“I was taught to believe you could use words to change the course of rivers – that even the darkest secrets would fall under the harsh light of the sun. But facts have been replaced by opinions. Information has been replaced by entertainment. Reporters have become stenographers. I can’t be the only one who’s sick of what passes for the news today.”
Well said, Clark!
The words that begin this column were spoken by Clark Kent as he quit his job at Metropolis’ greatest (and only?) newspaper, the Daily Planet.
Clark has been a journalist at the Planet for either five years, or 74 years, depending on whether you prefer comic book years or the kind of years most of us measure time by. Either way, what Clark did was a noble gesture.
This is not Mr. Kent’s first stray from the Planet city room. Some forty-one years ago he accepted a job in television and though, if memory serves, he didn’t completely sever all ties with the paper, he didn’t report for work there, either. Instead, he bopped around the city in a van seeking opportunities for on-the-spot, live coverage of news events. His secret – well, his newest secret – was that the van had an concealed escape hatch through which Clark could exit, unseen, when his alter ego – and you know who that is – was needed.
So Clark’s (temporary) change of status wasn’t dictated by ethics; he was just a working stiff doing what his boss wanted. And, not incidentally, what Superman’s biographer’s editor wanted. This was the splendid Julius Schwartz, who felt that Clark’s reporting gig was becoming a bit dated and that maybe shunting him into the electronic media would give him a dash of contemporaneity. You know, spiff him up a little.
I don’t remember what happened to Clark’s video career. Obviously, it didn’t last.
Now, he’s again cut loose from the only serious job he’s ever had, and I applaud him.
I expect that you applaud him, too, when you think about the egregious farce we’ve all just survived. It was called “an election” and it produced millions of words. Words spoken into microphones and in front of cameras and printed on paper: words used incorrectly and irresponsibly; words used to obfuscate and obscure; words that angered and irritated and infuriated; some words that distracted from the truth, some that denied the truth, some that seemed to bear no relationship to the truth.
Clark complained of “what passes for news today.” Does he mean all the print and broadcasting that details opinions and misadventures of instant celebrities – inconsequential nattering that once would barely have qualified as back fence gossip? Global warming? Palestine? Syria? The economy? Well, yeah, those get mentioned too, but maybe not a lot and besides, they’re not as interesting as Justin Bieber’s split with his girlfriend.
Are they?
RECOMMENDED READING: Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie.
From the totally unauthorized history of the late, great planet Krypton.
dedicated to Sandy
Fer-El waited until the building stopped shaking, stepped around a slab of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, and entered the senator’s office. He crossed to the desk and, without waiting for an invitation, slouched into a chair.
Senator Ban-El brushed plaster dust from his shoulder and asked, “Did you feel it?”
“Didn’t feel a thing,” Fer-El answered. “Building didn’t shake, not a bit, and even if it did, that’s happened before. Plenty of times. But enough of that. I bring good news. I just topped off our coffers. Put another four billion in your campaign fund. No problem with the election now.”
The windows rattled and a picture fell from the wall.
“Did you feel that?” the senator asked.
“Nope. Feel what? Say, you haven’t been listening to that Jor-El buzzard, have you?”
“He spoke to the combined chambers this morning. Said there’s still time. We can fabricate a substitute for –”
“And you bothered to stay awake? Banny, I’m gonna tell you once more plenty of what you already know. That Jor-El…not just him, all those so-called scientists with their ‘facts’ and ‘data’ – all wishy washy sissies. Not a real Kryptonian man in the lot! What is it they say again?”
“We’ve exhausted the planet’s supply of dragonbreath and without it there’s nothing anchoring us to the space-time continuum.”
“All lies. There’s plenty more dragonbreath where that came from.”
“All the dragons died out five million years ago.”
“Piddykrunch! I believe I saw a dragon on my way down here. And anyway, our beloved Krypton’s only about four hundred years old. That’s in The Scrolls and you know what else’s in The Scrolls? Nothing bad’s ever gonna happen long as we obey the Rules handed down by our beloved senators –”
“I’m a senator,” the senator protested.
“See? My point exactly. Proves that nothing bad can happen or you couldn’t do it. See how simple it is? And anyway, it’s all happened before and nothing bad came of it then.”
“A continent crumbled and forty million people died.”
“You believe that?”
“My mother was one of the forty million.”
“See! Your mother was and Jor-El’s mother wasn’t. That’s in The Scrolls , too, if you know how to look for it. I’m a little disappointed. I shouldn’t have to tell you this stuff. Maybe I can find another home for my four billion.”
