One month ago on Friday February 27 and Saturday February 28 I attended the Comic Arts Conference in San Francisco, CA (attached to Wondercon). This year marked my second annual attendance at this gathering of comics scholars; I presented there last year on the Chester Brown short story “Showing Helder.” This year I merely observed, although I do intend to present again next year.
I attended almost all the sessions of the conference on both Friday and Saturday (with one exception which I will note later). Sadly I was unable to attend the Sunday panels for the conference (which included a panel on copyright law, which I was very sad to miss) because I had to fly home, but the panels I attended on Friday and Saturday were all incredibly valuable and interesting. So I thought I would share here the content of some of those panels with you, the faithful GraphiContent reader.
First on the list was "Between Two Flashes" which gave an overview of the superheroes that were published between the Golden Age and the Silver Age. Very few heroes were successful during that time (apart from the major heroes like Superman and Batman), and the lecturers hypothesized that the reason for their waning popularity was due to the advent of television. Western and detective sows were popular on TV, so publishers of comics followed suit. It was only after Wertham and the comic censorship of the mid to late '50s that superheroes resurfaced because their cartoonish violence was less realistic and thus deemed "safe." (They also talked at one point about how Zorro and the Lone Ranger were proto-superheroes: crimefighters, secret identities, costumes.)
The second panel was on teaching comics, which I initially was very excited about. But this panel was the one that I decided to skip, because upon looking over the material for it and reading the description in the program, I realized it was aimed at using comics as a teaching tool in K-8 classes. That topic having little appeal to a college English instructor, I skipped it.
But I came back for the third and final panel for Friday, subtitled Barack Obama and the Superhero Metaphor. This panel was by a friend of mine Pete Coogan (who is in the STL area and actually interviewed me for a job once) but he didn't actually attend. He had prerecorded his presentation because he had had a family emergency at the last minute, but it was still an incredibly interesting lecture. It contrasted the media imagery associated with both Bush (who had a "cowboy" persona) and Obama (who is thought of as a superhuman savior). He discussed how Bush wanted to frame the war on terror as "us vs. them" like cowboys and indians, whereas he should have focused more on the "supervillain" of Osama Bin Laden. It was quite intriguing, even if it wasn't technically about comics per se.
Saturday's panels were even more interesting, although they varied widely in content. In the first panel of the day, Diana Green presented on homoerotic subtext in EC comics, which was quite enlightening. She discussed a few specific stories which involved crossdressing fraternal twins or asexual reproduction, and it really makes me want to seek out a lot of those old EC reprints. Also during that first panel Kate McClancy did a comparison between the graphic novel and film adaptation of V for Vendetta. She argued that the changes made in the film mean that the people of the film merely replace one leader for another, that the triumph of anarchy and the individual are replaced when the people simply begin to follow V. In the film V is no longer an idea, but he is a hero instead. Since I'll be teaching V in a few weeks, I found this presentation really valuable.
The second panel was by Randy Duncan whose new book The Power of Comics comes out soon (May 15 according to Amazon... and only $16.50 on sale). It's a textbook for comics classes, and his presentation gave an overview of the content of the book. He talked about how he (and his coauthor) tried to hit all the possible ways to approach a class on comics by devoting chapters to the history of comics, their form, and their place in the culture. It was absolutely riveting and I very much look forward to reading it. If it's half as good as it sounds, I might start requiring it for my class. He also mentioned the possibility of doing a companion reader in the future, which I have been wanting to do for AGES and am very excited about the possibility of helping him with.
Finally the last panel featured two presenters. One was talking about Legion of Superheroes and how Jim Shooter "Marvelized" the characters when he took over writing the series. It turned out to be an excerpt of an article in Tim Callahan's book Teenagers from the Future (about $24 on sale on Amazon), which is a book I've been meaning to pick up but haven't yet so that was quite nice.
Finally there was a presentation on female superheroes of the '70s by Jennifer Stuller. (Her book, Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors, won't be out in the US until 2010.) It mostly focused on Lois Lane and Wonder Woman, contrasting how Lois served as a feminist icon in the '70s while Diana Prince was a bit of a stepback in the comics of the time period. A friend and I have been tossing ideas around about doing a book on the portraits of women in comics, so I found this lecture greatly helpful.
