“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” pop legend Prince told the Daily Mirror in an exclusive interview today.

Puzzling, then, that the musical icon also said he deplores online and other digital means of music distribution.

“The Internet’s completely over,” he said. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

Prince’s famous and longstanding battle against the web gained steam in 2007, when Prince declared his intention to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay for users’ appropriation of his music. He’s banned such sites from using it, and he’s also refused to work with legal, legitimate outlets such as eMusic and iTunes.

And don’t try to find his official site; it’s been shut down, as well.

“The Internet’s like MTV,” the star said to The Mirror’s correspondent. “At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated.”

I imagine my immediate response to this was the same as anybody else’s: “Wha?”

These comments make Prince seem horribly out of touch with today’s consumers. However, upon thinking about it, I’d say he does have a point. Fads come and go. If you’re around for long enough, you see a lot of them. Prince has been around for a few decades now. Surely his comments at least have their merits.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s right in this case, though. Prince’s comparison between the Internet to MTV is a telling sign of the faults in his argument.

The logic goes something like this. MTV, in its heyday, was the most important thing to happen to music. MTV eventually fell out of fashion. The Internet is currently the most important thing to happen to music. Therefore, if MTV fell out of fashion, then so will the Internet–if it hasn’t already.

I’m loathe to spell out the obvious, but MTV and the Internet are two very different things, in just about every imaginable respect. That includes music.

What was MTV?

MTV, as it applied to music, was a system of advertisement. Music videos were–in the simplest sense–very expensive and elaborate commercials for new music. Record companies financed these videos in hopes that the viewers would go out and buy the vinyl records, or the cassette tapes, or the compact discs. The videos didn’t distribute the music, so much as promote the songs and the artists.

Like any advertisement, the purpose of the music video was to raise awareness in the mind of the consumer. The end goal was always to get people to go out and buy the music on a piece of physical media–a record, a tape, or a CD. That was the real method of distributing music.

MTV, like FM radio, featured advertisements disguised as entertainment. Or advertisements that were also entertainment, if that’s what you prefer.

When people lament that MTV never shows videos anymore, they’re essentially lamenting that MTV now only shows commercials that they aren’t as interested in. The decline of the music video isn’t mysterious at all. One form of product promotion becomes obsolete when a better one rises up to take its place. Enter…

The Internet

One can liken the Internet to MTV as a tool of promotion. But it’s important not to ignore that the Internet changed many other things about music as well. Not only has the Internet displaced MTV (and, arguably, FM radio) as the primary method of advertising music, but it has also displaced physical media as the primary method of distributing music.

This is what Prince is ignoring. This is why he’s wrong. “Paradigm shift” is a naughty pseudo-intellectual term, but it absolutely applies here. As momentarily significant as MTV was, it did not force a wholesale change in the way the music industry did everything. The Internet has, however.

The moment that online music distribution became feasible, the days of physical media were numbered. Consumers will, if nothing else, follow the path of least resistance. Convenience is one of the greatest incentives to buy a product, and there is nothing more convenient than punching the name of the product you want into a search engine and acquiring it with a simple point-n-click. (Define “acquiring” however you like.)

No more driving out to the record store and pawing through everything in hopes that the album you want will be in stock. Hell, no more ordering CDs online, paying the shipping fees, and waiting for it to come to your house. Today, the music can be in your possession almost as soon as the thought enters your head.

We’ve gotten to the point where acquiring music online isn’t even new or exciting anymore. It’s just something that we do.

This is what Prince is fighting against. I don’t think he’s going to win.

“Liberated by the state of the music business.”

Not every musician is reacting to the Internet with hostility. Rush drummer Neil Peart is open to the new possibilities.

What’s happening with Rush? I read on your blog that you were going to meet in November to discuss your future. What happened?

Well, in fact, we’ve just started working on new material. So we plan to get some writing and recording done. And we’re considering doing everything this year — maybe even a bit of touring. We are in action.

And we feel a bit liberated by the state of the music business. Even since 2006, when we started Snakes and Arrows, the album has become less significant in these times of iTunes and shuffle settings and whatnot. But perhaps we can take advantage of that and work in a whole different way. So we decided, when we did meet, that we’re not constrained by the patterns of the past, where you spend a year writing and recording, and the next year touring. Anything’s possible now; we can record a couple of songs and put them out and then go on tour if we want. So at this point, we’re just embarking on writing, but keeping ourselves open to all those other possibilities. One of our early titles for this year was Research and Development. That’s where we’re at.

So you might start making music in smaller increments?

Or larger. I went to see a band called Porcupine Tree not long ago. And I was talking with (singer-guitarist) Steven Wilson. They just put out a 55-minute piece. That’s a finger to the whole iTunes shuffle thing, and he intended it as such. And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s another way of rebelling against it — by just saying no.’ There’s too much lost in giving up the integrity of an album — what it represents to you as a musician, and as a human being, for that matter. So I like that approach. That’s very possible for a band like us. So there are no limitations; we might go big or we might go small.

In a nutshell, Peart is saying the album format no longer governs the way musicians release music.

