Comics212

Hey folks,

I’m really sorry about the outage for the past 20-or-so hours. I have to be honest, I’m really not sure what’s going on. It went down and then it came back up and we only had to send 5 messages to Dreamhost but honestly we still have no idea what happened. No. Idea.

Still, I’m glad things are back up, but because the site was down I didn’t put together a post for today… Yikes! Perhaps I’ll be able to get one together before bed-time.

Thanks for your continued patronage,

- Christopher

Is anyone else worried about the number of books that are coming out right now?

A quick count of our shipping list reveals a little over 30 new graphic novels this week, including a number of excellent high-end releases. New Darwyn Cooke & Tim Sale Superman, the Local hardcover, D&Q’s entire awesome fall lineup (so much good!), Plain Janes 2… And that’s before the manga! The all-in-one edition of Inoue’s VAGABOND shipped this week, as did the second Dragonball in that format AND 2 Inoue art books from the Vagabond series.

I’m just looking at all the books I wanted to buy from this week and last, and it’s well over 200 bucks, and that’s kinda crazy? A little? Maybe I’m just over-reacting because I’m trying to find space from all of this stuff on the racks and there ain’t space, maybe not. But you guys tell me; does your budget for comics and graphic novels allow you to buy everything you’d like? Do you suppliment purchasing with visits to the library or being a filthy stinking internet thief? Is there a larger the-economy-is-shit worry you have when deciding that the hideously underpriced $30 Local hardcover needs to go home with you today or not?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, because mine are pretty scattered at the moment.

- Christopher

Welcome to the inaugural installment of the Tuesday Review. My new review column will feature a work that will be in stores the next day (Wednesday, new comics day) or a work that has been out for a few weeks and should already be in stores everywhere. Of course, owing to my somewhat esoteric tastes not every store is going to have every book I recommend, but maybe that’ll convince you, my readers, to badger your store into carrying good, challenging, and interesting material that’s just a bit off of the beaten path? It’s worth a shot anyway… With that, here’s a book that arrived in comic book stores everywhere about a month back. Enjoy!

Disappearance Diary
By Hideo Azuma
$22.99, 200 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 978-84-96427-42-6
Diamond: JUN083951H
Published by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon

I think it’s worth noting, first off, that this is a comedy about a man who chooses to be homeless, suffers numerous breakdowns, and then spirals into alcoholism. A comedy. I think it’s important to take all of that into consideration when deciding whether or not this is the book for you.

Me, as soon as I heard about it I couldn’t wait to pick it up!

Disappearance Diary is a rare thing in English language manga–direct insight into the collective mind of the Japanese Manga Industry by an accomplished creator who worked within it for decades. Author Hideo Azuma created numerous manga serials for various magazines over the course of his career, more than a dozen are named in the book itself, and is credited with the creation of the “Lolicon” genre of manga (cute, sexy young girls in sexual situations) that would later give way to the concept of “moe” (moh-ay) or superlative cuteness. Basically, this guy has serious manga chops. The thing is, it nearly killed him to acquire them.

The table of contents for Disappearance Diary breaks the graphic novel down into four components: “Walking At Night,” covering Azuma’s first escape into homelessness, “Walking Around Town,” in which Azuma again escapes the glamourous world of manga creation to work anonymously for the gas company, “Alcoholic Ward,” which details Azuma’s battle with alcoholism, and “End of Book Discussion Hideo Azuma & Tori Miki,” which is an interview between Azuma and manga-ka Tori Miki, a contemporary of Azuma’s who has had one great book published in English by Fantagraphics: “Anywhere But Here.” But to my mind the two most important sections of the book aren’t listed on that table of contents: one is tacked onto the end of the second section, and the other is literally hidden from sight–and they are quite simply the strongest sections of the manga.

