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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.

Oregonians Getting Graphic

Graphic Novels by Oregonians, for Oregonians

This annual roundup of all things comicbookical originally appeared in Eugene Weekly's December 15 "Winter Reading" issue.

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What is it about Oregon that makes our state such an incubator for the creative imagination? Is it the natural beauty? The fresh food? The history of pioneering exploration and countercultural experimentation?

Whatever that X factor may be, it isn’t limited to genre or form: Out in the wider world, our fair state has a reputation as a mecca for creators and fans of comic books and graphic novels. So it comes as no surprise that three of 2011’s noteworthy works of sequential art were crafted by Oregon residents. Taken together, these three books (all of which are more appropriate for teen and grownup audiences than they are for kids) demonstrate the breadth of talent and creative impulse inherent in the Beaver State.
 
The leader of the pack is the charming Dear Creature (Tor Books, $15.99), written and illustrated by Jonathan Case. It’s a surprisingly gripping effort for a graphic novelist early in his career.

Case’s hero is Grue, a sea monster with the heart of Romeo and the appetite of Jeffrey Dahmer. Grue loves capturing and eating the young couples that hang out (and make out) on the beaches of a small town in midcentury Southern California. Inspired by Shakespearean verse he discovers floating in bottles in the ocean, Grue vows to curb his proclivities and devote his life to love, beauty and locating the person transcribing the words of the greatest writer in the English language.
 
At the heart of Dear Creature is the interplay of base desire and reasoned response. Grue’s entertaining quest to identify the sender of his Bardic bottles somehow makes time to comment on B-movies of the 1950s, Cold War hysteria, prejudice, immigration and the enduring powers of art and romance.
 
Another graphic novel dealing in large part with a menace to a coastal shoreline is Oil and Water (Fantagraphics, $19.99). But this book couldn’t be less like Dear Creature, tonally or in execution. This nonfiction work is written by Oregonian columnist Steve Duin and illustrated by comic artist Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man.

Oil and Water follows a group of real-life, concerned Oregonians (including a couple of Eugeneans) who visit the devastated Gulf Coast in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon spill. Upon hitting the Southern-fried states, the small band of Northwesterners witnesses firsthand the consequences, ecological and economic, of the disaster. Encountering church ladies, wildlife rescue volunteers, shrimp boat captains and even a voodoo practitioner, the trip becomes personal as the protagonists encounter a culture shock that parallels the environmental shock they see in ruined marshes and oil-slicked coasts.

History in the Making

A Springfield café connects past and future

Photo by Kai Hayashi

With this article, which appeared in Eugene's Weekly's January 26 winter Chow! guide, I sadly bid a fond adieu to able editrix Molly Templeton, who has fled the charms of the Le Eug for trendy, trendy Brooklyn. Molly has been a consistent advocate for my writing, and was even supportive of me in what bordered on a quixotic campaign to interview Gail Simone. As usual, I tried sneaking some local history stuff into this non-history article.

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Downtown Springfield’s Main Street strip continues to tread the line between gentrified and generally sketchy. And the permanent closure of Ruthie B’s Antiques in a couple of weeks marks the end of one of the neighborhood’s anchoring storefronts.

But last May saw the addition of the Washburne Café, a homey breakfast and lunch place just down the street. 

“I wanted to create a place that I’d like to go, that was comfortable and welcoming,” says café owner Karen Hageman. Originally from New Jersey, Hageman says the Washburne is her first foray into restaurant ownership after stints in construction, real estate and retail. 

At breakfast time, Hageman’s new venture serves various egg dishes with cibatta toast, including a “Washburne bowl” with eggs, meat and potatoes. Lunchtime fare includes paninis on locally-baked focaccia, as well as house-made soups. The chicken salad wrap is especially tasty and includes cucumbers and cranberries in the mix. Fluffy, house-made baked goods include tropical fruit scones and peach muffins, complemented by a coffee bar ... and free Wi-Fi.

“It’s getting busier all the time as word gets out,” says Hageman.

And she seems to be right. During a recent visit at almost 2 pm on a weekday afternoon, the lunch rush had yet to abate. The crowd proved eclectic, too. Some patrons read while dining alone. A couple of parents had children in tow. A group of college students, laptops and calculators spread across a round table by the window, discussed APR and interest rates.

Continue reading "History in the Making" 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.

Celebrating Hard Times

Local craft distillery gives Eugene a buzz

My able editrix for this piece asked that, if I was going to write for a second time about my buddy James and his bootleggin', I'd have to identify myself as his friend, make it clear we have a personal connection. That was a good idea. The line between business reporting and nepotism can grow mighty thin when covering local folks. One thing that made it simpler was the fact that I honest-to-God find James' and Dudley's efforts fascinating. The boys, James in particular, have been striving for so long to reach this level, that it's really gratifying seeing them hit the mark. Cheers, gents!

