Funny Books

Home for the weekend and have some thoughts about comic books.

I get one of just a few reactions whenever I mention anything related to comic books. There's smug laughter, tongue in cheek appreciation, and the one I hate the most. That's when people say, "Oh yeah, I used to read comic books when I was a kid." Most recently, a Crater Lake colleague laughed off the entire medium until I loaned her some choice contemporary books. It really got me worked up thinking about the way people could toss an entire form of expression aside. People do it sometimes with television, labeling it all crap and sporting bumper stickers like, "Kill your television." But comics get it a hell of a lot worse. Comics are like the Jew of popular media, a good analogy considering the first comic artists and writers were Jewish immigrants. Especially after reading "Understanding Comics," by Scott McCloud, which I understand Z just read as well, there's a lot to be said for the art form that in many ways is superior to any other. Legend Alan Moore put it well in an Onion interview a couple years ago:

Now, with comics, it's a much more user-friendly medium. The reader can focus
upon one panel for as long as it takes to absorb all of the information that is
there, and then move on to the next. If they want to see whether there's some
correlation between a bit of dialogue and something that happened a couple of
scenes ago, they can, in a matter of seconds, flip back. I know that we can
rerun videos, and rewind and pause and things like that, but that's not the way
you're meant to watch a film .... I feel much more in control of the finished
work. I feel like the statement that I'm making—even though it's in a medium by
no means as glamorous or as widely recognized as film—is at least the statement
that I wanted to make .... So that's basically it. I think that there are things
that comics can do which are stunning. There are things that can't be achieved
either by literature or by movies or by paintings. Just like any art form, it's
got things that it alone can do.

True and true, and so often I think of how silly people are to grow up reading X-Men and then just give up when they age beyond the acceptable funny book childhood days. Imagine someone adoring Mary Poppins as a child then scoffing at the thought of watching The Godfather because it's kid stuff. That's what these former comic book lovers are essentially doing. I'm too old for Superman, so I refuse to read Stray Bullets. Nonsense. So, here are a few currently running comics that people with any interest in the art form ought to check out:

• Sleeper, by Ed Brubaker This is an incredible book with as complex a protagonist as any I've read on glossy page. It is a superhero book, but unlike any you've read. Holden has the power to suck pain and then release it to others. This makes his sex life particularly interesting. He's a good guy pretending to be a bad guy, and hates himself for it. Look for human weakness and lots of it in a dark, noir-ish melodrama.
• Human Target, by Peter Milligan Christopher Chance has the ability to take on anyone's identity by contract. I think of Human Target as Quantum Leap, only instead of Chance going around the country doing good deeds, he shoots people with two pistols. Plotlines have included Chance impersonating a crooked banker who faked his own death after 9-11, and a 60s revolutionary-turned suburban family man.
• Stray Bullets, by David Lapham Nothing good really ever happens in Lapham's dark world of 80s urban crime and loss of innocence. But it's fun to watch tragedy after tragedy unfold.
• Queen and Country, by Greg Rucka A prescient political/spy story, about a branch of British international operatives and their assasinations, resuces and intelligence gathering. One plotline focused on the Taliban well before Sept. 11 brought Afghanistan to the forefront.
• Anything by Daniel Clowes Ghost World is best known, but David Boring and all other issues of Eight Ball are just as good if not better. Clowes' art is human emotion on paper, and his quirky stories of moral depravity and isolation rival Camus' The Stranger.

So there are some. See also: Craig Thompson's Blankets, Alan Moore's Watchmen, Frank Miller's Sin City, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets, Rob Schrab's Scud the Disposable Assassin and so on. Read comic books, watch tv and movies, read novels, poetry, short stories and epics. It's all art. Also check out this Portland account in the Wall Street Journal a while back.