But lets back up a little bit. The quote on the back cover of Disappearance Diary is pulled from the second panel of the book, and it reads “This manga has a positive outlook on life, and so it has been made with as much realism removed as possible.” It’s a little unsettling to pick up an ostensibly non-fiction, autobiographical book and see that on the back cover, and as the first sentence. I was a little surprised myself, and I imagine that it might put off those without a sense of humour about this sort of thing (anyone who tried to return a copy of James Frey’s Million Little Pieces, for example). But when the author’s first suicide attempt arrives 2 pages later and it’s hilarious rather than tragic, you begin to understand–and be grateful for–his light-hearted approach to personal tragedy. It’s impossible to tell how much of the thought and action attributed by Azuma to his adorable cartoon stand-in is strictly true, strictly accurate, but almost regardless it’s certainly convincing. By the second or third short story I was rooting for Azuma–to find some food in the wilderness, to figure out how to keep the rain off of him, and avoid being discovered by the authorities. It’s a hell of a thing to root for a guy that has abandoned his life, his wife, and his infant son, but such trivial and earthly concerns nearly-evaporate when Azuma figures out how to build a fire… It’s all a bit like if Tom Hanks’ character crashed the plane himself in ‘Castaway,’ but you’re still excited when he cooks the crab! The Azuma stand-in is incredibly self-effacing, humble, and especially adorable. He is designed to be loved, a personification of the lolicon/moe/kawaii ethos that Azuma the author contributed to developing within the manga industry. Azuma needs your good will and your empathy though, because that’s what makes his spiral into truly self-destructive behaviour so affecting, and enraging. By the time he gets around to explaining just why exactly his life was so tough, you can’t help but feel for the poor cartoon guy, and that wouldn’t have happened (I feel) with a more realistic depiction of Azuma, or his actions.

So at the end of the second section, “Walking Around Town,” it looks like Azuma simply ran out of stories to tell about his second foray into homelessness and obscurity, and so to fill out his serialization he decides to tack on three short pieces that chronicle his entire career in manga up until he checks into rehab, the last major event in his life before he begins creating this book. This might be the most important, and difficult to read, section in the manga, as it describes in painful (though surprisingly light-hearted) detail just how intense the creation of our favourite manga can be. It’s one thing to be told “Working in the manga industry is tough!” It’s another altogether to work alongside our beloved and cherubic narrator and see him slide cheerfully into oblivion. Rereading Disappearance Diary for this review, I couldn’t help but compare Azuma’s horror stories of working in the manga industry to the recently unearthed documents surrounding Siegel & Shuster’s dealings with National Periodicals during the early days of Superman. Is there something endemic of comics that creates creators that drive themselves to ruin and editors there to backseat drive the whole way? Azuma puts forward a solid argument for.

Another key piece of these stories, presented as almost an afterthought in the book, is that we’re introduced to them via a conversation between Azuma and the editor of the book we’re reading, probably in serialization. Azuma never lets you forget that you’re reading a manga about his problems with manga, making you complicit in the acts that cause his downward spiral. Of course he never accuses the reader directly, and takes great pains to filter these experiences through a very deliberate prism separating the heartbreak out and leaving only sunshine and humour behind. He lays out all of the clues for you and lets you make your own mind. Actually, he does that in his portreyal of his editors at the time as well. By all accounts, these men drove him not only to drink but to the drink of death, but he treats all of them with the lightest possible touch. They come off as heartless, uncaring, maybe even a little evil at points, but Azuma simply presents things as they were (to his recollection) and again, lets the readers fill in the gaps. Why? Well, I think it’s telling that his harshest criticisms of his editors are, effectively, “They stopped giving me work!” Despite all of the hardships and heartache, you get the feeling that he wasn’t entirely ready to burn his bridges with these folks, just in case he might get an assignment or two out of them again…!

The third section of the book chronicles Azuma’s fall into alcoholism, and his slow recovery in a rehab clinic, and that’s by turns funny and horrifying and as enjoyable as the rest of the book. Seriously, by this point in the book I was completely in love with it, all of its promises fulfilled. Well… almost all of them. The book ends with Azuma clearly on the road to recovery, managing his alcoholism but… still clearly in rehab. I mean, we’ve already seen him post rehab at the end of the second section of the book, we see that he comes out of it, but the book is left on a cliffhanger, with Azuma promising to tell the rest of his story “next time…”. That leaves us with the end-of-book interview to fill in the gap, to offer clarity and context to the graphic novel. But of course, that wouldn’t be in keeping with a positive outlook on life, with as much realism removed as possible, now would it? Which isn’t to say that the interview with Tori Miki is devoid of content or closure… It’s just not what we want after spending many years and 200 pages with Azuma. We want the last word on him, or a breathrough, or something, and in the end what we get is his life, as honestly as he could bare to tell it (and full of as many jokes as he could cram in). And he answers one of my early questions too–Azuma says that not everything that happened made it into the book, but everything that’s in the book actually happened.

The real clarity comes in an interview that is hidden from the reader… I’ll let you discover it for yourself but I will reveal that this hidden interview is where Azuma offers the first real bit of insight into his actions, what it means to leave your life behind. It isn’t pretty, but it lasts for only a moment or two before disolving into a conversation about which popular Japanese idols are prettiest. Azuma is certainly committed to his manga ideology, I’ll give him that.

