The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides invited the other into the space between them for “real” discussion (neither side budged while we watched), and a large, pro-Palestinian march the following day through downtown. Similar actions have been  reported around the country and the world. The opposing UW protests emerged in our mind as an symbol of how little chance there is of worthwhile resolution to the West Bank and Gaza issue. No doubt,  by the time summer is over, the flotilla incident will be just another footnote in a long, cruel and bloody struggle.

The death toll in the flotilla incident is small compared to that alleged in the two incidents illustrated in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. The book is a long account of Sacco’s investigation of two actions in Gaza that occurred back in 1956, one in the town of Khan Younis that left 275 Palestinians dead, another in Rafah that left 111 dead. While the overall effect of Sacco’s narrative is one of shock, disgust and shame it also serves as a reminder of the on-going nature of repression and killing that has marked the Palestinian-Israeli struggle for some 60 years.

Sacco, author-illustrator of Palestine and Safe Area Grorazde is the premier graphic journalist, the creator of detailed, researched, investigative comics that are no laughing matter. He approaches his subject in classic Gonzo style, injecting his search for stories into a larger narrative. This injection strengthens his reporting with its wide-angled, contemporary background to, in this case, events over 50 years old. That he concentrated on personal accounts, often to make up for a lack of official documentation, makes his work extremely engaging. Perspective–no pun intended– is everything in his work.

Sacco traveled to Gaza in 2001 with reporter Chris Hedges for Harper’s magazine and soon returned to collect accounts of the massacres that occurred during the ‘56 Suez conflict. As readers of Palestine know, his sympathies are with the Palestinian people and this will disqualify him as a legitimate source for many readers. Yet anyone reading his book and examining the illustrations cannot help but conclude that the Palestinians suffer overwhelming poverty, repression and the effects of  what amounts to war. His infrequent sympathies for Israelis thrust into terrible situations as well as infrequent but obvious disapproval of some Palestinian actions offer precious little balance to a story that has little of it to offer.

In his introduction, Sacco acknowledges  the “scant” official documentation of the events he investigates as well as the questionable reliability of oral testimony. What documentation he was able to discover by sending researchers into the Israel State Archives and the archives of the Israel Defense Forces is listed (and quoted) in the Appendix. He issues the hope that his work will cause some Israeli veterans to come forward with accounts of their own.

Sacco also cautions readers not to see his illustrations as fact. Despite using historical photos when drawing his landscapes, he says that drawing comes with “a measure of refraction” and should be seen as such. (It’s surprising how little things have changed from his depictions of 1956 to the  current day drawings.)

Sacco makes clear the complications of life in Gaza; the waste, the shortages, the crowds, the filth.  He claims that the half of Gaza’s workforce which once worked in Israel have found themselves replaced by Thai, Romanian and Chinese workers.  Invited by a United Nations Relief Worker Agency employee to visit a home in Khan Younis, Sacco sweats and becomes claustrophobic at the tight conditions in which 11 people live.. He considers what little work is avaialble hunting scrap or the rare teaching position funded by UNRWA. He finds that the Palestinian Authority hires police whose only duty seems to be to collect salaries. The most well-off man he meets works for an American aid agency as a facilitator of “democratization.”  “Basically, it’s bullshit,” says the man.

These modern-day accounts of Sacco’s investigation and story gathering make the book far more relevant than just an account of the massacres. When those accounts do come, they are filled with horror, grief and inexplicable cruelty. Some of Sacco’s most extreme panel’s are over-sized Hieronymus Bosh-like nightmares depicting killing, detention and states of cruel pandemonium. Cross-hatched scenes of darkness or those with the story-teller super-imposed on his own story are done to chilling effect.

Unlike Palestine, the art work doesn’t evolve but maintains a direct, composed style. The strongest work in Palestine is its portraits. Here, the portraits are all of a kind, similar in mood and expression. Footnotes’ best illustrations comes in the narrative flow. Sacco is a master at finding the right action and composition to move his story forward and even the scatter of spent shell casings on a blank background has an impact on his story.

