"This is not a comic book"

I think everybody remembers Adrian Veidt's famous moment of revelation at the end of Watchmen, when just after he has explained his master plan in the most stereotypically supervillain manner, he gives the most chilling response to the question, "When are you planning to do it?"

"Do it?" Adrian replied.

"Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?"

Adrian Veidt is essentially saying "This is not a comic book." You can't expect the typical tropes and tricks of comic book storytelling to apply to the real world. That kind of self reflexive storytelling was revolutionary...

...back in 1985. Since then, it seems it's been done to DEATH. I can't tell you how many times I've heard something to the extent of "What do you think this is? A comic book?" Yes, as a matter of fact it is a comic book, and the irony of the situation is no longer appreciated after reading the same trope for the 5,634th time. I really wish I could produce a bunch of on-hand examples of this to make this expose a little more convincing, but alas, this happens about as frequently nowadays as a character changing in and out of a costume - it's so utterly common it's completely forgettable.

However, it did happen again in this month's issue of KICK ASS.


I realize the whole book is meant to be self-reflexive, as it's a twisted take on the idea of a superhero existing in the real world, but do we really need another one of these look-at-the-camera-and-wink moments? This seems like a nitpicky criticism, but frankly, I just expect more from Mark Millar, especially when all the other comic book cliche meets real world collisions were so funny and different than the ones I've already seen. And hell, this book only seems to come out twice a year now. With this kind of time inbetween issues, can you blame me for expecting a top notch book?

Backwash: Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes

I've talked previously about the distinction between "mainstream" and "serious" comics, with the former often dealing with elements of genre and a sense of fantasticism, whereas the latter often deals with issues taking place in reality, rarely if ever imparting any powers or physical anomalies into the fiction (if it even is fiction). Mainstream comics tend to be published by big publishers, serious comics by small, independent ones.

While a lot of seriously great work has come out of the serious/indie camp, if there's one thing I'mm disappointed in, it's the severe lack of variety among the stories they publish. While everybody and their pets (myself included) are complaining about the dominance of the superhero in mainstream comics, few people seem to realize that the independent comics scene is largely dominated by memoirs, autobiography, and slice-of-life stories.

I don't mean to suggest that these books are bad by any means. I love me some Tomine and some Thompson. Blankets is one of my all time favorite comics, Box Office Poison boasts some of the most realistic character development I've ever seen, and Maus is a book that deserves close to every rave review it gets.

What I mean to say is that while the content and the conceit of these books is intending to be comparable to the Fiction and Literature section of your local bookstore, the breadth and variety of these books is lacking. Would it really hurt to give us some stories in the realistic vein that aren't just about guys working in convenience stores or going through breakups? As much as I enjoy some of these books, when I'm reading them, I usually can't help but feel that these writers are just documenting themselves and the people around the. Isn't that kind of easy?

Ed Brubaker once said in an interview that discovering Harvey Pekar was like discovering punk rock. Just as the gritty 3 chord rock of the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and The Damned set a stark contrast to the emerging glitter and sensationalism of rock music in the 70's, Pekar's focus on everyday issues ranging from domestic disputes to returning overdue videotapes was revolutionary in a time when the field of comics wasn't just dominated by genre, it was perceived as a genre. And just as punk rock was a call to arms for many short haired folks with musical ambition and a lack of technical proficiency, Pekar's comics carried a similar message: You don't have to construct big universes and have flashy art. You can just write about yourself.

Fast forward 30 years and Pekar's model has become the norm in independent comics, with some cartoonists like Joe Matt and Adrian Tomine arguably doing better work than Pekar himself ever did.

However, to say that the breadth of realistic fiction is writing about the jobs you worked in college, the messy breakup you had last year, or realizing you forgot your change while on the way to the laundromat is just as silly and narrow-minded as thinking a comic book has to contain guys in tights shooting lasers out of their orifices. We now have plenty of guys in the medium that have mastered the slice-of-life concept, but where are the Mark Twains, the John Steinbecks, or even the John Updikes of comic book fiction? Where are the writers that painstakingly research and write about people they have next to nothing in common with?

Enter Jason Lutes, who seemed to have known about the very thing I'm talking about long before I ever had the idea and long before I had even heard of him. As early as in 1996, Jason Lutes had published his first graphic novel, Jar of Fools, a story about a cast of characters as broad as a young alcoholic, an old retired magician hiding from a kind of mandatory living sentence at an old folks home, a frustrated barista, and a father-daughter team of grifters living on the streets. Now, I don't know much about Jason Lutes's life, but I'm willing to bet that his years of being a cartoonist and an art director don't overlap much with the characters in this story. Score one for research.

It's not the best graphic novel ever done and it's not even the best graphic novel Jason Lutes has ever done (though personally I suspect Berlin might qualify on both counts after its completion). However, what it is is a very compelling story about human hurt, longing, compassion, and friendship, as we see the various characters' plotlines intertwine. Despite how little I have in common with just about any of these characters, their charisma and quirks really shine through their interactions.

Watch out for this guy. As soon as he starts putting out comics on a more regular basis (Christ, issues of Berlin seem to come out only once a year), there's a chance that he just might author the Great American Graphic Novel. That is, assuming James Sturm hasn't done it already.

