Welcome to Inkville

Affection and Nostalgia

The UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum gives comic books a hero’s welcome

This article, which first appeared in the September 24 issue of Eugene Weekly, afforded me the opportunity to sort of wallow in my own special brand of hedonism, thinking and reading and talking at length about comic books.  I can guarantee you I'll be returning to the museum multiple times before the exhibition has concluded, to commune with the spirits of my gurus.  I was also pleased to discover a kindred spirit in the University of Oregon's Ben Saunders, a man who walks the walk in terms of comic book nerdery.  This guy isn't taking advantage of a pop cultural trend; he's advancing an art form about which he has been passionate for decades.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Can I touch this?” I ask, gesturing to the 70-year-old magazine sitting on the glass top counter of Nostalgia Collectibles, a Eugene comic book store. Darrell Grimes, the owner of both the shop and the comic book in question, gives his assent, and I lift the object carefully, reverently, as if I’m handling an illuminated manuscript from the Dark Ages.

Even encased as it is in clear, hard, protective plastic, the illustration on the comic book’s cover exudes a kinetic sense of exuberance: a boyishly grinning Superman leaps high above the rooftops, his cape billowing behind him.

This is a copy of Superman #1, published in 1939. Fewer than 200 copies are thought to exist. It’s worth $50,000. The very fact this comic book resides in Eugene makes this city noteworthy, in some circles.

And I’m holding it. For me, comic book nerd that I am, that’s like touching the Holy Grail.

This comic, and the nearly 200 pieces of original comic book art it will soon be joining on the campus of the UO, matter to the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hardcore comic book aficionados in the area.

But they’re also a point of pride to the citizens of Eugene as a whole, or at least they should be. Because the artwork that has been collected for “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero,” an exhibition opening Friday, Sept. 25, at the UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, is one of the most expansive gatherings of superhero comic book art ever assembled. And it’s not hanging on a wall in N.Y. or L.A. or London, or even Portland. It’s here.

“I do think this is the best museum exhibition of superhero comic art to date,” says Ben Saunders, an associate professor of English at the UO, and curator of the exhibition. “‘Best’ in the sense of broadest, most historically comprehensive,” he continues, “and with a large number of key pieces by key artists from the 70 years of the genre.”

It may sound as if Saunders is bragging about the show he’s assembled. But to be frank, the man has a right to brag: Works are on loan from the Library of Congress as well as from 18 private collectors from around the country.

But this show is about more than just volume. Saunders is an expert on this stuff, and he has taken care to present the original artwork. Originals are created on card stock pieces larger than the comic book pages to which they will eventually be reduced, in a manner that tells a story: not just the thrilling tales of spandexed champions or the story of good winning out over evil, but the story of the creation of a wholly new and inherently American way to tell stories in the first place.

“I went in pursuit of key works by key artists,” says Saunders, who revels in name-dropping from the collection’s impressive catalog: “Not just ‘something by Jack Kirby,’ but Jack Kirby’s cover to [Fantastic Four] #74. Not just Bill Sienkiewicz, but one of his large collage poster/covers from the mid ’80s. Not just Neal Adams, but Neal Adams on Batman.” Care has also been taken, Saunders says, to include “once-influential masters of the form” of the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, “who deserve to be better known.”

Continue reading "Affection and Nostalgia" at Eugene Weekly.

Photo by Todd Cooper.

Sweet Talk: Stretching your dough on desserts

This article first appeared in the fall Chow! guide, in the September 10 issue of Eugene Weekly.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the 2000 film Chocolat, Juliette Binoche soothes the pain of the residents of a provincial French town with a single magic potion: chocolate, the movie’s namesake. And while the current worldwide economic recession presents a different set of problems than the 1950s conformity and heavy-handed demagoguery of the film, eating one’s way to happiness still sounds like a tempting quick-fix cure for depression...both the emotional and economic varieties.

With a disheartening 12.5 percent unemployment rate in Lane County, more than three full percentage points higher than the national average, belts are tightening across the Southern Willamette Valley, and extras like sweets seem like a natural place to start trimming the fat. But if the thought of foregoing dessert due to a limited budget makes you want to toss your cookies, some local sugar-slingers are taking steps to ensure their customers can have their cake and eat it, too.