Comic touches are few. A restaurant menu is rolled open to reveal “Bombings! Assassinations! Incursions!” Sacco makes laughs at his own expense and his is the only overly characterized face: large lips, receding hairline, eyes constantly whited out behind  large, round spectacles. He also makes fun of the press corp and their proclivity to drink and party even as duty calls in sections that recall the indifferent press in the movies The Year of Living Dangerously and Under Fire.

That party scene  serves to illustrate his frustrations — and hopes — beyond the murderous bickering. Among the international crowd of reporters and N.G.O.s are “hepcat Arabs from Ramallah and right-on Jews from Tel Aviv sharing salads and grooving to the same post-bop jazz. Are the dark-haired cuties who jump up when the dance beat kicks in Palestinian or Israeli?…Ahhh, even in the belly of the world’s most intractable conflict there’s a glimmer of hope in which to exalt!”

At end, Sacco feels shame for what he’s lost while gathering his accounts, “for losing something along the way as I collected my evidence, disentangled it, dissected it, indexed it, and logged it onto my chart.” This confession comes as something of a surprise as he has shown nothing but compassion for those who experienced the killings. In a series of almost four wordless pages he runs a final account through his mind, from a perspective inside the punished crowd, as if in attempt to develop an empathy he didn’t have. If he didn’t succeed with himself — and what preceeds it suggests that he did — Sacco certainly succeeds with the reader.–Cabbage Rabbit

Fortune magazine has allegedly rejected a cover illustration that Chris Ware provided. Check it out…seems it might strike a little too close to home for the pro-finance cheerleaders at Fortune. Our favorite part of the drawing? The chopper dropping cash on the 500 edifice? The Chinese off-loading dollars? Or that tea pot aboil, surrounded by bulbous, flag-waving figures? It’s hard to see all the details, even in the enlargement. Surely some capitalist will see a profitable poster opportunity here. That is, if the Fortune attorneys will allow it.–Cabbage Rabbit

In Daniel Johnston’s art, it’s all about the head. Big heads, hollowed-out heads, tiny heads, duck and cat and mouse heads, severed heads, devil heads, heads with one eye and heads with many eyes waving on tentacles. No matter how many characters and twisted setting pieces fill one of his works, its focus is noggins.

Johnston–singer-songwriter and artist– has been called a cult hero ever since Kurt Cobain wore one of his t-shirts to the 1992 MTV Music Awards. Only the hero part is true.  Johnston is now larger than life, with a prize -winning documentary in his past and an iPhone game in the present. His music has been covered by a host of indie stars and heard in the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are, his art shown at the 2006 Whitney Biennial and he survived a plane crash that he himself caused. Rizzoli has published a big, colorful collection of his more recent colored marker work with some notebook drawings (on lined paper) thrown in for good measure. It wouldn’t be fair to say he’s arrived–Johnston’s still under the radar for most–but he does keep going and going.

As the 2005 film The Devil and Daniel Johnston makes (somewhat) clear, the source of Johnston’s art are as varied as the seasons. He’s more than a simple eclectic and not simply an innocent although innocence gives his work a certain attraction. Johnston’s story suggests the relationship of madness to creativity, explores nature and nurture questions and, in a sort of holy backlash, highlights the perversions of evangelical thinking towards purity and punishment. Despite his psychological difficulties, Johnston has a unique type of ambition. A broken heart is central to his art.

As one of the curators of the 2006 Whitney show, Philippe Vergne suggests in the book’s lead essay, the acceptance of Johnston’s comic-inspired art work is a reaction to art’s current sterility. Vergne both condemns and champions the avant-garde in his essay, saying it has “drunk itself away…by over-indulging in its own industrialization, pampering itself to death…” and citing its “incredible and uncanny driving force…[a] prerequisite to oppose conventional wisdom, a capacity to alter its own status and institutions.” As more than one of Johnston’s characters says, “Who cares?”

