Tom Spurgeon, 1968-2019

The amount of comics I read has waned more than waxed, but my love of the medium never falters. Reading writing-about-comics, there has been one source that I trust(ed) above all others to find things to read. One person I have related to as much as any other in the last three decades of living with and around and apart from the comics community.

Tom Spurgeon, Rest In Peace.

Art by Michael Netzer (Attribution)

His tenure at The Comics Journal overlapped with most of my full-time employment as a comics retailer, and this is not inconsequential. Not only did this give me the time and inclination to read nearly every page of those issues, but I really did feel a kinship with the community around that magazine. Part of the reason I decided I didn’t want to be a full time comics retailer was that I couldn’t envision a way I could make the store work (read, earn a middle-class living) in a way that eschewed trends like sports cards, pogz, or Pokemon. This wasn’t a lack of vision in the comics industry, but in myself as a retailer. I believed in comics as art, but couldn’t reconcile that with comics as commerce.

I went on to make a middle class living working for a national (non-comics) retailer, and by 2004, the year Tom Spurgeon founded The Comics Reporter, I was entrenched in that world, and only working one day a week in a friend’s comic shop. A few years later, my second daughter was born, and I gave up that one day per week, and a couple years after that, attended my last SDCC as a comics retailer.

There have only been two things, in tangent to the comics world, that I envied for myself and my connection to it. One would be an Eisner (nominated for a retailer award in 1996 was the closest I got), and the other would be earning a spot in the birthday wishes on Comics Reporter. Comics have been with me as long as any memory in my life, and I have put writing on the internet over the years with the hope that it may contribute in the tiniest way to others’ memory of comics.

Tom helped give me a vision of the importance of comics to the world, and he will forever live in my mind as sharing the joy and passion of comics. As someone who has never once felt like they fit into any group anywhere in the world, I always felt like I understood the world of comics that Tom Spurgeon lived in.

I value many writers about comics for the things we don’t agree on as much for the things we do. I have little interest in certain forms of comics, so I knew I didn’t need to read a certain type of book because Tom loved it.

One of the greatest things Tom repeatedly engaged in was the simple act of appreciating the things you love, be they comics or otherwise, and that will be the part of him that I try to carry on in my own life. Each time I throw a few dollars into a Patreon account, or buy a piece of art directly from an artist, I will endeavor to remember the great Tom Spurgeon and his passion for comics that lives on.

When you only know someone through their work, you have to imagine the reasons you emotionally connect with them. You have to know that those reasons are and can only be personal. Tom’s writing always delivered that message. He understood that a reader’s relationship with the art was not just the most important thing for that reader, but likely the only thing that really existed. A good writer helps you feel like someone is writing for you, and Tom was a good writer.

His death is hitting me hard, and when I try to figure out why, I just feel more sadness. Even writing this, it reminds me that this is only written for me, and by Tom’s example, that was always enough.

Comics certainly favors misfits; even the most famous of practitioners are oddballs. Whether they make Spawn or Rusty Brown, created the Marvel Universe or a 12-page mini comic this week, there is not a creator that has ever seemed like any type of stereotype and that’s why I love them all. I love every artist in every medium, if not their work.

This engagement with art was personified by Tom Spurgeon. The easy love of the artist. The connection to a world that so few really try to understand. The commitment to supporting the people who make it in the smallest, most important ways. When I read the Comics Reporter, I always had a visceral sense of the world of comics, at least through the eyes of one man. One man who I, and so many others, trusted to see things for us, and trusted that they were worth even a mote of our attention.

I never met Tom Spurgeon in the real world, having seen him at the Fantagraphics booth in the ’90s, but it was his influence that encouraged me to later shake Eric Reynold’s hand and say thank you in person as an anonymous fan of the publisher.

I said Thank You in emails to Tom, but never in person. It’ll have to do.

(This was published on Medium in a much more timely manner, but I realized I’d never posted it here.)

Personal Digital Security

What if there were a well-liked celebrity? A charming, award-winning, attractive, respected, popular, bright, young actress. A woman who had commanded the appreciation of those who populate the web, and of those who decide which news, journalistic or social, is seen by the masses.

What if this attractive young woman was attacked by violating her personal digital security? What if there were people who worked very hard to attack her personal information? What if these criminals uncovered, and stole her intimate details; who shared private photos taken for herself or sent to lovers?

What if the victim were so admired that most people felt bad that this had happened? What if the patriarchal people felt like they needed to protect this young woman?

There might be people who sympathized with her as a target for any number of reasons. They might think of how they would feel if they or their loved ones had been violated. They might think of the large or small ways that they had been exposed and embarrassed.

What if they didn’t care about this violation of others? What if they think that this victim deserved it? What if they thought they would never be that dumb or blind, that they wouldn’t put themselves at risk? Might they still think of this person when they were setting up their own digital security?

What if the story was spread around so that people all over the world were talking about it?

That might just be the thing to cause people to think of personal digital security as a necessity rather than an inconvenience. That might be just the thing to cause people all over the world to take it seriously.

Or maybe, a few weeks later, it would be forgotten.

White Nationalist Terrorist

Are you scared yet? I’m not, but I understand.