Senator Ban-El half rose from his chair and said, “No no no. I didn’t mean anything.”
The senator sank down and sat on the floor. His chair had vanished. Then the floor suddenly wasn’t there and as the senator fell, he heard Fer-El screaming, “It’s happened before.”
RECOMMENDED VIEWING/LISTENING:Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind, presented by The Teaching Company and taught by Professor Eric S. Rabkin. Note: These Teaching Company courses are generally offered in two formats, audio and video.
This week I thought maybe I’d do a few hundred words on Superman. Instead, I find myself sitting here wishing that Superman really existed and I knew him and he owed me a favor and I had him on speed dial.
Another big blow coming. Here we go again.
I saw my first hurricane when I was on an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean. I watched gigantic waves breaking over the ship’s bow and thought, wow – this’ll make a man believe in an Almighty. It was a glorious experience and I’m glad I had it.
A couple of years ago I had dinner with old friend/colleague Annie Nocenti, who was shortly to leave to teach a film class in Haiti. She was there when Katrina decimated that eternally tormented island nation. For while, I lost touch with her and I worried. But she was okay and we’ve exchanged emails since.
Next came a trip to the Midwest and a tornado that passed about a half mile from our hotel. The next morning Marifran and I drove through the suburb she grew up in. It looked like a toy town kicked by a careless child.
Then home again and soon…our gal Hurricane Irene, the fifth costliest big wind in U.S. history. We lost two trees, one of which hit and damaged the car. It could have been worse.
And now, on a gloomy October 27, the weather folk are saying that Sandy will be worse than Irene. “Widespread devastation” – that was the phrase one forecaster used. What to do? Not much. Fill jugs and sinks with water. Put inside the stuff on the lawn. Make sure we have batteries for the radio, and canned food that can be eaten cold if necessary. And…hold on to our asses. Tuesday morning’s when the fun is expected to start. It will all be over by Wednesday; Thursday at the latest. Happy Halloween.
Enter he who isn’t – Superman. Surely a guy who can “change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands” can deal with a lot of feisty wind. (Though, I admit, bending steel is pretty small potatoes.) Part of the reason we invented superheroes – and, cynics might aver, deities – is that sometimes we feel helpless and sometimes we are helpless and we want…no, we need to believe that some great something who likes us, some mamadaddy who offers unconditional love, will come along to save us. Imagining such a being might be better than nothing. Believing in such a being might be even better.
Deja vu, anyone? (And yes, I know that one of the synonyms for deja vu is “boredom.”) Okay, I’ve perpetrated this kind of blather before, less than a year ago. So let me make a deal with the universe: you stop throwing monster storms at me and I’ll stop whining.
I mean, I lived the first 71 years of my life having experienced only two total hurricanes (and a couple of tornados, but maybe they shouldn’t count.) Now – two in two years? C’mon, universe!
Ah, but the universe doesn’t negotiate, does it?
Maybe Superman does.
(Editor’s note: Denny wrote this before Hurricane Sandy hit our area, and Ye Ed is ye editing it the same day. So whatever Sandy did to us… right now you know more about it than we do.)
Back about a half-century past, when the streets of New York were grimy and enchanted and I first tiptoed into the supply side of popular culture, I would occasionally ride the subway to alien parts of the city to socialize with science fiction fans. Nice folk, these were. Sometimes they’d ask me about the science fiction books I was reading – and I read a lot of them in those days – and we’d chat. But, I eventually wondered, why weren’t they reading the stuff that I was? Didn’t they identify themselves as science fiction fans?
My memory is, as always, hazy, but I think I finally decided that what they called fanac had become more important than the fiction that had originally inspired it. The clubs, the meetings, and amateur publications – fanzines, of course – and the conventions occupied their leisure minds and the genre that was identified with the fanac – fan activity, as you have by now guessed – had a lesser place in their concerns. It was useful – it provided a reason for the gatherings and magazines – but the fanac was the thing. Fandom took on a life of its own and there was nothing wrong with that.
Much, much later, when I was seeing socially a lovely young woman who was part of that world (and whom I should have treated way better, and if she’s reading this, I apologize) I realized that fanac served noble purposes: it gave the participants private mythologies to share and elaborate; it gave them a social sphere in which to meet and sometimes mate like-minded others; it gave them places to go and things to do. In short: it gave them a tribe.