Vergne does provide context for Johnston’s style by looking at the role of the cultural misfit and primitive in resisting and advancing the state of art. Johnston’s work is certainly primitive, with a child-like focus on monsters, heroes and battles. His drawings show little respect for traditional composition and perspective, yet they seem naturally composed. That winged horse riding its two wheels on the rim of a hollowed-out head with a dragonfly and a bare-chested woman hanging in stars nearby has an impact, not all of it symbolic, that extends from the head’s up-turned eyes. Because of those eyes you almost miss the fact that hollow-head is wearing a peace symbol necklace.

Looking for influence here is like looking for love. In a discussion with Johnston interspersed throughout the volume,  the artist claims admiration for Picasso, Dali and Jack Kirby. But what really moved him, he says, was a nude photo of Marilyn Monroe. “It was the first girl I ever seen naked and I was like, ‘This is awesome.’” Nudity aside, I thought of the comic art of  Gary Panter. But the more one pursues the comparison, the less apt it seems.

In his essay, Harvey Pekar warns us not to make too much of Daniel’s mental illness, described as both “bipolar” and “manic depressive” by the non-professionals writing in this book (there’s also indication that, thanks to medication, he has it under control). Based on his own experience with mental health, Pekar tells us that “Daniel Johnston isn’t great because he has bipolar disorder. He’s great despite it.”  In something of a contradiction, he later states, “I wonder if part of what Daniel is doing is trying to purge himself of the terrible things going on in his head.”

It’s obvious that Johnston’s drawings, like his lyrics, are clues into his mind. His frequent use of text reveals the unresolved nature of his thinking. Two strange busts, tucked into the corner of one drawing have an exchange: “Truth hurts,” says one. “It’s funny tho,” says the other. “Peace On Destroyed Planets” is the heading over one ominously-colored, three-clawed (and one shoe) cyclops. Promise often comes as contradiction in Johnston’s work. “Hope for the Hopeless/ Life Is over” is the title of one in which a woman in a bathing suit pulls a dripping skull from a stump. Sometimes the text suggests Johnston’s dilemma: “Questions with no answers are stupid in the 1st place stump the intellect and jam the machine” states one  bulging, green head even as a thought bubble escapes saying “who cares”.

But not all is gloom and frustration. The same drawing has a smiling, topless woman with stars for nipples saying “Hoorway For None Nowhere.” Even a duck striding over a pile of skulls looks joyful as he cries “Kill em all!” And don’t forget the figure on Cobain’s t-shirt, Jerimiah the stem-eyed Frog, and his famous greeting, “Hi, How Are You.”  Johnston’s art brings new meaning to talking heads.–Cabbage Rabbit

In a situation that is truly comic, political correctness has come to the kettle as well as the pot.  This piece posted on Yahoo News highlights the wringing of  Tea Bag hands over a demonstration illustrated in Marvel’s Captain America #602.  Although the illustration seems to ring true with what we witnessed over the summer, its association in the story with a fictional right-wing militia group that Captain America and The Falcon are investigating drew the ire of conservatives. In his post, Warner Todd Huston explains why they’re ticked: “There you have it America. Tea Party protesters just “hate the government,” they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government.” Funny, but that’s exactly what many (and not all of them on the left)  feel motivates much of the Tea Party movement.

The term “political correctness” has been used almost exclusively by the right as a negative connotation to smear reaction to ethnic and other slurs. Their defense of such slurs is that they often have a ring of truth (see the current roar of the use of the word “retarded”) and that in the name of political correctness, the truth must be ignored less someone’s feeling be hurt. Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada has apologized for linking the Tea Party to the fictional anti-government group in #602 and has promised later editions won’t use the sign. The whole brouhaha is another example of the right denying their actual motivation, as in the current Medicare debate. We doubt that the broadcast voices of the right will make charges of political correctness in this case.–Cabbage Rabbit

