The Trouble with Zombies in The Walking Dead

Zombies are a great metaphor for ceaseless, senseless violence.  An expert in all things pop-cultural, Simon Pegg has an excellent introduction to Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead Volume 1, in which he makes the case for the extreme metaphorical malleability of zombies.

Unlike other supernatural undead creatures in fantasy fiction, there is no clear consensus as to the properties of zombies.  Unless you are reading Stephanie Meyer, vampires are always pale night dwellers who drink human blood and can be defeated by a quick stab to the heart with a wooden stake.  They generally represent things like sexual desire, coming in through the windows at night and draining people of their innocence.  Zombie, though, are much simpler and thus more problematic as metaphors.  As the title of the above mentioned comic and TV show simply puts it: zombies are the walking dead.  Reanimated corpses that simply consume until their brains are completely destroyed.  

Beyond being dead and needing a brain, there is not much consensus as to what a zombie can do.  Some can run, some just stumble along; some have increased senses, some are essentially mindless killing machines; some are unnaturally strong, some can be wrestled down by an average man or woman.  And this is not necessarily across media, but within one work.  

For example, take arguably the most popular piece of zombie fiction, AMC's adaptation of Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic.  In the first season, some of the original camp has made their way to the top of a building in Atlanta (a department store, if I am not mistaken).  There are two sets of glass double doors between the Rick and company, and the horde of undead (and it is a horde) outside.  Eventually, the horde pushes through the doors and gains access to the building.  It's not shown exactly how they gain entrance, but it can be assumed they pushed hard enough to either crack the glass or to rip the door off it's hinges (or break the locks, though that seems less likely, since locks are meant to precisely not do that).  

Later in that same season, when T-Dogg (may God watch over his soul) dropped the keys to Merle's handcuffs, leaving him trapped on the roof, he barres the heavy metal door with a chain.  When the company returns to the roof to rescue Merle, the chain remains unbroken and the door on it's hinges.  Apparently, these doors are more difficult to break.  Or Merle, who cut his hand off, escaped before they could.  When T-Dog was explaining himself to Daryl, there was a note of concern as to how well the door would hold up.

In the second season, Lori flips her car when she madly searches for Rick, Glenn and Hershel.  While passed out, a couple of zombies find her trapped in the car and attempt to make a meal of her.  One finds a hole in the tempered glass of the windshield and pushes so forcefully against it that his face rips off and the glass starts to shatter further.  Again, this is not just any glass, but the treated glass used for windshields, which is meant to take quite a beating.  That the zombie has pushed through is fairly impressive, not just as a feat of strength, but also a sign of how determined they are to reach living flesh.  

In this season, what remains of the small groups has made their way to a prison.  Behind two chain link fences, the survivors can leave in relative safety from the walking horde of ever-consuming zombies that stumble around the edges.  This, though, is problematic: the zombies have shown that, as a horde, there are few things that can stop them.  Their hunger for flesh supersedes their pain tolerance (which as dead things, is remarkably high).  They will just push and push and push until they get where they want to go.  Especially if there is something tasty living thing to eat on the other end.  It would seem to me that the horde would bunch up at the entry point and the sheer mass of the zombies pushing against the fence (a chain link fence, mind you, which does not secure the doors deep into the ground) would cause it to break.  The glass of the department store and Lori's car window couldn't stand up to the walkers, but suddenly a chain link fence can?  As this video shows here, even the weight of one heavy set teenager who makes bad decisions in his life can bend the support posts of a fence.  The combined weight of several dozen zombies unceasingly pushing against a similar fence, even one fortified against outbreaks, would eventually bend.  

Also, in the prison, Rick and the other survivors manage to lock the fence using carabiners and chains (not particularly strong chains at that).  At one squeeze point in the prison, there is a sliding chain link fence (probably the weakest of the fencing options) held closed by just such a contraption.  Now, assuming they did find climbing grade carabiners in the zombie infested wasteland of Southern Georgia, these would be able to hold, for brief periods, around 21 kN or 4,725 lbs.  As this article from Boy's Life notes, though, carabiners are not made to withstand constant pressure and are more for safety sake, such as when rock climbing.  In the prison, these are as good as fortified steel doors, tightly padlocked shut.  

Which, then, is it?  Are zombies so focused on eating humans that they will literally walk through doors to get at anything alive?  Or can you simply hold them off with a good fence, some chain and some carabiners?  As metaphors, they certainly can still be useful.  What The Walking Dead needs to remember is what their zombies can do.  This is why the Twilight books upset so many vampire fans: they bucked convention when it complicated the plot.  That is, it would be hard for Bella to meet Edward in high school if he couldn't go outside in the day time.  In a similar vein, if a horde of zombies can push through anything, then they shouldn't be stopped simply by latching a gate shut.

The White Trail by Fflur Dafydd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book for my sister as a Christmas present this past year.  I was studying in Wales at the time, and as I like to get books for her, I felt something particularly Welsh was a good fit.  That was really all I knew about it.  After she finished, she passed it along to me.

So, to say I was surprised is a bit of an understatement.  I really knew nothing of this book, this author, or the original story that it re-imagines.  What I found was a really engaging story by a really talented author.