I remembered my fanacking friends and their tribal rites when, a couple of days ago, I read that over a thousand Boy Scout leaders were accused of sexual misconduct and their supervisors very seldom blew the whistle on them. Getting to be an old song, isn’t it? Clergymen and educators, make room on the bus for the BSA, and it’s off to hell we’ll go…
Evolution wants us to have tribes and most of us need them. The problems arise when the tribe becomes, to its leaders, more important than the reasons for which the tribe was formed: the football program is a vital part of the university and any young athletes who are harmed are collateral damage, and that is too bad; the church is God’s earthly avatar and its well-being, including its reputation, must be protected at all costs; and don’t the Scouts teach our youth proper values and skills and surely a bit of psychological damage here and there is justified by all the good…
Yeah.
Let us agree: we need tribes. But now, let us ask most earnestly: what do the tribes need?
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Meaning of Life – Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions, presented by Jay Garfield and available from The Great Courses. If you take only one philosophy course…
Okay, sue me. Last week I blathered on about trying to know as little as possible about movies and television shows before seeing them. So comes Wednesday, the day the new Green Arrowseries, catchily titled Arrow, was to debut and what to my wondering eyes should appear, in the arts section of the New York Times, but a review of that same series. What the hell, right? I read the piece and very favorable it was, too, and later I was in front of the set, tuning it to the CW, waiting for the latest incarnation of the emerald archer. And waiting. And waiting. Because what I was seeing was two hours of programming about football.
Football?
I mulled scenarios. Somebody screwed up getting Arrow and the show scheduled to follow it to the various broadcast outlets? Something in both of them outraged some easily offended poo-bah with enough clout to kill hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars? The football lobby got the shows pulled so it could hype images of big dudes bumping into each other?
The next morning, Mari met a friend at the swimming pool she frequents. Friend told Mari how much she’d enjoyed Arrow. Friend lives in our area.
Time to get seriously paranoid. I was having an acid flashback and I only imagined I was watching sports…The universe was punishing me for not keeping faith with the ComicMix readers…
Maybe not. But then, what? As of right now, I don’t know. If any explanation of the hijacking of the archer by the gridiron mob has appeared, I missed it.
But I did see a story about another hero that appeared on the front page of the Times and jumped to the sports section. It concerned a real-life American athlete who won cycling’s most prestigious event, the Tour de France, seven times.
And doped himself for at least two of those wins and maybe more.
And pressured his teammates to use performance-enhancing drugs.
And lied.
Lance Armstrong, take a bow, and try not to moon the crowd while you’re doing it.
So I missed Arrow and that might be a bigger cause for lament than it, at first glance, seems to be. Because maybe fictional heroes are the only ones we have left. The people we once admired – priests, law-enforcers, athletes, lawyers, and especially politicians, both in and out of office – seem to have feet of clay up to their eyebrows. Admire them? Hell no. Despise them, maybe.
Green Arrow wouldn’t have done what Lance Armstrong did. Unless he was a real human being and the pressure to compete,, to win, was so great that he virtually had to use any means necessary. Then he might go seeking an affable pharmacist. You might be right behind him and I’d be there, too, holding your coat, waiting my turn.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Teaching Company is my favorite business organization. Wiggly, mind-wandering me has never been easy in classrooms – unless I’m standing at the front of them professoring, in which case I enjoy them but I kind of like knowing things. So, with its Great Courses program, The Teaching Company fills a vacuum for me. At very modest cost, it sends me audio and/or video recordings of the teachers you wish you’d had doing what they do best. The range of courses is long and large, and most of those I’ve sampled were terrific. I particularly want to recommend Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity. Presented by David Christian. Absolutely the best course I’ve ever taken, in or out of school.
New York Comic-Con starts today. Almost as big an event as San Diego, but closer to my refrigerator, it is a monolith in the comic-book calendar. NYCC attracts fewer movie and television folk but more people who work in publishing – a (mostly) Manhattan-based business – since NYCC is at the Javits Center, which is technically in Manhattan but more difficult to get to than many parts of New Jersey.
Also, the food choices are terrible, expensive, and such small portions! It’s like being a modern high-school student, but without the calculus. Like high school, I am still filled with anxiety about getting to hang out with the cool kids. I can see from the schedule that I’m already missing out on the cool parties, sold out before I even heard about them.
I am not a person who attended comic book conventions since they started. The first ones I went to were the Phil Seuling shows, and I only went to the parties because I was a struggling freelance writer and there was free food. A hat-tip here to Denny O’Neil for sneaking me in.
When I worked at DC Comics in the 1990s, I went because they paid me to go. Even the big shows then were mostly about comics, not so much movies and television, so being with one of the Big Two made me feel like a vital part of the industry. When I see my friends who are still at DC at recent shows, I don’t get the same feeling from them.
