This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2010, which began in this post.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 11:17 AM

The artist alley meet ‘n’ greet has begun, and the first panel starts in about 15 minutes. Might be a good time to grab some pictures of the gallery stuff, which is still here, but will be gone soon.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 11:56 AM

I just had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes with Randy Scott (at work as usual, acquiring comics for the world’s biggest collection), Ryan Claytor (tabling for And Then One Day and chatting about my recent published article, on comics at MSU), Matt Feazell (The Amazing Cynicalman, great stick figure comedy), Matt Dye (who does his whole production right here at MSU), and Jeremy Bastian (whose Cursed Pirate Girl features artificially aged paper and absurdly intricate line work, done, amazingly enough, at a 1:1 scan ratio).

After dawdling in the artist’s alley for a little too long, I arrive a little late for the first panel. (Oops.) The current subject, with Ethan Watrall, is the future of comics, or comics in digital media. iPad, cell phones, iPods, Kindle, color e-ink, and so on. Will this mean the death of the direct market/local comic book stores? What about publishers? There are analogies to be drawn with the music industry, with greater creative control but perhaps not as much money in physical media. This could be expounded upon at length.

The second speaker, Lee Sherlock, is on his way up now, discussing “Digital Culture Rhetorics in City of Heroes.” Superheroes in gaming space, in other words.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:06 PM

City of Heroes is an online games that allows fans to develop and play as their own characters, designing the costumes, creating names, picking from sets of powers, etc. On the one hand, it’s a fascinating example of drawing upon an archetypal kind of character, but it also seems to be an illustration of how formulaic the genre has become. It seems that the old characters are living in endlessly recycled stories, and the newer ones are further recycled versions of the old characters.

One of the cited examples from City of Heroes, Captain Quebec, could be thought of as post-modern: a superhero knowingly patterned on a preexisting character, and as a commentary on that character. A self-aware pastiche. The whole character creation process is an exercise in reshuffling preexisting elements to produce a character who is ostensibly new, but does not offer much that hasn’t been seen countless times before.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:21 PM

The next speaker is Joseph Darowski, who presents in the “old school” fashion of printed notes derived from his masters thesis. He raises the point that the superhero–particularly Batman–shares the underpinning of anxiety with the American gothic genre, in that the hero must confront the possibility of becoming the very villain he battles against. This is an interesting thought to pursue, though the converse is also true. The superhero, after all, is what the supervillain is patterned on, and not the other way around.

I’ve thought, on and off, that it would be interesting to see a story in which Batman’s strict moral code and self-image as a crime fighter is revealed to be a complex psychosis. A mechanism to guard Bruce Wayne against the reality that he is virtually indistinguishable from the other freaks and weirdos who populate the underworld of Gotham City. Such a story might be too outrageous for the notoriously risk-averse DC, though for all I know, it’s been done 147 times already.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:37 PM

Our latest speaker is looking at the X-Men. He introduces the oft-repeated idea that X-Men originated as an allegory for the Civil Rights Movement, with some going so far as to suggest that Professor X and Magneto are representative of MLK and Malcolm X, respectively. Our speaker is careful to quote Stan Lee, who has refuted such claims and instead proposed the X-Men as a more general parable about persecution against those who are different. (I would further cast doubt that Stan Lee is as responsible for the X-Men as is often suggested. He has admitted on several occasions to taking any credit that isn’t nailed down.)

The speaker also points out that the early X-Men, for all the posturing about struggling against bigotry, were fairly middle-class white characters who, in their civilian lives, could walk among ordinary humans without being noticed. It’s fair enough to claim that this perhaps isn’t quite the racial prejudice metaphor that it’s cracked up to be, but it could be viewed as an unintentional allegory for homosexuals closeting themselves in public.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:46 PM

I found the focus on superheroes in the academic panel to be certainly interesting, but a little dissatisfying. For one thing, I thought there was a disconnect between the content of the panel and the largely non-superhero content of the artists alley, which may be more representative of “what’s happening now.” There is so much more to comics culturally than the superhero. Unfortunately, the moral panic of the 1950s effectively killed all the other genres for decades, and recovery has been a struggle. Perhaps the academic analysis of superheroes might be additionally supplemented with a look at the 1960s undergrounds, for example, or Eisner and the birth of the graphic novel. All just as important.

The next panel, in which some of the artists will be talking about their work, will be at 3:00.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:22 PM

Some thoughts over lunch:

So far, I like the way they’ve organized the event this year. Last year, with several things happening concurrently, it was hard to get around to all the stuff I wanted to do, and inevitably I had to skip some of it. This year, things are staggered in a way where this isn’t an issue.

There is the aforementioned disappointment with the first panel, which–I want to reiterate–wasn’t bad by any means. It was good, but it had a different focus than what I would have wanted. I do think the superhero is one of the most interesting archetypes that American culture has produced, and there is much to be explored.

My big worry is for the hypothetical casual visitor. Somebody who maybe has a curiosity about comics, but doesn’t care for superheroes. (The common public perception of comics is that superheroes are all there is.) That person might wander into the forums, check out the panel, and come away feeling that this preconceived notion has been validated. There’s more to it, and I think part of the advancement of comics will necessarily be convincing people of that fact.

