Today on the site, Joe McCulloch takes us on a walk through the present of comics.
Elsewhere:
Ben Katchor: The agony and the ecstasy.
Michael Chabon talks nostalgia, and mentions Superman, too.
I don't care about either of the links above, but, y'know, gotta fill the space! I actually find Chabon especially irritating in almost everything he writes. Remember when he had his own comic book version of the fictional comic book from his novel? Ooof. Anyhow, a side note: I read the much-hyped Crime Destroyer #1, the first release from All Time Comics, a Fantagraphics imprint funded by writer/artist Josh Bayer's brother, Sam. It is basically a sub-par Marvel or DC comic from the early 1980s... imagine a random issue of Indiana Jones or Legion of Superheroes written and drawn by a couple of young hacks as a try-out for the "big time." It's not bad-good, or kitsch, or anything on which you could hang a reason for liking it. And of course it's vaguely misogynist and racist, but so is the amped-up pop culture world it comes from. All the publicity that money can buy positions All Time Comics as daring and both somehow new and somehow classic. It's none of these things. Bayer's writing is overly verbose and mostly incoherent. The drawing by old-time hack Herb Trimpe (now, along with fellow hacks Al Milgrom and Rich Buckler, somehow regarded as an important artist -- so depressing) is badly composed, static, and without a trace of distinction. Even the lettering is terrible -- crooked, inconsistent and crowded. Some recent superhero riffs, like, say Copra or Street Angel, have actual narrative momentum, personality, and individual points of view. This is just soulless and boring. I suppose some of this comes down to being unable to differentiate between good work and the work you liked as a kid. Or, rather, work with interesting qualities and the work you remember fondly.
Worse (since my own problem is that I somehow care), one of the big selling points for this line, both in interviews and in Bayer's editorial in Crime Destroyer #1, seems to be that it's wacky and transgressive that supposedly "snooty" Fantagraphics is releasing superhero comics -- a genre which somehow becomes Trumpian code for populism. How is that true? Fantagraphics, by its own lengthy, page-after-page confession/admission in the recent 40th anniversary brick, has been releasing garbage, including superhero comics, for decades: Amazing Heroes, John Byrne comics, impossibly long novels by Charles Schulz's son, and imprints including Eros, Monster and others I'm forgetting. That's not a knock. I'm actually proud to work for a publisher that will do anything it takes to continue publishing great material and doesn't spin a line of bullshit about community or connection. I would hope and guess that Sam Bayer's money is very green and very plentiful, so my Seattle brethren held their noses, closed their eyes, and took it like champs. Plus, some of my freelance friends are earning solid (and easy) paychecks working on these comics, and money is hard to come by in this biz. So, for my friends' sake, I guess I hope this line will last until the money or attention span runs out. As Bob once said, you gotta serve somebody, and, on a spiritual level, this is not that much worse than the very few other outlets that pay money for art. So, finally, in it's favor, the money-beats-all viciousness of All Time Comics is perfectly 2017.