Still, for four days there is a large comic book show in New York. The hotels, especially on the West Side, will have paying guests who are here for the show, who will meet each other in the lobbies otherwise full of foreign tourists. Bars and restaurants host private parties for publishers, studios, and industry-related non-profits. In other words, we’ll be spending a lot of money, which is the easiest way to get respect in this town.
(The other way is to actually accomplish something, and that is much more difficult. Or be British.)
Anyway, this is a long way to say that I’m kind of frazzled, and I’m not sure what there is I can say about comics this week. There are probably some trends that reflect on How We Live Now, but I’m distracted wondering what shoes will best protect my feet from the hard, cruel Javits Center floor.
It is at times like this, when I’m wary and distracted, that comics are most likely to come through for me. This time, I need to thank Grant Morrison. If you haven’t read this yet, check it out.
So okay, we can get our superhero fix without leaving the house. (And isn’t this what we all desire? And pass the chips…) SyFy’s Alphas, which is watchable, is back doing its weekly thing and this week we’ll see the debut of Arrow, based on a character who’s been around for 71 years. I mean, of course, Green Arrow created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp and, shall we say, “inspired” by The Green Archer, first a novel by Edgar Wallace and later a movie serial, and further inspired by the success of another costumed vigilante, Batman, who was getting mighty popular along about 1941.
I know very little about the television incarnation of – let me confess – my favorite arrow slinger beyond this: the TV folk are using the character’s first origin story, which has Oliver Queen, one of those soigne millionaires who littered the pop culture of the pre-war era, shipwrecked on a deserted island and learning to be a whiz with a bow in order to survive. That’s what I know. I don’t want to know more.
We are saturated with information about our entertainments and I wonder if that doesn’t get in the way or responding to them as evolution intended. We know that this actor is feuding with that actress and they’re both mad at the producer and… I guess we can still perpetrate a willing suspension of disbelief (which your English teacher told you was vital to enjoying fiction). But maybe such suspension doesn’t come as easily as it did in the pre-information age and maybe we bring to the story expectations fostered by show-biz venues which influence, for better or worse, how we respond to what we’re being shown. Maybe it’s becoming a chore to bring to the enterprise what some meditators call “bare attention” – simply responding to, and being amused by, what’s there in front of us. As for being surprised by plot twists and the like, once a staple of light drama… good luck!
Am I blowing smoke? If I am, I’m blowing it into a fan.
I used to enjoy Mel Gibson movies. But I can’t, not any more, not after his anti-Semitic ravings and espousal of Neanderthal Catholicism, all of which was thoroughly reported in the media.
A few months ago, I saw a Batman movie. I thought it was a fine movie and I still think so. But I knew that Talia – let me confess – my favorite daughter of a maniacal mass murderer, was in the story somewhere and I kept trying to jump ahead of the screenwriters and guess exactly when she would appear who she would turn out to be. (I was wrong.) Yep, nifty flick, all right, but maybe my enjoyment of it was just a bit dimmed.
On the other hand…Marifran said that if she’d known that the cult portrayed in the fine new film The Master was based on Scientology, she would have enjoyed it more.
It is not a one-size-fits-all universe.
But, dammit, I know that there’s information about Arrow available on the net. And I’m not going near it.
With apologies to my friend Martha (and more on this anon)…
Now where were we? Oh, yes.We were discussing naughty words. Last week, I mentioned that every civilization seems to have had them, though their content changed from culture to culture and even from time to time within the same culture. And the kinds of things they referred to – and still refer to – wasn’t consistent either. At one end, and forgive the pun if you dare, they refer to the stinky stuff that comes out of your alimentary canal, what television’s Dr. Oz refers to as “poop,” and at the other end, well…God or god, depending on whether we’re talking about my religion or yours. They have uses. The aforementioned Dr. Oz, on his TV show, actually recommended that they way to unwind is to shout s#%t! (I may have the gralix wrong – and note that the suitly fellows at Fox Broadcasting seem to feel that “poop” is acceptable, but “shit” would corrode the souls of the innocent.)
To a writer, they can be useful, these verbal no-nos, regardless of exactly what they are, because they’re rare. Save them for the big moments and then, when you drop the bomb, you get your audience’s attention and they indicate that whichever character uttered them is seriously disgruntled.
