a little entertainment during an economic downturn. And what is the result? Anger boils to the surface. Long-term relationships with potential customers suffer because the corporate overlords remain inflexible on price point.

So if you’re a publisher or a bookseller, consider this. If you know that people can afford a $10 hardcover (as opposed to a $30 hardcover), why in the hell aren’t you learning from these examples? Why aren’t you offering a Valve-like time window where people can walk into a bookstore and purchase a few $10 hardcovers over a weekend? And why aren’t you promoting the hell out of this? Why isn’t there a Free Book Day in which you get to introduce people to the joys of books and you get to know your customers? Why aren’t you forming intimate and personal connections with readers so that they’ll continue to buy your products? And why aren’t you considering that they really don’t have a hell of a lot of cash to throw around right now?

Are you willing to take a hit on the first spate of units, much as Valve did, if there’s the possibility that you may just hit a thundering mother lode after the initial curve? Or do you want to continue to turn off readers?

Can you truly afford to refer to the territory between the coasts as “flyover states” when there are good people there who want to enjoy books right now? If you’re an author or a publicist, can you afford to thumb your nose up at any media opportunity that isn’t the New York Times Book Review? Or are you not really all that interested in establishing relationships? If you’re a newspaper or a magazine, why aren’t you citing the blogs or providing helpful URLs to the blogs that break the stories or make the connections? Why aren’t you hiring bloggers to write the articles? Don’t you realize that online audiences might come your way if they know that a particular voice is attached? And here’s a bold concept to consider. If you took the top 10,000 bloggers on Technorati and paid each of them $40,000 a year — a livable wage that would permit them all to carry out their work, which could also include serious investigations — that’s a cost of $400 million. For $400 million a year, someone could get the top 10,000 bloggers reporting for newspapers and seamlessly integrate their content into the great whole. And the newspapers could offer copy editing and journalistic resources so that their voices might improve. (Of course, you’d have to accept their unadulterated voices. For these voices, differing from the mainstream, are what caused these bloggers to rise up in the first place.)

If today’s publishers, booksellers, and media outlets hope to answer these questions and produce results similar to the above four case studies, then bolder ideas and experiments need to be attempted and shared with transparency in mind. It is not economically feasible to sit back and wait for the magic results of the stimulus package to trickle around. The current Dow Jones declivity has demonstrated the follies of lame ducks. The previous ways of doing things may very well be at an end: possibly with some permanence. But we won’t know this for sure until those in positions of power attempt a little innovation and modify the current formulas that aren’t working. Change, it seems, was something we hoped somebody else would do. But it’s now become quite apparent that today’s real innovators are those with the courage to take hold of their own destinies.

[UPDATE: Since this post, like many of these lengthy ones, originated from thoughts and musings I expressed on Twitter, here are a few related thoughts from others on the subject. @jimmydare observes that Orbit is experimenting with the $1 ebook. @AnnKingman pointed out that Record Store Day was a huge success for her local record store. (More details on what goes on at Record Store Day here.) @thebookmaven suggests that a Free Book Day might be one way that independent bookstores can compete with ebooks, and also suggests a $5 Book of Your Choice Day.]

Interview with Dean Haspiel

For his most recent project, Jonathan Ames collaborated with friend and artist Dean Haspiel for The Alcoholic, a graphic novel in which a character named “Jonathan A.,” who bears more than a few physical and character similarities to Jonathan Ames, is depicted in various alcoholic, sexual, and relationship states. To clear up some of the many staggering questions which emerged during my reading of the graphic novel, I emailed Mr. Haspiel five unusual questions. Mr. Haspiel graciously consented to answer these queries. The results are posted here for the benefit of future scholars.

Word on the street is that Mr. Ames wrote the bulk of his script at your place. To what degree did you indoctrinate Mr. Ames with comics? Did he come up with any of the paneling and art ideas (such as the frequent head splitting)? (I think of the mice snorting coke at the bar, which is something of a nod to Spiegelman.) Or, like your work with Harvey Pekar, did he defer most of this to you? Was Mr. Ames’s continued proximity to your drawing table of benefit to you in brainstorming ideas? Were there situations in which you would quickly sketch out an idea and Mr. Ames would run with it?

Jonathan has written screenplays and is familiar with writing for a visual medium and he wrote the entire script for The Alcoholic far away from my art table. The script he delivered had clear descriptions of what he wanted me to draw while allowing me the collaborative leeway to visually design and interpret portions of the story to befit my comic book sensibilities. To use your example, I designed the head splitting shots [a classic comix trope] while Jonathan wrote the snorting cocaine rats. Ultimately, The Alcoholic was a great collaboration between two like-minded auteurs who also happen to be great friends.

Jonathan A. shares striking physical similarities to Jonathan Ames. And this is also very evident in the artwork, where the parties and events you depict are 80-90% similar to their real-life counterparts. To what degree did you rely upon reference? And visually speaking, did you and Mr. Ames establish any specific ground rules on how this graphic novel blurred from the truth?

Cartooning is all about shortcuts and, like Dick Tracy’s Rogues Gallery where every villain looks like their name, it’s a cartoonists job to exaggerate features and with Jonathan, whom we based the protagonist’s likeness on, I was fortunate to have his aquiline nose and his receding hairline to define the characters “face.” And, since The Alcoholic spans the protagonists childhood to adulthood, I relied heavily on that nose. As for the rest of the supporting cast [except for Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky], I drew characters based on my studio mates and friends and/or actors that Jonathan suggested. Some of the sex scenes were fun to draw because I got my girlfriend to pose with me for the “sake of making art.”

There is one tragic moment on page 46, in which Jonathan A. falls asleep naked in a trash can. Did you persuade Mr. Ames to pose in any way for this? Or was it necessary to recruit another figure to recreate these sordid conditions? What lengths were you and Mr. Ames willing to go in the interests of verisimilitude?

I didn’t have the guts to ask Jonathan if this event actually happened to him and if he would pose for me. So, I asked my studio mate, Tim Hamilton, to pose for me and it was the best time he had in a garbage can in years. In general, I don’t use much photographic reference for the figures in my comix — I make most of it up. However, Jonathan furnished me with a bunch of photographs from his past to present and that helped me make iconic the lead character.

There are many instances in which the positioning of figures demonstrates developments over time. On Page 20, we see two panels: Jonathan A.’s girlfriend replaced by Jonathan A. himself, and young Jonathan replaced by the old woman. On Page 75, we see Jonathan A. in November 2000 and February 2001 waiting for San Francisco to call back. But not only has Jonathan A. sunken, but his drawer is slightly open, with socks and underwear sticking out. In changing the illustrative details ever so slightly, the panels are both static and slightly dynamic. Are slight changes along these lines what comics and graphic novels need to matter? To what extent was this a case of you wanting to shake things up so that you wouldn’t get bored drawing the same panels over and over?

Sometimes I draw action adventure [as seen in my Billy Dogma webcomix] and sometimes I draw semi-autobio situations [as seen in my Street Code webcomic and in my collaborations with Harvey Pekar]. Luckily, working with Jonathan, he made sure I would draw action to compliment the mundane. Because real-life yields less adventure than we’d probably like to admit, characters are often talking to each other in a room, on the street, and/or on the phone when they’re not escaping from horny geriatric dwarves or experiencing a diarrhea explosion in their pants on the streets of France. It’s the artists challenge to help contextualize action, no matter how mundane, and make it look damned interesting on the comic book page or the reader is left with a series of talking heads reacting to one another and that can get boring to look at.

On Page 120, there is a panel of Jonathan A. swimming that rather disturbingly resembles David Duchovny in Playing God. Mr. Duchovny, of course, is now known for his portrayal of a fucked up writer who drinks and sleeps with women on the Showtime television series, Californication. Rather interestingly, there are billboards now depicting Mr. Duchovny standing on the bottom of a swimming pool. And Mr. Ames has indeed worked with Showtime. I am now becoming slightly concerned that there is perhaps a conspiracy that currently involves Mr. Ames, Showtime, and Mr. Duchovny, and that you have perhaps unwittingly been ensnared within the plot. Are you aware of such a cabal? Did Mr. Ames brief you in any way about any connection? Did Showtime or Mr. Duchovny control your mind at any point?

Seriously?

Review: The Spirit

The critics were not happy during the screening. The critic to my left fell asleep in his chair for an hour. The critic to my right — a jovial man who really wanted to like it — gradually realized that this was a film impossible to come to terms with.

Gone were Eisner’s primary colors, replaced by muddy and amateurish black-and-white visuals with digitally added snow that never seemed to stick. The Spirit was so bad that it made Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy look like a masterpiece.

Everyone was excited at the beginning, knowing that this was Will Eisner’s classic character finally brought to the screen and that it was Frank Miller who was going to steer it forward. But one of the fascinating aspects of this screening was observing the precise point in which each audience member would give up, knowing that Miller was cheapening a legend. Knowing that the film was wasting its cast and crew. Knowing that Miller was producing something even more odious than The Dark Knight Strikes Again or that crappy Robocop comic. (And let’s be honest. Has Miller truly contributed anything important to comics in the last ten years?) Knowing that it was Mr. Rodriquez who was the great force behind Sin City, and not Miller. (And to think that Rodriquez abandoned the DGA for this hack.) Knowing that just about everybody wanted to lock Miller into a room and punch him repeatedly in the face for about eight hours for producing this travesty. Knowing that something we all had hoped would be good was such a steaming turd.

I counted eight walkouts. There may have been more. But I can’t be sure. I was too busy slumping in my seat, stunned by the film’s relentless determination to sodomize Will Eisner’s corpse, assaulted by the film’s muddled script, which couldn’t even clear up the origin story until two-thirds of the way into the picture, its needless misogyny (women are either whores, nurturers, or kept in the background as laconic sidekicks), its inability to strike a single human note, and its failure to evince one note of fun.

Yes, Frank Miller should be punched in the face for this. It’s the only way to be sure.

There were jokes — one involving an ass on a copy machine — in which not a single person laughed. And again this was a friendly and rowdy crowd. But they all sunk into their chairs, feeling very angry that their time had been greatly wasted.

Oh, Stana Katic, how you tried as Morgenstern! You are as wonderful as Mageina Tovah, who played Ursula in the Spider-Man movies. I can now watch you in just about anything. And I feel so sorry for you for having your talent wasted. How much did you fight to keep the remainder of your quirks in? Bill Pope, I have admired your cinematography for quite a while. But this film was beneath your great talent and you should have known better. Samuel L. Jackson, signing on for a role just because you’re a geek simply isn’t worth it anymore.

Miller directs his cast as if they are statuary and handles his crew as if they are expected to generate magic simply by standing around. He is an ugly and crude man who does not know the human condition, and he is more interested in Eva Mendes’s ass than any innate personality she can use to sex up her role. He has tossed around crude pop culture references — including buildings and trucks named after Eisner’s collaborators — in an effort to win over the fanboys. But the fanboys will not bite. What Miller doesn’t understand is that geeks are too refined to swallow codswallop. What Miller doesn’t understand is that hell hath no greater fury than a fanboy spurned.

If there is any justice, the fanboys will lynch Miller at a future Comic-Con. If there is any justice, this film will fail at the box office and the money men will reconsider handing Miller the Buck Rogers reboot.

But there is rarely justice in Hollywood. The fact that this film was allowed to be made is testament to that.

The Bat Segundo Show: Alison Bechdel II

Alison Bechdel recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #250.

Ms. Bechdel is most recently the author of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. To listen to our previous interview with Ms. Bechdel, check out The Bat Segundo Show #63.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Overly concerned with modifiers attached to artists.

