Rants & Raves

MCSWEENEY'S #33

The next issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly, No. 33, due out momentarily, is “an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there,” saith the press release. No. 33 will be a “one-time-only, Sunday-edition sized newspaper — the San Francisco Panorama — and it’ll have the news of the day, plus sixteen pages of comics from the likes of Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides. But, apparently, no editorial cartoons. At least none the publisher feels like mentioning at this date. For subscription information (i.e., purchase instruction), consult store.mcsweeney.net. This is the third attempt that I’m aware of to rejuvenate the Sunday funnies by publishing an exemplary model. DC Comics did it with its short-lived Wednesday Comics; and then in Minnesota a couple months ago a consortium of enthusiasts published Big Funny, a coffee-table size paper of original comics that pays heed to the glory days of newspaper comics. Someday, one of these things might catch on if we’re not careful.

I DID IT HIS WAY

After B.C. cartoonist Johnny Hart died a couple years ago, the strip didn’t wander much into the spiritual arenas that Hart often visited. But the Hart family has produced a new book, I Did It His Way, that collects some of Hart's best-known religious cartoons, tries to explain one of his most controversial, and pays tribute to the cartoonist. “The book,” writes Lindsay Perna at Religion News Service, “is packed with Christian crosses, theological debates and Hart's unique wit. ‘He wanted people to know that God had a sense of humor,’ said his daughter, Perri Hart, who produced the book with her father's widow, Bobby. ‘He really always felt that this was what he was called to do,’ she said.”

Elsewhere, in Binghamton, New York, B.C. is coming off the page and onto pavement. In early October, the first three-dimensional dinosaur in the image of one of Hart’s creations was unveiled. More are on the way. In the manner of the fiberglass statues of cows and elephants and donkeys that wander the streets of Chicago and Washington, D.C., the Hart monsters will be painted by local artists in their own style. The Hart family helped develop the project. Said Mason Mastrioanni, Hart’s grandson who now draws the strip: "It's fortunate that our area is known for something so unique and hopefully this will be a fun project because it's unique and it's cartoon characters whereas some of the other towns [have] more realistic looking sculpture. I look forward to seeing what the artists do with it.”

ASTERIX & OBELIX

The 50^th anniversary of the small but cunning warrior Asterix and his pudgy stonemason pal Obelix is being celebrated with a new book of their adventures, The Birthday of Asterix and Obelix, the 34th in a series, time.com says, that was initially “created as a way to keep American comic strips from taking over France.” (Not a bad idea, now that it has surfaced again. How else could France be taken over but by comics?) The new book celebrates the golden jubilee with 56 pages of unpublished drawings by the characters’ co-creator, comic artist Albert Uderzo, who said: "It's a little different from the classic albums," adding, “they’re short stories, in which all the characters refer to the anniversary." The new book, said the Barcelona Reporter, contains many of the friends that Asterix has accumulated over fifty years because everyone is invited to the big party that the villagers have prepared. “The artist recalled the birth of these adventures, when on October 29, 1959, these Gauls appeared in the first issue of the weekly magazine Pilote, a magazine that aimed to address the invasion of U.S. comics.” Asterix the Gaul came out in book form in 1961, bearing the name of Uderzo and his co-creator, Rene Goscinny, and since then millions of readers have benefitted from the 32 books that followed, plus eight animated films.

BLACKNESS IN NOIR

The artists producing Marvel’s “Noir” series have taken the series title to heart, uncorking their ink bottles and pouring the contents on the pages, drenching the pictures in so much black it’s hard to make out just what is being depicted thereon. The Noir notion takes some of Marvel’s most recognizable heroes back into the Depression-era 1930s where they are still Spider-Man, Wolverine and Daredevil but not the same characters as they are now. Somewhat. Or almost. Still, each character resonates with his usual trappings. Spider-Man is a teenager in the grip of angst, Wolverine has a nasty temper, and Daredevil is blind. The fun, supposedly, is in seeing how these familiar features are played out in a different time, different world. So far, Spider-Man Noir looks the most promising, but others are provocative, and more are on the way.

