How the heck did it get to be 11:00 already? Didn't I just wake up? Meh. Such is December. Let's do some link-blogging today to try to catch up...

SANE Journal
The first issue of SANE Journal (Sequential Art Narrative in Education) is now available online for free. Check it out here. I haven't read any of it yet, but I do note that several of the contributors have doctorates, so I figure it must be at least well-thought out.

Rather-Be-Hunting Guys Comics
I can't help but think this falls at the other end of the spectrum. A gent by the name of Dale Dunnerway started up a "Rather Be Hunting" line of products a while back. First I've heard of him or them, but it turns out that, among his products, are several comic books based around his Rather-Be-Hunting Guy character. I'm pointing him out today because this press release says that he'll be donating 1,000 of his comics to soldiers and veterans. Those interested can purchase both of his books from his site.

Monkey Day
Today is Monkey Day. Nuff said.

Free Comic Book Day
Darwyn Cooke provided some DC hero artwork for a 2011 Free Comic Book Day t-shirt. View it here. Not surprisingly, Cooke turned in a really nice piece. They'll be available in stores in early April before the May 7 event.

Top Female Comic Creators
The S.O. pointed out to me that Jezebel has a good list of their top 10 female comic book creators from 2010. It's actually republished from Comic Book Resources, but there's something very positive and note-worthy about it appearing on Jezebel, a site devoted to "celebrity, sex, fashion for women." Especially since less prominent, though potentially more accessible, creators like Katie Cook are named. (Cook's Gronk really captured my attention earlier this year, despite completely NOT being the type of fare I would normally enjoy.)

I've been using Google Reader as one portion of my online comics reading venue. (Although I've changed some of the specifics, this older post walks through how I aggregate, sort and keep up with all of the webcomics I follow. Yes, all.) I actually use Google's broader portal feature for following anything news-related -- from broader world-news to comics-specific news to individual creator blogs. My Google Reader is then exclusively dedicated to webcomics that feature RSS feeds.

What I just saw/found/stumbled over today was their "Trends" link within the Reader. I think I'd seen it before, but never bothered to click on it because I don't really care what other people's interests are. But it turns out that it, in fact, takes a look back at my personal trends. My own Google Reader stats. Here's what I saw when I clicked on it...
The "119 Subscriptions" is how many webcomics I read through there. (There are another 42 that I read in other ways.) Some are daily, some are weekly, some are in between, some don't have any regular schedule at all. But apparently, in the past 30 days, there were 1,147 new comics that I read through Reader. (I do, in fact, read every one.) That averages out to 38 new comics per day, if you're curious.

The "clicked" items are comics that say they have an update through the feed, but I still have to click over to the site to view the actual comic. I don't put much weight in that number because several of the comics I read do actually come through in the feed, but at a reduced size. So, depending on the specifics of that particular comic, I may or may not be able to read the condensed version.

The 22,637 number is a little off as well, I'm sure. While I started using Google Reader in 2006, I didn't really start pushing all my comics to it until 2008.

There's some other stats to browse through in the Trends area, but that 1,147 caught me off-guard the most. I don't know what kind of number I would've expected to see there, but that's certainly a lot higher than I would've guessed.

And here I was, thinking I wasn't reading very much!

But for those of you who are using Google Reader, I point this feature out because I figure it might be interesting to check out your own stats to see what you've been reading!

Alright, I spent a good chunk of the weekend fighting to achieve the traditional dead tree in your front window thing. (Actually, it's a fake tree. Current estimates suggest that a fake tree is only better for the environment if you keep/use it for at least 20 years. I'm only half-way there at the moment, but it's still in good shape so I'm pretty confident it'll last another decade at least.) So what was the result?
My ex-wife used to do the tree decorating and had this blue/silver themed thing she did. To be honest, it looked pretty classy, like something you'd see in a upscale department store or something. That was in large part because my ornaments never got hung. She took all the blue/silver stuff when she split, and ornament-wise just left me with whatever she didn't want. Which is fine, because the tree now reflects more of my tastes...
The Bugs Bunny tree topper is animated, swinging that candle back and forth while his head turns from side to side. Besides Superman and the Flash, Batman and Robin are also represented in figure form, as are many of the classic Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Including Gossamer! The diamond-shaped piece was printed in "The Norm" comic strip a few years back as a DIY generic holiday ornament.

The tree is severely weighted towards the WB/DC end of the comic spectrum. I should probably rectify that sometime and get some Marvel, Image and Dark Horse representation. Some more comic strips, too. I think I've only got one Peanuts ornament. Anyone have suggestions along those lines?