I guess I’ll finish off by saying that, in today’s graphic novel market memoir and autobiography are the genres that have found the most traction amongst real mainstream readers… at least the ones not buying movie tie-ins. In a just world, this one would find a great deal of success… But I have a feeling that Disappearance Diary has traded in too much of what mainstream audiences want from their memoir for a gentle, knowing humour and a refusal to find a conclusion in an ongoing life. Disappearance Diary is a book that can find the comedy in tradgedy, and as we’ve already established that’s the book for me!

A copy of this book was provided for review by the publisher. But let’s be honest, I woulda bought in anyway…!
- Christopher

A few weeks ago I took a little vacation from my day job selling comics for The Beguiling, to head out to Seattle and sell some comics for my friends at Udon. They exhibited at the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, in Seattle, WA, a video-game convention hosted by the popular webcomic Penny Arcade. They’re really strict about who does or doesn’t get to exhibit at their show (though anyone can attend), and it’s the incredible devotion of the Udon guys to the Street Fighter videogames that got them through the door. I had a fun time, ate some great food, hung out with cool folks, and played a lot of Bomberman on my DS… I really gotta buy that at some point.

Anyway, the above notice was posted by the entrance ways to the exhibit hall, and a version of it appeared in the convention booklet that every attendee was given. Notice #5 there? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that getting a bunch of folks all in one place and getting them amped up, and maybe even a little turned on? There need to be some ground-rules laid out. The PAX guys throw an outstanding convention, really top-notch, and figuring out little things like this help a lot. Better still, security guards were both centralized and roaming, they received solid training, and there was never someone more than a yelp away. It was a safe, attentive, and solidly planned event. An event that ballooned from under 3,000 people 5 years ago to more than 50k this time out, with only the most minute of growing pains.

Why is this so hard for comics? Why all the hand-wringing and endless debate about nothing? It’s just like the bullshit about drinking or not drinking at the Hyatt during San Diego… endless chat and recrimination and “fun” suggestions and “concerned” suggestions and nerds marching to “a different drummer” but in the end? Just do the right thing. It’s not even hard. You’d think it was, but it’s not.

John DiBello is by all accounts a nice guy. I’ve never met him but people I like vouch for him, so that’s really all it takes–he’s a nice guy. He witnessed some pretty severe-sounding sexual harrassment at Comicon this year, tried to do something about it, and then realized that the biggest comics event in North America doesn’t have a policy on sexual harassment at their show… So he made some noise about it. Seems pretty open and shut, right? But… Angry nerds are still cluttering up comments sections with this stuff though, arguing against it, against him. But yeah, you can go to PAX and they (proudly, even) post right at the front door “Don’t be a dick guys, we’re all here to have fun.” and it’s not controversial, it’s not a problem that needs to be solved with zany solutions or protesting against organizations by giving them our money (I mean come on…). Some people just get it, and do the right thing. So, do it.

It’s funny, the first time I went to the Ad-Astra science fiction convention in Toronto, a small, fan-run and fan-oriented event north of the city, I kinda chuckled when I got to the part in their convention program about proper behaviour for attendees, and that included unwanted sexual advances… I mean, what kind of nerd needs to be told not to touch someones tits or that not everyone wants to hug you? But as soon as a friend I was hanging out at the show with expressed that same disbelief out loud, it clicked for me–this is a sexualized environment. Some people are going to be wearing little clothing, some people are being paid to be friendly (up to a point), some people are going to be demonstrative about their… affections. And that might give someone the wrong impression–that impression being “Holy shit she just made out with that guy I’ma gonna make out with her too!” There’s nothing wrong with setting ground rules.

It’s not like I don’t understand why certain comics folks get a little defensive about stuff like this… The idea is that having a sexual harassment policy means that you need a sexual harassment policy because comics people can’t be trusted to behave themselves. But guys (And It Is All Guys), that’s not the case. Every modern company of more than 4 or 5 people has a sexual harrassment policy, I’m pretty sure you need to have one by law in most places. Every con should have one just like every con should have rules regarding people taking pictures in the aisles, people with carts full of long boxes of books to be signed, and even when the doors open to let people in. That just ensures that a show happens that’s well organized, where everyone is on the same page, and if someone does behave badly there’s a clear statement saying “you shouldn’t have done that” and a very clear set of reprecussions for that person (“gtfo”).

So let’s take a cue from our kissing cousins over at PAX; there’s nothing wrong with telling people how to behave at your event, period. It not that hard to do the right thing.

- Christopher
P.S.: This is nice to read.

Having a great time, wish you were here.

