comics are (literally) history

I think, I hope, we’ve moved beyond the question as to whether or not comics and graphic novels are legitimate reading for kids and teens. But just in case another case needs to be made, or should you find yourself needing just one more piece of evidence to get the last word, I’m throwing this idea out there:

Comics existed before most people even owned books.

So the word itself, cartoon, comes from the Italian cartone which was the stiff paperboard Renaissance artists used to sketch out their paintings. Da Vinci’s notebooks are full of cartoons. All those frescos in the churches, they began as cartoons drawn on the walls. Historically, the cartoon was a representative drawing done in preparation of a finished work. These cartoons were illustration, plain and simple, and they came from a long line of visual representation starting with those cave paintings in the south of France.

You see, man’s earliest attempts to communicate story came in pictographs. The pictures, spread across cave walls, told a sequential narrative about The Great Hunt or The Battle for Berries or Hunter Tripping on Rocks. These forerunners of the cartoon predate cuneiform and hieroglyphs and other forms of symbolic language. The pictures told the story in much the same way that a wordless picture book or graphic novel does today. Depending on the sophistication of their brains, it would be curious to take a modern wordless picture book back to cave-dwelling man and see if they understood it.

Though it can be a bit of a stretch to call the cave paintings and fresco sketches cartoons they are nonetheless historical artifacts that show that there was a way to “read” before there were words. Up until the Renaissance these cartoons were historical in nature (the Greeks and Romans would illustrate battles from Mythology, they believed them to be historical at some level), but I recently came across what might truly be the genesis of the graphic novel in The Bayeux Tapestry.

Art history majors (and anyplace where the arts are still considered important and taught) know The Bayeux Tapestry to be an illustrated telling of the Norman Conquest and The Battle of Hastings which took place in 1066. The Tapestry itself dates to the 1400s which easily predates the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus by Art Spigelman and the groundbreaking work by the father of the American graphic novel, Will Eisner, by a good 500 years. Cartoons and the sequential narrative are not new.

Last week I was reminded of this when the website Open Culture featured an animated version of The Bayeux Tapestry. I don’t often post media within the blog, but this is worth the diversion.

The tapestry itself is a collection of narrative strips – or panels, to use a modern comic term – that read from left to right and top to bottom, just as if you were reading a book. Because you are, you’re reading a graphic novel from 1476, and the best part about it, it’s non-fiction! It’s not only a cartoon, it’s historical!

I hope this puts a cork in the comics-aren’t-reading argument so we can move on to more important discussions. Like what makes a good comic or graphic novel – and why are there so many mediocre ones out there for kids these day?

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VD + GN = TLR: the CYBILS awards!

In case you’ve forgotten your middle grade math, the headline translates to Valentine’s Day plus Graphic Novels equals True Love Always. Admittedly a little silly, but this was the year the graphic novel panel essentially agreed on the winners out the gate. That can either be viewed as a unified affirmation of what was good or, more cynically, that there was only one clear choice in each category surrounded by fluff that made the decision inevitable. The truth is probably located somewhere in between.

But first, a little business. If you haven’t done so already, got check out the winners of this year’s Cybils Awards.

Now, there’s plenty I can say about some of the choices in the other categories, most of it surprise about the number of books that weren’t on my radar, but I was on the Graphic Novel panel this year and will contain my comments, briefly, to our selections.

In the elaborate (not) process I use to determine my rankings, I actually had a tie between Anya’s Ghost and Level Up. I would have been happy to have either book as the winner, but here’s the thing about Anya’s Ghost that gives it the edge for me: I had a hard time articulating what it was about it that made me like it so damn much. I understand the mechanics of storytelling, sequential narrative, illustration, and the sort of stories that I like but in the end I was at a loss to articulate it. I felt bad for the publisher, First Second, who sent me an advance copy of the book practically a year ago because I felt like I owed them a review on my blog. I still do, as far as I’m concerned, and maybe I can finally do that. Not today, not here, but soon.

In short, Anya’s Ghost felt like the most complete graphic novel, most satisfying in terms of narrative arc, balance of humor and seriousness, light and dark, and was the most novel-like of the entries.

