(Commentary) Let's go to the inbox and see what showed up in the past week, shall we? We begin with a note regarding the recent death of Leo Bachle, the cartoonist who created the classic Canadian character Johnny Canuck. Please note that because our first correspondent did not provide permission to post their email, it has been edited to remove personal information:
"I noticed several entries in your on-line daily news journal regarding the death of Les Barker, a.k.a. Leo Bachle. I can confirm that Leo passed away on Tuesday May. 2003 in Scarborough General Hospital, Toronto, Canada. After a life filled with enough adventure for dozens of comic book heroes, Leo passed on unable even to see his family for days and weeks at a time due to the strict security measures caused by the SARS scare...
"[Leo] left comics in 1948-49 after dealing with several of its first publishers and creators, including Stan Lee, Jim Mooney, W. Gaines Sr. and Jr. and apparently even a meeting with Jack Cole. Leo had also invented an overhead projector to aid with his drawing when he was 15. He attempted to sell it to the New York School Board as a teaching aid but they said there was no use for it in the classroom! This was not to be the first or last time Leo was ahead of his time. However, his comedic patter and ability to draw as he talked brought him into show business as Les Barker. Leo once compared his act to Victor Borge's, except he used drawing as a prop instead of a piano.
"Leo went on to tour and appear with Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and a host of others. Even Liberace fell in love with his act and attempted to create a television show starring Les. But when the producers attempted to change Les' act, he turned away from the
opportunity."
Thank you most kindly for providing us with this background information. Our next letter also concerns Mr. Bachle:
"Will Ferguson's excellent book Why I Hate Canadians has a decent-sized section about Canadian comics, focusing particularly on the 'whites'. It's more loving mockery than respectful elegy, but I think anyone interested in Bachle would enjoy reading it. (Actually, I think anyone would enjoy that book. It's one of my favourites, and I'm not even Canadian.)"
Moving on, we have a request from a reader concerning Tintin fan-sites:
"I have just read your article about the closure of the oldest French language Tintin fan site, à la découverte de Tintin. May I ask you to consider mentioning in the article the fact that Moulinsart has also closed down the largest (and possibly the oldest) English language Tintin fan site, The Cult of Tintin? In mid 2000, a cease-and-desist letter from Moulinsart drove the fan site's owners to close the site and
abandon its domain name of www.cultoftintin.com."
Consider it done. Well okay, I didn't update the entry in question -- it's buried in the archives, now -- but I did just relay your information here. Fair enough?
Last week I mentioned that I had received a second letter concerning questions raised a few weeks ago, about how DC Comics would distribute its graphic novels to bookstores if and when AOL-Time-Warner's book division get sold off. Here it is; please note that again identifying information has been removed from the letter:
"There's often more to DC's silence than 'no publicity means no bad publicity' bunker-mentality; for example, DC may very well be in the midst of negotiations with different parties on this issue (I wouldn't be at all surprised if Diamond is one of them), and it may not be the best time to make a public comment. It might just be that there's nothing worth commenting on 'till there's actually something to comment on."
Sure, sure; that's not going to stop anyone from speculating, though. Incidentally, the same writer wrote back last week, over my citing of an entry in Rich Johnston's gossip column concerning DC's alleged decision to pull advertising from The Comics Buyers Guide after one of its editors signed on to write a comic book for Marvel. Again, portions have been excised to protect the writer's identity:
"I like a good gossip column as much as the next person, but I know not to place too much confidence in the muck that's raked; and I think Rich Johnston is really stretching thin any credibility he might have with these Krause stories. (And I'm disappointed to see you getting in on this.)...
"Is there really any evidence to suggest that DC cares one way or the other if a Krause editor is working on a project for Marvel? Isn't it possible that if such a decision was made, it could have been made for purely economic reasons? (And would a Krause editor in John Jackson Miller's position really be so transparently dimwitted to give the appearance of doing a favor for Marvel? Or could he just have made a poor judgement call?)"
I didn't do anything other than report on Johnston's allegations, and I was quick to note that the source of the piece was in fact a rumor column; that said, if the report is bogus, wouldn't DC have denied it after Johnston's column was posted? Or is this merely another example of the "bunker mentality" in action? I'm not saying it's either way -- just asking, is all.
Let's move on to the subject that just won't die: are the X-Men just a big gay allegory or aren't they? Our next correspondent writes:
"Rather than being a weakness of the metaphor, I think the fact that mutants actually ARE inherently dangerous and threatening is what makes the metaphor so strong and so fascinating. In much the same way that such movements as punk and (especially!!!) glam posited that to be different IS to be superior, the mutants could well believe, with some justification, that they ARE better than their human counterparts. As a recent article in the New Republic suggested, this is the angle that Morrison (and Millar, when he's not too busy setting up Bushie strawmen to be yelled at by Nick Fury) is playing, and he's playing it directly to an audience of queers, freaks and weirdos who share the sense that what society feels makes them inferior actually DOES make them superior.