Author: Alison Bechdel

Subjects Discussed: The relationship between visual developments and storyline developments, how personal developments worked their way into Dykes to Watch Out For, Tips o’ the Nib, narrative authenticity, research through asking people, being afraid of the telephone, the comics world as a simulacrum of the real world, being overly stimulated by the real world, developing specific background details, the risks of diverting attention between graphic novels and comic strips, dwelling upon a community vs. dwelling upon the self, therapy, Woody Allen, being ahead of the technological curve, Proust and the first telephone call in a novel, laziness vs. being seduced by technology, scanned lettering, managing all the characters in the strip, having characters refer to each other by first name, the advantages and disadvantages of deadlines, adapting media messages for the comics medium, Mad Magazine and Mort Drucker, fear of empty space, when text and images are not enough for comics, political semiotics and behavior, strips with little to no dialogue, artistic influences, fitting multiple people into a frame, portraying the butts of various characters, contending with censorious requests from newspaper clients, the limitations of four rows, Madwimmin Books and big box stores, why the bookstore is the perfect social nexus, the outcry upon introducing Stuart, the ideological balance between Mo and Stuart, gender jokes as cheap shots, contending with those who didn’t understand Bechdel’s storytelling style, the role of politics in Dykes, the moral responsibilities of a cartoonist, and Proposition 8 and the future of cartooning.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I think we should really clarify this for the record. I mean, the stripes on Mo’s shirt become more pronounced over the course of time. And they increasingly grew thicker during the course of the early ’90’s. And then sometime around 1995, they solidified into that absolute thickness that we have enjoyed for the last decade or so. I know there have been many Harry Potter jokes that you’ve thrown around. But you were there, of course, before Harry Potter.

Bechdel: That’s right.

Correspondent: But I have to ask you about the stripes. Had it occurred to you at any time to have Mo not wear a striped shirt? Or did you feel that this was such an indelible part of her disposition?

Bechdel: I think there might be one scene where she’s not wearing a striped article of clothing. But I can’t remember what it is or what its significance is. Indeed, the stripes did grow thicker. Very good observation!

Correspondent: Yeah! They did! They did! It was really great to read this all in one burst, because there are so many different character developments, which I plan to ask you about. But maybe I could probably phrase this better by pointing out Sparrow, for example. How the front curls that she had were chopped off to fit in with the adjusting times. And I’m wondering when you decide to change the look of a character. What circumstances dictate that? And some characters, of course, like Mo, stay the same over the course of time.

Bechdel: Wait, can I just make an observation? Thinking about those thickening black stripes, I think that’s of a piece with the increasing darkness of the strip and indeed the era in which it was passing through.

Correspondent: Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Bechdel: Maybe now if I were continuing to write it, Mo’s stripes would continue to get thinner and thinner.

Correspondent: Thinner, thinner, thinner.

Bechdel: No, I mean literal — I mean like figurative darkness.

Correspondent: Figurative darkness!

Bechdel: Yeah! Yeah!

Correspondent: So there’s some allegory here, I see. So it’s

Bechdel: Yeah, I’m totally bullshitting. I’m totally making this up.

Correspondent: Ah! No, no, this is good. This is good.

Bechdel: But…

Correspondent: But we can give the listeners something to latch onto here. Great allegorical decisions upon your part. I mean, how much of this is intuitive? And how much of this is really a conscious effort? Well, you know, Mo’s stripes look better. They just look better.

Bechdel: No, it was purely a visual decision. I don’t know. I just used a different pen or something. And it looked better thicker.

Correspondent: Okay, what about Sparrow’s hair?

Bechdel: Sparrow’s hair. Well, what made me decide to do that? I don’t know, but interestingly it prefigured her crossing over from being a lesbian into being a…

Correspondent: Yeah.

Bechdel: …a bisexual. I forget what she called herself. A bisexual lesbian.

Correspondent: I think she did.

Bechdel: But she didn’t want to completely let hold of her lesbian title. But she got this slightly more feminine-looking haircut.

Correspondent: Yeah, she did. She did. I mean, did you plan her to essentially shack up with Stuart?

Bechdel: No, not at that point. I didn’t.

Correspondent: How much does a visual decision like this predate the actual plotting? Or perhaps anticipate it in some way? It’s a very interesting observation.

Bechdel: It is interesting. What’s even more interesting is that the way that these storylines and developments prefigure my own life. Or are a reaction of things going on in my own life. Which I don’t like to admit, typically. But as I looked back over the book, I could see all these absurd parallels with my own life. It seemed almost indiscreet to have included them.

BSS #250: Alison Bechdel (Download MP3)

The Bat Segundo Show: David Rees

Just in time for Election Day! David Rees appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #248. Rees is most recently the author of Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of the War on Terror: 2001-2008.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Struggling to cast his vote.

Author: David Rees

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to also ask about the use of white space, and often the lack of white space, with some of the panels that have this extraordinarily long rant that one of the characters is conducting versus using the clip art and shifting it to the right hard edge of the panel or the left hard edge of the panel, or what not. What is your criteria in terms of white space and filling up the panel? Is it contingent upon the words you have to deliver for any particular strip?

Rees: You probably don’t know this, but the U.S. government allots all political cartoonists a given amount of white space in a year, and a lot of budgetary issues. If you don’t use your white space in a year, you don’t get it back the following year. There’s no rollover white space.

Correspondent: Yeah, yeah, it’s the appropriations and the earmarks I’ve heard.

Rees: So you have to really challenge yourself every year to use just enough white space, so that they’ll give you more white space next year. You have to submit this form. A white space form. Form JKL-202. And you submit this form. And they will give you more white space. And so as a political cartoonist — I mean, if you’re registered with the government, which I am, which all political cartoonists are supposed to be, if you find yourself at the end of the year that you haven’t used enough white space, then you go on a big rant. So there isn’t much white space around. You know what I mean?

Correspondent: Sure. Sure.

Rees: Because you don’t want to go over your limit immediately. Because you’ll be penalized.

Correspondent: But with all the “fucks” within the rant, that can be very problematic. I know you’ve gotten into trouble based off of that. Because of the specific requirements of this act.

Rees: Right. You’re referring to the Left Wing Political Cartoonists Profanity Allotment Act of 2003?

Correspondent: Yeah, yeah, I am. The number of “fucks” are quite frenetic. Exactly.

Rees: Well, I trade on the gray market. I trade — you know, cap and trade with carbon emissions? They set up the same thing for cartoonists, where you get a given amount of profanity. Fuck, goddam, asshole, shit, cocksucker, bitch, all that stuff. And then if you want to use more, you buy a set on the International Profanity Market. You buy a certain amount from other cartoonists.

Correspondent: They come in 200 units, I think.

Rees: Right. Well, it’s 200 syllables. You don’t actually buy the profanity by the word. You buy it by the syllable. So “motherfucker” is four syllables. You can use those four syllables to deploy one “motherfucker” or four “asses.” So I usually just buy them from cartoonists like Bil Keane, who does The Family Circus. He never uses his allotment. In a year, he never says “fuck” in The Family Circus more than ten times. So I will buy him out usually at the beginning of the year, so that I have enough to get me through a season.

BSS #248: David Rees (Download MP3)

The Bat Segundo Show: David Heatley

David Heatley appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #247. Heatley is most recently the author of My Brain is Hanging Upside Down.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: On the waiting list for a brain transplant.

Author: David Heatley

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to also talk with you about your “Family History” strip. I mean, it’s probably the closest thing in this collection to a hip-hop montage. You have, of course, the many births with the common images. A mother — one of your ancestors — giving birth with the “UNNNNH!” And you have a marriage with the “I do.” The swathed baby who is being held up by the white hands. And the like. I wanted to ask why repetitive images, or a hip-hop montage, seemed the best way to approach your own particular past.

Heatley: It’s funny. I never would have — that phrase “hip-hop montage” is strange to me. But it also rings true. So, yeah, thanks for that. You know, the repetitive thing is about — once I had my own baby, it was a realization that every single person that’s been born in my family history was this baby at one point. And every mother of that baby grunted in the hospital, and pushed it out. So it’s sort of honoring all these faceless women who have been lost. And it’s also — I think that strip is about, if you take any one of those babies, you can make a book this long about them. And so I’m just one of the babies in that book. And here’s my entire story. And I do it with my daughter at the end. Instead of doing one panel for her life, I wind up doing four pages, focusing on that day. So you could do that for any of those babies too. You could focus in on what was happening that day when they were born.

Correspondent: How did you settle upon the four Ns for the “UNNNNH?”

Heatley: (laughs)

Correspondent: I’m really curious. I mean, did you try out three? Did you try out five?

Heatley: I did, yeah.

Correspondent: Did that just look right? Four Ns really cut that particular verisimilitude?

Heatley: (laughs) Yeah, it did. You know, it’s like poetry. It felt right.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Heatley: That’s a great question though. Four Ns. I didn’t even know they were consistent.

Correspondent: Because it’s four Ns in almost every….I mean, we could dig it out right here. It’s four Ns almost every single time.

BSS #247: David Heatley (Download MP3)

Passive-Aggressive Newspaper Drones in Training at Montclair

I learned through The Beat (via Eric) that an installment of Keith Knight’s The K Chronicle has caused an uproar at the Montclair State University newspaper. Despite Knight basing his strip on a real-life incident and not even printing the full word in question, the editors of the student newspaper issued a campus-wide apology, with Montclarion editor-in-chief Bobby Melok stating, “It is never The Montclarion’s intention to offend its readership, and we sincerely apologize to all who were upset with this comic.”

I don’t know what’s more disheartening here: a newspaper of any sort lacking the courage to “offend” by depicting the truth or Melok’s current spinelessness-in-training, a passive-aggressive quality that will serve Melok well should he somehow nab one of the few jobs left at a Sam Zell-owned newspaper. To apologize for an artistic depiction of the word “nigger” (which, incidentally, never appeared in Knight’s strip in its entirety) is to draw greater attention to racial division, to give that word more significance than it deserves, and to suggest that anything probing into the cancer of racism is somehow racist. If anything, Melok should apologize for lacking the guts or the brains to determine what he deems appropriate. Melok went on to write, “We assumed because it was part of the syndicate, it was appropriate.” And I assume that because Melok assumes, Melok is incapable of the most elementary editorial judgment.

Mark Millar: The Pursuit of Popularity

Michael Czobit is a writer based in Mississauga, Ontario. He’s not fond of lengthy writer biographies. So the editor has provided two additional sentences to this introduction to provide Mr. Czobit with some necessary heft.

When the credits rolled, many people watching last summer’s film adaptation of Wanted didn’t really know Mark Millar. The audience may have known that he created, with artist J.G. Jones, the comic book series that the film was based upon. And “based upon” is important. Despite Wanted’s (potentially offensive) violence, the movie was scrubbed of some of the comic’s more controversial details. But unlike Alan Moore, Millar didn’t demand that his name be removed from the film. No, Millar was content to leave his name in Wanted’s credits. If he hadn’t, the 38-year-old Scot might risk missing out on mainstream attention.

Film audiences shouldn’t be disappointed by the comic’s missing details. Published in 2003, Wanted is unapologetically crass. Wesley Gibson narrates his life story, from office boredom to joining a fraternity of supervillains in a post-superhero world. (The comic’s supervillains and superheroes were replaced with superassassins. The comic’s opening homosexual sex scene was also dropped from the film, along with a lot of needless killing. And Gibson no longer resembled Eminem.) According to Millar, the director of the movie, Timur Bekmambetov, kept “70% of the book” and saved the film from becoming a straight crime story. Millar said producers had legal concerns about the story’s supervillains because of their similarities to Marvel and DC characters; a strange concern, considering the comic book had no legal trouble.

In the comic, Gibson is an unlikable narrator, who lacks the subtlety of another unlikeable narrator Millar wrote — Nazi Major Bauman in “Prisoner Number Zero,” which is one Millar’s best Wolverine stories. In Wanted, Gibson says, “I didn’t realize how much I hated the human race until I had the fuckers swanning around between my crosshairs.” This narration isn’t particularly antagonizing to the reader, but Gibson’s jokes about Down syndrome and babies born with spina bifida may be. Perhaps lazily, Millar titled the second issue, “Fuck You,” a charming name when considering some of the stale comic book in-jokes: in one scene, Mr Rictus, the super-supervillain (what do you call the villain in a story about supervillains?), kills the parents but spares their child, saying, “Leave him. With any luck, he’ll spend the next eighteen years training himself to avenge these idiots and give me someone interesting to fight when I’m an old man.”

