The Comics Interpreter #1
Robert Young
Reviewed by Darren Hick

This first issue of The Comics Interpreter is, it needs to be said, an ambitious project for any one person to put together. That said, any criticism I make in this review as regards its layout, editing, art direction, etc., should be taken with a grain of salt.

Though a mere 52 photocopied pages, The Comics Interpreter is a fairly hefty (and, at times, decidedly amusing and insightful) read for an amateur critical work. In the tradition of the Journal, Charles Brownstein's now-dead Feature, Cartoonist PROfiles, and the rest of our ilk, Young has deigned to address a wide breadth of comics-related information in a single periodical. From reviews to interviews to columns to remembrances, Young applies his comics knowledge and insight from a variety of angles. I have no intention of discussing each of the many articles in TCI, but I'll nail down a few:

To begin with, this first issue presents a number of reviews. I'll give you the low-down on a couple. For those of you already familiar with my indictment of Wizard at this year's San Diego Con, you can imagine my glee at finding a review of Wizard in TCI so clearly reflecting my own sentiments on the magazine. OK, Young is more even-handed than I was (he's only as scathing as he needs to be), and I don't necessarily agree with all of his printed thoughts, but the Wizard review reveals his unquestionable skill as a writer. Much like I did, Young essentially allows Wizard to hang itself, citing article after article from the periodical's 89th issue.

A (ahem) random quote: Wizard #89 is a "Giant-Size Year Ender!" which clocks in at 240-pages -- 50 pages of which are wasted on the price guide, with another 45-pages going to full-page ads or contests. Compare this to the recent 152-page ($6.95) issue of The Comics Journal #206, which featured lengthy interviews with four seminal comics creators (Ted Rall, Spain, Peter Milligan, and cover-boy Peter Bagge); as well as a slash-and-burn review of "A Touch of Silver" by the aforementioned Valentino; news, letters, a special section on European comics, etc. Really there is no comparison.

Hear, hear.

His next review, of Miller's 300, however, is a bit more wanting. It's obvious from the start that Young is of a writerly (as opposed to visually artistic) background. The review essentially lays out the plot of 300, with only a few asides discussing the visual aspect of the work, and leaves any real criticism for the final paragraph. Now, don't get me wrong -- it's still well-written, and it still displays some worthwhile insight -- it's just a weaker example of his writing than is apparent in much of the rest of the 'zine.

The reviews range in length from a few lines to a couple pages, and address a fairly wide scope in comics. Also in this issue are reviews of Oni Double Feature, Silver Surfer: Cable, The Minx, Comic Book Rebels, and more. (Incidentally, in regard to Comic Book Rebels, while I appreciate any review that plugs The Comics Journal as much as this one, I don't see why Young would review a six-year-old book, when there are so many current works out there worthy of the honor.) A favorably omnivorous approach.

A couple of problems with the reviews, though. First, while most of the books reviewed are published by The Big Four, provision of ordering or contact information might have been helpful for the lesser-known titles (well, for someone who didn't have them all sitting around his office already, it would).

Second, though Young is dealing with the Xerox medium which might hinder art reproduction, he might consider trying to include more accompanying art from the books reviewed so as to illustrate his criticism (out of 9 reviews, we're presented with only one panel of comic art, and that's a head-shot not particularly pertinent to the review). The Fair-Use Doctrine of U.S. Copyright Law is a wonderfully loose and accommodating thing.

Young is perhaps strongest in his articles written from personal experience. His short (and I mean short, clocking in at no more than 450 words) interview with Neil Gaiman has a bitter-sweet quality in its brevity, while his "Why Comics? Why Now??" account of his return to comics reading is an insightfully reflective article, comfortably blending personal history with industry politics and artistic critique. Young appears most at ease in this conversational mode, and most easily passes his thoughts onto his readers in this way.

TCI contains two articles which, in tandem, leave me a little confused. The first article, reportedly the first in an ongoing column, is entitled "Breaking In: The Obstacles." Although I may be wrong, I don't believe Young has, in fact, "broken-in" at all. His article lays out the structure of the mainstream publishers -- how to approach them, what attitude to take, etc., but is clearly written by someone unsatisfied with (because undiscovered by) the big-name industry. It's a fairly good read, as Young again blends the critical with the personal, but the premise seems flawed. The second article, "The Periplus of Robert, Pt.1," autobiographically lays out Young's trials and tribulations in 1) attempting to find a publisher who would accept his comics script for a book called This Corrosion, and 2) finding an artist for the book, once he realized the first approached failed. Young displays a few pages of work from each the two artists he tried out on the script (the second, incidentally, being infinitely preferable to the first), as well as the script itself. This second article, though filled with spite and ire, could be helpful to creators trying to break in to the profession, but, as Young has yet to break in himself, there's a painful lack of closure to the essay. While most "How to Break In" essays by industry professionals are a crapshoot (as there's so much luck involved in the process), at least the methods have worked for their proponents. Young's approach, while interesting, is for this reason decidedly hollow. (As an aside, why he chose to white-out the reference to "wannabes, pussies, [and] assholes" from this second missive after it had already been printed -- while leaving in reference to "liars, losers, no-talents, phonies... dorks, and dickheads" -- and whether he whited it out of every copy he made, or just from my copy, I suppose I'll never know.)

TCI seems to have been put together with Word for Windows, WordPerfect, or some other such word-processing program. As such, the 'zine suffers from printing limitations (fonts, leading, spacing, etc.) which might be vastly improved with the use of Adobe PageMaker, Quark, or some other desktop publishing program. His choice of the fonts themselves is visually annoying. He jumps from double-spaced12-point Courier to double-spaced 10-point Times to single-spaced 8-point Arial inside a few pages. Yes, it seems a niggling, little thing, but in a critical magazine, presentation can add a lot. Young's 'zine is, as I've said, rather admiringly well-written, but Young needs to recognize that writing in and of itself has a visual quality beyond the words themselves.

The Comics Interpreter is available c/o Robert Young, 5820 N. Murray Ave. D-12, Hanahan, South Carolina, 29406 for a $3.00 cover price. Four issue subscriptions can be had for $11.00. Get in contact with young at CREEDNAIL@aol.com.