IDW adds a second chapter to its second draft of history

June 23, 2009 by Brendan Wright
Barack Obama #1: Road to the White House
By Jeff Mariotte and Tom Morgan
IDW — saddle-stitched, $3.99

BEFORE PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA’S CAMEO ROLE IN Amazing Spider-Man and subsequent appearances as president in a host of other tasteless comics, IDW saw in the higher-than-usual interest in the 2008 election a chance to expand sales outside the direct market. IDW’s Presidential Material comics, published during the campaign, received a huge amount of press attention, and Presidential Material: Barack Obama is currently in its fifth printing. Less blatantly opportunistic than those later efforts, they were essentially straight, factual retellings of John McCain and Barack Obama’s biographies, flawed but accomplishing what they set out to do. Last week, IDW and creators Jeff Mariotte and Tom Morgan returned to the Obama genre that they founded, leaving me with similarly mixed feelings as their first outing.

When we last saw our hero, he had just won his campaign against Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Picking up where Presidential Material: Barack Obama (which I suppose could now be considered Barack Obama #0) left off, Barack Obama #1: The Road to the White House opens with the Democratic convention in August, 2008, and covers the general election campaign through Inauguration Day in January, 2009. There’s not much need to summarize these events, as most readers should be familiar with them already.

Therein lies the existential crisis of Barack Obama #1: unlike the Presidential Material comics, which told the life stories of the two major party candidates in the 2008 presidential election, all the material this time around is very, very recent history. The previous comics likely informed many readers about aspects of both mens’ lives of which they were unaware. By contrast, a reader who was following the campaign a few months ago is unlikly to find anything new in a rehashing of the events we all just lived through. So, what is this comic about, then? It’s doesn’t serve an explicitly educational role, as the Presidential Material comics did, and it’s not journalism in the traditional sense of the world—there is no original reporting or unique insights, and no pretense to those things.

Barack Obama #1 is most interesting as pure storytelling, a distillation of the campaign into a few broad thematic strokes. In the midst of a campaign, it’s easy to lose track of the overarching conflict amongst the hundreds of narratives fighting for attention every day. Looking back over an abridged version of the whole thing has a completely different feel. Naturally, in order to fit everything into 22 pages, events are condensed, and it’s necessary to select which moments will be included and which left out. In the process, Mariotte and Morgan have created, a few head-scratching moments aside, a cohesive narrative that actually feels fairly true to the general thrust of the 2008 campaign.

Interestingly, in this retelling John McCain actually comes across as the more compelling character of the two candidates. Obama is portrayed as remaining steady in message and presentation throughout the turns the campaign takes, which doesn’t make for much drama, but the representative moments chosen of McCain’s campaign reveal a man blindsided by the moment in history he finds himself in. McCain comes across as confused, out of touch, almost delusional in places—a victim of history, felled by the movement that he, by accident of timing, became an obstacle to, able only in defeat to step back and acknowledge the moment, in a concession speech that was the most graceful moment of his campaign. Even to someone diametrically opposed to McCain in political philosophy, it’s easy to sympathize with his apparent helplessness as the wrong man at the wrong time.

Of course, this is what happens when you impose a narrative on several months worth of a campaign in which a dozen things happened every day. During the campaign, it was in the interest of various news organizations to play up uncertainty in the election—a foregone conclusion is bad for ratings. By contrast, reading Barack Obama #1, Obama’s victory seems inevitable in the face of McCain declaring the economy sound while a falling line chart is placed behind him, or of Sarah Palin’s various statements, with their incoherent syntax even more glaring when appearing as text. The reality is that the truth is probably somewhere in between, but the 22-page format doesn’t allow for any more subtlety than the 24-hour news networks.

The limited space Mariotte has to work with also shows in the lack of detail in certain anecdotes. Steeped as he must have been in the material, Mariotte appears to have taken pieces of information for granted here and there. For instance, he notes that “when Obama described McCain’s policies as ‘lipstick on a pig’ . . . McCain’s campaign fired back, asserting that Obama was being disrespectful toward Palin.” How? Had a reader missed this story, nothing in the comic makes this sound like anything other than a total non-sequitur (the alleged connection to Palin was that she had earlier joked that the difference between a hockey mom—her self-identification—and a pit bull was “lipstick”). Several moments like this stick out.