In the middle grade category things were a little more interesting. For me, mind you. Two of the books I felt sort of disqualified themselves because they didn’t belong in the graphic novel category at all – Wonderstruck is very clearly a middle grade book and should not have even made it to the first round judges, similarly Nursery Rhyme Comics was an anthology and a picture book for older readers, but not a middle grade graphic novel. These personal disqualifications should not be taken as a knock against their quality – indeed, I would have loved to see Nursery Rhyme Comics considered in the picture book category as a finalist – but it did not belong, thus narrowing the field.

A third book, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, wasn’t even mentioned as a possible finalist in the category by any of the other panelists. I can’t speak for the others, but I found elements of this book troubling at the content level. Throughout the process I have deliberately kept myself from seeking out other reviews so as not to pollute my opinions, but I hope to work this all out in a review and then see what others have said.

With three titles eliminated all that was left was to decide between was Zita the Spacegirl and Sidekicks. The short answer here is that Zita had a lot more going for it in terms of humor and adventure, and by comparison Sidekicks felt slight. The best I can articulate, it was a little like putting any generic comic book adaptation of a Cartoon Network show up against Jeff Smith’s Bone books. With that in mind it wasn’t hard to decide that my first pick was…

Nursery Rhyme Comics.

Huh?

Yes, despite the fact that I don’t think anthology comic collections should be considered graphic novels (any more than a short story anthology should be considered a novel) it was, by far, a much better quality product. But in the end I had no desire to defend or attempt to justify a variance in my own personal criteria when I was going to vote strongly against Wonderstruck if necessary. And as an aside, even if I did consider Wonderstruck a graphic novel I don’t think it had a solid enough word-image connection, as emotionally compelling, or a strong enough sequential narrative to put it above Anya’s Ghost. I know people think Selznick has invented this great hybrid of storytelling but, really, those of us who have studied film know a storyboard when we see one.

And there you have it, my brief explanation of how the Cybils Graphic Novel Awards shook out from my personal perspective. I don’t know if any of my fellow judges have any plans to discuss their view of the process but if so I’ll happily update this post with links to their examinations. I will say, this was the most unanimous, least contentious judging panel I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

Andrea, John, Sarah, Emily, (and fearless leader Liz) it was a pleasure and an honor working (briefly) with you all!

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a cybils judge, a cybils judge!

I always feel like nerdy Navin Johnson from The Jerk anytime I get picked for something, so just imagine Steve Martin jumping up and down and shouting the title of this post for the full effect.

This year I am again on the Graphic Novel panel, although I wavered quite a bit over whether to make it my first or second choice after poetry. I still feel very much like a sham when it comes to poetry, and probably always will. Even if I were to publish shelf-loads of chapbooks (or even one) I would feel this way. I don’t know why poetry makes me feel this way though I suspect that somewhere in my educational past I was told something that put me in my place.

No matter, I think I’m better suited for judging graphic novels this year. Better informed, I should say. I think there’s going to be quite a strong showing of titles and it may be difficult to choose one over the other.

One of the things that judging graphic novels reminds me of are the back-to-school nights when I was teaching Art in middle schools. The question foremost on parent’s minds (as well as with students) was how I could consistently grade something as individual, idiosyncratic, and subjective as creative output. To their minds, creativity was something mystical that seemed outside the realm of quantitative judgment, going hand-in-hand with the idea that a talent was given at birth and not learned. Similarly I find, many feel a graphic novel is a form of storytelling that doesn’t follow the same rules as traditional narratives and so there must be some different, mystical set of rules for determining quality.

While it’s true that there is a different vocabulary for the mechanics of graphic storytelling, in the end the story needs to satisfy the reader on the same level as traditional narratives. Characters have to be complex and well-developed, there has to be a sense of narrative arc that flows from a central conflict or theme, and there needs to be a satisfying resolution. There is an added visual element to the decision to be sure, but the most lavishly illustrated and colored graphic novel is nothing more than a collection of pretty pictures if there’s no story to back them up.

