Book Club Patrulla 142
Troop 142 was recently translated into Spanish by Ediciones La Cúpula. Fantastic Plastic Mag, a Spanish publication, asked me to recommend three books I’ve read recently for a Book Club series they have been running. The link is here.
For those of you who can’t read Spanish, or don’t enjoy reading the Google translation, here’s my original text:
Europeans might have noticed how heated US partisan politics are. Intense, intractable partisanship in the national conversation is something Americans have learned to live with; at least in how our media portrays it. In real life, most people aren’t the fire-breathing extremists we see on television, and people on both the Right and Left are coming at their World View from a sincere place. I’ve always leaned Left, but have been interested lately in reading books that write about Conservatism in an intellectually honest way. I am less interested in seeing The Right as The Other, and more interested in understanding that World View. These are three books that have shaped my perception heavily.
There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, by Claire Berlinski. I am not sure what the common Spanish opinion of Margaret Thatcher is, but in the UK I know she’s polarizing. I think it’s important to understand that Thatcher came to power because of the state of the Left Wing in the 1970’s. Endless strikes and a dysfunctional society turned the population away from Labour, and to their only alternative. What is interesting about Thatcher is how hard-line and energetic she was in implementing her policies, radically remaking the country in a very short period of time. How We Got Here: The 70’s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life – For Better Or Worse, by David Frum. The conventional wisdom in America is that the tumultuous 1960’s were the decade that changed the social fabric of the country. Frum argues that it was the conflicts and convulsions of the 1970’s that transformed the USA in ways that are more relevant to our modern era. Similarly to the Thatcher book, he convincingly shows how the American Left Wing lost its way, and made way for the rise of Reagan. This book was published in 2000, but is still a fascinating assessment of America. Culture of Complaint, by Robert Hughes. This book is even older, published in 1993. I was inspired to read it after re-watching the excellent Crumb documentary. Hughes has both Left and Right wing leanings, depending on the topic at hand, which is exactly how normal people are. The book focuses a lot on pop-culture, and the world of Fine Arts, and is also an interesting time-capsule of the “Politically Correct” nineties.
In terms of American comics I’d recommend; Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks, Berlin Books I & II by Jason Lutes, and My New York Diary by Julie Doucet are all perennial favorites of mine.
T.I.P.S! 133 - Good Friends
We’ve got a listener phone call this week, wondering if we consider Randy Newman a Novelty Musician (answer: Yes.), but before we get to that, we’ve got discussions about the silliest sport on Earth (Rugby), whether there’s intelligent life on other planets (probably, and we hope they never come to visit us), as well as talk about eating well and keeping regular. Also, if anyone knows the reason that Lynrd Skynrd gives a shout-out to the Governor in their song Sweet Home Alabama, please let us know. Was it because of some sort of Highway Reform, or was it something having to do with Segregation?
Comments welcome!
This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by J. T. Yost! Check out his Kickstarter project, which Alex contributed to. Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com
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Recent Drawing Thursday - 5/24/12
A recent drawing.
A few months back, I switched from a fairly high-end scanner/printer, to a cheapie one that I got off amazon, mainly because it took up less desk space, and also the bigger printer was out of ink - so, therefore was practically useless. I think the cheaper printer might be doing a crappier job of scanning though, so thank goodness I never got rid of the old scanner like I’d been planning (when faced with moving house, my first impulse is to just get rid of everything I own, like when they toss all the cargo off of planes or ships, to keep themselves from sinking). I’m going to set up the old scanner down in my new basement studio, using an old computer that I’d planned on throwing away as well, and never did either. If all goes well, I’ll have a place to scan my stuff, that’s not connected to the Internet, and therefore doesn’t serve as a distraction. See last week’s blog entry for more about that.
