[[[Government Issue: Comics For The People, 1940s-2000s]]]
By Richard L. Graham
Abrams Comic Arts, 304 pages, $29.95

The rich history of comics is also one of the public’s perception of it being mainly for children. What is only recently being uncovered are the many ways comics have been used beyond cheap entertainment for the masses. As early as 1940, Will Eisner saw their potential and he was among the first to use the graphic form for educational purposes with what became P*S, the preventative maintenance magazine produced by the Army. During World War II, Stan Lee wrote comics to explain how forms need to be filled out and DC Comics did special editions of Superman to help teach America’s soldiers to improve their reading.

Now, we’re learning that the Federal Government has long been a proponent of using comics as educational and propaganda tool, dating back to the field’s infancy. Thankfully, Richard Graham has done the spadework that has uncovered the full flavor of material offered using your tax dollars. Government Issue is actually an important addition to our comics history, demonstrating the reach of the format and the value placed on its ability to communicate with the masses

Graham organizes his book by different subject matter – “military,” “employment and economics,” “Civil Defense, Safety and Health,” and “Landscapes and Lifestyles” – so you can get a better sense of how far-ranging this had become. And like most government operations, there was no central plan or design; no comics czar to ensure federally-produced comics met certain criteria for quality of accuracy. As a result, we see a variety of writing and artistic styles brought to bear in conveying the information to its intended audience. One of the worst results of this lack of control has to be the ham-fisted writing and terrible artwork accepted by the military for a piece on how homosexuals should consider admitting their persuasion to superior officers during the period of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

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In my lifetime, Halloween has come out of the closet. When I was a kid, it was just for kids. Now, there are special pop-up shops for costumes for grown-ups. You can buy as many different kinds of home decorations for Halloween as you can for Christmas.

In my neighborhood, Manhattan’s West Village, it’s practically a national holiday.

As someone who lives where I do, and as someone who went to a boarding school where we were required to wear uniforms every day, I understand the appeal of drag. It’s fun to dress as someone you aren’t. It’s fun to dress as someone you are, if only occasionally. It’s fun to dress in a way that confuses people about your role in life, your hopes and fears, your deepest secrets.

Halloween gives everyone in our Puritan culture permission to act out our wildest fantasies – for one day.

I always wanted to go as a superhero.

Back in my day, there weren’t a lot of superhero costumes for girls. There weren’t even that many for boys. My mom graciously made me a Supergirl costume in third grade, but, when I was older, she was less interested in enabling me. I was Peter Pan once, which felt almost like a superhero. And, since then, I’ve been a ninja at least once. It’s an easy costume when you can stroll over to Chinatown for materials.

There are those who like to be frightening on Halloween. And, while I get that (and zombie is an easy costume, if you have access to stage make-up), it isn’t what appeals to me about Halloween. I suspect it’s a generational thing. In my day, girls were supposed to be sweet and supportive, damsels to be rescued, a way to motivate the male hero to act. For Halloween, anyway, I could be the major character in my story.

No wonder my mom had to make my costume.

Nerd culture is peaking these days, so there are lots more super-hero costumes. Unfortunately, these costumes, inspired by the comics, don’t do much for a little girl’s power fantasies. They continue to sexualize – even fetishize – the bodies of the female characters. It’s cruel to see a little girl in a Wonder Woman or Supergirl costume, cut up to the top of her thigh and exposing her not-yet-developed cleavage. The boys’ costumes often include built-in abs and pecs, which contribute to their fantasies of being superhumanly strong. I have yet to see a costume for a little girl with built-in cleavage. I guess I should be thankful for that.

When my mom made my costume, she made it out of corduroy – this being at a time when spandex was not readily available. It was warm, especially with my cape. She made it big enough for me to wear extra layers underneath. You can’t do that with a commercially made superheroine costume. If you go trick-or-treating, you need to wear a coat, and then no one can see who you are. In fact, if you live in a rent-controlled apartment and have crummy heat, you need to wear a coat inside.

It’s insidious, and I doubt it’s really a conspiracy. Rather, I think these ideas are so ingrained in our culture that we don’t notice. The message to little girls is that they can have fantasies, but these fantasies must still be arousing to men. Girls can be princesses and fairies and Amazons and sometimes even witches, but they have to be pretty and they have a to show some skin.

At least they aren’t making Starfire costumes. Yet.

Martha Thomases enjoys Halloween less now that no one gives her candy anymore.

Walt Disney has released the first images for their forthcoming Japanese import The Secret World of Arrietty.

Residing quietly beneath the floorboards are little people who live undetected in a secret world to be discovered, where the smallest may stand tallest of all.  From the legendary Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Ponyo) comes The Secret World of Arrietty, an animated adventure based on Mary Norton’s acclaimed children’s book series The Borrowers.

