Fables: Animal Farm

This week unearthed some interesting possibilities in regards to working with comics. I interviewed with Kaplan (yes, the test prep company), and discovered that they actually have a brand new line of sat-vocabulary prep manga and comic books, which are really just straightforward comic books with sidebars explaining advanced vocabulary. Right now they only have a couple, but they've recently signed deals for a few licensed properties, including World of Warcraft and DC Comics' Justice League. They seemed extremely excited when i told them my own experiences dealing in comics. I haven't gotten it yet, but it just goes to show that there are a lot of unexpected paths for getting to the same goal.

In other news, I reread Fables: Animal Farm. In some ways I like this volume better than the first, as the overarching backstory finally begins to be hinted at, and there are a ton of inspired touches to a fairly straightforward guerilla coup story. The pigs as the revolutionary leaders was brillian, two direct literary references in one blow.

However, I do feel the story suffers in comparison to the first one as a result of a much more one-dimensional set of villains. Goldilocks is a psycho, and those helping her like Shere Khan never move past base villainy. Jack and Rose Red were much better fleshed out, to the point where Jack even carried his own series, something a simple nut like Goldilocks could never do. Hers was a case where I felt the idea (Goldilocks slept with Baby Bear and became an insane echoterrorist lashing out against the specism in Fable society) never transferred organcially to the page in a way that had emotional reasonance with me.

The transition from Medina to Willingham was seamless, and if I hadn't read it I would never have picked up on the shift in artists. Interestingly, neither of their work on other titles look anything like each other, which means one or both of them totally sublimated their favored style for the sake of continuity in appearance. Very hard to do, and an indicator of an artist with a fair degree of technical ability. Liefeld, for instance, could never take on another style like that, when he draws something you always know it (generally by the grossly mishapen anatomy and lack of hands, but thats a rant for another day).

Fables

After feeling that the art in Ex Machina lacked emotion and personality, it was a joy just to look at James Jean's incredible cover art for Fables. His drawing of the various Fables, in and around a NYC subway car, wasn't just technically excellent, it has real character and emotion behind it. The Beast looks both monstrous and all-too human, Prince Charming both perfectly handsome and perfectly loathsome, Bigby Wolf looks gritty and grizzled, etc. Ex Machina felt like looking at photographs, James Jean's covers feel like looking at real life, ironic considering his fantastic subject matter. I'm not sure anyone else could have gotten that perfect a blend of whimsy and realism, ideal for the comic itself.

The interior art is more than adequate, but felt like something of a letdown after the gorgeous covers. The pencilwork is tight, detailed, and the coloring subdued in the manner of comics like Gotham Central or certain issues of Daredevil- which fits, since those comics strive for "realistic" takes on fantastic subject matter, as does Fables. A more stylized approach just wouldn't have conveyed the same sense of these magical characters being stuck firmly in a world where they didn't belong.

Speaking of those characters, Willingham's knack for unorthodox takes on classic characters that nevertheless read like realistic extrapolations of what we know from traditional fairytales is extraordinary. For instance, lots of stories feature a Prince Charming who is handsome, charming and marries the princess as the end. Willingham's inspired interpretation was that they are all the same Prince Charming, and therefore in addition to being handsome and all that, he must be a tremendous womanizer. Similarly, for all that the Jack the Giant Killer stories cast him as the hero due to his victim being a giant, its pretty easy to read them as a case of lying, breaking and entering, theft and possibly murder for the sake og money and glory. Hence, Jack is an immoral glory hound. Willingham never does what you expect with the characters, but he also never offers up an interpretation that would directly contradict the known fairytales.

As great as Fables is, it does suffer some in my eyes for attempting to do many of the same things that Neil Gaiman's Sandman did. In Sandman, every story ever told is true, to a greater or lesser degree, and whether that truth impacts realities is determined by the perception of the individual. Gods, monsters and everything else only really exist insofar as people believe them, so defunct Gods like Bast are now near-powerless shells of their former self (Gaiman also deals with the idea of belief informing power/existence in American Gods). Characters exist in a sort of sub-reality within our own world, rarely affecting everyday people in obvious ways, yet their origins go back to worlds beyond our own woven from the very dreamstuff of mankind. Its not exactly fables, Gaiman never limits himself to fairy tales and indeed primarily plays with myths/Gods and famous literary or historical figures, but he plays by similar rules. Given that Gaiman's Sandman almost singlehandedly popularized the Vertigo imprint of which Fables is now one of the flagship titles, comparisons are inevitable. Fables is neither as big as Sandman, nor as ambitious, nor as groundbreaking. To anyone who has yet to read Sandman, I heartily recommend they do so at once.

Which isn't to say Fables isn't a blast. The plots, whether murder mysteries, political intrigue, or epic mystical war, are in of themselves pretty ordinary, but continuously redeemed by Willingham's aforementioned ability to just do really innovative stuff with the characters he plays with. And not in an artifical way either. The Big Bad wolf as noir style detective sounds good on paper, but could easily be botched by a writer with less talent. Instead, he feels deeply human, almost reminescent of Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes character.

