Welcome to Inkville

Say, you attended a conference, right?

Why yes, Johnny. Yes, I did. A few more words on the University of Oregon's recent "Understanding Superheroes" academic conference. I'll try to keep this post Teen Titans-sized, and not one of the Justice League-length diatribes of my last couple of superposts.

Perhaps my favorite of all the conference events I've attended to this point (yes, there are more upcoming; this conference and its schedule of attendant events are massive), was the panel "Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology." I knew I was among my own when I met a dapper Ph.D. student from UC Davis name Kane (or Caine?) who was dressed to the nines in a natty shirt, blazer, and Blue Lantern ring. I also met a wheelchair-bound comics expert from Tacoma who works for Twomorrows Publishing, who not only amused me with the tale of one Halloween when he won a costume contest dressed as a motorized Sherman tank, but recognized in me a kindred spirit when he realized he didn't have to explain the meaning of the phrase "Cei-U".

Both panel presenters were excellent. Professor Beth Davies-Stofka of Excelsior College spoke on the connection of superheroes and religion, arguing that comic book heroes are not the "modern day mythology" (yawn) fanboys make them out to be, but rather are representative of humanity, the religious themselves. Reading Comics and New York Times-published author Douglas Wolk also spoke about a connection of gods and men, helping this dubious nerd locate a logical through line in Grant Morrison's sprawling, metatextual Final Crisis storyline featuring DC Comics' so-called "Fourth World." (How could I never have noticed that the Omega Effect symbols on Darkseid's gauntlets on the cover of issue #4 form a "DC"? Jeez Louise.)

Both of the presenters were gracious and engaged in taking questions after their respective presentations, even when I pushed Wolk a bit to defend what I believe to be substandard work from Morrison. Davies-Stofka and her husband were also great fun to hang out with for the rest of the weekend.

The week prior, at one of the earliest conference talks, UO law professor Dominick Vetri, spoke about the complicated legal struggle of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, to regain control of their golden goose after a rash adolescent decision to sell the character to DC Comics for $130(!) in 1938. Vetri spoke at length about the legal ins and outs of the case, a superhero-style "neverending battle" that has risen, phoenix-like, from its own ashes countless times over seven decades...and which, believe it or not, is still taking place as I type this, long after the principle actors have all passed along to that great comics bullpen in the sky.

Professor Bummer's Tenure Track

I have a new nickname. Or deejay name. Or maybe it’s a superhero name: “Professor Bummer.” The moniker was bestowed on me by Matt Fraction, writer of the comic books Iron Man and Casanova, at the comic creators panel, a part of the University of Oregon’s “Understanding Superheroes” academic conference that ran a week ago on campus in conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s exhibition Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero. The conference sported panels with names like "Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology." (Yes, really.)

In fact, I have written previously about the exhibition and conference for local media.

Fraction appeared with fellow Oregonian comic writers Kurt Busiek (Trinity, The Avengers, Astro City) and Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, The All-New Atom, Birds of Prey). In the panel’s wrap-up Q-and-A, I asked the creators what it’s like writing for these sprawling, decades-old mega-storylines, considering that the DC and Marvel Universes have been rolling along since the 1930s and 40s, respectively. I may have asked it a bit bluntly, I’ll allow, as I phrased it along the lines of “…considering that you could stop writing for comics at any time, take a break of 20 or 30 years, and come back to find the same story had been told in your absence?”

Fraction’s response: “I’ve ever thought of my work in such Sisyphian terms. Thanks, Professor Bummer.”

That kind of wit was on display through the whole thing. Prof. Ben Saunders of the UO English department, conference organizer and guest curator of the exhibition, opened the panel with, “I apologize for the less than ideal angle some of you may have of our esteemed guests.”

Busiek: “Head on?”

As often happens when comics geeks and academics gather in real or virtual spaces, much of the chit-chat revolved around the agony and ecstasy of comic book continuity, the sprawling web of interconnected stories that compose a shared fictional universe, the violations of which give fanboys ample opportunity to praise or lambaste creators.

