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.

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