Following up on last week’s feature review.

Many of the online reviews of The Best American Comics 2006 appear to have been posted by fans of superhero comics, disappointed that their favorite genre wasn’t well-represented in the volume. While I share a desire to see a wider range of styles and genres in future volumes (not necessarily superheroes, but, you know, whatever happens to be good in any particular year, with no special concern for genre), there’s an angry, or at least melodramatic, undertone to most of the complaints that is not likely to change any minds at Houghton Mifflin, or anywhere else, for that matter, about the advisability of attempting to cultivate the traditional superhero comics audience alongside the newer audiences for other kinds of comics. Maybe the opposite. Too often, the genre’s most passionate defenders are its greatest liability, when it comes to wider mainstream acceptance, and pleasing the current crop of superhero fans can be seen as a dangerous game, from the publisher’s perspective — sure to scare away the casual reader that truly large houses like Houghton Mifflin depend on reaching.

Watch how Neil Shyminsky plays the entitlement card over at Comic Boards, for example. First, he notes that literary comics have “until recently depended on the creators and publishers of superhero comics to supply them with distribution, venues, conventions, and readers.”

Now, see, here’s the thing. I’m not sure if that’s true. And even if it is, I don’t see how a comic book distribution history lesson has, or should have, anything to do with whether or not this or that or the other story belongs in a “best of” anthology.

Seems kind of tangential, to me.

And kind of weird.

Literary comics are supposed to drag superheroes along with them everywhere they go, for now and forever, just because … literary comics … um … owe this to superhero comics? Somehow? Because most comic book stores are all about the superheroes? Or something? What’s that again? I don’t get it.

Shyminsky then goes on to complain that, thanks to Pekar’s bias:

[S]uperhero readers get a subtle slap across the face with the superhero stuff that is included. The collection’s first story, “The Amazing Life of Onion Jack”, is a cute contribution and one of only two superhero stories included, but its satire of all things held dear to the heart of a sincere superhero fan is just as likely to leave a sour taste as it is to cause a chuckle.” … more

One wonders if all superhero parodies, from the “golden age” Red Tornado, to the Tick, to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that hit the theaters a couple of weeks back, strike Shyminsky as “slap[s] in the face” that leave “sour taste[s] in the mouth” (some slaps!) or if he’s just posturing, maybe, a little bit, for his audience of fellow superhero fans. Well, actually, one doesn’t wonder much.

But I don’t mean to come down too hard on Shyminsky. I chose his post as an example of the fannish entitlement position because, unlike so much else of what I found, his writing wasn’t completely comprised of defensive, reactionary posturing, and he does have other things to say, too, some of them thoughtful. It’s interesting to watch him realize, as he’s writing, that the author of a literary story, as opposed to the author of a story about Wolverine and Collosus, has to, you know, actually develop interpersonal relationships and nuances of characterization right there in the moment, without depending on knowledge that the reader brought to the table beforehand. (Which reliance may be why the stories superhero fans like so very, very much fall flat when read by people who aren’t immersed in the culture — and, maybe, just maybe, explains their routine exclusion from anthologies like these, aimed at readers who aren’t, necessarily, familiar with comics at all, much less in possession of an understanding of X-Men continuity from 1975 to the present?) Follow the link.

Kristian Williams at Mind Buck Books worries a little bit, at first, about the lack of superheroes and other genres (such as horror and funny animals), but manages to move on from there in fairly short order:

[M]aybe no one needs to speak up for the genres. Superheroes still predominate. (Don’t believe me? Just visit your local comics shop.) And it’s not like anyone needs a highbrow anthology to introduce them to the Green Lantern — whereas how many of us have ever seen an issue of Jesse Reklaw’s Couch Tag?

That’s the real virtue of this collection. It showcases work that even an enthusiast might not have ever seen, or for that matter, even heard of. This is especially true of the short pieces that originally ran in magazines, newspapers, or self-published zines. The ephemeral nature of periodical publishing makes it exceedingly easy to miss good work, to let it slip into undeserved obscurity — unless, of course, it gets reprinted, collected, anthologized. And for this service, we owe Harvey Pekar and series editor Anne Elizabeth Moore a very large debt. … more

At Bookslut, Jeff Vandermeer cherry-picks a few of his favorite (and least favorite) stories for brief reviews, then interviews the creator of one of his favorites, Rebecca Dart, whose “RabbitHead” story, frankly, gave me a little bit of a headache (I think it would work great on the web, as a McCloudian “infinite canvas” sidescroller, but is not suited at all for print).

