Post Bang Conference or How Hillary Chute interviewed Lynda Barry

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry
Hillary Chute (Associate Editor of the forthcoming MetaMaus - and you might remember her from this) and Lynda Barry (well-known painter, cartoonist, writer, playwright, illustrator, editor, commentator, and teacher - which she finds are all alike; author of One! Hundred! Demons!, The Good Times are Killing Me and her most recent book What It Is).

If there is one thing I regret is having had to leave early from Chute and Barry's interview - after an hour I was convinced Barry is one of the funniest people alive. Seriously, the interview felt more like a one-woman stand up show more so than an intimate talk with a cartoonist, which made this a great way to end a well put-together symposium (kudos!)

Chute began the interview by wondering what Barry means when she says that all her different professions (see above) are all alike. Barry, with the type of humour that would permeate the entire interview made a curious analogy: at the center of them all is an image. Sure it changes in form, but it's pretty much at the center of all I do. Think of it as hand puppets - you can have a bunny or a snake, but at the center, there's always the hand. [Kinda makes sense, no? In a Barry-like way]. Instead of doing a disservice to Barry (and probably staying away from stepping on Chute's toes) I offer you snippets of dialogue from Barry (rather than a full-fledged transcript):

- "For the longest time I thought it was 'Spy Vee Ess Spy'

- "When I was in college I wanted to be a Fine Artist... a fine fiiine artist!"

- "Comics are my imaginary friends"

- "Matt Groening was very square. He wore slacks and went to a hippie school! I think he wore slacks because he hated hippies and wanted them to hate him."

- "We always delete what we're most unsure of, and that's usually where the 'image' is."

- [after explaining that she wrote her first novel with a paintbrush, as the slow process helped her write it] "And then, I thought... I found it! It's all about the brush. And I wondered: do they know?... Turns out 3000 years of Chinese calligraphy: yeah they know." 

- "Storytelling is a natural anti-depressant"

- "You know those cereal-trances. Like when you're eating cereal and you're like... 'I wanna name by first baby fructose'..."

And the most alluring of them all:

"Is a dream fiction or autobiographical?"

Check the rest of my commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Comics, Art Spiegelman, Lynda Barry

Post Bang Conference or How Art Spiegelman conversed with Gary Panter

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation

Bill Kartalopoulos (moderator, editor of the EGON comics website and Indy Magazine online), Art Spiegelman (best known for his Pulitzer winning Maus, co-founder of RAW Magazine, forthcoming: Breakdowns and Jack and the Box) and Gary Panter (known for his Emmy-Award Winning production design on Pee Wee's Playhouse and his Screamers 1970s posters, creator of Jimbo).

This was by far the most 'informative' of all the panels - in part because it encompassed such a huge topic (the combined careers of Spiegelman and Panter!) but also because Kartalopoulos was able to guide the conversation seamlessly from their underground/counter-culture roots to their works today, with visual aids that remind you why Spiegelman and Panter are such influential artists today. This is why it makes it more difficult for me to convey the amount of conversation that took place, but here goes a try (simplistic as it may be):

We began, as I said, with Art's start in the underground comics scene, talked about his initial idea when offered to write Funny Animals: a story following the Ku Klux Kats ("That lasted for 2 days, when I realised I knew nothing about the black experience... But I knew about Jews." - and thus Maus; or at least its first 3 page version, was born).

Similarly, they spoke of Panter's beginnings and most importantly of his influences: everything from junk culture to cubism, from Chester Gould and Philip Gustin to Andre Breton ("Beauty must be convulsive" he quoted) and at one point they spoke of his paintings as spaghetti and meatballs version of Picasso - if you just look at his paintings, including the poster of the event you can see where all of this is coming from. Of course then they moved to when Art and Gary met, how RAW published Gary's art, and his Jimbo.

And as the conversation got more and more personal they spoke of how they worked as post-traumatic stress buddies following the events of 9/11 (both living in NYC, they witnessed and tried to come to terms with the event through their art). "What I kept wondering," said Panter, "is where's the motherfucking airforce?!" - spoken with the sincerity of someone who was really bewildered by the events of that morning. "We kept talking on the phone to de-stress each other, and kept wondering... what if something else happens?" shared Art, "Where's the safest place to run? Should we run to Staten Island?"

