Tagged: Elayne Riggs

More of My Favorite Things, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • December 19, 2007

elayne100-5596635The combination of my temporary unemployment and inclement weather has enabled me to catch up on my DC comp box reading, so I can finally pick up where I left off a few weeks back. Mind you, I was looking at October books at the time and since then the November box came in. Still, a couple of the same caveats apply as last time — I haven’t seen the comics from the last few weeks, which gives me a bit of a headache when Robin gets his Suicide Squad advance comps and the issue in question (#4, in stores now) cross-references an important plot point in a Checkmate issue I’ve yet to see. So a lot of these observations will be about the issue prior to the one most comic fans have already seen, but in most cases the artists are the same.

Also, as before, I won’t cover every artist who did a good or serviceable job, just the ones I considered my very favorites of this most recent batch. Any omissions are not to be taken as an assumption that I didn’t like other stuff. And yes, I’m still talking more about how the art affected me viscerally than using technical vocabulary, which makes these more overviews than reviews per se. I miss full-on reviewing, but I just don’t seem to have the time any more.

While I stopped at the letter "F" last time, I wanted to mention a couple books which hadn’t come out at the time. Onward, then:

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Things to come, by Elayne Riggs

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  • December 12, 2007

elayne100-7452000This is the time of year when people usually start to compile "best of" lists and recaps. But as 2007 has been more "the worst of times" for me than "the best of times," I prefer to look forward. After all, as Criswell once "predicted" in a hardly-memorable Ed Wood film, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!"

Crystal ball gazing also helps if you have the retention level of a hyperactive gnat, which I’m afraid is the case for me. I don’t tend to get worked up over details in comic books or TV shows or movies because most entertainment is ephemeral to me; I just don’t feel I need to keep all the minutiae in my head. It carries the added advantage of making rereading the same book a lot more fun to me, a constant surprise as I encounter things again that I didn’t remember from the last time I read them.

In the land of graphic literature, at least in this country, Diamond’s magazine Previews is the only consumer choice in terms of moving from baseless speculation about what may or may not happen in monthly story installments months down the line (that’s more the realm of comics "news" sites, which often busy themselves in breathlessly extolling events yet to happen to the detriment of examining current comics) to actually planning out and ordering one’s reading of choice for the foreseeable future (say, two months down the line). Time was, order forms were the sole purview of retailers. Of course, time was when Previews wasn’t the only game in town. Not that the disappearance of competitors like Capital City and Heroes World constitutes anything like a monopoly for Diamond! At least not according to the antitrust investigation, which didn’t consider comics as separate from other literature. In any case, with all the major companies sewn up with exclusives and treated as Premier customers (some pigs being more equal than other pigs), Previews is the only choice now for readers who wish to support their local retailers, as well as for publishers who want to reach audiences they can’t afford to grow on their own (even in this age of online ordering). Unfortunately, Diamond doesn’t accept every comic published into the hallowed pages of Previews, so now more than ever it pays to see what’s out there in the virtual world, but online content distribution is another column entirely.

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Burning the candle, by Elayne Riggs

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  • December 5, 2007

elayne100-9533021This column is finally up to installment #42. As you well know, that’s said to be the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. And now that I’m 50 years old, I’m supposed to be ever much smarter than I used to be, and ever so much closer to achieving the enlightenment that’s supposed to help me understand the questions to that answer.

Don’t you believe it. It’s a good thing life is a constant learning experience, although it’s a bit disheartening that the more I live the more there remains for me to learn. I can’t be the only one who constantly feels like I’m treading water, or running in place just to keep up.