In other news, I finished a first reading of Are You My Mother? whilst taking the long train ride into the city a couple times this week. I say first-reading, because it’s a very dense book filled with a lot of ideas, and I am not sure I totally absorbed everything the first time around. In fact, I know I didn’t absorb everything, because I know I skimmed some of the pages, especially some of the parts that are very text-dense, with a lot of excerpts and quotes from other books. I had the same problem with Fun Home. It’s just tough for me to read comics that have big daunting blocks of very-dry text. I think it has to do with my “comic reading eyes”, because I am actually capable of reading books, even books about dry subjects. But, I don’t read a book the same way I read a comic. Comics I tend to read quickly. Rapidly turning pages. Not that I’m not absorbed, but there’s a speed to the reading that’s different from reading book-books. Hitting tough-to-parse dense spots in a comic can be jolting for me. Because, blah blah, we all know comics are words & pictures, it’s possible that finding myself suddenly in a patch of picture-less letters is almost like scrambling into a well of quicksand while running through a a jungle (y’know, like when you’re running through a jungle? We’ve all done that, right..?), my instinct is to want to just keep moving and get past it.
I really don’t know if I consider this a criticism of the book or not. It very well may be just my own shortcoming. There were many parts of the book where I was totally engaged and invested in the ideas, and absolutely being taken along on the narrative journey with them. The book is filled with ideas. It’s not slight, and it’s not half-baked. It’s challenging, and maybe it takes a little bit of extra-effort to properly read. And, that’s why my intention is to give it another pass.
T.I.P.S! 132 The Amazing Race
Alex and Mike are back in The Lair with a jam-packed episode! First, Mike’s Next Big Announcement Which Will Surely Have No Effect On The Regularity Of The Show (get read for lots of Ink Banthas episodes in November…), then Alex’s Man of The Week: a man who collects his own offspring like some people collect Vinyl LPs. A discussion about stress and decision-making, where unfortunately Mike implies that he’d always make the healthy eating choice. On the show he states he’d always choose the Fruit over the Candy, but he should have admitted in reality, he would choose a bowl of Heavy Cream over anything else. We all have our weaknesses. THEN! The topic of Mike applying to be a contestant on SURVIVOR is raised once again, but this time Alex has a better idea: The Panthers should apply to be on The Amazing Race. All one of them needs to do is learn how to drive a stick-shift, and the prize money is as good as theirs!
Comments welcome!
This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Betsey Swardlick! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com
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Recent Drawing Friday - 5/18/12
Things are chugging along.
Last week I tweeted the exciting news that my wife and I are expecting our second child this November. November is a month that feels really far away, because it’s after the Summer, and Summer isn’t quite here yet, so clearly November is never going to arrive. Of course, it will, and it will be sooner than I think.
Time to get back to the drawing board…
T.I.P.S! 131 - The Ink Banthas Show Episode II
Mike is on assignment down at the J’ore so Alex returns to the Bantha’s Den for another round of STAR WARS chit-chat, this time with Josh Flanagan. Why do the prequels make people so angry? Is George
Lucas really more machine, now, than man? Speaking of which, what’s the deal with Lobot anyway? If you aren’t sick of STAR WARS yet you will be by the end of this one.
Comments welcome!
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T.I.P.S! 130 - NOT More 50 Shades of Grey
No, it’s NOT more readings of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, it’s plain-old Alex and Mike yakking it up alone in the Lair, just like old times. We address the fact that Tony’s tour-de-force is gonna be a tough one to follow up on, and it’s almost like we don’t even try. Hear about our recent con experiences (TCAF, The Wild Pig Show in NJ), seeing Marvel’s The Avengers, getting cable installed in the house, adopting children and changing their names to something more suited to their social standing, and murdering buckets full of frogs.
Comments welcome!
This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Josh Bayer! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com
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Recent Drawing Wednesday 5/9/12
I was at TCAF this past weekend, and it was a swell time. However, I am burrrned out, I think probably like 80% because of all this moving house/being unsettled/etc rigmarole, and maybe 20% just worn out on conventions for a while. I did a ton of them since SPX last year: APE, MiX, BCGF, Angouleme, and now TCAF. That’s a lot for me. There was also the Game Developer’s Conference in California that I went to, which wasn’t comics, but was still a week-long event. I just want to be home, getting my head down and making comics. Thankfully, I have no plans to go to any other shows until SPX in October, by which time I should be ready to get back into it.
