Paul Hornschemeier's Let Me Be|Perfectly Clear

Hornschemeier makes me feel all funny inside. His collection of short works, Let Me Be|Perfectly Clear features expertly drafted parodies of the current indie-comics luminaries: Ware, Clowes, Burns, and more. Hornschemeier is a loving critic, however, because he replicates their stylistic tics and somehow throws away the rest--it is like he is making fun of the tics more than the works or the authors.

Let me try to put it another way. The much-discussed Obama cover of the New Yorker is supposed to take a series of mental images and make them solid, and by doing so expose their flimsiness as solids. Similarly, Hornschemeier uses Ware's little boxes and makes them feel trite. The effects alone are revealed, at last, to just be effects. Finally, we can appreciate that Ware is more than the shortlist of stereotypes he conjures, because we can sense something missing from Hornschemeier's re-creations.

I'm not exactly sure what Hornschemeier wants to get out of these exercises. Several times in the book he sets himself up to be viewed as an art critic. In Perfectly Clear he has a section labeled like a portfolio of artwork--it is a parody of a parody of postmodern art, jokes we've heard a million times before about polar bears in snowstorms. This is why I feel funny inside. I think as a comics critic he's taught me something about comics today, but I am only interested in his work as criticism.

Is Mad Men Any Good?

I have my doubts about Mad Men, the newly canonized "Best Show on Television". I like two things about the show, but I could like them more:

1) The period setting. Love the suits, the buildings, the dresses, etc. Liked the casual chauvanism too, but I feel like it's designed to be a pat on the back to us '00ers, who know better. They're not exactly plumbing the depths of the storyline--we follow the secretaries, and their reactions are nauseatingly predictable.

2) The shop-talk is the most fascinating aspect of the show to me. Why isn't there more of it? Would its novelty be lost?

I haven't learned to care about any of the characters yet--maybe with time. I will be finished with season one before sunday, when the second season begins.

Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide

This summer, I'm trying my level best to learn the history of graphic design from the ground up. In the long term, this project is to shore up my understanding of the interactions between word and image in the 20th century. In the short term, I can grasp what was happening to graphic design in the early twentieth century and compare it to comics history.

I picked up this volume, by Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish, because I hoped it would explain graphic design in a language I already understand, High Theory. So far it's still a challenge. The nature of textbooks requires their authors to move quickly past concepts that actually do require a little more depth.

Chapter one lays out graphic design in prehistory. In doing so, the chapter also outlines the principles of graphic design in general, but in piecemeal fashion. Statements such as, "only humans have the capacity to represent absent and abstract phenomena in symbolic form" throw me for a loop. I need to sit down and think them through (luckily, I have the capacity to represent abstract phenomena in symbolic form, so thinking it through is theoretically possible). So I am moving very slowly.

Karaoke: American Legion, 7/18/08

Last night got epic. Zack and Michael Mario, outgoing (in both senses) Comm. Studies students, gathered a bunch of graduate students together for friday karaoke at the American Legion. It's still not the best atmosphere in the world, and the host still sings too many songs, but we had people from Communication Studies, History, and American Studies in force. And then, the writers' workshop folks showed up . . . and it became a dance party.

Songs performed:
Rick Astley--"Never Gonna Give You Up"
Ace of Base--"The Sign"

The Astley went just ok. I did the dance from the video. He has a deep voice, but in that key, I still felt like I was holding on for dear life.

In contrast, The Sign went nearly perfectly. The house had filled up by this point, and enough people sang along that I didn't even need to touch the chorus.

Quick Thoughts on The Dark Knight

I liked it. Didn't dare love it.

A lot of the reviews treat The Dark Knight as though it has newly bestowed narrative richness on the Batman franchise. While this is true as far as the films go, I doubt these people have been seriously reading Batman in comic book form at all. Some may cite the '80s work of Frank Miller, but to be honest, Batman has been a nuanced and complex character from creators Kane and Finger on. In my opinion, TDK barely reaches this plateau, and doesn't climb any further. It doesn't really have anything to say about the character that the comics haven't numerous times.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the kudos are due to The Dark Knight's attempts to shoehorn superheroes into a realistic world. This is kind of cool, but completely unnecessary. I hope we never see a 'realistic' Superman, and we certainly don't require one to produce a great Superman comic or movie.

I guess the main problem here might have to do with the specialization of critics in a multimedia world--the focus is necessary for critics to succeed, but it means they can only adequately judge movies in light of other movies.

Watchmen, Issue 1

This feature will be a lot cooler when I have my scanner hooked up again. Should have a review of Dash Shaw's Bottomless Bellybutton up by tomorrow.

I've forgotten a lot of the minor plot points of this comic, although the major ones are impossible to forget. The cover of my paperback edition is an extreme closeup of the comedian's smiley-face button, smeared with 'bean juice'. In this case, readers have not yet seen the smiley and might treat the cover as some kind of abstract art. There's just a black oval on a yellow background--not really enough to make out what it is. The blood really does look like bean juice here, or some kind of waxy or plastic substance--certainly looks lighter than blood--a disturbingly articifial touch. The cover of the first issue is much more contextual.

Did Watchtower ever come with its name as a band around the pamphlet? For some reason, I feel like the WATCHMEN band evokes it beyond name. It would fit with the 'end is near' vibe.

This first issue sidesteps a potential narrative problem by making use of Rorschach's journal--it roots the story in time, promises access to Rorschach's thoughts, but not the unfettered access we might receive from a narration box. R is still at a distance from us. Lots of discrepancy between the words and the images here--R's journal speaks of looking down on waste and decay, just as we are looking down from the building to the street. But R is not up there, not yet. Moore pulls these moves off so often that they begin to grate.

We begin to receive 'world-building' in subtle and less subtle ways. Stilted references to government officals, newspaper clippings.

Rorsschach proves himself a much more thorough inspector than the detectives--I almost said 'able', even though at this point, the motive for the comedian's death is still unsustained speculation. While the detectives chatted throughout their search, Rorschach pulls his off in silence. It certainly gives him a mysterious aura.

One could easily be forgiven for thinking that Rorschach himself is behind the killing at this point. His name evokes psychiatric disorder, which his behavior and journals back up. And how does he know to investigate this death in the first place? Is it simply tied to coming upon the scene of the crime, or is it because he recognizes the smiley he finds on the ground as the Comedian's? Sally tells us that R is disturbed as well, and we learn he is wanted for the deaths of several men, and doesn't seem to be able to meter out justice in proportion to the crime, as Dan's anecdote suggest.

We're also introduced to the other main characters, with Moore's typical irony. Dan, the Nite Owl, can't even bother to stay out past midnight--a sign of his larger failures of definition. Ozymandias has a few choice turns of language as well. He tells Rorschach to "have a nice day," the phrase most often associated with the smiley face in the 1970s. Rorschach also calls him " a better class of person" which is definitely true in the financial sense, but is probably not true in regards to his actions, or even in R's perception.

Hollis Mason's autobiographical excerpt from Under the Hood rounds out the beginning. I really detest Moore's prose unchained, and for the life of me cannot recall why this information is narratively important. It may prove conceptually important--what with it being a story of a man in costume who breaks down emotionally to overwrought music.

More to come!