Backwash: The Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker

I really wanted to like this book. Seriously.

I tend to think Doctor Doom is an underrated character, so I figured that a book about his life history would be really enjoyable. I also generally like Ed Brubaker's stuff, and I figured that if it's written by a two-time Eisner winner for Best Writer, it must be pretty good.

And I wouldn't say it's bad necessarily. While I was reading it, I was actually actively confused as to why I was disliking the reading experience. Ed Brubaker's prose filled narration effectively nails Doctor Doom's arrogance and struggle for superiority over his fellow man while subtley hinting at the pain and anguish underneath that caused him to armor and mask himself against the world. It's a full three issues or so before he dons the mask, so we get to see a lot of young Victor Von Doom as he undergoes childhood and adolesence, dabbling in the dark arts here and there before finally studying science in America alongside Reed Richards.

But while I was reading it, I just didn't really feel that oomph that's needed to engage me in the story. That's right, oomph. It's a real world - look it up.

If I had to guess why the book didn't resonate with me, I would say that it's because I just couldn't relate to the character. Doom's conviction that nobody is nearly smart and talented as he is just comes off as obnoxious when I'm seeing it every page. The little bit of humanity that we get to see is his isolation, his feeling of loneliness and struggle for independence in the wake of his parents' deaths.

However, we saw so little of his parents that it was really difficult to feel the same kind of heartbreak that Victor was experiencing. We only saw Victor's mother for literally 4 pages before her death. Having spent such little time with her, I can't understand why Victor would spend so much of his life being haunted by her memory.

One could reasonably argue that there were so many events in the story that it was difficult to fit everything in. But personally, I would way rather see a little less of Doom tinkering with his inventions, leading militia groups, and just generally being a dick to people if I could just get a little bit deeper of a glimpse at the one thing in his life that made him feel like a human being.

I think if you look at most stories about villains in other genres and media, what you usually see is an emphasis on the little empathy that these characters possess. Both The Sopranos and The Godfather are just as much about the closeness of family relationships as they are about ruthlessly killing people. Humanity is what we want to see in our characters, good or bad. With that being said, I'm personally inclined to think that a villain book can't work if it's just about a supervillain cackling and asserting his genius (unless it's a comedy, in which case it can often be hilarious). We need to see their pain or a little bit of the care they have for the loved ones in their lives.

Brubaker should probably stick to writing bad guys in CRIMINAL. In the meantime, I'm hoping there's somebody out there that can take the concept of a supervillain book and do it right.

Backwash: Zot! OR Where's a Superhero When You Need One?

I can't sleep tonight.

I got a call from my landlord at 2:30 in the morning that my car had just been broken into. Just six months ago, one of my car's windows had been similarly smashed, except this time it was to nab my fancy schmancy Garmin GPS system. So at this point, I had been smart enough not to leave anything of value in the car.

When I had gotten dressed and walked down to the car, I looked through the broken back window (which is the most expensive to fix after the windshield) and noticed that the contents of the car looked virtually untouched. My two books of CDs were lying in the same places, my Atlas was still lying on the bed of the trunk, and the front console was unopened. This wasn't attempted theft, this was pure vandalism.

I don't really have any enemies, so I know it wasn't a personal attack. I do however, live across the street from several bars, next door to a Hookah bar, and am right on the edge of a ghetto. It could have been a surly drunk, a high schooler on a power trip, or a crazed homeless man unaware of what he was doing.

It could be any of these things, I don't know which, nor do I care. I just have this wish I could have seen the act and punished the fucker for doing it. Punish the guy for having the audacity to just destroy something that belongs to somebody else for kicks and kicks alone. Do people out there really have that little to do with themselves? Weirdly enough, right now I think I want to be wringing this guy's neck more than I want the event to never have happened. Columbus, you are really testing my patience right now.

And all I can say is, where's a superhero where you need one?

Weirdly enough, this connects to a review I've been meaning to write of the book ZOT! by Scott McCloud, a superhero comic from the 80's which is about an upbeat Silver Age-esque superhero named Zot that travels from his world of science fiction, self-satisfaction, and heroics to our world, a world where good doesn't always win, where disappointment, anxiety, and general emotional uncertainty outguns optimism by a longshot, where...

Oh hell, you're familiar enough with it. Do I even need to introduce you?

The funny thing about this book is that I never had any enthusiasm about reading it. I never heard any positive reviews, none of my friends have read it, no comic book store employees had recommended it to me. I didn't even think it was going to be that good. As awesome as Scott McCloud is for his work on Understanding Comics, I had known him primarily as a comic book theorist, so there was no guarantee that his work in fiction, particularly superhero fiction, would be any good at all.

It was guilt that made me check it out. Ask most creators that are only known for one particular work and they will tell you that they hate their reputation for being pigeonholed for something that isn't representative of the breadth of their work. When people talk about Art Spiegelman and they only refer to Maus, they're referring to the guy as if he's a one hit wonder. I can't help but feel a sense of sympathy for artists in that position, and that sense of guilt eventually made me pick up Zot! from the local library.

