Jean 'Moebius' Girard: 1938-2012

I had some more snide movie reviews all ready to go, but the passing of Jean 'Moebius' Giraud means they'll have to wait until later. If I had a black armband, I'd be wearing it right now. Mr. Giraud's passing was a truly unhappy moment for me.

In the summer of 1977, I was with my dad while he was working as a surveyor. We were in the foothills of southern Alberta, and I would wait in the truck while he was out doing his thing. Well, nosing around in the glove box, I discovered a rolled-up copy of a magazine I had never seen before. It was the American version of the French comic magazine,'Metal Hurlant'. Heavy Metal.. It was my first introduction into the world of 'adult' comics.

The one story that stuck with me, was of course, Moebius' and Dan O'Bannon's 'The Long Tomorrow'. I can honestly say that was the pivotal moment in my life that put me, for better or worse, on the current path of the primacy of art in my life. (My own 'style', such as it is, owes a huge debt to Mr. Giraud, as well as Robert Crumb.)

There was nothing, it seems, that Moebius can't draw. From pulp Westerns to fantastic flights of fancy, he renders everything in a clear, distinct line so precise, yet so effortless. You can feel the grubbiness of the world in his 'Blueberry' westerns, or in his classic anti-racism story, 'White Nightmare'. Yet even his most fantastic creations, like the world of 'The Incal' or 'The Airtight Garage' or 'The Long Tomorrow' have a connection to reality that you just don't see in any other work. When you read-I should say, drink in- a work by Moebius, you're transported to worlds unlike any that you've ever seen or will ever see again.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Giraud. I don't want to refer to him in the past tense, because really, Moebius isn't dead, is he?

(You can find a more eloquent and in-depth tribute to Moebius here: on the Comic Journal's website by Kim Thompson.)

Hi. My name is Tom, and I'm an Idiot.

Boy, it sure feels good to get that off my chest! Whoo! Let me just clarify. When I say that I'm an Idiot, I don't mean in the literal sense, that I have a low I.Q. and am only suitable for doing labour that would tax a monkey or brewery horse. I mean that I'm an Idiot in the way that there's a lot of stuff about the world that I just don't know about. Being a mammal, and thus controlled by my emotional state, I am likely to jump to erroneous conclusions based on limited or biased data. Because I am an emotional being and not a robot, I am likely to interpret the data that I am presented according to how my current world-view is at the time. I am also likely to spew forth subjective opinions based on my conclusions and my current world-view and attempt to present them as facts, like I am a fat, fact-shitting machine. When, actually, I am not.

My sole saving grace in this regard, I suppose, is that if I am confronted with further evidence that is contrary to my original opinions, and if I am capable of acknowledging my original errors in judgment, I can admit that I have made a mistake. Subsequently, once I publicly acknowledge my mistake, I can learn from my mistake, and hopefully refrain from making the same mistake again. In my case, I have found that this takes about three or four times before it sinks into my pink, gooey brain. This is because I'm an Idiot.

I'm bringing this all up because of a couple of odd events recently came up regarding the creator of 'Dilbert', the comic strip much beloved by office monkeys and cubicle drones across the world. The premise of 'Dilbert' is to point out the absurdities and contradictions of office culture for comic effect. Subsequently, Ted from Accounting has a hearty chuckle at the day's offering from Scott Adams, 'Dilbert's' creator, cuts out the strip and puts it on the bulletin board in his cubicle. Occasionally, he will look up and a slight snort of delight will issue from his lips as he recollects Adams' latest bon mot. If the day's offering is particularly trenchant, Ted will white-out a 'Dilbert' character's name, and write in the name of a co-worker, then place the altered strip in question upon the communal bulletin board. Hence, all in the environment will share in Ted's wry observation how that one character is just like Patty in Accounts Receivable, who's always on the darn copy machine. Then they all go back to being replaceable cogs in a vast, uncaring corporate machine.