In February 2019, a man was arrested for a plot to kill “almost every last person on earth.” This trend, as armed combatants continue to threaten and assault and murder people in the United States. Even though it provides me solace to read Onion headlines after a tragedy, I also have to remember that I want to work and live in public places in the United States, and I want to do so without being overcome by fear.

My first thought was some version of, Fuck, that’s terrible, so many victims. My second thought was, I grew up next to a Seabee Base, a major military port. My third thought was, See, we need to be focused on domestic issues, not international terrorists. Our current political climate has created this scenario, putting millions in danger.

Once the emotion of those headlines and ledes had worn off, I realized that this person, this Homegrown Violent Extremist (boy, the FBI sure loves its acronyms), is just a product of his experiences and brain chemistry.

There is no reason for any of us to fear any of the millions of active military or veterans. There is no reason for us to believe that the president created a monster with his hateful rhetoric. There is no reason for us to conclude that it is the fault of Al Qaeda, or the KKK, or Fox News, or CNN, or any of the other scapegoats (video games, violent movies, lack of mental health awareness) we want to place blame on.

Any or all of these factors may have contributed to the experiences of this man who was plotting to cause harm. Or there may be any number of unnamed and unidentified reasons. If you take a moment to reflect on your own life, where has the most pain and fear come from? Does it come from the national news media? Your memories of 9/11? An episode of Jersey Shore or Duck Dynasty?

I can only speak for myself, but most of the pain and fear in my life has come directly from people I know and experiences I’ve had, including those I had a role in. Maybe I’m ridiculously fortunate in my life to avoid being a victim of random violence, but statistics don’t support that. Statistically, we are all much more likely to be the victim of traumafrom people we know, or the people assigned to care for us.

I hope that these ideas and statistics don’t scare you further. For me they are a reminder. Caring for our loved ones, paying attention to those around us, and listening to those of us who have a story to tell, will all affect more change in the world than the headlines would have us believe. Care for those around you, be kind to your “enemies,” and offer as many people as you can with unconditional love.

The Writer’s Age of a Visual Medium

We Are In The Writer’s Age of Television.

Amy Adams in Sharp Objects ©HBO/Time Warner

A downside of the breadth and quality of television is that you can choose to watch only very good shows and never run out of material. For years I only had the energy to consume rather than consume and create. As I’ve stepped up my creative time, I have to be pickier about my consumer time, and that has led me to analyzing why I watch what I watch, why it’s important to me to watch it, and how I will choose what I watch in the future. I’ve decided to eliminate the not-so-good shows from my viewing, and raise the bar to the very good and the best.

Many people have noted that this era of expanded television production has been focused on writers. Not just the sheer number of scribes required to produce all this entertainment, but also that the writer is frequently the most known off-screen name from the credits. The stars from this era like Shonda Rhimes, Matt Weiner, Courtney Kemp, David Chase, Jenji Kohan, Vince Gilligan, and Joey Soloway are all known as writers even when they’ve also directed. In the movie world, writers like Sofia Coppola and Alfonso Cuaron are more often referred to as directors, even when they also wrote notable films.

There are tv shows driven by writer/directors and there are tv shows driven by writers. I find that, ironically, when they are not writer/directors, I think of the notable directors as visual poets and the notable writers are masters of narrative. I recognize that there are those directors who are considered auteurs, but in pop culture filmed media, there are few who didn’t use the exceptional collaborators.

Image from Rectify, created by Ray McKinnon © Sundance Channel

For my money, the very best television of this era is actually by those who excel at the visual when tied in with the verbal and structural and delivered through craft and performance. When it comes to visual media, it reaches its peak when the interplay between these is so closely tied together that to remove either would destruct the other. My first love, well known but not nearly as popular: comic books.

In comics that the best books are written and drawn by those who understand that art and script must work together to create the medium. I’m going to use comic strips to illustrate this simply: Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes contrasted with Scott Adams’ Dilbert. In most Dilbert strips, it is not essential to see the art in order to fully comprehend the joke being told, and there is rarely anything of substance beside the joke. The “acting” ability of Watterson’s characters far surpasses Adams’, and the former’s strips find far more poetry in the art form than the latter, which traffics primarily in verbal jokes.

Dilbert without pictures doesn’t impact the joke. ©United Features Syndicate/Scott Adams

Calvin and Hobbes without words is still beautiful, and the drawings have some humor in them. ©King Features Syndicate/Bill Watterson

Recently, between semesters of school, and while my kids took a vacation with their mom, I spent a little more time in front of the screen, and as I considered what was important to me, I realized that while I love great narrative tv, such as Breaking Bad or Mad Men (and really good narrative tv like some seasons of Last Man on Earth or most episodes of Sherlock), what I really want are the shows that are going to stick in my brain for the long term. I realized that those shows were exceptions, and exceptional, mostly for their ability to create visual poetry along with fantastic performance and compelling scripts.