Last night many Jews began the annual commemoration of Chanukah (or Hanukkah or Channukah or Throat-Warbler Mangrove), the Festival of Lights, not to be confused with Diwali, the Festival of Light marking the victory of good over evil, and uplifting of spiritual darkness, which seems to predate it by a good many centuries. Chanukah marks the rededication of the Second Temple (after it was desecrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes at the time of the Maccabee rebellion, a couple hundred years before that Jesus guy came along) and the miracle that one day’s worth of consecrated olive oil wound up burning for eight (the length of time it took to process a new batch). So instead of celebrating something cool like the uplifting of spiritual darkness, in the hands of the Jews the festival became the glorification of frugality, of making a little go a long way.

Then the Christians came along and, within another few centuries, had converted massive populations and co-opted their festivals so that Midwinter (the winter solstice) practices became part of Christmas, which grew and grew into a general celebration of plenty and excess and cheer (except for those people who insist on missing the point by suggesting Santa is a "bad role model" because he’s fat and jolly; no no, can’t have any happy large people around during the months when it’s customary to fatten up to stave off cold and hunger!). And you know, given the choice between a whooping it up over how fortunate one is to have enough to eat and how dire one’s circumstances are that one has to burn the midnight oil for a week — well, let’s just say it’s easy to see how one can become so popular it’s no longer solely Christian or even pagan but practically secular, where the other is forever relegated in the public consciousness to second-place status and an excuse to teach lessons in multicultural inclusion.

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Comics, community and The 99

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  • November 28, 2007

elayne100-4266390One of the things I mentioned in a previous column is how frustrating it is to many readers that reviewers have so many negative things to say about comics and so few positive ones — one of the reasons being, of course, that it’s simply easier (and, for many, more fun) to slag on someone else’s hard work than to praise it, to pick at the missteps rather than examining the story as a whole.  I still suspect this ties in with why so relatively few reviewers discuss the art in a comic book; as they’re writers, it’s easier to concentrate on just the writing, which one can then proceed to negatively nitpick to one’s own standard of personal amusement, rather than learning about how to talk about the main thing that separates comics from prose work, from movies, from just about any other form of entertainment.  But I digress.

I’ve had the first four issues of a comic book series in front of me for months, wanting to talk about them. This was before the series even debuted in the US, and now the first two issues have already appeared in stores. And with one thing and another in my crazy life, I haven’t had the time nor the wherewithall to actually sit down and review anything. And it’s become, as these things do, rather an albatross ’round my neck that I haven’t gotten to it. After all, a wonderfully talented, amazing woman who happens to edit the books sent them to me in good faith that I’d get to reviewing them sooner or later. And after all, wasn’t I the one who did over four years’ worth of weekly reviews on Usenet, covering at least a dozen comics during some of those weeks? What, besides life’s vicissitudes, was preventing me from sitting down and doing this review?

Sooner or later we all have to face our own procrastinating natures. For me, the approach of the year’s close and the feeling of community that means so much to me in this industry prompted me to finally get down to it. After three introductory paragraphs, naturally. Has the time finally come for me to say a few words about The 99 from Teshkeel Comics? Well, yes and no. I’m not going to do a structured, formal review per se, but discuss the series more in terms of its inspiration and ideas. (more…)

The days of miracles and wonder, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • November 21, 2007

elayne100-1554533I’ve taken a break from my promised sequel about comic book artists whose current work I like because (1) I still haven’t made it through the most recent DC comp box, (2) it’s not like there’s a huge clamor for it. and mostly (3) I’ve been in a sort of weird transition mode and needed to write about that because it’s never far from my mind, but is thrown into special relief during the upcoming holiday season.

In truth, I feel like this entire year has been a transitional one for me. Losing my best friend then my father in rapid succession threw me for such a loop it seems doubtful I’ll ever fully regain my equilibrium. Then there was The Job Thing. I’d been looking for a new position for awhile but the timing never worked out. Every time my job search gained momentum, my boss would return from Europe and I had to put everything on hold. Meanwhile, lots of little downturns became bigger ones and, to make a long story which I’ll be happy to tell you in a bar sometime short, on November 9 my employer of ten years and I officially came to a parting of the ways.