Then the conversation turned to Art's new upcoming children's book (Jack and the Box) which Bill pointed out had something to do with an old comic-essay on the Jack in the Box he had published years ago (and has a very adult-like tone). In the essay Art had explored the ways the Fool/Jack in the Box (read: flaccid penis) had an underlying scary sense to it. I mean, here's something that just comes at you and scares you. But, how it turns out it's funny is by the fact that you control something that (for all you know, as a child) wants to kill you. So, in a sense, he set out to create a children's book that functioned like a jack in the box. Scary at first, but that would be funny when re-read ("I make comics to be re-read, not just read" he acknowledged).

And from the Q&A (short as it was) we got this great question: "If LSD had not been invented, what your comics look like?" (alluding to the constant reference to the drug throughout the talk by both artists in their formative years)

Art: That's a tricky question.

Gary: Well, there was always mushrooms.

Art: I have to say, I did not 'good' work while on drusg. And I have to say, I would probably have 5 more years as a cartoonist, I guess.

Check back for commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Comics, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter

Post Bang Conference or How 'Comics and the Internet' is a tricky subject

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
Kent Worcester (moderator, co-editor of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium), Sarah Boxer (writer for The New York Times and editor of Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From the Wild Web), Shaenon Garrity (webcartoonist best known for Narbonic and editor of Modern Tales) and Hope Larson (webcartoonist best known for the award-winning Salamander Dream and co-founder of SecretFriendSociety) [Siva Vaidhyanathan was scheduled to be part of this panel, but couldn't make it]

Worcester, panel moderator, began by admitting that he probably the person least qualified to chair a panel about comics and the internet considering he is very techno-illiterate and confessing to just getting on Facebook. That said, Worcester seemed genuinely interested in the ways comics interact with the Web and set about making the panel think about the ways the internet may have affected comics as a medium; financially and aesthetically, thinking in particular about the changes in their production, distribution, consumption and even about the way fan culture has changed since the Web hit it big (think: forums & message boards!).

Following Worcester's encouragement each woman in the panel ("And how great is it that we're not talking about being a woman in comics?" asked Hope to her fellow panelists) to give a brief bio giving us some background as to how they got involved with the internet and comics:

Hope confessed that the main reason she started publishing her work on the web was in order to find a print publisher - which she did, and now she mainly uses the Web to promote her work.
Shaenon (an editor of comics by day) says that she makes webcomics in the form of daily strips in the same way print-comics are made and made it clear that Narbonic and her other creations come more from a place of enjoyment rather than financial drives ("I'm not really good at the whole entrepreneurship part of webcomics" she said, to which Hope echoed: "I mean, you can make 'good' money on webcomics, but it's a lot of work. It being mostly merchandising and stuff.") Shaenon also spoke of the feedback aspect of publishing her comics online: she enjoys hearing what her readers have to say in form of comments, for example.

Boxer, a webcritic for the NYTimes (but more interestingly a graphic novelist herself - see The Floyd Archive), was suffering from jet-lag and instead of talking, she resorted to reading a written script where she described how she had found herself writing the Web anthology and the various ways she saw the internet and comics intersecting. What was striking - and this might have been due to the more theoretical approach Boxer took, was the description of the 'future' of comics in the Web. Quoting Scott McCloud, Boxer put forth the idea that the future of comics might lie in the 'infinite canvas' that is available on the web (she also quoted Gary Groth, whose attack on McCloud centers on McCloud's "thinly veiled argument for animation"). Yet, the more she has explored the world of webcomics (including Hope and Shaenon's work) she has found that webcomics tend to maintain the framing and page-constrictions found in print. As an insight she offered: webcomics are to comics what email is to regular mail. That is to say, there are more options available but we don't utilize them to their full potential (or choose not to).