I'm not a fan of 'Dilbert', obviously. Though to be fair, the office environment is a breeding ground for finding humour in the absurdities of corporate culture, and from the perspective of middle management, finding the funny in both upper management's absurd whims and those lower in the pecking order, like vendors and service personnel' clueless-ness seems to be a prime field for comedy. I imagine it's a survival tactic for the office workers in that position, as well.

Those odd events I referred to earlier were Adams' baiting his blog readers into an argument on Men's Rights issues, writing an adorable misogynist rant comparing women to spoiled children begging for candy. And getting his ass handed to him by readers of his blog, then backpedaling and claiming that he was 'trolling' his readers, and it was all a 'cunning plan' to bring up the absurdities of Men's Rights, and oh, how you silly monkeys Just Don't Get It At All. Or Scott Adams, for that matter. Then earlier this week, Adams was busted for creating a sock-puppet account on various message boards, bravely leaping to Adams' defense when his integrity or intelligence was called into question. Adams was busted, and to no one's surprise, proceeded to write up a 3,000 word justification-not an apology, mind you-about why he created a sock puppet. Who kept bringing up the 'fact' that Adams was a 'Certifiable Genius'.

The impression I'm taking away from all this is that Adams is the type of person who trains professionally for a career in Middle Management. Thus, when he creates a product that is wildly successful, (in this case, the comic strip, 'Dilbert') he assumes that his success is owing to his brilliance as a idea man and a relentless self-promoter. And not because he happened to capture a zeitgeist of documenting the absurdities of corporate culture at the right time and in the right place. Subsequently, while Adams has made mucho banko off his merchandising from 'Dilbert', all his non-'Dilbert' businesses have failed, (Like his meatless 'Dilberto' burrito) or are in the process of failing. (He runs a restaurant in California that is evidently losing money, if the article in the New York Times' Veteran's Day edition is any indication...) The common theme throughout all this is that Adams is either incapable or unwilling to acknowledge his shortcomings and limitations. Hardly the qualifications for a 'Certifiable Genius', I'd say.

You know something? Maybe I'm not such an Idiot, after all.

Horseshoes for Elephants, and Paying for Water.

(Note: when I wrote the following, er, tirade, 'The Goon' comic creator Eric Powell had a very funny and very articulate video editorial bemoaning the lack of variety in the domestic comic market. Namely, that it's mostly super-hero comics. Powell's comic, The Goon, is a relatively successful non-superhero adventure comic. I'd provide a link to the video on YouTube in question, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore. Maybe the scene of a mainstream publisher comically sodomizing a hapless artist as a metaphor for the industry might've had something to do with it? Anyways, sorry. You'll have to take my word for it...)

Eric Powell's editorial on the lack of variety in the comics field bothered me, and not the content itself, which I'm in agreement with. Rather, it's a matter of perspective, and I'd like to present the following ham-fisted, clumsy, and probably unfair metaphor to illustrate.

Powell is a village blacksmith, who makes riding tackle and shoes for a specific type of mount. You would think, upon entering his shop, that he makes tackle and shoes for horses, being a
blacksmith and all. You would be wrong. Powell makes tackle and shoes for elephants. He is saying that he works in a field that is traditionally serving horse-riders, has always served
horse-riders, and when you think of blacksmiths, you always think of horse-riders. Well, Powell points out, there's room in the field for not just horses, but gazelles, elephants, ostriches, elk,
reindeer, wildebeests, and even chihuahuas pulling sleds. If the traditional horse-rider likes horses, might he or she not also like different types of mounts as well?

Well. The problem is not twenty feet from Powell's livery, there's a massive six-lane superhighway full of fast cars and very fast bikes. These methods of transportation are faster, more fun to drive, and get you from point a to point b better than mounts. Occasionally, a canny bike or car maker might brand their vehicle with the name of a particular horse for marketing reasons. The people who equip those horses usually don't benefit materially from the branding. People who buy a car named after a horse don't usually go out and buy the horse as well, you see. So a lot of people who would like to make a living as blacksmiths usually wind up getting jobs working in auto and motorbike plants. The pay's better, the risks are less, and the prestige is
greater. At the very least, you're going through the same grief as in the smithy business, but you get a living wage, usually.