Also, I decided that A) since I don’t really expect to ever make a living writing my books, and B) since I have no plans to leave my publishers at Secret Acres, and C) as long as they stay in business, then I really don’t need to be as informed about the comics industry as I have been. Blissfully ignorant: that’s my new goal. I want to write what I want to write, and read comics that interest me, and that’s it. We’ll see how I do. Twitter is probably my biggest nemesis in this regard. I do like talking about the industry, and it’s pretty much a perfect place for that sort of chat, because it’s the thing that gets conversation going the easiest. And I love twitter. I can’t see quitting, but I have plans to put the drawing table and the computer in totally different rooms in the new house, so Tweetdeck’s Siren’s Call is just that little bit harder to hear. They’ll actually be about as far away from each other as possible - the drawing table in the basement by the boiler room, and the computer upstairs by the bedrooms. I’m really excited about it.
Recent Drawing Wednesday - 5/2/12
This coming weekend, May 5 & 6, I’ll be present at the Toronto Comics Art Festival, camped out at the Secret Acres table. I’ll obviously be selling Troop 142, but will be bringing copies of Freddie & Me, Ace-Face, and Gabagool! as well. I think I’m going to be offering a sweet deal of a heavily discounted copy of Ace-Face and free copies of the Gabagool! Hedonism saga with every purchase of Troop 142. I am also going to see if I can rummage up a little original artwork to put on sale too.
I will be appearing on a panel on Sunday afternoon, from 2:00 – 3:15PM, called Making Comics: The Process along with Adam Warren, Cecil Castellucci, and Kagan McLeod. It’ll take place in The Pilot Tavern location. I’m looking forward to it.
I participated in a panel this past weekend at the MoCCA festival, called Memoir, along with Jennifer Hayden, Derf, and Peter Kuper. The structure of the talk had us giving lengthy introductions and offering some of our thoughts about memoir/autobiography. There were definitely a lot of provocative points made, and I wish we’d had an extra half-hour to get a lengthier conversation going between the four of us.
A point that was raised more than once was that there are too many boring autobiographical comics about boring lives. I take a little bit of exception to this idea, though I think I understand where the sense of it comes from.
I don’t think there are too many autobio comics at all. I love reading autobio comics! I wish more cartoonists did them.
Sure, there are poorly made amateurish autobio books. But, I suggest to you, there are no more of them than there are, say, poorly made amateurish space-adventure epics, or poorly made amateurish Love & Rockets rip-offs. There’s poorly made comics of all stripes and genres.
In my opinion, the sense that there’s too much of this sort of work, glutting the market, comes from the reader’s raised expectations when presented with memoir. The immediate question the reader asks is Why is your life worth reading about? Why are your experiences worth my time?
And it’s a fair question.
But, I don’t think it’s the same thing as there being this overwhelming sea of sad-boy autobio, threatening to drown us in it’s navel-gazing. I just don’t think that exists. No more than any other kind of comic.
Batman III
A new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was released today. I watched it, and am filled with conflicting thoughts.
On one hand, this movie looks totally unpleasant. I thought Batman II was grim, but this looks worse. To me it feels like all the bleak nihilism of the last movie, but without a charismatic villain. Does this even look like it would be a nice way to spend 2 hours in the Summer? This looks more like a visual endurance test than a summertime diversion.
On the other hand, how awesome is it to take something everyone perceives as a lightweight action Summer tent-pole type thing, and pack it full of all this awful horrible heavy stuff? Because it’s Batman, the movie is going to make a pile of money, which means a ton of people sitting in seats watching this thing. This unpleasant awful-looking thing.
It’s funny, sitting here on May Day, typing this. Helicopters hovering above the city, sirens blaring, as Occupy Protesters go back to the streets. I think history will be kind to Batman II and III. They are probably better capsules of the mood of this time-period than The Avengers will be. But, right now, if given the choice to go and see one of these movies, I think I’d lean towards Captain America and the Hulk…