Here Hope and Shaenon focused on this issue: why don't webcomics use the 'infinite canvas.' Simply put, they said, creating something on an 'infinite canvas' makes it impossible to publish. This, coming from two writer-artists that prefer print (mainly due to its financial possibility) doesn't seem quite a shock. Hope did comment on her Sex Rainbow work being printed as a deck of cards in order to include the 'infinite canvas'-like feel it had on the web, prompting Worcester to ask: "So is this the future of reading? A deck of cards?"

Ultimately the panel - in due part because both of its writer-artists were print-based, or functioned within a print-based comics environment - didn't (or couldn't) explore further the implications that Boxer's comments and questions raised (sadly, no new ground was opened in terms of the 'weightlessness,' the 'ephemeral nature,' the 'insubstantiality' of webcomics or even the paradoxical idea that, in being less substantial, webcomics offer more possibilities for archiving than their print counterparts!). Instead the conversation veered towards a web vs print comparison where both Shaenon and Hope bemoaned the lack of Editors on the web, saying that the help of an editor in print-based projects helped them immensely.

And once the floor was open to questions, the panel became a How-To seminar. Up and coming webcomic artists wanted to know how to promote their work; established webcomic artists who Hope and Shaenon read professed their admiration; and ultimately the session became more of a networking panel, strengthening the sub-culture of webcomics rather than exploring theoretically what the internet can/should/does offer the form of comics. [Ed note: This kind of sounds like a complaint, but alas, as an English Grad Student, I feel everything should be more theoretical - which need not be taken as a complaint]

Check back for commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Comics, Art Spiegelman, Hope Larson, Shaenon Garrity,Sarah Boxer,

Post Bang Conference or How 'Comics & the Lit Establishment' raised some questions

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
Jeet Heer (moderator, co-editor of Arguing Comics), Hillary Chute (Associate Editor of the forthcoming MetaMaus - and you might remember her from this), David Hadju (author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great American Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America) and Douglas Wolk (author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean and you can read some of his work at The Savage Critic(s)).

This was the panel I was most looking forward, mainly because, out of all the panels offered this seemed to be the most attuned to my current critical questions.

Kicking off the panel was Jeet Heer: "Hi, I'm Jeet Heer and I write on comics... [pause/laughter] It kind of sounds like we're in an AA meeting!" - and that pretty much set the tone for the panel; light-hearted and well-meaning throughout. Heer set up the panel with a quote by Art Spiegelman, who in a recent interview had said that he felt that comics were becoming 'too academicised.' Chute, who currently works with Spiegelman took this up: "I constantly hear anti-academic stuff from Art, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not," she said and went on to elaborate on what she thought was actually lacking in academic responses to the graphic narrative medium (and what probably prompts Spiegelman's suspicion of it): quality - or as she put it, "intelligent discourse." [ed note: in trying to find good resources to work with for a paper this past term I found a lot of unintelligent comic book academic articles, so I can't help but agree with Chute on this one]

This sparked a more interesting discussion on the role and value of academic discussion when it comes to comics. Hadju asked: what does an intellectual/formal inquiry on a vernacular/informal art such as comics offer us? Does it deepen it? Contaminate it? These seem to be the questions floating around and it is a shame that they got lost among in the related but not quite as probing question of 'why do people write on comics?' Wolk quipped that he did it for the money [cue laughter]. If, as we are seeing, more and more people are writing 'academically' about comics (Chute cited at least five journals publishing graphic narrative special issues in the past couple of years), then what is it that they want in doing so? The panel suggested that, in beginning to create an academic body of work what we'll be seeing is an expansion of the very vocabulary necessary to discuss comics. Commenting on the literary criticism coming from the academy, Chute added that what was lacking was an attention to the way the form of comics work, suggesting that most comics-criticism tends to shy away from visual analysis and focus instead on plot-details, disregarding the distinct language of comics. 'How do we read comics?' is a question that, to Chute, has not been exhaustively answered. [Heer helpfully pointed to the fact that the work of all three panelists tried to overcome the logocentric academic responses in the field: Hadju's book tries to convey the art through his prose; Chute's analysis focuses on the way image and word collaborate to narrate a story and Wolk's pieces highlight the artwork as well as the writing of comics].

At this point the conversation veered in two separate but altogether complementary ways: the production of comics and the insider/outsider feel to the comics environment.