For Millar, Wanted was a break from the mainstream comic work he had written for Marvel and DC Comics. So perhaps it’s especially ironic that Wanted ended up as the title that brought Millar to the mainstream. Gone were the normal editorial guidelines of superhero comics, though Millar had pushed against those for several years before this comic series. With the freedom, Millar created a story that lacked the moral complexity contained within his best mainstream work. Wanted is constructed in the summer blockbuster mold, but it’s more violent and profane, and it sold very well. Like in any entertainment industry, these strong sales meant that the comic was a success.

Less successful was Millar’s single issue of Youngblood: Bloodsport. Until June, the series seemed destined never to be concluded — if Millar’s fans could be so lucky. The artist of the series, the notorious Rob Liefeld, announced a fall continuation for Bloodsport. The first issue featured superheroes discussing blowjobs they’d received; Seahawk: “I’m just sick of all the decadence, Battlestone. Sick of the drugs, sick of the champagne, sick of Scott and Logan here dressing up as their girlfriends and giving us head.” Millar pushed his superheroes-in-the-real-world theme to its extreme and it failed in that first issue. Whether Millar is able to make the remaining issues compelling enough for his fans to forgive the novelty of Liefeld’s poorly illustrated art is the series’s remaining question.

If you were to only read Wanted and (somehow come across) Bloodsport, you’d think Millar’s work was a complete waste of time. But those two series display why Millar deserves attention: he risks the scorn of fans and commentators in attempting to entertain the majority of his readership. It is this reason that Millar attracts the best superhero artists in comics (aside from Liefeld). This year, Millar has comics being published with major artists including Bryan Hitch, Tony Harris, John Romita Jr. and Steve McNiven.

Millar broke into mainstream comics by embracing a populist philosophy. In comics, that means writing almost exclusively about superheroes. Other than his stay on Swamp Thing in the early 1990s, Millar stuck to this formula. What made Millar so different from other superhero comic writers was his courting of controversy. He unapologetically wrote stories with violent and political themes. His run on the series The Authority in 2000 ended when the publisher, DC Comics, censored the final issues. Millar jumped to Marvel and started Ultimate X-Men and later, The Ultimates. Writing the latter, Millar came closest to writing a superhero book on the level of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s The Watchmen. The Ultimates was Millar’s first collaboration with artist Bryan Hitch as they re-imagined Marvel’s Avengers team in a modern setting, free from decades of continuity. Millar and Hitch created two critically-acclaimed 13-issue volumes of the series, published from 2002 to 2007.

The Ultimates embraced a decompressed narrative – what Millar called novelistic – where characters didn’t appear in every issue, and the plot developed at a pace that strengthened suspension of disbelief; Millar and Hitch created a superhero story that reads as how it would really happen. The decompressed narrative was hardly the revolution Millar claimed it was in commentary of the first volume of the series, but a style characteristic that made The Ultimates distinct from the typical mainstream superhero book. Millar set the series in today’s pop culture world, dropping references to Shannon Elizabeth, Jennifer Tilly, President Bush, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp, and Robert Downey Jr. (Downey was used in a joke about drug use.) Millar also addressed U.S. politics as the country fought its “War on Terror” and its war in Iraq. Thor resists working for the U.S.-backed Ultimates team because of the country’s military operations and oil obsession. When Thor complains to Nick Fury about the U.S. negotiating with the terrorists, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Fury says, “Ain’t the first time the security services done deals with terrorists, big man.” Millar risked alienating readers who did not agree with his politics, though it’s unlikely he cared. The aforementioned Frank Miller and Alan Moore commented on politics in their most famous superhero stories.

In his commentary to the second volume, which began running in December 2004, Millar wrote, “Hollywood is just touching on this stuff now, three years later, and that makes me very proud of comics—how immediate we can be. It’s like being newspaper cartoonists. We don’t have a legal department watching over us.”

One problem with Millar’s political commentary is its bluntness and how it may be perceived as unnecessary preaching. In Superman: Red Son (2003), Millar writes about Superman landing and growing up in Kiev during the Cold War. By the end of the series, Superman, who has become the dictator of the world, realizes the underlying effect of his actions. He says, “We weren’t born here and we’ve no right to interfere.” Millar’s political analysis can be simplistic, but he shouldn’t need to defend writing about politics. But one does wonder what Red Son’s dumbed down material says about Millar’s readership. The reason Millar sometimes may offer blunt political commentary is the worry that people will miss the point. Regarding his new comic War Heroes, Millar said in an interview last month, “It’s amazing how many people seem to think this is a neo-con comic. Same thing happened on [Marvel’s] Ultimates, when it was clearly anti-war through and through. I feel like [director Paul] Verhoeven must have felt after Starship Troopers, in the sense that many people are missing the political satire.”

So why is Millar one of the most popular writers in comics? In an interview in the summer, Millar said, “It’s the worst kind of snobbery to want to be into stuff that most people aren’t. It’s a defect in character. Whereas being into something that everybody’s into, what could be nicer?” Millar — despite or because of his politics — has succeeded in creating comics that will appeal to the largest readership. His 2006 Marvel mini-series with artist Steve McNiven, Civil War, sold as if it was the speculator boom of the 1990s. Millar is not an experimental writer with theme or storytelling; the ones he uses, he twists only slightly. And he is not yet the legend Marvel claims he is in its monthly solicitations. Millar infuriates some with his writing and disappoints others when he deviates from established characterizations. Millar is not comics’ best writer, but he is one of the comic world’s best personalities; his ambition may lead to another Dark Knight Returns.

Millar has conquered one mainstream, and could conquer the larger one. His new series with John Romita Jr., Kick-Ass, is already being filmed and there are plans for a Wanted sequel. But it should be observed that both of those creator-owned series lack the politics of Millar’s best company-owned work. Both are violent superhero stories, and because they remain apolitical, the mainstream may still not know who Mark Millar really is. If the upcoming War Heroes film adaptation retains the writer’s political satire, what we may finally learn is whether Millar’s mix of superheroes, violence and politics was the right formula to break into the mainstream.

Review: Best Erotic Comics 2008

It is doubtful that Best Erotic Comics 2008 (Last Gasp, $19.95), edited by Greta Christina, will receive any kind of mainstream reviewing attention. The volume has, much like Tim Pilcher and Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s Erotic Comics (released earlier this year), even eluded the seemingly more permissive pastures of alt-weeklies. But it does warrant some attention, if only because erotica, fantasy, comics, and horror remain some of the only areas in American culture where certain forms of human behavior can be portrayed without needless censorship.

Like many anthologies, this volume relies on a few notable names to draw attention. Work from Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Gilbert Hernandez is included. In the case of Clowes and Hernandez, these are reprints from material that anyone remotely stepped in comics is likely to know about: excerpts from David Boring and “Kisses for Pipo,” respectively. Gloeckner’s one-page contribution, entailing a medical illustration of a blowjob, is, like most of her work, especially striking. But some of the more juvenile inclusions, such as Ralf Konig’s “Roy & Al: Sniffing Around,” bog down the collection. Konig’s work, which chronicles two dogs watching two gay lovers copulate, is artistically crude and predictable, too taken with hysterical text balloons (”OH, YOU LOVE ME?! SO C’MON, GIMME A KISS, MY TREASURE!!”) and an uninteresting situation that made me long for Catherine Breillat’s wit.

Toshio Saeki’s excerpt from “Inkenka” captures some of the taboo-breaking, quasi-hentai images that Saeki is known for: a doctor performing cunnilingus on a legless girl bandaged to a bed, and a man hacksawing a clitoris (with a distressed observer seen looking through the window at the top of the illustration). But these images don’t go nearly as far as Saeki’s other work and the inclusion here feels more like perfunctory padding.

One of the more surreal inclusions is Dave Davenport’s “Gigantic,” which features King Kong trying to get it on with Godzilla. Davenport knows how to get much out of his shading, and his paneling is interesting, but he doesn’t explore the intriguing possibility of how the human population, seeing their city destroyed by this kaiju copulation, are likely to be influenced or even titillated by this big beast action.

This failure in storytelling also plagues Ellen Fornery’s somewhat interesting “After Hours,” which involves a group of women bonding while they snap pictures of themselves in various poses. Forney knows how to set up a story. She’s even willing to draw unshaven armpits and comment on body image. But there’s a diffidence on her part to dwell upon what the greater emotional truth entails. We get a pat gotcha ending that anyone will see coming a mile away. (This is admittedly an early 1994 work from the Seattle-based cartoonist.)

Susannah Breslin’s “My, My American Bukkake,” which I’ve seen in a few other collections, offers a comic documentary for the uninitiated. Katie Carmen’s “Thrift Town at 3 A.M.” is also a standout, largely due to the penciling and colors. The art captures a lonely rendezvous between strangers at the famed Mission District store quite well. The faces are tired. The sex is lustful and desperate. And the world will go on tomorrow without any awareness of the present. Dale Lazarov and Steve MacIsaac’s “Talk Show Queers” falls into similar territory, but ends on a moment of sweetness readily combats the bombast and oppression of sensationalistic television.

I would have liked to see more “erotic comics” along these lines in this collection. Sandez Rey’s story expends considerable illustrative effort for a pedestrian fantasy. Likewise, while Justin Hall’s “Birthday Fuck” has a playful anecdotal quality, it’s nothing more than a stock rentboy situation.

Perhaps the audience for this collection wants nothing more than generic erotic comics. And that’s fine. But if alternative comics have found artistic credibility in the past few decades (which in turn caused other alternative comics artists to push the boundaries further), I’d think to think that erotic comics were capable of similar potential. Some artistic truths are too important to be kept inside the closet.

The Bat Segundo Show: Peter David

Peter David appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #225. He is most recently the author of Tigerheart and the Incredible Hulk novelization.

Condition of the Show: Investigating claimed nemeses of Goliath.

Author: Peter David

Subjects Discussed: On being prolific, producing work quickly, writing stories set in expansive universe, reacting to a universal construct, working with mythos, the Fallen Angel universe, the Star Trek: New Frontier books, Joseph Campbell and Star Wars, Willow, fundamental tropes in storytelling, whether or not all stories are derivative, retinkering the Peter Pan formula for Tigerheart, the advantages of pastiche, James Barrie, Don Quixote, the Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital’s litigious actions towards Peter Pan adaptations, emulating Barrie’s voice, the unproducable nature of Barrie’s Peter Pan play, the advantages of dream narratives, the conversational nature of the comic book script medium, cameo appearances and throwaway side characters in Tigerheart, verisimilitude, managing numerous characters in a universe, story elements that originate from the protagonist, speculative double entendres to George Bush, adjusting comic storylines as sales figures come in, spicing things up in Fallen Angel, keeping a comic book marketable and other commercial demands, David’s twelve-year run on the Hulk, boosting sales, the role of the comic book editor, David’s exclusive Marvel contract, Tennessee Williams, unique stories and salable stories, and coordinating storylines on other comic books.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I’m wondering though if there has ever been an instance in your comic career, in which an editor has come to you and said, “Hey, Peter, the sales for this particular title are flagging. What can we do to raise things up?” Has this ever an influence?