Here’s Keith Olberman’s interview of David Wiegel, reporter for the Washington Independent and comics fan who took the original photo of “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You” that resembles (okay is exactly, minus the word “Dems”) the sign that’s the flash point in #602: Countdown on Captain America and the Tea Baggers

Did the past century belong to Tintin? That’s the suggestion in Pierre Assouline’s new biography Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin when Assouline, using redundant hedges, writes, “some speak with some justification of a ‘Tintin century,’ signfying the 20th.” Writer and Vanity Fair editor Bruce Handy, writing in The New York Times Book Review begs to differ. “I wouldn’t even give him a decade,” Handy says, lumping him into year-or-two sensations “like Zonker Harris and the Fantastic Four.”

Handy admits that his is a typical Ameri-centric opinion (Handy like Mickey and Batman for the century- owning comic characters). Tintin’s  popularity in the U.S. has, to this point, barely registered. Indeed, my local library has a solid collection of the cow-licked reporter’s adventures from his U.S. publisher Little, Brown which seem little touched by my fellow comic enthusiasts, young and old alike. This will change when director  Steven Spielberg’s movie The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is released in time for Christmas, 2011.  Until then, Tintin must be content with whatever controversy the biography and the American release of his adventures brings.  Little, Brown pulled Tintin In the Congo after news of the 1931 publication’s re-release brought protests of racism…shades of Babar! Herge had long since cleaned-up the adventure after its initial publication as well as having removed some of the anti-Semitic representations in his drawing from The Shooting Star and others.

All this doesn’t mean that Tintin isn’t the perfect cartoon character for the French century.  Like the French themselves, Tintin has dealt with the demise of the French colonial empire, such as it was, as well as showing as much resignation as resistance to its occupation. Herge apparently fell more on the resignation side. During World War II, he worked for the pro-German paper Le Soir and after the war was arrested, but not convicted, for being a collaborator.

It’s this ability to survive even while maintaining a false of dignity that marks Herge’s life (Handy notes that Herge “shrugged off accusations of anti- Semitism by saying ‘That was the style then’”). Some of this carries over to the character he created who, like Batman and the Fantastic Four, was trying to do the right thing among the tenor of his country and its times. The innocence of this,  not yet lost even after years of  cultural and social change, can still be admired despite its flaws. Herge’s genius lies in his story-telling, his panel construction and plot sequencing, his articulate drawing and wit, even as the stereotypes and racial arrogance are called out. –Cabbage Rabbit

There’s much to quibble over in Abram’s big, beautiful The Art of Harvey Kurtzman (the “man” in Kurtzman isn’t spelled out but drawn as  simplistic balloon-stick figure). Why include the complete “Superduperman” from Mad no. 4 (1953) instead of  samples from “Dragged Net!,” the parody of television’s cigarette-selling, L.A Cop promoting Dragnet or “Bat Boy and Rubin” that parodied the legal power of comic book publishers and the homoerotic relationship between the protagonists or show more of the incredible post-horrors-of-war Two-Fisted Tales or, or…

That’s the problem with writer, illustrator, editor and Mad magazine founder Kurtzman. His career was so long, varied and important; so influential to American humor at large, that it would be impossible to do it justice in any single volume. His early strip work for Timely Comics and Stan Lee, his sci-fi and war stories for Will Gaines’ EC, the founding of Mad and its turn from comic to magazine, the follow-up publications  Trump, Humbug and Help, the bread-and-butter work of “Little Annie Fanny” for Playboy, his late work for the French alternative market; any overview can only touch work that all deserves long and serious consideration.

This over-sized book, selected and annotated by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, does an impressive job to highlight the obvious as well as illuminate less well-known aspects of the Kurtzman legacy.  Including everything from high-school woodcuts to his 1988 cover-design for the graphic novel Kings In Design this big volume would embarrass any coffee table with its crazed and crazy riches.

