I am just not feeling the whole writing thing today for some reason. Text is from today's Garfield, art from today's...

Bob the Squirrel

Artifice

I'm amused by the role-reversal in Bob while the version in Artifice takes a decidedly darker turn.

It's a bit strange to think of myself as a writer. I was just another blogger when I started Kleefeld on Comics, but now I've got ongoing columns for The Jack Kirby Collector, MTV Geek and Drawn Word (coming soon). I've contributed short pieces to a few different books now, and wrote an entire one myself, with another (slowly) in the works. So it kind of looks like I'm a writer of sorts now. Kind of makes me wish I took more classes on it in school.

When I was in, I believe, third grade, the teacher gave us a story assignment. I think it was a simple one-page story about whatever we wanted, but it was supposed to be fiction. I wrote about a battle between a barbarian and a wizard, and I liberally plagiarized the one Conan comic I had at the time. But, in that plagiarization, I lifted some dialogue. I recall the teacher being impressed and calling it out as a good example because I was the only one to use dialogue at all. No one else's story had anyone saying anything, and she pointed out how much more engaging and exciting my story was because of it. (I believe one line was something like, "Surrender, dog! Or I'll slit your throat from ear to ear!" Why that didn't seem to concern her, I don't know.)

English was, of course, a mandatory subject throughout grade school. I had pretty much all the same lessons as everyone else. I was more interested in art, though, so the "College for Kids" classes I would take up at the local community college on weekends were mostly centered around drawing. Those of us in the school's gifted & talented program did take a journalism course for one quarter in eighth grade, but it was as much about printing and production processes as it was about writing.

In high school, I somehow wound up working a bit on the school newspaper. I honestly don't know how that started because it wasn't something I actively pursued, and I never went to any meetings about it. I don't remember writing or turning anything in, but I can distinctly recall seeing my articles in the finished papers. My mom thought my report on the band's activities in one issue really stood out, and I got more than a few congratulations from other students for a particularly derisive op ed piece I wrote about the school administration. But I was more interested in the cartoons that I drew for the back of the paper.

Freshman English was mandatory in college, but I was in a graphic design program so nearly all of my projects were art related. I didn't even have many term papers to write. I did take a fiction writing class as an elective my senior year, but my pieces came across as horrendous compared to the other students in that class. My girlfriend at the time noted at one point that she thought I wrote very well. I don't know what work of mine she'd read, but she was minoring in English, so it didn't come across as completely idle praise.

But now, here I am writing every day. I'm still making my living doing design work, but there are people out there willing to pay for me to write, too! With little formal education or training beyond what most high school students get.

But, looking hindsight, one thing I can see that I've done is read. A lot of comics, to be sure, but a lot in general. And I often did more than just read; I took mental notes while I was reading. I wasn't thinking specifically in terms of formal writing conventions, obviously, but I could see, "Oh, the writer is dropping some heavy foreshadowing here; that's clumsy" or "Wow! That came out of left field! That doesn't make any sense!" Mostly a list of what not to do. But I still mentally absorbed things like narrative structure and character arcs and word choice.

For anyone out there who might want to be a writer -- of comics or non-fiction or whatever -- you will be told repeatedly to read a lot. Which you do need to do. But don't just; think about what you're reading. Is the author just following a standard Joseph Campbell narrative? Is the work driven by plot or characterization? What sort of tone do the specific words being used convey?

Reading is great.

Reading and thinking is even better!

I sent the S.O. a link to an article this morning. Just a "Hey, this is interesting" thing. And I added, "Bonus points for using a mixed race couple in the photo, too!" To which she responded that it didn't really count because it was a black guy and a white woman. "Tired" is the word she used because it's the default for showing a mixed race couple. It's easy for me to point to examples where that doesn't happen -- there's another white guy here in the office who's married to a black woman, and there's the perennial geek fictional favorite of Zoe and Wash -- but the examples are ones that rather prominent in my field of vision. The co-worker is someone I have to work with almost daily and Firefly is one of the great sci-fi shows of television, so of course I see those. But in terms of the stuff that acts as something closer to white noise -- the flyers in my mailbox, ads running in the background while I'm waiting for a Hulu video to play, catalogs that usually get thrown in the trash with an at most casual glance, etc. -- that stuff rarely shows mixed race couples and, when they do, it's a black guy and a white woman.

