Breakdowns

Breakdowns is a new release by Art Spiegelman, the creator of the Pulitzer-Prize winning Maus. Actually, Breakdowns isn't entirely new, it was originally released in 1978 as a collection of short stories that Spiegelman had done for various underground comix in the 1970's. This new edition of Breakdowns does feature about twenty new pages by Art Spiegelman, is in a gorgeous oversized (10"x14) format, and has outstanding production values throughout. Before I talk more about Breakdowns, I'd like to share some of my thoughts on Maus.
Maus, is primarily Spiegelman's memoir of how his father (and mother) survived the Holocaust, but Maus is also about Art Spiegelman's relationship with his father.

Reading Maus was my first exposure to the horror that was the Holocaust. I went to high school in Munich, Germany (it was an American school - I was an air force brat) and I remember going on a school field trip to Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp, where we were given a tour of where the (mostly) Jewish prisoners slept and ate and there was a big room with photos. I vaguely remember a feeling of unease during the Dachau field trip and being sad after seeing those photos, but at that time I didn't grasp the horror of what was going on in the Nazi concentration camps. I attribute this to the poor history books used in schools which largely just relate cold facts without putting the events into a context that young minds can process. So it wasn't until I'd been out of high school for several years and read Maus, with Spiegelman's father recounting his memories of being in Auschwitz to him, that I understood what the Nazi regime was doing to people.

A three page short story in Breakdowns from 1972 is called Maus and while the art style is different than the style he ultimately used when he did his 300 page Maus graphic novel (originally two separate books that collected the chapters that ran in Raw, an anthology comic book magazine), this early Maus story definitely shows Spiegelman knew this was a story he had to tell. Another short story in Breakdowns is called Prisoner On The Hell Planet, about Spiegelman's mother's suicide and this story he also used within his larger Maus narrative (but here the art is much bigger). The new material frames Breakdowns and includes an excellent sixteen page sequential story that is Spiegelman looking back at his formative years as a cartoonist and a six page afterward autobiography. Breakdowns is expensive ($27.50) for "only" 72 pages, but this is book really is a must have for one of the pioneers of autobiographical and experimental comics and nothing within these pages has a dated quality. In Spiegelman's previous work, In The Shadow Of No Towers, he commented that he doesn't think he has another long work like Maus within him (and I'm sure that the highly personal nature of Maus took a lot out of him as well as the fear of how to follow such an acclaimed book), so books like Breakdowns, in which we just get "small" doses of Spiegelman's comic genius will have to suffice.

Burma Chronicles

Burma Chronicles is the third graphic novel travelogue by cartoonist Guy Delisle and is about the year he spent in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. I enjoyed Burma Chronicles as I did Delise's Pyongyang (his Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China didn't leave much of an impression on me) because I'll probably never visit those countries so reading about his immersive experiences living in those oppressive countries gave me a much better sense of what living there entails than from what I knew about those countries before reading these graphic novels.

Guy Delisle lived in Pyongyang and Shenzhen for a year while he was a supervisor for animation studios there and he was in Burma for a year working on his graphic novels. When Delisle wasn't working on animation or comic book projects in those countries he does as Joe Sacco, comics' other comic book journalist (excellent cartoonist of Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde) does, which is to live amongst the local people and then produce graphic novels about their experiences.

Burma borders China and Thailand and like Pyongyang (North Korea) is a very oppressive country. Burma also has many regions that are very impoverished and is / was one of the countries that Doctors Without Borders provides medical services to (Delisle, while in Burma, lived amongst some of those doctors and traveled with them sometimes when they went out in the field). Before reading Burma Chronicles I hadn't known that drug use in Burma is amongst the highest in the world and as Delisle states "In my humble opinion, it suits the government fine. They'd probably prefer to see young Kachins stoned to the gills than taking up arms and joining the ranks of the resistance." Learning about countries such as Burma and Pyongyang in which personal advancement is next to impossible, poverty is so prevalent, and just daily living is such a grind, makes me appreciate that although conditions such as the economy and the present political climate here in the U.S. are amongst the worst that they've ever been in this country, there are many people in many countries around the world that have it much worse (and I'm not saying that people should here in the U.S. should just accept what's going on, just that everyone needs to increase their perspectives because the United States is not the world).

Emiko Superstar = ugh

Emiko Superstar is a new Minx graphic novel by writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Steve Rolston and while I was reading it I was thinking that this book wanted to be what another Minx title, The Plain Janes, is and that is a good coming of age story with the central character trying to make their transformation through art. My problem with Emiko Superstar wasn't that I thought it was similar to The Plain Janes, but that none of the characters were especially interesting or were handled in such a way to make the reader care about what happened to them.