I really do think comics are on the way up. We’re living in a multimedia world where we’re becoming increasingly used to the integration of text and visuals as a single language of ideas. Web browsers, modern advertisement, new media content–the foundation is in place now, more than ever, for the public acceptance of comics as a medium of art and entertainment.

Furthermore, I was listening to a podcast interview with Art Spiegelman from a couple years ago (it can be found here) in which he said something very interesting. My paraphrasing: though the publishing industry is in a rough patch, and though the comics direct market is still not especially concerned with anything outside of its niche audience, there are two forms of literature that are doing better and better. In the red states, it’s religious-themed literature. In the blue states, it’s graphic novels.

In my own personal observations, it’s the inclusion of comics in the big book chains–think Borders and Barnes & Noble–that is majorly responsible. The average reader isn’t going to amble into the local comics ‘n’ games shop to pick up the latest issue of the X-Men, but he (or she) might be interested in self-contained stories, created and packaged in a novelistic format. These, as well as digital comics, are the greener pastures that comics has been waiting for.

It is encouraging to see comics finding their way outside of the dedicated Graphic Novels sections at these stores as well. I have seen From Hell shelved with historical fiction on one occasion, and on several others, I’ve seen Maus shelved with the biographical books. Though I personally would prefer that comics be recognized as its own medium, independent from purely text-based literature, this phenomenon may indicate a wider acceptance of comics as “real” books, rather than mere juvenile amusements.

Or, as Frank Miller has said, we might be looking at an era when we’ll see “Sin City shelved next to Mickey Spillane instead of Spawn.” The mainstream audiences, which have been thus far kept at arm’s length from comics, might be primed for them now, more than ever.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 2:44 PM

There’s a tour coming through the hallway with the comics exhibit display cases. The tour guide just gestured to the case with the artwork by Toepffer (1799-1846) and said, “And these are examples of student artwork…”

I just made another pass through the artists alley and picked up some stuff: a mini-comic issue of The Amazing Cynicalman by Matt Feazell, a mini-comic “As Eavesdropped…” by Suzanne Baumann, one of Ryan Claytor’s And Then One Day compilations, Gary Scott Beatty’s Jazz: Cool Birth, Jay Jacot’s 24 hour comic: The Chase - A Twist of Fate, and an issue of Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl. Definitely more on these when I get a chance to discuss them.

Lindsay Gordon, one of the artists tabling today, does knitted dolls of famous characters. They’re pretty amazing. I haven’t seen anything like them. I also spent a few minutes chatting with Jay Jacott, discussing his 24 hour comic and my own abortive attempt from a few years back (more on this, perhaps, later), during which time a drawing board came around to him. The challenge: everybody draws a monster. There was an observable trend of increasingly elaborate and twisted creatures, which Jacott seemed more than enthusiastic to perpetuate. I’m sure the finished product will find its way online eventually.

Feazell does seminars on making mini-comics, and also offers a small guide to making them. I’m noting it here to remind myself: send him an email to inquire about getting one of the guides.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:15 PM

Bill “Wolverine MacAlistaire” Messner-Loebs enters: “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve asked you here today.”

The creator panel begins, with Jay “Dead Duck” Fosgitt and Guy Davis joining Messner-Loebs. Jacott is moderating. Fosgitt grew up on newspaper strips and Jim Henson, and narrowly missed working for Henson due to an unfortunately timed death. Davis brings in influences from everyday life–looking at a hinge or a joint in a piece of machinery and dressing it up to make it look more bizarre, for example. Messner-Loebs: “Everybody thinks I have a strong Eisner influence until they put my work up next to Eisner’s.” Messner-Loebs takes Frank Miller’s mindset to heart: cartoonists are cartoonists, and should resist splitting up into categories.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:49 PM

Messner-Loebs, on doing historical comics: “History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. We’re living the farce, so it might be instructive to go back and look at the tragedy.”

Fosgitt: meet people at the big cons. Everybody knows somebody, even “whatever hooker they got to pose as the pin-up girl in the back.” He met the first publisher for his work at Wizard World Chicago. Davis adds that it’s all about perseverance. Keep drawing new samples, even as the rejection slips come in. Messner-Loeb: “The first book, let them screw you. Let them publish it.” In this way, you’ll have something out there that you can show people. “The 30th issue, get someone who will pay you.”