Adam Bernstein, proprietor of eateries Café Maroc and Adam’s Sustainable Table, recently changed the name and menu of the latter from Adam’s Place, a measure to reflect not only sustainability of the environmental sort but a nod toward finances as well. “I think people tend to share more desserts” these days, says Bernstein. 

“We have a chocolate volcano, a shared dessert,” Bernstein says. Ordering a dessert, even a shared one, makes “people feel like they’re getting a bonus,” he explains.

If even half a chocolate volcano is beyond the budget, Amy Brown, manager of the Candy Baron at Fifth Street Public Market, may have the solution. Brown equates the shop’s à la carte shopping experience with a way to save a few coins, asserting that her customers “are appreciative of the fact we carry individual candies, and can buy just a couple of pieces” as a pick-me-up. All the same, Brown says, “We’ve definitely had a [sales] drop at the beginning of the year.”

Continue reading "Sweet Talk at Eugene Weekly.

Grease is the Word: Will Dickie Jo's sizzle or be fried?

This article, which originally appeared in the July 1 issue of Eugene Weekly, may have come out a tad more negative than I intended.  I really do appreciate what the Wests are doing, aesthetically.  How can I not love the checkered floor and pre-Elvis blues rock?  In researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that there seem to be no middle-of-the-road opinions on Dickie Jo's; Eugeneans feel passionate about their hamburgers, I guess.  Everyone seems to either adore the place, or detest it.  I don't think I fall into either category, but I will state for the record that I've been back twice since my initial reporting foray.  I do love me some Mucho Gusto carnitas, so, you know, bueno on ya for that one, Wests.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The new Dickie Jo’s Burgers has a prominent spot on 13th between Pearl and High, and likely the first sign of the diner’s presence detected by many Eugeneans was the new paint job applied to the south wall of the abutting office building. And what a paint job. Snappy and sharp to some, a garish eyesore to others, the commanding, mid-20th-century-styled tile design of alternating red, pink and white visually drowns the compact building like a busy computer wallpaper overpowers a desktop icon. The owners, restaurateur siblings Jim and Phil West, are counting on the business as a sort of hardware upgrade for their family name, as well. 

The “Westraunt Concepts” partnership founded by the brothers may have a cutesy name, but don’t be fooled: These guys are playing for keeps. The company also created local Mexican eateries Mucho Gusto and Fina Taqueria, and Jim, the elder West, is already casting an eye northward, envisioning a day Portland will be home to combo outlets, with a Mucho and a Dickie’s under a single roof. The Wests planned to return to their roots by converting Fina Taqueria’s south Willamette location into a variation on their early 1990s barbecue joint, but those plans have been scrapped to concentrate on burritos and burgers.

Jim West proselytizes a form of dining known as “quick-casual,” a couple of steps above fast food but with a pointed lack of spendy table service. According to West, the lack of niceties translates to more cash in diners’ pockets. That no-frills style extends to the Wests’ day-to-day, as well. “We haven’t created any corporate positions,” Jim says. “I’m the bookkeeper,” while “Phil does all of our design.”

Continue reading "Grease is the Word" at Eugene Weekly.

Drafting a Plan for Expansion

This article originally appeared in the June 25 issue of Eugene Weekly.  If only every reporting gig involved sippin' on likker.  Special thanks to friend-of-the-blog (is there such a role?) Brendan Mahaney, who offered a lovely and savory staging ground for cider tasting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was about 11, I was chosen from a crowd to help a costumed reenactor operate a wooden cider press at a living history demonstration. Surprised at how little liquid was squeezed from each apple, I learned a lesson about the value of hard work and scarcity of resources. That was the last thought through my little bowl-cut head, in fact, before I tripped over the cider bucket and dumped the fruits of my labor into the grass.

Happily for Mimi Casteel and Nick Gunn, the married couple behind Salem’s Wandering Aengus Ciderworks, cider-making technology has evolved, now allowing the fermenting, bottling, and kegging of the stuff on a massive scale. 

Casteel and Gunn left Portland-based forestry surveying jobs in 2004, tired of the travel involved, and cast an eye toward agriculture. Casteel’s parents own the nearby Bethel Heights Vineyard, and though his wife “really had an itch to get into farming,” Gunn says, there wasn’t enough work to go around at Bethel Heights, and they didn’t want to undermine her parents’ efforts by founding a competing label. So they leased a nearby orchard and went into the hard cider business.