All in all, it was a fantastic conference and I look forward to attending next year.
Showing posts with label wondercon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wondercon. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
ideas stolen from my brain
As you may know, I presented at the Comic Arts Conference in San Francisco in late February on the idea of truth in autobiographical comics. I started my discussion with a brief look at James Frey's "memoir" A Million Little Pieces and continued on to briefly mention, among other authors who deal with truth in fiction, Tim O'Brien. That all served as introduction to my discussion of one particular autobiographical comic, "Showing Helder" by Chester Brown. During my speech I made mention of other autobiographical works by Brown, such as I Never Liked You and The Playboy, as well as the autobio works of Brown's friends Joe Matt and Seth.
So today I got a copy of a new book I've been meaning to read for a while, This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature by Rocco Versaci. Rocco Versaci is an English professor at Palomar College whose work I first became aware of via teachingcomics.org when I first proposed a comic book course in Olney several years ago. This book came out in December, and sometime between then and February I found a copy of it in Borders one day. I recognized the author's name and thought I should pick it up, but I didn't have the money at the moment. When I finally made the decision to buy it, in the hopes of reading it before my presentation, I went back to the store but the only copy they had was sold. I searched everywhere around the city but couldn't find another copy anywhere.
Recently when I placed an order on Amazon with some birthday money, I decided it would be a good time to pick up this book too. I ordered it, it came today, and I flipped through it quickly, planning to give it a proper read later.
As I flipped through, my eyes caught the words "Tim O'Brien." I stopped, went back and found the page, and read. It was a reference to his philosophy on truth in fiction as portrayed in the book The Things They Carried. I was aghast, so I turned to the front of that chapter. I discovered then the second chapter was called "Creating a 'Special Reality:' Comic Books vs. Memoir" and on the FIRST PAGE of that chapter Rocco Versaci is talking about... James Frey and A Million Little Pieces.
Versaci continues by addressing Chester Brown's use of literary techniques in some of his work on pages 39-43, particularly focusing on "Helder" and "Showing Helder" in pages 70-73. He also brings up Joe Matt on pages 64-66 and Seth on page 76.
I am really fucking glad that I didn't read this book before my presentation, because I HAD THESE IDEAS for years (and addressed some of them in the past when teaching "Showing Helder") before presenting on them, and if I HAD read this book, I would have felt like I needed to start my presentation over from scratch so as to avoid the implication of plagiarism. As it is, I feel rather foolish thinking that someone at that conference might end up reading this book and thinking I lifted my presentation from it, but there's nothing I can do about it now, as what's done is done.
I do think I'm going to email the organizer of the conference to point out the similarity to him, lest he think I'm a plagiarist. And of course I'm going to track down Rocco Versaci's email address too; the coincidence is too uncanny not to find him and point out to him.
So today I got a copy of a new book I've been meaning to read for a while, This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature by Rocco Versaci. Rocco Versaci is an English professor at Palomar College whose work I first became aware of via teachingcomics.org when I first proposed a comic book course in Olney several years ago. This book came out in December, and sometime between then and February I found a copy of it in Borders one day. I recognized the author's name and thought I should pick it up, but I didn't have the money at the moment. When I finally made the decision to buy it, in the hopes of reading it before my presentation, I went back to the store but the only copy they had was sold. I searched everywhere around the city but couldn't find another copy anywhere.
Recently when I placed an order on Amazon with some birthday money, I decided it would be a good time to pick up this book too. I ordered it, it came today, and I flipped through it quickly, planning to give it a proper read later.
As I flipped through, my eyes caught the words "Tim O'Brien." I stopped, went back and found the page, and read. It was a reference to his philosophy on truth in fiction as portrayed in the book The Things They Carried. I was aghast, so I turned to the front of that chapter. I discovered then the second chapter was called "Creating a 'Special Reality:' Comic Books vs. Memoir" and on the FIRST PAGE of that chapter Rocco Versaci is talking about... James Frey and A Million Little Pieces.
