Well, this weekend has been a bit of a mind-trip so far. I've taken in the 1972 filmed version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the graphic novel adaption of the 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie, Mahendra Singh's illustrated version of The Hunting of the Snark, several philosophical essays by Steve Ditko, and Sean Andress's first two issues of Moral Geometry. Having absorbed all that in the past day or two, you'll excuse me if I'm not entirely coherent with this post.

When Andress first contacted me about his comics, he likened them to "a violent car crash between a Terry Gilliam film and sleazy German Expressionistic art." When I got them and flipped through them initially, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to "get" these books right away. That was about two weeks ago, I don't think I'm any closer to understanding them now than I was then.

The stories are mostly wordless, and rely primarily on Andress' brushwork. (Despite the covers, the interiors do not feature any collages.) As suggested by his original description, the illustrations themselves are fairly impressionistic -- you can make out characters AS characters but, for the most part, they make the cast of Tod Browning's Freaks seem ordinary. With the exception of perhaps the first few pages of the first book, Andress is able to make the panel-to-panel and page-to-page transitions smooth, so the reader can focus on what's actually going on, rather than trying to decipher the flow.

Which, I think, is critical here. The pieces aren't easy to really grasp here beyond a superficial level. It's easy enough to see what is going on, but much more difficult to figure out why. Because of that, I'm more inclined to take his later description of "a violent car crash between a David Lynch film and sleazy German Expressionistic art."

Overall, I'm going to have to go back and borrow a line from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass... "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas---only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate."

Andress has begun posting pages at a new Moral Geometry blog while printed copies can be purchased from his broader art blog.

Carl Barks, Disney's famed "Good Duck Artist", is seen here laughing heartily at the antics of Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Frank Brunner.

The photo was used as the cover to the 1976 Newcon program booklet. This image should make any comics fan smile.

I spent too much time today coming up with superhero-themed Dozens comments and ran out of time for actual blogging. (If you don't know, The Dozens is basically two people making "yo mama" jokes back and forth to each other. Check out the #superherodozens hashtag on Twitter to read through some of them.) Anyway, on with today's mash-up. Dialogue from Garfield, and art from...
Legend of Bill

Bob the Squirrel

I'm amused that it makes Frank there look like he's barking mad, but it doesn't really change Bill's mentality all that much.

... this must be a link-blog!

• So you've heard people throw around the term "transmedia" or maybe "transmedia storytelling" but you really don't get what they're talking about? Dr. Pamela Rutledge has this excellent and concise summary of what it is and why it's significant in the 21st century over at Psychology Today.
• Charles Forceville has a blog set up called Adventures in Multimodality. "Multimodality" is just a fancy term for "using multiple forms of communication." Like, say, words and pictures. Several of his posts focus specifically on comics and, while I haven't read them yet, the abstracts make them all sound fascinating. (via Neil Cohn)
• The theme of the latest issue of Image & Narrative is "Visual Language of Manga." Again, I haven't read everything there yet, but several articles look good. (again, via Neil Cohn)
• These next two are actually from Stumptown, but I don't recall seeing them making the usual rounds, so let me point to the Stumptown Trade Review's video interviews with Carla Speed McNeil and Nate Simpson.

Bet you didn't know that today was World Intellectual Property Day, did you? Almost certainly not if you live in the United States. Since 2001, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, an agency of the United Nations) has held conferences and symposiums on April 26 "to celebrate creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies across the globe". As near as I can tell, though, it's almost wholly ignored here in the States.

I only first heard of the organization and the event this morning. Now, admittedly, it usually takes a few years for holidays and celebrations to catch on, but what I've been able to find online so far suggests that more people are aware of the event in Mexico than here in the States, despite the population difference and, ostensibly, a greater importance put upon idea generation up here. The event is, by comparison, HUGE in most European countries and has a strong base in the Middle East, South America and Southern Asia.

Which leads me to wonder why it's not bigger here.

I mean, arguably, America is founded on the notion of creativity, isn't it? If you don't like the way something works or think of a better way to do it, work it up on your own, sell it and make yourself a millionaire. That's the America Dream^TM, isn't it? Haven't many of the great inventions over the past 100 years come from the U.S.? Aren't many of the best-known characters in pop culture from the U.S.? Doesn't a huge chunk of our export revenue come from movies, video games and television? If so much of our society stems from the promotion of intellectual properties, shouldn't we be more interested in something called World Intellectual Property Day?

We should, of course. But we're not.