The cider produced by Wandering Aengus isn’t the pulpy, syrupy, kid-friendly concoction enjoyed on chilly autumn evenings. If anything, this hard cider is a bit like champagne: crisp, sweet and a little tart. Perfect for enjoying with cheese, pork or other musky savories.

The proof, says Wandering Aengus marketing director James Kohn, is in the fruit juice. “Most ciders are made of concentrated juice or dessert apples” like the ones found in grocery store produce sections, Kohn explains. Wandering Aengus cider, on the other hand, is made from apple varietals specifically for cider-making, and in fact, the ingredient list printed on the side of a bottle of the Semi-Dry cider amounts to a single item: “Fermented apple juice from certified organic cider apples.”

Continue reading "Drafting a Plan for Expansion" at Eugene Weekly.

Better Read than Dead: 2008's Graphic Novels

Continuing an occasional gander at what I'm reading, with yet another cheat. This article appeared in last week's Eugene Weekly.

-------------------------------------------------

Embers Among the Coals
2008’s fieriest graphic novels

Our nation’s economic downturn may well splash cold water on some of the smaller publishers of sequential visual narrative. But before the blaze goes out, let’s gather ’round the hearth of the comics industry and bask in the toasty glow of the wealth of choice in this year’s red-hot graphic novels.

Even as beloved series Y: The Last Man shutters its doors and Fables settles into a deserved middle age, with The Vinyl Underground Volume 1: Watching the Detectives (Vertigo, $9.99), DC’s “mature readers” imprint proves it’s still relevant. A quartet of twentysomething, C-list British celebs leads a secret life as an occult detective agency, their sleazy nightclubbing and tabloid exploits a cover for the defense of London from supernatural forces. Combine one part 90210 and two parts Buffy, add a splash of Scooby-Doo, and stir.

Speaking of the occult, they say that playing a single song at a crossroads at midnight will make you a guitar genius … and all it costs is your soul. Fans of manga and blues alike will respond to Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson (Del Rey, $19.95), Akira Hiraomoto’s magic realism account of the early years of the titular bluesman.

 I didn’t expect too much of a graphic novel based on a videogame, honestly. But then, isn’t it that sort of attitude that maligns comics in the first place?  At any rate, Prince of Persia (First Second, $16.95) turns out to be a dense, multi-layered medieval epic of the divergent paths of three siblings, involving memory, destiny and the repercussions of our actions through history.

Continue reading "Embers Among the Coals" at Eugene Weekly.

Better Read than Dead: The Ten-Cent Plague

Beginning an occasional feature in which I share what I'm reading. And hey, look, I'm already cheatin', since this article appeared in the October 2 issue of Eugene Weekly. I really enjoyed interviewing Hajdu via phone. He may be the most famous person I've interviewed, as well as one of the few folks who has challenged my assumptions and openly disagreed with me while we were chatting.

-------------------------------------------------

No Laughing Matter
Author David Hajdu talks censorship of the funnybooks

THE TEN CENT PLAGUE: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, nonfiction by David Hajdu. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Hardcover, $26.

As one of the hardcore comic book faithful, on some level I already knew of the events chronicled in David Hajdu’s new book, The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America. I like to think I absorbed the knowledge directly through my fingertips in 1992, when I first held a copy of Superman #75, the comic that hooked me. But I suppose it’s more likely I learned the tale from the vast folk memory of comic book shop talk and online message boards, a central repository of geek collective unconscious. 

The high points of the story are legend among my tribe: the premature demise of EC Comics and dozens of other publishers in the 1950s at the hands of puritanical proto-"family values" interests; the rise of Mad magazine as a wickedly smart countercultural stress outlet; and, looming large, the specter of a buzzkilling German-born psychiatrist named Frederic Wertham.

To celebrate the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, Hajdu speaks at 6 pm Friday, Oct. 3, at the Eugene Public Library (which, I might add, sports an extensive collection of graphic novels). He’ll be introduced by Jan Eliot, Eugene resident and creator of the Stone Soup comic strip.

Continue reading "No Laughing Matter" at Eugene Weekly.