Not only did Kurtzman direct the course and tenor of  social satire, he employed and/or influenced many of its greatest artists and writers. Terry Gilliam came up at Kurtzman’s side where he was first introduced to John Cleese. Both Art Spiegelman and R. Crumb credit their success to Kurtzman. Even Gloria Steinem came up through Kurtzman’s rank ranks. Successful humor enterprises from National Lampoon to The Onion all wear their Harvey Kurtzman influences proudly. Kitchen and Buhle effectively quote a host of big names to find Kurtzman’s esteemed place in culture. On their own, they seem to have some trouble defining his importance. His work, they write,  not only gave us “critical insights that shaped our view of vernacular art and its uses, but it also helped shape the world as it came our of the war in the 1940s by giving us a very different future.”  A discussion of how Kurtzman shaped the future outside of the world of graphic arts and satire is lacking.

Kurtzman’s biography isn’t full of success. He was constantly  looking for ways to make money and remain true to his individual and artistic beliefs. It’s not surprising that anyone who challenges the status quo to the extremes that he did would find tough sailing in America. Kurtzman’s death in 1993 was given short shrift by the mainstream press and might have been entirely lost on the public if not for efforts by Spiegelman and Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker. His reputation was always secure among those he influenced and those who enjoyed bits of his work, even if it was consumed under bed covers by flashlight. This book goes a long way to lift the entire body of his work.–Cabbage Rabbit

In the beginning, Robert Crumb’s work was all parody and cartoonish variation. Over the decades, he has breathed form into his illustration, bringing detail and something, at times, approaching realism while maintaining his characteristic style prickly-male legs and ponderous female thighs. The Book of Genesis Illustrated is his longest, most ambitious creation and, despite the subject matter, his most real, though realism is relative to his style (see “A Short History of America“). As the cover declares, it contains “ALL 50 CHAPTERS” and “NOTHING LEFT OUT!” Indeed, not only does Crumb include, as he declares in his introduction “every word of the original text” (derived from “several sources”, mostly Robert Alter’s 2004 translation The Five Books of Moses and the King James Version) but something of his own interpretation, no matter how innocent, via his drawing.

Something of Crumb’s approach to the project can be found in Todd Hignite’s interview from his 2006 publication In the Studio: Visits With Contemporary Cartoonists. At the time of the interview, Crumb had finished all of  four pages but much of his thinking on how he would approach it was complete. Commenting on an old 1946 EC comic Picture Stories From the Bible, with its blond Eve and red-headed Adam, he complains about its sloppy drawing and the fact that, “they just make shit up to gloss over and fill in whole passages. They have Eve  saying, ‘Mmm, this apple tastes really good.’ If I’m going to be doing this and don’t want some fucking Christian fanatics to kill me, I’ve got to say, ‘Look, it’s all there, I didn’t change a single word, I just illustrated it as it’s told.’”

No doubt, some fanatical Christians will want to kill him anyway simply because he does illustrate what’s told. We’re shown Onnan spilling his seed on the ground when “he would come to bed with his brother’s wife” as well as the cruel consequence of the act. We see a drunken Lot having sex with his daughters, the older in missionary position, the younger girl-on-top. Crumb does not shy away from the murder, incest, adultery, lies and God-driven war that make the Old Testament the more human of the two scriptures. Nor does he exaggerate or parody the acts as he might have in the days of Zap. That’s Genesis‘ greatest accomplishment: bringing humanity and reality to the cruelties and taboos that are so often glossed over.

This may also be the text’s one weakness (though we Crumb fans will see it as a plus). In humanizing the events, Crumb draws in his own interpretation of his subjects’ reactions and feelings. Did Issac actually sit by dejectedly when Esau took Hittite wives? We can imagine that Noah’s reaction to hearing of the Lord’s plan to kill every living thing on earth is as bug-eyed as portrayed but would his eyes bulge again when there’s a hint of the end? There’s a touch of homo-eroticism when Jacob wrestles “until the break of dawn” with a nameless divine being. Would the handmaid look so sleepily satisfied after sex with the elderly Abram? Occasionally, character expression adds comedic touches as when Abraham takes all the males among his household to be circumcised. The looks on their faces shows they know what awaits!