Of “RabbitHead,” Vandermeer says:

This mind-blowing sequence of surreal adventures begins as one narrative thread and branches out into seven threads before collapsing back in on itself. RabbitHead demonstrates a twinned playfulness and seriousness that hooks into your thoughts for days after reading it. … more

Writing for the Silicon Valley alt-weekly MetroActive, Richard von Busack also provides brief reviews of several of the stories, then concludes:

All our popular arts are enamored with stories of lost childhoods and inner children. Still these artists transcend the commonplace, with sensitivity and absolute honesty [...] this anthology will strengthen the art of comics immeasurably. … more

I couldn’t agree more!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

From the days when I was a pompous, pipe-smoking creative writing student, to now (when I’m a pompous, pipe-smoking web application developer), I’ve maintained a habit of picking up every installment of the Best American Short Stories anthology series from Houghton Mifflin. And I like it, too, which isn’t true of everything I habitually buy. Here’s the trick: despite its title, the fundamental structure of the series acknowledges the impossibility of objective certitude in matters of literary taste. By putting the final curatorial authority for each successive volume in the hands of a different celebrity writer, a sort of spokesmodel for this or that important trend in literary fiction for the year in question, the series grabs us on a completely different level. It’s not about what’s best, necessarily, so much as it is about what happens to be engaging the attention of this or that literary celebrity right now. When chosen well, the identity of the editor, all by itself, says as much about the current state and direction of literary fiction as do his/her final story selections. In the days when suburban minimalism was all the rage, for example, we all wanted to know what Raymond Carver was reading and enjoying. Of course we did. When magic realism held sway, Mark Helprin’s picks meant more to us than they did before, or have since. If “speculative fiction” is in this year, then call Margaret Atwood, immediately. And so on. You can (and you almost always do — you have to) deny the comprehensiveness and justness of any individual volume, but over the years the series has, undeniably, cut the widest possible swath through the field of literary fiction, introducing its readers to truckloads of great stories and writers, to be sure, while, at the same time, subtly providing an overview of the trends, counter-trends, and benevolent frictions that define and divide the American literary fiction community, by aligning itself temporarily with key figures, at interesting moments in the lifetime of the larger movement or faction or aesthetic that each represents. And then switching sides the very next year. Or not.

That’s why the choice of Harvey Pekar to edit the first volume of Houghton Mifflin’s new Best American Comics anthology series strikes me as odd but apt. He’s a celebrity from comics, to be sure, but he’s not really a celebrity in comics. You just don’t hear much about Pekar in comics circles, even in the higher-brow hangouts. Yes, he pops up every now and then. But his celebrity outside our field makes his influence within it look paltry by comparison. He’s sort of our Ray Bradbury (I have stuck in my mind the possibly apocryphal story of a young Isaac Asimov remarking, probably with a jealous smirk, that Ray Bradbury was one of the first science fiction writers that non-science fiction readers would think of, when they would think of science fiction — but among actual science fiction readers, he was one of the last who sprang to mind). Pekar’s low profile inside the comics world can be attributed, maybe, to nothing more than his grumpy-ass persona. This is no visionary Scott McCloud, proudly wearing his agendas (webcomics, creator’s rights, etc.) pinned to his chest like medals of honor, still planning to win the larger war one Small Press Expo, one blog post, one evangelical roadtrip at a time. He’s not even a Warren Ellis, whose translucent meanie mask fails to hide a friendly man with a plan, and who, like McCloud, pulls behind him in his bright wake an energetic school of young (and some not-so-young) creators. Nope. Pekar’s a cantankerous loner, a realistic, candid old fuck, and he knows it, and so does everybody else. So, yeah. I guess I think it’s a very good thing they picked him to edit the first volume. Whatever else happens, we can be sure that we won’t be seeing any “Team Comics” glad-handing or personal favoritism from Harvey Pekar.