The most interesting part of the comic is the day of the inauguration prior to the ceremony. Though only a single page, there were several details I was unaware of, such as the fact that the incoming president takes command of the nuclear “football” hours before before being sworn in, and I’d have loved to have seen more moments like this. Amusingly, Chief Justice Roberts’s mangling of the oath of office (and his addition of “So help you God?” which many oath takers say, but which is not actually part of the oath) is presented without comment. The scene is actually quite funny without context, though it did make me realize that the entire thread of the assorted conspiracy theories about Obama’s supposed lack of legitimacy—for instance, the fact that the oath was administered wrong, so he can’t really be president, OMG, remains a popular charge—are ignored in this version of events. (In fact, the oath was later re-administered, just in case. My favorite theory about the whole thing comes from a New York Times op-ed speculating that the error was a result of Roberts’s grammar Naziism.) It’s not something serious people debate, but it is a sad, dark undercurrent to a story that Barack Obama #1 portrays as purely sunny (one that is even darker after the many conspiracy-theory-driven murders that have taken place since the inauguration), with the sole exception of the now-impeached Illinois Governor Blagojevich’s attempted sale of the president’s vacated Senate seat, which receives a panel.

On the art side, a lot is asked of Tom Morgan, who has to master a whole new set of likenesses since last time, and he generally manages, though his Palin never comes out quite right, his McCain is iffy when not in close-up, and the Obama girls look a little too old. On the other hand, if Bluewater’s Female Force series is planning a Nancy Pelosi issue, I recommend Morgan. I was also able to recognize Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, even though he is not named when he appears.

The story moves a lot faster than in PM: Barack Obama, with most scenes lasting one panel and a heavier reliance on captions. Morgan’s response is to shake up the page layouts a lot more, with the unfortunate effect that, even after looking at them for awhile, I couldn’t determine the reading order of captions on a few pages. It’s a more mixed bag than Morgan’s last stab at this material.

It will be informative to see if Barack Obama #1 can recapture the success of the Presidential Material comics now that the election is over and, even though Obama’s popularity remains high, readers may be burned out on the campaign or ready to move on. For anyone who followed the election closely, there’s little new in this comic, but I found some value in a quick recap of those months, which seemed so different when seen all at once than when experienced day-to-day. With bits like highlights of the inaugural address, the comic fulfills the same “moment in history keepsake” function that last year’s installment did—this is what President Obama’s election looked like right after it happened—and in that respect it does its job, though in some areas more clumsily than PM: Barack Obama. In any event, IDW’s not finished yet, as the presence of a next issue blurb informs us that Obama has completed his transformation into a comic book hero by announcing the imminence of Barack Obama #2.

PS: Now that Mariotte and Morgan have gotten to continue with this project, I wonder if, somewhere, Andy Helfer and Stephen Thompson are seething over Obama’s victory in the same way that Jon Lovitz reportedly said, after the 1988 election, “Now fucking Dana [Carvey] gets to play the president for the next four years.”

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Comics, Journalism, and Ethics

June 22, 2009 by Brendan Wright

So, Valerie D’Orazio recently asked the question:

“Do you think the comic book industry, and its principal players, should be subject to the sort of public scrutiny and (at times) gossip that others in the entertainment field are subject to?”

Today, I read my esteemed coworker, Rachel Edidin’s, response. I think she’s right on about a lot of it, but I also think there’s an element many are missing.

D’Orazio’s question is a good one, except for two things: it’s really several questions, and it takes too much for granted. Let me try to separate out some of the issues:

  • Look at film and music. Name me some actors. Easy, right? How about directors? Yeah, you can do that. Cinematographers? That’s fewer hands, but still some. Key Grips? Naw, I’m just kidding. Studio execs? Yeah, me neither. No one really knows who makes the decisions at those places, just like most corporations. In comics, the people that run the major companies are public figures on the same level as writers and artists—actually, more visible than many of them. We need to distinguish between the people who set policy and the people who carry it out.
  • Second, when I say “public figures,” what do I mean? We know the names of the people who make our comics, but they aren’t really public figures, not like Brad Pitt is. Brad Pitt has decided that it’s worth it to him for his personal life to be public, in exchange for being a celebrity. Hell, it probably helps his celebrity. Let’s not kid ourselves, people like that are complicit in the way they are portrayed in the media. No one really believes that all those young women in the film and music industries all started forgetting both to wear underwear and cross their legs all at the same time, do we? Comics professionals aren’t really comparable.
  • Third, does the fact that something deserves scrutiny mean it deserves gossip? Of course not. As Rachel points out, accountability is important, but being accountable for treatment of talent has little to do with discussion of one’s personal life. That’s why the business moves of the corporations that own film studios appear in a different section of the newspaper than celebrity gossip.

That third point is the main one for me. That, and the fact that we should stop pretending we’re not talking about one specific person, because we are. We’re talking about Rich Johnston, recently of Comic Book Resources’ “Lying in the Gutters” and currently of his own “Bleeding Cool.” It’s a little early to see how “Bleeding Cool” will develop, but “Lying in the Gutters” was an important column for several reasons. I can’t agree with D’Orazio that it is “the quintessential . . . comic book column, period,” because I’d put something with more serious formal and critical chops there, but, but, when it was running I read it every week on Monday, because it was entertaining, and because it was one of a kind. And that’s the problem.

Because “Lying in the Gutters” was the only column doing what it was doing, the things it was doing have come to be lumped together. It was the place to go for gossip, much of it completely wrong, but it was also the place to go for comics journalism, by which I mean the only place. In the tradition of Wizard magazine, the major comics news sites are generally content to rewrite press releases and throw high-selling talent softball questions. Rich Johnston actually does the work, doing research and making calls, with a network that has its ear to the ground, and he doesn’t hesitate to pursue a story, and when he’s on to something he’s alone in breaking important news. He’s shone a light on publishers acting in bad faith, scams perpetrated on publishers and fans alike, and a wide variety of stories that have allowed comics readers a window into the same kind of production issues and corporate accountability that consumers in any other industry would expect.

Unfortunately, “Lying in the Gutters” combined this work with many, many stories that bring serious question to Johnston’s ethics, such as the notion that revealing upcoming plot points in comics series constituted news; that Johnston’s own comics projects should be plugged not at the end of the column or in his byline, but as stories within the column itself; his frequent backpeddling on the implications of his reports (including his recent claim on The V that his recurring “Swipe File” feature is not meant to imply that one image included is “swiped” from the other); and his use of the “traffic light” ranking system in “Lying in the Gutters.” A disclaimer told readers that stories running with a red light were probably not true, which begs the question: why did they run anyway? This is part of a pattern of avoiding accountability for the accuracy of the stories “Lying in the Gutters” ran.

This is not to single out “Lying in the Gutters”—except that, well, actually it is, but not through any fault of Johnston’s. He’s alone out there, meaning that the things he gets right are important, but the things he does wrong are just as important. When the premiere comics gossip column is also the only real comics journalism, it becomes difficult to separate the two and the otherwise off-base question

“Do you think the comic book industry, and its principal players, should be subject to the sort of public scrutiny and (at times) gossip that others in the entertainment field are subject to?”

becomes sadly relevant. If we want to have a serious comics press, it needs to be staffed by people who practice journalism, not hype. There is a place for hype, and because of the First Amendment, there will always be a place for gossip, but the place of those things is separate from the place of journalism, and once there is actually a steady base of real journalism in place, then Johnston’s decision of which side he falls on, or whether or not he picks a side, won’t hold nearly the relevance it does now. And then we can get around to discussing

“Do you think the comic book industry, and its principal players, should be subject to the sort of public scrutiny and (at times) gossip that others in the entertainment field are subject to?”

without it being a total sideshow, like it is now.

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Steve Lieber and Sara Ryan’s house burgled

June 19, 2009 by Brendan Wright

INCREDIBLY TALENTED AND ALL-AROUND NICE COUPLE Steve Lieber and Sara Ryan had their house broken into this week. Lieber blogged about it at he and Jeff Parker’s new promotional website:

They stole our laptops, so we have no computers at home anymore, and we’ve got several days ahead of us of running around dealing with police, insurance, checking to make sure backups work, etc. This means that all the time at home I’d planned to spend doing promotion is gone, as are the machines I’d planned to it with.