There’s an analogy to violence here. Once, in what we might (smirkingly?) call “classic dramaturgy,” violence was used to relieve tension or, again, to indicate that a character’s more than just upset. Now – it’s often just screen clutter. We’ve all seen what I think of as video game movies, in which the good guy slaughters evildoers in wholesale lots, faceless cannon fodder who exist solely to be slaughtered and demonstrate the hero’s aptitude for mayhem. Exciting as watching a faucet drip? Well, no. The stuff involves movement and noise, both of which we’re wired to respond to, but the prevalence of these scenes deprives writers of the earlier uses of extreme action.
Same with the words. If “fucking” is the all-purpose modifier, it loses its capacity to signify emotion extremity.
It was once used to indicate that the speaker was either a thug or a tough guy or at least someone of low estate. But, hey, if altar boys use the word…
A screenwriter of my acquaintance observes that this is how modern people talk and if your story is to be realistic, your characters can’t sound like refugees from a Jane Austen novel. No argument. I’m just reporting, not pushing an agenda.
And what might happen if, from overuse, naughty words vanish from our vocabulary? Anyone else find that an interesting question?
Two last items: “Gralix” is what cartoonist Mort Walker, of “Beatle Bailey” fame, calls the miscellaneous symbols that stand in for ^&##$%* words he isn’t allowed to use in family newspapers.
And finally… Martha, I’m sorry I poached your turf. I wrote last week’s column before reading the very similar one you wrote recently, and first. Mea culpa...
Dean Haspiel strikes me as a creator who’s constantly growing. He’s an artist, he’s a writer, he’s won an Emmy for TV design work, and in the last year he’s started up a new project, Trip City, a “Brooklyn-filtered literary arts salon” with an eclectic mix of comics, stories, realism, sci-fi, and more. Now, don’t get me wrong – I obviously love superhero comics, and the people who create them, but I also love creators who can and do cross genres and try new things. Dean is clearly one of these.
While Dean is perhaps best known for his work with Harvey Pekar (e. g. American Splendor and The Quitter) and for his “last romantic anti-hero” Billy Dogma, his current project that’s caught my attention is Trip City, via the sample booklet Dean shared with me at Baltimore Comic Con. While there’s no denying I am hooked on the Internet and social media, I am admittedly also one of those people who still generally prefers reading a paper book when it comes to fiction and creative works; which means that having a paper selection of Trip City’s offerings to lure me to the content on the web is a smooth (and effective) move.
The booklet is a combination of short stories and comics from a variety of creators, and runs the gamut from tales of relationship heartbreak or zombie science to a whimsical “missed connection” ad. It’s definitely a “something for everyone” kind of collection, and while not every selection may strike every reader’s fancy, they’re all quality work (and I, personally, enjoyed them). The best part, of course, is that if you want to read more, you can easily hop over to the site, which hosts a large and varied collection of content, as well as a regular podcast [http://welcometotripcity.com/category/podcast/]. I’m definitely going to spend some time over there, I can tell.
Another cool thing about Dean is that he’s a natural storyteller and born conversationalist. This made for a fun interview when I chatted with him at Baltimore Comic Con. Read on to hear what he had to say!
Emily: Walt Simonson’s work on Thor was just honored at the Harvey Awards. I know you’ve worked with Walt. Tell me about working with him; and did you have some work in the award-winning collection?
Dean: In 1985, I was a senior in high school, at what was Music and Art, which got married to Art and Design and became LaGuardia High School in Manhattan; so I was in the first graduating class of LaGuardia High School. I had befriended Larry O’Neil, Denny O’Neil’s son, who was in school with me, and he would get wind from his father of when some of the local artists might need assistance. Larry went on to become a filmmaker; but at one point during our initial friendship he wanted to be a cartoonist, and he got a gig working for Howard Chaykin on American Flagg! Howard Chaykin shared a studio called Upstart Studios with Walter Simonson. At one point Frank Miller was in that studio, and Jim Starlin…it was this amazing studio. The studio at the time was Howard, Walter and Jim Sherman.
Down the hall, Bill Sienkiewicz set up a studio with Denys Cowan, and Michael Davis (fellow ComicMix columnist!), who was part of creating Milestone Media. Bill Sienkiewicz was looking for an assistant, and I got that gig. So I would work with Bill, and sometimes he wouldn’t be there but I’d come in anyway; so then I’d work in Upstart with those guys, until eventually I became a second assistant for Howard Chaykin. Larry and I both worked on his monthly book. While there, we got friendly with Walter, who would sometimes use me as an assistant as well, and if you know his run on Thor, at one point, Thor becomes a frog; which was so absurd that Walt was a little worried that it wouldn’t fly – but it totally flew. I remember that distinctly because I remember working on some of those stories. My artwork of that time would be more prevalent in Chaykin’s American Flagg!, because I actually drew the backgrounds with Larry on that book; but I did work with Walter.