(For purposes of this argument, the album format involves making new music in chunks ranging from 30 to 80 minutes. This may or may not involve dividing the chunks up into discrete mini-chunks, usually by song.)

Though Peart talks about resisting some of the changes brought on by new technology, his perspective is realistic and forward-thinking. How we buy music affects the form it takes–that’s what Peart understands. With less and less music being bought on physical media, it is no longer necessary to format music with physical media in mind.

New music releases can be as short as a few minutes or as long as an hour. And it is no longer necessary for long-form music to be divided up into short tracks for convenient CD play. If bands want to release a few songs here and there just to stay in touch with their fans, they can. If they want to tour with a new batch of material that doesn’t necessarily conform to the traditional album, they can do that, too.

The Internet brings new freedoms for artists, but the decline in physical media also means that it’s now a lot harder for them to make money with their recordings.

“Giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.”

For decades, the accepted modus operandi for music artists was this: record an album of material, play live shows to promote it. Record sales were the big moneymaker. This business model is quickly becoming untenable.

Record sales are now in permanent decline, and the “99 cents per song” policy on iTunes is doing a modest job of filling the breach.

Many bands are toying with the usual M.O. Some, like Umphrey’s McGee, are turning it on its head entirely. Vocalist/guitarist Brendan Bayliss explains:

The first time we played Colorado, we had never even been there. We sent out 1,000 CDs about a month or two before we went there for a show we were playing, and it sold out. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, and giving out the music will only come back in ticket sales. We don’t make money from selling CDs. The typical music model doesn’t really apply. I definitely think giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.

Umphrey’s is relying on recordings of their music to raise awareness of their live shows, which is where they make their money. It’s the opposite of yesterday’s business model.

For anybody unfamiliar with this band, this is how it goes. The group makes studio recordings, but doesn’t rely on them as their main source of income. They do it primarily because concert venues want bands to have professional studio music available. It’s a sign of legitimacy.

Where Umphrey’s McGee really shines is in live performance. No two Umphrey’s performances are alike. Songs are regularly extended, twisted around, and changed every night. Their shows are the main draw; fans who see the band two nights in a row can expect surprises on both nights.

Fans are allowed to bring recording devices to the concerts. The fans will upload the audio from the concert to the Internet. The unique music from that particular show will circulate online, where it is freely downloadable to fans around the world. Far from complaining that this is money out of their pockets, the band members encourage this behavior.

As an additional incentive to make it out to the live shows, the band itself has recording equipment on hand. At the end of the concert, fans can take the performance home with them in the form of an inexpensive, official CD recording. It’s one more way of using recordings not necessarily as a method of making money, but as a way of building consumer loyalty to the real product: the concert.

As Bayliss says in the interview above, word of mouth is the best form of advertisement. Encouraging fans to freely trade recordings is the primary way that Umphrey’s McGee spreads awareness of its shows. This, in turn, enables the band to stay in business.

Postscript

There is another band that originally gained popularity through word of mouth. In the early years, fans would make unofficial copies of the music and circulate it throughout the community. Awareness of the music would build, and more and more fans would come out to see the band perform.

On the strength of that early fan awareness, the band became the biggest in its genre. It eventually became the seventh highest-grossing musical act in the world.

It is therefore ironic that this band was also one of the most prominent resistors of online music technology in the 1990s. Much in the way that Prince is doing now, the band decried the Internet for taking money out of its pocket. It didn’t understand the boundless free advertisement that online music presented.

I won’t bother with the name, because it’s still big enough that anybody reading this knows exactly who I’m talking about.

The Internet did not financially crush this band, and its members are still phenomenally rich and famous. They eventually figured out that resistance is futile. The Internet isn’t a technological nuisance or a passing fad. It’s a new way of doing things. It’s the new way of doing everything. If they didn’t know it then, they sure as hell know it now.

They decided to play the game. Prince, on the other hand, is taking his ball away and going home. If his recent comments make him seem out of touch with the times, it’s because he is.

Perhaps it’s part of the reason why Prince’s star doesn’t shine as brightly as it used to. Talent isn’t all it takes to stay relevant in the world of popular music. Musicians need to understand and care about the wants, needs, and tech-savviness of today’s music listeners. Prince seems to care only about where he’s at with respect to new technology.

I’m not sure that Prince gets to decide that the Internet is over. But I’m certain that the Internet will determine whether or not he’s over.

Be warned! At 2,441 words, this is going to be an epic length excursion into the guts of the comics medium. It will explore things that can be done to good effect. It will explore mistakes that are made all too often, sometimes by comics’ brightest stars. I really hope it will explore ways for writers and artists to achieve an improvement in their own work.

Prepare to become a better storyteller!

1. Choose your format wisely.

Is the finished artwork going to be on 6×9 paper? Horizontal 14×11 paper? A computer screen? Make sure that the needs of your story are in tune with the format you’re working in.

There is most definitely a common format, but by no means is it automatically the best for what you’re doing.

Don’t be afraid to experiment!

2. Sound in comics has severe limitations. Or, off-panel voices don’t work.

A dialogue balloon comes in from an unknown source beyond the edge of the panel. Is it a man’s voice? A woman’s voice? Is it coming from an old person or a young person? If it’s off-panel, who knows? Remember, the readers are supposed to be hearing this in their heads!