Messner-Loebs again: “You need to be good, you need to be fast, and you need to be able to work with people. But you only need two of those.” This was also said, almost verbatim, in Eisner/Miler–but I don’t remember which one said it.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:56 PM

Q&A begins, to “a round of silence,” to quote Gary Scott Beatty from last year. A good story from Messner-Loebs, at Fosgitt’s prompting: Al Capp suggested to Will Eisner that they fake a feud between the two of them. Eisner would parody Capp’s Li’l Abner in The Spirit, and Capp would parody The Spirit in Li’l Abner. Doing so would be a boost for both books. Eisner followed through, and Capp never did. A good summation of the character of the two artists.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 4:05 PM

Curiously, Guy Davis was not raised religiously and is not a religious person, and draws upon religious imagery in The Marquis purely as a means of portraying good and evil. In Dead Duck, Fosgitt doesn’t consciously work from any political or religious dimension, but does portray various forms of afterlife. Believing in Elvis, for example, will lead to an afterlife in Graceland. Once in a while, politics find their way in, such as an issue set in Canada that deals with universal health care. Though Messner-Loebs considers himself religious, he says, “The doctrine is right there. To make fun of.” Fosgitt: you don’t have to insult something in order to parody it. One of his titles, “Everybody’s Working for the Wiccan” gets a good laugh.

Bill Messner-Loebs absolutely does not have a secret project, for Vertigo, 130 pages in length. There is no secret project. Or so he assures us.

And with that, the panel comes to a close.

In Closing

Overall, I had a great time at this year’s event. Depending on where life takes me, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend next year, but I’ll certainly hope for it. I’m definitely on the side of comics as a form of both entertainment and self-expression, and it is my view that comics deserves a better shake than it routinely gets. Events like this can help to legitimize the medium in the eyes of the general public.

Here are some cell phone pics I snapped during the event:

Ryan Claytor’s original artwork for the promotional poster. (Pardon the blurriness and light streaks; they’re reflections in the glass.)

A Guy Davis original, from B.R.P.D.

Guy Davis artwork from The Marquis.

A historical comic: Charles the Disobedient Boy (y. 1888). This, and the next three, are originals, not reproductions.

A historical comic: the artwork of Rodolphe Toepffer.

Another historical comic.

Another historical comic.

Superman. The lower one is an original, while the copy of Action Comics #1 is (obviously) an oversize reproduction.

Batman. Same deal here.

Figurines, done in the style of their original artists–Joe Shuster for Superman and Bob Kane for Batman.

Dolls hand-knitted by Lindsay Gordon.

And a bit of comics from the bathroom.

This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2010, which began in my previous post.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:10 PM

This year’s keynote address is in the Residential College of Arts & Humanities Theater, which is located in the basement of Snyder Hall. It was as hard to find as the previous sentence is hard to say in one breath.

The speech hasn’t begun yet, which is fine with me. After getting out of work and heading straight here, I appreciate the time to settle in. Various organizers are milling around. I recognize Ryan Claytor and Jay Jacot, both of whom I’ve spoken to recently. It’s all very thrilling.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:21 PM

The introductory speaker has divulged the specifics of tomorrow’s schedule, to take place at the LookOut! Gallery where the comics exhibit was set up.

11:30 AM: Artist’s alley and academic panel
3:00 PM: Creators panel

Guy Davis is on now, coming down the stairs from the back. “I feel like I’m on the Price is Right,” he says.” Davis was a big drawer as a kid, and a fan of monster movies, but not much of a comics reader. His first foray into comics was a sci-fi strip called Quonto (beginning, in George Lucasian fashion, with “Episode 58, Part 3″). This was in junior high, and, at the behest of a teacher, he pursued it as a hobby. He found that a full 24 page comic was the true test of a prospective comics artist–how long it takes, the amount of work involved, and so on.

He continued Quonto in a local fanzine upon graduation, and kept it going in the early 80s black and white boom. (”Everybody wanted the next Ninja Turtles.”) He also worked on a fantasy strip by another creator, called Realm–his first professional job. Davis reiterates that he was not formally schooled; he is a self-taught artist.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:31 PM

His next thing was a detective story called Baker Street. Realm did not increase his demand as an artist–”Nobody wanted to hire me to do anything”–so he kept to his own ideas. During this time, he received a big box of international graphic novels from Scott McCloud (yes… THE Scott McCloud), which expanded his influences and exposure to other styles of art and storytelling. “Things got grittier; things got messier… used a lot more zip-a-tone.”

He moved into the mainstream, doing Sandman Mystery Theater with Matt Wagner. The gas mask Sandman, not the Neil Gaiman Sandman, which was happening concurrently. Davis treated it like Baker Street, on the strength of which he was hired to do this project. The editors did not try to force the typical superhero convention on the book, giving Davis freedom to do what he wanted.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:40 PM

An unfortunate effect of the strength of Sandman Mystery Theater was that Davis was typecast. “1930s.” “The guy who draws hats.” When the book was canceled, the big houses didn’t have anything for him, but the fledgling Dark Horse Comics brought him in for Nevermen. Davis treated it as a Dick Tracy style story, with hard-boiled stories and freak show villains. Nevermen expanded his reputation from “the guy who draws hats” to “the guy who draws bizarre shit and monsters.”

After some dead time following Nevermen, Davis went back to his own stuff, developing a book called The Marquis. After doing the strong female lead/detective story with Baker Street, he wanted to do a strong older man lead/18th cenutry devils ‘n’ violence story. The series “The Marquis and the Midwife” is forthcoming from Dark Horse.