To demonstrate what I mean by poetry, I’m going to focus on drama. Comedy is much more a writer’s medium, even when the writing is improvised (Curb Your Entertainment). There are surely good examples of great directors in comedy, but when the focus is, by necessity, on delivering the jokes, the poetry of directing less often comes into play. I’m sure there are many great exceptions. One that immediately comes to mind is the shot of Selina Meyer lying on the floor of the Oval Office in the fetal position at the end of Veep Season Five, a nice bit of visual artistry, which is not often this wonderful show’s forte.

The shows that really stick in my brain for the long term offer a few shared components.

One, they don’t require a huge episode commitment. I enjoyed chewing on the bubblegum of Lost while my kids were babies and toddlers and my mental facility was at its weakest while working 50–60 hours per week and spending every remaining waking hour chasing them down and cleaning them up. I recently thought of rewatching it with my now-tweens and the idea of 121 episodes was simply tedious. The worst examples of this bring peak drama late in the second or third season, and then simply can’t maintain find reasons to raise the stakes. I’m looking at you, Walking Dead or 24.

Two, they have something more to offer than a (mostly) compelling plot. Last year I was convalescing for a few months, and often spent 22–24 hours a day at home. During this time I watched many, many shows and movies. Among them, the first five seasons of Dexter. I then speed-watched the last two (skipping entire episodes and watching the pre-show recaps to catch up), but I can’t recommend it to anyone else. I loved The Wire, but seem to think it has more weak spots than most fans, and I enjoyed season two very much, thank you. I also enjoyed The Sopranos, but the acting far surpassed the writing for me, and a third of season one felt like drudgery. Breaking Bad chewed me up, but the memorable parts were less plot-driven and more emotion driven. For example, I loved the poetry of the cold opens, even though I could rarely anticipate how they tied into the narrative. They set a tone and feeling rather than a critical narrative step. They tied in to the plot, and usually in the same episode, but they were frequently non-essential to follow the narrative. What I really remember from Breaking Bad however, were the gruesome or shocking bits of visual exposition. The bathtub sequence in season two; Gus Fring’s exploded face; Walt’s tighty-whities; etc.

Three, the best shows allow their directors some visual space to tell a story without plot or narrative being pushed forward, building character and relationships by showing rather than telling. In television this is often dictated by budget, but whatever, an artist paints with the tools they have, not the tools they want. Take Breaking Bad again. “Fly” (s03e10) was notably filmed in one location for budgetary reasons, and while it definitely feels like it stretched out the season’s narrative, it offered amazing visuals and helped define the main characters and their relationship. I understood Walter and Jesse better after that episode and could easily reflect the rest of the season and much of the series through that lens. I think it’s no coincidence that this was directed by Rian Johnson, but I think that the writers had to allow room for direction. They had to let visuals and performance tell a story that could never be told exclusively through dialogue and scene direction. Close-ups and “fly’s-eye” view, security cameras and overhead shots, quick cuts and languorous takes combine to make visual poetry through the work of a visionary director, working on a limited budget and with less shooting time per minute of screen time than one would allow compared to most films.

To sum up this theory of the poetry of television I want to use two shows I just watched to contrast what I’m looking for when I decide to spend my time in a show’s world. HBO just finished up the first seasons of heavily-advertised and reasonably well regarded (70 and 77 on Metacritic, respectively) shows: Succession and Sharp Objects. I think these scores are reasonable, and I would rank Sharp Objects a bit higher, as it offers more of the poetry I seek.

Kieran Culkin, Brian Cox, and Jeremy Strong (Succession) ©Time Warner

As a narrative, I found Succession to be particularly exposition and plot-driven. These shows are realtively new, so I want to avoid spoilers, but there are three significant events in the first ten episodes. There are other major plot events that are necessary to drive character development, and with such a large cast, these are clearly essential to maintain engagement with each of the main members of this family. I would watch an hour of just Sarah Snook, and she rarely got to play protagonist in her scenes. What’s missing for me is the visual poetry.

Performances are great throughout the show. It’s a benefit of peak television that there are so many great roles for actors like J. Smith Cameron from my beloved Rectify, and the leads were all compelling, with Sarah Snook’s Shiv as a standout. Characterization through dialogue is solid in the series. In particular, the siblings are each given very clear voices that help you understand their shared and individual foibles, even if some on-the-nose therapy scenes are required to convince the viewer that our assumptions are true. By the way, I blame The Sopranos for cliched therapy scenes. That show frequently held a high regard for its audience with its therapy scenes, but gave writers a cheap form of exposition, with characters telling one the viewer, with analyst as proxy, precisely how they feel, rather than their actions and the camera showing us. I was left with the same feeling from Succession that I get from many other seasons of modern television, which is that it could have been half as long with the same result.

What poetry gives us that prose struggles with is the knowledge that how we feel about a character (or situation, or scenario) is just as important as what we know. Art as vessel for our perspectives is one its greatest values.

Sharp Objects gives me more visual poetry. The show uses both time-jumps and dream-state/reality shifts to show us how the main character is experiencing her world. Through these visual cues we get a view of what drives the protagonist, Amy Adams’ Camille, without telling us every detail at each step. Admittedly, some of these steps seem designed to simply delay plot reveals, but building tension can be critical in a story like this.

