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Grave Concerns

Zombie comic book series wants Eugene’s braaaains

This originally appeared in last week's Eugene Weekly, the February 16 issue. I angle for EW's cover story now and then, which is not to say I always land it, and I was honestly sort of surprised when my editor Rick Levin lobbied to put this particular story on the cover. I certainly didn't write it with that in mind. It does seem to have struck a bit of a chord, though, as more folks than usual have sought me out to tell me they liked it. Evidently the Association of Alternative Newsmedia was diggin' it, too, as they posted it to their top stories for the week.

Many thanks to Chris Roberson and Michael Allred for the interviews!

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Eugene can be a contradictory place. Some find numerous opportunities here, seeing Eugene as a community full of music, culture, good food and outdoor adventure. Others characterize the city more prosaically, as a nice place to live, but maybe a little … lacking in diversions.

Count cartoonist Michael Allred in the former category. “Growing up in Roseburg, Eugene was always the exciting place to go,” he says. Allred, creator of the independent critical-darling comic book Madman, moved on to college in Utah (where he met his wife, comic-book colorist Laura Allred) and eventually lived for a time in Eugene. He later relocated to various points all around the country, and even to Europe. But Eugene always held a special place in his heart.

Now Allred is the artist of a comic book series that is not only set in Eugene, but also embraces the line our city walks between the everyday and the extraordinary.

Published by DC Comics’ imprint for adults, Vertigo, iZombie follows the adventures of Gwen Dylan, a UO dropout who hangs out in a diner, makes her living digging graves in an eco-friendly cemetery and who just happens to be an undead zombie.

Gwen, helped along by her friends Ellie the ghost and Scott the were-terrier (yes, you read that right), solves supernatural mysteries, eats the occasional brain and dodges an ancient order of monster hunters … all punctuated by routine trips to the diner for chocolate and coffee.

Comparing his work to a cross between Archie comics and Scooby-Doo, iZombie series writer and New York Times best-selling author Chris Roberson, who lives in Austin, Texas, says that balancing the mundane and the fantastic sides of Eugene is one of his goals. Roberson’s stories cleverly subvert the standard monster-movie formula by showing how the undead spend their down time.

“It’s almost required that the moment that someone becomes one of these supernatural beings, they become angsty,” Roberson says. “If I became a werewolf, I’d still be the person I am now, I’d just have some personal hygiene issues once a month, or have some self-control issues.”

Roberson, who has never visited Oregon, relies in large part on online street views to inform the sense of place inherent in his writing. But his collaborator Allred just moved back to Eugene after a stint on the Oregon Coast. Having one half of the creative duo based in the city where the story is set has its advantages.

Besides advising Roberson on details of Eugene geography and daily life, Michael Allred incorporates real Eugene landmarks into the comic’s illustrations, which are in turn brought to colorful life by Laura Allred.

In the Eugene of iZombie, vampires troll for dates at the Downtown Lounge. A UO science lab is used as a staging ground for communing with extra-dimensional beings. The Shelton-McMurphey-Johnson mansion at the base of Skinner Butte doubles as the home of a centuries-old Egyptian mummy. And the diner where Gwen and her spooky friends hang out is modeled on Fins Drive-In in Springfield.

Continue reading "Grave Concerns" at Eugene Weekly.

Tricks are for Kids

Graphic Novel recommendations for 2010

A month late a dollar short in cross-posting. This originally appeared in Eugene Weekly's December 16 "Winter Reading" issue.

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The year’s crop of comic books and graphic novels presents a couple of noteworthy projects that are fun for the whole family, and two that are decidedly just for grown-ups.

Juan Díaz Canales’ and Juanjo Guarnido’s lush and noirish Blacksad collection (Dark Horse, $29.99) falls into the latter category. This single-volume collection of comic albums, originally intended for the European market and now produced in translation by Oregon-based publisher Dark Horse, simultaneously celebrates and lampoons the American detective genre, using anthropomorphized animals as stand-ins for human characters in shades of Art Spiegelman’s famed Maus. These aren’t comics for kids; the adventures of titular feline detective John Blacksad feature all the sex and violence of dime-store private eye paperbacks, lushly rendered with a Disney-like eye for detail and an admirable fidelity to the craft of building a fictional world. 