Production: while Wolk, Hadju and Heer seemed to look positively on the amount of work being produced right now in the realm of comics (The 'Golden Age'), Chute voiced her skepticism: true enough, we have more comics being published right now, but is any of it good? Heer put it best anecdotally: before you'd go to a party and hear everyone talk about how they were working on their 'novel' but now, everyone's talking about the graphic novel they're currently working on. That is precisely the type of work Chute was dismissing: everyone is churning out graphic novels they make in 3 months, but if we look at quality graphic novels, they take years citing Spiegelman's Maus and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home as examples. This of course speaks to the conversation of canon-formation which had taken place earlier; but not just in terms of comics but also - and this is where the 'new-ness' of the field exposes itself - of comics criticism. Not only do we need better material out there, but better criticism and academic attention of it.

Insider/Outsider: This, just like the canon-conversation, brought up then the role of fans. Wolk spoke of the schism between the insiders and the outsiders (a binary that he himself suggested should be thought of as a Venn Diagram): between the fans/shopkeepers and everyone else, or even between the mainstream comics circle and the indie/academic one (glibly speaking Batman vs Persepolis). Hadju spoke of the heat he had gotten from comics-fans who didn't take nicely the fact that an 'outsider' was writing The Ten-Cent Plague, and of the recurrent question of 'Can you draw?' that he got while researching and interviewing for the book. These anecdotes, Hadju went on to explain, are indicative of the sort of sheltered and defensive (if ever so well-meaning) attitude that currently exists in the 'Comics world.'

While the panel didn't quite reach an answer to any of these questions (and I'm not saying it should have) it was still fruitful to see intelligent discussion surrounding these issues. To end, a comment that really stuck with me from Wolk: talking about how he catered his work to different audiences, he said that sometimes he just had to work with the assumption that his readers knew about comics even if they hadn't: "If you're not making the assumption that your readers don't know comics, it becomes easier and it makes readers aware that they should know about them." Isn't that nicely put?

Check back for commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Conference or How 'Comics and Kid's Lit' was fun!

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
Françoise Mouly (moderator, Art Editor of the New Yorker and founder of TOON BOOKS), Lisa von Drasek (Children's Librarian of the Bank Street College of Education), Leonard Marcus (historian and critic of Children's Lit, author of The Wand in the Word), Mo Willems (author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Knuffle Bunny: a cautionary tale) and Sara Varon (author of robot dreams and chicken and cat).

The second panel for the Post Bang symposium, held at the Cantor Film Center @ NYU last Friday dealt with the relationship between Comics and Children's Literature. After introducing the panelists, Mouly put forth the very simple (albeit provoking) question: IF children like comics, can we ponder, WHY?

What followed was a conversation mainly dominated by Mo Willems and Lisa von Drasek, whose strong and colourful personalities were no match for the quiet demeanour of Leonard Marcus and the subdued and straightforward answers of Sara Varon ("I just make things I like" seemed to be the only thing Varon could muster when asked if she wrote for a particular young audience). "Nobody suspected the comic strips" began Willems when trying to convey the freedom the medium allows for and answering Mouly's question; "When people take comic strips seriously,"he added, "I'll have to sculpt pooh-pooh or something." [what difference in tone and in subject matter, I thought, from the initial panel on comics and canon-making!].

What was really interesting about this panel (the one I was least interested in, as I hadn't really given this particularly subject a second thought) was the way the panelists handled their different takes on the issues raised. Case in point: in the liveliest part of the conversation, Mouly and her panelists took to answering the question of whether Children's Literature (condescendingly dubbed Kid's Lit) was ghettoized by the publishing companies and whether in that ghetto the picture-book was looked down upon in contrast to its wordier counterparts. Willems and von Drasek spoke to the way Children's books (and by default it would seem, picture books - which as Varon pointed out, need not be, but are marketed as, kid's 2-4+ books) are indeed ghettoized, sometimes causing its authors little freedom to 'move up' as it were to produce 'adult-oriented' material ("Jim Henson couldn't have made Goodfellas" joked Willems).