The whole series, New Tales of the Mabigonion, is a collection of medieval Welsh fairy tales reshaped for a modern audience.  That is, the old characters are given a modern face-lift with new settings, new jobs and new(ish) stories.  Their core, however, was meant to remain the same.  The core of the story - the moral of the tale, if you will - remains the same.

What I was most impressed by was Dafydd's voice.  There is a poetry and ease of narration to the book.  Some of the descriptions are elegant and well-formulated, the word choice is immaculate, and the narrator easily slips and moves through time and space.  I felt like the narrator was genuinely concerned for the central character, Cilyiad, and that the narrator did a good job of showing the lost befuddlement which he seemed to walk through life covered in.  In short, the story was quite engaging and quite well-written.

I have two concerns: 1) The book had a lot of Welsh names in it which I was not really sure how to pronounce.  This is my own fault, mind (it's not the author's job to know that I can't read Welsh names), but a pronunciation guide would have been helpful.  I'm sure that, even to some native Welsh, Gwelw is a hard name to pronounce (and that was one of the shorter ones).  Yes, I get that the book was to be connected to the original tale and I am sure the names were left unmolested.  I understand that choice artistically; I just would have liked a little help is all.  2) The book was not very long, I found myself tearing through the book, due in part to the author's style and in larger part to the generous margins and spacing.  At £8.99 (or roughly $14), I felt like I was owed more to read.  With George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books, I was given over 800 pages for about $9.00 (¢1.125 per page).  It might have been nice for the publisher, Seren, to lump some of the books together and package them so that the reader gets more for the dollar (or pound, as the case may be).

In the end, though, I was neither too put off by the use of old, hard to pronounce names, nor the price per experience.  I was really pleased, pleasantly surprised even, by the book, and I would read more from this series and from Fflur Dafydd.


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The Thing About Feminism

So, today on Twitter, thanks to @Shakestweetz, the hash tag #TellAFeministThankYou was trending.  For the most part, the tweets associated are fairly benign, with honest thanks given to women and men who have, in a personal way, taught people that it was okay to be a woman and not to accept less than anyone else gets.

Then there are, as there always are, trolls who look to derail the conversation with knowingly offensive rhetoric (or maybe not knowingly, but that is ever worse...).  Such as:

#TellAFeministThankYou if you like women dressing like men, acting like men & telling men what to do. Well I dont! 1 Timothy 2:12 #TeaParty
— Tea Party Amercan (@BarryWirth) February 12, 2013

#TellAFeministThankYou for being ugly. None of them are pretty any which ways...
— Saju (@sajupt) February 12, 2013

#TellAFeministThankYou for making the female population look like psychos. I believe in equality not superiority for women.
— Baileigh Bailey (@baileigh_bw) February 12, 2013

And probably my personal favorite asinine comment so far today:

#TellAFeministThankYou for creating chaos in our families.Thanx for the divorce rate, thanx for unwed mothers. thanx for abortion. thanx!!
— myspace (@henry_fork) February 12, 2013

What I love about these frankly idiotic tweets is how far off they mark they land.  It seems to me that the underlying argument here is that feminism, in arguing for equal rights for women, has undermined other's agendas/natural rights/what-have-you.  It would seem feminism can be blamed for the unnatural act of speaking a woman's mind, wearing pants, divorce, abortion, failing families, etc. etc.

Obviously, this is wrong, particularly the evils in society that are blamed on feminists, like divorce and abortion.  To claim that feminism causes divorce and leads to women wanting abortions fails to remember that abortions and divorce have been happening for quite a bit longer than people have called themselves feminists.  Or maybe we can retroactively declare anyone who wanted a divorce is really a feminist.  Henry VIII is thrilled, I'm sure.  He held the tenets of feminism close to his heart.

That's an interesting point here: the tenets of feminism, like those of the Occupy Movement and wide-reaching philosophies, are often misunderstood, and actually a difficult thing to discuss.  There are a lot of different feminists and each prescribes to a different type of feminism.  There are feminists that are interested in equal pay for equal work; there are feminist interested in reproductive rights for women (both nationally and internationally); some are more interested in other forms of subjugation, such as the use of burkas in some Islamic communities; some are interested in recognizing that motherhood and maternal work as an equal and valid form of contribution to society (since most things valued in capitalist society have a direct monetary value, this is a worthwhile cause); and so on and so on.  It simply is invalid to blame all feminists for what any one feminist believes, just like it would be wrong to blame all Americans for what one American has done, or all Republicans for what some Republicans believe, etc.

There are as many central tenets to feminism as there are feminists, but the core value is equality.  No feminist worth her (or his salt...but, for the sake of brevity, I will generally use "her" as a pronoun here, where that encompases all feminist of any gender) salt honestly argues that women are superior to men, and that the patriarchy should be substituted for a matriarchy.  There are some who make such obviously asinine claims, but their connection to the feminists is tenuous at best (much like the KKK's connection to the "American Dream" is tenuous, or the connection between German nationalism and the Nazis).  Feminism is interested in shedding light on the inequalities faced by women, and how those inequalities could be balanced.

Now, I'd like here to state, for the record, that I don't necessary count myself a feminist.  It's also important to remind you dear readers that this is not a binary opposition; that is, because I don't count myself a feminist doesn't mean I associate myself with anti-feminists (or that I am against feminists).  I am uncomfortable with the label is all.  I consider myself more of a secular humanist (or a Humanist) or an egalitarian, since my interest in equality has less a focus on gender and more on the indifference between people of all stripes.

