Joe Casey and Matt Fraction talk about the European comics market in the latest Basement Tapes. It turns out Casey is big in Germany. I don’t know how they can discuss this topic at length and not make a single David Hasselhoff joke.

See how easy that was?

I’ll also take undeserved credit for the plug Casey gives Dan Slott’s She-Hulk.

As usual, the column is a mix of interesting observations, probing questions, and shameless self-promotion, sometimes all at once:

Casey: “So, what does this say about us? What is it about our culture that, in some sense, “anti-promotes” this medium and its presentation to the point where a German hardcover of a piece of my work — that isn’t even available in America anymore — is just the Way Things Are?”

It’s not really similar, but I can’t help thinking about something that happened during a trip to Germany I was fortunate enough to take. My partner had designed a set for a production that was part of an exchange program with one of the regional theatres there, and I tagged along with the company and crew and got to bum around while they all worked.

As part of the itinerary, we went to one of the host theatre’s studio productions, which was neither the best nor worst play I’ve ever seen. At the end, the audience (who hadn’t reacted strongly either way during the performance) gave the cast a standing ovation that I found to be out of all proportion to the quality of the piece. Apparently, that’s just seen as common courtesy when you attend a play — stand and clap until your hands are numb.

Obviously, this was something of a revelation for the American actors. (They’re students, and their audiences generally consist of other students who have to attend to pass their 101 survey courses. These audiences generally are headed towards the doors with their cellular phones out before the lights even dim. Yes, that’s rude, and, yes, the program has set itself up for this by stacking the house with prisoners of liberal studies requirements. Moving on.)

So, during the ovation that would not end, we were standing and clapping behind two student actresses, who were soaking in the experience. One turned to the other, and, with the perfect mix of greed and indignation, hissed “Audiences should do this in our country!”

We all knew it was inevitable, didn’t we? Mike Sterling, amiable master of ceremonies at Progressive Ruin, is sponsoring a Swamp Thing contest. Mike knows no peer in Swamp Thing fandom, and he’s celebrating by giving away a copy of Swamp Thing: Bad Seed, which collects the first six issues of the current Vertigo ongoing. And even if you aren’t a Swamp Thing fan, Bad Seed is written by Andy Diggle, so how can you go wrong? (Okay, now I’m having visions of Swamp Thing vs. Rhoda Penmark, and I can’t say I hate it.) (Deadline: 12/31. I had this wrong yesterday, because I’m an idiot. Sorry, Mike!)

On the contest reminder front, you still have time to jump on the Owly Love Train by sending Johanna Draper Carlson a cute picture of an owl. More details are available at Johanna’s splendid blog, Cognitive Dissonance. I just bought the first volume of Owly, and it’s an absolute treat. This is the kind of all-ages book that should become a classic. (Deadline: 12/24.)

And you still have a chance to squeeze some extra bucks out of Dave Carter at Yet Another Comics Blog. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, offering to match 10 first-time $25-donations to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. (Deadline: 12/24.)

Nothing puts me in the holiday spirit like ambulatory plant matter, adorable owls, and protecting the First Amendment.

Can I claim to be boycotting something when I never had any intention of buying it in the first place? That’s the quandary I’m facing with Ultimate Iron Man, to be written by sci-fi author Orson Scott Card.

Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has some informative links on Card’s conservative views. There was also some lively discussion on the subject on Usenet. Card certainly does sound like someone whose work I’d avoid on principle, but I’m not a science fiction fan, and I have to admit that the chances I’d actually pick up Ultimate Iron Man under any circumstances are next to nonexistent. (With all due respect to Iron ‘Fro, I’m just not a fan.)

Comics always seem to rob me of the opportunity for activist purchasing patterns. Sure, there are creators whose public personas I find repugnant, but I usually find that out after I started avoiding their work for purely aesthetic reasons. How am I supposed to vote with my dollars under these circumstances? It would be like giving up cooked cauliflower for Lent.

For more on Card, stop by I Am NOT The Beastmaster and Crocodile Caucus.

Don’t hold back. Tell us what you really thought.

“…an event book like Identity Crisis points to an identity crisis at work at DC itself—one that it would do well to resolve before it alienates everyone by promising everything and satisfactorily delivering nothing.” Jeff Lester, The Savage Critic.

“On the Savage Critic Scale, it gets a CRAP, as well as the PICK OF THE WEAK for this week. In fact, though we have 2 more ship weeks to go, I think I can safely take the position that IDENTITY CRISIS was the worst comic of the entire year.” Brian Hibbs, The Savage Critic.

“This, combined with recent events in JSA has tainted the DCU for me as a reader. It’s so dark with no sense of wonder or joy. Outside of the silver-age throwback New Frontier, I can’t think of a wholly positive experience I’ve had with the any of the superhero titles.” BeaucoupKevin.

“I’ve read comics series that started promisingly, then devolved into sludge before they were over. I’ve read some that got better as the series progressed, and ended satisfactorily. I’ve read some that were just bad from start to finish. But I can’t recall very many that started so promisingly, kept my interest throughout, then completely crashed and burned like this one.” Johnny Bacardi.