He credits the design for one of his monsters to his cat–specifically, his cat’s puke.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:53 PM

After doing “devils and perverse stuff” with The Marquis, Marvel (somewhat inexplicably?) brought him in to do Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, a down-to-earth telling of the backstory of the characters. The job consisted of redrawing from the author’s sketched layouts–not necessarily radical, but cushy, and a departure from his recent stuff at the time.

That’s when he got the call from Mike Mignola to do B.P.R.D., a Hellboy spin-off. Monsters, creepy settings, retro-futuristic stuff–right up his alley. It’s his current gig, and he’s doing another spin-off featuring one of the B.P.R.D. characters next year.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:02 PM

One of his recent oddities is a French comic called Les Zombies Qui Ont Mange Le Monde (the Zombies Who Ate the World). Drawn for and published in France, of course, but from scripts in English. Fortunate for the non-French-speaking Davis, who gets an assist from an audience member in pronouncing the title. It began in 2004, which was a seminal year for the comedic zombie apocalypse genre.

Another recent oddity: Davis was tapped by Guillermo del Toro to do some comic artwork for the Pan’s Labyrinth DVD, which was animated in a Monty Python/Flash sprite sort of way. The same technique was later applied for the Hellboy DVD. The “motion comic” style, which I personally think subtracts from one of comics’ central traits–time dealt with in space–but that’s just me. It works better as an avant garde movie than it does as comics.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:19 PM

Davis shows scans of some of his pages, first at the penciling stage, then at the inking stage. He reveals that much of his vaunted speed and intricate detail is because his pencil work is quite loose; much of the detail and finished appearance doesn’t find its way in until the ink is applied. It takes me back to the book Eisner/Miller, in which the two masters discussed skipping over the “tight pencil” stage entirely and doing much of the drawing at the inking stage.

In doing pin-up type artwork where he’s doing one non-sequential piece of art on a page (say, for role playing games), he discusses “faking.” In other words, making it seem as though the picture is a panel from a larger story, throwing in details that hint at a larger unseen continuity. It allows the audience to fill in the blanks. I’m reminded of Travis Bickle, who is given no backstory in Taxi Driver. The movie gives us bits of his past (and future) through the details of his present.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:37 PM

Davis opens the floor for Q&A.

In response to the question of whether or not the writers ever disagree with his designs, Davis describes it more as a back-and-forth process of hashing out the details, combining thoughts on design, and so on. The next question was: should all comics be creator-owned, or should there be room for work-for-hire franchise stuff? Davis answers, why not have both?

My only objection to that, which is a part of the debate that hasn’t been addressed tonight, is that many franchises exist with “a line of cheated old men standing behind them,” as Alan Moore would say. This is not so much a concern with much younger franchises, but many of the Golden Age characters–including, perhaps, Sandman–were acquired by companies through less than admirable means. It is an understatement to say that the big publishing houses were not kind to the writers and artists who gave them their flagship characters.

After another question or two, the speech comes to a close.

Last year, I was fortunate to attend the MSU Comics Forum, an event that unites readers, artists, and scholars in the exploration of comic art. The time for this annual event has come once again, and like last year, I’ll be writing blog entries in real time to cover the various goings-on. My entries from last year can be found here:

Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 1)
Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 2)
Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 3)

The event itself will be occurring over two days. The keynote speech is this Friday evening, and the guest speaker will be Guy Davis. I’m not tremendously familiar with the stories he’s worked on, but I’ve seen his artwork and it’s pretty strong stuff. I look forward to his address, particularly after last year’s impressive speech by David Petersen.

On Saturday, things will get into full swing. Like last year, there will be discussion panels with guest speakers throughout the day, which I’ll be sure to attend. And again, there will be an “artist’s alley” meet ‘n’ greet, with a dizzying list of creative people. I don’t believe the comic submission contest will be returning this year, which is mildly disappointing, but like last year, I don’t have anything worth submitting on hand at the moment anyway.

One of this year’s new features is a comic art exhibit that will remain open until the forum itself begins. The exhibit is called “From Superman to the Small Press: The Library of Comics Shows Its Stuff.” It features many items on loan from the MSU Libraries Comic Art Collection, gathered together by Randy Scott–comics’ own patron saint, as Ryan “And Then One Day” Claytor has said.

I had the opportunity to visit the exhibit briefly today, and I hope to return before it’s over. There are a couple of glass-encased displays within the gallery, the first one featuring the original superheroes: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Each character is represented with both a genuine first-run copy of one of their earlier adventures, plus a tabloid size reproduction of their first appearance. Furthermore, the Wonder Woman portion of the display is accompanied by a small showcase about female representation in the early days of the comics industry.

At the opposite end, the other display case features a number of curiosities, including a collection of Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” strips. Capp’s signature style is in full force on the chosen example page, including the idiosyncratic lettering that grows in both size and weight as the shouting reaches its crescendo. The case also contains representatives of independent comics and the dawn of graphic novels, or comics structured in a novelistic format. On hand is a first-run copy of Will Eisner’s A Contract With God, which–it did not escape my notice–features a much cooler cover design than the version currently in print.

In the middle of the room, there are tables and boxes filled with comics that passers-by can read or even trade for comics of their own. These are, admittedly, not quite as luminescent as the curiosities in the glass cases. What they lack in monetary value or cultural significance, they retain in the simple pleasure of riffling around and absorbing the comic book aesthetic from the last few decades.

