My trusty old pressboard bookshelves that have been housing my graphic novel and trade paperback collection have about had it. After 20+ years, a dozen moves and a couple of floods, they're finally getting beyond any semblance of usability. So I bit the bullet and bought a new set of bookshelves from Target. You know the type: a bunch of flat pieces of board and an assortment of screws and dowels that you assemble yourself. A furniture kit packed flat.

As I was putting them together this evening, I got around to thinking about the instructions. (Beyond just the "what do I do next" type of thinking, that is!) I'd never gotten this particular brand of flatpacked furniture before, but the set-up and instructions were familiar. Dowel here, screw there, weird internal bolt thing over there... I really only needed to glance at each step to see which numbered boards I should use. I've put together enough of this type of furniture over the years that I've gotten accustomed to the way they tend to be built and how the instructions are laid out.

Now I'm not about to suggest that these instructions are a form of comics; I think that's a far stretch. But it does remind me of a previous post where I talked about the language of comics. Like comics, these flatpack instructions seem to have a common language that is -- with the exception of Ikea -- relatively easy to learn. Or, at least, it seemed easy to learn for me.

I wonder, then, how easy it might be for people unfamiliar with a more visual language like comics? Conversely, can people use their fluency in "instruction language" to more readily start understanding the language of comics? Are they like French and Spanish, which are both derived from the same Latin origins? Or, are they two wholly unrelated languages that don't have any relation to one another?

I'm just wondering if that might be another bridge comic fans might use to help non-comic-readers pick up a graphic novel for the first time.

Here's the list of the top ten graphic novels checked out of the Emerson School Library by 5-11 year olds...

10. Babymouse: Our Hero
9. Bone #9: Crown of Horns
8. Babymouse: Rock Star
7. The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook
6. Babymouse: The Musical
5. Bone #8: Treasure Hunters
4. The Baby-Sitter's Club: Kirsty's Great Idea
3. Rapunzel's Revenge
2. Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians
1. Smile

How many of those have you read? How many have you even heard of?

This is what the kids of today are reading. This is what the kids of today think is cool. If you're not at least passingly familiar with these books, you won't really be able to speak to the future of comics because you won't be aware of what the next generation of comics readers is bringing to the table. I don't think it's any great secret that all the Marvel and DC stuff that so many of us grew up on is NOT as kid-friendly as it was 20/30/40 years ago. But the folks still looking at those books, the ones still enmeshed in the Direct Market system, aren't seeing other great material out there that kids ARE getting. (It should be pointed out that the two titles you're most likely familiar with -- Bone and Smile -- are published by Scholastic outside the DM.)

Ask your librarian what kids are checking out. Read a couple of Babymouse or Lunch Lady volumes. If you want to help comics' future, you ought to know where comics' future comes from.

He's not at HeroesCon like he wanted to be this weekend, but here's hoping he's having a enjoyable time in Cape Cod nonetheless!

(Sorry, Dave. My boss says you're not allowed getting Scarlett Johansson pictures from me any more. I had a really good Black Widow one picked out, too!)

I have to admit to a bit of apprehension coming to Deadlands: The Devil's Six Gun. Not only am I unfamiliar with the Deadlands game, I hadn't even heard of it before now! (I've been out of the RPG circle for years!) But I've read enough from David Gallaher and Steve Ellis to give them the benefit of the doubt, and dove in with no preparation. I even skipped the brief overview of the world on the credits page. I'm coming to this with no more knowledge than what you can find on the cover: Wild West with some weird steampunk/mystical elements.

My apprehension, though, was entirely unwarranted. As with all of the Gallaher/Ellis stories I've read, they give the reader everything they need to know. One of the reasons I enjoy reading their books is precisely because of that; even if you're diving into obscure Marvel minutia (the history of the Dire Wraiths, for example) they don't rely on you knowing any of it. But unlike the old comics from the 1970s and '80s where there was often clunky dialogue and flashbacks that was used to catch new readers up to speed, these guys are able to weave in those elements into the story more organically.