While reading Emiko Superstar, I was also thinking of a discussion I had with Kate when it was first announced that the Minx line would be discontinued. Kate's argument was that most of the Minx titles featured stories that were preachy, with characters that learn some kind of moral lesson and not the kind of story she (Kate) sought out as a teenage reader. Well, Emiko Superstar proves her point, even though I still stand by my argument that just about anyone who read the two best Minx titles, The Plain Janes and Good As Lilly, would enjoy them (although she's probably right that they would be bought for teenage girls rather than something they'd think to select themselves).

Actually I didn't want to just write about what a dud I thought this book was, I wanted to talk specifically about something Emiko, the central character of Emiko Superstar does that transforms her. Spoiler alert following! Emiko works as a babysitter and she finds a journal / diary that was / is written by the mother of the boy she watches. So she decides to PLAGIARIZE the whole diary and present it as her creation at this gathering of artists / performers and their audience. Emiko copies every word from the diary, calls it "Suburbia", and the reaction to it is very favorable. Nowhere in the book when Emiko does this is the word "plagiarism" named nor is the reader or Emiko left with the impression that plagiarism is bad. I think plagiarism is a pretty serious offense and I think that any young readers of Emiko Superstar will just think that stealing other people's writings (or ideas) is okay as long as it advances you as a person. I have (had?) a friend who discovered that a friend of theirs had plagiarized complete ideas from another person and presented those ideas (word for word) in an outlet as if they were their unique ideas so my friend stopped talking to that person (the plagiarist was not confronted by my friend and I don't know if the plagiarist realized that someone discovered this or if the person who was plagiarized ever knew that that happened to them, of which I'm two minds of, but who amongst us hasn't been confrontational when they should have?). While I think Joe Biden is generally a fairly intelligent person, I'm surprised that his previous plagiarism incident (when he ran for President years ago) hasn't been brought up as a character assault towards him. Maybe plagiarism isn't so bad anymore!?

Obama & McCain comics

Today IDW released an Obama biography comic book and a McCain biography comic (there's also a flip book that has both under one binding).

Except for the covers (and your milage may differ on that depending on whether you like cover artist, J Scott Campbell's new too much like bad caricature art style), both of these comics are good primers of both of the 2008 Presidential candidates.

The Obama comic is written by Jeff Mariotte and drawn by Tom Morgan. I thought the art was fine, but I wish someone like Paul Gulacy would have been available or interested. I hadn't read Obama's two books so wasn't real familiar with his background other than what I'd read about him and his mother (an interesting person, sadly she died in 1995) in Time magazine. As any even semi- regular reader of my blog knows, I was already going to vote for Obama, but reading this comic about Obama's history would have sold me if my mind wasn't already made up.

The McCain comic was written by Andy Helfer and drawn by Stephen Thompson. The art here is fine, more photo-realistic than the art in the Obama comic, except sometimes it comes across as too static (whereas the art in the Obama comic is sometimes too cartoony). I'd already known quite a bit about McCain (mostly from a Biography show on The History Channel), but this comic serves as a good overview of how McCain got to where he is today (although if I was going to nitpick, even though I think a lot of McCain's life has been admirable and fascinating, sometimes it was a chore to read this comic because there was too many text captions per page). Anyway, I think McCain has led an interesting life (and obviously an especially difficult five years when he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam in the late 1960's), but I still don't think that makes him qualified to be President of the U.S.

Arab In America

Arab In America was a 2007 release, but I don't recall ever seeing it available from my main distributor, Diamond Comics, so I just received it from Last Gasp a couple of days ago.

Arab In America is an autobiography written and drawn by Toufic El Rassi. While I'd say that as an illustrator, Rassi doesn't have a style anywhere close to that of other autobio comic artists such as Joe Sacco, Rutu Modan, Alison Bechdel, or Eddie Campbell, the art doesn't distract from Rassi's objective with this graphic novel, which is to show how much prejudice exists in the U.S. towards anyone with an Arab identity. In Arab n America, Rassi also does a good job of chronicling how most people in the U.S. don't even know that Turks, Iranians, and Pakistani people are not Arabs (Rassi was born in Beriut, but grew up in the U.S.).

I will admit that my knowledge of the Middle East situation isn't that great so Arab In America was a good resource for me, specifically where Rassi explains how "Israel has one of the world's most sophisticated militaries and living standards on par with Western Eupope, yet the U.S. gives them about 3 billion dollars a year in military and economic aid, more than any country on earth - more money than the U.S. gives annually to all of Sub Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region." I'd recommend Arab In America just based on how well Toufic Rassi details the hypocrisy that the U.S. has employed in its involvement in the Middle East. If more people were aware of facts such as those presented in Arab In America, they'd understand one of the many reasons the U.S. war in Iraq is such a farce.