In the past I have seen some interesting finalists for the Cybils Graphic Novel category that, to me, were clearly chosen for their graphics and not their storytelling. I cannot say whether or not the panelists felt the lack of story was compensated by the strength of the art or if they simply couldn’t see the narrative flaws but it does make for some interesting discussions when it comes time to select a winner.

As I said, I think this is a strong year for the Graphic Novel category and I’m looking forward to having to make some tough decisions down the road.

At this point almost all the judges have been posted over at the Cybils blog, and there are some mighty impressive people involved all over the place.

What are the Cybils? Oh, no, you did not just ask me that!

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do we want teen boys to read, or not?

Sports writer (it figures) cum YA author Robert Lipsyte rattled the cages of the kidlit community this past weekend with his essay in the NYT Book Review essentially lobbing the teen boy reading problem back across the net into the “more boy books” camp. This naturally, almost assuredly, possibly deliberately, raised the hackles of those who feel that the problem isn’t books (don’t blame the books!) but in the way society raises the boys (we need to raise boys as feminists!). Here’s the one line that resonated with me out of the whole essay, the one most true, the one ring to bind them:

“We need more good works of realistic fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, on- or ­offline, that invite boys to reflect on what kinds of men they want to become.”

Forget everything else Lipsyte said for a moment (especially if it bothered you) and think about everything this statement embraces.

First and foremost it recommends we need books. Define that how you will, I would love to hear someone argue the opposite side, that we don’t need books anymore.

Second, the modifier good is in there. We don’t just need more crap, we need quality, and again there’s a spectrum there.  Suffice to say we know good when we see it, what defines good isn’t at issue here.

Third, following the rule of threes, comes the type of good books that we need: realistic fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels. Any naysayers out there? Anyone think we couldn’t use more quality nonfiction, solid realistic fiction, or good graphic novels? No? Let’s move on.

The next part is tricky: inviting boys. This gets tossed around and argued quite a bit, and it usually has to do either with cover designs or whether a girl is involved with the story. This is the “Ew, cooties!” argument, and the division is usually between “if it’s good, it shouldn’t matter” and “we need to teach boys to get over it.”  This is the point where I would think most pro-feminists would want to weigh in with just exactly how boys get to this stage of thinking. There’s an avalanche of advertising and marketing out there that is conditioning boys from a very early age to think of pink as a girly color and that stories featuring girls will contain content of no interest to them. There’s a ginormous world out there molding and shaping the ways boys approach their entertainment and free time, and you want to draw a line in the sand at books and dare boys to cross it? If we aren’t going to invite boys into books, if the stand is going to be pandering versus political, or if there’s just no desire to even bother, then how can we possibly imagine a world where boys even begin to come close to recognizing books as valuable?

Now comes the most interesting phrase out of the Lipsyte quote, to reflect. We don’t just want them to read for the sake of reading, we want them to find meaning and purpose in what they read, we want them to think. This is where I feel a lot more harm than good is done in the schools when there is a dramatic shift from reading for fun toward reading for meaning. I do think boys can and should be able to analyze texts and glean relevent meaning from a story, any story, but I don’t think books should be used to do this. This is where I get a little radical and run my post a little off a side track, but this is the crux of it:

Apply all the lessons taught about subtext and metaphor and literary devices via movies and television shows.

Why? Because we already know they spend more time with visual media than they do books. Because we need them to see that these lessons exist in the world outside the classroom. And because they will be better able to apply those lessons to books if we don’t remove them from the category of pleasurable pursuits. You can take any contemporary television sitcom and use it to teach racial and gender-based stereotypes for example – and there’s a LOT of examples out there, many of them hit shows, a lot of them negative – then have them read any work of fiction and they’ll spot them without effort. It doesn’t work the other way around however. Kids who are whipsmart at spotting literary devices in books view their favorite TV shows as somehow being separate or above all that.

Anyway, if we want our boy readers to be able to sincerely reflect on what they read in books we might have to actually teach them how to reflect somewhere else besides books first.