That said, I can respect and appreciate what the feminist do.  After all, when we argue that one section of society needs to be treated fairly, that sheds light on some imbalances felt across gender, racial or religious lines.  For example, by raising the debate that women are not treated fairly in the work place, it also raises the question of who else might not be treated fairly (such as racial or sexual minorities).  After all, if society can accept that women should have an equal voice, then similar arguments can be made for others.

Equality for one is equality for all.  (Did someone famous say that?  It sounds like something someone smarter said.)

Actually, it's only by recognizing are enforcing differences that the turmoil mentioned in the tweets above really rises to the surface.  It was by treating black people as inferior people that lead to the slave uprisings and the disputes central to the Civil War; had men offered women equal voices long ago, the Women's Suffragists would not have had to rise up as they did.  In fact, a lot of problems in the world would simply dissolve if, as a common people sharing one planet, we recognized the rational ability of all people.

That sentiment above can slip down the slippery slope of bad rhetoric towards some sort of social relativism, where people will wrongfully claim that if everyone is equal everyone's opinion is equally right.  To be sure, such a relativistic claim would lead to the anarchy of too many cooks in the social kitchen.  Luckily, like all slippery slope arguments, there is no basis for it.

Again, what I am stressing here is that all people have the ability to think critically and analytically about the given problems in society.  That does not mean that everyone is equally trained to do just that.  I've spent the better part of 26 years in school (i.e., my whole life save those first five lazy ones where I learned to walk and talk outside of any institutional support).  I've studied the English language extensively, and can speak with great authority about literature in English.  What I can't do, though, is explain why I universe works the way it does.  Any argument or solution I pose to the problems of the universe is invalid because I cannot buttress my claims with well-reasoned supports.   The same is true of profoundly difficult economic theories, the traces of history, higher order mathematical issues, and so on.  Certainly, in day-to-day conversations, I can talk about why supply-side economics is problematic as a national economic model based on the populist research I've done, but that hardly makes me an expert and hardly supports my bid to be Chief Economic Adviser of the Universe.

What feminism suggests is that women should not be excluded from any conversation simply because they are women.  A well-trained woman is equal to a well-trained man when the chips are down.  And thus by extension, the reverse (or any other well-trained person of any persuasion).

Everyone should thank the feminist, as well as any other group which struggles for the acceptance and equality of minorities, for paving the way toward equality for everyone.  It would seem to me the only ones resisting that notion are people who sit in power now and would like to hold it without explaining why.  Or in other words, lazy bullies.

Thanks feminists.  Keep doing what you do so well.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the interest of full disclosure, I really like the HBO series of the same name, and have seen all of seasons 1 and 2, eagerly awaiting season 3, before I read the first book. Generally, that's not how I like to do things, but...well...these books are long.

But, I finally got around to reading the first book of the series, and I honestly was not much surprised. The book and the TV show are very similar, though, like in most things, the book offers more detail in places, and a different, often shifting perspective. The major plot points are all there and all the same. So, in the end, I was not surprised.

That said, I liked the book. What I think Martin has done with this series is marry the mystery novel to the adventure novel, and he's done so in perfect harmony. There is a lot of intrigue as to what has happened before the novel starts and a lot of clues that the reader has to follow to piece together some sort of agenda for the characters. This book is one hard-boiled detective away from a Raymond Chandler novel. And it's none the poorer for that. A lot of adventure novels, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Hobbit, lack surprise. Certainly, we all hold our breath and wonder how the assembled armies at Helm's Deep are going to survive the massive onslaught of orcs, but most adventure novels end with the characters winning. The book would have taken a much darker, nihilistic turn had the Rohirrim and Elvish armies had been slaughtered, leaving only the intrepid Hobbits to stand against the combined forces of Sauron and Sauroman. In these fantasy novels, the point is not so much the struggle, but the toll that struggle takes on the characters. Frodo is a changed Hobbit at the end of that quest, like Bilbo before him. The loss of innocence is the greatest loss of that adventure, and now he can never go back.

In Game of Thrones, the adventure is there (armies, fighting, etc.), but there is also this looming mystery: why did John Arryn die? What about the Baratheon bastards frightens the Lannisters? How long has this plot been going on to seize the throne? What are these dragons? The reader has to put these things together while reading about the adventure of the Seven Kingdoms. And again, there are plenty of those: Robb leads the Northern Armies, Arya trys to escape the city once her family's favor collapses, John's struggle against the Others, Tyrion's escape from the Eyrie, and so on. What is not clear is why all of this is happening.

Another of Martin's strengths is how fully realized his characters become. In the end, these characters were not just flat stereotypes fulfilling roles to advance the plot; these were well-rounded characters who I felt almost friendly toward. I could identify with Ned's struggle between honor and friendship, I could understand Tyrion's conflict between family and doing the right thing, I felt Robb's hesitance at leading an army all he wanted to do was be a kid. Martin has a way of connecting and humanizing characters, even though they all fight with swords, live in castles and exist in a world where dragons, magic and giants are all real things.