Never keep your audience from knowing what a voice should sound like. It might be mysterious, but it’s also cheating. Dialogue balloons stand in for real sound. If you can see the dialogue on the page, you should be able to “hear” it.

3. Time in comics has severe limitations. Or, one panel cannot represent multiple lengths of time.

Comics can’t outright show the passage of time, so be as careful as possible when implying it. If you have both an action sequence and a bunch of expositional dialogue to get through, find a better solution than just cramming them together.

Say that one of your characters is punching another character in the jaw. If the panel is supposed to be showing the hit, then the hit is controlling how long the panel lasts. If the panel is supposed to be showing dialogue, then the dialogue is controlling how long the panel lasts.

Of course, you see the problem. Punching is fairly instantaneous. Dialogue is not. They can’t be included in the same panel without screwing up the panel’s sense of duration. This can be thought of as the “Jeph Loeb makes superheroes talk too much while they fight” rule.

4. Use color with deliberate purpose, or not at all.

Color for the sake of color is a marketing tool at best, and an intrusion upon the visual design of the story at worst. Know why you’re using it.

Avoid the shiny, airbrushed, gradiated, heavily filtered coloring often seen in today’s mainstream comics. It’s sterile and artificial-looking. Colorists ought to be proud when their work looks like it came primarily from the hand of a human being, rather than a computer.

Don’t be afraid of black and white.

5. Don’t rely too heavily on text.

Let the readers discover your world visually. Let it unfold for them. It will be much more “real” than if it’s explained through captions.

Use subtext and physical action to hint at what your characters are thinking! Many comic book characters express themselves just by grimacing and balling up their fists. Real people have a much broader range of expression than that.

Don’t overload the page with text. It makes for an ugly page. Once upon a time, former DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger decided that 210 is the maximum number of words that one page can support. How he came up with that figure is a mystery to me, but it seems pretty spot-on.

6. Choose wisely, when to break from the panel you’re in and advance to the next one!

Tell your story in as few well-chosen, well-composed images as you can. Fragmented visuals are a sign that the author and artist are imposing too much of their own voice upon the material. Let the readers form their own experience, rather than forming it for them.

Give your readers enough detail to visualize the complete environment. A strong grasp of the geography (this word will pop up again in a little while) is essential for the reader to make visual sense of what’s going on.

More lines in your drawings do not mean more detail. This means you, Jim Lee!

7. Avoid talking heads.

If two characters are talking to each other, let them be seen together! Draw them in “two-shots,” and use as few panels as possible. If you find yourself needing a long chain of close-ups to get the whole conversation in, trim your dialogue first.

In fact, don’t use close-ups at all unless you need to reveal something in the character’s face. That’s what close-ups are for.

8. Work from the human level.

Don’t go for flashy visual angles unless they somehow make sense within the story. If your two characters are calmly dining in a restaurant, keep us in the room and keep us at eye level. Leave the fancy angles out of it.

9. Be mindful of the axis of action.

As I’ve said, your drawings should be creating a sense of geography—in other words, the physical space of the story—in the reader’s mind.

If the geography is going to make sense, the placement of characters and objects needs to be consistent. This is best accomplished by keeping them in the same left-to-right visual arrangement from panel to panel. Their positioning will feel much more consistent this way.

This visual arrangement is sacred! Stray from it only in two circumstances: one, the scene ends, or two, a new viewing angle has been clearly established.

10. When it comes to the era, keep it real.

Either tell the story here and now, or do good research to create the time and place that it does happen. Don’t use stereotypes or clichés to create the illusion of an exotic setting. That’s cheating.

11. When it comes to environments, continue to keep it real.

If a scene takes place in a bedroom, the bedroom should have the things that a real bedroom would have. The same goes for a kitchen, a living room, a dining hall, a snowy field, a desert, or a verdant forest.

If your environment has a foreign item in it—that is, anything that wouldn’t commonly be there—your story must include a plausible explanation for how it got there and why. A gun taped to the bottom of a table, a chest buried in the yard, or whatever.

This could even extend to special knowledge possessed by a character. Unless your characters are all-knowing and all-powerful, they should never miraculously be able pull the right item or right bit of information out of thin air in the nick of time.

12. If it looks like it violates the laws of physics, don’t use it.

If your character clearly kicks a ball forward in one panel and it is seen rocketing straight up into the sky in the next, something is wrong. If your character punches a boulder and the boulder reacts as though it’s made of rubber rather than stone, something is really wrong.

Get rid of this stuff. If your story depends on it in order to work, go back as many steps as it takes to fix it.

Of course, this assumes that your story’s universe is consistent with real world physics. If not, then any differences from reality must be carefully established early on. And, once established, your story must never stray from its own version of physics.

13. Come up with something better than a villain who exists solely to oppose the hero.

Unless you’re going to explore the hero’s grief when he realizes that his actions led directly to the existence of a violent monster—and trust me, it’s been done—you’re only going to make him look stupid, impotent, and irresponsible.

14. Avoid telling stories with “quote marks” around them.

The comics medium is so choked with parodies, alternative takes, ironic takes, and other post-modern dickery that the original stories are starting to lose out.