The way Walter worked (and this was before Photoshop) was that he would do these amazing thumbnail layouts that he always wanted to try to keep the energy of, because when you initially draw something, that’s almost like the best version of that art; because after that you start to finesse it, and sometimes you can cripple it by overdrawing or over-rendering it, or tightening it up too much. And Walter’s style has a loosey-goosey kind of line and he does a beautiful thing with a crow quill pen and brush; so part of my job as his assistant was to take his thumbnail layouts, and use this machine called an Artograph to blow them up onto boards that he would then fully pencil or ink.
Knowing what he was trying to capture was actually harder to work on because you’re trying to be in his arm and his mind, and take his scribbles, and enlarge them onto the projector-sized paper; and I didn’t have the faculty for that. Not only was I not as good an artist as I hope I am today, but also you’re trying to draw like someone else, which is hard. And then of course he would mostly erase it and go on and do his own version. But it was very good training; and also I would fill in the blacks and erase pages and things like that.
But: yes, I did work on some of those famous Thors, and Walt is like a mentor to me. Because another thing that happens, when you work with guys like this for a year, is that it’s the best kind of school. It’s not like, “here’s how you draw a panel, or a page, or rule it” – you do it by example. You do it because you’re around people and you’re getting that energy, and you learn – that’s the only way really to learn these things. He and Howard Chaykin have been mentors to me since 1985. And he’s pulled pranks on me and stuff like that.
Emily: Oh, give us an example!
Dean: Here’s a famous prank. I kind of made a joke at the Harveys about the fact that some of the stuff I learned in their studio was about Warren Zevon and Van Morrison and the writing of Jim Thompson; and they’re the ones who introduced me to Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo. Because at the time I was like, “It’s 1985, I’m into hip hop; I’m into Prince, I’m listening to what kids listen to.” And in the studio they had this record player, and they were always playing Van Morrison and Warren Zevon and this kind of rockabilly music, and I was like, “I don’t want to listen to this stuff, whatever.” At the time, okay? Now I’m older, I can appreciate it. So they allowed me and Larry to play one record each, and I was way into Prince, so I brought in a 45 of “Little Red Corvette.” So once in awhile they’d allow us to play our song, to be democratic.
One day while working with Howard and Larry on American Flagg!, Howard encourages me, “Hey Dean, why don’t you play that song you like? Play your Prince song.” So I put it on, and it starts playing, and I go back to my seat and I’m drawing. Suddenly I hear Walter’s chair slam against the floor, and he gets up, and he’s huffing and puffing. He’s really upset; and he’s like, “I fucking hate this song, this is bullshit.” And I’m thinking, “Oh my God, what’s happening?? This was sanctioned, why am I not allowed to play it?” And then he goes over to the record player, and I look up at him, and I see this raging – he looked like a monster; and if you know Walt Simonson, he’s the nicest guy in comics ever. I didn’t know who this was, and I got so scared, I turned away. I hear him yelling again about how he hates the song, and he takes the record needle, and he scratches it across the entire song, and I’m just hearing this ripping sound, and I actually start to get sick, and he takes it in his hands, and crumples the vinyl, and I’m thinking, “I’m dead,” or it’s not happening; like I go into shock.
And Walt says, “Dean, I have something for you.” And I’m thinking, “I don’t want anything!” I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And he brings over his portfolio, and he pulls out a 12-inch version of “Little Red Corvette”! And at one point I’d looked at Larry O’Neil and Howard Chaykin, and their faces were pressed against their art tables, because they were trying to stifle laughter, but I didn’t know that at the time. I thought they were afraid and cowering as well. And then everyone starts laughing; and I’m having heart palpitations – I want to vomit; but the thing that was cool was that it made me feel like I was part of the gang. You pull a prank on someone like that, and it means they’re okay, they’ve been green lit in a way…But the collector in me is a little pissed off that that 45 got destroyed!
Emily: Hah! I bet. Now, you’ve also worked with Harvey Pekar; tell me about that.
Dean: It took me awhile to finally do something with him. I would send him samples, and I think he thought I was probably too mainstream, because he wouldn’t react. I actually wrote and drew a two-page comic about it, called The American Dilemma, which I published. It was basically about me sending him my artwork, and feeling like by the fact that he didn’t respond, I was going through a scenario of paranoia about how he was rejecting me; so I published that, to show I could create an auto-biographical story about me and my feelings. It was with other comics that are auto-bio, which I did with Josh Neufeld. It was called Keyhole, and again: nothing. So now I’m publishing things about him and he’s not responding to that either; and I was kind of getting a little pissed off, to be frank.