- Chris

“The bluest skies I’ve ever seen weren’t in Seattle. The greenest hills I’ve ever seen weren’t in Seattle. When I arrived in that coastal town, there was only shades of gray.” - Bruce McCollough

So I’m in Seattle at the Penny Arcade Expo. No fanfare, no sound and fury, I just showed up like a Ninja. So far, not including my boothmates from Oni and UDON, I have seen exactly 5 comic book people at this event: John Green, COrey Lewis, Ryan Yount, Marion Vitus, and Ed Brubaker. This is not a comic book show or really of any interest to comics people… although the guy walking around dressed as The Tick might lead you to believe otherwise.

Why am I here? Is this really a vacation? WTF? I wrote this on the plane on the way in Thursday morning, trying to sum up my own feelings on the event:

I am currently on my way to PAX and I have no idea why I’m going. Well, I know why. My friend Jim asked me if I could help him out at the UDON booth, and I said yes. Thinking about it now, part of me wanted to do this for the work aspects… to see how the Penny Arcade guys run their event. I run an event too–the Toronto Comic Arts Festival–and while TCAF & PAX started at around the same time, last year PAX’s attendence was roughly 37,000 people, and TCAF managed about 6500 over the course of a half-dozen festival events… I want to see how the show has managed to grow, and why, but also how they manage that many attendees all at once! Maybe it’s just hubris, but I can totally see a time when TCAF could be this big, or bigger, and attending PAX in the first few years to see how the show works makes a lot of sense to me. To see ways we can improve, add features and value for attendees. Ideas to steal.

The other reason I wanted to go, and this is the crazy one, is that I just love conventions. Love’em. I love theshow floor, the panels, the events… I love sleeping on hotel beds, using hotel pools, getting to see at least a small part of a new city. I like meeting people, and getting a chance to interact with the people I’ve already met. I almost always have a great time at cons–San Diego this year was fantastic–and I’m kind of expecting that this will be no different. Actually, scratch that, it will be different because I’ve got no horse in this race. PAX is a video game con, with video game industry people and video game fans and video game obligations and… I’m a comics guy. Even me, your humble blogger, I try to be… well I have to be… “on” at comics shows. Or book events for that matter. But this? This is a vacation to a place where you speak the language but the culture is totally different. Where you can observe (and even interact!) without affecting the proceedings. I will be in the mist, chilling with the gorillas and we’ve all got Nintendo DS’s. I can sell comics in my sleep, I’ve been to over 50 conventions in my lifetime, the “work” part of this will be easy. That just leaves fun and frolic and a drink or two. Maybe.

I can’t think of a better reason to go away for the weekend.

- Chris

Now it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m out in the lobby using their free wireless and taking pictures of people walking by. It’s been a pretty fun weekend, we sold the UDON booth out of almost every book they had (the manga didn’t move quite as well as everything else, but it still did solid). I’ve actually gotten 3 really good nights’ sleep, and I feel like I learned an awful lot from these guys. I even got to have a quick conversation with some people from Reed Exhibitions, the folks that will be helping the PAX show expand to the east coast (and the folks who put on the New York Comic Con). That’ll be interesting.

I’ll probably have a more thorough wrap-up of the event later, but for now, I’m having a great time, and I’m going to go finish up the day.

L8rs…

- Chris

I’m not dead, I’m just on vacation. Well, a 4 week series of vacations actually. It’s been pretty good. I hand-wrote a blog entry today though, so I’ll probably type that up and post it tonight or early tomorrow…
Hope you’re all having a lovely summer.

- Chris
P.S.: This photo was taken last weekend actually, I’m less beardy at the moment.

Hey, I actually got a chance to check out some of Kramers Ergot 7 while I was in San Diego. It was already on my buy list, honestly, because I’ve got all the other ones and the creative line-up sounds amazing. But the stuff that I’ve read and glanced at is really is top-notch… It’s probably going to make things worse, not better, if this thing is really good right? Like, people will be more upset that they can’t afford it? I can’t tell if it being good will make people more or less angry about the price. Maybe if it’s bad they’ll be happier, because that’ll justify their insane hating? Or passive-aggressive non-opinions?
Actually, haha, actually the whole argument reminds me of an Achewood comic where roast beef gets a new shirt. He gets this shirt from a girl who likes him and he tries it on and feels pretty good. Then:

Except it’s not just in his head, those are real people doing that. For tonight’s performance, the roles of the angry cartoon animals that exist inside the depressed cat’s imagination will be played by people in the comics industry. It’s kind of amazing and awful at the same time? Like, people gathered down to shout-down a project that they personally feel is too ostentatious? Can you imagine if this happened in other media? Like people protesting The Batman movie because Christopher Nolan didn’t remake the Adam West one? Haha… So sad/awful/amazing.

Keep hope alive, guys.

- Chris