But, all of this aside, the book was not the most elegantly written. For all of it's strengths, and there were a lot, Martin's style left a lot to be desired. He often just told you how character's felt rather than developing these feelings through action. There is an odd focus on the clothing worn and the decorations on armor. There seems to be a lot of superfluous sex scenes (particulary with Daenerys and Drogo and even more particularly near the end of the book). But these minor issues did not really get in the way of my enjoyment of the book. That is, though I felt like the book could have had a more sophisticated syntax and style, I didn't feel that Martin's style detracted too much from the text (unlike in the books of Dan Brown, where I felt like he has tons of interesting ideas and stories, but the writing is so bad I couldn't stomach the narrative).

I know that fantasy novels aren't for everyone and that my soft-spot for the genre leads me to like this book more than some might (after all, when I was a kid, I almost exclusively read D&D novels), but I would still suggest this novel to anyone. Not just fans of books with knights and dragons, but anyone who likes a good story. Underneath all the armor plating and intrigues of court, this is just a good story about how people's conflicting desires will often put those around them in horrible situations.


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Women, Body Image and Game of Thrones

In Columbiana, Zoe Saldana was an assassin who went on a solo killing spree, massacring hundreds of crime lords in Latin America.  In Tomb Raider, Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft raided crypts using her ninja abilities and two blazing guns.  Carrie Ann Moss in The Matrix helped Neo overcome the robot apocalypse both in reality and the virtual world.  Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry and Anne Hathaway all played the anti-hero/villain Catwoman (one better than the others, but that is a conversation for later), traipsing about on screen in skin tight clothing.  Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow, Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Emily Browning as Babydoll in Suckerpunch.  All of these women were strong, brave women who used there mental and physical strength of overcome adversities.

Also, all the above women overcame these adversities while looking amazing.

Halle Barry doing her best with a terrible movie.

Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft listens...and waits.

Carrie Anne Moss as Trinity, either missing a punch or with a wicked follow through.

Despite all being extremely attractive, these women have nearly impossible body shapes, especially considering the impossible physical tasks they undertake.  Compare any of the gymnastic women in these films to the actual gymnasts that compete in the Olympics, and the difference are startling.

Shawn Johnson and some thighs that could kick ass.  

Furthermore, let's compare these women in real-time.  First, this clip from one of the Tomb Raider movies in which Lara Croft fights a robot:  

Compare that to the above pictured Shawn Johnson performing some routines at various gymnastic events (meets?  games?  I don't really know much about gymnastics):

Unlike Hathaway in the Batman movie or Moss in the Matrix trilogy, Jolie at least wears industrial work boots, which are more apropos for fighting robots.  That aside, it is hard to believe that she could perform the string of back flips and other aerial maneuvers with her body.  Johnson is all tightly packed muscle and needs to be in order to do what she does.  And she is not an anomaly.  Look at any woman athlete, such as female boxers, soccer players, and so on.  The evidence is there: physical activity requires a certain body shape.  One which female action heroes simple don't have.  

Men, in the same role, are never shown to be anything but rippling sacks of muscle.  Just look at Tom Hardy portraying Bane:

It looks like he's smuggled grapefruits in his shoulders.

Bane was strong, stronger even than Batman.  So, Tom Hardy, who got beefed up for the MMA movie, Warrior, was the obvious choice seeing as he was built like a Mac Truck with a head.  Robert Downey Jr. in Iron-Man and The Avengers bulked up.  Chris Evans did the same for Captain America.  Chris Hemsworth was already massive when he was cast as Thor.  Matt Damon put on muscle for The Bourne movies.  The same for Daniel Craig in the Bond films.  And the list goes on and on.

This is a hot topic among gender studies scholars, and I want it to be clear that I am not one of those people.  There could be a lot said here about the objectification of both women and men, who these ideal bodies are hardly realistic, and what this phenomenon does to the minds and esteems of men and women, boys and girls everywhere.  I'm sure someone more familiar with the scholarship could make far more cogent answers to the above queries.

Instead of that prickly conversation, I want to look at Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones (note: I have only read, or rather am reading, Book 1 of the massive set, so what I am pulling from is the TV show; though, in my experience, the TV show draws most of it's characterizations from the book, so I imagine there will be a lot of parallel).  Compared to the women above, I find her extremely interesting.  Watch this clip below where she beats the Knight of the Flowers in a head-to-head melee: 

Played by Gwendoline Christie, who stands at 6'3" and was at one time a gymnast, Brienne is portrayed in the show always in full armor and as a physical presence.  She is impressive as a warrior, both technically proficient and strong as an ox.  Throughout the two seasons currently on air, she beats the best knights out there, kills dozens of guards, and lands a job that would honor any knight.  She is physical power embodied.  She would need to be in order to pick up Loras Tyrell and slam him to the ground or, as she does later, to be the only guard watching over Jamie Lannister , the famed and feared knight who is called Kingslayer, as the two make their way to King's Landing.

There have been others like Brienne on TV, such as Xena the Warrior Princess, though women like this are few and far between.  What is different about Game of Thrones is that Brienne is not the only woman who challenges the concept of femininity.  Several of the other characters equally shun the roles society has defined for them.  Arya, the Stark's youngest daughter takes up sword fighting in the Braavosi style and refuses to give into the role that highborn life has forced on her (in a really interesting turn, Arya is often confused for a boy, and constantly is fighting for people to see her both as a young warrior and a young woman).  Daenerys proves, more than her hot headed and petulant brother, to be the last dragon in the world, and when he marriage to Drogo (a massive man in his own right) fails to procure her a crown, she takes on the charge all her own.  