Versaci continues by addressing Chester Brown's use of literary techniques in some of his work on pages 39-43, particularly focusing on "Helder" and "Showing Helder" in pages 70-73. He also brings up Joe Matt on pages 64-66 and Seth on page 76.
I am really fucking glad that I didn't read this book before my presentation, because I HAD THESE IDEAS for years (and addressed some of them in the past when teaching "Showing Helder") before presenting on them, and if I HAD read this book, I would have felt like I needed to start my presentation over from scratch so as to avoid the implication of plagiarism. As it is, I feel rather foolish thinking that someone at that conference might end up reading this book and thinking I lifted my presentation from it, but there's nothing I can do about it now, as what's done is done.
I do think I'm going to email the organizer of the conference to point out the similarity to him, lest he think I'm a plagiarist. And of course I'm going to track down Rocco Versaci's email address too; the coincidence is too uncanny not to find him and point out to him.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Wondercon presentations
Now that almost two months have passed, here’s a quick rundown of the presentations I saw at Wondercon:
Friday Feb 22—
Jeff Kahan was supposed to present on the first panel that day, but he didn’t make it. I wanted to get a copy of his book Caped Crusaders 101 but couldn’t, obviously, and that made me sad.
So David Baldizon presented the whole time on “Literacy and Social-Political Awareness” and talked about how he used comics to get his students thinking about concepts in new ways, concepts like Lois Lane as a feminist icon, the connections between Batman and Hamlet or Hulk and Jekyll/Hyde, Captain America as the Nazi ideal, or body images changing over the years as seen in representations of Superman. He brought two of his students to show off their own comics work and talked about how the students, when they were doing comics, were much more perfectionists than when they normally worked because they owned the ideas.
My presentation on “Showing Helder” started off the second panel, followed by Shawn O’Rourke’s presentation on Alan Moore and “Religious Pluralism in Promethea.” I hadn’t read Promethea so I didn’t get a ton out of his presentation unfortunately. He did discuss the concept of theosophy, all religious beings working together and being a part of the same pantheon, so I asked a question of him afterward in regards to that concept in Gaiman’s work, such as American Gods or Sandman: Season of Mists. Also he talked about Promethea’s use of another plane of existence called Immateria, which seemed to me to have a lot in common with the “Blazing World” of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But unfortunately he had not read THAT book, so he couldn’t comment on the similarities.
Saturday Feb 23—
The first panel of the day was all Douglas Wolk. And it was great. It was called The Sense-Shattering Novel of Ideas, and he was basically talking about how, because drawings are automatically the subjective interpretation of reality of the artist, they are naturally drawn to the type of metaphorical explorations that are rare in fiction these days. And then he just basically listed a whole bunch of metaphors that comics have dealt with, from their inception to the present day. And he talked about how, when the metaphor is non-existent, like with Hawkman, or way too obvious, like with Hawk and Dove, the characters tend to fail to catch on.
Some of the ideas he threw out included: how Spiderman’s earliest enemies all seemed to be old men, personifying the youth v. adulthood metaphor of the character; Iron Man being born out of Cold War fears, hence his Vietnam origins and his villains frequently being tied to foreign invaders; how the Flash’s rogues almost all rely on gadgetry, thus turning the book into an exploration of how science when used responsibly (by Barry Allen) can be used for good but also how it can be corrupted in the hands of others. He talked about Green Lantern, how as a galactic police officer he imposes his will on others constantly, and how he checks in with his morality via his oath regularly to avoid straying from the path he has established in his mind as right. And his weakness, yellow, is the color of fear, fear that his will might lead him astray (as we’ve seen with Parallax and the Sinestro Corps recently). He loved House of M for turning the identity metaphor of the mutant inside out, and he loved World War Hulk as a metaphor for post-9/11 blowback. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what he talked about in this truly interesting lecture.
The second panel had a cancellation so the entire hour and a half was taken up by Travis Langley, who spoke on the psychology of Batman. I have to say though that I found a lot of his insights rather elementary. At one point he claimed that such analyses into Batman’s psyche were lacking, and I wanted to shout out, “What about Batman Unmasked? What about The Many Faces of The Batman? Did you actually DO any research before you came here?” He also stole one of his images from my Long Halloween website, which I found kind of funny.