David: Sure. Of course it’s an influence. I mean, look, when it comes to — particularly my work-for-hire material — my job at the end of the day is to do two things. As far as the publisher is concerned. This is purely my job as far as the publisher is concerned, okay? Number one: Turn in a publishable script. And number two: Do everything that is within my power to write a book that will sell. Okay? Because I could turn in absolutely kickass scripts that aren’t going to sell for crap. But I feel to a certain degree that part of my job is to try and do everything I can to keep the book marketable. I’ve been doing that my entire comic book career. When I was writing Hulk, during my initial twelve-year run, I regularly had access to sales figures ahead of time. Three, four months ahead of time. Because that’s how far ahead we were soliciting. And they were incredibly instructional. Because what would happen is, I would be aware of a sales drop months ahead of time. Months ahead of time. So that I would have the Hulk in a particular incarnation going through a particular series of events. If I saw sales starting to flag, I’d say to myself, “Okay. That incarnation of the Hulk seems to be running its course. Time to come up with something else.”

So if you want to have an idea of when sales were starting to drop during my twelve-year run, at any particular time, look to a point where the Hulk undergoes some kind of transformation, backdate yourself about six months and that’s when I was looking at the sales figures, going, “Okay. We have a drop.” The problem nowadays is that we don’t know sales figures until after the book is already on the stands. So instead of having a three to four month early warning system, so that I can course correct ahead of time, we are always behind the curve by three to four months. Because we don’t know the sales numbers until at least two months after the book has come out. I mean, you know, we see the sales numbers on ICv2 or whatever it is. That’s when I see the sales numbers. We see those sales numbers come out two to three months after the book is on the stands, plus we’re soliciting three months down the line. So you can find yourself in free-fall before you’re aware of the fact that you’ve got any kind of attrition problem. Because every book’s always going to have attrition. Every book. Every book. There’s no stopping it. There’s always going to be. You’re going to get a build. And then it’s going to level off. And then it’s going to start to drop. Always. No matter what the book is. Always. The thing I was able to do on Hulk is, when I saw it start to drop, I would say, “Okay. Time to do something different.” And I could come up with a new angle on The Hulk that would boost sales. Because we’d have people going, “Oh, they’re doing something new and different with The Hulk? Let’s see.” As it is, I can’t course correct. And it’s incredibly frustrating.

Correspondent: But I’m also wondering if some of the stuff that you do with, say, Fallen Angel — I mean, you had a post on your blog recently in which a gentleman couldn’t purchase it from his neighborhood comic store. Because he was the only person purchasing the issue.

David: Buying it, yeah.

Correspondent: So for something like this, is Fallen Angel more of an unfettered territory to write in?

David: It’s unfettered territory. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to see sales be brought up.

Download BSS #225: Peter David (MP3)

The Bat Segundo Show: Mort Walker

Mort Walker appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #216. Mort Walker is the creator of Beetle Bailey. A volume of the first two years of Beetle Bailey is now out.

Condition of the Show: Observing fifty years of development.

Author: Mort Walker

Subjects Discussed: Walker’s drawing pace, the Beetle Bailey production cycle, filtering through the gags, rejected strips sent to Sweden, Beetle’s early days as a slacker in college, the military as the common experience, Walker’s relationship with the syndicate, the curly hair look of Buzz and Lois, portrait-like illustrations of women, early attention to background, the shrinking space of newspaper comics, Berkeley Breathed and Bill Watterson’s fights for space, appealing to the greatest number of readers, the development of Sarge’s girth and teeth, Plato as the only other character carryover, covering the eyes of characters, Dik Browne, Beetle’s early square form and perpendicular limbs, Walker as Lt. Fuzz, Lt. Jack Flap, African-American characters in comic strips, being confronted by editors by Ebony, Colin Powell’s approval of Flap, code numbers associated with the comic strip, writing a military-based comic strip without reference to Iraq, General Halftrack’s skirt-chasing and later sensitivity training, the circumstances that will cause Walker to change his strip, why Walker hasn’t included women soldiers, aborted cliffhangers, and characters staying the same in the Beetle Bailey universe.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Here we have a military strip. But there’s no reference to Iraq. And I wanted to ask you about this kind of balance.

Walker: I try to avoid anything controversial. Because if you do something pro-Bush, fifty percent of your readers are going to get mad, fifty percent of your readers might like it. But I’m after the whole broad spectrum. So I’m really avoid those things.

Correspondent: But to talk about the broader audience, I mean, Bush’s approval rating isn’t exactly the best in the world. It’s under 30%. So you have 70% of the audience if you were to play around with this kind of thing.

Walker: Yeah. Well, anyway, I try not to get too topical or controversial. That’s why I’ve avoided the war pretty much. I don’t mention Iraq very much. Very seldom.

Correspondent: Even though this war has lasted longer than World War II? I mean, doesn’t it seem…?

Walker: But there’s so many people that are angry about it that I’ve got to be really careful about how I treat it. Mostly, I just ignore it. People say, “Well, when is Beetle going to go to Iraq?” I said, “Jesus Christ. I hope never!” You know, I don’t want to send him there because it’s very difficult to deal with. I’m just keeping him in basic training. It’s the common experience that all soldiers have. If I take him out somewhere and specify into some particular kind of work, I’ll lose a lot of my readers there. They won’t be interested or they won’t understand it. But everybody understands basic training. That’s where I keep him.

Correspondent: I mean, you had this similar situation with Jack Flap. That’s why I present this as well. I mean, that didn’t hurt you. In fact, that got Beetle Bailey more attention, you know?

Walker: Yeah, but it was a common experience. Anyway, that hasn’t hurt me.

The Bat Segundo Show: David Hajdu

David Hajdu appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #207. Hajdu is most recently the author of The Ten-Cent Plague.

Condition of the Show: Dabbling into hidden threats.

Author: David Hajdu

Subjects Discussed: Hajdu’s approach to journalism, primary sources vs. secondary sources, categories of people to talk with when preparing a book, tracking down people who disappeared, grassroots methods of finding people, changing names, the untold story of women in comics, Irvin Kersener’s early career as an agitprop documentary filmmaker*, corroborating facts against shifting memory, telling history without a fully documented record, Billy Strayhorn’s career before Duke Ellington, remembering details based on a nugget, the ever-shifting complexities of William Gaines, whether EC Comics could have survived if it shifted to magazine format, Will Eisner on not being taken seriously, what caused the great comics scare, literate comics, the fear of kids turning on parents because of a medium, Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocents and the media’s willingness to give credence to Wertham’s anti-scientific tract, why America needs a lowbrow cultural blaming point for social ills, cultural class bias, pornography and other populist mediums as subliterary forms, comics decency legislation vs. the Hays Production Code, postwar censorship, comics being placed in a position not to challenge authority, Charles Biro’s Crime Does Not Pay vs. yellow journalism, and Bob Wood bludgeoning a woman to death.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I’m wondering if certain artists may have changed their names because the comic book industry was considered a great calumny for many of these various artists and writers. Did you face a problem along those lines in tracking people down?

Hajdu: I did. I had trouble with people who changed their names, but not for that reason. Because most people used their real names. Most people, but not all. Some use pseudonyms. Still do in comics. But most people intended to use their real names. But women married. And women who married in that time took on their husbands’ names. And I was surprised to find when I was doing my research how many women there were in comics. I mean, dozens and dozens of women who did terrific, beautiful, important work. Marcia Snider is one. I was never able to find her. I’d been told that she’d married. And nobody I could find knew what her married name was. In the case of the great many women artists, I only had their maiden names. And I couldn’t find them. I tried social security records, but they weren’t of that much value. And I did hit a wall with women artists. And I’m sure to this day, much of their story remains untold because they’ve been impossible to find.

Correspondent: Well, what steps did you take to atone for this? Because if you’re slicing off a portion of comic book history — a very important part of comic book history that involved women — I mean, how did you make up for this?

Hajdu: Well, I sought to do justice to the story that I can tell. I don’t know what I don’t know. I did make a point to ask about those women to the people who I could find. And that’s the only recourse.

* — Despite Hajdu’s representations in this interview, Kershner remains quite alive!

Hulk Smash. Critic Write.

Guardian: “Idea is. Dr Bruce Banner – on run. Keep anger under control. Banner hope not turn into Hulk. Banner live …. in Brazilian slum. Work in factory. Total babe there fancy Banner. Banner quite fancy babe. But Banner not make move. Babe in film to keep guys interested. Until Banner’s girlfriend Liv Tyler come into action later. Tyler not mind Hulk thing. Hulk remind her of dad. Steven Tyler. Possibly. Much location work. Overhead shots. Of slums. City of God vibe intended. But this rubbish. Like everything else.”

Dave Sim: The Stalin of Comics

In case you haven’t heard the news, the once great Dave Sim has demanded that anyone who corresponds with him must pledge that Sim isn’t a misogynist. The whole business has erupted into a sad and terrible train wreck in which Sim has nearly alienated his friend Chester Brown and spurned long-time fans. And it’s all because Sim doesn’t appear to be acquainted with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Calling Sim a misogynist is not libelous. It is the truth. A misogynist is someone who hates women. And the man who wrote, “It wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to categorize my writing as Hate Literature against women,” in Issue #186 of Cerberus, speaking in his own voice, is most certainly a misogynist. For years and years, Sim has been spewing out this bile. And rather than take his lumps and be the man he thinks he is, he instead wants to set terms and alienate everyone in the process. These are not the actions of a civilized person.

For years, I’ve tried to overlook Sim’s hateful ramblings for the great wonders contained within the early books of Cerberus. But if Sim is going to set terms for us, I’m going to set a few terms for him. Until Sim can confess that he is the working definition of a misogynist, I will never buy another comic written or illustrated by Dave Sim or acknowledge Dave Sim in any way ever again. The great talent Dave Sim has been replaced by an atavistic creature who now calls himself “Dave Sim,” who believes himself to be some small-time Stalin and perpetuates this sad despotism as long as his delusional hubris will let him. He has now fully disappeared from my cultural radar. And it’s too damn bad. Because when he was still sane, he was an innovator.

Free Comic Book Day

I walked into my local comic shop and saw few unfamiliar faces looking over a few freebies. I walked out with a thick stack of comic books, headed home, and consumed them in the best way: in one mad tear, one mad comic book binge.

It was Free Comic Book Day, the comics industry’s to Halloween. But candy’s handed out in May. Comic publishers supply plentiful issues that are then handed out in comic shops around the world. It isn’t the pounds of sugar that will make your head spin, but the smell of fresh ink.

Four or five hours passed before I put down my last free comic book. A thought balloon hung over my head. What a complete waste of time. The seventh annual FCBD was a bad haul with the effort cut to accommodate the price. I must be insolent to complain about getting forty-one free comic books, but when a company gives you a sample, the idea is to make you a paying customer. But most publishers forewent storytelling and went straight for the sales pitch. These were comic brochures.

The majority of the Free 41 were either excerpts or pages of preview art. And the problem with the multiple previews could be seen in Viz’s Shonen Jump sampler. It had three stories — all close to incomprehensible.

(On the topic of the free manga offered, Jump was one of only three that fit the category. The others were a full-length graphic novel from Antarctic Press and a preview of the manga adaptation of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride novel series. Reading it left-to-right or the traditional manga way did not make the preview any less dumbfounding.)

Perhaps I could forgive the majority of comic book publishers had they offered new material instead of reprints. Gemstone Publishing brilliantly reprinted a 48-year-old story featuring Gyro Gearloose, successfully ensnaring today’s youth with colorful caption boxes: “How does Gyro happen to be in this awesome place? It is necessary to flash back to a recent day in Duckburg!”

DC Comics and Maerkle Press were the only publishers to offer a regular issue of a series for free. Unfortunately, issues were of the how-dumb-do-you-think-kids-are quality of Tiny Titans #1 and Love and Capes #7, the latter being a series flapping wildly in the world of superhero cliché.

DC’s other offering was a reprint of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman #1 — an entertaining book, but one originally published three years ago and since reprinted numerous times. Dark Horse offered new Hellboy stories from Mike Mignola — one of the few FCBD comics worth the trip.