How these portrayal alters the discussion above regarding depictions of femininity and idealization are for better gender scholars than myself.  For me, it's refreshing to see strong female characters that are also built like strong women.

The Thing About Famous People

In 1993, Scott McCloud published what would become one of the most important, if not THE most important, book in American comic criticism.  Understanding Comics laid the ground work for critical discussion regarding comics.  In the years since, McCloud has become a bit of a celebrity as probably the most cited critic in comic studies.  He's written two other books, toured the country discussing comics, and now makes his living as one of the most trusted and knowledgeable figures in the world of comic criticism (though, he does have a new comic coming out soon, which is very exciting and reconnects him to his Zot! roots).

20 years ago, he presented Understanding Comics at one of the first Comic Arts Conferences, which is held in conjunction with the San Diego Comic Con.  To celebrate the 20th anniversary, the CAC organizers asked him to respond to some papers that have carried out what he started with Understanding Comics, one of which was my own paper on words and comics.

I was incredibly nervous to be on a panel with McCloud, especially because my paper sort of looked to alter some of the claims McCloud made in Understanding Comics (or, more baldly put, I took issue with how McCloud and others defined comics).  More so, though, McCloud is a legend in my field.  Arguably, the most popular and well known name in comic criticism (though, John Lent, Joseph Witek and David Kunzle, all legends in their own right, were also there).  This guy...this guy who made what I do possible...was going to talk about my paper.  I worried he would look at me like a disappointing child, making noises and trying to draw undeserved attention to himself.  

On Saturday, I arrived early, set up my Prezi (which is quite sexy), and waited for the other panelist (most notably, McCloud himself).  McCloud showed up quite early, and luckily I got the chance to sit and talk with him.  I was really nervous about saying something stupid, and a bit nervous that he might see this whole exercise as beneath him.  But really, McCloud was nothing but a genuinely nice person.  We chatted for a while before I became the star-eyed fanboy that I am capable of becoming, and asked him to sign one of my copies of Understanding Comics, which he did without complaint.  

After my paper, and during his remarks, McCloud has a lot of nice things to say about my paper (amid some critical questions, as well...it wasn't all softballs), and afterwards, he thanked me, genuinely, for being a part of the panel.  Really, the honor was all mine.  Having someone like that respond directly to my work is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I was really pleased with how McCloud handled the situation. 

Later, on the floor of Comic Con, there are hundreds of booths in which lots of published authors and artists sign their work, do individual sketches and chat with fans.  This is my favorite part of Comic Con: getting to meet the professionals that do the work I spend so much time analyzing.  Some professionals can be a little standoffish, and I was not immediately impressed with Jaimie Hernandez, who practically ignored me while signing a copy of Love and Rockets #2.  Alex Ross, another legend in the field for his painted pages tends to sell his art work (for THOUSANDS of dollars) from a massive booth with leather sofas and curators in suits.  

And then there was Eddie Campbell.  The tall Scottish artist and author had a hand in the very excellent From Hell, which he illustrated for Alan Moore.  Campbell's frantic artwork, in contrast to the strict, regimented frame count, was as essential to creating the contained chaotic feel of the book.  As I was browsing his section of the Top Shelf booth, he asked me if I liked his work.  I said I did, and we got to talking about how I appreciated his art work, and thought that he, more than any of the other artists Moore has worked with, greatly affected the feel - the mood - of the narrative.  He was genuinely interested and asked if he could read my paper I've kicked around about this topic anywhere (which, as of right now, he can't).  We talked for a while, and I got him to sign a copy of Alec: The Years Have Pants.  Most of the other artists for Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly, and :01Second Books were similarly quite easy to talk to and appreciative of anyone who wanted to talk.  Brecht Evens, who I signed my copy of The Wrong Place at the Drawn & Quarterly booth, took time to illustrate a childhood memory I had in water colors on the title page (also check out Night Animals, which was quite excellent).  

Now, granted, these are people of limited fame.  Had they not been wearing name tags, I would not have recognized any of them but McCloud.  This might account for their more human nature than most other famous people.  Lou Ferrigno, for example, was rarely at his booth and charge $40 to take a photo with him, even if you had your own camera.  I've heard equally unflattering stories about other big name TV and movie stars that make appearances and sign memoribilia.  [In contrast, though, Matt Groening (who was walking through the Drawn & Quarterly booth when I was waiting for Brecht Evens to sign my book) seemed to have an ease with the crowd.  I didn't approach him, though I think I might have made a suggest for Moomin, so I can't speak much more to his dealings with people.]

The people I met above, though, are similarly people who have known some relative success.  Certainly more than I have known.  These are people who have created critically acclaimed art and stories, who have had some critical and financial success in what they do.  I am, by comparison, a nobody.  Just a fan, interested in their work.  Still, they took the time to interact with me.  Again, it is a large part of what I love about Comic Con. 