At the beginning of the show, I admit that the shifts between dream-state and reality was partly compelling because I was working to figure out where we stood. There is a scene where Camille as a teenager wakes Camille as an adult from sleep. It was not immediately clear functionally, but emotionally, I understood exactly what had happened. When these scenes became more abstract later in the series, I felt their importance more than I parsed it. This works to the series advantage. We identify with its flawed characters, and humanizing them through their internal struggles is what allows this to happen.

At the conclusion of the show, we realize that we have been swayed by identifying so strongly with Camille that parts of the narrative only become clear as she realizes them. This makes the series at once both very traditional, the procedural through first person perspective, and very poetic. The poetry comes as we realize that the things we have been feeling all along — her unease, her distrust of certain characters and protection of others, her own struggles to accept her reality — are both earned and misplaced. The feelings are very human, which poetry can achieve more quickly than narrative.

Every episode of Sharp Objects was directed by Jean-Marc Vallee. I believe that it is not just the vision of the director, but the cohesion of having a single director that allows the poetry to come through. The writing is solid, and I would argue that Gillian Flynn’s participation is a reason for its strength (who understands these characters better?), but the marriage of visual and script is what elevates this series. I expect that the story will stick with me, but more importantly, I expect that the visual poetry that Vallee used to tell it will embed itself deeper in my consciousness over time.

Some exceptional shows that use visual poetry better than others:

Better Call Saul / Rectify / The End of the Fucking World / Top of the Lake

Twin Peaks / True Detective

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in True Detective / © HBO

Some exceptional shows that are more heavily narrative and dialogue driven:

Succession / Breaking Bad / The Wire

Broadchurch / Justified / Mad Men / Big Little Lies

Halt and Catch Fire / The Sinner / Transparent

The Exception That Tests The Rule

Molly Parker in Deadwood ©Time Warner

The other common denominator in great narrative shows is the acting. I left my personal favorite all-time narrative drama off this list for the reason that its acting and script are so breathtaking that it overwhelmed me. Deadwood.

The Best Television Show of All Time (as voted on solely by me) was writer driven. It is missing the visual poetry that I love, but the acting and scripts were so amazing I am still in awe at its grimy beauty.

Deadwood was exceptional for the fact that its impressive actors were given lines with incredible depth and passion. David Milch is a mad genius whose skill is specifically in giving his scripts a verbal poetry that overtakes the lack of visual variety. The storylines were a sexually- and violence-heightened version of familiar stock from 20th century drama, but the style of dialogue was anciently, sub-conciously familiar while being fresh and disorienting in the best way. Some dialogue was Shakespearean, some was more Mamet-ian, and all ranges in between, but it was all catered to the characters. William Sanderson’s E.G., for example, loved his verbal flourishes, which made him my favorite Shakespearean comic relief since the the Bard wrote one.

It didn’t hurt that the cast of Deadwood, while centered on a few stars whose roles gave them top billing (Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, and Molly Parker), was supported by maybe the best cast of any show ever. Look at this list of actors: Kim Dickens, Robin Weigert, John Hawkes, Paula Malcomson, Powers Boothe, Brad Dourif, Garrett Dillahunt, Jim Beaver, William Sanderson, Gerald McRaney, Sean Bridgers, W. Earl Brown, Titus Welliver, Leon Rippy, Jeffrey Jones, Keith Carradine, Brian Cox, Ricky Jay, Anna Gunn, Sarah Paulson, and many more. When it comes to acting, the casting may be as good as the writing. It is sad, if somewhat historically relevant and a standard of the time of production, that there is effectively no diversity in roles on the show, with the exception of Keone Young as Mr. Wu and Geri Jewell as Jewel.

Postscript

I couldn’t decide where Fargo falls on this list. It has some exceptional moments of visual skill, but also builds its plots like a clock, and relies heavily on the tone built by the Coen Brothers to pull off the visual tics.

I did not include formulaic, non-narrative shows, including personal favorites like House or NYPD Blues, because in my experience they are necessarily formulaic. They are, by definition, writer-focused, as a wide variety of ideas are required to fulfill the formula. There are also a handful of shows that I didn’t include or reference in this essay because I don’t have proper (or any) knowledge of where they fit. I’ll leave it up to you to decide where they belong in context.

Post-postscipt notes (deleted sentences)

Some of my favorite prose writers drive the story through character, dialogue, and narrative, such as Elmore Leonard, and some of them support the narrative with beautiful bits of poetic language, such as Dave Eggers or Haruki Murakami. I don’t believe in the superiority of one choice or another, as I believe each offer their own function and reward.

I take great pleasure in my kids’ enjoyment of the shows and films that I probably wouldn’t bother going to the theater for (half of the MCU) or would never even watch (Jurassic World or Pirates of the Caribbean) by myself, but too long CGI-fests are not my bag. I’d still be at Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious, though, so don’t think me dilettanteish.

Billions does a slightly better job with [the therapist role] by making Maggie Siff’s Wendy more crucial to plot and story.