Most interpretively expressive is God himself. The look of  satisfaction when He smells the aroma of Noah’s burnt offering of cattle and fowl after the flood is divinely human. But mostly He’s shown in various stages of anger (Crumb modeled the Lord after his father), allowing only his messengers to appear relaxed and serene.  Crumb’s is an angry God indeed.

One of the greatest achievements here are the dozens of thumb-sized portraits of all the begotten and begatters, the minor sons and daughters, all meticulously drawn. No Aryan looking Middle-Eastern ancients for Crumb! We can  see the different tribal characteristics as the sons of Abraham spread out to fill the known corners of the world. Where Crumb found all these faces can only be guessed. Scholars may take exception with Crumb’s models for the architecture and costumes of the time, many derived from Hollywood. But there’s no arguing against the fact that Crumb has made one of the world’s greatest archetypal and symbolic sagas, from Adam to Joseph, enjoyable in its humanly purest form.–Cabbage Rabbit

The best thing about The Best American Series’ The Best American Comics is that it reminds us of comics we enjoyed a couple years ago. Anyone who stays half-way current  with alternative comics and graphic novels will have seen a good portion of what’s in each edition of this four-year old series. Still, there’s always something missed as well as something new to discover.

The latest volume, edited by Big Baby and Black Hole artist Charles Burns, fits the bill. There’s well-known stuff from the Crumbs, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Jason Lutes, Tim Hensley and Art Spiegelman, stuff we enjoyed back in the day, as well as a less easily obtained piece from Chris Ware. The Rabbit had overlooked Kevin Huizenga’s popular Ganges series. He found Huizenga’s “Pulverize”– an ironic story of the cruelties of  dot-com life and video games–to be the collection’s previously-unseen highlight. Then there’s always new material he absolutely missed (blame rabbit hole isolation) such as David Sandlin’s demented, magenta dream-work “Slumburbia” pulled from the pages of Hot Wire.

Another service The Best American Comics series provides is to remind us of what’s become tiresome. This year, it’s parodies of classic comics, complete with comic-like advertising, no matter how crude or absurd. Tim Hensley’s brightly-colored, Archie-inspired teen serial “Gropius” (three installments spread through this volume) didn’t strike us as funny this time around. Michael Kupperman’s “Indian Spirit Twain & Einstein” is a clever-enough comic-tv series spoof, drawn in classic golden age style, that plays too far past its initial couple of pages. This stuff’s been done before and better by Ware, Spiegelman and others all the way back to Harvey Kurtzman.

In the past, the guest-editor’s introduction has often served up insight into craft and creation. Burns’ piece, disappointingly,  is standard bio fare. We learn that his father collected comics and that his parents succumbed when, as a child, he demanded all six volumes of the Tintin saga published in the U.S. by the Golden Press. We’d never realized that Olympia, Washington’s Evergreen State College was a comic breeding ground, but Burns, Matt Groening and previous series editor Lynda Barry were all there at the same time. The story of Burns’ association with Spiegelman shows that the mentor-student relationship is as rewarding to comic illustrators as it is to other artists.

We all knew that The Best American Comics, always published in time for the holiday gift  cycle, is best suited for the casual and non-comic reading public. But it serves a purpose–or two–for fans as well.–Cabbage Rabbit

It’s fitting–or maybe ironic– that Fahrenheit 451,  favorite of high school librarians everywhere, has been turned into a graphic novel. About half-way through Ray Bradbury’s familiar story of a world where books are put to the torch, Fire Captain Beatty tells the story’s wavering central character, Guy Montag, how books went wrong.  “Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater,” explains Beatty. ” No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive.”