Maybe what Eddie Campbell and Brecht Evens realize is that it is the fans that make these conventions, and the relative popularity of these artists, authors, actors and personalities famous.  It's my money and interest, like the money and interest of hundreds of thousands of similar fans, that keeps comics and other popular culture ventures afloat today.  This is what I think Lou Farrigno has lost sight of: it's not anything inherent in his person that makes people want to take picture with him - it's the one moment in our collective consciousness in which he played the Hulk.  Had he not done that, he would be just another big bodied actor that no one knew about.

Maybe I am super jaded so when these creators show appreciation and a bit of humanity I find it surprising.  There are so many people of dubious talent that cast unflattering lights on genuinely talented people that makes me tentative to talk to someone famous (I'm looking at you, Lindsey Lohan).  It was nice to see and talk with genuinely interesting, talented people who were not above talking to the people that made them famous.  It was a nice experience and I was really happy to get the opportunity to talk with these people and look forward to what I bought from them. 

Holy Pretentiousness, Batman...

Let's get it out there right now, before I get into the crux of this entry and people descend upon me with claims of preference: I love Marvel comics, and not ironically or nostalgically.  I love to read Marvel comics, and some of the best writing in comics comes out of this huge publisher of superhero comics.  But I also love to read other comics, too.  Like anyone with any credibility in comics criticism, I firmly believe that Art Spiegelman's Maus is as important to the history of the form as any Superman or Spider-Man comic out there.  As far as I am concerned, comics are comics are comics.

That said, there seems to be this belief that I want to squash here and now.  Some people claim that comics with spandex superheroes are only popular with children or with nostalgic older fans (see Matthew Putsz's Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers for a long and elitist detailing of a cross-section of Putsz's experience in comic shops).  There is a pervasive claim that comics like Maus, Persepolis (by Marjane Satrapi), Palestine (by Joe Sacco), and other such books are for adults, and Marvel and DC (sometimes Image and Dark Horse), comics with superheroes, are for children.

This is the most aggravating claim that anyone can make about comics, and I feel it's my duty as a comic critic to show this claim for what it is: pretentious, elitist claims made by those who would like to distance comics without superheroes from the history of American comics, a history that is strongly built on an empire of superheroes.  This is a claim that has dogged all new popular mediums since mediums have been new and popular.  Plato disdained writing, claiming that it degraded memory and people's oration and rhetoric suffered because of it.  The novel was original seen as flimsy in comparison to poetry, even as recently as 1849 (particularly for women, who, as the fairer sex, where seen as the target audience...take that Hemingway, author of ladies literature).  Films were not as good as plays and TV was never going to be as good as films.  And so on and so on.

This introduction is important, because I don't want any charges of prejudice leveled against me, claiming that I am some sort of nostalgic fanboy or that what I love is the trashy, simple joy of comics.  I am by no means a "comicbook guy" similar to the same named character from the Simpsons.  In fact, I am woefully under-read in a lot of the Marvel and, more so, the DC Universes.  I like that Marvel has a massive, expansive Universe, complete with it's own history, but it's not why I continually return to it. What I love about Marvel is the story telling.  I like Marvel comics the same way that I like science fiction, fantasy or some other type of genre fiction: the escapist narrative that sheds light on my own existence.

It seems the overarching problem with superhero comics is, as so many seem to claim, that the story telling is subpar or that the artwork is sloppy or too polished (as if something could be too well drawn, colored and lettered...).  While this is certainly true for some superhero comics, this seems to be a bold statement to make about the entire genre.  Superhero comics, like all genre fiction, are judged by its worst examples.  A while back, Molly Templeton quoted Lev Grossman in her Twitter feed raising this exact concern about genre fiction: "You wouldn’t want to judge literary fiction on the basis of its mediocrities. So why judge genre fiction that way?" This question strikes at the heart of the issue here: why should all superheroes comics, and all comics for that matter, be judged based on some examples that were less than stellar.  People still read novels even though some novels are not as good (see Snooki's novel or the series of novels by Nicole Richie [Richie gets her own author page on Amazon she has so many novels]).  Still, people buy and read novels by more respected authors, or some might say better authors.

In order to differentiate between the novels that are worth reading, and those that are worth burning in lean times to stay warm, people toss a lot of labels around: genre fiction, pop-fiction, literary fiction, etc.  The things that are not good get lumped under one of a plethora of labels, and "good" books are literary fiction.

Yes...there are certainly differences between Nicole Richies' self-indulgent novels about rich people, diamonds and heiresses, and say Ulysses by James Joyce, which is self-indulgent in it's own ways.   And I am certainly not suggesting that we should not make claims about which one is better.  What I want is to stop lumping all books with similar content together, and judging the entire lot by the worst examples.

This has been happening for ages in science fiction and detective novels.  Authors like Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke have long been saddled with the label "science fiction", and are lumped together with the cheap, poorly written pulp fiction paperbacks popular in the early 20th century (though, even some of those are not all that poorly written, even, I might add, good).  There is no denying that some science fiction...SOME...is quite terrible.  But it would be a massively sweeping generalization to claim that all books which set the story in the future are terrible.  Occasionally, as with Bradbury, the Literary Elite will begrudgingly accept that certain work maybe, might, just possibly in the right light and context, be good enough to read alongside the "canon" of literary excellence that starts with Beowulf and goes through Joyce.