Despite differences among the panelists (Mouly stressed several times how she had experienced first hand a certain dismissing attitude from publishers when it came to picture book, in their manuscript-based system; while Willems and von Drasek seemed much more optimistic about the situation, for example), the panel as a whole suggested that things were changing when it came to the way picture-books and comic books were seen by publishers, teachers and libraries. Von Drasek shared many an anecdote regarding the way her work had indeed breached the way for picture books to be picked up and bought at her library; yet her anecdotes also (as did Willems' points at times) pointed at the inevitable censorship inherent in the cultivation of early readers.

Time and time again, the panel faced the very crucial point of is the word more important than the image; but then, if what we want to nurture is quality readers and quality work, why would it seem (as Mouly pointed out) that such renowned Children's Classics are remembered as much for their images as for their language (think Cat in the Hat, Goodnight Moon, Curious George)? The consensus seemed to lie in the apparent 'readability' and 'accessibility' of picture/comic books, which the panel concluded was as much a strong as well as a misleading label. But this is inherent in all 'All Ages' products, it indeed broadens the audience, but it need not intrinsically be limited to just kids. If we are seeing a revival of the 'funny books,' Willems said, it is because 'funny isn't scary anymore' and pop culture has embraced it, and if in this time and age, it gets the kids reading and sponsoring a self-selective reading practice, well so be it!

Check back for commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Comics, Art Spiegelman, Mo Willems, Sara Varon, Françoise Mouly

Post Bang Conference or How 'Comics and Canon Formation' was up first

Post Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!
Friday, June 6 2008
An all-day symposium on the growing cultural significance of comics curated by Art Spiegelman and Kent Worcester

Blogging about an academic symposium - it seems like an attack on everything I get taught in grad school, but I do feel that the more interesting part of a panel like this is the interactions and the personal reactions from the audience (consider it [retroactive] liveblogging in an academic setting).

11:00-12:15pm Comics and Canon Formation
Rob Storr (moderator, was curator of MOMA, including its High and Low exhibition), John Carlin (Masters of American Comics) and Dan Nadel (Art Out of Time: Unknown Visionary Cartoonists, 1900-1969, also check out his PictureBox)

Kicking off the Post-Bang Symposium and its first panel, Rob Storr started us off with a few introductory remarks regarding the question of the 'Canon' as it relates the Comics-medium. "If we have the problem of canon formation," he said, "it is because we can argue we need one." True enough: add in the fact that criticism has proliferated and we find ourselves going back and forth between Carlin and Nadel on the issue of canon formation.
And, following up on Storr's lighthearted boxing match language, I offer a brief match recap:
On the one hand we had John Carlin, a Yale graduate who got his start as a Comp Lit student before moving on to Art History [this of course was information he offered, though a keen listener would have been able to discern his Yale/theory roots, particularly in the form of Bloomian remarks), who put forth the sort of institutional impetus towards canon-making arguments that are so common place it was hard for me not to be suspicious of them.
On the other we had Dan Nadel, who Storr posited as 'anti-canon' or pro an 'alternate canon.' If Carlin was advocating the creation of a canon so as to give a sense of what the best of comics were/had been (think Matthew Arnold, though he later softened this argument), Nadel was giving us a wider version of the canon, and trying to think of ways of (re)conceiving what the 'canon' might mean in a medium such as 'Comics.' For Nadel, the concept that comics deserve 'special treatment' and the continuing battle that comics have waged for themselves and for 'legitimacy' has done more harm for the medium, especially in the last couple of years, which - according to him - have seen the battle become non-existent.
For every 'the canon is merely an instructional tool' Nadel had a 'yes, but canons tend to calcify'; for every 'canons are made to be rethought, critiqued and expanded' Nadel had a 'yes, but we need to remember that the Comics canon has been made and perpetuated by and for fans, who says we have not left people behind in that initial step?' and for the very intriguing 'canons are strawmen to be torn apart; its just how they work: someone creates them and then other people attack it and make it broader/better' Nadel had a 'but can't we skip that step? Comics aren't literature and if anything, we should learn about the 'mistakes' in canon-making which disciplines like Literature have seen.' Overall I found Nadel's insights provoking and much more rooted in the medium at hand: Carlin all too often (as did Storr) ventured into analogous arguments (Jazz and American Film being their favourite counterparts) that did little to elucidate the Comics part of 'Comics Canon.'
But what we saw at work was basically a difference in approaches and methodologies. Carlin, due to his academic background kept bringing up such notions as 'discouse,' 'Apollonian taxonomy,' and 'Benjaminian Mechanical Reproduction' that did little to ground his Bloomian and Arnoldian arguments: the canon is a list of exemplars that can be used to map out the influences and trends in comics history, in something other than institutional jargon. Carlin does have a point - we work (with)in canons - in classrooms, museums, galleries, etc. which rubs up against Nadel's very insouciant 'let's keep looking back at archives trying to continually (re)discover talents to add to what would look like a web-like pantheon of examples ("__ was very good at __").' That said, the conversation was ripe with possibilities and you can't really have a Nadel without a Carlin, and ideally, a Carlin without a Nadel.
And yet, they both seemed to agree on the fact that what makes hard for us to think/conceive of a comics canon is the hard-to-come-by archives due to the very ephemeral nature of comics themselves. Sure, there is TCM for movies, but what would a TCM for comics look like? And how does that reflect on the very nature of canon-making we were discussing?