Fahrenheit 451 evolved from a number of incarnations, or so Ray Bradbury tells us in his introduction to this new edition (Bradbury’s intro  makes the new book worthwhile even to those of its fans who might think the comic treatment sacrilege).  It’s premise, as any high school student from the last 50 years will tell you, is that books and the ideas they contain can be subversive and a challenge to authority. Firemen, no longer needed for their namesake purpose since the invention of fire-proof buildings, go about torching books and occasionally their readers. A mechanical hound,  symbol of evil technology, sniffs out and brings down. When Francois Truffaut’s movie of the same name came out in 1994 (minus the hound but with Julie Christie), Bradbury said the book wasn’t so much about censorship as it was about television destroying our desire to read. In the era of flat screens, Blackberries and iPhones, his message seems more heated even as Kindle and other e-machines seek to throw water on the flames.

Illustrator Tim Hamilton’s visualization of Fahrenheit may make it even more attractive to high school readers. With Bradbury’s blessing, Hamilton has skillfully distilled the story, paraphrasing or quoting the original verbatim, and illustrating it with panels that speak to contrast: fleur-de-lis flames against black backgrounds, dark figures against flaming umber backgrounds. Every panel is serious and to the point. Much of what’s seen  is presented, appropriately enough, in blacks, grays and twilight blues. Light and flame almost seem alive. Hamilton has a great sense of  suggestion and symbology. When Beatty and Montag have their discussion on the demise of the written word, Beatty’s pipe smoke swirls around the characters like a snake.

By turning the  story into a cartoon, Hamilton has neutralized some of the original’s hamminess. Re-reading the original for comparison, the Rabbit found the illustrated adaption more to his liking if only because it did away with some of the gravity and heavy-handed sermonizing that’s endemic to science fiction in general. No doubt, all those spinning high schoolers will find the graphic adaption more to their liking as well.–Cabbage Rabbit

The Rabbit thought he’d caught a superhero–book jacket designer and author Chip Kidd– in a contradiction. In a recent interview for the New York Times‘ “The Moment” blog, Kidd discusses how the cover he designed for The Dark Knight Returns can be seen in any comic book store “instantly at 200 paces.” That coupled with interviewer George Gene Gustine’s intro lines that the old adage not to judge a book by its cover goes out the door in comic books stores spurred us to recall that Kidd once said, “I’m very much against the idea that the cover will sell the book.”  But apparently he doesn’t hold that belief when it comes to comics. I know for a fact that I often buy comics on the strength of their covers with no clue to where the story inside might lead.

Comics may be books but they are marketed in a completely different fashion due to serialization, their graphics, format and their audience. I’ve no doubt–and no way of knowing for sure–that Kidd’s belief that covers are less important than content holds true for comics. He’s  been known to make statements against the publishers’ notion that covers really do sell books. And it’s really no contradiction to be proud of a cover that will grab attention at 200 paces, especially if what’s inside deserves the attention the cover draws. The covers Kidd designed for his own novels–The Learners is now out in paperback– are at once clever and attractive.  And I’ve appreciated the design of his inter-connected stories as well as their literary content.

As is often the case, what’s most interesting about the Times blog-interview are the comments. A couple commentors complain about all the attention Kidd gets. One, who signs the post “de Kooning”– criticizes the Times for its failure to cover “break-out” art. This is a common complaint about big media of all kinds: it seldom knows what’s new and exciting in the wide and active world of culture. They rely on small media–alternatives, blogs and low-culture riff-raff publications–to discover and champion it for them. At a time when there’s much groundbreaking comic work out there, say David Mazzucchelli Asterios Polyp (its cover certainly wouldn’t grab you at 200 paces), it seems the Times, as usual has chosen to tell us something we already know (the Kidd interview is tied into an appearance at a local appearance, another time-honored motivator for newspaper coverage) . Sure, those-in-your-face comic covers sporting exaggerated superhero physiques (wouldn’t Wonder Woman’s pendulous bosoms make it hard to throw a punch?) play to the kind of fantasies that we’ve always loved about comics (an excpetion: the boyish Robin  with his exagerrated skininess, on the cover of Batman and Robin No. 10). But we want what’s truly different and innovative to be recognized as well.–Cabbage Rabbit