I have enough severance pay for awhile and am still interviewing for a new position back in Manhattan, so this isn’t a lamentation on my lack of current employment. It’s more a realization of how lucky I’ve been again this year. Even with deaths in the family and among my circle of friends, I have so very many blessings in my life. And with my half-century mark looming ever closer (a week from Sunday, in fact) I thought it would be a nice and perhaps inspirational idea to count those blessings.

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Residual Effects, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • November 14, 2007

elayne100-1758150I was going to continue my review of art I like, but since last week the new DC comp box arrived and I want to catch up before I write any more about that. Plus, I had a fairly major lifestyle change, more about which later. Meantime, the Writers Guild of America strike is into its second week and, while a resolution still seems fairly far away, I think it’s done a lot of good already in terms of consciousness raising. As with other recent revelations a lot of Americans have had, many people are starting to question why such a modern and powerful country seems so backwards when it comes to its citizens fairly sharing its bounty, whether that means providing health care for all or living up to its humane ideals in its treatment of captives or celebrating and supporting the collective strength of productive workers.

I think the WGA strike has resulted in a lot of folks who’ve never heard anything but anti-union talk since before Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO workers rethinking that knee-jerk (but craftily cultivated) attitude. They’ve learned that about half of WGA members are unemployed or underemployed in a given year, and they don’t buy the studios’ insistence that the strike is “millionaires versus billionaires.” They’ve learned that professional writing, like a lot of other entertainment-related professions that seem all-fun from the outside looking in, in fact represents a lot of hard work and long hours. They’re learning to deeply mistrust the line they’ve been fed for so long, a version of the famous Peter Stone dialogue from 1776 that “most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.” Nowadays it’s become imperative to protect the reality of being able to survive. And they understand that residual payments are the way most WGA members survive between the relatively few successful gigs they’re able to score.

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A Few of My Favorite Things, by Elayne Riggs

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  • November 7, 2007

elayne100-1811653Back in the days of Usenet, I used to hear a lot of variations of “Why are there so many negative reviews and so few positive ones?” As one of those reviewers who not only discussed the art half of comic books but who also wrote a lot of positive reviews in my 4½ years of doing Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts, I would see this manifest more as “Why are the threads responding to the few negative reviews so long, as opposed to those on the far more numerous positive reviews?”

The answer was pretty self-evident to most of us reviewers. In general it’s much easier for people to perpetuate clever putdowns, or to pile on a negative thread, than it is to engage in the vocabulary of positive discussion. One of the things we would identify as a next-to-useless post would be someone merely typing “Me too” or “Ditto.” It added nothing of substance to the online dialogue, it just took up bandwidth. But it had the opposite effect of the real-life etiquette advice that “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” It became “If you can’t add something of substance to a discussion rather than just agreeing with the original poster, you’re better off not contributing at all.” I suspect that what some of them actually meant was “Bored now. You’re being too nice; throw us some raw meat.

And of course, that was a shame. I’ve never found it that hard to say good things about comic books. I love comic books. I buy and read quite a wide variety of graphic literature, and as I’m generally not in the assumed demographic for much of it I’ve learned to adjust my tastes accordingly — that is to say, there’s still some subject matter that doesn’t appeal to me, but I’ll generally try to give most of my chosen reading a fair chance, and I think I tend to be easily pleased. Nitpicking details, while worth noting in a review, has never weighed as important to me as how the work made me feel, whether it held together as a whole and moved me during the time it took me to read it.

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More Artistic Vocabulary, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • October 24, 2007

elayne100-5274740Well, I said I’d be back and, since there were a number of terms I didn’t recall until after last week’s column went live, I figured I’d take note of them this week while I still remember what more I wanted to say.