“I think continuity is the devil,” Fraction asserted, his usual timid, reticent self. He went on to explain that, so long as characters and story scenarios operate in a basically consistent manner, he’s happy with his writing.

Busiek, who along with Mark Waid represents perhaps the largest walking repository of superhero continuity lore in the industry, countered with a quote his mis-attributed to John Donne, but which actually belongs to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

(Coincidentally, Saunders specializes in Donne and Shakespeare. Reckon he was gritting his teeth.)

“I personally get continuity fatigue,” added Simone.

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.

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“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.

Summer Vacation: The Vertigo Project

Continuing an occasional series in which I share how I wasted spent my summer vacation. The First Lady of Inkville and I decided to spend a week in San Francisco.  Here we are hanging out in the stables of an old Spanish mission just a little over an hour south of the city:

Oh, whoops.  That's actually a shot of James Stewart and Kim Novak in Hitchcock's 1958 noir masterpiece Vertigo, one of our favorite films here in Inkville.  How'd that get in there?  Here's a photo of us in San Francisco:

Hm.  You know, come to think of it, Vertigo coincidentally takes places almost entirely in San Francisco... 

Hey, I have an idea!  Wouldn't it be really nifty if Aaron and his wife totally took a pilgrimage to all the shooting locations, and photographically recreated the high points of a fifty-year-old film storyline panned by contemporary critics?  By golly, I think it would! 

But wait, what point would such a jaunt serve?  Well, perhaps it would make a statement about the continuity of fan culture, or comment on the subversion of traditional American gender roles and filmic tropes, or serve as a sort of urban archaeological expedition.  Or heck, maybe it would just be an excuse for Aaron to to annoy his wife all week with Jimmy Stewart impressions.

Or maybe it would be all of the above.  I think we should find out.  Let's skidoo, shall we?

Like all mid-century detective thrillers, this one begins in a flower market.  Okay, maybe I'm reaching, but that is in fact where our journey began.  Vertigo is about a retired police detective hired to tail one looker of a suspicious character.  Kim Novak plays the distant, ethereal Madeleine Elster, the object of our hapless ectomorphic detective's passions.  It seems Madeleine has been zoning out of the here-and-now of 1958, falling into a trance in which she believes herself to be 18th-century Spanish gentry. It's up to Stewart to bust this case wide open, Scooby-Doo style.

So why a flower market?  Over the course of the film, Novak, in fact, dies three times.  (Uh, right.  Sorry.  Spoiler Alert.  The movie is half a century old, people.)  Novak and her freaky, romantic longevity are represented in the film by means of a visual device: flowering perennials, which bloom everlastingly.  Or, um, is that annuals?  I can never remember. 

At any rate, like Jimmy Stewart says of the redwood trees, "Their true name is Sequoia sempervirens, 'ever living.'"  Kim Novak's connection to the natural world and plant life is typified by her penchant for gadding about the Presidio sporting a small, trim bouquet like the one she has seen in a painting of her Spanish noblewoman...

...which is my roundabout way of explaining why we started at a flower market.  My wife's bouquet, however, was neither small nor trim:

Kneel Before Zod

What’s fluffier and more appealing for a summer weekend than a Top Ten list?  About comic books, no less?  While Batman arguably has the dubious honor of being hounded by the best rogue’s gallery in comics, Superman’s own collection of world beaters, miscreants, ne'er-do-wells, and extraterrestrial bullies ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.  Listed here are a top ten of Superbaddies, ranked not by their level of villainy or ability to cause the Man of Steel a kryptonite headache, but simply in the order of my preference.  Ten’s a nice, round number, so apologies in advance to also-rans like Toyman, Mongul, and the Cyborg Superman.  But sorry, no love whatsoever for goobers like Terra-Man and the Composite Superman.

That's right: Inkville is runnin' the geekery straight up, no chaser, this time, so, y'know, forewarned is forearmed, for all you civilians out there.