Now here's where my metaphor gets wonky. In the past decade, a new form of conveyance has appeared. Sky bikes and Spinner cars. (Like in Blade Runner.) They go faster, and in three
dimensions, and they're even more fun to drive than the cars and bikes on the highways. The problem with them, from a builder's point of view, is that most people who fly in these things
have figured out how to get them for free. Worse still, the sky riders' vehicles can emulate the qualities of not just cars and bikes, but horses as well. That is, while a car builder might throw the blacksmith a few bucks, more out of largess than out of honor or obligation, the person flying around in the rocket car that can look like a horse or a car is not only not going to pay the blacksmith and the car builder any money for their efforts, he's (well, it's always a he, isn't it?) going to get quite indignant at the suggestion.

Pay for this wonderful thing I have? Are you mad? Why, for the love of God, should I even do such a crazy thing? These sky bikes (Digital media) are just lying around, not being used? Have you seen the price of a movie ticket recently? I just downloaded the entire run of Neil Gaiman's Sandman collection for free! I don't have the space for all those comics and movies and books and DVD collections of T.V. shows in my apartment! Besides, if I don't ride that sky car, someone else will! (In a bitter display of irony, the type of person who gets free movies, video games, T.V. shows, and, yes, even comic books off the Internet usually has a bottle of brand-name water somewhere on their desk that they paid a couple of bucks for. Oh, sigh...)

I've seen this complaint about the lack of variety in the domestic comic book market for the last twenty years, and while some things are getting better, a lot of things are getting worse.

While artists and writers might start getting royalties from reprints of their work, that doesn't mean jack if their publisher goes under for lack of income. Powell's concern about the lack of
variety in the market at this point in the twenty-first century is like a Japanese businessman complaining about the train being late while a tsunami wave is rushing towards him. (Sorry, Japan. Sorry, Eric Powell.)

Here's a hypothetical: You're a comic artist, and you want to put up the first issue of your first comic for sale. Well, firstly, you have to spend money at a printer. A LOT of money at a printer. Then, you would have to take copies of your comic around to all the comic shops in your area and see if they want to sell them for you. This is going to take a long fucking time. So there's this distributor called Diamond who acts as the middle man and does all that running around for you, so you send a copy off to them to see if they will distribute your comic for you all over North America. If they agree, and the chance that they will is better then showing up at your local minor-league hockey team's tryouts to start on the path to being a professional hockey player, you're in business. If you want to do this comic thing for a living, and not just a hobby that worst case scenario, pays for itself, you have to devote a major part of your working day to not just making the actual comic. Remember, you've also to got to promote your work at conventions, schmooze with industry people, deal with shippers and the printer, and sweet jesus the costs! Not just to your wallet, but the waking hours of your day! And what if your comic just doesn't cut it? Not that it's bad, or you're a terrible administrator, but you do everything you can with the time and resources that you have, and your comic just doesn't sell enough copies to earn you a living. That 's a hell of a risk, but people do that every day.

Sometimes they forge ahead even knowing the pitfalls.

So web distribution seems like an easier solution, doesn't it? Make up your comic, upload it to Apple's Itunes site, or Amazon's e-book page, someone pays two bucks to download it on their Ipad3 or ColorKindle or whatever, you keep 70% of that two bucks, with enough paying readers, you're making money. Better still, you've got the time to do other things. Hell, maybe even another comic series.

