Work Journal 3/6/05

I didn't expect to get a lot done, but it's a funny thing how my mind works pretty well under pressure. See, I didn't get to bed until 3:30 this morning after a long night of mainly watching dvds with a friend; no partying or anything, just lots of laughing and talking. So I slept in and lounged around much of the day, doing laundry, cleaning my floors, and catching up on the last three The Comics Journals. I could go on and on about them, but I'll just say a few things. 1) The Bendis interview is excellent--I liked and respected him as much as I ever did, and was sobered by the revelation that he was doing bar mitzvah caricatures up to the first year he was writing ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, and was saddened about his wife Alisa's brain swelling incident that she doesn't even remember. At least everything seems okay now. The Ivan Brunetti interview was as good or better, and I found that, just as he sees qualities in other people he admires like Mondrian and Kierkegaard, so too did I see parts of myself in him. Not so dark is my humor, and I'm not suicidal, but it does sound like we had a superficially similar marriage, at least in the short description he gave of it. I was also really pleased by the quality and renewed zest of the reviews, perhaps some of this simply from the fact I know people like Sean T. Collins, Tim O'Neil, Rob Vollmar, et al already, but mostly just because the work is less pretentious and sneering as a lot of TCJ reviews can be. I felt a little bad for Noah Berlatsky, as his In the Shadow of No Towers review seems to make a few good points (I haven't read the book, so take that for what it's worth), but he does take some cheap shots, suggesting Art Spiegelman is someone who exploits tragedies like The Holocaust and 9-11 (well, to my mind less a tragedy than a vicious attack, but of course anyone should be moved by it with any compassion) for $. His over-the-top attempt at irony in the opening paragraph, and the insulting title, "In the Shadow of No Talent", really go so far as to hand the villages already-lit torches, so I'm not that sympathetic to Berlatsky's cause. Still, if he wasn't such an ass, he had the makings of a strong review there. I suppose there has to be one of those in every issue. I just went through a much smaller scale bit of backlash with my review of the two-decades-old SQUADRON SUPREME, but there's not much one can do there. If you're called a moron or someone without a shred of critical ability or whatever, how can you engage someone like that? It's just name-calling at that point, and no one's interested in the other person's point of view. If someone were to explain to me what they saw as the merits of the book, I'd like to read it, rather than just shrill assertions that it's great and I just am too stupid or mean-spirited to understand.

With the latest issue's Year In Review section, I admit to feeling a little left-out, as I had no pieces in there. I didn't ask for any, as I was knee-deep in comics writin' then and now, but it was almost like a page had turned. I should probably try to keep my hand in a little more.

Read Chester Brown's I NEVER LIKED YOU tonight. Brown has become a better cartoonist since then but this thin-lined style is still appealing. It's a drama of adolescent yearnings and isolation and angst, but with some disturbing moments that place it outside the typical. Brown's mother has a mental breakdown, and he's so generally detached and reticent about grabbing for the semblance of a normal adolescent even when it's right in front of him is frustrating and yet affecting. You want to know what became of this strange kid long after the book is over. Also, much of the book's power is derived from what Brown leaves out, questions of motivation and psychological makeup he refuses to answer in the narrative. Even an unreliable, Holden Caulfieldesque narration would have been the wrong creative choice here--the detachment and blankness in confusing and sometimes cruel acts is what grabs you. As with Joe Matt and Ivan Brunetti, Brown really likes to beat himself up sequentially.

As for the work, I was haphazardly trying to break down what I've written of The Solution (maybe 2 1/3 issues) into 22 page serial format, making notes here and there, and then I got distracted and watched Office Space on Comedy Central. Unfortunately, I'd missed the funnier first half, but whatever. Afterwards, and I really don't think Office Space can take credit, The Solution opened up a lot in my mind as far as what I really needed to cover and could I do it in a total of five or six issues (originally planned as three or four or a 100 page OGN). Well, I realized that I really had a lot more to cover as far as the mystery of these cool assassins, the "real" villain behind everything, the two missions/A-plots remaining, character subplots and flashbacks, and now I'm thinking this might be ten or twelve issues. Well, maybe eight, I don't know. I really can't tell yet, but I did come up with a really explosive ending that ties pretty much everything together, so I guess my mind is capable of working backwards from the ending like that, maybe. I honestly hadn't worked things out like that before I started writing, which was a mistake, but then, I may very well not have come up with this ending if I'd tried to think of it way back when I loosely plotted the thing and started writing. I may have to go back to my method of just writing and not worrying about breaking it up until I get to the end, or I may just try to plot the thing really, really tightly first. As with everything I've been working it, it's becoming more challenging and more personal than I first expected.