The promotion Lieber had been planning was for he and Parker’s new Image miniseries, Underground. There is altogether not enough spelunking fiction in the world today, and Lieber and Parker have set out to correct this. Since Lieber is limited in the promotion he can do under the circumstances, he’s put out the call for the comics Internet to help out, and it looks like several people have already lent a hand.

So, allow me to direct your attention to Lieber and Parker’s Underground website, where they have process art, preview pages of the first issue, and even the complete first issue in black-and-white.

Pages from Underground. Click for larger images, or see more pages at the official website.

At a glance, the art is clearly beautiful (and rounding out the Periscope crew, Ron Chan’s colors complement the underground setting—plus some aboveground ones—perfectly), and perusal of the first issue confirms it’s in the vein of the pair’s short “Underground” story in Image’s Four Letter Worlds from 2005, meaning it’s an alternately light and tense read. You’ll even recognize a kinship with the Lieber-illustrated Whiteout, from its tough-yet-awkward female lead to its implicit environmental message, less subtextual here, but not too preachy, as the story creates sympathy with the townspeople who want to turn the local cave into a tourist attraction, even as it takes the side of the rangers who want to protect it.

Lieber has been talking about this series for years, and both men’s passion for the subject matter shows on the page. As unfortunate as the theft of Lieber and Ryan’s computers is to begin with, that it comes just as Lieber is gearing up to promote this series he so obviously cares a great deal about is particularly sad. Do give Underground a look in September. I’ll be adding it to my pull list.

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Resurrection: Relaunch as sequel and reboot

June 9, 2009 by Brendan Wright
Resurrection vol. 2 #1
By Marc Guggenheim and Justin Greenwood
Oni Press — saddle-stitched, $3.99

I DON’T USUALLY REVIEW individual chapters of larger stories, as I prefer to stick to collections or at least full runs, but I enjoyed the recent Resurrection: Insurgent Edition paperback and Free Comic Book Day issue enough that this week’s new #1 had my interest. Writer Marc Guggenheim has come up with a great premise and presents it with a compelling point of view that instills the actions of even the unlikelier characters with believability.

The first chapter of Resurrection vol. 2 is something of a strange animal; similar to several recent film franchise reboots, it is part sequel and part remake. Oni Press has heavily emphasized the new series’ independence from the old one, and it’s true that all the information necessary to understand the premise is there. The first two pages use a very effective time-lapse sequence of presidential addresses to quickly establish the background: in 1998 aliens invaded Earth and, within a matter of days, completely conquered it. The sequence elegantly shows the progression from confusion to panic to defeat that characterized those few days.

The next page jumps ahead to 2007, setting up Resurrection’s real premise, the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the aliens after nearly ten years. This is where the relaunch gets a little weird. Pages three through eight are a word-for-word replay of the first six pages of the previous #1, reintroducing a group of characters who haven’t been seen since then. This certainly vindicates Oni’s confidence that new readers won’t be lost, but it does feel redundant to the returning reader, coming so soon after the collection of vol. 1. You couldn’t ask for a more direct method of recruiting new readers than returning to the series’ ground zero, but I found myself wondering if it couldn’t have been abridged somehow, instead of spending a fifth of the pages on something we’d seen before, staged exactly the same.

A positive effect of repeating those early pages is to flatter vol. 2’s new artist, Justin Greenwood. In every instance where he’s slightly altered a panel, his version is a little more dynamic, with greater depth and movement to it. His work throughout the issue is punchy and tells the story clearly. While David Dumeer’s art in the first series had an appropriate grit to it, it was often a bit flat and occasionally inconsistent, with characters sometimes looking different on some pages than others. Greenwood’s art is cleaner, but still largely captures the desolation of the post-invasion world, though it sometimes looks a little too spare, with small pieces of rubble spread thin against otherwise featureless landscapes.