Learn to tell sincere, original stories first, because you need to know what something is before you can even attempt to subvert it. There’s a fine line between clever and obnoxious—and when the authors know and even enjoy what they’re playing with, it makes all the difference.

Note: “sincere” and “original” do not necessarily mean serious! There is such a thing as sincere comedy, just as there is such a thing as ironic tragedy.

15. Ambiguity is good. Deliberately confusing your audience is not.

Ambiguity means that there are a variety of valid, interesting ways that your story can be looked at. A muddled, nonsensical story doesn’t count as ambiguous. Not that meaning can’t be found in muddled nonsense, but in that case, the audience deserves the credit—not you.

16. Female wardrobe is not an opportunity to pander to young male readers.

I realize that mainstream comics are primarily read by teenage boys and adult men, and that most of those comics involve superheroes—and superheroines. If you insist on perpetuating the dominance that this genre unfairly has over all others, this rule is especially for you.

Please, please—at least pretend that your female characters are proud and emotionally secure when you’re designing their costumes. Also try to remember that while your female characters might be able to defy gravity, the costumes probably can’t.

While you’re at it, you might also pretend that your superheroine would probably opt for clothes that protect her skin, rather than expose as much of it as possible.

17. Don’t sanitize violence.

If you’re going to let your characters fight, then show what would happen if they fought. Blood. Broken bones. Severe wounds, perhaps. If the nature of your story doesn’t allow this, then it doesn’t allow the violence.

However, don’t amp up the violence to exaggerated levels, either. This isolates the reader with a layer of fantasy, which is its own sort of sanitation.

18. Storytelling is a moral activity.

Remember the thing about imposing your voice upon the readers’ experience? Your readers have a right to explore the images without you dragging them around with selective, constrictive page layouts. When in doubt, always err on the side of giving the readers more freedom.

How much you control the reader’s experience is a matter of story as well. Don’t be too restrictive in how the story can be judged, and do not, DO NOT impose your overarching interpretation upon the reader! Never be too on-the-nose with what you think it all means.

The amount of freedom you give to your readers, in any aspect of your comic, is an important moral decision.

19. Everything in your comic matters.

Every panel composition, every page layout, every character design, and every line of dialogue has its own little bit of influence upon how your story will come across. Be careful of your decisions!

The reader can and probably will notice careless decisions and overlooked mistakes. And even if they don’t, their experience of the work will still be negatively impacted. Assuming you’re good enough to weave a spell over your audience, it’s all too easy for that spell to be broken.

And finally, the big Kahuna…

20. Never use what is overused.

The following are signs that your story is on autopilot:
• Romantic complications that occur because one character cuts off the other’s explanation and nobody ever bothers to clear things up.
• Horror stories that only move forward because somebody does something unreasonably stupid.
• Superficial, unlikely action of any kind—weapons, murders, drugs, whatever. Most of us will never kill anybody, be murdered, or be involved in a shootout in a warehouse full of heroin. And yet, our lives certainly don’t lack stories that are worth telling.
• Directionless stories about quirky outsiders and their unlikely friendships.
• Revenge plots.
• Wealthy criminal masterminds who issue orders while sitting in the shadow of a really tall chair.
• Impossible-to-kill characters that fall down, apparently dead, but rise back to their feet after a moment. Or—for the Dragon Ball fans—characters that apparently die, but emerge unscathed from a cloud of dust and dirt.
• Common turns of phrase, especially in dialogue. (“I’m not a terrorist—I’m a patriot!” “She died of a broken heart.” “We’ll meet again, Spider-Man!”)
• Characters that are capable of coming up with a perfect Seinfeldian one-liner for any situation.
• Out-of-the-box slice-of-life woe-is-me self-indulgent masturbatory sub-cultural award-baiting psychosexual pseudo-intellectual coming-of-age generic pre-fab shopping-list anything.
• Stories in which the main problem is that the hero and the villain haven’t fought yet, and the solution is that they do.
• Gunfire scenes in which nobody hits anything or anyone unless it’s convenient to the plot. Also known as the Imperial Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship.
• Exotic, elaborate forms of assassination that could just as easily be accomplished with a single gunshot. Also known as the Dr. Evil School of Supervillainy.
• Final showdowns that occur in a factory with showers of sparks everywhere, or in a completely deserted area with lots of smashable scenery.
• Final showdowns that occur in densely populated areas, completely glossing over the high number of casualties that would necessarily occur.
• Really, any story in which the conflict is resolved through prolonged physical combat of any kind—fire arms, kung fu, whatever. If you’re such a great writer, is that the best you can do?

This is usually the part where you’d expect me to say that rules are meant to be broken, or something equally trite. But that’s not going to happen here. You may think you have an awesome reason to violate these principles. I assure you, though, that you do not. You need these limitations. They will give your stories a fighting chance at some kind of ingenuity.

Seriously, no excuses. Don’t phone it in. Don’t slack off. Don’t put your story on autopilot. Be a good storyteller.