For instance, I can’t believe I neglected to talk about surface form versus underlying construction. I consider it one of the most important criteria for judging good comic book art. The more I learn about how visual storytelling is done, the pickier I find myself becoming when it comes to appreciating crafting level. Art doesn’t need to look polished to be of professional level (although my particular taste does lean more towards smooth and streamlined rather than blocky and rough). It just needs to show that the artist understands the rules about how things are logically built. It’s like any other creative endeavor — if you’re going to break the rules, you first need to prove you know what they are and are able to follow them.

I have to admit, not being an artist, that I’m not so sure about construction rules myself, certainly not enough to be able to articulate them for you the way my husband does for me. But I do know that one of the biggest mistakes many comic book readers make is confusing style with substance. When they judge a comic they’re usually looking at the final polish given to the work rather than judging what lies beneath that polish. And that’s understandable; if you don’t know how a piece of furniture is supposed to function in its environment, or even whether it’ll hold what it’s supposed to hold, you’re pretty much going to base your opinion of that furniture by how pretty it looks in the catalog or showroom.

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ELAYNE RIGGS: The Fifth Freedom

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  • October 10, 2007

elayne100-9344719Last week was the American Library Association’s annual "Banned Books Week." What bothers me most about Banned Books Week isn’t its concept, but its name. Even its proponents admit it’s not about banned books, but challenged ones. Even at our country’s most fascist periods (like, um, now), I don’t believe our federal, state or local governments have actually banned books in decades, if ever. But apparently "banned" has a more alliterative cachet than "challenged" or "endangered" or even scrapping the misnomer altogether in favor of something like "Freedom to Read Week" which is more in keeping with the point of the event — to "celebrate the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stress the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them."

Oh sure, lots of backwards-thinking people, the kind who usually believe every word in the Bible is true (rather than seeing the book as allegorical fiction and an interesting take on history by multiple authors, the way a lot of rationalists view it), seek to limit others’ imaginations and freedoms and generally stir up trouble by whining in the courts about any piece of fact or fiction they don’t like, from science texts to Harry Potter. And these attempts at censorship should be and are condemned and fought by patriots and book-lovers everywhere they crop up. Partly because of these efforts, no attempts have succeeded.

And yet, people’s hobbies and even lives have been ruined by this repression. Even in our hobby, the CBLDF abounds with stories of comic shop owners who paid for a misstep or a failure to predict ever-shifting "community standards" usually embodied by the community’s loudest kook.

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ELAYNE RIGGS: The Girls of Summer

  • News
  • October 3, 2007

elayne100-4838919The summer of 2007 is well and truly behind us now. The regular baseball season has wrapped, culminating in the promise of the playoffs and World Series, new network TV shows have debuted and returned, and October ushers in a new era for many of us. For ComicMix it means Phase II, the actual raison d’etre for this site (and I’m psyched to be sharing Wednesdays with EZ Street). For me it signals an imminent lifestyle change as the day job I’ve held for the last ten years is about to disappear, a part of my life destined to become an unpleasant memory in the very near future.

This job has taken much out of me emotionally this last decade, snipping away at little pieces of my soul and memory that I feared I’d never recover. But now that things are taking their course and I feel like I’m about to be paroled, I find many of those pieces are starting to return. Robin’s remarked that I remind him once again of the person I was when we met, the last time I was between jobs — healthier, happier, more energetic and optimistic, closer to my true self. And I’m having strange dreams that mix the past and present, where I can almost recall things that I’d thought gone forever.

The other night I dreamt I was back in college, only I was the person I am today. And for some reason, my roommate looked exactly like Sarah Silverman. (I often dream about celebs for whom I have no particular affinity in real life; the pheme of fame, as Stephen Fry calls it, seeps into my subconscious remarkably easily.) And I remarked to Sarah, in between trying to divvy up the laundry and other mundane chores, that I was impressed by all the youthful enthusiasm around me. "I remember when I used to have that kind of energy," I mused. "Heck, back when I was a day camp counselor I’d run around all the time…"

Then I woke up, thinking about day camp.

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