Now, at the crest of legitimization, where comics seem poised to break through the collective consciousness ("break through again" is actually more accurate; any scholar of comicbook/American history might note that, at one point, comicbooks were the most dominate media in America with over a million regular readers monthly for certain titles), there seems to be an effort to segregate "good" examples of literary comics from "bad" examples of genre comics, with superheroes falling into that last category.

Like with science fiction, detective fiction, steam punk fiction, and fantasy, critics begrudgingly make certain exceptions, and Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen are trotted out by comic critics as the "acceptable" superhero comics.  There is no doubt that these books are really good (though I have a hard time reading Miller's work as critical of any establishment after his Occupy Oakland rant), but they are not the only ones that are good.

Now, it's not my intention to go through a litany of other texts that should be added to the canon of "good" superhero fiction.  Instead, I want to question the validity of sectioning off all superhero comics under one label and judging the whole lot as one unit, save a few "good" examples.  It probably should be enough of an argument that at least two comics have garnered critical attention AND featured superheroes (Batman, in fact, being the second super hero ever created), but to take this one step further, I want to examine a recent Wall Street Journal article, "Worst Comic Book Ever!" by Tim Marchman a thinly veiled review of Leaping Tall Buildings that instead tries to explain the popularity of The Avengers film and how that film does not reflect on the medium as a whole.

Marchman seeks out to explain why superhero comics are not as popular as their filmic counterparts.  He begins:

In its first three weeks in domestic theaters, "The Avengers" has taken in almost half a billion dollars. According to the calculations of people who care about such things, this has it on pace to become one of the three highest grossing movies ever. Soon, Hollywoodland will inflict on the world new Spider-Man and Batman films that might make even more money than "The Avengers."...You might thus assume that superhero comics, the original properties on which these franchises are built, are in flush times. They aren't. The upper limit on sales of a superhero comic book these days is about 230,000; just two or three series routinely break into six digits. Twenty years ago, during the comic industry's brief Dutch-tulip phase, hot issues of "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" sold millions.

It's interesting, first, that he flippantly dismisses the box office revenue from the Avengers film while simultaneous holding up the comic sales figures as a sign of hard times.  It doesn't seem that the "almost half a billion dollars" equates artistic success, but the "[t]he upper limit on sales of a superhero comic book these days is about 230,000" shows how the industry is failing. [As a side note, I wonder how many books sell 230,000 copies...]

But I digress...he goes on to claim that comics are "clumsily drawn, poorly written and incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in years of arcane mythology", and this is why they are not popular today, even as the form seems (again) poised on the brink of cultural acceptance, and America hungrily snaps up all the superheroes it can in film form.

He is right: the mythology of superhero comics is dense and can seem impenetrable, even to those who are interested in it.  In my own experience, I have no idea what happened to the X-Men.  I used to read them in the early 90s, then drifted away.  But when I returned with Joss Wheddon and John Cassaday's very excellent Astonishing X-Men, I have yet to piece together what has happened, and I don't really know where to start.  I went through the House of M trade paperback, and get that a lot of mutants were conveniently eliminated in one of the most baldly "Deus-ex-Machina" of devices.  How to connect the two, though, is fuzzy.  I could dump a lot of hours into reading various lists and suggestions for assembling the history of the X-Men, but honestly, my interest hasn't been piqued yet.  For now, I am fine reading just Astonishing X-Men even after Wheddon and Cassaday handed the reigns to Warren Ellis and several other artists.

Access to the Universe can be daunting, and if someone wanted to go into a comic store, pick up an Avengers comic to casually see where the movie stems, this person would be faced with a wall of single issues, collections in hardback and paperback, and cross-over series in which the team is pit against or with other teams.  There is no clear starting point, no Avengers #1, as there is with those that Marchman says are better books, like Watchmen or Walking Dead.  Comic shops are often rightly labeled as being dens of defensiveness where outsiders (non-fans) are marginalized (just like record shops of yore).  Marchman's claim that mainstream comics have given up on a general audience in favor of it's own continuity and niche of readers, and the audience in turn has given up on it is not quite untrue, but not exactly true.  The shape of superhero comics requires a more nuanced examination than Marchman gives it.

The thing is, Marvel and DC comics are not intended to be read like other books.  They are not so much single narratives that allow the reader to step in at a clearly defined beginning point and read to a clearly demarcated end.  These publishers are more like Rockstar Games or Blizzard Entertainment, in the way that both publish what is known as "sandbox" games: sprawling worlds with tons of options for narratives and linear progressions that are left to the reader to work through.  Blizzard has made quite a name for itself with World of Warcraft in which the player just exists, choosing to go on adventures, or just to hang out with friends.

Granted, playing WoW (see how hip I am) or Grand Theft Auto is a different experience to reading, but the intention is the same.  The point with sandbox games or massively multi-player, on-line role-playing communities is not to get to the end, but to enjoy the experience of the world (see Harold Goldburg's All Your Base Are Belong To Us for more on how massive games like WoW and GTA are unique narrative experiences).  To say that any of these games is less good than, say, Mario Bros. because the narrative is too expansive is to miss the point.  The Mario games, and all linear story lines, are different than Red Dead Redemption in both what they are doing, and how they perform that agenda.  What connects them is the medium used by both, but the use of that medium is what separates them.