That’s not to say that Pekar doesn’t have an agenda, all the same. He clearly does. He spells it out in the introduction, pretty much: “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore! Ta da!” No, he doesn’t use those precise words (I made it up), but he might as well. Here are some of the words he does use: “this Best American Comics collection … lends legitimacy to the cause of comics,” and “the [non-superhero graphic novels] that are issued by large publishers have a chance to be sold in ‘book book’ stores,” and so on, and so on. “We just want to be looooooved,” he says (well, okay, he doesn’t — I’m making this part up too, but you know what I mean), “is that so wrooooooong?” It’s easy for comics obsessives like me to snark at the “comics aren’t just for kids” line of defense — it’s so, well, defensive – but comics fans are not the intended audience here, and the general public, despite an umpty-thousand or so local newspaper articles proclaiming the comics-aren’t-for-kids gospel, still doesn’t quite believe. “Give it a shot,” Pekar begs at the end of his introduction, “you might be pleasantly surprised.”

If any publisher is in a position to reach Pekar’s intended audience, it’s Houghton-Mifflin, and if there’s any context in which such a project could find success, it’s the Best American series context, which carries a century’s worth of goodwill and brand recognition handily. I didn’t pick this book up at a comic book shop, for example. I couldn’t find it at a comic book shop. I picked it up at a high-toned independent bookstore in the upper-to-uppermiddle part of town, a “book book store,” as Pekar would have it, the kind of place that a David Sedaris or an Adrienne Rich will never fail to hit in the course of a signing tour, the kind of place where NPR commentators intone with endless articulate fascination in the background about Darfour and/or bebop, and where a new issue of McSweeney’s hitting the shelves can honestly be described as a Major Publishing Event. The Best American Comics: 2006 boasted top placement on a huge, tastefully-designed, matte-finished, gray-and-gold cardboard display unit right beside the checkout line, standing alongside but well above all the other Best American books (short stories, essays, etc.) for this past year. It was unavoidable. It was attractive. It was effective. I actually watched the entire process of discovery and initial interest turning into a purchase, while I was there in the store (not that I was, you know, hovering and watching for research purposes, or anything): a cynical-looking middle-aged woman with stained smoker’s teeth, enormous sunglasses over the top of her bifocals, and the latest issues of The Wall Street Journal and Cat Fancier clenched under her elbow, along with a handbag made out of a wooden Partagas Serie du Connaisseur No. 1 box, picked the thing up, flipped through it, and added it to her stash before moving over to the Spirituality Studies/New Age section of the store. In short, she was exactly the kind of reader that comics doesn’t have a bunch of. But now, for a little while, anyway, we’ve got her, thanks to this project. And I’m sure there are more just like her. That Pekar’s tastes famously run toward literary realism and quotidian narrative probably bodes well for the book’s reception in this demographic. I can’t imagine expensive-illegal-Cuban-cigar-handbag cynical New Age cat-owning lady getting off on a Johnny Ryan story about Hitler being shit out of an AIDS patient’s hemorrhaging ass and then leading a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists in a bloody gang-rape of Coretta Scott King’s corpse under the monkeybars at a daycare playground, or whatever. I think she probably wouldn’t have liked that at all, as much as I personally would have enjoyed it. Ditto on the heart-wrenching climax to that grim’n'gritty superhero crossover. She wouldn’t have much cared for that, either.

That last observation, of course, points to the conflicts among themselves, and within themselves, that comics insider types always have about projects like this one: in reaching out for the literary readers, the liberal upper-to-uppermiddle, in trying to achieve what Pekar calls “legitimization” by celebrating the material that is roughly analogous to “establishment” literary fiction, do comics’ apologists sometimes castrate the art-form, rendering it less viable and meaningful, ultimately, than it was when a taste for comics was still a trashy, outlaw kind of affectation? Maybe they do. Maybe they should? Where’s the harm when, looking for new audiences, an editor, for one book, or one series of books, covers up or ignores some of the medium’s crazy but fun tropes, in favor, just for now, just for a little while, of the “respectable” and the “legitimate?” Does this really hurt anything other than the precious little feelings of fanboys and fangirls? And don’t we fanboys and fangirls need to have our precious little feelings hurt, every once in a while, in order to maintain our all-important underdog self-image, our sense of entitlement, and our minority protected status? I do not have any answers for you here. I’m as conflicted as any other fanchild on this matter.