But I'm a white guy who grew up in a white suburb and went into a field that's predominantly populated with white men. Which means that "white male" is what I think of by default. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Archie, Malcolm Reynolds, Han Solo, Harry Potter, Aragorn, Captain Kirk, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, James Bond, Indiana Jones, John McClane... These guys are "normal" in that they represent my default hero. Which is to say me, only handsome, clever and powerful. Anything 'not that' seems different or unusual.

I just started reading Mike Madrid's The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines which looks at superheroines throughout the history of comics. I'm only one chapter in, and it's amazing to see how much I just don't know about many of these characters. Some of it are characters I know but just never thought about in gender-specific terms. For example, the first female superhero, the Red Tornado, was essentially cross-dressing as a male. Or just how many of those old heroes had the dismissive "-girl" suffix instead of "-woman" that would have been more equitable to their male counterparts. Hawkgirl, Bulletgirl, Flame Girl, Doll Girl, Rocketgirl...

The reason, of course, those things never occurred to me is because I've looked at them from my default perspective. "Of course they're called 'girls'! They're weaker than men!" Never really questioning that they didn't have to be. I didn't need to look up to these characters and see them in the shadow of others because I always could look up to the characters casting those very shadows. I could easily look past Supergirl to see Superman. "Of course She-Hulk's name is derivative of the Hulk's! She came after him!" Did the Hulk have to be a male in the first place, though? Did she need to have a name derivative off his?

When I was a kid, I watched Dukes of Hazzard pretty regularly. Again, two guys like me only handsome, clever and powerful. Also they drove a cool car. The General Lee was an icon for the show, and the Confederate Flag on the roof became a shorthand icon for that. Except I heard it called the "rebel flag." And rebelling against corrupt government officials like Boss Hogg was the theme of the show. Freedom and justice were mete out by the Duke boys, not the inept and ineffectual law of Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. I took it that this "rebel" flag represented personal freedom and justice against oppressive governments. (Well, I was seven -- it was probably more like: "Rebelling against big ol' meanies.") The point is that this iconic flag was one with an excessively positive connotation for me. It wouldn't be until years later, probably sometime in college, that I began to realize that that image didn't hold the same meaning for everyone. That, for a lot of people, it meant slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow and exactly the opposite of what I had been told. Needless to say, I lowered the flag from my mental flagpole.

But while I know that flag's meaning intellectually, and while I've even removed my old emotional attachments to the image, I can only empathize with those who lived under it. I can only empathize with those who maybe didn't live through it themselves, but had relatives who did. I can only empathize with those people whose choices have been limited because their parents or grandparents were artificially prevented from moving forward. I can't sympathize with any of them, though, because I can't have had those experiences myself.

Try as I might, I can never fully appreciate what anyone's experiences are outside my own. Whether they're as huge as slavery or as insignificant as a hangover.

BUT!

I try. I make an active choice to try not judge people or their situation on my terms. I make an active choice to try to look outside my bubble and see what other people are seeing. Sometimes, that's seeking out comics whose lead characters are a mixed race couple like in Cafe con Leche. Maybe that's buying indie graphic novels with a strong, empowered female lead from a female creator like Alex Heberling. Maybe that's staying away from creators produce culturally insensitive work. (I'll let you fill in your own examples on that one!) Maybe that's all of the above.