However, the book ended up sitting on my shelf for a couple of months. The page count of 550 daunted me a bit, so I didn't want to spend close to a week reading a book that may not even be all that good when I could be catching up on FABLES, DAREDEVIL, or hell, just plain old books that I've been ignoring lately. A few months and a dry spell of comic reading later, and I was finally willing to give the book a shot.

Man, was I glad I picked it up.

McCloud takes the two world premise and runs with it, painting a wonderful contrast between the fantastical and surreal world of genre fiction that Zot lives in with the stark and real world that we live in. The whole purpose of Zot's visits to the real world are to spend time with his girlfriend Jenny, a 15 year old girl attending high school in Lexington, Massachusetts. While we get to see Jenny's big eyed reactions of awe and wonder observing Zot's world, just as well we see the frustration and bewilderment in Zot as he experiences a world of pain, sorrow, and racial division, where perfectly good people are victimized and nobody seems to do anything about it. While Zot is a successful celebrity living the life of an optimistic professional super boyscout in his own world, that approach doesn't work so well on our side.

But this isn't even the real meat of Zot! It doesn't take Alan Moore to write a story about a superhero ripped straight from the pages of a 60's DC comic book feeling a sense of frustration about not being able to solve the world's problems by punching people, and in the process gradually coming to a sense of awareness that good doesn't always win over evil and developing the same cynical attitudes as the rest of us. No, a story like that would reek of bitterness, feeling like a misguided writer's attempt at punishing superheroes for making them believe in the goodness of the human spirit when in actuality, we live in a world where nice guys finish last, your parents get divorced, and on some occasions, your car gets broken into.

Zot! ends up becoming so much more than what can intuitively be done with the concept. While it seems like the presence of the two worlds might diminish each other, McCloud somehow managed to do the opposite, using the contrast to highlight the two worlds. After seeing Zot's wild and wacky world, Jenny's world of mundane troubles doesn't come across as dull or boring. Instead, amidst the context of a story about an army aiming to deevolutionize the world or a looney supervillains attempting to rob a bank, Jenny's sexual frustration with not knowing her exact feelings for Zot come across as much more real and strangely beautiful. Just as well, while it would be reasonable to suspect that the heavy weight of our world might make Zot's world seem ridiculous and silly, on the contrary, McCloud's detailed splash pages of a big and busy world in addition to his fast-paced superhero romps couldn't have been brighter.

Sure, his initial stories start out kinda rusty. The dialogue was a little weak and it didn't seem like he quite figured out how to balance the two worlds yet. But there's an emotional maturity that develops over the stories as McCloud came into his own much more as both a writer and an artist. The plots got a little more interesting, the emotional reactions a little more real, and his art more detailed. By the halfway point, his referenced backgrounds looked so detailed that their portrayals could have rivaled those of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Japanese artist and master of all things mundane.

The book is divided into two sets of stories. 'Heroes and Villains', which comprises the first 17 issues or so, is composed of stories that mostly take place on Zot's world. As the stories progress, we get to see more of Jenny's friends take the plunge, including her brother Butch who appears in their world as a monkey for some strange reason. As the cast of characters gets bigger and bigger, a glitch occurs as Zot travels back to Jenny's world and he's suddenly trapped. This begins the remaining 9 issues, the 'Earth Stories.'

This is where McCloud really begins to shine as a writer. Each issue presents a stand alone short story that takes place from a different character in the cast. Whether it's Jenny's mother describing her own problems with her divorce and hoping that Jenny gets something better, a comic book collecting nerd that has troubles with women (who I suspect is based on McCloud's high school buddy Kurt Busiek), or a friend vying for Jenny's attention who takes a stand in a way that Zot never could, we get to see little intimate portrayals of daily life in a New England high school that are as raw and real as anything Adrian Tomine ever produced.

And finally, at the end of the story, we're given one last look at Zot's world before the book's conclusion. I don't want to spoil anything, but the last issue of the book's parting glances at both of the worlds felt almost like a referential nod to genre and serious fiction. At the time this was written, there were some pretty firm dividing lines between the two camps, with most of the well regarded indie press guys like Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar decrying superhero stories as juvenile escapism and most of the mainstream Marvel and DC guys never so much as touching a story about the struggles of ordinary people. Considering how rare it was for anybody to write fiction that blurred the lines, I can't help but feel that the concluding speech by one of the characters, "So this it. The great escape. Is it wrong for us to want this?" is a message defending the idea of genre fiction. And of course, that puts a possible spin on all the previous stories, suggesting that maybe Zot's world is a metaphor for immersing yourself in an imagination completely unlike your own world.

Zot! is, quite simply, a rare breed. It's a smart and innovative take on classic Silver Age comics without ever dipping its toes in cynicism or hard-edged perspectives is nothing short of remarkable. Hell, it was almost ten years after Zot!'s creation that Alan Moore himself dabbled with the same ideas in his run on SUPREME. The fact that Zot was able to walk away from his experiences on our world after having been hospitalized for a gunshot wound (and brutally savaged on other occasions) and still has hope for saving it, really makes you wonder if you should feel the same. Hell, it even makes me think that a broken window really isn't so bad.