 

#10  Darkseid

Just thinking of the intergalactic, semi-divine tyrant takes me back to mid-1980s Saturday mornings and Challenge of the Superfriends.  More of a general all-around DC Universe bad guy, Darkseid is a relative latecomer to the decades-old mega-storyline that is DC’s shared universe, but so fully imagined in 1970 by his creator Jack Kirby as the final word in alien evil, that Darkseid has suffered through virtually no rebooting or re-imagining, unlike most major comic book characters.  Some geeks have even posited the guy was an inspiration for Darth Vader, and I can certainly see a resemblance in the supervillain family tree.  Darkseid and his anti-pantheon of evil New Gods were used to great effect last year as street-level gangsters in Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis.

 

#9  Doomsday

One of only two characters from the modern era of comics to make it onto my list, Doomsday is the guy who first got me hooked on this stuff, as the titular murderer behind 1992’s “The Death of Superman” storyline.  The character appeared from nowhere, a being of mystery, and dispatched his Super-foe with such apparent finality, that the teenaged Aaron was quite shocked.  Ill-used by various appearances in the 1990s (seriously, a “Joker-ized” Doomsday?), ol’ Doomie has lost some of his luster.  The character has been given a second lease on his rampaging life, and an actor in a poorly-lit rubber suit to boot, in the most recent season of teen action soap Smallville.

 

#8  Silver Banshee

The only other Post-Crisis character to creep onto my list.  She's also the only woman... Who knew the Legion of Doom had a glass ceiling?  Banshee adds a bit of occult noir to a roster of evildoers who usually like to attack the Big Blue Boy Scout head on in the skies over Metropolis in big purple-and-green rockets. Seriously, how can I not like Silver Banshee?  She's a supernatural, Irish femme fatale, for God's sake!  Banshee can only kill people with her ear-splitting, vitality-draining wail if she knows their names.  That's so weird.  I’m such a sucker for weirdly Byzantine superpowers.  And, evidently, for chicks with skull-shaped earrings.

Summer Vacation: The Redwood Coast

A family trip down to Trinidad, California and back up Highway 101 along the Oregon Coast provided an amazing panoply of natural sights, from majestic, rocky sea stacks rising from the pounding surf, to ancient redwoods towering to lofty, leafy canopies.  So what scenery most impressed this fan of the mid-century modern aesthetic?  Why, the kitschy neon signs of interstate travel, of course.

Ocean Grove Lodge, Trinidad, California.  We passed this multiple times throughout the week, as it's situated between our cabin and downtown Trinidad, and I kept bugging my wife that I wanted to stop and take a photo.  She was confused, thinking I meant the horrible day-glo sign of a peasant-skirted señorita advertising the Mexican joint next door.  No, no.  It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing.  This sign is a beauty, though.

The Lumberjack Bar, Orick, California.  The homey, charming atmosphere of this lovely town was tempered by the large Confederate flag mural painted on the side of this watering hole, which seems to have devolved into a biker bar.  At least the owner seems to appreciate the historic nature of this vintage sign.  In other news, this bar also featured a tethered goat grazing in the yard, reminiscent of another stop on our trip.

The Egyptian Theatre, Coos Bay, Oregon.  My wife and I vacationed near Coos Bay last fall, and one of my favorite memories of the trip is seeing Hitchcock's Vertigo on the big screen of this fabulously restored movie palace... think "Walk Like an Egyptian"-style hieroglyphs, grand balcony, and opening Wurlitzer music.

Singularly unimpressed with vintage signage is my five-year-old nephew Elijah.  At least he got a kick out of Trees of Mystery, to date my favorite roadside attraction on the West Coast.  Here we're pictured chillaxin' on the fiberglass boot of a gargantuan Paul Bunyan statue along 101.  I love this place because it combines my interests in folklore, local kitsch, tourism studies, and natural beauty.  Even briefly considered writing my grad school terminal project on the attraction's history, before I committed to the ghost-hunting route.