I'll admit that it's often difficult to see outside my own biases. It often takes someone else to actively point out that, "You know, you're not really thinking about that from the perspective of someone who might actually have to deal with those issues." But even if you actively try to look at those issues, like praising that a mixed race couple is used at all, and find yourself hearing a "Yeah, but..." take it as a learning opportunity. Maybe the person you're hearing the "Yeah, but" from has a valid point because they've lived with it. Maybe the new Starfire is too trampy. Maybe Power Girl should grow up to become Power Woman. Maybe the name Black Lightning is pretty condescending.

Maybe... just maybe... your opinion only reflects your own personal preferences, and aren't indicative of anybody else's. Maybe... just maybe... they have a point, if you'd just look beyond your own bubble.

• Here's a short interview with Matt Campbell over at Examiner.com. It's a pretty basic interview as far as the depth of the questions, but I'm struck that it's essentially a mainstream site talking about a webcomic without any of the usual tropes of "gosh, these webcomics are wildly new and different from most printed comics."
  
• Apparently, George R.R. Martin has put up a list of fanzines he contributed to on his site; however, Chain Letters for Disturbed Children notes that there isn't much in the way of visuals, so he's begun posting scans of said fanzines.
• The Webcomic Overlook has a nice write-up on the Phantom Lady.
• I expect you've already heard that Karl Kesel has brought back Section Zero as a webcomic, right? Not true. Total myth. There's nothing to see here. Move along.
  

According to Wikipedia, One Piece is "the most popular manga series of all time in Japan and one of the most popular manga series worldwide. It is the highest-selling manga of all time in the history of Weekly Shōnen Jump, as well as currently being its most acclaimed manga. In 2010... volume 61 set a new record for the highest initial print run of any book in Japan in history... One Piece is currently ranked as the best-selling series of all time in manga history. It enjoys a very high readership, with more than 250 million volumes of the series sold by 2011." And that doesn't even talk to how many people enjoy the anime. So, pretty popular, right?

The series was created by Eiichiro Oda in 1996, and first saw regular serialization the following year. The basic story, if you're unfamiliar with it, follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his small band as he seeks to find the fabled One Piece treasure and become the King of the Pirates. The protagonists are all clearly labeled as pirates very early on, and they spend more than a fair amount of time fighting or evading the Marines. Naturally, over the course of the story, we're seen how the heroes are sympathetic characters and all of their illegal activities are easily justifiable and justified.

I only started getting into the series last year, but I'm up to the point in the story where Luffy is attempting to free his brother out of prison. (Which is to say that I've plowed through over ten years' worth of material in about 6-7 months!) But in the process of battling his way through the prison -- allegedly the strongest of it's kind, housing the most dangerous criminals on the planet -- every prisoner that isn't killed/wounded in the ensuing mayhem is released. Some are specific characters that have shown up in the past, and are now helping Luffy in order to win their own freedom back, but many are nameless background characters in black and white striped prison uniforms. Hundreds of prisoners now running free. The Vice Warden of the prison notes at one point that he has to ensure that no one escapes because that would cause a danger to the rest of the world. That the general population would be sent into a state of terror, knowing that so many hardened criminals were now free.

Except...

Once their escape looks like it will finally be a success, they start making comments about making sure they never get sent to prison again. And when they realize that one of their own willingly sacrificed himself to keep the gate open for them, they all go into weeping hysterics. So, perhaps not quite as hardened criminals as they've been made out by the Marines.

This is not far off the heels, too, of a story in which one of Luffy's crew is captured and sentenced to execution because she knew how to read some ancient history texts. They make it very clear in the story that she is being executed because she might read something the government doesn't want her to read. In this particular story, though, there's a clear intent that the Marines were after her, as a single individual, because they feared what she and she alone could do. And it was also suggested that she was, in part, being targeted by a personal grudge of a single official.