Down the hall, there are display cases featuring even more gems. One side contains original artwork from keynote speaker Guy Davis–in other words, the actual oversize boards that he drew and inked on prior to the coloring stage. This side also includes a copy of the promotional poster by Ryan Claytor, plus the original artwork for it. The other side contains some of the earliest examples of comics as we know it, including the “picture stories” of German artist Rodolphe Toepffer (1799-1846). Nobody thought to call what Toepffer did “comics” in his day, but his artwork–hand-drawn cartoons sequentially arranged in panels with text–are comics in every way that matters.

For anybody in the mid-Michigan area this week, I strongly recommend coming around for these events. For everybody else, you can read about them here as they occur.

This post is the conclusion of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2009, which began in this post.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 1:56 PM

It appears I’m missing the “comics in the (university) classroom” panel. Unfortunate, but the name sounds as though it would have some overlap with the previous discussion anyway.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 2:27 PM

I hear clapping coming from within the rinky-dink Spartan room, signaling the end of the discussion that I missed. It was probably scintillating, so pretend I wrote several pages about it.

The next panel begins at 3:00, and will focus on comics creators. While I find the subject of comics framed in a scholarly context to be deliriously interesting, I’ll admit it’s worn a little thin for today, so it’ll be nice to dig into something that’s purely about comics in itself. The discussion will take place among four Michigan comics creators: Gary Scott Beatty (DC’s “Ultimate Guide” series), Ryan Claytor (And Then One Day), Jason Howard (The Astounding Wolf-Man), and David Peterson (Mouse Guard, obviously).

I will sit here with my thumb up my ass until then.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:02 PM

The last panel of the day begins, to “a round of silence,” as Gary Scott Beatty quips.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:08 PM

Petersen, to Beatty’s prompting, discusses achieving the success of Mouse Guard through word-of-mouth and online buzz. He stresses the importance of posting on forums, keeping a current website, and having a healthy amount of luck. Howard (again, to Beatty’s prompting) turns out one issue of Wolf-Man per month. That’s the round of opening subjects.

Ryan Claytor joins the table at this point. Not only is he a Michigan comics artist, but he’s also a teacher here at MSU.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:16 PM

Howard discusses developing artwork from a script. He finds it takes more inspiration to do the quiet, reflective pages than the action-packed “robot fighting a tank” pages. Understandable. The author he works with, Robert Kirkman, sounds like a strong collaborator, though I have no personal experience with The Astounding Wolf-Man.

Petersen, just as much as Claytor in his autobiographical work, mines his life to inform his stories. His characters in Mouse Guard are based, to some extent, on people he knows. It isn’t a process of writing his friends into the story, but lifting certain personality traits that are interesting, have chemistry, and are useful for developing the story.

Apparently, he took almost 10 years to publish Mouse Guard, partially due to his discovery of Redwall. It’s not hard to imagine why, since anybody who knows what Redwall is probably thinks of it when they find out about Mouse Guard.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:27 PM

Beatty is the author of a self-contained series called Jazz: Cool Birth. He makes the point that it’s important to have an artist who’s competent and has an appropriate style, but also has a personality that’s compatible with the material. He has to have a three-dimensional understanding of what the author is trying to say.

Claytor takes the floor to discuss developing art style. He discusses style as the sum of influences, which is a good, if predictable, point that applies universally. He cites the tiny comics in the margins of Mad Magazine as a primary influence. Claytor, incidentally, drew the poster for the Forum this year.

Howard discusses liking certain artists as a kid without knowing why, then figuring it out later as he delved into art himself. He found that he was drawn to very stylistic artists—in other words, artists whose strong sense of identity appeared very directly in their work. The obvious con is that it might not lend itself to marketability (DC and Marvel both always had a “house style” that they preferred their artists to work in), but I doubt that bothers the artists who choose not to work in that fashion.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:49 PM

The next question is on character development and world building. Claytor has the luxury of running his work by the people who appear in it, being an autobiographer. His rule is to be as true to the characters, through action, dialogue, and situational interaction as he possibly can. It’s more about “personality, rather than a cool-looking robot.”

Howard, being an artist, is concerned first and foremost with “What do I want to draw over and over?” He is, of course, being slightly facetious, but it is a very real concern. He has to do the work, and if he loses interest in it, the work will suffer. It also produces an interaction with the author: if he designs something the author finds visually appealing, the author will incorporate it into future scripts.

Petersen has the unique problem of making mice that look convincingly like mice but act convincingly like humans. He has to differentiate them and ensure that their visual differences are significant and reflect their personalities. He also details the interesting process of giving a mouse a beard—a unique challenge, for obvious reasons.

Beatty believes in doing enough thinking about the character and their world that the voice just comes through him, which is fair enough. It’s not so much a conscious process for him as it is an intuitive one. By putting himself at the point of history he’s writing about, he channels the characters and the writing comes out. He doesn’t create worlds, so much as he uses “the world that’s already there.”