The last part of Lipsyte’s quote is a loaded gun: what kinds of men they want to become. You ask any boy what character from literature they would most like to be like, and what are the odds you’ll get a character from a fantasy novel, a hero with superpowers? Not very realistic. On the spot I can only think of one good example, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a boy wanting to be like Atticus Finch. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a guy (outside of fellow writers) who said they wanted to be like any male, author or character, connected with books. There are great men to emulate in the world, politicians and athletes and movie stars, but these are all men of action who give no appearance of having read any books.

So if we want to invite boys to reflect on the type of men they want to become, and we want them to do it through good, realistic fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels – and there’s nothing in that restatement I find objectionable – then we need more books that allow this to take place. This isn’t an argument of pandering versus bootstrap feminism, it’s about saying, simply, let’s put out more books like this and give them time to find an audience.

Boys and reading are like a teen driver and his broke-down truck by the side of the road. You can either give them a lift to the next town and help them one step further along the road to reading, or you slow down long enough to smirk at their choice of vehicle before driving off and leaving them in the choking dust.

We can argue all we want, but there are boys all over the literary map who need lifts into town.

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it’s cybilcalifrgilistic!

That time of year again, when folks from all over the blogosphere begin tossing their favorite hats into the ring for consideration of the Third Annual Cybils Awards!

For those unfamiliar, the Cybils are the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers literary awards.  The great thing about the Cybils: anyone can nominate a title (one title per person, per category) and that makes for some pretty long lists by the time nominations close, which is on October 15th.  More details here.

Yours truly is once again hanging out with the graphic novels crew and am looking forward to seeing what crops up this time.  Once the nominations close I’ll post my collected nominees in each category and we’ll see if all my taste is in my mouth (where my foot often ends up).

Folks, honestly, if you haven’t checked it out, please, do so.

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belly-up minx

It’s sad, but not totally surprising.

Over at Comic Book Resources they’re reporting that the DC imprint of graphic novels for girls, Minx, is no more.  From the announced launch the element that struck me oddest was DC.  I think DC comics and I don’t immediately think “girls” or “graphic novels” really, I think Batman.  I think Superman.  I think of a publisher that made their name as the chief competitor to Marvel for the better part of half a century.  Guy stuff.

Also, anytime you start a subdivision aimed at a specific core market you’re acknowledging (a) that you have been neglecting that market, which connotes a sort of guilt, and (b) you’re attempting to correct the problem through a form of market segregation.  DC started Minx because the noted there were a lot of teen girls reading manga.  Imagine if they took similar steps back in the 60s by starting an imprint of comics aimed at black children by giving them their own imprint, a sort of separate but equal for the comic book world.

The problem is that what girls — or any consumer for that matter — wants isn’t their own culturally specific art, media, or entertainment as determined by a single entity, what they want is true integration across the board.  If the observation is that girls are reading more manga the conclusion isn’t that they want their own comics brand but they want comics with female characters in them.  DC sort of got that part right. Castellucci’s Janes books, Good As Lily, The Re-Gifters, all of them featuring female characters.  If that was all it took wouldn’t everyone be beating down the door for that untapped market?

Recently I caught a talk given by J.J. Abrams, one of the creators of the TV show Lost, talking about what he calls the mystery box.  It’s about wanting to know what’s inside that drives dramas, their secret heart, what makes them tick.  During the talk he shows a clip from Jaws.  I’m not going to recount the whole thing here, so if you want the full experience jump over here and give it a look and then come back.  The thing he identifies though, what he says the film is about, it isn’t what we think of with Jaws.  It isn’t the shark, it isn’t the totentanz for three men in a boat, it’s about one man in personal crisis, a crisis of the heart.  This is the core of the film and the essential secret, the mystery within the box, because without this the film is dead.

I’ve always sort of known this about Jaws, but what I realized while listening to Abrams is that when some cultural phenomenon like Jaws — or a graphic novel like Watchmen, or a TV show like Lost, or the Harry Potter books — garners attention what follows is the parade of imitators desperately hoping to cash in through imitation.  But what they see, what they copy, isn’t what makes the original resonate with people.  What is copied is the artifice, the exterior, and not the core or the mystery.  Sequels to Jaws weren’t about a man in crisis, they were about the shock of the shark, and as such became pale (and laughable) imitators.  The core of the Harry Potter books is no different than a Cinderella story with a bit more Grimm added to it, but the immitators only saw wizards and magic and dragons that adorned the outside of it.