Ex Machina

What I like most about Ex Machina is that it has the guts to have an opinion (even if that opinion does tend towards South Park republican-style "neither position is right, the answer is in the middle" on a large number of issues). Too many political shows try to somehow write about politicians without actually adopting a political stance, which isn't just futile, its disingenuous. Ex Machina takes real issues and has the character have a clear opinion on them, without equivocating. It also handles the impact of the superhero stuff on politics really well (loved the joke about "people blame me for bush being reelected, but that would have happened anyway"). The tackling of 9/11 was incredibly brave.

The pure superhero stuff didn't work quite as well, and at times felt almost out of place. Its like, in the middle of the fascinating west-wing with a twist type stuff, there's a fairly generic murder mystery and unlike the political stuff its not fresh or new.

I used to have a buddy who criticized photo tracing as looking like Tom Goes to the Mayor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Goes_To_The_Mayor) and to an extent I agree. Its an easy shortcut to realistically rendered people, but there's always something slightly stilted about the people being drawn, like they're posing even in scenes where they're just talking.

Ex Machina doesn't completely manage to avoid this, but it mitigates the problem by consistently using movie-type shots and angles-- extreme closeups or shots from much lower or higher than you would otherwise expect keep it visually engaging. More importantly though, the lighting is excellent. Lighting is something that rarely gets talked about in comics outside of Batman and noir comics, but Ex Machina does a great job of matching tone to time period and event in a way that highlights the exact emotion of the situation. Sepia green for a childhood flashback, TV-blue for a presidential announcement, horror movie purples and blacks underscoring the murder scenes.

The dialogue is excellent, and the characters, especially Mitchell, all feel unique and fleshed out without resorting to stock. Mitchell can seem a little too idealized at times, but the superhero angle is a plausible way for him to have become mayor without hopelessly compromising himself.


All in all I like Ex Machina, but not quite as much as I might have had he chosen to just eschew the murder/conspiracy/where are his powers from angle and instead focused more on the politics.

Alex Ross' work is hit or miss for me. He's obviously an extremely skilled painter, which in certain comics can be a problem- much of what goes on with superheroes suffers rather than benefits from a high degree of visual realism. I know he favors classic icons like Superman, but for every panel where he evokes heroism, truth, justice and the american way all rendered in glorious oil, there's one where he essentially just highlights the absurdity of a grown man in spandex.

I think he's at his best when he's pushed to experiment, allowed to get inventive rather than simply hearken back to the silver age. Given a work with genuine emotional depth and realism and imagistic challenges worthy of his abilities, Ross can do incredible things.

Uncle Sam is an incredible thing. A strange blend of MTV's the Maxx ("crazy" homeless protagonist interacting with ostensibly fictional figures) and A People's History of the United States, it could very easily have been pedantic, trite, or pointlessly bizarre. Indians, slavery, racism, yadda yadda yadda. What sets Uncle Sam apart are its script, which has great fun with. The blend of Watchmen style visual experimentation and extreme realism of detail and style was probably the only way that this story could have been told, given that it is simultaneously about madness and fantasy and gazing unflinchingly into reality.

Kristen Bell is on Heroes, which for anyone who knows her, is really really good news. She played Veronica Mars, the titular character of the most underappreciated show of the last decade.

I had a lot of trouble finding a copy of City of Glass, and ended up just reading it in a reading room at the library, which was a shame because after reading it I wanted to take it home and absorb it and really get to think about it. I liked it very much. I've read about Paul Auster (though not actually read him), and I would be very interested to see his representation of this story, because after reading it as a comic I can't imagine it any other way.

Dave Mazzuchelli's art was familiar to me from Batman Year One, and I was pleased to see him again employing the noirish clarity he used in that book- his work isn't just dark and gritty, its stark, focused, unmistakable. In Batman it lent a dose of reality to the work, and here it grounds it, so that even as the story spirals out of sanity the visual touchstones make sure we never lose it. There were so many points where he employed visual suggestions that would have been impossible, not only in any other medium, but in any other style. For example, when he speaks of the city as the labrynth, the lines faze effortlessly from city to maze in a way that is only possible because the city was being portrayed in clear, cartoonish simplicity in the first place.

The story itself recalled some of the Manhattan in the 70's wierdness of Donald Barthelme. The "characters meet the author" trope is a common one- Grant Morrison, Stranger than Fiction and Cerebus have all made use of it. But by adapting the story the dynamic is shifted slightly, characters are no longer meeting their creator, but their inspiration, the creator once removed.

Stillman's monologue was incredible, visual trickery that was absolutely essential to the text. I couldn't imagine it any other way.