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 3:54 PM

A question from the audience: “What’s the hardest part of making a comic book?” Claytor responds that the writing is the hardest part. He finds it easy to sit down at the drawing board, but the process of creating the characters, revising the stories, and so on and so forth, is the trying part.

Howard quips, “For me, it’s waiting for writing.” In all seriousness, he finds it challenging to get through the work, regardless of whether inspiration is flowing or not. Petersen agrees, and adds that figuring out the layouts and the drawings is a process when he doesn’t already have a good idea on tap.

Beatty’s most difficult part is finding the audience. His books “don’t have spandex, explosions, large breasts…” It’s finding an audience of adult readers who like to read, will accept something different, and so on. He’ll find plenty of sympathy from me.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 4:05 PM

Another audience question: “What do you do to get yourself through [the business process]?” and what happens when art and business collide. Beatty stresses the importance of patience and loving the work, because it isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. He also details the long process of submissions and rejections, which becomes routine at some point.

Petersen cautions on being smart during that period, so “you don’t lose your shirt.” He finds himself fortunate that he can make money doing this full time, and prefers breaking even doing this than making money doing something he doesn’t love as much. To him, self-promotion is a careful process of providing stuff at multiple price points (ranging from free to rare items at hundreds of dollars) in order to maximize his access to his potential audience.

For Howard, it’s about being able to look at his own work clinically, analyzing it for its professionalism. If he were the big cheese of a company, would he hire himself as an artist, based on this work? He understands that it’s a competitive world, and that he must strive for the best in order to be marketable. It takes a certain level of honesty towards oneself, but also a sense of balance between business acumen and passion.

Claytor seconds everyone else’s answers, and adds that it’s important to keep himself excited about what he’s doing. He discusses setting up tours for himself, to do in-store signings—first regionally, then across the country (plus a couple of Canadian provinces). This was during a summer break after grad school and took place over the course of three months. He also stresses that it’s important to acknowledge his own limitations. He knows his flaws (forgetfulness being an operative example) and compensates for them (keeping extensive documentation for the details of his various engagements). Basically: “Think about what excites you, know your limitations, and work around them.”

Beatty runs a site called Comic Artists Direct, which keeps him in touch with the community of up-and-coming people in comics. He cautions that professional comic book artists have to be able to do everything, making it one of the hardest art jobs in the world.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 4:09 PM

Next comes the announcement of the winner of the amateur comics submissions contest. I’ve said nothing about it so far, and it would be absolutely irrelevant to anybody who isn’t actually here, so I’ll forgo covering this particular part of the event.

That brings this panel, and my participation in the MSU Comics Forum, to a close. Hopefully I’ll make it again next year, and hopefully I’ll have a personal submission for the contest I just mentioned. That ought to give me more reason to talk about it. At any rate, things have been interesting, and I’m glad this opportunity sort of dropped into my lap at the last minute.

This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2009, which began in my previous post.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:12 AM

I arrive as the artists in the “Artists Alley” are setting up their wares. The panel appears to be taking place in the food court, rather than in the rinky-dink “Spartan rooms,” which live down to their name. The bulk of the nerds have yet to wander in. One of the photographers on hand is the father of one of my school friends. I might say hello, if I manage to struggle out of my shell of curmudgeonity that I’ve carefully constructed over the years.

I would consult an online dictionary in order to find out whether or not “curmudgeonity” is actually a word, but I can’t get an Internet connection for some reason. This campus has a wireless router in every closet, so this is mildly disturbing.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:26 AM

No such luck. We are in one of the rinky-dink Spartan rooms.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:31 AM

I coax my retardedly uncooperative computer to restart itself in the nick of time. The same unintroduced introductory speaker is back for another engagement, plugging the American Studies major that sponsors this event.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:39 AM

This panel is on trends in scholarly comic book studies. One of the panelists is Dr. Randy Scott, curator of the MSU library’s comic book collection—apparently the largest in the world. Dr. Scott appears to share lineage with Jerry Garcia and James Randi. The gentleman currently speaking, Dr. Gary Hoppenstand, reminds me of Steven Spielberg but looks more like George Lucas. In his graduate days, his educators torpedoed his attempt to study comics as an academic subject, leading him in through the side door: pulp heroes and comic strips. Comic books themselves were a verboten subject, surprisingly among fans as much as stodgy academics. And the panel moderator is Joseph Darowski.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:45 AM

Superheroes: the Evolution of a Genre is the first graduate dissertation (that these guys know of) related directly to the comic book form, and it is in publication. This bears looking into. On a side note, the broad sitting next to me keeps creaking her chair and loudly chewing her nails. I hope the sound of my typing is sufficiently irritating to her.

Dr. Hoppenstand perceives a sense of conflict between “fan writers” and “scholarly writers.” Fans perceive scholars as being impermissive to their interests, and scholars view fans as having no critical sense. I’d say this is an accurate observation.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:48 AM

The broad next to me has been on her Blackberry for several minutes. She is fidgeting. I’m sure she’s here strictly as a class assignment, and I’m pretty sure I want to rip her jittering legs out of their sockets.