In terms of my own fannish interests, I personally would have liked to have seen some representation from the smarter side of the indie pop-comics scene — some Warren Ellis or some Becky Cloonan, for example, some Bryan Lee O’Malley or some Svetlana Chmakova, some Oni Press or some Vertigo, or even some Scholastic. It’s possible that the serial nature of most of those kinds of entertainments, more than anything else, is what kept them out of this volume, which mostly sticks to very short stories or complete “novellas.” The handful of graphic novel excerpts — from Jessica Abel and Alex Robinson, among others — fail to stand up by themselves as enjoyable reads, in the company of so many impactful done-in-one stories, no matter how good the books they came from happen to be. More likely, though, we’re seeing Pekar’s personal biases in play (as we should; he’s the editor, after all). Maybe we’ll have to wait for another year, when a Frank Miller or a Scott McCloud is actually editing the thing, to get a taste of that side of comics. I hope that Houghton Mifflin does decide to switch things up in interesting ways from year to year, and picks some editors whose ranges of taste lie well outside Pekar’s, and soon. Otherwise I might be less forgiving of, and/or enthusiastic for, any inbuilt “slice of life” biases in future volumes. I am not sure what I think, for example, of the announcement that Chris Ware will be editing the second volume. Is that a far enough step away from the sensibilities in place for volume one? Maybe so (Pekar personifies “comics as written things,” while Ware strikes me as the embodiment of “comics as items of design.”) But despite stylistic and formal differences, their thematic concerns, which are what we expect to inform their editorial decisions, after all, seem, to me, anyway, to be very close, indeed. That the Chris Ware-edited McSweeney’s comics issue contains many of the same stories as this volume does not give me a lot of confidence that next year will be a substantive jump. If the Best American Comics series can’t create the same kind of pleasing variability between each annual volume that the Best American Short Stories series has been able to establish, I’ll still probably pick future volumes up when and if they come to my attention — like if I happen to be standing beside an attractive cardboard display in a book book store, and have some money to spend, for example — but I won’t be looking forward to them quite as much as I do the short story books.

But on to the book itself: by definition, each thing in here is supposed to be a standout, and, for the most part, that’s the case. I don’t want to go over all of them, one at a time, to give my impressions of each. I happen to know beyond any doubt that that would be boring. I know this because that’s precisely what Pekar does toward the middle of his introduction. Skip it.

For me, one important function of an anthology like this one is to introduce me to artists I might not have tried, or even known about, otherwise, so that I can go out and find their other works. In this regard, the book was definitely a success. I already have bought graphic novels by Anders Nilsen and John Porcellino, for example, based on the way they acquitted themselves within these pages, despite my having passed over their work in the past, turned off by the primitive art styles they employ. I am also looking forward very much to reading more stuff by Lille Carre, David Heatley (easily the standout in a book of standouts), Kurt Wolfgang, and Justin Green, none of whom I’d ever heard of, before. The authors I was already familiar with, and the stories I’d already read, were less exciting to me, of course, but not because the work wasn’t as good as it gets. If this is your first exposure to, say, Joe Sacco, or Kim Deitch, or Alison Bechdel, your money will be well-spent in purchasing this book.

There were a few disappointments. Esther Pearl Watson’s story didn’t grab me — I didn’t hate it, but this is supposed to be the best of the year, and, well, um, I don’t think so — and Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog story seemed like it was only there to point to past accomplishments by its creator, not because it, in particular, had anything special to offer. That goes for the r. crumb story, too, come to think of it. The two pieces of unabashed leftist agitprop (”Nakedness and Power” by Seth Tobocman, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill and “A Street-Level View of the Republican National Convention” by Lloyd Dangle) struck me as naive and sentimental, and maybe even (in the case of the former) politically harmful, due to the ease with which the oversimplified solutions to complex problems proposed within the course of the story can be ridiculed — but that’s probably just because I morphed from a supercool punk rock Queer Nation street activist to a mainstream establishment liberal about ten years ago, when my bank account balance started exceeding my bare minimum needs for groceries, pipe tobacco, and condoms, so pay no attention to my compromised opinion on those particular stories. I have no doubt that The Man has thoroughly screwed up my thinking here, possibly using the media to do so, or maybe microwave radiations of some sort.

Overall, though, whether you’re a casual comics reader, a complete newcomer to the medium, or even a lifelong fanchild, like myself, the book is worth getting your hands on. The only reason you might not want to buy it is if you already own the aforementioned comics issue of McSweeney’s, and/or Ivan Brunetti’s recent An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, since many of the same stories appear in those volumes. Even then, I’d still buy it, for the ones that don’t (some of which are the best stories in the book). But a heads up does seem to be in order.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!