NEWS BITS: VOICE / BATMAN / CONAN

After yanking all its syndicated cartoons a number of months ago, The Village Voice is reinstating This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins). Editor & Publisher asserts that other alt weeklies that are part of the Voice chain may do likewise. ...  In Britain, Batman ranks as the greatest superhero of all time in a survey of sf fans for the fantasy website, SFX.co.uk, which, mirror.co.uk reports, elbowed Spider-Man into second place and Superman, third. Batman’s popularity in England may be somewhat surprising, but in this country, not: we’ve consistently displayed a morbid fascination with such psychotic anti-heroes as Darth Vader and J.R. Ewing, and the current funnybook manifestation of Batman as a psychologically scarred person is in the same misbegotten tradition. ...   Dark Horse is bringing back Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan oeuvre. In the 1970s, Windsor-Smith achieved eminence among comic book illustrators by drawing Roy Thomas’ adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Cimmerian cult hero, gradually evolving from the Marvel house style into a mannered technique distinctly his own. The first of two hardcover volumes will appear in January.

DISNEY COMICS BOOK GO BOOM!

BOOM! Studios, as Icv.2 reported recently, is in the midst of launching its four monthly Disney Standards comics:  Mickey Mouse and Friends, Walt Disney Comics & Stories, Donald Duck and Friends, and Uncle Scrooge. The duck comics by Carl Barks have long been sought by “the duck man’s” most passionate fans, which number in the millions. But flying in the face of custom — always dangerous in comics fandom — BOOM! is targeting an elementary school audience, evenly divided between boys and girls. Icv.2 quotes Boom CEO Ross Richie, who says the package was designed to be more kid-friendly. “We think that the material will be more accessible to a younger-skewing audience. We have a mass market newsstand deal with Kable, who distributes Archie to the mass market. If you look at the price points of things like Sonic the Hedgehog and the Archie stuff, we’re priced in their category. I think it’s every publisher’s heartfelt desire to publish a comic book that maybe is somebody’s first comic and I definitely think that’s our focus with these characters, that a kid will see a comic with Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck and get excited about it and buy it.”

A noble notion. And someone should be trying to nurture young readers, indoctrinating them into the joys of funnybook reading. But BOOM! is also inaugurating a multiple-cover strategy that seems counter-intuitive on kids’ comics. Richie argues that it’s not about creating a collectible: it’s about increasing the odds of a book’s having a cover that appeals to a particular customer. “We’re not expecting kids to buy both covers,” he said. “When you put two covers out there, you’re giving a consumer a choice. You might not hit them with the cover A design, but with the cover B design you might hit something they love. It gives us an opportunity to appeal to different kinds of tastes."

I dunno: looks like a double-barreled dodge to me: collectors, whatever Richie says, will go for more than one cover. The stories are being published in story arcs that will allow compilation into trade paperbacks of 112 to 150 pages, in a 6x9-inch format, the same format BOOM! is using for its Pixar collections. BOOM! also plans high-end hardcover collections of classic material. Sounds like collector-targeting maneuvers to me. And that’s no sin.

STEPHEN KING COMICS

Stephen King, among the most adapted novelists to film, is also becoming one of the most adapted writers to comic books, reported Vaneta Rogers at newsarama.com. "He has always loved comics, so I think he's really open-minded about his novels becoming comic books, and that's why you see him being so enthusiastic about it," said Robin Furth, King's collaborator on his recent comics adaptations. For Furth, the experience of condensing King's novels and working with an artist to interpret the writer's vision has taught her a lot about writing and about the way King structures his work. "I've learned so much," she said. "You have to work so hard condensing and condensing. It makes you really think about the story and what the key elements are. At this point, I go with my instincts. What is it that really grabs me about a section? When I close my eyes, what do I see? And I'll write up scene by scene and panel by panel."

Michael Doran at newsarama asked King what were his favorite comics as a kid, and King replied: “Oh, come on — everything! But my favorite, by a country mile, was Plastic Man and his pal Woozy Winks. I dug Plas's dark glasses!”