Marvel, during a major movie weekend, made some questionable choices. It published a brand new story by the strong creative team of Mike Carey and Greg Land. But it was an X-Men story, not Iron Man or even the Hulk. Those two characters, who appear in movies this summer, were relegated to a new Marvel Adventures book.

The Free 41 could have been worse. There was variety, from kids’ books to comic book journalism to books where the protagonist doesn’t wear a mask. Indie publishers provided the bulk of the books but only one publisher, Oni Press, offered a full-length story that was outside the superhero genre. Unsurprisingly, superheroes, rather than regular Joes, had the highest representation.

If I were to offer a sappy speech about FCBD, the first thing I would say is that the event is supposed to be about more than just the free comics. It’s supposed to be a celebration of the medium, its power to tell a story, its rich history. But how can I believe that when most books bothered only to make a pitch to buy the next one, the real one?

If FCBD was about seriously good comics, the titles offered would have been worth reading. But where was the free issue of DMZ? Of Fables? Of Thunderbolts? Of The Fantastic Four? Of Ex Machina? Of The Killer? Of Uncanny X-Men? Of 100 Bullets? Of anything happening now? Of the book that will transform someone into a Marvel Zombie? Of the book that will make someone an addict of any comic book genre?

A free book along those lines wasn’t in my thick stack. And I doubt that many people who were in a comic shop for the first time will visit again and leave with an altogether different stack that contains a receipt. Reading an FCBD comic is like talking to the friend who tells you that he has an amazing story, but he doesn’t have the time to tell it to you right now. There were people in the stores, and FCBD deserves credit for this. But all these people ever got was a tease.

The smart shop owners built events into the day — artist signings, contests, etc. Some owners, however, can’t afford to do that. The villain of FCBD becomes the low quality comics that are not truly indicative of today’s comics — whether mainstream or indie. And if comic publishers want new readers, than they need to give the newbies the same comics that the old readers will pay for. The best sales pitch is a cliffhanger, not another six-page preview.

NYCC: An Impromptu Interview with Jeffrey Brown

On Friday afternoon, I began walking the floors of New York ComicCon, collecting strange snippets that will be glued together for a future installment of Segundo. I counted thirty-seven Jedi Knights (some of them portly, making me wonder why Jedi discipline doesn’t seem to involve physical fitness), two Stormtroopers (both in good shape), and two Princess Leias (both in remarkably gaunt shape and dressed to show this). If one must choose a side in the Star Wars/Star Trek dichotomy, I’m more of a Trek man myself, even though I recognize that the franchise is dead and hasn’t produced anything of quality since Deep Space Nine. Nevertheless, if costumes are anything to go by, there is a distinct sign that Trek is on the wane with the true believers.

I’m not quite sure what Roman centurions and Jedi knights have in common, aside from the fact Asimov’s Foundation series serves as the missing link between the two. But I must confess that, of all the costumes I espied, I was the most impressed with the Centurions (pictured above).

Speaking of Star Wars, I learned about the economics of lightsabers. A good lightsaber will cost you around $100. More if you want it customized. Joseph Semling, purchasing manager of Brian’s Toys, told me that he has anywhere from 20 to 100 lightsabers of any particular type in his warehouse. And if you’re wondering what a lightsaber dealer is likely to net, a lightsaber goes wholesale for about $75 and is then sold from anywhere from $25 to $50 more at retail. And if you’re wondering how Semling makes his money, he informed me that he raises the price of his lightsabers when the supply goes down. Like anything, the lightsaber is subject to a supply and demand curve. But even if the supply remains relatively stagnant, I suspect if Semling moved six lightsabers a day, discounting overhead, he could probably pay for his New York hotel room.

But the most intriguing conversation I had was with Jeffrey Brown, whose work I was apparently more interested in than I realized and whom I may have profoundly confused with my line of questioning. I’ll let the following partial transcript speak for itself. But Brown, I suspect, has more going on in his personal chronicles than most people realize. And I’m hoping that one day, I’ll be able to sit down with him and give him the full-length treatment he deserves.

Brown: I don’t really write about my personal sex anymore.

Correspondent: I know. But I’m saying that people are still interested in the past.

Brown: Yeah.

Correspondent: So this might be a conundrum. Many people are expecting more of that in the present and the future.

Brown: Well, um, I just keep dangling it in front of them. Well, that sounds bad.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Brown: What I mean to say is that maybe I can just make it seem like I might write more. But I’ll really just write whatever I want.

Correspondent: Okay, I propose something for you. What if you were to fictionalize the personal and therefore it’s not personal sex. But it’s fictional sex. I mean, you did that with the robots. But to have a story that doesn’t involve you as the chief protagonist.

Brown: I have lots of ideas and I’ve got a couple more autobiographical things that I want to cover. Including writing about religion. Growing up with my dad being a minister. And I want to write a book about pregnancy. And the book I’m working on right now is about becoming a cartoonist. And then once those are out of the way, I have some ideas about fiction-like stories that I want to get into. Although the first one, at least, there’s no sex. Well, there could be. I don’t know. I haven’t written it yet.

Correspondent: Well, it’s not all sex. I’m just trying to point out the first-person vs. third person vs. fictive vs. real and all that.

Brown: Well, if you don’t know me, I guess it’s all fiction writing.

Correspondent: I don’t actually. I don’t know you.

Brown: Well, you kinda do.

Correspondent: Well, not entirely. Because this is entirely true. That’s the question.

Brown: But to people listening to this, they don’t know.

Correspondent: Well, now they know. Now that we’re talking about it. We’re clarifying.

Brown: But to them. To them, this could be fiction.

Correspondent: Oh, you may not even be Jeffrey Brown.

Brown: That’s true.

Correspondent: Okay, so let’s talk about this reality vs. what you put in your books.

Brown: Well, it’s something. And I haven’t entirely figured out why. I mean, there’s something about when you know it’s true. There’s something about that honesty, that authenticity, that kind of heightens the impact of things sometimes. Which is why I’ve avoided doing more fictionalized autobiography. And sometimes I’ve thought about moving in that direction. And then it just doesn’t feel right for what I’ve done so far. But on the other hand, books — like some of the Bighead stuff — there are some very personal autobiographical elements sort of in there. So in a way, I kinda do it occasionally. In various half-assed ways.

Correspondent: I’m wondering what boundaries you’re placing on yourself as you’re getting older. As you have a family. And all that.

Brown: I definitely. Well, not writing about personal sex anymore. There’s boundaries there that I’m much more aware of. You can see that in the new book, Little Things, where everything’s approached from a slightly different direction. Where I’m much more careful about what I’m revealing and how I’m revealing it.

Correspondent: But this issue of authenticity that you were talking about earlier, I mean, this causes a bit of a problem if you have boundaries like this.

Brown: Unless you just ignore it. Fuck it. I’m going to do — oh wait, can I say that?

Correspondent: No, you can say whatever you want.

Brown: This is going on the Internet? Oh, Internet. Then I just leave those questions up to people analyzing the work. Then I just ignore the problems.

Correspondent: Now wait a sec. Wait a sec. That was a very great way of evading the question.

Brown: I know. I tried earlier.

Correspondent: Yeah, I know. Well, I’m going to have to put it — just try to get an answer on this notion of how you retain truth despite having these boundaries.

Brown: (laughs) I mean, certainly there’s a theory that some people have. That fictionalizing — that by lying, you can get at a more real truth. So in that sense, whatever boundaries I have, I’m walking some sort of line between those boundaries forcing me to reveal some kind of more pure truth in that sense. But then we can go into how reliable is my memory. I think people who know me would generally say that I’m pretty honest. But it’s also possible that it could all be a big act. And I’m a really good actor. Totally. But –

Correspondent: The issue I have is here you are putting some kind of identity. It doesn’t really matter how true it is.

Brown: Right.

Correspondent: Nevertheless, it is true in some sense. And then there are these boundaries on top of that. So as a result, you’re painting yourself into these interesting limitations. Possibly to be more creative.

Brown: And I think the other thing to is that I tend to think of all the autobiographical works as a bigger picture when you put them together. So one book, for example, might have a lot of boundaries in some way that limit what you’re seeing from that book. It’s a very limited view of me as a person or as a character. Or however you want to put it. But when you read the other books, they all kind of inform each other. And so it’s like a tapestry of information that combines. It’s almost like it gets around those boundaries. Maybe.

Correspondent: Well, I also ask this because, in Little Things, you’re very clear about when things happen in that. You actually date the stories. If I’m thinking of the right collection. This happened during this particular time. I drew this during this particular time. And so as a result, it seems to me that there is an effort on your part to be truthful here.

Brown: No, I was just ripping off John Porcellino with that. No, I actually was ripping off John Porcellino. Well, I do that. And if you look in Unlikely, where there’s the drawings from photographs. Or AEIOU, where there’s the receipt from the dinner. And that stuff’s kind of just an additional way of telling people that, despite those boundaries, I’m trying to be as honest as possible and as forthright. Obviously, there’s probably some weird subconscious thing going on. There’s things that I’m not saying. Or things that I’m in denial about maybe. But what I’m trying to do is be honest.

[UPDATE: Our NYCC podcast, featuring this interview and others, including chats with Kyle Baker and Scott McCloud, should go up soon. But alas, I'm now on deadline. But I'm hoping to get the podcast up once I beat these deadlines.]

NYCC: The New York Comics Legend Award

Eric Rosenfield reports:

The first annual New York Comics Legend Award was held at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square where a number of die-hards ponied up $350 each to see the award given to Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, etc. etc. He’s something close to the PT Barnum of comics, fond of such catchphrases as “True Believer” and “Excelsior!” I had come with this guy. At first, we milled around and ate the excellent canapés. We were upset because the luminaries—including Stan Lee, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, his DC counterpart Paul Levitz, and long-time comics writer Peter David—were all sequestered away in their own area, separate from the people who had paid so much money to be there. Then the show began. Peter David got up and told a number of amusing stories about Stan, including the way that Stan saved his family. (Basically, when Peter was getting a divorce, both he and his wife wanted custody of the children. Peter got a character reference from Stan, which had apparently astonished the court-appointed psychiatrist and made the judge awestruck. His wife said that, during the whole time she was with the psychiatrist, all he wanted to to was talk about was how Peter knew Stan Lee.) Next up was Sharad Devarajan, the CEO of Virgin Comics, who didn’t actually know Stan and seemed to be there only because we were all in the Virgin Megastore. At least he seemed to understand his irrelevance and got off quickly. Then Joe Quesada came up to the dais and talked about how Stan always liked to rip into him. Joe: “Every once in a while I’ll get a call from Stan and he’ll say, [doing Stan Lee impression] ‘This is Stan Lee. I’ve just read the last few months of Marvel Comics. [Dramatic beat] What’s wrong with you?’”

Then there was Stan himself. He apologized for not having a speech prepared. He hadn’t known he was supposed to give one. He made fun of Joe Quesada a little and then talked for a bit about comics and his new book, Election Daze, where he wrote captions, speech bubbles and thought balloons on photographs of political figures. Finally he threw his hands up and said “Excelsior!” The crowd erupted in applause.

Afterward, the comics luminaries did come out and mingle with the crowd. I managed to corner Joe Quesada for an interview, though, being the professional that I am, I didn’t bring an audio recorder. I asked him about whether he thought that the big crossover events that Marvel has been doing (Civil War last year and Secret Invasion this year) might be intimidating to new readers who maybe don’t want to buy all these different books in order to keep up with the storyline. He acknowledged that this had been a problem in the past (I mentioned some cross-overs from the nineties, Captain Universe and The Evolutionary War, which were particularly hard to follow without buying an enormous number of comics), but he said that the way they had built these series was by making them contained within the few issues of their own comic. You only had to read the other comics if you wanted to delve deeper into the story. You could get a complete comics experience just in the seven issues of Civil War, for example. This method has been successful: “I think Civil War has gotten more new readers into comics,” he said, “then anything else in the past ten years.” I asked him if having two Marvel Universes, the original and the “Ultimates” might confuse new readers or dilute the characters, and he said that both the original and Ultimate comics were selling very, very well, and he’s heard of a lot of people getting into comics through the Ultimates. “A lot of people told me that a long time ago the first comics they ever bought were GI Joe, back when they did these TV/comics crossovers. Nowadays people tell me that Ultimate Spider-Man was the first comic they ever bought.”