Jokes vs. Stories: The Magic of Hannah Gadsby's Nanette

I have loved comedy and comedians for as long as I can remember. When I was five we didn’t have a tv at home, but we had Dr. Demento every Sunday. When I was around a tv, even my favorite action shows were loaded with comedy (“them Dukes, them Dukes"). I have been reading since before I was five, and my favorite daily read was the comics page. I have also always loved telling jokes. Five-year-old-Josh-favorite: “What do you do if you stub your toe? Call a toe truck.” When I was quite young, I began wishing I was a storyteller. Making a movie seemed impossible, writing a book was mysterious, but a three-panel-comic strip was something I could imagine doing. And it seemed to me that a three-panel-comic strip was a story. It must be a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I was watching Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby, and she said a few things so clear and obvious that I expect they will forever be linked with her in my head. She was explaining jokes as a release of tension and she said, “I have been learning the art of tension diffusion since I was a children [sic].” Right then, my identification with a queer woman from the other side of the world stuck hard. A bit later, she said, “In a comedy show, there’s no room for the best part, an ending.”

That’s why I prefer telling stories to telling jokes. (Or writing internet essays to writing jokes.) I want to be able to include an ending, even if the ending is just an ending to the story. I want the people in the story to live on. I want them to live on in the mind of the person reading the story and in imagination of the person writing the story.

She followed that up with a very effective story as metaphor. I don’t want to spoil it, other than to say I identified with it greatly because of my experience. The magic of the show is that she includes an ending that the audience and the author can appreciate and accept, yet we can continue the story in our imagination.

Court Day

May, 2003

The ceremony was casual and relaxed, outdoors, in the backyard of my grandparents’ house. My bride and I chatted with our seventy guests, dressed for the ceremony, before it started. My sister officiated and the simple ceremony lasted less than five minutes. It was just what we wanted.

Photo from unsplash.com

December, 2013

The hearing is scheduled for 9:00, and we’re both shivering from anxiety and chill. It’s one of those winter days that the sun rises and the temperature starts to fall. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for it, but it feels illogical. I got here at 8:40 and she was already standing out front. As we’ve waited the temperature has dropped ten degrees.

It’s now 9:15 and we are here, standing in front of the courthouse, waiting for her missing lawyer.

The divorce is no contest and I’m not required to attend. I didn’t even hire a lawyer, so only she has one. Yesterday she told me that I didn’t have to be here and that she may start crying in front of the judge if I’m here. I apologized, but told her that I couldn’t imagine not being there, it’s something I have to do. I need this memory.

We’ve each called the lawyer three times, and sent text messages as well. We’ve looked inside the court building, but no sign of him. The clerk directs us to the room in which our hearing is scheduled. We enter the room and there’s no sign of him, so we sit and wait, both anxiously holding our phones.

9:25 and the judge calls our name. We stand up and she says the lawyer isn’t here yet. He tells us to wait and moves onto the next name.

It’s 9:40. I offer to print the only document that we don’t already have printed out, in case the judge will continue without the lawyer being present. She agrees, and I’m out of the courthouse and in my car. I find a copy shop a mile away. The whole time we’re texting back and forth and calling the lawyer.

At the copy shop the lady behind the counter helps get my document prepped and asks if I’m having a good day. I say “No…but it’ll be okay.” I notice the smallest wedding solitaire I’ve ever seen on her left ring finger. I notice ring fingers a lot these days. It’s become a reflex.

She prints out the documents and charges me. As she does, she says “I hope your day gets better.” I say, “it’s ok, someday it’ll make a funny story.”

It’s 10:00 and I’m back in the courtroom. Still no sign of the lawyer, and I can see the anxiety in her darting eyes. I don’t want to be here, this whole thing wasn’t my idea, but at this point, I just want it to be over.

The judge calls our name again. I stand up and offer that I have all the documents and ask if we can proceed. The judge says, “Not without your lawyer.”

We both call the lawyer again.

---

I didn’t want the divorce.

When I finally gave in and agreed to this, I really thought I’d done all I could, but the feeling of failure was immense. I had spent years doing my best, succeeding occasionally, failing often. I had changed in the last decade, much more than I expected to.

Now I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to deal with my failure on my own terms and move forward. Dealing with the lawyer, the money, the court, it just became the business of it all, and I wanted the business done.

---

It’s 10:10. We both call the lawyer again.

It’s 10:15. The lawyer has sent her an email. It reads I’m so sorry…I will call the court and reschedule…

“No way,” I say. “Tell him he is supposed to be here and we’ll wait.”

I seethe about the fact that I called him five minutes ago and he is replying by email instead of answering the phone. She emails him back: We’re here now, we don’t want to reschedule.

A few minutes later he responds with I’ll be there when I can.

As she continues to wring her hands I say “Aren’t you glad I showed up today?”

She says “You’re always right,” which stings a bit under the circumstances.

We settle in to wait and watch a hearing before the judge. Dad is in a wool suit and tie, Mom is in a slinky knit dress and high-heeled boots. The hearing is about whether their court mandated divorce decree can be modified so that Wool Suit can send his teenaged daughter to a counselor even though High Heels doesn’t approve. He is quiet, but I sense control issues. She is loud and fidgety and I sense emotional distress. The judge is listening to the lawyers and snacking on chips, as if he he were watching a courtroom in a TV show instead of presiding over one.