Hoppenstand has name-dropped Understanding Comics. We’re going to be hearing a lot about this book today. He also name-drops Will Eisner, for the first time in this event and hopefully not the last.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:58 AM

Other areas covered in academics are biographies of important figures in the comics field and studies of comics as a social history. The latter is particularly interesting, as comics were interwoven within 20th century culture in a less obvious but no less important way as films were. Summarizing everything this guy has to say would be an exercise in tedium, so perhaps I’ll write more about it at a later date.

The next category, and one that Dr. Hoppenstand feels is underrepresented, is on character-specific studies. I would personally not be interested in seeing spend too many sleepless nights dissecting the finer points of the X-Men, but to each their own. The reason these books either don’t exist or are underwhelmingly superficial might be because there isn’t enough depth to most superheroes to provide a rigorous study. Feel free to challenge me on this.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:07 PM

I have moved to a different seat, leaving the babies to their bottles. The current subject is cultural studies of comics (a euphemism at this point for the cultural theory of superheroes). Hoppenstand is mercifully critical of the “___ and Philosophy” book series, which exists on the dubious merit of providing superficial criticism of pop culture in the major bookstores, by way of lucrative marketing tie-ins.

Randy Scott takes the floor. His personal history of academia and popular culture goes back about a decade further. Scott went from a modest typist to a curator in the library’s special collections department, and is majorly responsible for making MSU an early adopter of comics as a legitimate medium of art and entertainment. He’s certainly responsible for making it the largest collection of comics from around the world, in the world. Bigger than the Library of Congress, even, which keeps only American comics.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:16 PM

Scott returns to the subject of fan suspicion, characterizing himself as more of a fan early on than a scholar. It is of possible interest that this was occurring very close to the time of Eisner’s return to comics with A Contract with God. Scott contends that fan scholarship was the only kind of scholarship that existed at the time. Fan scholarship ironically begat the academic scholarship that soon provided its opposition.

His goal, simply put, is to “get everything. Good, bad, bring it all in.” But, he says, there must be a limit, and he’s appealing to his audience to help him decide where to go from here. My personal answer is to find titles that encourage people to believe in the immense artistic potential of comics, to get them to see that talents equivalent to Dickens, O. Henry, or Clarke can be—and, in some cases, have been—applied to the comics medium. I’m not so concerned with getting people to take the Flash seriously as a subject of historical and cultural significance, because that’s such a specialized area of interest. Get them to treat comics as a leading form of art and entertainment that affects the world at large, like film did in the 20th century.

I haven’t fully collected my thoughts on this yet, so I may email him rather than bend his ear now. I’m sure he’s dying to hear from me.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:30 PM

According to Dr. Hoppenstand, we’re in the midst of a golden age of comics scholarship. He states, with optimism, that while the field is currently dominated by superheroes, serious scholarship about the minority of literary comics is on the rise, and that the field is wide open. I hope he’s right. Perhaps we’ll see where things are at the MSU Comics Forum, 2019. It does rankle me that there is a an academic course on superhero comics, but not on the so-called independents (i.e. anything not from the tights ‘n’ flights publishers).

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:40 PM

An interesting contention from Darowski: literary titles like Maus have encouraged superheroes as an academic subject. I’m not sure how I feel about that. He may be right, but I’m at a loss as to whether or not it’s ultimately a good thing. It may reinforce comics as being forever the territory of superheroes, which is restrictive at best and harmful at worst.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 1:00 PM

The current panel is over. Ironically, although the food court is right outside, only Subway is open. Never mind that the food is disgusting; it’s currently overrun by people here for whatever, so it looks like I’ll have to skip the next panel and go find some food.

Held every year on the beautiful campus of Michigan State University, home of the largest public collection of comic books, The Michigan State University Comics Forum is a 2 day event that brings together scholars, creators, and fans in order to explore celebrate the medium of comics, graphic storytelling, and sequential art.

That’s from the MSU Comics Forum website. I’m taking it upon myself to attend both days and record my impressions. Friday evening is the keynote speech, and the panels and meet ‘n’ greet with artists take place during the day on Saturday.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 6:58 PM

The keynote speech begins in two minutes. The scheduled speaker is David Petersen, Eisner-winning artist of Mousegard and native Michigander.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:00 PM

The unintroduced introductory speaker informs us that this is the second annual Comics Forum. I don’t know where I was for the first one, but that explains where I was for the rest of them.

The lecture hall is sparsely populated this evening. Surprisingly, there are a number of females in the room. The second introductory speaker appears to have taken his speech notes verbatim from the website.

Petersen takes the stage, sans microphone. If anybody talks over him, I will kill them. Petersen runs partway through a photographic slideshow of his youth before someone bothers to solve the mic problem. He pointedly restarts with a chuckle. Nerds and technology are an inconsistent mixture.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:09 PM

Children’s books, anthropomorphic animal stories, and Jim Lee are the connective tissue of his influences, hence, Mousegard. I actually don’t have prior knowledge of Mousegard, other than that it exists, but it looks neat. Artwork looks strong, and his summary of its inspiration sounds interesting. I’ll check it out once I’ve gotten through the laundry list of other things I’ve promised myself I’d read.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:15 PM

Ah, the good stuff. He gets through Mouse Guard (the correct spelling this time, I promise) and gets to a slide called “comics as a medium.” This subject matter is my bread and butter, but it’s nice to hear anyway. He runs through several genres and mentions his favorite examples from each, thankfully avoiding tights and flights. I’ve only read a few of these titles.