Well, it's gotten late enough in the year that things are getting pretty hectic. Despite being an atheist, I still bend to some of the holiday traditions -- sending out cards, getting presents for others, etc. I don't attach any religious significance to any of it, but it does provide a good opportunity to catch up with friends and relatives. And since it looks like several relatives will be visiting stately Kleefeld Manor this year, I figure it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to tidy up and maybe put up some decorations.

Interesting thing about one's home, or mine at any rate. When my parents bought their first (and, to date, only) house back in the 1970s, it was with the decided intention that they were going to live their whole lives there. I think that was a pretty common mindset at the time. I don't know if that's nearly as prevalent today in the 21st century. Society, on the whole, is more mobile and it's not uncommon to move many times in one's life, often to entirely different states or countries. I noticed this especially when I was going through my address list and noted that many of the people I went to college with in Ohio now live scattered everywhere from Portland, Oregon to Gijón, Spain.

But as I was sitting here today putting lights on the tree (still the worst part about holiday decorations, even if the likelihood of an entire string going out at once is pretty minimal) I could hear the just-above-freezing rain pattering down outside. And, despite my basement still being something of a wreck at the moment, my stuff is still safe. My comics are all dry and still organized in fact. My action figures suffer only from being picked up and moved around when I was cleaning. My holiday decorations -- many of which are Warner Brothers/DC themed -- came up from the basement completely fine and are now waiting in the dining room to be put up.

This year, I'd just like you to take a moment, regardless of what religious beliefs you hold, to appreciate what you have. Maybe your biggest frustration is stringing lights on a Christmas tree. Maybe you're already sick of the incessant holiday music piped into every retail outlet around the world. Maybe you won't get to spend Kwanzaa with your spouse. Maybe you have to visit with that loud-mouthed aunt who no one in your family really likes, but she IS family.

Me? I'm in pretty good shape. I'm certainly not in need of anything I don't have. Even the things I want make for a pretty short list. There are portions about the next few weeks that I'm sure I won't enjoy. (Did I mention that I don't like stringing lights?) And some things won't be optimal -- I won't be able to see my niece's and nephews' faces when they open their gifts from Uncle Sean. But you know, I can't complain. I've got a roof over my head, food in belly, and a number of friends and family out there who care for me. Many of which I'll even have the pleasure of celebrating with over the next few weeks.

Happy Christmahanakwanzika, everybody!

Wow.

I just got and read a copy of Brittney Sabo's & Anna Bratton's Xeric-winning Francis Sharp in the Grip of the Uncanny! Let me say off the bat that it's easily one of the most fun, entertaining books I've read all year!

The story starts with young Francis, whose family is struggling to keep their farm going. Francis doesn't want any part of it, though, and would rather flit off into his imagination in front of the radio or with comics. As he's playing "The Occultist" with a friend in the field, he spies an unusual creature that looks kind of like the shadow of a fox. He chases the creature for a while, eventually losing it, his friend and his way. A passing stranger does give him a lift into town on his cart, but it's a town VERY strange and unfamiliar to Francis. All the inhabitants have long, pointed ears and angular faces. After a night hiding under some stairs, he's befriended by some cousins who try their best to help him back home. But the trail Francis took into this strange land doesn't seem to take him back home again...

It's a little hard for me to pin down exactly what drew me into the story. Francis isn't the type of character I'm usually drawn to -- he's irresponsible, self-centered, impractical and not entirely ethical. Despite those flaws, he's still an affable character and one does get the sense that he's going to learn a thing or two by the time he eventually does get home. (This book is only chapter one, after all!) We don't see much of Francis' parents or his friend (although, the dynamic between he and Francis is quite well done) and the two goblins who help Francis later seem nice, but they're introduced late enough in the story that we don't get to see a whole lot of characterization with them yet.

Sabo's art is well-suited for this tale. Her figures are smooth and pleasant-looking (some really nice line work with them overall) and she's also got a very good eye for using spot blacks to create/enhance the mood. Especially potent on the key story beats, like when Francis overhears his parents discuss their financial problems or when he first realizes that he's in a strange town full of goblins.

(On a slight side-note, I might also note that she illustrated a gorgeous piece of Francis encountering that shadow fox creature as a frontspiece in my copy. When you buy the book from her site, there's an option for a "free sketch" in the book, but this was the most detailed and elaborate "sketch" I've ever had the pleasure to receive in a book. Fully inked to boot, and I spent a fair amount of time just studying her brushwork on that one image.)

At some level, the book has a Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland notion running through it. Young kid who doesn't care for his/her home life falls into a magical realm, and learns to appreciate how great home really is. What strikes me as somewhat different here, though, is that, while Francis is surprised and apprehensive about this new world, it bears a number of similarities to his old world. An interesting angle that appears to be developing is that both Francis and his goblin friend have an mutual interest in cryptozoology but, while Francis reads about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, his counterpart studies fantastic creatures like... squirrels.