Like Blacksad, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95), the first original graphic novel by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential), is titled after the surname of its protagonist. And like Blacksad, Wilson is an incredible and affecting work. That’s where the comparison ends, though. The title character is a middle-aged, bloviating blowhard of a loser who loves his dog (sort of), accosts unsuspecting coffee shop patrons (always) and, weirdly, gets wrapped up in a kidnapping plot. Each page is presented as a separate comic strip, with a separate episode title and a distinct art style, bricks in the single storyline house Clowes is constructing. The usual Clowes levels of ennui, disaffection and misanthropy are on full display, blended with just a slight touch of nausea. So laugh along with Wilson as he tries to grow up and get his shit together. Or not. Whatever. He’s a Dan Clowes character.

Full-color Sunday adventure comic strips are the forerunners of modern superheroes. Combine this with the fact that Wednesday is the traditional day of the week that comic book stores release new issues, and you have the handsome new hardcover Wednesday Comics compendium (DC Comics, $49.99). This thing is massive, well over 11x17 inches, and, in combining work by indie darling creators like Paul Pope and Oregon favorite son Michael Allred with superhero stalwarts like Joe Kubert and José Luis García-López, the sprawling project convincingly replicates the Sunday morning comics-reading experience. The stable of DC characters is also diverse, from headliners like Batman and Wonder Woman to niche characters like Sgt. Rock and the Metal Men. There’s a bit of innuendo and a bit of violence, de rigeur for superhero comics. The price tag is a bit steep, but DC has really hit a home run with this project, producing a meaty helping of comics that straddles that elusive middle ground between the reading (and interest) levels of the YA and adult reader. And hey, the titanic thing would look darn stylish under the Christmas tree.

But the real winner for tykes this year is The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics (IDW Publishing, $34.99), an encyclopedia volume-sized collection of comic books and comic strips reveling in their immaturity and aimed squarely at children. These comics, spanning from the 1850s to the 1990s, are Looney Tunes-style zaniness, a pure and uncut sugar high reminiscent of chugging the milk left over after a helping of your favorite chocolatey breakfast cereal. There’s not a whole lot here for adults, beyond those grown-up comics history geeks who will enjoy seeing early work by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Steve Ditko (The Amazing Spider-Man), Dan DeCarlo (Archie) and Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey). But that’s OK. Just think of the book as the printed equivalent of a secret clubhouse, and let your kids go on believing you’ve forgotten the secret handshake.

Summer Vacation: Tiki Travelogue

A couple of weeks ago, the First Lady of Inkville attended a work conference in her professional capacity. I tagged along to Los Angeles in a decidedly un-professional capacity. Still addled on the rum-soaked fumes of the Northwest TikiKon earlier this month, I decided to cram as much Polynesian pop as possible into my visit, with one goal in mind: Tiki pilgrimage.

And what Los Angeles Tiki travel would be complete without a visit to the Enchanted Tiki Room in Disneyland? The entirety of the Adventureland portion of the park is pretty Tiki-tastic, but the Tiki room (complete with its delicious and overpriced pineapple Dole whip) remains the Genesis moment for many Tikiphiles' obsession, including that of your intrepid guide.

Spoiler alert: those Tikis totally come to life.

After working up a sweat escaping the Haunted Mansion and whining about the insertion of Johnny Depp mannequins into the original Pirates of the Caribbean, we adjourned to downtown L.A. to quench our thirst at the Trader Vic's:

Better Read than Dead: Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans

Inkville's "mostly New Orleans, much of the time" coverage continues with this installment. And by the way, the images after the jump sort of stray into NSFW territory. And definitely stray into "Ewww" territory.

The book pitch I have been kicking around for a few years now centers on ghost stories of old New Orleans. So what better research item than, well, Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans, Jeanne deLavigne's 1946 treatise on supernatural hauntings throughout the French Quarter and other NOLA neighborhoods?

The book is sadly out of print and going for around $125 online, so I'm indebted to the University of Oregon's interlibrary loan program, and to the libraries of the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham Young University.