“This is absurd. This is obscene. And the much ballyhooed “darkening of the DC Universe” that will follow this (because Christ knows we need to make mainstream comics less fun these days) is being predicated on an essential lie.” Websnark.com.

“It took me less than ten mintues to pull out each issue and do a quick check to see how well the versions of the incident matched up—or, I wondered, if they even did in their significant particulars (this being a mystery, and that being our key crime scene). They don’t. They differ in key elements—that’s CRAP WRITING for a murder mystery.” George Grattan, rec.arts.comics.dc.universe.

“There are strong character-driven bits to be found here as well that make me want to see past the weaknesses in the plot, but I just don’t get all of the way there.” Don MacPherson, The Fourth Rail.

“A flurry of milksop emotional scenes doesn’t make up for an empty and aimless exercise in sullying the reputations of DC’s premier super friends.” Shawn Hill, Silver Bullet Comics.

Lengthy discussions are underway at Howling Curmudgeons and The V, too.

I finally got my hands on the fourth issue of Street Angel, which seems to have disappointed some fans of the series. It’s a significant change of pace from the first three, certainly, but I think it’s the strongest chapter of the title so far.

It’s a “day in the life” story, following Jesse through the alleys of Wilkesborough as she searches for food. There’s none of the kinetic action of previous installments, and the comedy is gentler and more rueful than usual. At the same time, it’s consistent with the underlying tone of the series, which is quite a trick.

One of the things I most admired about the first three issues of Street Angel was the creators’ ability to ground the comic insanity in the unpleasant reality of Jesse’s circumstances. Mixed in among the ninjas and pirates and assorted mayhem were poignant reminders of the fact that the protagonist was a homeless teen-ager. Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca folded these moments in without melodrama or fanfare, making them more powerful and purposeful.

In Street Angel 4, they bring those moments to the forefront to what I think is stunning effect. I’ve always been partial to change-of-pace issues, and this one is a particularly ambitious example. It’s also very necessary, in my opinion, as it grounds Jesse’s situation. It confirms that the heroine’s homelessness isn’t one of the gags, tracing the more mundane difficulties and dangers she faces when she isn’t putting down bizarre thugs.

Some of the art is nothing short of virtuosic. The early pages consist of full-page and large-panel shots, following Jesse from dumpster to trash can. They emphasize a sense of place and have a kind of back-alley lyricism. At the same time, the visuals never lapse into “suffering porn.” Despite their scale, these sequences don’t overstate anything. The smaller-panel work that follows is equally effective, with some very expressive character work.

And it’s the character work, both visual and verbal, that ultimately sells this comic for me. Jesse is a homeless kid, and her youth is communicated awfully well. She’s surprisingly compassionate and has a well-defined social conscience for someone so young. At the same time, she has anxieties and insecurities that are heightened by the ongoing deprivation she faces. When Jesse worries about looking bad in front of a classmate, it’s teen angst at a whole different level.

Like the three issues that preceded it, Street Angel 4 is a surprising comic. For me, it’s less of a change of pace than it is a welcome focus on a fundamental aspect of the protagonist. As such, it rounds out the world of the comic with sensitivity and considerably artistry. It’s an unexpectedly moving chapter in a sterling title.

Yet Another Comics Blog continues to prove that it’s anything but, as Dave Carter sponsors a new member challenge for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Between Dave’s challenge, the recent blogversation about content, and a fascinating article on the CBLDF in The Comics Journal #264, I’m convinced.

And he’s a librarian! Swoon. Thanks for the kick in the pants, Dave.

1. If you see only one Broadway musical in your life, make it Avenue Q.
2. Seeing someone escape the role of Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to play Christmas Eve in Avenue Q is kind of like seeing someone flee a totalitarian regime and go on to win a Nobel. (I would have loved to see Ann Harada in the role, but Ann Sanders did a fine job.)
3. Jim Hanley’s Universe has an incredible selection of comics and a very helpful staff. Even my comics-hating partner bought something.
4. Jim Hanley’s Universe needs to turn the damned music down already. Seriously. My comics-hating partner shoved his purchase into my hands and ran out onto the street because he couldn’t take it any more. Only my thick veneer of geekdom protected me.
5. My comics-hating partner much preferred Midtown Comics, which looks kind of like a Pottery Barn. I liked it, too. The absence of crappy, loud music goes a long way for me.
6. I need to make a list of odd books I’m looking for when I go urban shopping, because I completely forgot to grab copies of p.s. 238.
7. I did not, however, forget to grab the first volume of Owly, and I’m so glad I did. Johanna is having an Owly contest, and you should run right over and enter.
8. Subways are wonderful, wonderful things, particularly when the alternative is walking 30 blocks to buy cheese.
9. If you’ve ever seen an Eric Bogosian play and thought (or hoped) that people don’t really talk that way, some do. We sat near them at lunch.
10. The recently reopened Museum of Modern Art left me feeling strangely disoriented, which isn’t a bad thing for a museum.

I’m out of here for the next few days, but before I go, here are the comics I would be really excited about if I weren’t leaving before they show up at the shops:

DC has Birds of Prey 77 and Ex Machina 7. Marvel has Madrox 4. Not a staggering number of really good books, but individual quality will just have to make up for numbers.