Hang on. Remember those guys above I mentioned? The ones with the flying cars? Remember when I said that they figured out how to get their hands on those flying cars for free? "Flying
cars" was my own lame metaphor for "Digital Media". And those guys aren't being spiteful, or mean, or cheap, or greedy. (They're not taking movies and T.V. shows (or bikes and cars) off
the 'net and selling them. Well, unless they're Chinese. Or Russian.) That's just the way they've been doing things for over a decade now. Try explaining to them that what they're doing is
literally starving you to death, and it's like trying to explain Calculus to a chimp. To these guys, the whole of the Internet is a cornucopia of free stuff that's just lying around. Nothing's being
destroyed. No paper or plastic went into making an Mp3 or a Divx video. Every time a photo or comic or book or magazine is converted to a jpeg or a .cbr file, God doesn't kill a kitten. What, for the love of God does this all mean for the aspiring writer or artist or musician in this century? Are they going to have to go back to the Patronage system of the Renaissance? Will they be the 21st century version of the street busker?

Okay. Remember when I pointed out the irony of some kid downloading t.v. shows and movies and video games onto his computer? Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars of media onto
his hard drive for the relative cost of Internet bandwidth. And on his desk is a bottle of water. Fucking tap water. That he paid for from a store. Water, that is free, that falls from the sky into
a bucket that, if you think of it, you can run through a filter and will likely be safe to drink. (Unless you currently live in Sendai, Japan. Again, sorry, Japan.) Somebody convinced that kid
that shelling out two bucks for that water was a good idea. I don't know how comic artists can currently convince people to drink their brand of tap water, but like it or not. THAT'S the
future of not just the comic industry, but the entire media industry. It's an unknown future, but as always, it's the only one we've got.

Goodbyeee...

"You ever notice there aren't too many Chinese guys named, 'Rusty'? Guess the name never caught on over there..."

A quick note about George Carlin's passing: Carlin's 'Toledo Window Box' was the third album I ever bought in my own life. (First two: Queen's 'News of the World' and Roxy Music's 'Country Life'. Why? 'Cuz 'News of the World' had 'We are the Champions' and 'We will Rock you' on it, and 'Country Life'... Well, Google the images section of 'roxymusiccountrylife', and you'll see why...)

"Our thrust is to prick holes in the stiff front erected by the smut dealers..."

Carlin's brand of comedy involved reframing reality in our use of language, in the way he pointed out how the English language could be used to fuck people over. I picked up 'Toledo Window Box' because the track listings included such titles as, "Urinals are 50% Universal", and "A Few More Farts", and well, fart and pee jokes were all about what the budding young sophisticate Pajak considered the height of comedy at the time.

"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

What Carlin did for little ol' me was plant the seeds of doubt in faith in authority, be it school, work, government, or organized religion. First and foremost, he taught me that if it smells like bullshit, it's bullshit. You can't listen to his routines and feel the scrabbling intellect at work there, pointing out the hypocrisies and lying in our day-to-day goings on.

"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."

I can't say I'll miss him, just that I wish we were all a little younger. Bye, George.

"I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work. "

"So who does watch the Watchmen, anyways?"

Let me just strap on my neckbeard, here...

Ah. There we go. Now, then.

Given the caliber of the people involved in the forthcoming 'Watchmen' movie, I don't see any nuanced, articulate meta-commentary of the superhero genre being part of it. It'll probably be that 'okay action-mystery-sci-fi' movie that eventually makes it's production costs back from DVD sales/rentals. (kinda like 'V for Vendetta')

What itches my neckbeard in this case, however, is that the original creator Alan Moore is stuck in a lose/lose proposition. His (and artist Dave Gibbons') original deal with DC/Warner stipulated that all rights to Watchmen reverted to them once it had gone out of print for a time. (In which case, as Mr. Moore had pointed out, he and Mr. Gibbons were free to make all the money they could from the slurpee-cup licensing.) Well, twenty-some odd years later, with the Watchmen graphic novel still in print, we can all see how well that deal turned out for them...