Here's a photo of deLavigne, which she has signed as a gift for another favorite New Orleans author, Robert Tallant. Seem slike a nice older lady, doesn't she? You'd never expect she was a macabre freak.

deLavigne was part of the early-to-mid-20th century New Orleans artistic and literary renaissance as fueled by the Works Progress Administration, a contemporary of Lyle Saxon and a sort of spiritual inheritor of George Washington Cable. I haven't read an awful lot about this period of NOLA history, but on the surface, some of the relationships, artistic output, and activist bent of the whole thing seem reminiscent of the Irish Literary Revival's Yeats/Synge/Lady Gregory complex across the pond, just a few decades later.  It's temptingly easy, in fact, to cast deLavigne as a sort of Southern Lady Gregory, gathering the spooky tales of the common American.

Literary Arts Profile

Hey, cool. For the moment, Oregon Literary Arts has bumped a trimmed version of my profile and interview, as well as my smiling mug (okay, tight-lipped and smirking mug) up to their fellowships page. Dig:

 

In one of my trademark acts of shameless self-promotion, I figure my most effective strategy will be to ride the coattails of my own sweater vest until they fall off... like, say, cross-posting this to my blog. The full profile, by the way, can be perused on Literary Arts' Paper Fort blog.

And on a related note, I sure have gotten a lot of mileage out of that Isaac Viel-powered photo shoot.

The Strange Tale of Bobbie the Wonder Dog

During a recent and rare sunny springtime day in the northwest, the residents of Inkville, human and canine alike, road tripped to Silverton, Oregon, an hour south of Portland, to pay their respects at the memorial devoted to Bobbie the Wonder Dog:

   

Silverton is a cool little town, with a lot going for it. Besides the requisite antique shops and the fact that the town sports the nation's first transgender mayor, Silverton also offers the amazing natural beauty of Oregon's lush Willamette Valley. Dig:

 

I can tell you from personal experience that border collies grow very nervous while crossing this covered footbridge. Pfft. Dogs. No appreciation for charm.

But wait, there's more! Speaking of collies, Bobbie the Wonder Dog and his family took a little Oregon-to-Indiana road trip in 1923 to visit relatives. Silverton's interpretive materials note that, weirdly, Bobbie traveled on the car's running board(!). Unsurprisingly considering this undignified mode of transport, Bobbie somehow disappeared in transit. The family returned to Oregon, sad and dogless.

Amazingly, stunningly, heroically, Bobbie showed up six months later on his owners' doorstep in Silverton, beat half to hell and wearing a strange collar. That's right: Bobbie the collie walked and navigated 2,800 miles out of his devotion to his humans.

The Märchen Rap

Remember my post about the Three Little Pigs?  One played pipes, the others danced jigs?  Let's call that my excuse, shall we?  This was composed to amuse Camilla Mortensen. With apologies in advance to Guntis Šmidchens and Daniel Wojcik.  Okay, hold onto your copies of Aarne-Thompson.  A-one and a-two...

Tale-type indexin' like a mad, mad fiend,
Perrault's actin' Grimm and Richard Burton plays mean.
Students only know that whack Disney crap,
But this is my slant-rhymed Märchen rap.

Um.  Yeah.  It's a folklorist thing, you wouldn't understand.  Honestly, I'm not sure I do, either...

In other news, this l'il ditty has the dubious distinction of being the first Facebook comment to graduate to Inkville blog entry status, Joseph Campbell help us.

Out and About

Just a random collection of recent links to my work, both creative and professional.

Paper Fort, the blog of Oregon Literary Arts (which may have the greatest photo logo ever, as seen at left), published a li'l post about my ghost-hunting work. I guess winning this award means I need to get motivated, and expand this project, toot sweet. It was fun to be the interviewee rather than the interviewer for once, but I must admit I now have a better understanding of why my interview subjects obsess over their responses. The interview was conducted via e-mail, so I had loooots of time to unhealthily agonize.

I had a similar realization when the Oregon Daily Emerald, the UO"s independent student newspaper, published "Admissions office taps into Facebook." The article explores my department's use of social networking to recruit students, and quotes me extensively. Also mis-quotes me just a wee bit; I seem to remember my actual statements, as delivered over the phone, being just a skoch less self-serving. The Facebook profile in question, by the way, is located at http://facebook.com/UOAdmissions.

Finally, dotEduGuru, a sort of trade press site for higher ed marketing types, posted the online article "Best Admissions" Uses of Twitter," giving the nod to the tweet stream I maintain for the UO Office of Admissions, located at http://twitter.com/BeAnOregonDuck, as one of its "best." The article provides some tips for effective tweeting for recruitment. I'd mentioned this article in passing in a previous post, but frankly I wanted to make a little more hay of it.