But in light of the more recent story, it got me thinking. Throughout the entire series, the World Government in One Piece is consistently shown in a negative light. Not only are the lower level Marines continually being trounced by the story's heroes, but the machinations of higher government officials is frequently shown as suspect, if not outright corrupt. Now, clearly, if the protagonists are going to be pirates, they have to be shown in a more positive light compared to their antagonists and it will of course default to showing the Marines poorly. But there are any number of ways that could be handled which would simply show the heroes as simply being misunderstood. Given the pervasive and continual nature of how not just the Marines, but very nearly everyone associated with the government is depicted, it can't help but lead to one inescapable message...

Governments are run by power-hungry elitists whose only interest is in keeping themselves in power, regardless of what it means to anybody else. Criminals are simply those who threaten that by daring to think differently. (Many of those in the prison were apparently only there because they raised transgender awareness.) That's not a new message, certainly, but it's a fairly consistent one throughout One Piece's decade and a half of publication.

Think about that for a second. A decade and a half. That's about the same amount of time that Harry Potter has been around. You've heard those stories about how many of the kids who started reading the Harry Potter books back in the day have grown up with the characters and are now adults themselves? As in, adults who vote. As in, adults who can't get a job and go to Occupy Wall Street protests.

Some of my political beliefs were influenced by pop culture. Everyone from Batman to Frank Zappa. I don't think I lifted any of those ideas wholesale, but they informed my thinking as much as family, friends, my own experiences, etc. I think everybody has some ideas they picked up from comics and movies and TV.

With that in mind, recall those two-hundred fifty million volumes of One Piece? Not including the individual chapters read via Shōnen Jump. Not including the anime.

I'm left wondering how many of those people at the Occupy protests know Luffy and the Straw Hats, and how much of an influence Oda may have had on them.

One of the reasons I don't do more reviews is that I can't seem to get the books and read them in enough time to be of any real use. But sometimes a book is worth highlighting even if it's a couple years old. Such is the case with Blake Bell's Fire and Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics.

It should come as no surprise that it's mostly a biography of Everett with some related info on the early days of what would later become known as Marvel Comics. I've had it sitting on my bookshelf for a little while now; it's large and inconvenient enough that I can't really carry it around to read on my lunch hour at work or anything. But it's a surprisingly fast read. I have to admit that I haven't studied Everett's work in great detail, nor much about the man himself, outside of his creation of the Sub-Mariner and his return to that character towards the end of his life. Consequently, much of this book was welcome information, from mundane issues about his childhood to a deeper look at his overall career in comics to some of the problems he fought to overcome. Much of the information comes from rare source material, many personal papers and notebooks as well as interviews with various family members, so it's good to see it all sorted through and recorded before it might get lost or destroyed.

The book looks like a coffee table style book and, to that end, it includes a lot of Everett artwork. Some original production art, some published material, many sketches and prelims. All of it looks fantastic. Worth browsing through just to see some of the detail he included on his pieces. The early pieces he did for NBC Radio are incredible, especially when you consider he was still in his teens when he did them!

There are two things I would've liked to have seen added to the book, though. First, I would have appreciated having notations in the text on where certain art pieces might be found. Some pieces are more-or-less where the explanatory text is, but many pieces are placed between chapters and there's an extra long art section in the back. Just a simple "see page 42" would have helped more than a few times where I was hoping to see what the text was referring to.

Second, I would have liked to have seen his dealings with alcoholism more evenly paced throughout the book. That he had lifelong problems with substance abuse beginning when he was 12 is mentioned early on, but then mostly dropped until his late 40s/early 50s. Granted, you don't want to focus his whole biography towards that one element of his life, especially since it's a negative one, but if it WAS a constant issue, as the book asserts, then I should think it would be more of a running theme. How did he deal with it while he was enlisted, for example? Were his various job losses due, in part, to alcoholism or was he just being stubborn as part of a basic personality make-up? There's a clear acknowledgement of the issue, but it's largely not referenced AS an issue except almost in retrospect.

That said, though, it is a beautiful book and has a lot of great information about Everett that I am glad to have learned. Worth keeping an eye out for this, if you can still find it!

It Was Only A Dream by Winsor McCay circa 1903-05.