Altogether, the panel was very lively and ripe with interesting and thought-provoking questions - a great start to what was a great event.

Check back for commentary/'retroactive liveblogging' of the rest of the panels:

11:00-12:15 Comics and Canon Formation
1:30-2:45 Comics and Kid's Lit
3:00-4:15 Comics and the Literary Establishment
5:30-6:45 Comics and the Internet
7:00-8:00 Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation
8:15-9:30 Hillary Chute interviews Lynda Barry

Post Bang Comics, Art Spiegelman

2008, or How I'm adding to my wishlist

I can't help but keep adding to my 2008 Wish List:

Buffy Season 8 continues
Is anyone else anxious about Drew Goddard's arc or Jane Espenson's issue?

San Diego Comic Con 2008

I had such a good time at the 07 one I'm already saving up to see if I can manage a repeat

BSG Season 4 (read: Last one!)
It has to be frakking amazing, right?

Umbrella Academy
How will it all end? And will please Gerard give us more?

Y the Last Man: The END!
Yes, we'll all cry once Yorick leaves us...

The End of the WGA Strike
One hopes... And if it does:

Pushing Daisies
I mean after that revelation re: Aunt Lily, I need this ASAP

How I Met Your Mother
Because I really want to meet The Mother already!

30 Rock
Do I really need an excuse to want more of this?

Triple Threat, or How TGIW

Thank God It's Wednesday!

Astonishing X-Men 23
by Joss Whedon

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8: No Future For You Pt 3
by Brian K. Vaughan (Exec Produced by Joss Whedon)

Y the Last Man #59
by Brian K. Vaughan

Suburban Glamour, or How the 'Burb's go all emo on us

Suburban Glamour
Writer/Artist: Jamie McKelvie

Just when I thought my comic book collection would not be seeing any new additions (currently it only houses Whedon stuff, BKV books, Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy and Fables TPBs) comes Suburban Glamour.
The premise: an emo couple (not romantically - at least not right now, one never knows with these teenagers, though I forget this is not a WB show where pairing up top-billed teens was mandatory) find themselves living a normal life - parties, shopping, school... when Astrid's long lost childhood imaginary friends come back to warn her about 'something' coming to the town. Out there? Yeah. It also doesn't hurt that the artwork is pretty and pink!
With a wit and spark that seems indebted to everyone from Joss Whedon to anyone writing WB shows circa early 2000s, Suburban Glamour finds that good balance between being ... well suburban (normal, average) and glamorous (stylish, fantastical) - you get both an almost date-rape episode AND a talking marionette; you get both a shopping spree AND a Bang-On-like store (in Suburbia? Yeah... pretty hard to believe!)
Needless to say, I can't wait for the next installment, and not just because it showcases hottie David on the cover.