Likewise, this is precisely what I think Marchman has done here: miss the point of Marvel and DC.  He claims that there have not been too many new characters introduced to the respective Universes in 20 years, and instead the two publishers rehash prior glory (he cites BEFORE WATCHMEN and Avengers V X-Men as two prime examples).  The BEFORE WATCHMEN issue is a whole nest of bees that is going to have to wait.  The point here is that Marvel and DC are not interested in expanding their base of characters (though, that, too is not entirely correct; there are plenty of new characters introduced in the last 20 years, but they aren't going to replace Spider-Man or Batman).  Marvel and DC want to explore what narrative possibilities exist for a set of embodied metaphors.  What is interesting to me is seeing how Iron-Man, a wealthy, powerless individual with a cool suit of armor, would deal with, say, government mandates that encroach upon individual liberties while masquerading as national security (Marvel's Civil War), or how Superman, with the power to stop anyone doing anything but who believes in restraint and individual will, would deal with the rise of violence in his own medium (DC's Kingdom Come).

I feel that Marvel, more than DC, has an interest in adapting their stock of characters to an ever-changing readership base, just like World of Warcraft is interested in updating their universe and game play options every few years.  Marvel has questioned the role the government and vigilantes play in American culture (Civil War), the concern of an overreaching and oppressive security force acting in the name of nationalism (Dark Avengers and Siege), the concerns of invasion by hostile forces while opposing sides lose sight of community goals due to polarization of rhetoric surrounding personal beliefs (Secret Invasion), a return to core values of nationality (Age of Heroes) and so on, and so on.  Captain America, who has punched Hitler in the face, is an interesting character (and by extension a metaphor) in these debates (and the careful hand of Ed Brubaker explored that metaphor in a really interesting way in the past few years). [note: the titles in italics are the overarching story-arcs; individual titles are published under and between these story arcs, so Iron-Man, for instance, will have a few comics published during Civil War and some published during Secret Invasion and so on.]

So part of what Marchman sees as a problem, as stagnation, is misunderstanding.  Misunderstanding Marvel and DC's agenda, and misunderstanding the unchanging stock of characters as unchanging character agendas and motivations, and narrative arcs.  These characters are lenses through which the reader can examine a part of their own life.  Certainly, my day to day life is free from alien invasion, super powers, and the ability to fly into outer space, so these books are different than who Marchman finds valuable: Chris Ware, Jamie Hernandez, Robert Kirkman* and others who, "By a quirk of the comics industry...deal with the stuff of real life and whose work is treasured by people who read books that have spines".  Interestingly, Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth examines the disparity between fantasy and real life; a narrative in which the title character imagines himself to having something like super powers.
[*note: Walking Dead is published by Image comics, which Marchman hails as being an "influential boutique house"; Image is famous for it's own superhero universe and was founded by Jim Lee, current DC co-head honcho, and sought out  Brian Michael Bendis, who Marchman sites as the key problem with Marvel, for his writing and art style, which he has since taken to Marvel.  It could be said that Image is just a different version of Marvel with a more differentiated catalogue and more relaxed ownership rights - but the difference in content is minimal at best.  As Marchman notes, Kirkman worked with Marvel but eventually left; Marchman asks why he would want to give Marvel the credit for his new characters, when really the question that should be asked is if Marvel wanted new characters.]

What Marchman fails to see is that superhero comics are doing the same thing as science fiction or fantasy: using one thing to reflect back on the reader.  Like Tolkien uses Hobbits to examine international relations during times of war, comics use superheroes to examine the lives of contemporary America.  So yes, Spider-Man did trade his marriage to the devil, but through this fantastical situation not too dissimilar to Goethe (who I believe is roundly believed to be pretty good), the reader can examine how he or she feels about love, relationships, and sacrifice.  To take superheroes at just face value is a problematic reading, and denies them the ability to comment on something other than themselves.  Science fiction certainly is about more than just space flights and aliens; fantasy is about more than just dragons; hell, even Ulysses is about more than a dude walking along the Thames.  Why is realistic fiction of all variety is allowed to speak to more than itself, but superhero comics, or all genre fiction, are denied this?

The answer is elitism.  Superheroes are not for everyone, creator and readers alike, but this does not mean that it is a subpar literature.  Just because someone doesn't enjoy something does not mean that thing is not worth enjoying.  When I want gritty, realist examinations of mental health issues or family dynamics, I'll reach for Nate Powell's extremely well done Swallow Me Whole or David Small's Stitches.  When I want to know how superheroes would deal with mental health issues or family dynamics, I reach for Dark Avengers or Spider-Man: Brand New Day.  One set shows me the dark, "realness" of the situation, the other explores the possibilities through a man with the proportionate strength of a spider.  One is not more valuable or adult than the other; they are just different.

And this is where I see problems with what Marchman and others like him (Dylan Horrocks, Douglas Wolk,  NPR, etc.) have claimed about superheroes: they are not ever going to be like the tightly contained stories found in other comics (including some that feature superheroes, like Planetary, Criminal, Irredeemable and so on).  They are not going to deal with societal issues and concerns in a realistic way.  They are going to be sprawling meta-narratives that use a fantasy lens to reflect back on contemporary readership.  That's what Superman was doing in 1938, lifting cars over his head and enacting justice the Great Depression-ridden readers wished they could do; it's what superheroes are doing today, punching the problems of America in the face just like we'd like to do.