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The last time I wrote in these pages about the liquor-distilling ventures of my friend James Stegall (“Money Where the Mouth Is,” 3/13/08), he had a different business partner, a different company name and a different plan for his product line. 

He also had 100,000 fewer miles on his car’s odometer, now the legacy of commuting among a day job in Albany, his home base in Eugene and the clean and earthy refurbished granary in Monroe he shares with business partner Dudley Clark and two stills composed of copper tubing and stainless steel.

They make an unlikely pair, smooth-headed, thirtysomething Stegall, and Clark with his longish silver hair and swashbuckler’s goatee. “We don’t always see eye to eye,” says Clark, “but James and I have figured how to be partners in a very deep sense. Almost like brothers.”

It’s been a busy fall season for these almost-brothers and their business, now christened Hard Times Distillery. After more than two years of work fueled by a loan and training courses courtesy of Lane County’s Entrepreneurial Development Services (eDev), their product finally hit liquor store shelves in early October.

Continue reading "Celebrating Hard Times" at Eugene Weekly.

Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant

Dealing as it does with Eugene's Marché restaurant, this is a little companion piece to my article "Salve, Sfizio." Both appeared in Eugene Weekly's summer Chow! Guide. And, dealing as it does with our charming First Lady and a visit to the White House, this seemed an appropriate post for the 4th of July weekend. Happy Independence Day!

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The term “pro bono” more likely conjures images of legal briefs and power suits than it does freshly-sliced rhubarb or the stark whites of a professional chef. But Stephanie Pearl Kimmel, founding chef and owner of Eugene’s Marché, will be cooking and consulting for free in the coming months as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools initiative. 

As one foot soldier in an army of white-clad chefs invited to Washington, D.C., last weekend, Kimmel and her cohort got their marching orders on the White House lawn, directly from the First Lady. 

The Chefs Move to Schools project is part of the wider “Let’s Move!” initiative to combat childhood obesity, and ultimately to strengthen the federal Child Nutrition program that feeds kids in schools.

“A third of our schoolchildren [in the U.S.] are overweight or obese,” says Kimmel, who cites the “lost creativity, lost contributions and eventually just the medical costs” of that sorry state as major problems for the nation, down the line.

Continue reading "Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant" at Eugene Weekly.

Salve, Sfizio

Oakway Center welcomes Italian dining with Osteria Sfizio

Photo by Trask Bedortha

This article appeared in Eugene Weekly's summer Chow! Guide, which came out on June 10. Local celebrity chefs tend to have big personalities, and Rocky was no exception (as is evidenced by the below photo). That makes them fun interview subjects, especially when they're starting a new venture. It's kind of charming to watch a grown man boyishly wax eloquent about his new digs, like Ralphie breathlessly enthusing to Santa about his Red Ryder BB gun. And hey, why not? Creating a new restaurant or watering hole, especially in this economy, is certainly something to crow about. You rock, Rocky.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to try the food, as the kitchen wasn't complete at the time of the interview. I think we're going to go check out the restaurant this weekend, though.

Shout-out to Google Translate, which always looks makes me look way more educated than I really am. Bello!

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In a large cardboard box situated behind the snappy-looking host station of Osteria Sfizio, the new Italian restaurant opening at Oakway Center, an impressive collection of cookbooks waits. The books are destined to be arranged not 10 feet away in a special bookcase designed especially for them. They’ll be the first sight to greet diners as they enter the restaurant.

 

While it seems unlikely he actually needs all those cookbooks, the fact they’ll remain a prominent part of the décor demonstrates that their owner, Rocky Maselli, is proud of his roots, of the influences that have shaped his culinary habits. This ethic extends to his new digs as well.

Osteria Sfizio, Maselli’s new dining venue, opens June 18 and will dish up homey Italian cooking seven days a week, including brunch on weekends, in a relaxed yet refined atmosphere. Sfizio is situated on the north end of Oakway Center’s Heritage Courtyard (and, in what may be perceived as a cruel irony, next door to Weight Watchers).

“For me, this is a natural,” says Maselli, who says he has designed Sfizio’s menu to be “a little less foofy, a little more Italian.”

Maselli may want his new menu to go light on the foof, but opening night patrons are still more likely to dine on rabbit cacciatore or fried oxtail than on chicken parm. And little wonder: Maselli has worked at Marché, a cornerstone of high-end Eugene dining, since 1998. He became executive chef in 2004 and general manager in 2006. “I’m still a partner at Marché,” Maselli says, “but all my focus is here.”  

Continue reading "Salve, Sfizio" at Eugene Weekly.

Chewing the Fat

Momma's Kitchen brings barbecue to downtown Springfield

Photos by Todd Cooper

It's tough reviewing a local business when the review isn't going to be all that glowing. This article, which appeared in Eugene Weekly's spring Chow! guide, required me, with the help of able editirix Molly Templeton, to make a call on just how aggro I wanted to be in discussing this place's culinary offerings. Trust me, this printed version isn't nearly so hardcore in slamming the food as was draft 1. I guess this is a sort of "damning with faint praise" situation. On the bright side, hey, check out the as-usual fine photographic work of Todd Cooper!