Comics Industry For Obama

Over on Newsarama yesterday they had an interview with Sarah Grace McCandless, the creator and website moderator of http://comicsindustryforobama.ning.com/. Here's their mission statement in McCandless' words from the Newsarama interview: "It's a central meeting place where Obama supporters across the comics industry can mobilize, with a focus first and foremost on doing a get out the vote push, followed by fundraising efforts for the campaign." Writer / artist Eric Powell (The Goon), did the artwork for the logo. I also love the tag line on the website: "Let's make sure the good guy wins" even though I don't think McCain is really a bad guy, just not a good guy to be the President of the U.S.

I think Comics Industry For Obama is a great idea, I just wish it had been thought of earlier because it seems so obvious. So far there are just about 140 members, including comic creators such as Laura Martin, Mike Mignola, Jimmy Palmiotti, Mike allred, Andy Diggle, Steve Niles, and Denys Cowan. I'm thinking that most of the comic industry (like most people in the entertainment / arts community) are of the Democratic persuasion anyway, so why not get together and proclaim their support for Obama? The website has a good no-frills design and hopefully as more people in the comics industry hear about this, they'll join in and encourage others to do so as well. They have a facebook and myspace page, but myspace annoys the hell out of me (I can't get past the horrible busy design layout that is myspace) and it seems like the only dialogue tha happens on myspace is people saying "thanks for the add."

Warning, soapbox time!: The only thing I don't like about Comics For Obama is that one of their objectives is to raise money for Obama's campaign, with artists doing sketches and donating artwork for auctions for that purpose. I don't know what the total amount of money has been raised for the Obama campaign is, but I do remember that they proudly announced that they raised 66 million just in the month of August! That's just for one month - I think that amount for a whole year is an insane amount to spend on a campaign. I'm sure that the Republicans have similar (if not higher) amounts they're raising and using for their campaign, but either way, dollar amounts like that are gonzo. As Kate has reminded me, television ads are expensive and all the people involved in the campaign need to be transported to this state and that state, but really aren't there enough people just volunteering their own time and resources canvasing their neighborhoods to get out the word? If Obama can't defeat McCain November 4th just based on Bush and the Republican's record the last eight years, well all of the television ads and hopping from state to state are just really expensive window dressings or parties for the already converted.

What if Obama and his campaign used the money they raised and gave them to organizations and programs that would do something productive with those crazy dollar figures (the same applies to the Republicans)? Certainly there are many worthwhile organizations and programs that could really turn their operations around with a few million dollars and wouldn't the press from that show that Obama (and the Democratic party or the Republican party if they went this route) was a making-it-happen candidate, not just talking the talk candidate? I realize that Obama isn't taking matching government funds for his campaign or taking money from Washington lobbyists or political action committees (rather he's getting his insane dollar contributions in smaller amounts from more people) and I admire him for that, but 66 million in one month is still insane. Running for office in the U.S. needs to be seriously overhauled, it needs to cover a span of something like just six months and all of the candidates should have the same amount of not more than 5 million (total for their whole campaign) to run their campaigns. Presently as Mark Twain said we have the "best government that money can buy," except even with all of the crazy money it takes to run a Presidential campaign (and other political campaigns in the U.S.), we still don't end up with the best government.

The Alcoholic

No Spoilers:

Yesterday, Vertigo / DC released The Alcoholic, a new original hardcover graphic novel by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel. I read the first forty-five pages at the store between customers, read some more last night after watching the long awaited return of the best show on tv, Pushing Daisies, and finished it this morning before my morning jog. The Alcoholic is fantastic! It reads very much like an autobiography (but don't let me saying that scare you away if you think autobio is usually boing) and the central character shares the same name as the author (on the liner notes on the back of the book it sates that the character "bears only a coincidental resemblance to the real-life writer" - yeah, right. Anyway regardless of how much of The Alcoholic is true, the reader is drawn into Jonathan's world immediately as the book follows Jonathan as he takes his first drink all the way through his later adult life, imparting on the reader the whole range of emotions as we see his life as an alcoholic unfold.

The Alcoholic is novelist Jonathan Ames' first graphic novel and he came out with all cylinders firing, helped to a great extent by artist Dean Hapiel, who does the best art I've ever seen by him (and I'll have to admit that I previously wasn't a very big Hapiel fan). 136 pages, hardcover, for only $19.99 - this will surely be amongst the front runners in next years Eisners. Now I wish I had a good German dunkel (dark) beer!