The book, as I said, is a lot of fun. I read (and review here) a lot of comics that are good -- even great -- and a lot of the creators' skills show through. And while Francis Sharp certainly does have some talent behind it (good storytelling and art, smooth dialogue, etc.) I just plain enjoyed reading it. I can just imagine the Xeric judges looking at this and saying, "Let's not bothering voting this time around; just put the award in the mail for this now."

Francis Sharp in the Grip of the Uncanny! Chapter 1 is available here for $10. An eleven page preview is also available at the site if you're not convinced yet.

This comes from an actual email discussion I had at work. A co-worker asked, "What's up with superheroes always standing on top of buildings... a lot of crime up there?" I made a joke about the view being really cool, in part because you didn't have to look through some ugly railing they put up to prevent twits from jumping off the side to their deaths. That prompted his observation that super-folk are always leaping over the edge whether or not they can actually fly.

Which brings me to how I've actually been defining what it means to be a superhero. Namely, that a superhero is someone who can confidently leap off the side of a tall building confident that they won't get hurt. Flight is the obvious (well, obvious in the context of comic books) solution.

"Ah, but what about Batman? Or Daredevil? They can't fly."

No, but those types of characters are both A) athletic and B) resourceful enough that they have other options to prevent them from hitting the ground with a splat. Often involving ropes and cables.
Although, it sometimes just involves being really, really acrobatic.
Another possibility, too, is that the character is just so tough that smashing on the ground is just going to put a dent in the pavement, without actually doing them any harm.
The point is that a superhero can casually leap off a building with no real concerns about becoming a puddle on the street. That's how you can lump Superman (an alien) in with the likes of Thor (a god) and Iron Man (a regular guy with lots of technology) and the Vision (an android) and Zatara (a magician) and the Phantom (just a really athletic guy) and Deadman (a ghost) and Plastic Man (an altered human).

Of course, the down side to my definition is that it also includes characters most people wouldn't normally think of as super-powered. Like Wile E. Coyote.

On this day, pretty much every year, somebody trots out the cover to Street & Smith's 1942 comic Remember Pearl Harbor to help commemorate the day in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Sometimes, it's accompanied by some basic information, like that it was drawn by Jack Binder and was released in early 1942 as the first comic book to acknowledge the bombing in any capacity. By all accounts I've read (not having been able to read the actual comic myself) the story not surprisingly portrays the Japanese in a relatively poor light, and pretty blatantly plays into American nationalism.

Here's the one piece of interior art I've been able to find online, and the American iconography is obvious to the point of being over-the-top...

Even the most subtle imagery -- the huge mortar cannon coming out of Uncle Sam's crotch -- is barely less than glaring. It's difficult to argue that the book is NOT jingoistic.

If you've read any comics from the early 1940s, you've almsot undoubtably stumbled across similar expressions of nationalism. Whether it was obvious caricatures of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin; or yellow-faced, buck-toothed Japanese villains; or Superman filming the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It was beyond just American pride, it was almost a reveling in utterly defeating the bad guys. It wasn't sufficient to overpower their military, but there was a sense that they needed to be humiliated and ground into the dirt.

It's unclear to me if that's how U.S. citizens, by and large, actually felt. I know, in my readings about the infamous Keafauver Hearings and associated boycotts of the comic industry, that, while there were indeed people acting on the far side of irrationality and organizing comic book bonfires and the like, that wasn't exactly the norm either and a number of people in fact maintained a fair degree of rational behavior despite their concerns as parents. That leads me to wonder just how much the media outlets of the 1940s were distorting American's view -- both with regards to portraying an outrage that might be misdirected or exaggerated, as well as how that portrayal then impacting others' thinking.

There're obvious parallels to today. Characters like Glenn Beck are showing an upset and anger that isn't actually representative of the American public. But by claiming that he is completely typical in that regard has suggested to others that it's perfectly acceptable to amp up their own negative emotions and direct them inappropriately.

Now, admittedly, Hitler exterminating tens of thousands of people in concentration camps is outrageous even compared to 9/11 so more outrage there is understandable. But was it really so deeply visceral and unfocused? Where everything that was remotely unAmerican was considered better off destroyed? Or is that just how it got translated in comic books and movies of the time? I'm asking that sincerely; I don't know.

It's almost every day that I see some news item that makes me shake my head in disgust about how people never learn, and we're almost destined to annihilate our planet in hubris-filled myopia. But every now and then, I come across some anti-intellectual pop culture pap made decades ago that actually makes today's issue seem not quite so bad.