BOUND FOR TV AND THE BIG SCREEN

The Dr. Seuss environmental cautionary tale The Lorax is being made into a 3D animated film to be released in 2012, according to Variety. ... Frank Miller’s Ronin graphic novel is being developed for the big screen under the watchful eye of director Sylvain White, who, Steve “Frosty” Weintraub tells us at collider.com, likes Miller’s “production design and the character design and the colors that are used,” which he thinks he can frame with “much more depth and beauty on film than you can in a graphic [novel]." ...  Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove are slated to play themselves in a future episode of “Family Guy” saith Leigh Holmwood at guardian.co.uk. “Brian, the liberal dog of the cartoon's central family, the Griffins, gets bored and frustrated because he feels he no longer has anything to complain about with Barack Obama in the White House, so he becomes a Republican and starts listening to Limbaugh.” So the show is going to the dogs? ... Posy Simmonds’ exquisite graphic novel, Tamara Drewe, is slated to be transformed into a motion picture by Stephen Frears. ...

HOLIDAY COMIC STRIP

Tis the season for chestnuts by the fire. In song and custom, chestnuts by the fire are roasted. But we’ve convened this meeting not to roast anything or anyone but to warm ourselves before the freshly kindled flame of fond recollections.  For these chestnuts, old and not-so-old, are the stuff of anyule memory, and all of those are the best kind. Or they should be.

For as long as anyone can remember, the Newspaper Enterprise Association has served up a special three-week holiday comic strip to subscribers to the NEA package. NEA publicity this year claims 1937 as the inaugural year, but in Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide (and a few other places to which he resorted), 1936 is cited as the first year. That year, NEA circulated Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” as interpreted by cartoonist George (The Comic Zoo) Scarbo.

The Christmas Strip is usually produced by NEA cartoonists who ladle out this cup of seasonal cheer in their so-called spare time while also doing their own features. Walter Scott, whose regular gig was The Little People, probably brewed more Christmas Strips than anyone else: his byline was on the feature through the 1950s and well into the next decade. And he also produced the first original material for the NEA Christmas Strip, Sailor Sally and Meany Mo, in 1937.

In recent years, NEA cartoonists recruited for the assignment have used the characters from their regular strips to moonlight in the Christmas outing, among them: Bill Schorr (The Grizzwells), Jimmy Johnson (Arlo and Janis), and Greg Evans (Luann), to name a few. This year, it’s Dan Thompson’s turn, and he has drafted his mock-adventure strip hero, Rip Haywire — “soldier of fortune, contemporary action hero, and big lug” — to appear in a Christmas Epic entitled “Rip Haywire: Away in the Danger.”

Debuting earlier this year, Rip Haywire is “a throwback to a bygone era of adventure comics, but with a very modern spin that gives it a look and attitude unlike anything else in papers today,” according to NEA publicity. “It’s a fast-paced, globe-trotting combo platter of danger, dysfunctional romance, and comedy (often at the expense of our noble hero).” (To read more about the strip, visit Dan Thompson's blog.)

The 17-strip Christmas series begins with Rip telling his cowardly pet pooch TNT that he wants to buy his ex-girlfriend/adventure sidekick/erstwhile villainess foe, Cobra, a gold bracelet. The NEA press release takes if from there: “While out for a Christmas Eve stroll, Rip and TNT run into an old, white-bearded man who asks Rip to deliver a parcel for him. Inside a nearby house, Rip and TNT find a bomb, a desperate man, and the beginning of a riveting holiday caper. Our heroes rescue the man’s family from a sinister organization, but with all the commotion, Rip is unable to get Cobra’s gift…or is he?” The series began December 7 and runs Monday through Saturday, ending on Christmas Day. The anyule strip is provided to NEA’s 600 clients and is also available for individual sales.