I loved loved loved Persepolis. Wow. I had steered clear of it despite widespread praise due to my own preconceived notions of what it would be out (growing up female in Iran= story of overwhelming oppresion, veils, etc. etc.) Instead of a downtrodden look at a people with no rights, I got a refreshing look at one family's unwillingness to relinquish their right to dignity, free thought or fun. That was what I liked best abut it. In spite of everything, for the most part it was upbeat, happy. The characters weren't just noble, they were down to earth and literate and relatable. It was a view of life in Iran that you rarely see these days. The protagonist is great- her glamorization of torture and martyrdom giving way to an overwhelming sense of anger and melancholy rang very true, as did her chosen methods of rebellion (clothes and music). It was very funny at many points to, as in her myriad exaggerated stories.

The art was incredible It reminded me of epileptic, another brilliant comic out of France, with initially simplistic and cartoony art becoming increasingly stylized and fantastical. This is the second autobiographical story of oppresion told in extremely cartoony images. Like Maus, the visuals lend a fairytale like atmosphere to an otherwise painfully realistic story. The scene of the cars driving in huge stylized candlelike flames was haunting, as was the last panel.

Still working on my comic-lots of interesting developing ideas I'll show you tomorrow.

I already posted some about Bone and Making Comics- I didn't have much time this week to go over Bone again, but I did go back and look at Making Comics some more. I really like the section on word/picture combinations- McCloud is brilliant at coming up with examples of how they can be used differently (as in the "intersecting" panel where the dialogue reads "My God, Walter, you have changed" and the picture is of 2 women talking). In fact, I think the execution of the book was almost more enjoyable than the theory, there were so many little jokes embedded in it (like when Dumbledore asks Gandalf for his autograph in the character section) and it really goes to show that critics and theorists who neglect to make their works enjoyable and readable in favor of dry pontificating are missing out.

Elsewhere in comics and related stuff:

All-star Batman and Robin has officially gotten old. Frank Miller's satirical take on the ultra hardass Batman he created was funny and fresh at first, but a year and a half and 7 issues later its still the same stupid joke. We get it. Batman is a dick. He's sadistic and he talks like a pissed off high school gym teacher with a fetish for the word "goddamn". Miller needs to stop falling back on the excuse that its satire and recognize that even a parody needs to be halfway inventive to be worth anyone's time.

Grant Morrison's Club of Heroes mystery ends quite satisfyingly, complete with red-herrings and actual detective work by Batman. Between this and Paul Dini's Detective, Batman is doing more actual mystery solving than he's done in years.

the Justice League movie is greenlit...with the Babe director at the helm, and Tom Wellin and Jessica Biel in talks to play Superman and Wonderwoman, plus someone besides Bale as Batman. Ugh. A good justice league movie would be a dream come true, but I suspect this will be anything but.

Heroes remains totally sweet.


As for my own comic, I was thinking of a Harry Potter style parody, only instead of a school for wizards, its a school for supervillains, with a young protagonist who really wants to be the most powerful dark lord in the world.

Thoughts on Bone

I ended up just going to the library and reading Bone. So I read it, but I don’t have it here with me as I type this. Still, based on my memories here are some things that struck me:

The art style is perhaps most reminiscent of Bill Watterson’s work on Calvin and Hobbes. That’s about as high a compliment as I can pay a cartoony comic like this one. Calvin and Hobbes was remarkable and notable among newspaper strips for varying wildly in style as the story demanded it, so that a film noir parody was inked like 100 bullets and a soap opera bit looked like a 50’s archie comic. Bone isn’t quite as varied, but Jeff Smith still does a tremendous job of injecting bits of complexity and charming visual references into the work. Grandma, for instance, is done in the style of popeye, and there are many scene where fantasy settings are rendered in glorious high detail- all without compromising the cartoony nature of the characters.

Fone himself is an interesting exercise in the universalizing nature of the smiley face that McCloud touches on in his books. The more simplified a figure, the easier it is for anyone to project themselves onto him. So while secondary characters like Smiley and Phoney have distinguishing traits to catch the eye, and Rose and Grandma actually are drawn like people, Fone is as simplified as a character can be. Its an effective tactic for making an instantly identifiable protagonist, and his broad, easy to grasp personality ensures that we never once doubt who we should be rooting for.

I’m a sucker for stories that appeal to everyone, adults and children, seamlessly and on all levels. That is, some works like Shrek tell one story for the kids, but inject it full of so many knowing references that adults have something to laugh at too. This is an occasionally effective tactic, but IMO not nearly as admirable as stories which are simply so universal and well told that it is impossible not to appreciate them, whatever your age. Examples include the Incredibles, the currently airing Avatar the last Airbender and the early 90’s Batman the Animated Series, and without a doubt, Bone. The humor makes me laugh, not because of wink-wink-nudge-nudge vulgarity, but because its simply genuinely funny, and the adventure excites without gore. Its not even that the story is wildly original (though a few sections, like the coming of winter, are tremendously imaginative),. Bone is living proof that it is still possible to tell a simple, timeless story very well and have it be enjoyable and appealing.

I thought Making Comics was really interesting- McCloud makes tremendous use of working in the medium he is exploring. When trying to explain a phenomenon he can simply show us rather than tell us, and perhaps even more here than elsewhere this is invaluable. He’s also grown quite a bit as an artist since his first book, and it makes the book much more effective than panels meant to look pretty actually do.