Jolly Good Fellow

I wasn't in the best mood, to be honest. I felt rushed and harried, and my million-and-one editing and web projects at work at the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions were keeping me hopping. I was just about to step out of my office to run an errand and clear my head, in fact, when my cell rang.

I don't often pick up personal calls at work, especially if I don't recognize the number. Too frequently it's "Vote YES on Measure Such-and-So," or Comcast trying to suss out some billing nuance. But it was a Portland area code, and I needed a break, anyway.

"I'm calling from Oregon Literary Arts," said the voice of Susan Denning on the other end of the line. I felt my hands go numb, the way they always do when I'm about to get really great news, or really bad news.

It was the former.

I'm the happy recipient of the 2009 Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship for my literary nonfiction work, specifically some of the ghost-hunting material I worked on while a grad student at the UO. I'm proud to hail from an institution and an academic program that has produced so many great writers, many of whom have been fellowship recipients in the past, most recently my cohort Sabena Stark. And I'm also glad to sweep the literary nonfiction awards section with my fellow UO writer Mike Copperman. Most of all, I'm proud I was even considered for a fellowship, and pleased that the selection committee sees value in the sort of pop culture writing I do. My alma mater seems glad to claim me, if nothing else, based on the digital ink they've given me.

I'm not sure how I'm going to utilize the nice chunk of change my benefactors have dropped on me. But one thing's for sure: now my project has a ghost of a chance. Nyuck.

Oh, and my mood has picked up considerably.

Tough Choices

Graphic Novel recommendations for 2009

From the December 10 issue of Eugene Weekly. Sometimes I write about topics other than comic books, I swear. But hey, if they want to keep paying me to write about this sort of flotsam, who am I to argue?

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In the three years I’ve been writing this annual graphic novel review roundup, I’ve never had such a difficult time choosing which books to cover. 2009 produced an amazing wealth of material, particularly in the realm of graphic narrative journalism and nonfiction.

A standout comic of 2009, The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (First Second, $29.95) is the true story of Didier Lefèvre, a Parisian photographer embedded in 1986 with
an international aid convoy as it crosses on foot into Afghanistan to treat the medical ailments of mountain villagers. It’s a dangerous adventure, one in which opium dealers and tribal gang lords paradoxically provide refuge from airborne Soviet patrols, corrupt rural cops and harsh winter conditions. Even as Lefèvre is disheartened by the complicated web of strange bedfellows, religious division and sparse mercies of Afghani politics, he simultaneously achieves a grudging respect for the cultural and geographic idiosyncrasies of the troubled countryside. Illustrated comic book panels by Emmanuel Guibert are intercut with “panels” composed of Lefèvre’s stunning black and white photography, advancing the story in a wholly original way and even making a low-key statement about the nature of comics’ graphic storytelling.

In A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (Pantheon, $24.95), another graphic story presenting a specific moment in history, cartoonist Josh Neufeld reconstructs the Hurricane Katrina experiences of six real-life New Orleans families. Some flee the city, while others remain defiantly in their homes. Some barricade themselves to protect property and livelihood as others seek an ill-fated shelter in the Morial Convention Center. As in The Photographer, salvation is discovered in the most unlikely heroes, while those sworn to protect become one of the problems they’re assigned to relieve. The affecting subject matter is never maudlin in Neufeld’s hands, never feels ill-treated by the comics format. Sentiment that could easily devolve into a moribund, jingoistic chest-thumping is kept invigorated by stories of struggle for survival that are by turns saddening, thrilling and triumphant, but always engaging.


From a serious tale of world affairs to something that’s anything but, Toronto cartoonist Kate Beaton’s Never Learn Anything from History (TopatoCo, $18) gives world history the “Fractured Fairytale” treatment. Think of Beaton as the brainy kid who sat in the front row of your high school history class, who also happens to be wicked funny. Beaton finds dry-witted humor and more than a little cuteness in a petulant Napoleon, a meeting of Garfield the U.S. president and Garfield the cat and even the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. These comics aren’t for kids: Marie Antoinette advises one homely attendant she’d be better off as a hooker, and an arrow-to-the eye at the Battle of Hastings elicits some rough language. But adult history buffs will discover plenty of wiseass in-jokes in this charming collection.

Continue reading "Tough Choices" at Eugene Weekly.