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Entering Momma’s Kitchen, one of the first things to catch my eye is a gleaming white host station, styled a bit like a church pulpit. The walls are a matching pure white, adorned with a framed print depicting an energetic African-American church service. Contemporary gospel music blares from a boom box by the kitchen.

With a restaurant that seems to be so much about the churchgoing experience, it’s amazing that Aline “Momma” Austin and Marian Austin, the mother-daughter team behind the Eugene-Springfield area’s newest Southern-style eatery, once served food in a nightclub. Aline Austin used to prepare and sell soul food at the Taboo club, now The Blueprint. “She couldn’t do the nightlife,” Marian says of her mother. “Her friends couldn’t even come there at all. She’s a churchgoing woman.”

The personable, gray-haired Aline does seem an unlikely candidate for slinging hash in a late-night hotspot. Originally from Alabama, Aline married a man from Texas, creating an impeccable pedigree for her barbecue. She imported her cooking chops, and her family, to Safford, Ariz., a small city just two hours to the northeast of Tucson. That’s where Aline raised Marian, along with her five sisters and three brothers. 

“We lived in a little community where all the African-American people lived,” a place called Little Hollywood, Marian says. “That was all we grew up with: Southern dishes, Southern food. We didn’t know it was a delicacy” until they moved to Oregon in 1985, following Marian’s eldest sister.

Here in the Willamette Valley, Marian decorated cakes for a living, while her mother worked as a care provider for senior citizens. Aline noted that some of her elderly charges lost their appetites as they aged, but “When she cooked, they ate,” reports Marian.

The nightclub location followed, but the opening of the current Momma’s Kitchen in June of last year, in a space formerly occupied by a St. Vincent de Paul at the corner of Main and 5th in Springfield, feels truer to Aline Austin’s roots and clientele.

Continue reading "Chewing the Fat" at Eugene Weekly.

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.

Dusting Off the Golden Lasso

An Oregon writer makes Wonder Woman relatable

It's fun interviewing someone famous, or at least famous enough to have fans, even when their fame leads to complications. This article, which I wrote for the December 3 issue of Eugene Weekly, is the product of attempts over many months to convince the intensely private Gail Simone to allow me to interview her. Guess now I have to find a new professional goal.

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Since her inception in 1941, Wonder Woman has been a symbol of freedom and democracy, a totemic 1970s feminist touchstone, a piece of bikini-clad eye candy and an icon of gay America.

What the foremost female superhero hasn’t been, particularly, is relatable, at least not for the legion of mostly male superhero fans who support the comic book industry. When the Amazon princess wasn’t being used for gratuitous T&A, she was portrayed either as a man-hating harridan or a cipher for blandly apolitical gender equality. Wonder Woman always seemed to work better as a symbol than as a character.

Happily, that’s changed. In an era in which parent company DC Comics is fostering iconic runs by star writers on some of its flagship titles — Grant Morrison on Batman, Geoff Johns on Green Lantern — Diana Prince (the heroine’s secret identity) has been quietly flourishing under the pen of Oregon native and former hairdresser Gail Simone. And though some women have tackled the character in the past, notably in a short-lived stint by novelist Jodi Picoult, it is Simone who holds the rather surprising title as the first female regular writer in Wonder Woman’s history.

“We have a different conception of feminism than was written in [Wonder Woman’s] conception,” Simone said in October at a panel for the UO’s Understanding Superheroes conference. And while the writer is certainly capable of writing a good, old-fashioned, politics-free superhero fight, Simone’s social messaging makes her work compelling. “I can’t write a story that doesn’t have some of that, somewhere,” she says.

Simone will discuss “Gender and the Superhero” in an appearance on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at the UO, likely touching on her work on Secret Six and Birds of Prey, both comic series that incorporate well-rounded characters of both genders, the latter detailing the exploits of an all-woman team of superhero espionage agents.

Even as her star has risen swiftly, Simone continues to live a quiet life on the Oregon Coast, far from fan culture. “I always wanted to be a writer to some degree,” she says, but the goal “just didn’t seem attainable, somehow.” She graduated from high school early and received a scholarship to study English and theater at the UO, but “life intervened,” and Simone wound up at a Springfield beauty school.

While managing her own salon, Simone began writing for online comics fan forums and soon attracted attention with her superhero humor column “You’ll All Be Sorry,” which led to work on The Simpsons comic book and then on Marvel Comics’ darkly humorous Deadpool. “It’s one of the amazing things about the Internet,” Simone says, “that kind of democratic notion that you can live in a town with no decent Chinese food and still be read each week all over the world.”

Continue reading "Dusting Off the Golden Lasso" at Eugene Weekly.