The hearing devolves into something that would strain belief if I made it up. High Heels can’t stop interrupting the proceedings to chime in or by shaking her head or grunting. Wool suit can’t stop talking when asked a simple yes-or-no question, and doesn’t realize he sounds just as crazy as she does, yet in a much quieter way. Eventually the judge takes a minute to admonish both of them and the lawyers. He says, “I’m quickly losing patience. This should have only taken a few minutes.”

We are watching slack-jawed while giggling a bit. At one point my to-be-ex-wife looks at me, and says sincerely, “Thank you for making this easy.”

High Heels is being hushed loudly by both her attorneys. They are joining the judge in exasperation. They are saying things like “You need to stop.” and “Just walk away.” She keeps picking up a legal pad and scribbling furiously on it then pointing at it to her attorney. He keeps waving her off.

The judge says something, then stands up and walks out of the courtroom. He just leaves. Wool Suit walks quietly back to his seat. High Heels walks to hers and begins picking up her papers. Her attorney walks by and she starts saying something to him. The attorney says “You’re killing me…” and keeps walking out of the courtroom.

Our lawyer shows up. He looks in bad shape. His hands are shaking, he looks pale and feverish, his hair is not properly combed, and he has cut himself in several spots with his razor. His suit is pressed and buttoned nicely, but otherwise he looks like the caricature of the guy whose briefcase is crushing documents in the seams as he is darting up the courthouse steps, glasses askew on his face, tie hanging loose. My anger dissipates into relief that he’s here, and she looks at him and asks “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer, but apologizes and begins to collect the papers he will need for our hearing.

High Heels and Wool Suit have joined their attorneys back in front of the judge. He speaks plainly.

“You guys have good attorneys and you are making their work much harder. I don’t feel the need to make a decision today, seeing as you already have a hearing scheduled for two weeks from now. When you get back in the courtroom, I hope you can act better, because at this point, I can see why I should be worried about the health and well-being of your children.” Damn. Even our attorney looks a bit surprised at this.

They are dismissed and our names become the only names on the docket. The judge calls our name, and this time we are invited to approach the bench.

The attorney introduces the case and hands the judge the decree. As he reads it, making notes, I stare at the plaque with his name on it. I think about the fact that my wife and I are standing before a judge, asking him to end the marriage that started 10 years and six months earlier, standing before friends and family and officiated by my sister. I can feel the tears welling.

My tears are preempted by the judge asking the lawyer about a couple points in the document. He hands the Divorce Decree to the lawyer and the lawyer makes changes in pen, and she and I initial each change. The judge offers the floor to the attorney who asks her the questions she needs to answer to satisfy the judge. She is mostly facing away from me, but I can see her tears as she answers the questions, then she’s finished.

The judge faces me, and asks me a few questions. I answer affirmatively and he announces that the marriage is over and signs the paper.

Photo ©2018 Joshua Leto

We are outside the courthouse. The wind has picked up and it’s even colder than before.

The hearing only took ten minutes after two hours of waiting. The lawyer is apologizing sincerely, and with a great deal of embarrassment. We both tell him not to worry, but it doesn’t seem to settle him.

She says “I’m just glad it’s over.”

He apologizes again.

I say, “I’ll admit that until you walked into the courtroom, I was pissed. But it’s okay, we forgive you.” We shake hands and he walks away.

She asks where I’m parked. I point north. She points south. She takes a step toward me and gives me a hug.

We walk away in opposite directions.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew

I don’t seem to have the nostalgia bug that many comics readers have. I don’t feel the need to reread the Herb-Trimpe-drawn Hulks that were my first purchases from 25-cent bins. There are books that I can reread many times — Paul Chadwick’s “Concrete” and “Jar of Fools” by Jason Lutes come to mind — but those are rare. I like to move forward.

Art by Sonny Liew

“The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” is a book from 2016 by Sonny Liew. The cartooning brings to mind a cliche of reviews: It is a bravura feat of artistry. In terms of the styles of art, the design of the various materials that the story presents through layout, and coloring and tones, Liew demonstrates such a facility with his goal of depicting the various layers and levels of a long-lived artist’s life that I had to study the book for several minutes to determine that it was the work of only one artist.

Art by Sonny Liew

The story, in the aspect of comics-making, may go too far in depicting the different styles of the titular artist. When I think of the people who made comics and art for more than 50 years such as Kirby, Davis, or Eisner, none of them changed their styles so drastically once they reached maturity. While I love 1940s Jack Kirby art, once he hit the 50s, his style had mostly coalesced and he only made incremental stylistic changes to his art, revising layout approaches and fine-tuning the mark making over time. Will Eisner’s brush seemed to loosen and gain emotion in the last 30 years of his life, but other than that, I don’t see a dramatic shift in style, he was already experimenting with his layouts in the 40s. Jack Davis got looser but was immediately identifiable to fans of his overwhelmingly detailed 50s EC work.

In service of making the book look like the work of another artist, one who had a long career with many various projects, Liew went a little too far in varying the styles. The transition from the rudimentary, early-career manga-style work to Kurtzmanesque 50s work, to Mort Drucker-style 60s to Walt Kelly to Frank Miller to Carl Barks storytelling designs seems an unlikely transition for a lifelong comics maker who is renowned. I can see the oil paintings as a reasonable change in style; the medium can change the message, of course.