Arrietty (voice of Bridgit Mendler), a tiny, but tenacious 14-year-old, lives with her parents (voices of Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) in the recesses of a suburban garden home, unbeknownst to the homeowner and her housekeeper (voice of Carol Burnett). Like all little people, Arrietty (AIR-ee-ett-ee) remains hidden from view, except during occasional covert ventures beyond the floorboards to “borrow” scrap supplies like sugar cubes from her human hosts. But when 12-year-old Shawn (voice of David Henrie), a human boy who comes to stay in the home, discovers his mysterious housemate one evening, a secret friendship blossoms. If discovered, their relationship could drive Arrietty’s family from the home and straight into danger. The English language version of The Secret World of Arrietty was executive produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, and directed by Gary Rydstrom. The film hits theaters Feb. 17, 2012. (more…)

I have not read as many books as I wanted to this year, nor have I written about as many of the ones I did manage to read. (I didn’t manage to save as much from the flood as I would have liked, either; it’s a low-batting-average kind of year.) But the year is not over, and I can catch up on one of those fronts very quickly, viz:

I’ve devoted several thousand words over the past few years to the “Best American Comics” series — see my posts on the 2006 and 2007 and 2008 and 2009 editions — so perhaps I’ll be forgiven for not diving as deeply into the Neil Gaiman-edited 2010 edition. (Particularly since the 2011 book is out now, all shiny and new, so this is terribly old news.) Each editor shifts the material somewhat — Gaiman’s volume leads off with a long excerpt from the Jonathan Lethem/Farel Dalrymple/Gary Panter Omega the Unknown, the first Big Two story in the series, which feels significant — but the core of each book is very similar, drawing from the same group of major mid-career “alternative” cartoonists, from Gilbert Hernandez (here represented by a story done with his vastly less-prolific brother Mario) to Ben Katchor to Chris Ware to Peter Bagge to Bryan Lee O’Malley to C. Tyler to Robert Crumb. As usual, the series editors, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, picked a hundred notable works from their year — September 1, 2008 through August 31, 2009 — and sent those to Gaiman, who chose from them (and, possibly, from a few things he discovered on his own) to make this collection. Gaiman’s introduction makes it clear that this isn’t the “best” comics of the year — nor even the best “American” comics of the year, whatever that may mean — but it is a big collection of a lot of very good comics (and a few clunkers, though precisely which ones are clunkers may be a matter of personal taste) at a reasonable price. The whole series is a great way to discover what’s going on over on the more interesting, less punchy side of the modern comics world, so I recommend this book, as I do its predecessors, for people who like stories told in comics form, though probably not for the kind of people who like the things that draw in the crowds of maladapted boy-men every Wednesday. (more…)

“You can’t go back home” Thomas Wolfe wrote in a novel and I cry, amen. When I return to visit relatives in Missouri, I find the city I left almost 50 years ago strange and, in places, unrecognizable – alien, even. And last week I visited DC Comics, my employer and sustainer for decades, and found it much changed, beginning with the entrance to the building and the security forces guarding the lobby. I was told that if I wanted to see the floor that once housed Mad Magazine, I’d better hurry because it was being gutted, and the corridors leading to where I had to be were cluttered with cardboard boxes.

Maybe the whole experience was just a little forlorn?

But after a long and pleasant conversation with Dan DiDio, who honchos the company’s editorial department, I thought that perhaps the company is, in a modest, limited, yet quite good way going home again and we funny book aficionados will benefit.

The home that’s DC’s destination? Why, old comics. I mean, really old. Really old. Your grandpa’s comics, published before Marvel made continued stories the norm in the 60s. Stories of six, eight ten, maybe 12 pages, complete in one issue. (And a bunch of them in the – sigh – 52 page total package. Which cost a dime.)

An eight page story? A story even shorter than eight pages? Bizarre, you say?

No, not bizarre, Maybe even beneficial. Indulge me while I quote something I wrote a while back: Every story has to end with a lesson learned, an evil thwarted, a problem solved, a defeat, a triumph – some kind of resolution. The events of the story show how that resolution occurs. And if the writer doesn’t know how his story will end he can’t create a logical progression of scenes leading to that ending…writing an eight-pager forces the writer to know his ending before he submits the manuscript. (Except in rare cases, the beginning and end are in the same sheaf of pages, or email.)

So, knowing what his destination is, the writer can move toward it confidently instead of – brace for metaphors! – stumbling around the narrative thickets hoping to find a path. And limited length forces the writer to write only those scenes that move the plot along and this, in turn, tends to keep the story interesting: no pointless digressions to create ennui and yawns.

So: DC Comics is going to give us a glut of short fiction? No, of course not. But Dan told me that most story arcs would be limited to six issues – not exactly haiku territory, but not a completely open-ended narrative that will meander into the murk until somebody figures out how it might end, either. And writers must tell someone – probably an editor – something about the tale that’s to be told. Again, no making it up as you go along, with no clear plan on how the pieces will fit together.

Usually, I question looking to the past for answers. But every so often, answers might be found there. Don’t try to go home again, not permanently. But a now-and-then visit? To capture a bounty?

Recommended Reading: Pretty obvious, isn’t it? I should be recommending You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. But in the interest of keeping myself honest, or at least honestish, I try to read before I recommend, and if I’ve ever read Wolfe’s novel, it was long, long ago and I have no memory of it. So instead of recommending a book, let me recommend the author’s hometown. Last year, Mari and I toured Wolfe’s boyhood home in Asheville, S.C. while visiting Mars Hill College and found the house interesting, the school welcoming, and the city delightful.