What has your summer vacay been like, readers?  Let me know in the ol' comments corral.

The UpStairs Lounge: Dead Men Do Tell Tales

This article originally appeared in the Winter issue of Etude: The Journal of Literary Nonfiction.  A much expanded version of this story was incorporated into my final project for my graduate program.

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The psychic is already on his second glass of cheap red wine, and he’s been in the bar only ten minutes.

Phillip is in his late thirties, slight of stature, intense in disposition and nearly bald. He sits stoically, cloaked in the gloom of murky bar air at the head of the table, regarding his fellow ghost-hunter Kalila, her dark, straight hair bobbing as she dances along to the routine of four muscular young men, a Village People tribute group.

The costumed performers, on break from a show at a competing club down the street, are in the throes of an impromptu performance of the disco hit “Y.M.C.A.” here in Jimani Lounge, an Italian bar at Chartres and Iberville, in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Kalila seems especially enchanted by the cop character, a friendly African-American man in an incredibly tight tee shirt.

Phillip is hitting the red hard.  He’d much rather be ogling the beefcake, but he’s already picking up strong psychic impressions from the floor above, and the wine, he explains, “smoothes out the edges.”  He’s more forthcoming when pressed: wine drowns out the telepathic barrage of voices and impressions constantly battering at his consciousness. His daily intake is in the neighborhood of fifteen glasses.  Phillip makes a point of never beginning a supernatural investigation without first bellying up.

Instead of watching the high kicks, Phillip has busied himself unscrewing the top of a plastic salt shaker.  He neatly dumps the contents into a small plastic baggie he has produced from somewhere on his person. Phillip twists the baggie tightly closed and pockets it, as if squirreling away an ounce of cocaine.

“Do you believe in coincidence?” Phillip drawls at me, in an accent that reveals his backwoods Oklahoma origins. “I don’t,” he states flatly. We’re here tonight to investigate the site of the gay bar that occupied the space one floor above us in the 1970s, and Village People look-alikes “randomly” showing up feels like fate.  Or prescience.   

Just a quarter-hour ago, Phillip left his night job at Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, a French Quarter occult supply shop catering mostly to tourists. Phillip is one of the store’s in-house psychic readers, advising vacationing secretaries and sloshed frat boys how to get laid or get loved.

 The Jimani, pronounced like “Gemini” but misspelled to incorporate the given name of its founder, Jimmy Massacci, Sr., occupies the first floor of a building whose second story once housed the UpStairs Lounge, the gay club. The UpStairs had been a gathering place for the Quarter’s nascent gay scene, even hosting homosexual-inclusive church services, until a Sunday evening in June of 1973, when someone lit an incendiary device, lobbed it into the stairwell leading up to the club and locked the street-side door from the outside.

Twenty-nine people, mostly homosexual men, died in the flames that night, while another three victims succumbed in the following days.  The destruction of the UpStairs was the most deadly fire in the city’s history, and an event that quickly evolved into a rallying point for gay rights in the Crescent City. The arsonist-murderer was never caught.

Continue reading "The UpStairs Lounge" at Etude.

Hello Dear

Today a friend asked me to go to coffee.  He's facing some difficult choices in his relationship, and told me he wanted someone objective to talk to. The episode, oddly enough, added an extra layer of meaning to a weirdly contemplative spam message I received this week in my Gmail inbox:

It was kind of a surprise, actually, as I kind of thought the whole point of Gmail was its spectacular spam-blockers. 

But what really struck me about this e-mail was its poignancy.  Spam messages usually try to lure their suckers in by way of lust, or greed, or envy.  This one is more insidious; it preys upon a desire for companionship, for the need for a “long lasting relationship.”  Yes, Miss Joy does proceed to offer photos, the features of which can be invented in the heads of her panting readers, but she also wonders, in writing, whether “you are interested in knowing more about me.”