Interestingly, this flaw actually highlights a great strength of the author. I hadn’t seen such adeptness in his comics work previously to suggest such an ability to ape styles and techniques from throughout comics history. The Tezuka-influenced early work of the fictional artist is obviously drawn by the same artist as the Pogo riff mid-book, or the 80s grim and gritty comics that appear later, but the change in styles is admirable. Even Mad Magazine would have different artists for most parodies, Wally Wood being a notable exception in the ability to ape fellow creators (“Never draw anything you can copy…”). Art seen in an early aughts Sonny Liew Marvel story intended to be in 60s style didn’t show a desire to copy the stylistic ephemera of Ditko or Kirby. It remained wholly identifiable as Liew.

Here I have to admit to being a poor reader for a major aspect of this book. I had honestly never thought twice about the history of Malaysia or Singapore. My entry into this story was comics, and being quite familiar with the history of them allowed me to not become overwhelmed by the density of the historical material. I fully admit that I finished the book with a nominal knowledge of the facts behind it, which is not a flaw of the author.

Art by Sonny Liew

Coming to the history and politics of Singapore so cold, I had a hard time evaluating whether the metaphors designed for the work of “Charlie Chan Hock Chye” were heavy-handed or adept. Liew is constantly providing context, but I am probably missing some subtleties that make these allegories more creative and engaging. For example, it was difficult to tell if the political message of the Harvey Kurtzman E.C. pastiche was broad and unsubtle because many of Kurtzman’s stories were the same, or if it had a subtext that I was missing as an ineffective reader. There is a Walt Kelly Pogo-style strip later that feels like it holds a little more nuance, but then a later story, with running commentary by “Sonny Liew” reads as though it is teenaged parody, akin to the worst of Mad Magazine.

I also wonder whether readers who don’t share my knowledge of comics so immediately recognize the forebears of the styles in the book, which gather the context of time and history they mean to entail. There are endnotes which define some of the comics creators whose styles are referenced, but others are left out. I took a Frank Miller Dark Knight reference late in the book to encompass meaning in both the context of the sociopolitical landscape in which it was created (80s leftist Western Culture feeling overwhelmed by Reagan and Thatcher and the Cold War) and the context of the comics and manga industry which had been referenced earlier in the book (American Pre- and Post Code comics, British and Japanese post-war, e.g.), reading it’s tone as both reflective of the time and the mood of the “author”. The endnotes don’t mention Miller at all.

Speaking of the mood of the title character, my favorite aspect of the book is the consistency of definition of his personality. I was completely engaged with the story of this man, and how he navigated his world, personal and political. He is so fully defined that late in the book, I found myself thinking of him as a real person. The conceit of this being a biography became realized and I was invested in his story to the point that I wondered what happened to him after the end.

This book is certainly the work of an artist who has matured in his storytelling to a point of being able to deliver an engaging, intelligent, cohesive narrative told across a man’s life and bring it all together through disparate styles into a compelling narrative of both man and country.

Blade Runner 2049

REPLICA OF EMOTION

This movie is beautiful. The sound design is intense and overwhelming, the music is immersive and subtle, the cinematography is lush and distinctive, and the visual effects are at once awe-inspiring and seamless. The performers are compelling.

I wish that it was in service of something deeper.

Looking at the run-time it seems forty-five minutes too long, but I would have a hard time cutting fifteen. It felt, in the best way, like a big budget tone poem. It evoked the isolation of life in a brutal metropolis with an appreciation of open spaces and interior escape zones. Each scene provides a feeling, as when Ryan Gosling visits San Diego and the oppression of his confusion while digging into the mystery connects to the oppression of the inhabitants connects to the oppression of memory. Other scenes provide a stark contrast, as when stepping from the antiseptic police station to the grimy streets of Los Angeles from the clear belief in purpose to the muddled reality of the real and unreal world.

I hadn’t watched Blade Runner in at least ten years, but I never felt lost or cheated. Its impact is probably greater with a stronger affinity for or knowledge of the first film, but only in a nostalgic sense, and nostalgia means little to me. I’m sure I’m supposed to feel something stronger when characters from the first film show up, but nostalgia does little for me.

Performances are strong throughout. Ryan Gosling shows how to do much with little, implying rather than emoting. Harrison Ford is sullen enough to join Gosling in being understated, not normally a strength of his. Sylvia Hoeks is fantastic as a definition of efficiency. Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, and Carla Juri bring much-needed humanity. Ana de Armas is charming and lively, both a defense and a critique of her character. Jared Leto, who has been previously great (in movies with “Club” in the title), and hammy (“Suicide Squad”), is too much the latter, but that also feels like a problem with a character defined by its tics rather than its emotions.

The time spent setting mood and defining tone were balanced with forward movement on plot, which kept it from dragging, but character motivation felt implied rather than defined. While watching the film, I was drawn into Joe’s story, Luv’s story, and even Joi’s story, but reflecting after, the character’s motivation disappeared in service of the mechanics of moving the story along. Only Joshi and Mariette had relatable motivations, and Mariette is a prostitute, hardly a character given deep thought. I could argue that Joe’s motivation is one of defining one’s place in the world and search for meaning, but I could just as easily point out that he is only driven, as an android, by what he was programmed to do, far from human. This appears to be inspired by the source material, but once answers are provided, it serves to make the questions less valuable.