After the repeated pages, the story diverges from Resurrection vol. 1, as characters go their separate ways. Where the first volume followed Sara, the character who went off on her own, here the story sticks with the remaining members of the group, spending the entire issue with them, and reintroducing various elements of the series’ world through their travels rather than jumping between several sets of characters in different locations, as in vol. 1. No single member of the group ends up receiving as much development as Sara did in vol. 1, but their adventures do have a sense of urgency—there are strong moments of drama that feel earned, and the ending takes the kind of left turn that leaves the reader with no idea where it might go, which is always good.

Following one cluster of survivors instead of several makes Resurrection more closely resemble The Walking Dead than before, with a similar focus on a diverse group attempting to survive in a post-disaster, monster-infested world, facing the potentially greater horror of their fellow man. That being the case, the addition of color was a wise choice, as it makes Resurrection more visually distinct from The Walking Dead, which it is not much like beyond those superficial elements. The colors also further the series’ aesthetic with a desert-dry palate dominated by orange, as though fires just beyond the horizon haven’t yet burned out.

Overall, the issue feels like a recap right after reading the collection of the series to date, and will actually probably read better for someone new to the series than returning readers. After I had such a good time with vol. 1, the new #1 didn’t add much that was new, but certainly fulfills its new-reader-friendly mandate. Since the story quickly moves in a different direction from vol. 1, there’s promise of more momentum in future issues, and this taste of what’s to come—and especially the revelations in the FCBD Resurrection #0, which introduced another subplot and actually advanced the overall story more than this issue—has definitely got me curious to see what comes next.

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View From the Bay Area: Isotope and Comics Relief

May 27, 2009 by Brendan Wright

The storefront of Comic Relief, on Berkeley’s Shattuck Avenue.

I’VE JUST RETURNED FROM A short vacation in Berkeley and San Francisco, and while I was there, I did a mini-tour of some of the area’s several famous comics stores. I only made it to two, but they were impressive enough that it seemed worth writing a bit about them and showing off some pictures I took.

Isotope: The Comics Lounge, located on San Francisco’s Fell Street, has an unassuming storefront, but it gets across what it’s about with its striking logo and the diverse set of graphic novels in its bright, clean windows. The store is narrow, not much wider than the display windows, but extends a ways into the building. Immediately inside, the store earns its “lounge” designation with a sleek design and a nice arrangement of couches, complemented by another in the store’s upstairs section, inviting customers to sit, read, and relax, much like many bookstores do.


Some of the couches that earn Isotope its “lounge” designation.

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Mainstream Media: “Comics is easy!”

April 26, 2009 by Brendan Wright

NEW PET PEEVE:

 

It’s not exactly news that when covering comics mainstream media and literary outlets often focus on writers to the exclusion of artists. Articles about DC/Vertigo’s line of original graphic novels written by well-known novelists, like Incognegro (written by Mat Johnson and illustrated by Warren Pleece) and The Alcoholic (written by Jonathan Ames and illustrated by Dean Haspiel) generally profiled the writers and the novelty of their comics debuts, while making passing reference to the veteran cartoonists they worked with (though Vertigo’s own marketing and book design likely deserve some of the blame). Not surprising considering that such pieces are written by people who make some or all of their living writing and probably do not draw.

Notoriously, when the graphic novel Skim was nominated for the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Awards, writer Mariko Tamaki was named in the nomination, while artist Jillian Tamaki was not. Complaints throughout the comics world and an open letter signed by several prominent Canadian and American cartoonists were to no effect.

The latest thing to catch my eye in this area is a blurb on the back of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s wonderful A Drifting Life. The quotation, which comes from Publishers Weekly’s 7/7/08 review of Tatsumi’s Good-Bye, reads,

“Masterful . . . reads as if Haruki Murakami decided to try his hand at manga.”

Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m simply reading too much into this. What the reviewer seems to be trying to say is that Tatsumi’s work in Good-Bye is as good as Murakami’s writing, but the phrasing comes across as dismissive of the artistic side of comics. Setting aside the question of whether writing comics requires different skills than writing prose, it is taken for granted that Murakami’s manga would be as good as Tatsumi’s because, well, the writing’s the hard part, but the drawing’s probably easy. Forget all the work that goes into learning to draw—the use of the words “decided” and “try his hand” make it sound as though Murakami could make great comics on a lark. This phrasing most of all, and the picture it paints of Murakami idly picking up a brush one day and creating a masterpiece, was what raised my eyebrow.