Westboro Baptist Church
- An Independent Baptist organization led by Pastor Fred Phelps and populated mainly by his own family. The WBC is most widely known for its radical Christian views, and for hate speech directed mainly against gays and Jews. The organization gains publicity by staging protest activities at the funerals of dead American soldiers and high profile figures.

Draw Muhammad Day
- An organized protest that occurred on May 20, 2010, encouraging artists to depict Muhammad in their artwork. The event was designed to uphold free speech, and to condemn the belief that people should have to abide by the rules of a religion that they don’t subscribe to. The protest grew out of Comedy Central’s unilateral censorship of a South Park episode that included a depiction of Islam founder Muhammad.

—–

Dio’s public memorial is tomorrow, and it’s probably common knowledge by now that the Westboro Baptist Church intends to picket it. To put it in their own words:

WBC to picket this public memorial to remind you who worship that old Serpent, Satan, that your time is very short. You know 67 year old, Satan-worshiping (or at least one of their enablers) Ronnie James Dio (of showing his devil horns to the world each time he goes in public) Black Sabbath fame is dead, right? We’ll be there! Just because the chances of any of God’s elect being amongst this group of heavy metal sycophants is slim to none does not mean they should not get some good words. Yes, it is true that Ozzy Osbourne did “accidentally” bite off the head of a bat, but THAT is the least of their sins (little nasties!), they currently do not do that, but they throw raw meat to the audience and encourage violence of EVERY FORM! Here you have the list of admitted sins of this now dead and in hell pervert: 1) He hates his neighbor(s) starting with Ozzy Osbourne 2) He hates God. Pay especial attention to the fact that he changed his original sir name from Padanova to Dio, which means “God” in Italian. 3)Ronnie the simpleton enabled, and encouraged Sorceries: everything he was about including the little finger horn thing (he got this from his mother which is an incantation to ward off the “evil eye”) to the drugs, bloody raw meat and his fellowship with those pentagram necklace wearing freakish band members. Yes, Ronnie James Padanova (NOT DIO) is currently residing in hell. When all those who worship him and his false gods meet him in hell it will be just like this: Isaiah 2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: Isaiah 14:11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Praise God all ye, His people. The Great Day of the Lord draws nigh. AMEN!

The sheer wrongness of the Westboro Baptist Church, its views, and its activities is self-evident. The reactions that it inspires in people, often virulent, are absolutely understandable. Many would gladly see the church sued out of existence or its members attacked with physical violence–again, understandable.

But if the Muhammad controversy is to remind us of anything, it should be that free speech is fragile and worth protecting. I certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep tonight if Fred Phelps were to die this instant, but I might lose a few winks if his basic human rights were abridged. A mourner threatening to do violence against the WBC flunkies is no different from a Muslim threatening to do violence against an artist who depicts Muhammad. If free speech is to be protected, then that includes all speech. Even that which is vile, hateful, and horribly misguided.

Phelps and his band of idiots should be allowed to protest this memorial, free of litigation or physical harassment. For the fans who will have to tolerate this unpleasantness, I guarantee that the tremendous love for Dio and his music outweighs the petty, small hate of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Preamble to the United States Bill of Rights

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent starts of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

The flyer for “Draw Muhammad Day,” including the original cartoon that inspired it.

Ronnie James Dio, performing the horn gesture that he popularized. Rock in peace.

Myself, playing “Children of the Sea.” It can be found on Heaven & Hell, Dio’s first album with Black Sabbath.

There are two big movie trends right now that seem impossible to escape. One is so-called “realistic CGI,” in which the animators try to achieve a photorealistic look with purely synthetic images. (Photorealistic images have already been achieved in movies by pointing real cameras at real things, but let’s not digress too far into that.) The other big trend is 3D, which requires the viewers to wear large plastic goggles. Hollywood asked you if you wanted these things in your movies by making them, and you responded by opening your wallet.

The royal “you,” of course. I’m not pointing fingers.

There have been some oddly specific objections to these movies, more than just the backlash you’d expect from a burgeoning trend. The complaints range from mild annoyance to actual physical pain. People think that the CGI characters look weird, waxy, and lifeless. Some have complained about getting headaches while watching the 3D presentations.

The Uncanny Valley

It turns out that human biology itself might be resisting the CGI graphics. The recent buzz term for the unshakeable “offness” of realistic computer images is “uncanny valley.” Our brains are fully prepared to accept images of real actors, photographed in the flesh. We’re also prepared to accept animation, so long as it’s on the cartoonier side. It’s when realism and animation start to encroach on each other’s territory that the trouble begins. That point of convergence—too realistic to accept as a cartoonified representation, never realistic enough to accept as the genuine article—is called the uncanny valley.

Psychologists have done some recent research on macaques, which might shed some light as to why this happens.

Princeton University researchers presented images of real monkey faces, unrealistic animated faces and realistic animated faces to five monkey subjects and recorded how long they gazed at each. Similar to the human response to objects in the uncanny valley, the monkeys avoided looking at the most realistic animated faces. The scientists, who published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, speculate that realistic animations might resemble sickly or diseased animals because they lack subtle cues of health such as normal skin texture and hue—and that an aversion to such sights may have evolved to keep us healthy. [Scientific American]

While this is a compelling explanation for why CGI characters never quite seem to look right, I doubt it will deter further attempts by movie animators.