Then a couple of years later I get a phone call from a guy who I thought was pretending to be Harvey Pekar and pulling a prank on me (because now I’ve had pranks in my life thanks to Walt Simonson!). So he says, “Hey, do you want to do a one-page comic?” And I’m like, “Is this really Harvey Pekar?” I’m starting to question him and who he is. And he says, “Come on man, don’t you want to make some bread?” And I’m like, “Now he’s lying; this guy is a bad Pekar; talking in his lingo and stuff.” And finally he tells me to fuck off and hangs up the phone. And I’m thinking, “How is that a funny prank, if it ends like that? Where’s the prank part?” So I start realizing, “Holy crap, that was probably Harvey Pekar.” And this was before caller ID. So I called up Josh Neufeld, and first of all I thought he’d been the caller, but he says, “No man, what are you talking about?” and then I tell him what happened, and he’s like, “That was Harvey!” So I said, “…can I please get his phone number, and I’ll call him back?”
I call him back, get him on the phone and apologize, and he says to me, “What can I do to prove to you that I’m really me?” And I say, “Can you give me that job that you’re offering?” And he did, and it started this relationship. At one point, I had only done one- or five-page stories with him, and then I’d been an assistant to a film producer named Ted Hope, and I knew Ted was a comics fan, because I’d see a lot of his comics and I would file his comics at times. Ted had a couple of scripts, and one of them was a defunct American Splendor script. So it occurred to me; I’ve worked with Harvey; it would be great to make an American Splendor movie; and I suggested it to Ted, who said, “I would love to try to do that.” So I said “I’ll talk to Harvey and hook you guys up to have a phone conversation.” They did, and a year-and-a-half later, it won the Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival.
Because of that, Harvey wanted to thank me by doing something more substantial together, and that’s where The Quitter arrived. I’d pitched it to Vertigo; they wanted to start branching out and doing more indie stuff and autobiographical. So we did The Quitter together; and then I brought American Splendor over, because it had been at Dark Horse for awhile, but it wasn’t doing well, or they couldn’t produce or market it right. It was always a hard comic to sell anyway; it’s a particular kind of franchise. It’s not superheroes, it’s about a grumpy guy writing about the mundane things in life; like how much of a fan base can you have? You can hear about it, but does that mean you went and bought it? It’s a Catch-22. So I got two miniseries’ at Vertigo of American Splendor, that became collections, and we did a couple of other little things, and then unfortunately he passed away. He was a great guy to work with. As much as he had his curmudgeonly persona, he was a sweetheart; a mensch. He always looked out for his artists, and he was just a great guy.
Emily: You’ve done a lot of really cool things. What are you working on now?
Dean: Recently I drew Godzilla Legends #5 for IDW. I just drew a Mars Attacks Christmas story for the Mars Attacks holiday special, coming out in October; I wrote and drew a 12-page story for that, which takes place in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I’m doing a couple of little things right now, and I’m also working on the second season of The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies, a webcomic with Ben McCool over at Shifty Look. Namco Bandai is working with different houses to produce these comics at Shifty Look. We worked with Cryptozoic; they also produced The Lookouts which Ben just did, which is a new comic.
I’ve been doing Trip City, where I’ve been curating and creating content; it’s a Brooklyn-filtered literary arts salon online. We also have these paper curated anthologies just to give people a taste of what is online. It’s prose, some comics, multimedia and a bunch of other stuff. I have other things I want to flex, other things I want to do; not just draw comics. I was recently at Yaddo, which is a writers’/artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, NY, where I completed a feature-length screenplay, the first part of a novel, and a new comic book idea in 24 days.
I’ve been itching to do this stuff, and I had it in the back of my mind, so I went into the woods in a cabin, and did this and walked the dog. It’s the best thing – you should try it! I recommend it to anyone who can afford to do a retreat like that. I just did a print version of The Last Romantic Antihero, which isalso up at Trip City; but believe it or not, even if you give it away online, some people will only read it if you put it in their hand or create a different kind of delivery system. So I’m testing the waters with that.
Emily: What do you think today are the most effective ways to reach people with new material?