My favourite line exchange:
David: Yeah, go on it's not like we've got anything better to do.
Astrid: Speak for yourself!
Chris: You're right. I'm sure sitting in your room listening to MCR and refreshing your myspace endlessly is much more fun.
Astrid: ... Sometimes I look at facebook too.

My favourite touch: the 'title page' that doubled as an early-morning montage that could just as easily been a scene of a 1990s chick-flick if put to the tune of an upbeat cloying song (this is, of course a compliment - I am thinking Clueless's use of Supermodel, or more recently Devil Wears Prada's use of Suddenly I See)

My Chemical Way-Ba, or How I Love The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy
The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk
Issue 1 (of 6) of Apocalypse Suite
Story: Gerard Way
Art: Gabriel Bá
Cover: James Jean

From the very first page I knew I was going to like this comic-book. Actually, I take that back. From the cover, I knew I was going to like this comic book. James Jean never goes wrong. Also, having Scott Allie associated with a project is a plus any day.
So first page: I love Way's "notes from Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a.k.a. The Monocle" they're really funny and offered a good 'intro' to our Academy members. My favourite line:
"00.03 Insufferable, narcissistic creature, but extremely useful."

A couple of disclaimers -
Even though I have some My Chemical Romance songs on my iTunes I am by no means a Gerard Way fan - unlike some people I know.
Even though I got a free copy of The Umbrella Academy short story released on Free Comic Boy Day both at the time and later at Comic Con, I had not read it (I had only looked at the pretty cover, over and over again)

That said, after reading the first issue I fell in love with everything - the ridiculously crazy plot, the witty dialogue, the super-fun artwork by Gabriel Bá (reminiscent enough of his brother's work on Joss' Sugarshock but appropriately different to suit Mr Way's tone and story) and of course, the characters. Rumour might just actually have the greatest power I have ever heard of. So simple and yet so 'extremely useful.'
To Gerard Way's merit I will say that the comic-book reads very much in a cinematic fashion and I think that's one thing I found helped set the pace and the mood for the story. More so than any other book I've read recently, Bá's panels work as shots on a screen that accompany Way's voice-over in the first five pages what seems to be a wonderfully informative and yet vague enough introduction that reminded me of Ms Blanchett's voice-over narration opening Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. And then, as if that wasn't enough, Way gives us one of the most amusing titles I've come across: The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk. (Those crazy French! Non?)
Overall it is an intriguing concept and though I was actually hoping to get more background story (I am always weary of those '__ years later' labels, but actually that followed by 'The Moon' was cool), I am enjoying where it is going and can't wait for the next issue!

No Future For You, or How I Can't Wait For Wednesday!

Isn't this rivalry just perfect? I love it. More of Vaughan-goodness here.

Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth, or How I Bought/Read My First Pretentious Graphic Novel

So, still reeling from the fact that I went to New York's biggest comic book store and bought one of the best-selling graphic novel's of all time there I thought I should actually get around to read it. Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth illustrated by Dave McKean is an interesting read for many reasons. It is Batman as I had never thought of him before (sexually stunted? ambiguous and shadowy? broken and fragmented?) - it's not West, Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney or even Bale and I don't think I'd have it any other way. Little did I know that this classic graphic novel has spurred disparate reception with the lovely power of hindsight. Just from reading around the web the word that is ever-present in all the negative reviews is "pretentious" and maybe that's why I liked it so much.
Freud + Christian Imagery on its head + Tarot Symbology + Jungian Mythology + Batman + Theories of Sanity/Insanity = A good read for someone as geeky and theory-oriented as myself. The inclusion of Morrison's original script in this version was very intriguing - you get to see how intricately woven all the symbology was in Morrison's writing and yet how far away McKean drifts from specificity and moves towards mood and tone to invoke the surrealism and Saturnalia-effect the book has when you first read it. This is the kind of graphic novel that just screams "Theorise-Me!" (an apt Lewis Carrollian imperative from a book so influenced by that 'children's story') and well I would love to - I find that stories about losing one's sanity in order to gain self-knowledge are quite appealing. Reading Asylum reminded me of Carlos Fuentes Aura and Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo - which, while different in style and scope deal with similar topics - only instead of Batman you're getting Latin-American history.