And let's face it, the reviews are going to nail him to the wall if it tanks ('Alan Moore's seminal 'Watchman' graphic novel flops on the big screen...') and in the unlikely event it's a success, ('Zack Snyder's take on DC/Warner's 'Watchmen' is boffo at the box office!'), he's not going to benefit in any practical way. Any money coming from DC/Warner on this is going entirely to Dave Gibbons, since Moore's previous comic-to-movie adaptations were such disasters, Moore wanted to disavow himself from them. (He eschewed any compensation from the studios after the train wreck that was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

Well, you may ask, you little rascal, you: "So why doesn't Alan Moore either A) demand more hands-on involvement like Frank Miller with Sin City or B) shut up and just take the Hollywood money like Dashell Hammett did? (As Hammett pointed out when asked if he was concerned that the studios would ruin his work, "Look, my books are still there on the bookshelf, they're fine.")

In regards to A),Watchmen isn't Moore and Gibbons' property like Sin City is Miller's, it's DC/Warner's. And Warner's is more likely to treat Moore like Disney treated Dave Stevens on the set of 'The Rocketeer'. That is, throw him off the set and dangle lawsuits over him to shut him up. And in the case of B), Moore has this pesky vestigial quirk perhaps unfamiliar to movie executives called a set of principles. These principles were what made him not do any more work for DC after he felt that he and many other talents were treated by the company as hired hands in a field. If he took any money from them after the fact, he'd look like a hypocrite. (Then, when DC bought out Wildstorm from under Jim Lee, Moore was still accused of being a sellout, since he was still doing work for Wildstorm.)

The point of all this nerdy indignation, I suppose, is that comics are not a stepping-stone to the wealth, glamour, and big titties that is Hollywood as some people might suppose. And secondly, work like 'Watchmen' doesn't lend itself easily to other mediums. It was specifically designed to work as a comic, and ideally, a comic it should remain. Put it this way: Could any of cartoonist Chris Ware's work be 'adapted' for film or T.V.? Nope. All the movie of 'Watchmen' is going to be is another trip to the money well by DC/Warner while Alan Moore, who raised up the medium more than a few notches in quality, and practically built the ground floor for DC's Vertigo line of 'mature comics', (Remember all those 'Bang! Pow! Zoom! Comics aren't for kids these days!' articles in mainstream magazines in the 90's?) gets roughly the same deal the 'Superman' creators got.

The other message to take away from this, is that if one wants to work in a medium where one wants to do thoughtful, more meaningful work, the comic book field is not the way to go. Let's face it, there's been quite a resurgence in good television in the past few years. The Wire, Deadwood, The Sopranos, Mad Men (off the top of my head) are all examples of this. Hell, even a lot of what you'd consider more mainstream T.V. fare is looking pretty good. (like 'House, M.D', 'Heroes' and 'Battlestar Galactica', to name a few. I imagine you'd still have to endure the same level of petty bureaucracies and corporate bullshit working in television that one does in a comic-book publishing house, but at least you'd be paid well enough to put up with it.

And hey, there'd be not a neckbeard in sight...

On Web Cartooning...

As the old saying goes, the great thing about the Internet is that anyone can participate; the bad thing about the Internet is that ANYONE can participate...

I don't see much of a point in bringing up bad Internet comics to make fun of; it's not like the 'camp' factor in bad movies. When it comes to comics on the web, if it isn't a fuckin' masterpiece, I don't even want to look at it. Thanks to Scott McCloud's 'Reinventing Comics', a lot of people without any innate skills felt that if they put up their derivative, self-involved, whiny crap, they might be able to get money for 'em. Here's a good rule of thumb: If a comic has 'furries', 'goths', 'gay college students', long-winded socio-political tirades masquerading as story-lines, 'nice-guys-finish-last' story-lines, drawn in a quasi-anime style, or horror of horrors, all of 'em in one package... it blows goats for nickels and gives change, figuratively speaking.