Dean: I think using the DIY tools that have been given to us, like Twitter and Facebook, is good. We’re all still figuring out how to navigate that, and when is it too much, or not enough – how and when to use it. Figure out a destination point where you put your stuff up, where you can link to something that’s all yours. Also, be communal. You can’t just be me-me-me-me; because after awhile, people get bored of that and who cares? So share what you like, show up to the party. Be informed, be aware. Luckily, I like a lot of other things much more than what I do. I love other people’s stuff, and promote that; and I don’t waste my time hating stuff. I hate stuff; but I’m not going to publish and promote that I hate something. That’s a waste of time. I sometimes feel like the Internet is made for hate, and I’m like, no, no, no; use it for good. So that’s what I promote.
Emily: There are always people looking to break in, or for tips on what to do in the industry to get noticed. Things have changed a lot from year-to-year. What would you tell people today?
Dean: Use the Internet. If you’re not Alan Moore… Listen, no one’s standing in line knocking on my door; I’ve got to let people know what I’m doing. What’s great about putting even ten images up with your name and a contact is that it works as a 24-7, 365 resume. It’s working for you while you sleep. You may get someone knocking on your door from that. And as important as it is to have something up that shows off your wares, also show up to the party and be part of the community. Find your people. You’re not going to love everybody, you’re not going to like everybody, and not everybody’s going to like you; but find your people, truck with your gang, and luckily you can do it virtually. You can do it from your basement or home.
Emily: I’ve heard some artists say DeviantArt is a good place to showcase work; if you don’t have your own website, do you think that’s an effective place? What do you think is helpful?
Dean: This will show my age a little bit. I don’t have a DeviantArt and I don’t have a Tumblr; and I hear about Tumblr and DeviantArt all the time. If I’m hearing about it – and I hear some of my favorite artists do get a lot of work through their DeviantArt pages – then it sounds like it’s probably a good idea to have that. You don’t have to have your own website. You’re part of a community when you’re on DeviantArt and Tumblr, as with Facebook and Twitter. You can curate who you know, and keep a public presence so people can stumble upon you. The key, though, is to respond to other people’s work; comment; spark a dialogue. Yes, I understand that it’s another job sometimes; but if you’re trying to engender work and get people to know you, you’ve got to get to know other people. That’s the only way it works.
Emily: A sentiment I totally agree with. Thanks, Dean, for sharing some amazing stories and your outlook with us!
Everyone, go check out Dean’s work and the new content over at Trip City. And until next time, readers: Servo Lectio!
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis Does Ralph Ellison
And now that I’ve established my bona fides, let’s get to today’s topic: naughty words.
They aren’t new, these verbal no-nos. Virtually every culture has had them, though their content, even allowing for translation glitches, is not always the same. (My doo-doo is your Number Two?) I don’t know how far back on civilization’s continuum the use and misuse of these words goes. Did the early farmers, about thirty centuries ago, have them? How about the hunter-gatherers? The guys who made the cave pictures?
Maybe some of you have answers; I don’t, but I do know that ever since we homosapiens started hanging around in cities and having politics and organized games and such, we’ve been able to let go of frustration by uttering, or shouting, some syllables that redden mom’s ears.
Even within my brief lifetime (okay, not so brief) these expletives have evolved a bit. When I was a nipper, the word “hell,” and even more-so “damn,” were not to be uttered in polite company. (When father spoke them from the Sunday morning pulpit, he was just doing his job – letting us know, maybe, what would happen to people inclined to use said expletives.) And you never – and I mean never – heard them coming from screens and speakers. (And the little sophist in the corner carps, “What about the last line of Gone with the Wind? And I reply that the exception proves the rule and then ask, ‘Pray tell, sophist in the corner, are you a politician?’”)
Today, hell and damn are common broadcast currencies, bouncing off our living room walls even well before ten p.m. which once marked the temporal divide between family and adult. (Did this presume that adults are not part of families?) In some cable television venues, mostly those we have to pay extra for, nothing utterable seems to be off-limits, and even on basic cable and its cousin, broadcast TV, lips are getting a lot looser.
We’ve come a long way since Norman Mailer coined the word “fuggin” to approximate soldier dialogue in his World War Two novel, The Naked and the Dead. (I was once part of a group of sailors who were cautioned, when home on leave, not to ask granny to “pass the fuckin’ salt.”)
Does this bring us to comics? I guess it might as well. Naughty words haven’t been used much in mainstream comics, though in the so-called undergrounds apparently anything went. We have inched away from the time when editors and publishers were perpetually running scared, afraid to offend anyone (and good luck with that!) and thereby trigger another witch hunt of the kind that decimated the comics business in the fifties. How far have we inched? I don’t know.
But it seems likely that we’ll inch further unless gents like Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan actually get the power they obviously covet. Then? Again, I don’t know.
But maybe the more interesting question is, should we inch further?
Well said, Clark!