There’s a scene at the end of the first issue of Secret Invasion in which duplicates of many Marvel characters dressed as they appeared in the seventies show up. I asked Quesada if there was any worry about cognitive dissonance with all the characters in seventies’ clothing. Because in the Marvel Universe continuity, none of them are old enough to have been around in the seventies. The extreme example of this is Luke Cage—Power Man—walking around with a giant afro and a tiara on his head. He said, “Yeah, Power Man had that tiara and it was six years ago [in Marvel continuity], he was just having a real fashion problem then. You know, that’s the least of the problems with the Marvel Universe. Every story practically contradicts other stories because we’re coming out with so many of them all the time. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. You can’t get caught up in these things.” And then he leaned in conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you something about comics. We just make this shit up. Every day we go in there and just make this shit up.”

I found Quesada’s attitude refreshing when compared against sticklers in the comics world — the type so ably parodied by Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons — who get upset when any little thing seems out of place. Some might not understand why these issues of details and crossovers and parallel universes are so important and why Marvel’s attitude toward them is so interesting. You see, since the eighties, Marvel’s big rival, DC Comics, has been fanatical about updating their characters for new generations, constantly rewriting the histories of Superman, Batman, Wonder-Woman and so on to make them more “relevant.” Like Marvel’s current situation with the Ultimates and the main universe, DC once had two universes, one which took place in the contemporary DC Universe and one which was about the characters from the “Golden Age” of the thirties and forties, a universe where Superman grew old and married Lois Lane and Batman had a child with Catwoman. DC eventually decided that these two universes were too confusing and basically destroyed them both in Crisis on Infinite Earths, creating a new, “Post-Crises” DC, resulting in mixed reactions from the fans. My conversation with Quesada tells you a lot about Marvel Comics’s attitude and why it’s been more successful than DC for decades now; at DC, everyone seems very concerned about making everything just right, where as at Marvel they just seem to be having a good time.

Finally I managed to squeeze into the crowd and get a moment with Stan the Man himself. “Stan!” I said, “I’m Eric Rosenfield!” He looked at me for a moment before quipping, “THE Eric Rosenfield?” “Yes,” I said. Knowing I was only going to have a few more seconds with him before he was whisked away, I shot out the one burning question I had of the old Jewish comics maven, “I wanted to see you on Saturday [at the New York ComicCon] but I can’t because it’s on Passover! Why are you speaking on Passover?” I didn’t mention that it was particularly galling for the ComicCon to be taking place on Passover when New York is the epicenter of Jewish comic creators. “I don’t know what to tell you,” said Stan sweetly. “I may not be getting into Heaven, but at least we got to meet here.”

As Ed and I shuffled out, we were given a gift bag full of Virgin Comics. [ED: I politely declined the bag.] It didn’t matter that these comics are awful. It didn’t matter that we had to muscle out through the crowds in the Virgin Megastore into the crowds in Times Square. I was skipping with joy. After all, I’d just met Stan Lee.

Edward Champion reports:

Thursday night’s event had the feel of a corporate retreat initiated on a casual Friday. Crammed throngs transformed the basement into a semi-sweltering exposition. Caterers, dressed in red Spider-Man shirts and wearing false smiles, were casually ignored. Guests extended their anonymous tendrils onto trays and gulped down the food without thanks. Black plastic spiders were placed delicately in martini glasses. I observed one apparent reporter who wore a prominent button for Stan Lee’s book, Political Daze, and I had to wonder if the reporter was there to cover the event or serve as a Marvel advertisement. As Peter David observed during his remarks, “Ten people came up to me with business cards, wanting to give me more.” Did many misconstrue this brush with the greats as a networking session?

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but remain somewhat impressed by the madness of it all. Stan Lee had an entourage that, as Eric remarked later, resembled a Latin American potentate. Here was a man whose greatest creation was, as Joe Quesada observed, Stan Lee himself. During the ten minutes he sauntered through the crowd, flashing a politician’s smile. He’d place an arm around a fanboy’s shoulder for a quick camera snap, only to spin around and toss out a quip to another. He never spent more than thirty seconds with any one person. The crowd, of course, ate this up with the same zeal in which they scarfed down the canapés.

“Truth, above all, is his major contribution,” said Peter David. But I wondered what kind of truth was on display here. Being relatively clueless, I had no idea that people had shelled out $350 for this event until Eric pointed this out to me. Lee proudly boasted to the crowd that he was a tightwad. And I had to wonder whether some magical Marvel accountant had figured out a way to pull off this awards ceremony to ensure that Marvel made a sizable profit.

As Eric talked with Joe Quesada, I couldn’t help but observe a short man protectively clutching a plastic bag containing original Marvel artwork. Another comics fan began talking with this man, asking him how much he had paid for it. “Too much,” said the man. When the fan begin to open the top folds of the bag, the man shrieked and waved the fan’s arm away. He told the fan that the artwork was very personal to him because he knew many people. But if he knew many people, why then was he spending much of the party alone?

The comics industry is built on hardcore fans like the man with the plastic bag. And these fans were willing to pay considerable money to spend only a few seconds with the men they considered masters, hoping to feel important by proximity. But what made me feel truly sad was the way they had been casually sequestered away from their heroes, while their heroes saw no ethical conundrum in profiting at their expense.

[UPDATE: Comic Foundry senior editor Laura Hudson reports that because she has written critically about Virgin that she would be banned from future Virgin events. Meanwhile, Lance Fensterman reports that there were many unhappy fans because Stan Lee wasn't signing anything.]

Interview with Charles Burns

Four new podcasts were released today at The Bat Segundo Show. And since we’re on the subject of Segundo, what follows is a short excerpt from my conversation with Philadelphia-based artist Charles Burns, who I chatted with during a recent visit through New York.

You might know Burns’s work from his advertisements or his illustrations for The Believer. But he’s best known as the writer and illustrator of the graphic novel, Black Hole, a compilation of his twelve-volume comic book. Burns worked on this over the course of ten years. And one of its remarkable qualities is the way that it remains remarkably consistent in its tone, despite the fact that Burns saw his two daughters grow up as he patiently put his work together. Black Hole depicts the story of a sexually transmitted disease that afflicts various teenagers in the Pacific Northwest. The work is very much a Rorschach test for the reader. One might infer a parable about AIDS or, if you wanted to get really reductive, innocence lost. Or it can be simply enjoyed as a dark tale of American adolescence gone awry.

Since Burns has conducted many interviews for his magnum opus, the challenge was to come up with a few conversational angles that he hadn’t encountered. But the interview frequently drifted into abstract personal memories when I asked him about a specific facet of Black Hole, demonstrating perhaps that artistic ambiguities aren’t always so easily pinpointed.

Correspondent: You’ve probably seen Vanessa Raney’s really lengthy critical essay of Black Hole, where she analyzes your panels quite in-depth. And I actually wanted to ask you about a comparison she made. She pointed out that Keith, Chris, and Eliza actually represent the same relationship structure in Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. And I wanted to ask you about this. Was Sartre ever on the mind in concocting this narrative? How did the relationship structure begin?

Burns: Boy, that’s a good question. I don’t know that I’ve read the essay that you’re referring to. But there have been some questions asked along those lines before. It really wasn’t an influence or that wasn’t in my mind when I was creating the story. I guess I was trying to create these characters. Two very different types of women. The main character is just coming to terms with the differences between them and his attraction to them. His initial attraction to Chris, a girl that he admires from his biology class, is this very kind of clean-cut — what he thinks is kind of clean-cut. The kind of woman that he’s putting on a pedestal. She’s perfect. But he doesn’t really know anything about her at all in reality, other than just that she seems amazing.

And then he meets a very different kind of woman, who’s very much earthy. Much more sexual. And he finds himself attracted to her, much to his dismay. So the story’s really his coming to terms with his reaction, I guess, to these different women.

Correspondent: But no Jean-Paul Sartre.

Burns: No.

Correspondent: Any literary…

Burns: I would love to be able to say that there’s a good comparison there. But, no, that wasn’t the case.

Correspondent: Okay. I also wanted to ask you about some of the anatomical close-ups throughout Black Hole. They remind me very much — in addition to the pustules and the various biological impediments that many of the characters have — it reminds me very much of the sort of World War II venereal disease films.

Burns: (laughs)

Correspondent: I was wondering. What kind of visual references did you use for these particular decisions? Or was it just more of an intuitive choice?

Burns: It was probably more of an intuitive choice. I mean, there’s those things that I grew up that are out there. I think there’s references in the movie to sitting in the biology health class and looking at — learning about sexuality that way. There’s was always this kind of very strange antiseptic situation. I remember one time in biology class, there was — I guess, what do you call it? — a TA. A student teacher. And there was some film on — I don’t know, reproduction. And she showed the first half of it. And then she abruptly turned the film off. And, of course, everybody in the class said, “Oh, keep running it! We want to see it again! We want to see the rest of it.” And she would say, “No, no, no, no.” And finally she turned it back on. And there was this very graphic portion of the movie, where we were seeing an IUD inserted into a vaginal — (laughs)

Correspondent: Yeah.

Burns: And everybody just immediately got very, very quiet and very, very uncomfortable. Because here’s this — suddenly after seeing these very typical movies about “Your Growing Body,” suddenly we were seeing these very graphic representations. It was an odd moment.

Correspondent: Is it something about that period between, say, 1945 and 1975? Was that very much on the mind — in terms of getting this particular look? Or this particular emphasis on close-ups and warts and the like?

Burns: I don’t know. I guess that’s more of a personal thing. I guess that’s just how my brain works or thinks. Those were the kinds of images that were coming up. Again, it has to do with all the things that you’re subjected to and that you come across from that time period. But nothing as thought out as that, no.

Correspondent: So really it’s more of a personal intuitive experience that you’re drawing upon here? I know…

Burns: That would be a better description.

Correspondent: Yeah, because this leads me into another question. I know that the yearbook photos, or rather the photos on the inside cover, were taken from your own yearbooks.

Burns: Yeah.

Correspondent: And this leads me to ask you about how much of what is in Black Hole is taken from your personal experience, and where do you imagine certain details. I mean, certainly, the disease which plagues all these various people is imagined in some sense. But I’m wondering, in terms of the more personal observations, were these taken more from anecdotes? Were these imagined? On what level did you feel the need to draw upon real life and your own instinct for reimagining behavioral scenarios?

Burns: I mean, my situation growing up was a much more benign situation than what I’m depicting. I mean, there were internal struggles that I was going through, that I think everybody goes through during adolescence, that seemed extremely dramatic and extremely heartrending, difficult times. And I guess I was trying to depict that. What those feelings were. The kind of internal struggle that I was going through.

There are certainly situations in the story that are drawn directly from my life. I never met a half-naked girl with a tail.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Burns: I would have loved to.

Correspondent: Wouldn’t we all really?

Burns: That never happened. My existence was much more sedate and pedestrian, I suppose. But again, these sorts of things were brewing in my mind. My sense of not fitting in. My sense of this kind of internal horror that I was feeling in a lot of situations. Whether they were anywhere near…

Correspondent: Well, in terms of personal experience vs. what you observed, I mean, it seems to me that personal experience is more the motivating impetus for what you put into Black Hole more than anything else. If what I’m understanding you to say is correct. Were you more of an observer or were you one of those types of people?