Anyway, Devil's Six Gun is the story of Copernicus Blackburne. He's genius-level inventor, up there with Nik Tesla and Tom Edison. Most of the book recounts his life story, and how he spent so much of it work on a gun to kill the Devil, at the behest of wealthy industrialist Samuel Tygian. Ultimately, he does succeed, though at serious cost. I'll leave the specifics for you to find out in the book itself.

There's a lot of interesting things going on in this story. What first struck me was that Gallaher is a lot more verbose than he normally is. He often refrains from adding lots of text, instead preferring to let the artwork tell the story, but he opts here to provide a fair amount of narration. It works well with the story, and provides a sort of an American folk tale feel to the piece. Almost Mark Twainian, but a bit less optimistic.

Ellis, too, turns into some interesting work. As always, he does a superb job in the illustration and basic storytelling. What I find more interesting here, though, is that he weaves in some more subtle visuals in places that provide some nuance to the reader's interpretation of the story.

There's something of a question running through the issue: when Tygian asks Blackburne to create a gun to kill the Devil, is it a literal or figurative request? That raises a host of other questions. Is the Devil really guiding the forces running throughout Blackburne's life? Is Tygian an agent of the Devil or, in fact, the Devil himself? Is the "Ghost Rock" really mystical or is it simply an unusual meteorite fragment? One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was that Gallaher and Ellis walk a very fine line on all of these questions, never providing an outright answer but giving enough suggestions to keep the reader thinking that maybe there's more going on than they're being told.

All in all, I thought it was a great read. It has a lot of the great storytelling that Gallaher and Ellis proved themselves with on High Moon, and even has some of the same tonal qualities, but it's still a much different approach that is just as successful. Deadlands: The Devil's Six Gun is due from Image in stores on the 15th, while Gallaher and Ellis will touring New England doing signings the weekend of the 25th.

I've been reading up on Steve Ditko lately. Like, I suspect, many of you, I'm primarily familiar with his work via Spider-Man and Dr. Strange from the early 1960s. I'd seen a few of his Charlton stories and some later Marvel and DC work from the 1970s and early '80s. But, aside from anecdotes about his reclusive nature and his deep appreciation of (devotion to?) Objectivism, I didn't know much about him or how to reconcile his mainstream work against his more personal pieces. So when I stumbled across Avenging World, which reprints much of his creator-owned material from the 1970s through the early 2000s, I snatched the book up.

The works here range from text essays to full-page illustrations to comic stories. The only constant is that they are entirely and exclusively the work of Ditko. The text pieces seem largely responsive in nature, with Ditko reacting to what seem to be very specific articles or incidents, but they're mostly centered around creativity, art and intellectual property. One piece, for example, goes at length providing his thoughts on the ownership of original comic art and seems to stem almost exclusively from his being asked to sign a petition in the 1980s to get Jack Kirby his original pages of Marvel work back.

The comics primarily revolve around the basic precepts of Objectivism. Some are more fictionalized narratives, while others are decidedly more direct in saying, "Here's what this philosophy is." But they all center around the same ideas.

The first thing I learned about Ditko himself is: he's not a very good writer. Good artistic storyteller, but not a good writer. While there are no real issues with grammar or spelling, his actual writing style is very dry and unengaging. He also tends to get sidetracked with some minutia that isn't particularly germaine to his larger point. Consequently, his longer text pieces took me forever to read because I found myself literally nodding off while wading through them.

Despite that, though, I did get a better sense of where Ditko is coming from, I think. Certainly not a complete understanding, but a better one. Most significantly, I've realized the problem people have with his adopted philosophy.

The issue at hand is usually obscured by the examples. Many of the arguments Ditko presents in his pieces, regardless of the specific topic, focus on a binary solution set. You're either good or evil. You're either for creative expression or against it. Readers see that and try to point out the grey areas in between. What about the good person who inadvertently commits evil acts? What about those people who are so invalid that they simply cannot live without support but are still able to contribute things of benefit? Where exactly does the boundary lie between true creativity and repurposing existing ideas? People on both sides get caught up in these types of arguments, and miss the broader issue: a basic assumption that runs underneath all of the discussions.