The content of this phishing attempt speaks to our national alienation, our disconnect, our discontent.  The whole thing is sort of sad.

Oh, and by the way, Yahoo!’s Babelfish translator helpfully informs me that Miss Joy’s auto-postscript is an Italian advertisement for the e-mail program’s increased graphics functionality.  Too bad the spammer didn’t include a photo: I imagine an earnest-looking Neapolitan beauty with soft, pleading eyes: “I am ready to invest in a relationship with you.”

Ciao, Signorina Joy.   Hope you find what you’re looking for.  Just so long as it’s not my social security and credit card numbers.

The Gifts that Keep on Gagging

Much like Dr. Fate’s Tower, the incomparable Smith Family Books in Eugene, Oregon, always seems somehow magically larger on the inside than it does on the outside.  Recently this alternate dimension of bibliophilia coughed up a treasure beyond value: the Johnson Smith & Co. Novelties catalog, 1950 edition.

If you’re having trouble picturing exactly what I mean, gents might recall the ads for chintzy, silly crap they used to find consigned to the back of Boy’s Life or early 80s Marvel Comics.  (Sorry, ladies, I don’t know the female equivalent.)  This book is 500 pages of crudely-drawn, vintage-styled ads for whoopee cushions, costume jewelry, and coins that squirt water.  In short, it's bliss.

Some of the ads are bizarre.

Some are horrendously offensive.

Some are illegal!

Some make me think this catalog was actually printed in 1994.

Some of 'em are, um, “spicy”...

...while others are quite chaste.

Some could have really helped me out, if I had discovered them while in grad school.

Some are for the rich...

...and some, for the poor.

But all of 'em are stuff I wanna own.  Anyway, just wanted to share.  And if you happen to dig this particular flavor of kitsch, I hereby nominate Kirk Demarais' Secret Fun Spot and Mr. Bali Hai's Eye of the Goof for your reading and viewing pleasure.  Did any of you actually get suckered in with sort of junk when you were kids?  Or, uh, now?  Let me know in the comments corral, pardners.

Falling Into the Reflection

Over the past week I’ve been working on my publisher’s letter for the upcoming summer issue of Eugene Magazine.  It’s our Top Doctors of Eugene-Springfield issue, and, seeking to draw from my own experience, I open the letter with an anecdote about what it was like growing up with two psychotherapists as parents.  

In the letter, after I set the scene and (hopefully, presumably) draw the reader in with personal detail, I expand my theme and apply the anecdote’s simple lesson to the larger world. Lots of nonfiction is structured the same way… this blog post, as a matter of fact.

The publisher’s letter is a prime example of a frequent writer’s dilemma: How much of myself should I put into this thing?  Writers of fiction have to ask themselves the question, but it becomes even more pertinent to writers of poetry and nonfiction. 

Even writers who produce literary nonfiction have to gauge their involvement.  John Berendt is a central character, for example, in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  But I’d argue that Erik Larson may communicate almost as much about himself in The Devil in the White City (perhaps my favorite book), a narrative that takes place a good six decades before Larson was born.

The writer wants his work to convey something about himself, his values, what matters to him.  But it can be difficult to tread the line between self-inclusion and self-absorption, between personal storyline and base narcissism.  (And no, I’m not ignoring the narcissistic overtones of writing about narcissism in a personal essay, appearing on a personal blog.)

Though in essence, the writer conjures only the illusion of personal connection. After reading this mini-essay, for example, you, the reader know that I wrote a publisher’s letter, but not what was going on at the same time, or whether I produced two drafts or twenty, or whether the writing took ten minutes or ten hours, or how I feel about it, or whether I even like the thing.  You can guess, based on clues I might include here or what you know of me outside this writing, but you can never know for sure.

So how about it, writers?  Or creatives in other fields?  How much of yourself do you insert into your work?  How do you avoid sharing too much?  How much of the “you” in your work is illusion, and how much is genuine contact with your readers or audience?  My comment corral is feeling snubbed…