Burns: I was one of those types of people in varying degrees. Someone was asking me the other day, “Were you a punk?” I was there in all those concerts participating, but I never shaved my head or carved a swastika on my forehead. But yeah, I was there. I guess that’s what I wanted to do too — in the book, talk or just have a realistic look at the times I was growing in. There’s moments in there, even though they’re very sedate, that are very horrific to me. To be sitting in a room for four hours listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon get played over and over, and sitting around with a bunch of guys for hours and hours, is horrific to me.

[The full interview will appear in a future installment of The Bat Segundo Show.]

December Comics Madness

Since the month of December is typically a slow month for the publishing industry, and since the wintry weather is conductive for this sort of thing, and since I have received several enticing graphic novels over the past few months, in December, I plan to devote these pages to investigating many of these volumes — while also gradually releasing the fifteen (!) podcasts I have in my backlog. In addition, I’ll also be covering the New York Anime Festival in a few weeks. If you are a comics publisher who would like to have your titles considered, feel free to email me or send me titles to the Flatbush address.

Winsor McCay

I will have more to say at length about Winsor McCay and, specifically, Checker Publishing’s reissue of The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend later. For now, I direct you to Josh Glenn’s slideshow, depicting McCay’s influence upon other filmmakers, and this website for the book. And I must also direct you to this interesting tale concerning “Gertie the Dinosaur.” The story goes that, sometime around 1913, another newspaper cartoonist bet McCay that he could not bring a dinosaur to life. McCay then came up with this groundbreaking animation in 1914 (YouTube). Note the attention to detail in the movement and the very fluid detail in the way that Gertie investigates the elephant. There is also Derik’s tribute to McCay from last year, in which he examines McCay’s use of page layout and sequence in relation to Little Nemo in Slumberland. There is also this explanation from Ulrich Merkl, which explains precisely how The Dream of the Rabbit Fiend was restored for publication. There is also this odd audio dramatization, which attempts to render McCay’s universe into oral form. There is also lost McCay art found not long ago, with stunning colors and efforts at restoration. There is also McCay’s response to Clair Briggs’ 1926 questionnaire. If you are fortunate enough to be in Ohio, there is this McCay exhibit for your edification. There is also a DVD available of McCay’s animation.

The upshot is that if you have not heard of Winsor McCay, it would behoove you to check him out immediately.

How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

Comic Book Icons to Appear on “The Simpsons”

I’ve just learned from Eric Reynolds that Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, and Alan Moore will appear on the October 7 episode of The Simpsons. Sayeth Reynolds:

The plot concerns Comic Book Guy, who gets some competition in Springfield from a new store, “Coolsville Comics & Toys,” run by “hipster” Milo, voiced by Jack Black.

No word yet on whether either of these folks will appear with a bag on his head.

Personally, I’m Waiting for R. Crumb to Meet Michael Mollan

Harvey Pekar meets Anthony Bourdain.

Berkeley Breathed Returns to Rabble-Rousing?

Editor & Publisher: “At least 25 of the 200 or so “Opus” client newspapers might not run the Sunday-only comic’s next two episodes, which feature Islamic references and a sex joke.”

One of the very funny strips in question can be found here.

BSS #126: Alternative Press Expo 2007, Part Three

[This is the last of the three APE 2007 podcasts. All three podcasts will eventually be available on the main Segundo page. But for the moment, here are temporary links to Part One and Part Two]

CONDITION OF MR. SEGUNDO: Searching for surgical uses involving his tequila bottle.

GUESTS: Helen Parson, Ruben Fernandez, Bud Burgy, Mike Hampton, Suzanne Kleid, Shannon O’Leary, Jennifer Joseph, Brian Colma, an unqualified “lowly human,” various representatives of Kaiju Big Battel, John Schuler and William Binderup, Jose Lopez, Liz Baillie, Bob Self, Richard Ruane and Tim Trosky, Mikhaela Reid, Stephanie McMillan, Matt Bors, Masheka Wood, Robert Steven Rhine and Hollie Stevens, Corwin Gibson, Matt Bernier, Mel Smith and Steve Oliff

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: The nutritional qualities of flavored ghosts, the trouble with comic book names, telemarketing poets, penny aphorisms, a search for a mean-spirited fan who may live in Wisconsin, marital modeling and zombies, a comparative discussion between zombies and corpses, pet noir anthologies, conducting poetry discussion at a comic book convention, how to make cartoons more respectable, using aggression for control of the universe, how to exploit and make money out of kaiju monsters, getting people hooked on poop jokes, conflict that attracts people, character design for Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, working on secret projects for Google, how to riff on the sacrosanct world of Degrassi High, Gris Grimly, a pair of books by a pair of sisters, shy guys, moms and drugs, the distinct lack of attitude within Cartoonists with Attitude, love and anger, on having sharp opinions without being angry, the Reese’s peanut butter cup concoction of girls and corpses, clown porn and Mensa, unexpected enthusiasms for the Orange County Sheriff, Nacho Libre vs. luche libre, Jack Black, trying to eat a hot dog and selling comics at the same time, excluding the important sexual elements of a classic myth, how Bob Burden is giving the Gumby crew ulcers, on Mel Smith being the Henry Kissinger of Gumby, and Paul Reubens and Gumby.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: You seem very pleasant for someone who has attitude.

Reid: We all!

Correspondent: And someone else speaks for you here.

Bors: Nah, I’m pleasant in person. I don’t know. Uh I’m just chilling at a convention.

Reid: His strip is called Slut of Guantanamo Bay. He’s not that pleasant!

Correspondent: But he’s very pleasant about it right here.

BSS #125: Alternative Press Expo 2007, Part Two

CONDITION OF MR. SEGUNDO: Longing for phone numbers and fistfights.

GUESTS: Julia Wertz, Julie Walker, Levni R. Yilmaz, Bill Morse, Neil Fitzpatrick, Brandon Bird, Ming Doyle, John Rivera, Steve Fuson, Zack Corzine, Christopher Perguidi and Keith Knight

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: Comics inspired from Craig’s List Missed Connections, unusual underwear, tactile animation, web comics vs. minicomics, an update on the Neil Jam universe, the practice of appropriating every known cultural construct, mullets, a comic book adaptation of a rock opera, family-friendly gnomes, using all five senses to experience a narrative, cannibal cooks, standing out among zombie comics, meticulously placed exclamation marks within comic book titles, grammar and comics, and how to work on comics in Los Angeles.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: So I was passing by a booth and I found some very unusual underwear designed by someone here. Maybe you can identify yourself and explain what the purpose of this underwear is, why it exists, and why it is being offered to the public at large.

Walker: Um, my name is Julie Walker and I really wanted to put weenies onto underwear. Because it seemed like a good idea.

BSS #124: Alternative Press Expo 2007, Part One

[This is the first in a series of podcasts devoted to Alternative Press Expo 2007.]

GUESTS: Carmen Ogden, Heather Morgan, Jess from CW, Sacha Arnold, Stephen Notley, Sarah Weinman, Jacquelyn Mentz, Tammy Stellanova and booth babe, Gabriel Martinez, Brian Andersen and Preston (cheerleader), Alex Cahill and Jad Ziade the laconic writer, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Tessa Brunton, Melina Mena, DJ Bryant, Travis Fox, two guys talking about waffles, Argel Brown and Michael Galande, Hope & Nicolette Davenport, Jeff Zugale, and Kristian Horn.

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: The glut of autobiographical comics, Fat Camille, an unexpected skirmish between old media and new media, consulting cartoonists for tax advice, writing age-appropriate comics, handmade books, compartmentalized paneling, urban wildlife, the pigeon ecosystem, satanic raccoons, copraphilia, inverted superheroes, laconic comic book writers, whether or not robots are the savior of humanity, country bands and domain squatting, life’s rich pageant, retail humiliation, ripping off George Harrison, efforts to exploit the comic book circus atmosphere, waffles and freedom fries, turning interviews into comics, how to get rid of excess self-published comics, and superhero political comics.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Whoa, whoa, WB and UPN have merged?

Jess: Yeah. About…

Correspondent: No one told me this!

Jess: I’m sorry. I mean, I’m hear to say. The last one to know. About nine months ago. But, um, it has shows like America’s Top Model and Simpsons and South Park.

Correspondent: But if WB and UPN merged, shouldn’t it be called WPN? Or UB?

Jess: Uh, that’s —

Correspondent: I mean, how the hell did you get CW out of it?

Jess: That’s a very valid…uh…what is this for?

Putting the Mash Into Mash Ups

Peanuts by Charles Bukowski. (via Fimoculous)

Free Book Day

PW’s Douglas Wolk reports on some of the successful efforts to turn average Joes and Janes into successful comic book regulars. Among one of the comic industry’s more enriching promotional tools is Free Comic Book Day, which disseminates samples and various issues of comics every year in May.

All this makes me wonder why the publishing industry isn’t working with bookstores to institute “Free Book Day.” With all the “sky is falling” hyperbole being tossed around by book critics and booksellers alike, would not disseminating literature on a specific day of the year be an apposite way to hook the next generation on reading?

In fact, if the high cost of printing a fat volume is a consideration, this might be a very good way of getting short stories and novellas into the public consciousness. If the publishing industry doesn’t want to take this up, then perhaps literary journals might want to coordinate with independent bookstores to remind the public that there are all sorts of fantastic stories to be read. And if not bookstores, why not publicize a Free Book Day where literary journals are handed out at subway stations or other places where people face the prospect of staring into space for 45 minutes or getting lost in a narrative?

This may seem a rather extraordinary solution, but this kind of pro-active approach sure beats throwing one’s hands up in the air and shrieking “The End is Nigh!” at the top of one’s lungs. And besides, wouldn’t it be a more interesting world — just for one day — if something like A Public Space or The Threepenny Review replaced The New York Sun as the free handout of choice?

Next Page →

If you like edrants, your donations to help keep the joint running are greatly appreciated.





Books To Jump Up and Down Over

Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.

Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.

Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.

Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)

The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Contact Ed by email.

Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217





• The Possibilities of Small
• Ben Macintyre: The Latest Sourpuss to Run Away From Possibilities
• Untapped Currency
• Reminder: Live Conversation with Sarah Hall on Tuesday!
• Five Three Oh
• The Bat Segundo Show: Marjorie Rosen
• When Parody Replaces Opportunity
• The Benefits of Notebooks
• Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project #8
• Slowdown