Namely, that man is a rational being.

There's a tacit belief than man, because he can think, is rational. The problem is, man is NOT rational. Even the most rational among us behave irrationally. If we were rational beings -- truely rational beings -- we would not respond to art. We would have no need to create art. We create and respond to art on an emotional level; that we have emotions means that we act on those emotions. We can react beter or worse in any given situation, and try to keep things under control, but we are all subject to happiness, fear, hate, love...

So, as long as we have emotions, we'll continue to act irrationally. We're going to make "incorrect" decisions because we have an overwhelming fear of rejection or a burning desire for acceptance or whatever. As long as emotions are part of our makeup, Objectivism in the strictest sense won't be possible.

Which isn't to say that the ideal isn't a valid one anyway. But that ideal is necessarily different from the reality, and Ditko's central basis for most of his arguments glosses over that point. I doubt that it's a deliberate obfuscation of the issue, but it sets up all of his personal comics work (Mr. A and the like) in a reality that's fundamentally unrecognizable, despite a veneer of normalcy that it has over, say, his Dr. Strange stories. It's an odd dichotomy, if you think about it -- Ditko's almost surreal Dr. Strange art is more approachable and understandable than his mundane-looking personal works...

From what I read, I don't think Ditko's not aware of the irrationality of people. I think he understands that emotions DO get in the way of rational thinking. There's just enough in his work to see that. But that he doesn't formally acknowledge or address it, I think, prevents people from understanding what his inherent assumptions and biases are. They don't know how to even meet him half-way because they can't even tell what direction he's coming from, much less where a half-way point might be. That he's so reclusive doesn't help, of course, but I think part of his problem is that he's just not a very good writer and people can't follow along very well.

Which is a pity, because there's some interesting ideas worth considering in his work. He winds up asking more questions than he answers and can really make you think, but it's only in something approaching the body of his work that it looks like you can get an appreciation of what Ditko is bringing to the table. And that that requires such a concerted and ongoing effort means that few people are going to do that much digging.

Showcase #4 introduced a new Flash in 1956. Adventure Comics #247 introduced the Legion of the Super-Heroes in 1958. Wonder Woman #98 re-introduced the title character in 1958. Showcase #22 introduced a new Green Lantern in 1959. Adventure Comics #260 re-introduced Aquaman in 1959. Action Comics #252 introduced Supergirl in 1959. Brave and the Bold #28 introduced the Justice League in 1960. Brave and the Bold #34 introduced a new Hawkman in 1961. Detective Comics #327 introduced the "new look" Batman in 1964.

Where I'm going, if you can't guess, is that the DC Universe that was launched at the start of the Silver Age actually took the better part of a decade to be unveiled. It's easy to say the Silver Age started with the introduction of the Flash in 1956 but, while that's true enough, the DC Universe wasn't just dropped in whole-cloth.

Even though Julius Schwartz, et. al. knew they had to revamp their comics to attract more readers, they were still doing well at the time compared to other comic publishers. They understood they had a lot to lose and, as such, rolled out changes over a period of time, using a strategy that allowed them to gauge what was and wasn't working. Even Marvel, who really had almost nothing to lose by the late 1950s, rolled their new books out over the course of several years, picking the best elements of what was working for them and discarding what wasn't.

Creative people, whether writers or artists or puppeteers or musicians or anything else, aren't mind readers. They can try to tap into whatever the cultural zeitgeist of the moment is when working on their creations, but that is by no means a guarantee of success. There were flag-draped patriotic superheroes before Captain America, for example, but it was the specific interpretation that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created that really resonated with people enough to develop into a character that remains commercially viable a half-century later.

I could rant in much the same vein as Brian Hibbs did about this week's DC announcements. In fact, my thought process when I first read the announcement was almost precisely Hibbs' points 1, 15, 9, 15, 7, 6 and 15. This whole thing strikes me as a marketing disaster of New Coke level proportions waiting to unfold. But Hibbs, Spurgeon and others have all covered that topic pretty well.