The issue, as I see it, stems from the fact that putting on World Intellectual Property Day events requires money. Money that is largely in the pockets of large corporations. Corporations that have invested millions of dollars over decades to secure intellectual property rights for themselves. Corporations that have lobbied hard to repeatedly extend copyright laws that prevent works from entering the public domain for generations longer than they used to. (My friend Matt had an excellent post about that many years ago. Hey, Matt, I don't suppose you still have that, do you? It was on your blog prior to Alchemy.) These corporations fully realize the value of intellectual property and also know that they (as an organization) can't really generate more ideas; they're reliant upon individuals working for the organization. Further, they know that the people who CAN generate great I.P. ideas generally don't need the corporation to secure the rights to those ideas.

There was a chart in a Jack Kirby Collector several years ago where someone analyzed all the issues of the Fantastic Four and plotted how many new characters Jack introduced each year. I can't find it offhand to check the specifics, but the numbers went up and up, until around issue #70 and the last two years or so of the title saw mostly variations on old ideas. The reason had nothing to do with Jack's creativity -- he was still dreaming up new characters and story ideas. But now, he was keeping the best ideas to himself. He didn't want give Stan Lee (and Marvel) anything else that would make them a lot of money. That's why, when Jack finally quit Marvel and went to DC, he had this incredible flurry of output with his Fourth World material. That was all stuff he'd been saving up.

Of course, he realized that DC wasn't any better in that regard after a year or two, so he held back on his ideas. That's where Kurt Busiek's and Alex Ross' upcoming Kirby: Genesis comes from: all the brilliant ideas Jack had after he left DC.

You can look at some of the legal fights that have been going on in comicdom lately to see the same thing. The ongoing Siegel/Shuster battle against DC over Superman. The ongoing battle between Lee and Stan Lee Media, Inc. The various lawsuits from the Kirby estate and Joe Simon against Marvel. Those are all about a large corporation trying to hold on to intellectual property that was created by someone else.

I'm not saying that your not hearing about World Intellectual Property Day before now is part of some grand conspiracy. I'm just saying that I suspect most corporations who might sponsor such an event see it as going against their best interests to help educate creators about their rights.

Just something to think about.

I stumbled across the Graphic Library series from Capstone Press. It's a series of around 150 graphic novels aimed at 3rd and 4th graders covering a wide range of history and science. Each book covers a single topic: hurricanes, the Battle of Gettysburg, the first moon landing, the life of Harry Houdini, etc. They're high-level summaries, only clocking in at 32 pages each, and are told in broad strokes that nine and ten year olds could readily absorb. Despite the low page count, they're square-bound and have a bit more heft to them than a typical monthly pamphlet comic.

I read through The Buffalo Soldiers and the American West, one of the many, many topics woefully skipped over entirely in my public school history classes. After the Civil War, the government promoted westward expansion through the Homestead Act. Not surprisingly, the Native Americans were often not thrilled about this, and fights occurred from time to time. (This much I did learn in school.) The government wanted to sent armed forces out to protect the Homesteaders, but didn't feel it was fair to send all these troops out to fight under harsh conditions so soon after the Civil War. So they sent out African American troops. Despite having the worst supplies and harsh treatment from their white superiors. (Blacks weren't then allowed to be officers.) These troops were so effective and powerful, the Native Americans started comparing them to the ferocious buffalo. The troops went on to round up Mexican bandits and Native American "troublemakers" like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse; they went on to serve valiantly with the Rough Riders under Teddy Roosevelt, and continued on through the Spanish-American War up through World War II. Their long unsung bravery led Colin Powell to dedicate a memorial to them in 1990.

As I said, this is a book aimed at kids. The language is pretty simple, and there's not a lot of nuance to the story or art. That said, it's well done and does a good job taking advantage of both the words and pictures. That is, it's definitely NOT just a straight narrative with some illustrations. The text and imagery are very well-integrated.

The other interesting thing here, and one of the reasons I opted to look at this book over some of their other titles, is to see how they handled racism and bigotry. Obviously, during that time in American history, any non-Caucasian was looked down upon. But for kids of that age group, you probably don't want to include the derogatory epitaphs or depict lynchings or anything. This is where the book REALLY surprised me.

The poor treatment of blacks was definitely not glossed over at all. They flatly state that a lot of whites didn't like African Americans and treated them poorly, like sending them out in the place of white soldiers and only providing inferior equipment. But once they're out West, the story largely focuses on their bravery and military successes. It comes across as an almost Campbell-ian hero's journey, just using an entire cavalry troop instead of a single individual.

But the REALLY elegant part is the depiction of the Native Americans. The Buffalo Soldiers are clearly the heroes of the book (they're the ones it's titled for, after all!) and the were largely created to deal with Native Americans. But rather than making the Native Americans the bad guys, they're actually depicted as people who were cornered into oppressive and unfair circumstances. Not victims, mind you, and not as noble, ignorant savages. They're simply shown as what they really were.