And the last panel I attended that day was called Teaching Comics, and it was a panel discussion that featured among others Stephen Cary, author of Going Graphic, and Gene Luen Yang, author of American-Born Chinese. It was a really insightful discussion and it was great to hear from other people who also use comics in the classroom… But I failed to take any notes during the presentation, so I simply cannot provide any kind of comments about this panel.
Friday Feb 22—
Jeff Kahan was supposed to present on the first panel that day, but he didn’t make it. I wanted to get a copy of his book Caped Crusaders 101 but couldn’t, obviously, and that made me sad.
So David Baldizon presented the whole time on “Literacy and Social-Political Awareness” and talked about how he used comics to get his students thinking about concepts in new ways, concepts like Lois Lane as a feminist icon, the connections between Batman and Hamlet or Hulk and Jekyll/Hyde, Captain America as the Nazi ideal, or body images changing over the years as seen in representations of Superman. He brought two of his students to show off their own comics work and talked about how the students, when they were doing comics, were much more perfectionists than when they normally worked because they owned the ideas.
My presentation on “Showing Helder” started off the second panel, followed by Shawn O’Rourke’s presentation on Alan Moore and “Religious Pluralism in Promethea.” I hadn’t read Promethea so I didn’t get a ton out of his presentation unfortunately. He did discuss the concept of theosophy, all religious beings working together and being a part of the same pantheon, so I asked a question of him afterward in regards to that concept in Gaiman’s work, such as American Gods or Sandman: Season of Mists. Also he talked about Promethea’s use of another plane of existence called Immateria, which seemed to me to have a lot in common with the “Blazing World” of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But unfortunately he had not read THAT book, so he couldn’t comment on the similarities.
Saturday Feb 23—
The first panel of the day was all Douglas Wolk. And it was great. It was called The Sense-Shattering Novel of Ideas, and he was basically talking about how, because drawings are automatically the subjective interpretation of reality of the artist, they are naturally drawn to the type of metaphorical explorations that are rare in fiction these days. And then he just basically listed a whole bunch of metaphors that comics have dealt with, from their inception to the present day. And he talked about how, when the metaphor is non-existent, like with Hawkman, or way too obvious, like with Hawk and Dove, the characters tend to fail to catch on.
Some of the ideas he threw out included: how Spiderman’s earliest enemies all seemed to be old men, personifying the youth v. adulthood metaphor of the character; Iron Man being born out of Cold War fears, hence his Vietnam origins and his villains frequently being tied to foreign invaders; how the Flash’s rogues almost all rely on gadgetry, thus turning the book into an exploration of how science when used responsibly (by Barry Allen) can be used for good but also how it can be corrupted in the hands of others. He talked about Green Lantern, how as a galactic police officer he imposes his will on others constantly, and how he checks in with his morality via his oath regularly to avoid straying from the path he has established in his mind as right. And his weakness, yellow, is the color of fear, fear that his will might lead him astray (as we’ve seen with Parallax and the Sinestro Corps recently). He loved House of M for turning the identity metaphor of the mutant inside out, and he loved World War Hulk as a metaphor for post-9/11 blowback. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what he talked about in this truly interesting lecture.
The second panel had a cancellation so the entire hour and a half was taken up by Travis Langley, who spoke on the psychology of Batman. I have to say though that I found a lot of his insights rather elementary. At one point he claimed that such analyses into Batman’s psyche were lacking, and I wanted to shout out, “What about Batman Unmasked? What about The Many Faces of The Batman? Did you actually DO any research before you came here?” He also stole one of his images from my Long Halloween website, which I found kind of funny.
And the last panel I attended that day was called Teaching Comics, and it was a panel discussion that featured among others Stephen Cary, author of Going Graphic, and Gene Luen Yang, author of American-Born Chinese. It was a really insightful discussion and it was great to hear from other people who also use comics in the classroom… But I failed to take any notes during the presentation, so I simply cannot provide any kind of comments about this panel.
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