Uncategorized Technical Roundup Book Reviewing Author Publicity Needless Intellectualizing Media Television Speculative Fiction Awards Chit-Chat Personal Miller, Laura Vollmann, William Politics Silliness Poetry Sex Breasts Bad Writing Atwood, Margaret Literary Motifs Salinger Amis, Martin San Francisco Racism Satire Book Collecting Gaddis, William Ripoffs McEwan, Ian Literary Adaptations Shields, Carol Coetzee, J.M. King, Stephen Radio Hemingway Alcohol War Rove, Karl Bolton, John Music Publishing Industry Reading Film DVD Google Technology Books by the Bay Field Reports Podcasting Birnbaum, Robert Wickett, Dan Plath, Sylvia Dubya Photo Headlines Journalism Writing Blogging Naughty Reading Everyday World Amazon Moody, Rick Best of Lists Crace, Jim Holidays Prokosch, Frederic Language Theatre Eggers, Dave Prison Wallace, David Foster Libraries New York Times Tanenhaus, Sam Bat Segundo Relationships End of Paper Strachey, Lytton Faber, Michael Harry Potter Cooking New Yorker Jefferson, Thomas Lovecraft, H.P. Dickens, Charles Pynchon, Thomas History Celebrities Lebowitz, Fran Sykes, Plum Solomon, Deborah AudioBlog Star Trek Beatles Lethem, Jonathan Veblen, Thorstein Consumers Frazier, Charles Pullman, Philip Author Readings Dancing Franzen, Jonathan McSweeney’s Privacy Food Stephenson, Neal Roth, Philip Lucas, George Bookstores Comedy Literary Magazines Sinclair, Upton Linklater, Richard Waldman, Ayelet Chesterton, G.K. Censorship Monty Python Ellison, Harlan Foer, Jonathan Safran Advertising Yates, Richard Academy Awards Rushdie, Salman Thompson, Hunter S. Self, Will Link, Kelly Chabon, Michael Comics Literary Hipsters Obits Eccentric Authors Boyle, T.C. Updike, John Peck, Dale Fundamentalism Mitchell, David Ames, Jonathan Oil Keller, Bill Katrina James, Caryn Wolfe, Tom Nabokov, Vladimir Miéville, China Book Babes Hamsun, Knut Marquand, John Lipsyte, Sam Astronomy Slackers “Wrestling an Alligator” Allen, Woody Vowell, Sarah Markson, David Video Games Kakutani, Michiko Education BEA Powers, Richard Sorrentino, Gilbert Typography Gender Relations Smith, Zadie Rita Doppelgangers NaDruWriNi Burgess, Anthony Economics Odd Ventures Death Penalty Games Torture Paranoia Frey, James Dating 75 Books Twain, Mark Nepotism Bellow, Saul Mailer, Norman Woolf, Virginia Voices Kraft, Eric Hefner, Hugh Image Dybek, Stuart Shameless Kudos to Peers LBC Shameless Promotion of Peers Truces Kerouac, Jack Opportunists Hoover, Bob Perlman, Elliot Elevators Intelligence Public Transportation Radiation Hygiene Whitehead, Colson Baum, L. Frank Didion, Joan Kucinich, Dennis 2004 Election Dean, Howard Greenaway, Peter Science Extraterrestrial Life Anonymity Lawsuits Psychiatry Electroshock Workshops Wolfe, Gene Honesty Noir Mitchum, Robert Mozart Forensics Vonnegut, Kurt Cox, Ana Marie Conspiracy Theories Hate Biskind, Peter Marquez, Gabriel Garcia Stanwyck, Barbara Starbucks Dubious Achievements Byatt, A.S. Heinlein, Robert Cohen, Miguel Pierre, DBC Pope Religion Math Tyler, Anne Fanfic Author Deals Law Enforcement Security Drabble, Margaret Maps Architecture Love Faulkner, William Haddon, Mark Mamet, David Smith, Alexander McCall Pollack, Neal Flanagan, Caitlin Homophobia Coulter, Ann Waters, Sarah Niffenger, Audrey Pitt, Brad Spiers, Elizabeth Pelzer, Dave Money Predictions Serials Cruise, Tom Sequels Fischer, Tibor McInerney, Jay Gray, Spalding Snobbery Coffee Fear Criticism Mystery Edwards, John Banville, John Handwritten Blogging Kennedys Scott, Liz Photography Denby, David Kirn, Walter Meat Plagiarism Oprah Literary Hoaxes Auster, Paul Design Women Bear, Greg Southern, Terry Police Authority Audio Weather Barth, John Sexism Beckett, Samuel Saunders, George Class Apple Abortion Butler, Octavia Thomson, Rupert Literary Style Disney Starving Writers Poverty Don Quixote Hitchens, Christopher Dali, Salvador Kinsey Coleridge Rodgers, Mary Literary Scams Creativity Goldsmith, Olivia Westlake, Donald Ford, Richard Cllinton, Hilary Flanagan, Richard Recording Format Mosley, Walter Shakespeare Clinton, Bill Clarke, Susanna Borders Books Wolf, Naomi Robbins, Tom Graphic Design Christensen, Kate Kundera, Milan Oates, Joyce Carol Sports Microsoft Stupidity Logic Drugs Internet Biology Women’s Issues Fashion Acting Humor Police Brutality Robots Horror Corporate Greed Literary Agents Vanity Presses Adolescent Audio Web Design Football Swearing Copyright Insanity Patriotism Blogathon Global Warming Plastic Surgery Online Dating Gay Marriage Allende, Isabel Chekhov Fry, Stephen Ginsberg, Allen Ellroy, James Animals Gibson, William Elkin, Stanley Vlogging Welsh, Irvine Austen, Jane Hemon, Aleksandar Memoirs Literary Oddities Keeler, Harry Stephen Kael, Pauline Vidal, Gore Ozick, Cynthia queenan-joe Tipping Point Speeches Weight Mergers Geeks mcmillan-terry Cheever, John Public Broadcasting Kerouac Campbell, Bruce Book Length Houellebecq, Michel Public Access pamuk-orhan Agee, James Remainders Book Marketing Wikipedia shriver-lionel Book Design Star Wars Gibson, Mel Responsibility Call Centers Telephone Military Weschler, Lawrence Carroll, Lewis Archer, Jeffrey Zombies Gass, William Terrorism Fourth Amendment Guns N’ Roses Plaigiarism Plagirism Hucksters Self-Publishing wieseltier-leon Porn Interviews keillor-garrison Abu Ghraib Conferences Candy talese-nan Solipsists lee-harper Reclusives Neuroses Idiocy Lists Naughty Reading willeford-charles fitzgerald-f-scott Genres dixon-stephen Magazines Lunatics Chick Lit Cons Airlines Camus, Albert Civil Liberties Butler, Jack Newspapers Brooklyn Amusement Parks leroy-jt grass-gunter Moleskine danielewski-mark Death Labor jones-edward Baker, Nicholson Museums grossman-lev freeman-john Barnes, Julian handler-daniel Bouchercon Space Lovecraft Atheism New York murakami-haruki Auctorial Doppelgangers 2006 Election Amis, Kingsley 2006 Elections donadio-rachel The Human Body Beverages AMS Bankruptcy Beer AWP Chick Flicks Environment miller-henry Time mendelsohn-daniel Virginia Tech Baseball Coney Island 2008 Election delillo-don dick-philip-k Symbols Traffic Homeless Style Grammar romero-george mencken Anderson, Lindsay Facebook New York Mets James Bond Scams Art Health Care Audio Books Radio Drama Toys Health New Jersey Iraq Bush WGA Strike National Book Awards Journalistic Ethics Walking Kindle NPR Gross, Terry Animation Men NBCC Campaign Working Class Ignorance New Reviews Gawker Writers Masculinity james-henry Labels Snow New York Review of Books Events France Memes O Lucky Man Edward Champion Historical Revisionists Randy Forbes Christian Right Jon Stewart Stephen Colbert Daily Show Colbert Report Unions Jami Attenberg Lenka Clayton James Price Lee Siegel Critics Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Cult of Personality Canada Charles Burns Mark Sarvas Readings Boxcar Lounge Ceridwen Dovey Rene Denfeld See, Carolyn J.R. Moehringer Systems Perception Class Division Sam Tanenhaus Dave Itzkoff Frank Wilson Philadelphia Philly Inquirer Reading Contests Zadie Smith Laziness Charles Baxter Judgment Humanity Unlimited Tayari Jones Lori Gottlieb Atlantic Monthly Lazy Journalism George Romero Diary of the Dead Arrogance Levi Asher Pride Bill Keller Ruth Conniff Socializing Baldness Michael Czobit American Gladiators Steroids Diablo Cody Movies Grape Soda Drink Topography Karma Faith Cruelty Zimbardo Bill Plympton The Bank Job Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Authenticity Human Smoke Roundtable Dogs Book Review Ellen Palestrant Eric Rosenfield Prozac Pets Litblogs winchester-simon henson-jim April Fool Heston, Charlton weiner-jennifer smiley-jane Arts Funding NEA kipen-david siegel-lee wolff-tobias Lost New York ComicCon lee-stan Brown, Jeffrey Baker, Kyle mccloud-scott morris-errol Birkerts, Sven davidson-jenny Actors roache-linus rudnick-betsy levy-david Obama Bakshi, Ralph haverford-gilbert Publishing Random House dohle-markus olson-peter Asher, Martin Bertelsmann YouTube olbermann-keith Mathematics Summer Digitalization Moving life ebert-roger Literary Criticism miller-laura sim-dave Misogyny NAFTA superhighway minion-joseph frank-joe Andersen, Kurt Bananas 60 Minutes rooney-andy Barker, Clive douglas-edward longyear-barry Ames, Mark Russia Publicity gessen-keith doctor who christie-agatha davies-russell Brooklyn Book Festival Allison, Dorothy markowitz-marty hall-sarah Spore Associated Press fair use Elitism Telecom Immunity Carlin, George hajdu-david crosley-sloane park-ed maazel-fiona Hysteria Waterboarding Los Angeles Times Layoffs zell-sam subway Atlantic Ocean Fish Micronations Best disch-thomas Literary Publicity St. Louis Urban Decay Twitter Wiretapping John Twelve Hawks glass-ira This American Life snow-tony World War II Paris bribery Corruption lopate-leonard Interviewing hartford courant goldberg-carole YA rabb-margo lindgren-kris Hobgoblins smith-kevin MPAA mccain-john India Verizon Telecoms Corporations Business raisin-ross Slang Yorkshire Northern England jones-james-earl OnePoint NorthPoint Booker orwell-george patchett-ann Hubris Book Touring NYPD Literary Journalism sanders-william glass-philip Sesame Street Violence hawk-thomas Free Speech wood-james clinton-hillary russell-david-o zutons warmsley-jeremy Furniture Erotica Baltimore City Lights Biden, Joseph Caro, Robert LBJ fish-stanley San Francisco Chronicle Book Pricing Customer Service limbaugh-rush disease Fascism Activism Gustav Banks, Iain First Amendment goodman-amy Freedom of the Press Marketing Book Covers Xmas Chrome FOX News sutherland-john Accountability mcdonald-gregory Fletch palahniuk-chuck Anniversaries cowles-gregory marcus-ben palin-sarah New York Film Festival Trains kachka-boris walken-christopher shatner-william China o’reilly-bill Philosophy debord-guy tolstoy-leo FBI leigh-mike Storytelling Israel Jimmy robinson-marilynne kirsch-adam hirsch-judd Reviews My Friends garner-dwight gladwell-malcolm itzkoff-dave klausner-harriet 02138 kaufman-charlie Jesus in America Farting Medicare knight-keith Joe the Plumber Clear Channel leonard-john IPG Borders Book Distribution Same Sex Marriage Exit Polls Polling mannix-max Freelancing Manhattan Media Bolano, Roberto scott-ridley Monopoly Board Games maslin-janet Celente, Gerald Futurism PHonies joel-billy mukasey-michael Theater heffernan-virginia raimi-sam Time Out New York Cats Friends Translation PEN America Brown, Tim Literary Smackdown inge-william Federal Writers Project Best Books Hockey schrader-paul fsg macmillan lurie-rod dillon-matt spicer-jack eisner-will miller-frank pinter-harold friedman-thomas saramago-jose Theory browne-sylvia salinger-jd buckman-adam New York Post allan-col Snark sternbergh-adam haspiel-dean bittman-mark vincent-norah Mental Health senesh-hannah mcgoohan-patrick Bars Washington Post nbcc coleman-gary roth-eli ferrara-abel blackburn-oliver nafisi-azar tools of change Super Bowl Graffiti bale-christian russell-david Lobbying Infographs DRM Success Flying Fandom dowd-maureen recipes Vikings New Directors/New Films Broadway parenting Breaking News gaitskill-mary Bad Editing Snacks farmer-philip-jose Curiosity Addiction Naked Wizard Coachella News calvo-javier Parties Sleep Novelists Literary Biography sarvas-mark tao lin mothers roiphe-katie ebooks alexie-sherman Ereaders Piracy Bubbles Ed’s Films Neighbors cheap anderson-chris jackson-michael Hoaxes Telecommunications de-botton-alain everett-percival london-jack ruppel-shell-ellen Racial Profiling gates-henry-louis Political Correctness Barnes & Noble russo-richard ulin-david Commercials Linkrot Hate Mail Dramatic Readings Kindness cavett-dick Underwear Jelly Communication west-kanye grayson-alan FTC Cinematography Confusion Preservation Paper meyer-stephenie Parody


Archives by Month November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003