Rocking the Casbah

This article appeared in the July 31 issue of Eugene Weekly.  The research for this one was grueling, as it involved phyllo dough, lamb stew, and bourbon.

-------------------------------------------------

Chef Adam Bernstein isn’t shy about why he launched Café Maroc, a Moroccan eatery, this past June. “I’ve worked too hard next door,” at the adjacent, upscale Adam’s Place, Bernstein admits, “and I’m tired. I needed something that was fun and playful.”

Luckily, Bernstein wasn’t too bushed to devise a sustainability game plan for his casual new restaurant. Located on East Broadway where Bernstein’s jazz club, Luna, used to be, Café Maroc buys locally and organically whenever possible. My water glass, Bernstein tells me, is filled with harvested Oregon rainwater; the sprig of mint soaking in my tea hails from Bernstein’s backyard.

Conservation is key in Moroccan cooking, Bernstein explains. “It’s about efficiency in a place where water and fuel mean a lot.”

“Most people probably don’t know that we’ve been the leader in green and sustainable and local for a long time,” at Adam’s Place, observes the third-generation restaurateur. “We’re making decisions that are forward-thinking.” Bernstein carries this idea through to the Maroc design, incorporating tin cans claiming new life as lanterns and microfiber seat covers to simulate leather.

Continue reading "Rocking the Casbah" at Eugene Weekly.

High Fidelity

I've been e-mailing with Molly Templeton, one of my editors at Eugene Weekly, about pros and cons of the film The Dark Knight.  As a long-time pop culture nerd, I found that most of my feedback centered on deviations, both positive and negative, from the comic books. 

I can’t think of a major superhero movie that more lovingly respects, and gives the nod to, its source material.  From the inclusion of Batman mythology bit players (Carmine Falcone! Salvatore Maroni!), to the thoughtful reinterpretation of Two-Face’s disfigurement, to the major parts for Detectives Stephens and Ramirez as obvious proxies of the comics’ Bullock and Montoya, I was in Easter egg heaven.  The film carefully categorizes the nearly 70 years’ worth of Batman and Joker material, cherry-picking what works, and excising what doesn’t.

In a way, this is what I try to do, too, as a writer of narrative nonfiction.  I sift through the layers of a person’s life, or of an incident, and try to find its essential truth.  This requires more reinterpretation and recontextualization of fact than it might seem at the outset.  Truth is malleable, and slippery.  With a little care, “What happened” can be reformatted to tell a better story, ethically, without sacrificing accuracy.

Belly Up

This article appeared in the July 10 issue of Eugene Weekly, and afforded me the opportunity to write the phrase "fusion of barnyard flesh and Northwest fresh."  Tantalizing, no?

-------------------------------------------------

Teetering at the top of a painter’s ladder, Brendan Mahaney was plastering the dining room ceiling of his new restaurant recently. When someone walked through the front door and asked for the owner, Mahaney’s first impulse was to shout for someone else. “Hey, wait,” he thought to himself. “That’s me.”

Even after notable stints as a chef at some of Eugene’s finest eateries, including three years each at Marché and Red Agave — with El Vaquero, Chanterelle and Soriah as résumé line items, for good measure — this is the first time Mahaney (whom EW profiled in Chow! in April) has been able to make that claim. With his new venture, simply called Belly, Mahaney aims to produce “reassuring” and “direct” cuisine that goes for under $20 a plate.

Belly opened last week, on Independence Day, in the 5th Avenue spot formerly occupied by Penelope’s Mediterranean Cuisine. Mahaney’s shorthand ways of describing Belly’s fare are “rustic European” and “old-school farmhouse cooking,” but to expand a bit, the enterprising gourmand encapsulates his approach as “applying classic French and Italian techniques and practices to the food in the Northwest.”

Continue reading "Belly Up" at Eugene Weekly.

Rubber Chicken

Thanks to a nomination by Suzi Steffen, my hip chick of an editor, one of my articles won a Society of Professional Journalists award at Saturday's annual banquet in Portland.  It was at the zoo!  Where they had goats!  And tiramisu!  And a writer in a suit!

And I met a robot dinosaur!  Thank you, Suzi!  Thank you, Oregon and Southwest Washington SPJ chapter!