I’m sure none of this is what the writer intends, and there is actually a single line in the review mentioning Tatsumi’s artwork, but that crucial sentence comparing Tatsumi to Murakami completely elides the biggest single difference between the forms they work in. It reveals an approach to comics that focuses on story to the detriment of the visual aspect of comics, essentially taking the art for granted without thinking very hard about the challenges of that part of the medium. The writer could just as easily have argued that Good-Bye reads as if Tatsumi had collaborated with Murakami, or like the kind of manga Murakami would make if he could draw (though even this has problems—would similar writing styles guarantee similar art styles? Are their writing styles similar?).

Murakami is an acclaimed novelist, and writing that Tatsumi’s work is as good as his is high praise (presumably—I confess I’ve not read any of his work), so Drawn and Quarterly can hardly be blamed for using this blurb on the book. However, it’s hopefully not too much to ask that as comics receive more and more coverage from mainstream media and literary outlets that those outlets recognize that comics are not simply illustrated prose, and that the art in comics deserves the same critical attention as the writing.

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Once Again, Stumptown

April 20, 2009 by Brendan Wright

THE WRIGHT OPINION HAS NEVER HIDDEN its monomaniacally pro-Portland bias, and I don’t really expect that to change anytime soon.

So, then:


The entrance to the DoubleTree.

After doing the Emerald City Con in Seattle two weeks ago, this weekend reminded me that Stumptown is still a relatively cozy show, more or less by design. I’ve always taken the “Fest” rather than “Con” in the name to mean that the show is aimed at the on-the-ground attendee rather than the media world. Guests of the show come to mingle with the local scene and meet fans rather than make news. Panels focus on personality and craft over announcements, usually including sprawling Q&A sessions, and are balanced out with workshops and how-tos, such as this year’s “Instant Graphic Novel,” “Your Legal Rights: Protecting and Profiting From Your Work,” and “Art and the Small Business.” For members of the comics scene, it’s one long social gathering; for the general public, it’s a showcase for what comics are about and what the small press, as well as Northwest publishers like Fantagraphics, Oni Press, Top Shelf, and Dark Horse, have to offer.


Jeff Smith at his spotlight panel (stolen from the Stumptown 2009 Flikr pool).

On Saturday, after a fortifying breakfast, I arrived at the show around noon, in time to catch the beginning of the spotlight panel on Jeff Smith, the Fest’s Guest of Honor, who bookended my weekend. I only saw a few minutes then and a few more at the end, as I was called away, but what I saw included insightful moderation from the CBLDF’s Charles Brownstein and enthusiastic questions from the many children in attendance.

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Wright Opinion: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman.

April 6, 2009 by Brendan Wright
I CONFESS that I remain regretfully behind in posting to this blog.

However, I have managed to contribute an article to the online women’s comics magazine Sequential Tart’s “Redirected Male” column, about Jon B. Cooke’s dialectic of “Humanism vs. Materialism” in comics journalism, and how it played out in Tim Leong and Laura Hudson’s sadly defunct Comic Foundry, as well as in Cooke’s own magazine, Comic Book Artist:

One of the things I’ll miss the most about the recently departed Comic Foundry is one I don’t remember hearing much about: the magazine’s covers. Comic Foundry was, as far as I’m aware, unique among comics magazines in featuring an actual person rather than a fictional character on every cover. Comics professionals graced the covers of three of the five issues, and the other two featured, respectively, a pair of young comics fans representing Comic Foundry’s desired audience, and a TV personality who talks comics on the air.

Continued at Sequential Tart.

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It’s Comics Month again! (A drunken dispatch from Portland)

April 3, 2009 by Brendan Wright

IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN!

Once again, representatives of Portland’s Stumptown Comics Fest stormed City Hall (where apparently security has not been improved) last month, demanding that Mayor Sam Adams declare April “Comics Month,” as his predecessor did last year. They came brandishing Hulk Hands, and, his administration rocked by a sex scandal earlier this year, Mayor Adams lacked the political capital to ward the Stumptowners off.

Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian, via Associated Press

And so, once again April is Comics Month in the fair city of Portland, with a massive array of events planned throughout the month—culminating of course in the Stumptown Comics Fest April 18th & 19th.

Tonight was no exception. Every month Portland holds a city-wide set of gallery events for “First Thursday,” and this Thursday was packed with comics events. I went to three of them, though it’s not a Wright Opinion report unless I forget to bring my camera, so unfortunately I have no pictures.

First up on my circuit was Paul Hornschemeier’s gallery show at the Charles Hartman gallery. Hornschemeier (whose The Three Paradoxes I reviewed when he was last in Portland) is on tour for the new Fantagraphics edition of his debut graphic novel, Mother, Come Home, and the included pages from several of his books, as well as covers and other design elements. Considering that Hornschemeier sells them (the gallery had pieces between $600 and $1,500), I was surprised that so many covers and key pages were still available, and it was a treat to see them. Hornschemeier works mostly in blue pencil, and it was fascinating to look at all the changes made from penciling to inking, since there’s no need to erase. One piece in particular had a figure with several versions of a hand penciled in, but none of them inked, as Hornschemeier had chosen to leave the hand out, but the pencils remained, detailing the process.

Next, it was on to Floating World Comics for an exhibit of David Mack’s artwork from his recently collected Kabuki: The Alchemy from Marvel Icon. As I arrived, Mack was giving a slideshow presentation on his artistic process, talking about a page of The Alchemy that integrated pieces of mail sent by readers from around the world. He went on to describe his collaboration with Joe Quesada on Daredevil, explaining that he wrote a detailed script and provided layouts for Quesada, and was impressed by the how Quesada built on them. He also discussed his work with Brian Bendis, who was in the audience, and when one attendee asked if the pair would ever create a project with Mack as writer and Bendis as artist, Mack answered, “Yes,” while Bendis said, “No.” More questions elicited Mack’s thoughts on the thematic motifs in his work and his philosophy toward writing.

Finally, I visited the Sequential Art Gallery to see Erika Moen (whose DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary I reviewed after last year’s Stumptown) and Dylan Meconis’s “Lady Parts” joint show of erotic art. As one enters, Moen’s work, sex toy cut-outs and Sex Toy Goddesses, was on the left, while Meconis’s, fanciful portraits of lesbian couples, was on the right. The Sequential Art Gallery is hardly larger than a closet, and was packed, so I was out fairly quickly, but it was a delightful show, especially Moen’s large tableau of an orgy (drawn with Lucy Knisley), a collage of all manner of sexual play, which exemplified the tone of the show: sex as a whimsical and even innocent thing, a breath of fresh air in our puritanical (sorry, Sarah Vowell) culture.

Then, this being Portland, it was time for a friend and I to hit a pub and enjoy Portland’s wealth of local beers. And now, home again, here I am typing instead of packing for tomorrow’s trip to the Emerald City Comic-Con. All in all, a great evening of comics culture, and a true reminder of how apt the mayor’s declaration of Portland as the city of comics is. It’s only April 2nd, and most days the rest of this month will have at least one comics-related event, so there’s a lot still to come, including Stumptown.

But now, Seattle . . .

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Wright Opinion Live

February 5, 2009 by Brendan Wright

SO, IT’S BEEN HARD TO GET BACK INTO THE HABIT OF THIS. I have a couple books in a stack to review, and I will get to them soon, but it hasn’t happened yet.

In the meantime, I’ll be on the Erika Moen Show next Tuesday, talking comics—probably mostly about Dark Horse, but hopefully also comics reviewing/interviewing, teaching comics, and Stumptown Comics Fest planning.

I reviewed Erika’s webcomic, DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary, after last year’s Stumptown, and recommend it just as much as I did then. Past episodes of the Erika Moen Show are definitely also worth catching. Recent guests have included Sarah Oleksyk, Cat Ellis & Susan Tardif, Douglas Wolk, Steve Lieber, and Sara Ryan.

The show will be live on the web at 7:30 on Tuesday, February 10th, and available to stream thereafter. However, if you watch live, you can type in questions, so be there.

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