Instead, I'd like to point out four really good ones for the benefit of you all here. First off, we have Chris Onstad's Achewood, which seems to have 'furries' as it's protagonists. Actually, they're a collection of Onstad's toy animal collection brought to life in a demented manner. Onstad's line could be described as 'Adobe Illustrator Lite', and on casual glance, his strips have an improv feel to them. It's his quick wit and matter-of-fact weirdness that keeps the strip entertaining. My personal favorite storyline of his would be the "Great Outdoor Fight", in which rap mogul Ray Steckels and depressed slacker pal Roast Beef attend a Darwinian fight competition that Ray's been invited too, as he's B-O-C (blood of champions-Ray's dad won a match in the 70's) Oh, hell, just check it out here.

Tristan Farnon's Leisuretown is also a delight, though he's stopped putting out any new work for a while. I imagine the labour-intensive method of photographing bendy animals and painstakingly photoshopping them into urban settings took a toll from him. Coupled with the typical 'net audience' complaint of 'Hey, where's our free entertainment,man! What a rip-off! Farnon, you sell-out!", it probably discouraged him. Though I'd put good money on his return, if not to 'Leisuretown', then to something else. Humour this clever and subversive can't stay dormant for long...

In keeping with the blunt, snarky tone of my blog, I must tell you that political cartoons suck. Suck, suck, suck. The last truly great political cartoon I ever saw was one of a former B.C. Premier, Bill Vanderzalm, pulling the wings off a fly and saying, "It's a fun thing, don't you see?" (I now have no idea of what the issue in question was about, or even who drew it, but it made me laugh...) The vast majority of them tend not to rise beyond the cliche of a pig in a tuxedo eating out of a trough saying 'Taxpayer, restrain thyself!'. And that's what passes for discourse in our culture. I can't think of any body on the right side of the political spectrum successfully engaging in cartoon demagoguery, it would be like being the Iraqi Minister of Propaganda. Well, there's that 'tard that does that 'Mallard Fillmore' cartoon, but he got busted for a DWI a while back, and if I was a Republican, I'd still want him arrested for impersonating a cartoonist.

And really, the Left isn't much better, sad to say. If they're not being spineless, like Stephanie McMillian (she's like a nicer 'Mallard Fillmore' guy), they're being plain out of step with reality, like Ted Rall. When he's not pissing on 9/11 widows or espousing conspiracy theories, he just plain sucks as a cartoonist. (Most of the criticism against him would be blunted if he were a better draftsman.)

So it warms my black little heart to endorse the work of Tim Krieder. He's a skilled artist with the disciplined, elegant line of Kilban, Gerald Scarfe, and Ralph Steadman. With a little DuMaurier thrown in, I may add. Plus, his observations are well-thought out and astute. He realizes that the Left in America is as much to blame for the resurgence of the Right in America, and gives out the slaps accordingly. A kinder, gentler Christopher Hutchens, if you will. His cartoons of Dubya and Dubya's new best pal, Dick Cheney are a thing of joy and beauty. Krieder's rendition of Cheney, especially, capture the essence of what it means to be that horrid, small-minded, mean-spirited, selfish, cruel, sneering, hypocritical, tight-assed, greedy, grasping, hollow-souled, rotten, insensitive, criminal, lesbian-breeding, lawyer-shooting, useless fuck-pig son-of-a-bitch.

Ahem.

In his latest cartoon (see here) in the third panel we see a parasitical alien mind being transferred from Cheney to (I presume) Giuliani. "Ahh...", it hisses in what is no doubt a guttural, sibilant tone: "Such luxuriant hair!" That, to me, is, in essence, the heart and soul of the Bush administration.

And finally, let me point you all in the direction of one Steve LeCoulliard, a fine chap whom I've had the pleasure of working with at one time. If he were living in France thirty years ago, you'd see his name mentioned amongst Peyo, Uderzo, and Franquin in the classic "Bigfoot" school of Euro-cartooning. Well, I think so. Plus, there's a hint of Leiji Matsumoto and Akira Toriyama in his character design. He's currently running a 'Robin Hood' comic in his blog space which is turning out to be a hoot and a half. Please do check it out, won't you? (Consider this all penance for that truly libelous post I put in in his name several months back...)