I could also make some commentary about the same-day-digital end of things but, frankly, it just seems relatively inevitable to me. The comic market has been heading in that direction for a few years now anyway, and it was only a matter of time before Marvel and/or DC went all-in. I think the most interesting thing here is that they've tried rolling the announcement up into a full line relaunch to deflect some (also inevitable) criticisms of it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with DC re-envisioning their intellectual properties. Justice League Unlimited was essentially that. But that had been a work-in-progress that began with Batman: The Animated Series over a decade earlier. They took elements that worked and applied them to a Superman cartoon. Which they then applied to Justice League. And then, finally, Justice League Unlimited. That show didn't occur in a vacuum.

The notion of organic growth is bandied about a lot, both in and out of comics. The general idea is that you take where you are, right here and right now, and take a step that's a logical outgrowth of that.

"We have this new superhero called Superman that's popular. Let's do another hero, but just a little different, and call him Batman."

"Say, what if we give this Batman character a sidekick?"

I think there's a two-fold problem happening here. In the first place, people are impatient and want to duplicate results without going through the process of getting to them. I was speaking with someone just the other day about her kids (now in their early 20s) wanting the same level of lifestyle comfort that she herself has now, ignoring the fact that she's worked 30-some years longer to achieve that. Same thing in comics at a creative level. They want to re-create overnight a DC Universe that took years to develop. This has been tried before in comics, you know. Valiant and Atlas spring to mind.

In the second place, entertainment media houses have been abuzz the past few years with "world building" and "transmedia." The idea that an IP is in fact much larger than the presented materials can show, and you're able to utilize multiple media to engage the audience in different ways. What this means is that companies are looking for ways to exploit different avenues simultaneously and, therefore, need multiple storylines fleshed out very quickly.

"How does the comic tie in with the video game with the website with the TV show with the marketing campaign?"

There's nothing wrong with that idea in and of itself, but I think those in charge (i.e. the non-creative types who often control the purse strings) are demanding aspects that aren't necessarily appropriate for the venues. "Is a series of 'viral' videos on YouTube really the best avenue for selling more comics?" But I wonder if creators are forced to generate more of these types of ideas before they've had the chance to think through how that would really make sense. How do newspapers work in the new DC Universe? What are commercial implications of Wayne Industries? What are the politics of Paradise Island and how do they impact the overall geopolitical stage? These are all questions that CAN be addressed, but by asking them before the creators have had time to really think through all the possibilities and implications of them, the solutions are going to sound trite or, worse, forced.

What you're doing, when you're forcing this kind of world building on a project all at once, is you're creating continuity. You are creating a history for all of the characters and the places and the world. And you're binding yourself to that continuity right out of the gate. Which creators will inherently find limiting when they think of a BETTER idea two or three months later. An idea that stemmed from where the story direction or character development went. An idea that was organic, and not manufactured to fit some set mold that somebody thought the public would respond to.

This is exactly why all of DC's comic reboots since the start of the Silver Age have not worked. They've all been deliberately manufactured to fit a set of ideas, and aren't organically grown from some smaller element that was found to be working.

So, yeah. I don't have an axe to grind against DC, but I think that this new effort is not going to go over well from either a creative or marketing perspective.

(Nertz. I really wasn't intending to talk about this whole announcement business.)

• Beginning tomorrow, Campbell River Art Gallery in Canada will be hosting a month-long series of classes on "Illustrating for Comic Books and Storyboards" aimed at students ages 12-17. Peter Davies will be the instructor.
• At The Brick Theatre in Brooklyn, NY on June 3, 5 and 12: Reporter Girl: The Story of Dale Messick. The play by Laura Rohrman and directed by Erica Gould is about the woman who created Brenda Starr.
• BusinessWeek thinks comics should embrace iOS subscriptions. No new arguments there, really, but it's interesting that the article is for BusinessWeek.
• F.O.O.K. Matt Khuns points me to this article citing how some idiot drove his car through the fence of Joe Shuster's family home, causing a few thousand dollars worth of damage.
• Are we sick of mainstream articles like this one praising Naif Al-Mutawa's The 99? No, we are not.