H3daches

Then there’s the issue of 3D, which presents yet another psychological puzzle.

Recent web-discussions on the issue of ‘Avatar h3dache’ seem to agree that the problem lies in presenting the viewer with a fairly rich 3D environment, but no opportunity to choose to focus on a part of the scene that was filmed (or rendered) ‘blurred’, i.e. out-of-focus foreground elements such as leaves. Some of us seem to be fighting Avatars determination to make these choices for us, and getting our cognitive perception in a twist in the process.

In his determination to avoid criticisms of traditional ‘jack-in-the-box’ leveraging of 3D (wherein a director will engineer a shot so that things deliberately swing out at the viewer) Cameron seems to have compromised by shooting as much of the movie as possible with a very limited depth-of-field, in order to accentuate the 3D illusion.

…

Examining unfocused areas of the frame in Avatar is literally quite a headache, and counterintuitive to our enjoyment of the ‘baked and locked’ 3D planes that we are being presented with. Knowing that depth-of-field is all he has to play with if he’s not going to shoot rocks directly at us, Cameron doesn’t hold back - he relentlessly racks focus in scene after scene.

So the trick to avoiding a headache when watching this movie is to be obedient, and concentrate on the parts of the shot that the focus tells you are ‘important’. Once I understood this at the preview screenings last week, my headache began to clear up, but I was conscious too of the effort of having to ‘zip over’ to the next point of rapid-focus in order to keep up and preserve the 3D illusion. [Shadowlocked]

To simplify, your eyeballs are focusing on an unmoving 2D surface—the movie screen—which is lying to them, telling them to focus and refocus on distances that aren’t there. The actual surface isn’t going anywhere. Like realistic CGI, nothing in nature has prepared our eyes to accept this.

I humbly submit that the audience shouldn’t have to “be obedient”—in other words, politely ignore the movie’s problems. After all, if 3D has any possible benefit to the art of moviemaking, you’d think it would be giving the audience multiple planes of action to look at. While Cameron’s 3D renderings have a deep, rounded appearance, the movie itself—the images on the screen—stick to just one plane of action at a time. It moves no differently than a 2D movie. When Avatar goes from one plane of action to another, it doesn’t do so by composing in multiple planes and letting the viewer decide. It drags the viewer, through rack focusing.*

Texture aside, Avatar isn’t terribly 3D at all. In classic movies, there is a longstanding tradition of “deep focus” shots that show everything clearly, far away and all the way up to the foreground. This style of camerawork gave filmmakers many planes of action to play with. In The Rules of the Game, characters bicker like children in the foreground while other characters sneak around them in the background. It’s played for laughs, and it works. In Citizen Kane, the boy plays outside the window while his parents debate his future inside the house. These movies might not “pop” at you with the special glasses, but they are composed in 3D. Multiple planes of action, playing upon one another. That’s real 3D cinema—movies that use depth in the action.

The irony is that Avatar might cause even more headaches if it were photographed in this way. With eyes skating all over the place and constantly refocusing on depths that aren’t there, the presence of actual stuff to look at might just drive them haywire. Just give them one surface to look at. Be confident that the viewer’s brain is smart enough to bring the movie into the third dimension on its own, without the aid of big plastic glasses. So long as the movie is good enough, of course.

(*Rack focusing is when there are at least two things happening on the screen: one near the camera, and one further away from it. The camera focuses on one, and then quickly refocuses onto the other. You see it happen every other second in Paul Greengrass movies.)

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.

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.

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.

1. An honorary Academy Award for Gordon Willis.

This guy’s work with low-exposure photography on the Godfather movies is legendary. That he hasn’t been acknowledged for it until now is shocking, even for the Academy. Was he even nominated for the first two? I don’t think so.

2. Best Film Editing goes to The Hurt Locker.

This will be one of the many remarks I’ll make in this post over how The Hurt Locker, for all its virtues, has no business beating Inglourious Basterds in a number of categories. This is one of them. The Hurt Locker features the “run ‘n’ gun” style of shooting and cutting that I’ve come to despise. It’s not much of an offender—it manages to maintain its coherence—but at the same time, I’ll take the classic technique and clarity of Inglourious Basterds any day.

3. Best Cinematography goes to Avatar.

No. No no no no no. This is one gaffe on the Academy’s part that isn’t just a matter of taste, but of pure, factual wrongness. I won’t deny that Avatar’s stunning images are commendable, but cinematography—by definition—involves actually shooting the footage with a camera. Cinematography is the art of manipulating and capturing light through the lens. Avatar’s visual wonders are almost exclusively dealt with through computer animation. Cameras have nothing to do with it. If there ever was a reason to not take the Oscars seriously…

4. Best Original Screenplay goes to The Hurt Locker.

Is The Hurt Locker really a writer’s movie? It seems to me that you don’t see The Hurt Locker for the dialogue or the story developments, but for the visceral experience of spending time in a bomb suit in the streets of Iraq. The Academy has a tendency to give certain movies a “sweep” of the categories, as a matter of putting as much of its dubious clout into one cause as it possibly can. In this particular case, it looks like The Hurt Locker is the lucky winner. There isn’t much else of an explanation for why this award didn’t go to A Serious Man or (yes) Inglourious Basterds, which are much more written movies.

5. Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz, Best Supporting Actress for Mo’Nique

Shockingly, these are the winners I was pulling for in these categories.

6. The John Hughes and horror movie montages

Somebody please convince me that these two show padders weren’t a complete waste of time. Clips from mostly bad horror movies? A tribute to a man who was a fine enough writer but an unremarkable director? I realize that pandering to fair-weather viewers is the theme of this year’s Oscars (just look at the size of the Best Picture category!), but isn’t this too obvious and counterproductive?

7. Best Actor goes to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Sometimes people praise a movie when they mean to praise an actor. Crazy Heart is one of those movies. I’m not sure it deserves the acclaim it’s gotten, but Jeff Bridges more than pulls his weight, and he’s an excellent actor overall. And you have to love a guy who uses the word “groovy” in his acceptance speech.

8. Best Director goes to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

I think I might be getting blue in the face. I’m actually not going to deny that this is a well-directed film. The atmosphere and the tension isn’t in the script or the acting, but in the way the images are put together and the way it pulls us in by our shirt collars. That’s the hand of the director.

That said, Bigelow over Tarantino? Hurt Locker over Inglourious Basterds? Remember, we’re talking about direction here, and if The Hurt Locker pulls us by our shirt collars, Inglourious Basterds sits us down, gives us a shoulder massage, feeds us, and slowly strangles us in the meantime. In a good way.

9. Best Picture goes to The Hurt Locker

I suppose this was predictable. What wasn’t predictable was the four seconds it took for Tom Hanks to appear, open the envelope, and read the name. Check it out when they cut to the backstage camera. Kathryn Bigelow didn’t even have time to get to the snack table before her movie’s name got called. I realize the Academy is raring to break the glass ceiling by showering a female director with as much praise as possible. But when you factor in all that praise, the choice of song, and Streisand’s comment about making history, it all smacks of condescension. It’s one of those calculated superstar moments.

I don’t think it’s at all diminishing to Bigelow, her excellent movie, or her tremendous talent to say that, either. I think it’s diminishing for the Academy to ignore actual merits in favor of imagined ones.

That’s probably all I have to contribute to the discussion over this year’s cavalcade of acceptance speeches, unconscionably expensive clothing, and badly scripted comedy routines. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker for victories perhaps partially deserved, and my sincerest condolence to Quentin Tarantino for the 100% undeserved losses of Inglourious Basterds. I don’t know if it truly is his masterpiece, but it—along with the criminally overlooked A Serious Man—is one of 2009’s movies to see.

This film is an exercise in doubt. If I were to break it into three parts, I would say that the first third sows the seeds of doubt over whether or not the authorities of Shutter Island can be trusted. Our U.S. Marshal characters go in to solve the mystery of a missing patient. They are met by a number of important people who make a big show of being helpful, without ever doing anything to help. We get the pervasive sense that nobody is being honest. This sense is communicated through every frame of every shot.

The middle third sows the seeds of doubt in our perception of the events. In a chance encounter, one particular character makes a compelling point: if our hero’s sanity comes into question, then his credibility is forever undermined, even to himself. And because our hero is our guide through this narrative, that means that everything we’ve witnessed so far and everything we’ll eventually witness can only be taken in those uncertain terms. His mission is no longer just to unravel the mystery, but to cling to the faith that he’s in the right. In his view, the authorities of Shutter Island might question his sanity, but his sanity allows him to see their ulterior motives for doing so. It’s all part of their devious plan.

So what does the final third do? The majority of movies don’t require the audience to think very hard. Most viewers have been trained to expect that the mystery will be solved, that the questions will be answered, that everything will be tied up nicely. The cleverness of this portion of the movie is that these people will find what they’re looking for. Shutter Island provides the necessary evidence to support this interpretation. All has been revealed. We’ve reached the cheese at the end of the maze.

That is, if we stop looking once we’ve found the cheese. We must be careful to guard ourselves against confirmation bias, which is what happens when we see the evidence we’re looking for and disregard the evidence we’re not interested in. In truth, Shutter Island is littered with too much evidence to conclusively point to any one answer. By my count, there are three major possibilities left open at the end of the movie, and they all deserve consideration. They are broken down as follows:

1. Our hero is insane. In the course of the final act, the authorities reveal that our hero is a mental patient, living in an elaborate delusion. It appears that they’ve gotten through to him, that he’s accepted their attempts to convince him. However, in the final scene, he speaks confidentially to his doctor—the man who, in his fantasy, is his U.S. Marshal partner. He reveals that he still intends to escape and bust this Shutter Island conspiracy wide open.

This seems to be the most commonly accepted interpretation of the ending. He’s insane, and has been the whole time. There have been some negative reactions to the film that appear to be based on this version. The viewers feel as though everything they’ve slogged through to get to this point has been invalidated, as if a film this well-crafted could ever be described as a slog. But never mind that.