The best art leaves room for many interpretations of the narrative, so that the viewer can imbue the film with a meaning that can be personal. The beauty and passion was simply in service of plot, wrapped up nicely at the end, leaving very little to chew on besides the visuals. A fireworks display in which power disappears as the colors fade to memory.

We Stand On Guard by Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce

They’re taking comic characters from my youth and making movies about them, and I don’t care. I love comics and I love movies. The types of movies that they make from comics are generally not my cup of tea.

Art by Steve Skroce

We Stand On Guard feels like a movie treatment. I could even see how it may have made it to the script stage as a screenplay. It had a solid three-act structure, it had character development, it had action set pieces, it had humor and drama and half-baked social critique. It had a semi-blockbuster ending that hinted at the sunnier outcome that producers and executives would have required, and probably would have come in around a hundred pages.

That’s not to say it is bad. It is solid escapist entertainment, delivered by master craftsmen, Steve Skroce and Brian K. Vaughan. 

Skroce excels at delivering character designs that are solid; you can see the personality in the rendering and you never confuse characters for one another. This story even has two characters portrayed as youth and adults, and you know immediately that you’re looking at the same character. (Credit to Vaughan as well as building the script—even if there were a lesser artist, context would provide the information.) The art has a fussy, obsessive line that seems influenced by co-conspirator Geof Darrow—they both worked on The Matrix movies. There is a skull-explosion that could have come straight from Hard Boiled or Shaolin Cowboy. (Skroce drew Marvel comics in the 90s and his art had a softer brush stroke and more open design.) His art supports the storytelling so that you never get lost in the fuzziness found when some artists take shortcuts.

The color, by Matt Hollingsworth, is consistently impressive. Never over-rendered, always highlighting key information, he is also a master craftsman. He avoids cliches in story points like flashbacks and technology (computer screens or science fiction weapons) and uses the palette to support the tone of the scenes.

The plot and ideas here seem right in the Vaughan wheelhouse. Science fiction influence that never feels so futurist that you’ve never imagined; big stakes seen through individuals rather than communicated by narrators or exposition; dark humor; and a strong sense of family, through both blood and circumstance. These are themes and techniques consistent with the books I’ve read by BKV and the ones that keep bringing me back to his work.

Brian K. Vaughan’s story is interesting and clean, and suffers only from comparison. It lacks the depth of character of his longer stories, and the inherited (read: unearned) gravity of the few Big Two superhero books of his I’ve followed. As a self-contained, one-and-done mini-series, it delivers. Seeds planted bear fruit later, characters are consistent if broadly drawn, lines that would be hokey delivered on the screen work fine when internalized, and the before and after story arcs that we are encouraged to imagine provide context for what we experience in the chapters presented.

A solid entertainment that felt worthy of the time spent with it, which is exactly what I hope for from a blockbuster.

Empire State by Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga is a singular artist that I have to admit I’ve slept on. I had purchased several of his self-published mini-comics (I would confirm this if my “archives” were in order), but I never really engaged with one of his books until Demon. As I eagerly await the next volume, I found some previous books to catch up on.

Art by Jason Shiga

I tend to enjoy comics that are playful in narrative technique such as Matt Fraction and David Aja on Hawkeye, or clever in structure such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons with panel structure in Watchmen, or self-aware such as Grant Morrison in Animal Man. At the same time, I occasionally become overwhelmed by relentless changes in narrative structure, such as the book-length “Here” by Richard McGuire or the more diagrammatic Chris Ware pages, which pull me right out of the narrative.

Jason Shiga’s “Meanwhile” fell too far into play for me to engage with the story, and in retrospect, while reading the short comics I didn’t value his patience and playfulness with the narrative. If I were to tell you the plot of “Empire State” I could do so in about three lines. That is because the plot is the least important part of the narrative Shiga has built here.

The art is simple and straightforward and the figures are so simple that at first read I undervalued his art for its weight and authority. There are a few clunky panels or figures, but these are rare and only standout amongst so many pages of figures, backgrounds, and layouts which put the characters front and center in a world that feels absolutely real in a way that the best comics artists can do using such abstract designs.

Art by Jason Shiga

Detailed backgrounds and flat limited palette colors serve to highlight the story flow and help the reader focus on crucial information. Shiga plays with timelines to accentuate the character’s progress through their arc in the story. At one point I thought I had found an error in balloon tail placement, but then realized quickly that I was being given key information about a time jump instead. Once I absorbed that I needed these context clues, the characters became an even greater focus, which is crucial when the rendering is so clean and unburdened by detail.

I don’t care to discuss spoilers in plot and character development, so that will admittedly make this essay light. Just believe me when I tell you that Shiga does not waste pages, panels, or words in delivering his story. I found the main character’s arc incredibly affecting, even though it has a gentle touch. A complex and compelling story told in a direct style.

Art by Jason Shiga