"On the flip side, the actual danger inherent in mutants also makes the anti-mutant forces slightly more sympathetic -- never a bad thing when one deals in metaphors, as it offsets the technique's natural (over?)simplicity. (Back to Millar, this is why his lame attempts to draw direct War on Terror parallels fail: Unless you're hopelessly naive or a die-hard Chomskyite, it's nigh impossible to argue that the current hostilities are a War On All Muslims, whereas a War On All Mutants might actually make practical defensive sense to a threatened government.)"
Our second email on the subject came from Tim O'Neil, who continues his argument from last week:
"You're right, now that I recall, my thoughts did shadow another correspondants on the matter -- but I thank you for printing my letter anyway. However, when you said I probably 'underestimate just how seductive violent response can appear to an oppressed minority' -- unfortunately, I don't. I'm not really a minority by any stretch of the imagination but I do know my history enough to realize just how potent a historical force this can be with proper stimulus. My problem is I don't think Morisson really thought this through to its logical conclusion -- because, ultimately, if it were Mutants vs humans, it'd be a really short battle. All we need is one Xavier level telepath to be born in Iran or Afghanistan and then -- boom -- he thinks too hard and all the infidels just stop breathing. There's your oppressed minority for ya!
"No, as I said, I know enough history to understand just how seductive violence can be -- and not just to callow minority youths, but multiple generations of the oppressed. But Genocide is Genocide -- once you kill enough people you do your movement irreperable harm by confusing the original legitimate moral outrage with an inexcusable crime."
I was writing at four in the morning last week, so naturally I forgot to complete my thought. Actually, my response to your letter from last week should have concluded with "Now, how many times has the US Government sent Sentinels out to 'neutralize' mutants in X-Men comics?"
I'm not excusing genocide by any means; I'm merely pointing out that when the majority is perceived as either passively watching a minority die, or worse, actively involved in killing them, a desire for revenge should be expected. It's simple human nature, even if it is the monkey part of the brain doing the talking.
-- or so I said in my response via email to Tim. Here's his reply to my reply:
"Oh, I hardly thought you were excusing genocide! You really hit the nail on the head, I thought, when you pointed out the kind of anger a repressed minority group feels -- but I think, if anything, that Morisson underappreciates that very real and visceral human response. You put up someone like Quentin Quire as basically a straw man (who was in for insurrection to impress a chick, no less) for the anti-assimilationist pose and you really do understate the case to the point of obfuscation. There's real anger here... the kind of anger I see on the TV every time I turn on the news and see something about Palestine and Israel.
"On another unrelated point -- something you said stuck in my brain today as I was driving around doing my errands. I had mentioned 'Daredevil' in my letter and you said something about him wearing his pajamas on the outside -- which, of course, is 100% right on -- its a totally silly plot device that unfortunately makes anyone who takes these things seriously look like a, ah, retard (for lack of a better word). But, you know, I grew up reading superhero books, and therefore have the unfortunate capacity for 100% suspension of disbelief in relation to these things when I want to. I certainly don't read as many of them as I did when I was 12 but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of interesting creators working on work-for-hire superhero books. I have no problem buying a superhero book if I think I'm going to enjoy it. I wish that people like Mike Allred and Brian Bendis and Morrison didn't feel the need to work on them, but that's where whatever paltry money in this industry is for most people.
"I am honestly of two minds about Morrison's post-superhero work. On the one hand, New X-Men is an enjoyable read. On the other hand, the kind of work he puts into a title like X-Men just seems like gilding the proverbial lily -- it's a superhero book, it's about people with fantastic powers who do things with odd motivations that don't relate to anything you or I would ever feel in real life. Trying to gussy it up and add all the subtext and interesting sci-fi stuff just seems like a waste of time that would be better spent on something that wasn't, well, the X-Men. On that same token, wouldn't it be nice if Bendis could afford to sit around and do his wonderful crime graphic novels like he used to? But he isn't, and he won't be for at least the foreseeable future -- so if he's doing Daredevil, I'll enjoy it."
Thanks for the reply. On that note, I swear I'm dropping the subject right here -- those with further interest in discussing it are of course encouraged to bring it up on our message board, where our crack team of all-volunteer Elitist Comics Snobs will take the shakier parts of your arguments and do... oh, just horrible things to them.
Finally, I received an email from a reader who asked that they not be directly quoted, but who noted that I linked to the wrong Sterling Publishing when I wrote an entry last Saturday about the sluggish bookstore market. It seems that the Sterling in question was bought recently by Barnes & Noble, and consequently several other bookstore chains refuse to purchase books from it now that Sterling is owned by their direct competitor. This is probably why it's harder to find Asterix books in Borders stores these days -- the American Asterix editions are published by Sterling. Thanks to my anonymous correspondent for cluing me in.
And there we are, done with the Mailbag for another week. Like the sidebar says, send email to weblog@tcj.com -- all email is considered anonymous unless you volunteer otherwise, and assumed printable unless you say otherwise.