2. Our hero is sane. In this version of the ending, our hero is still playacting—not as an insane man pretending to be sane to placate his doctors, but as a sane man pretending to be insane in order to guarantee a release from his pain. His last words to his “partner” strongly imply that he is sane, but is willing to be lobotomized so that he won’t have to live with the terrible things that his fantasy was safeguarding him against.

While this interpretation doesn’t frame the earlier portion of the movie in a drastically different way from the first interpretation, it does cast some interesting doubts upon earlier scenes that seem to imply insanity. It becomes that much harder to tell when he’s been wrong and when he’s been right.

3. The conspiracy is real. According to the laws of reality, this is the least plausible of the three endings. But for one thing, “least plausible” is not the same as “implausible.” Shutter Island is an utterly self-contained environment where any attempt to question the authorities can easily be dismissed as the ravings of a delusional paranoiac. One of the main reasons for disbelieving in conspiracy theories is that they’re untenable in an open marketplace of ideas. Shutter Island is anything but.

For another, to dismiss this interpretation out of hand is to ignore the seductive ideas that the film has been playing with all along. Our hero’s certainty is all he has to tell him that he’s sane, and the most obvious way for his enemies to protect themselves would be to declare him insane. In his most vulnerable moment, it may be that they’re not freeing him from the delusion, so much as crafting it for their convenience. In a place like Shutter Island, reality is fragile and mutable. Which version of reality is the “real” one might depend solely on how many people are willing to agree upon it. In the final scenes, our hero simply gets voted down.

There is not enough evidence to settle upon any one ending, and that’s just as it should be. As Scorsese’s on-and-off collaborator Paul Schrader is fond of saying, the final scene of a movie should continue to play out in the lobby of the theater. Movies with open-and-shut endings are rarely as interesting as movies that encourage the viewers to puzzle over the pieces. Unfortunately, it often seems as though a clean-cut ending is all that the average moviegoer cares about, as though two thirds of the story are just a means to arrive at that point. It’s a shame.

Jack goes to the movies. He sees, oh, say, Avatar. He comes away from it thinking it was crap. “Who are these people trying to fool?” he bellows. “This is the same plot as a bunch of other movies I’ve seen! Why, the acting wasn’t even that great!” Jack goes home, logs onto IMDB, and gives Avatar a 1 out of 10 rating. Somebody needs to put these Hollywood hacks in their place, after all.

Meanwhile, Jill (arbitrarily female), for all her differences of opinion, is very similar to Jack. Jill goes to see Avatar and she loves it. She finds the special effects dazzling; Pandora is so real to her that she felt she could reach out and touch it. She thinks to herself excitedly: “This is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time! Just look at all the stuff on the screen! Check out all the hidden messages!” Jill goes home, logs onto IMDB, and gives Avatar a 10 out of 10 rating. Surely this marvel, this wonder of a film, deserves to unseat stodgy old bores like The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. Why, those movies aren’t even relevant to today’s world.

You rarely see a Jack or a Jill go for the “5 out of 10″ rating, or its close neighbors. If you’re lucky, they’ll shave off a star or two at the top because it wasn’t the second coming of Christ. Don’t expect anybody voting at the other end of the scale to shave off anything.

I’m not sure what drives this phenomenon, but it is observable. Whether you go online and look at the numbers or just listen to the scuttlebutt around the water cooler, there seems to be a reverse bell curve governing people’s opinions about entertainment. In the parlance of Beavis and Butthead, either “it rules” or “it sucks.”

Why is there such an absence of more varied opinions? Why isn’t there a more complex gradation between the two poles? Here’s my theory. Outside of natural selection, there aren’t many ways for something complex to arise from something simple. You’re probably not going to get a thoughtful, well-rounded opinion from a simplistic viewing process. If all you’re doing is passively absorbing what the screen pumps at you, then you’ll likely respond just one way or the other. It becomes a reflex. It rules or it sucks, and damn the very notion that anybody should discuss it more deeply.

Movies are for thinking about. Art is for thinking about. If you go into it thinking that it’s okay to turn your brain off–or worse, that you should turn your brain off–then you’re depriving yourself. You’re disabling yourself from knowing real crap when you see it, and you’re closing yourself off to the sheer richness of a truly good movie.

Most of all, you’re shutting off the critical faculties that are necessary for knowing when a movie isn’t great, and isn’t crap, but just… is. What doesn’t deserve your best appraisal doesn’t necessarily deserve your worst. Some movies are just lightweight entertainments.

Setting the record straight, I believe Avatar is worth seeing. To say that it’s the best film of the year, or even a great film at all, is worrying. It’s certainly an imaginative, pretty film, with many evocative moments and much else to write home about. No, it isn’t especially well-acted, and the plot is low on both subtlety and originality, but plot and acting are highly overrated phenomena. Perhaps its worse crime is that its visuals are so splendid that the rest of the production just isn’t audacious enough to keep up. This is by no means a bad film, and certainly not a “1″ on the IMDB scale. But neither is it a “10.”

Your homework is to look up a bunch of movies on IMDB and check out their user ratings. Look for how many people voted at the extreme ends of the scale, versus how many voted for the middle ratings. Test my theory.

(And yes, I realize it’s been a long time since the last update. For the few people who may have noticed, I apologize. Hopefully normalcy will resume soon.)