Back to Minx.  DC saw girls reading manga and said “hey, we can do that!”  But what they created were comics, not manga.  The stories were more decidedly Western when perhaps it was a Japanese cultural perspective that was the draw.  DC/Minx saw the shark, they never tapped the mystery box, at least that’s my take on it.  But get this explanation:

Multiple sources close to the situation agree Bond and DC aren’t to blame for MINX’s cancellation, and that this development should be seen as a depressing indication that a market for alternative young adult comics does not exist in the capacity to support an initiative of this kind, if at all.

Are they kidding?  Yeah, well, we saw that girls liked comics so we started an imprint just for them, but no one really bought them and so we have to conclude the market really isn’t there. No, Minx, from my perspective the alternative young adult comic market does exist, you just didn’t really bother to understand what that market wanted.

You want to know what I think is the most telling part of the news release?

Nevertheless, CBR News was told that Random House, DC’s book trade distributor, has not been able to successfully place MINX titles in the coveted young adult sections of bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

That’s the killer.  Barnes and Noble decided the books should be buried among the bound collections of guys with tights and the girls don’t like going there.  I worked there, I know.  Reason?  That aisle is full of grown men leering through the manga and teen boys acting like jerkworms arguing over alternate Batman universes.  Everyone knows that what B&N says, goes. And if Minx was even going to have a chance at the market they knew they needed better placement than Fanboy Alley.  I bet a face-out in YA of Minx titles might have told a different story then the one we’re hearing about now.

So long, Minx.

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d-day

As in deadline day, as in my first packet of writing was due today, as in I just sent it off to my advisor and now it’s the waiting game.

Overall I feel pretty good about this packet because I think I paced myself well.  That’s about the only concrete thing I can focus on right now because I don’t have enough of a sense of my own writing to know whether or not to be freaking out about that.  Not rationally at least.

I sound a little babbley.

Things should get a little less navel-gazey here at fomagrams in the next couple of weeks while things shift back to whatever I call normal.  In the meantime tomorrow the Cybils will be announced and then we’ll open the floor to questions concerning the graphic novel category, where the judging was interesting to say the least.  I’m okay with one of the final choices and not so much so with the other.  I’m going to have to think hard about what I want to say or even what I think I should say.  Whatever I decide to share, and it’s going to be personal as opposed to an expose, it’ll be on Friday so that the Cybils can bask in their own glory.

I really just want to listen to a lot of music and chill right now.  Preferably in Amsterdam.  Drinking one of those hot-chocolate-on-a-sticks at a cafe along a canal. Really, the best.

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Cybil-ized

How can you not love an award for children’s literature that sounds like it was named after a person with multiple personality disorder?

Yes, it’s Cybils season and the second round of finalists were posted this morning. This is the one yours truly has been waiting for because it includes the nominees for the graphic novel category, of which I am a judge.

When heard that the graphic novel announcement wouldn’t come until today I was a bit worried, what with the ending residency at school and all. Turns out my fears were baseless as I have read (and in some cases reviewed elsewhere) all but three titles with only one title a total mystery to me. Like God in a Far Side cartoon making snakes out of clay, this should be a cinch.

Or will it? With so many great titles on the list I suddenly realize that I’m going to have to pit them against each other in no-holds-barred cage matches to determine which truly deserves favor over the other. I may even have to get out my graph paper and comparison charts (again, borrowed liberally from What Color Is Your Parachute) in order to figure out the winners by points.

Of course I alone will not make this decision, I am merely one of a panel of judges. How will the collective see things? Will we go toe-to-toe over our personal convictions or will we bend gently in each others breezes until a consensus is borne? Will we fight doggedly against the obvious or will we, like an ALA panel, allow for the rise of mediocrity in compromise (anyone feeling Lucky?)?

We shall see. In the meantime if you haven’t checked out all the Cybils stuff, or are curious to know what the heck I’m talking about, check it out. Winners for all categories will be announced on Valentine’s Day, a blogger’s heart and a box of virtual chocolates for the writers and illustrators we honor.

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