Speaking of quantity issues, the local shopkeep was grumbling about how lots of people want to try Madrox, but that he can’t get his hands on copies of the earlier issues to accommodate them. But why would Marvel put out a second printing to boost sales of an interesting book with growing buzz when they can slap a variant cover on New Avengers 1?

Note to self: take advantage of urban mini-vacation to bask in wider selection of unusual comics.

Johanna at Cognitive Dissonance pointed out a new blog, Dead Chicks and Mayhem, founded on the principle that “Comic books have a major influence in our society and they should be subject to the same rules that music and movies are being forced to follow. Content should be clearly labeled and a product meant for one audience shouldn’t be reworked for another.”

I’m ambivalent about content warnings, in part because of concerns about censorship. When a publisher adopts these warnings as a practice, does it have a chilling effect on the stories they tell? Do creators compromise their output in a pre-emptive effort to comply, rather than putting out a book that’s going to have a “contains violent/sexual/whatever content” stamped on the front?

Are they useful? In my experience, very rarely, mostly because they’re inconsistently applied. The movie rating system has always struck me as flexible to the point of meaningless. There seems to be a huge grey zone between the different levels of age-appropriateness. (Not that I go into movies trying to figure out what made a movie PG-13 as opposed to R, though I will if the movie is boring enough.) Studios campaign for more general-audience ratings all the time, mostly for financial reasons and not from an artistic standpoint. Fair enough, but it doesn’t do much to cement the integrity of the rating system.

Some television programs like 24 have traditionally identified every potentially objectionable bit of content right up front. At the same time, you can see something truly ghastly on, say, CSI without any preface. The interesting thing about television is that popularity issues leeway. I’ve seen any number of production types suggest that you can get away with a lot more if your ratings are high. A casual scan of who issues warnings over what kind of content leads me to believe this is true. And how arbitrary is that?

And comics don’t have a great history in terms of consistent application of content warnings. Take the dust-up over the issue of Avengers featuring a sticky Yellowjacket, fresh from “spelunking.” The last-minute panic over that content suggests that no one was really mindful of warning labels during the process, which renders them kind of meaningless. But, as Lyle points out in comments at Dead Chicks and Mayhem,

“I disagree with Greg that a property should always be apropriate to a single audience, I think it’s good to have separate versions of a franchise providing that their differences are clear (i.e., that Marvel makes a good faith attempt to package a Marvel Age Spider-man so that an average consumer could tell the difference between that and Ultimate Spider-Man).”

Or as DC does with its Adventures line, and the implicit “mature content” notion behind Vertigo and Marvel’s Max. Even with those, there’s a huge middle ground of mainstream titles that range from good-natured romps to babies shot on camera.

As David Fiore suggests at Motime Like the Present, challenging subject matter helps young readers mature or at least begin to consider the wider world. My reading material was almost entirely unmonitored as a kid, and whether that had good outcomes or bad, it did help me think critically about larger issues. It also led me to seek out answers from other sources when I’d encounter something challenging or “mature” in a comic book. Would content warnings (and more alert parents) have kept me from having those reading experiences? I wonder.

Oh, and one last note to the people who are anonymously posting comments at Dead Chicks and Mayhem: you seriously undermine your credibility on subjects like intellectual freedom and individual responsibility when you don’t put your name on your opinions. Sack up and sign it already, even if you don’t feel like setting up a Blogger profile.

Hee. Comic Book Resources made me laugh today with the simultaneous publication of two pieces.

First, there’s Joe Casey and Matt Fraction’s Basement Tapes column where they wonder why super-hero comics are such bummers lately. From Casey:

“Are any superhero comics fun anymore? And I mean fun in a truly — to use your word — sincere way? In an unqualified way? Or has the worm turned too far, and neither the creators nor the readers are capable of either a) creating it or b) recognizing and supporting it? Is the innocence finally gone?” (1.)

At the same time, they posted an interview with Judd Winnick on the upcoming Countdown:

“We find it to be important and it’s a way to send a shot across the bow to tell
people that this is something of importance, we want you all to get it.” (2.)

At the end of the Tapes column, Casey detects a shift in the force:

“I think I’m more in line with your implication that we are, in fact, about to experience some new pendulum shift… that we’re about to enter some new phase of how we perceive the mainstream comicbook idiom. That the response to whatever antipathy or bad vibes — the wife rapings, the event killings, the New Coke mentalities — that might exist right now will be strong enough to shake the foundations to such a degree that gives us all some newfound hope about what we do.”

This is similar to but a bit less cynical than a theory that Graeme has posited at Fanboy Rampage:

“I’m convinced that Identity Crisis/Countdown/Crisis 2-or-whatever-it’s-called is another Knightfall. By which I don’t mean that everyone will start wearing ugly Joe Quesada-designed costumes, but that it’s a long, drawn out story where everything gets grim-and-gritty purely to make the readers say uncle, and give DC an excuse to make everything lighter/more optimistic/less Marvel-esque again.”

1. Try She-Hulk.

2. “Important” has replaced “edgy” as my least favorite comics marketing buzz word.