He singles out nonfiction as a particularly underreported genre, which is interesting. I disagree with the inclusion of Maus, which has a thick enough layer of fictionalization to disqualify it. He points out that it won a Pulitzer, up against “real books,” which I guess is justification enough to get Maus into just about any club.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:21 PM

The next subject is the mythology of comics (and sci-fi/fantasy, and assorted other geekery). Again, nothing new, but it’s fun stuff. Let’s never get tired of the fact that much of modern comics is informed by mythological heroes and story forms of the past. Name your favorite superhero or space opera character. He mentions Star Wars as a childhood influence that informed Mouse Guard, moreso than any ancient myth.

He moves onto comics in education, now. He makes fun of the nerdy smell of 21st Century Comics, the local specialty shop here on campus. I can’t disagree.

Teachers have removed word balloons and captions from Mouse Guard and used single panels as teaching aids. Using this method, kids can learn about the context of a single moment within a narrative, and creatively imagine what happens before and next. A fascinating abandonment of the stigma of comics, and apparently a very effective way of helping kids who are reluctant or unable to read to comprehend the stories.

On a related subject, Petersen has apparently been involved in a program encouraging elementary school boys to read, using adult male mentors. It is an underreported but documented phenomenon that modern public education favors girls over boys, so this is a very prescient response to a major problem.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:39 PM

New slide: “Comics… unique to books and movies.” I like this guy more and more. Category number one is Words & Pictures, which he argues are balanced in comics (as opposed to film, which is mostly picture, and books, which are mostly text). He likens this to ancient pictographs, which predate fully developed textual language.

The next slide is an image from McCloud’s superb “Understanding Comics”—specifically from the section about how comics deal with time. Perhaps I’ll discuss this in detail later; for now, it suffices that this book is fantastic and everybody interested in comics, art, deconstructionism, or any of the other myriad subjects it deals with should read it.

He uses an image from Watchmen to illustrate—what else?—non-linear time, which film cannot accomplish to nearly the same degree of effectiveness. The high-dollar Watchmen movie, currently in theaters, probably provides ironic illustration of this point. Petersen quotes Alan Moore several times, because, let’s face it, Moore has repeated these points so many times that he has them down to a hard science. (Folks: a big beard and a self-righteous attitude do not make you wrong. Just preempting the vocal minority of armchair comic book philosophers who talk more than they think.)

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:42 PM

Comics in the modern day: a topic that necessarily involves comics being used by Hollywood and the video game industry. Petersen points out that comics are basically in ready-to-pitch form, which is a factor of their Hollywood appeal that I hadn’t thought of. He also points out that comics take much less money and manpower to make, which is something that everybody has thought of. More middlemen increase the chances of studio interference, he says. No challenges from me. Collaboration can be a good thing, but not when the people involved are big on money and low on artistic creativity.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:46 PM

Petersen argues that major bookstores and online vendors are restoring accessibility to comics that was lost with the advent of the direct market. I would argue that this might be happening on a modest scale, but it isn’t going to take off unless the major houses reconfigure to a format more suited for bookstore sales. Grinding out floppy monthly issues isn’t going to cut it in a market more suited towards trade paperbacks and honest-to-gosh graphic novels (in other words, self-contained stories that aren’t piled onto month after month of continuity, aren’t serialized with ads for video games and action figures, and so on).

Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:50 PM

He’s onto the ins and outs of self-publishing and small publishing now, which is as good a time as any to mention that one of the features of the Comics Forum is that budding artists can submit their own 10 page comics for consideration by the Forumgoers. I found this out too late, or I’d have submitted an entry of my own. Oh well; there’s (hopefully) always next year.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 8:00 PM

The speech comes to an end. Not too bad. I’m part of a narrow subset of the geek culture that has probably thought of these topics to death already, but he managed to slip in some points that I hadn’t thought of, and related his own experiences with publishing a creator-owned title. Hopefully he’s managed to open the minds of the people in the room who showed up thinking they were in for a point-by-point analysis of Spider-Man’s political biases.

The first Q&A centers on his not-entirely useful experiences with higher education, which brings back the subject of comics in education. His earlier points are reason for optimism in this area, although his personal understanding is, charitably, ambivalent.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 8:14 PM

Another interesting question, which doesn’t necessarily apply to Petersen himself, is about the likelihood of a writer being favorably matched with an artist. It’s an apparently tricky thing to pull off. Perhaps making a name for yourself (a name like Alan Moore) is a good way of earning the ability to choose artists that will suit your material.

The event resumes tomorrow at 11:00 AM. There is a series of panels I’ll be attending, which unfortunately runs concurrently with a meet ‘n’ greet with artists, which I’ll not be attending.