It's an incredible balancing act. The American Indians aren't really to blame for resisting their lands being forcibly taken away and their food supplies slaughtered. So you can't depict them too poorly, despite them needing to play the role of the villains here. The Buffalo Soldiers chase down a lot of these Native Americans unfairly on the orders of their superiors, but they're supposed to be the heroes so you don't want to really put any significant faults of conscience on them. If there's a real bad guy here, it's the (broadly labeled) U.S. government but you don't want to depict them too badly either, since they were the ones ordering the Buffalo Soldiers around in the first place. Amazingly, writer Jason Glaser handles all of those angles superbly such that the reader still roots for the heroes, but doesn't really disparage the villains.

I suppose, in that sense, it's not a 100% fair assessment of history but A) you can't reasonably provide ALL the details and nuances and expect children to comprehend them, and B) it's still more accurate than any school history book I've ever seen/read. Now, Glaser hasn't written all of the books in this series, but if this is any indication of the level of expertise going into these, I heartily recommend the whole series to anyone with kids in that age range.

I arrived in LaGuardia on Friday afternoon and took a taxi over to my S.O.'s cousin's place. (She had said it was close to the World Trade Center, but I hadn't realized that she meant 1/2 a block from Ground Zero!) This cousin has two kids, 14 and 11.

The 14-year-old had heard (from my S.O.) that I was big into comic books, which he thought was pretty cool, so he offered to take me over to Forbidden Planet. (I'll do a proper shop review later.) Now, this was a bright and mature kid; he's read most of the works of Shakespeare in his free time. Anyway, while we were in the apartment, he was playing Call of Duty, chatting with his friends via headset, chatting with us in person and periodically checking his phone and laptop all at the same time. I understand that's the norm for kids today, but I'm not around young people very much, so it was kind of fascinating to watch in action. It was also interesting to note how quickly his mom, the S.O. and myself got accustomed to discerning when he was talking to us versus when he was talking to his friends, despite no real obvious outward signs of who his comments were directed towards. (No change in tone or volume, and his eyes remained directed towards the television.)

Naturally, he and I chatted about comics on our way to and at the comic shop. His interest is primarily in manga, and the two he cited as reading the most of were Naruto and Bleach. Kingdom Hearts came up as well, as did Deadpool. He was also relatively familiar with Justice League but primarily through the cartoons, I think. While he was looking over the latest volumes of Naruto, I noted that I hadn't seen any of the books around the apartment. He responded that he read the first couple dozen volumes from the library, and had read the rest of them online. As far as I can tell, only the first volume is online legally, so I'm presuming he's read pirated versions of the rest. He didn't say so expressly, but it struck me that the legal issues surrounding that barely registered, if at all. Although, interestingly, he did later make a comment about another manga artist who was clearly borrowing character designs from someone else; his thought here was more focused on the lack of originality than the potential copyright infringement.

Coming out from their manga section, I found and started flipping through a collection of Steve Ditko's work. The kid asked what it was, and I explained that it was a collection of stories by the guy who created Spider-Man. His response was something along the lines of, "Spider-Man's cool and all, but Deadpool kicks his butt!" One of the folks who worked at the store came up, wearing a Spider-Man shirt. Within moments, he was in a friendly argument with my young guide, noting the Deadpool is a pale imitation of Spider-Man and without Spidey, there would be no Deadpool. That got cleverly segued into the kid trying to haggle down the price of the book since Spider-Man wasn't all that anyway.

The Spider-Man/Deadpool debate continued off and on throughout the rest of the weekend.

At some point, while we were browsing, I came across and pulled out a Darkstar and the Winter Guard TPB. I opened it to the credits page and explained, "This guy, the guy who wrote this? He's the one whose wedding I'm going to tomorrow."

"You know him?"

"Yeah. And this other guy who drew this? He'll be there tomorrow too."

He was really impressed. I tapped on the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man on the wall. "This writer will be there too."

"Dude! You've got CONNECTIONS!" (Not that I'd ever met Dan Slott. I didn't get a chance to meet him at the event, either, for that matter.)

When we got back to the apartment, he played at being upset with my S.O. for downplaying my interest in comics. "You just told me he liked comics! That he was a Fantastic Four fan! You didn't say anything about him being all connected in with the business and everything!" Apparently, working in comics is still pretty impressive by a 14-year-old's standards. And I never even gave him the full run-down of all the comics folks who were at the wedding.

(The S.O. and I are seen here chatting casually with DC's online technology manager, Dave McCullough. You can't see him, though, because he's sitting behind writer Frank Tieri. Greg Sanderson on the left there used to intern at Marvel with McCullough and Tieri. The photo itself is by artist Chris Cross.)

It was a fascinating weekend for me, in part for the awesome people I met at WeddingCon, but also in part for being able to get some insights from an intelligent and well-read teenager on how teenagers themselves look at the comics industry and media in general.