J. EDGAR HOOVER: A GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY

Rick Geary deploys his customary storytelling techniques — both haunting visual effects and careful research — in another series launched last year at Hill and Wang, for whom the cartoonist produced a biography, J. Edgar Hoover (102 6x9-inch pages, b/w; hardcover, $16.95). The high points in the career of the obsessive bureaucratic crime fighter are detailed and the concomitant evolution of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is traced as Hoover became a more and more ominous figure in the corridors of power, a keeper of files with the potential to blackmail even presidents. Hoover’s jealousies and feuds, his prejudices and irrationalities, his abuse of power and privilege are fully illuminated; likewise his possessive image-conscious attitude toward the FBI. It was largely his creation, but that scarcely justified his forcing Melvin Purvis out when Purvis proved more of a media celebrity in the crime-fighting 1930s than Hoover. “In the official histories of the Bureau, Purvis’ name would never be mentioned.”

About two allegations, Geary asserts he could find no evidence in support. Hoover was reluctant to take on organized crime, perhaps, it was once supposed, because the Mafia had something on him, something with which he was blackmailed into silence and inaction. “No evidence for this has ever been discovered,” Geary says. Hoover never married, lived with his mother until her death, and made a life-long intimate of his bachelor assistant, Clyde Tolson, even going on vacation together. The other canard Geary addresses is the allegation that Hoover was a cross-dresser or transvestite, if not homosexual as well, according to a story about his supposed appearance in dress and wig, requesting to be called “Mary,” at a private party in New York’s Plaza Hotel. But for Geary, the story is without merit. “Told by a single unreliable witness, it seemed, to many, out of character for the obsessively secretive Hoover.” More likely, Hoover simply suppressed his sexuality: “as an authoritarian personality, he was fearful of his own sexuality and would actively suppress any such desires.” Another Geary biography is due in the fall from Hill and Wang, this one about Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary ousted and ultimately assassinated by the Communist Party of Joseph Stalin.

FIRED EDITOR SUES NY POST

Editoonist Sean Delonas is still working at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, but Sandra Guzman, an associate editor who protested Delonas’ controversial chimpanzee cartoon last spring, was fired at the end of September, and many on the Post staff, according to the HuffingtonPost, believe she was terminated because she openly criticized the paper for publishing the cartoon. Officially, the Post said only that “Sandra is no longer with the Post because the monthly in-paper insert, Tempo, of which she was the editor, has been discontinued." The HuffintonPost went on: “Guzman was the most high-profile Post employee to publicly speak out against the cartoon that compared the author of the stimulus bill (whom nearly everyone associated with President Obama) with a rabid primate. ‘I neither commissioned or approved it,’ Guzman wrote to a list of journalist colleagues shortly thereafter. ‘I saw it in the paper yesterday with the rest of the world. And, I have raised my objections to management.’”

Ever since then, some Post employees believe, Guzman has been on the management’s short list of people who aren’t essential to the well-being of the newspaper. “They’ve been looking for any excuse to get rid of her,” one employee told the HP on the understandable condition that he/she not be named.

Ironically, Guzman’s firing exacerbates the dilemma the Post was forced to confront in the firestorm of protest from African American organizations that, in the wake of Delonas’ stumbling cartoon message, accused the Post of a lack of diversity in its staffing: until she was fired, Guzman was the only woman of color on the paper’s executive staff. The HP quotes another “longtime Post employee” (again, anonymously) who said there has been only one African-American editor at the paper in the last decade. "The hiring practices are really bad and have been for most of the time I've been here," said the employee. "Since I've been here there have been as many black editors as there have been black presidents of the United States."

The irony of Guzman’s firing is heightened because it comes “shortly after Murdoch is said to have held a meeting of leaders from a variety of ethnic communities to discuss ways to make his various companies — including the Post — more diverse. Guzman did not return a request for comment.”

On November 9, Guzman filed a lawsuit against the paper, alleging that she was fired over the cartoon incident. She had worked at the newspaper as associate editor since July 2003, repeatedly receiving glowing performance evaluations. The suit alleges that Guzman was subjected to a hostile work environment in which, google.com reports, women and minority employees continually encountered sexist and racist comments. According to the lawsuit, Guzman's fate at the newspaper was set when she tearfully told a Post human resources executive that the newspaper should apologize to the public and its employees for the cartoon.

In a statement, the Post said: "This lawsuit has no merit and is based on charges that are groundless."