Studio YOLO “Aporia” Challenge

Studio YOLO was founded after 8 artists and their mentor completed the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency in October of 2012, and worked together for 3 weeks on individual and communal comics projects. One of their projects with mentor Dean Haspiel, Eisner-nominated and Emmy Award winning artist, was A LETTER LASTS LONGER  where Dean provided the text and each artist had to complete their comics interpretation of the story. YOLO took this idea and ran with it, posing a challenge a month after the residency, and the challenge is open to all and sundry who wish to participate. Each month, text is posted on their website with the rest of the month to submit a comic based upon it. In March, “Aporia” by artist Christa Cassano, was posted and in April, the results were published.

I had a great idea for the comic, but am newly returned to drawing, trying to take classes on and off this year. Still, they kept insisting I shouldn’t chicken out, so I was able to make their extended deadline. The result is below. I hope to keep up with YOLO’s challenge regardless of my drawing skill level in future because it was a difficult but majorly empowering experience for me to “just do it”.

You can find a massive interview with all 8 members of Studio YOLO about their residency experience here and a review of the new Atlantic Center for the Arts Anthology BREAKERS, to which they contributed, here.

Studio YOLO are:

Christa Cassano
Fionnuala Doran
James Greene
Dean Haspiel
George Jurard
Meghan Lands
Gregory Mackay
Jp Pollard
Jess Ruliffson

The Future of Comics Scholarship at the SWTX PCA Conference, 2013

The Southwest Texas Pop Culture/American Culture Association hosts a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico every year, and three years ago, it’s where I presented my first foray into comics scholarship. I was pretty terrified to do so, having only returned to reading comics less than a year before, but I was talking about (still) one of my favorite comics, Alan Moore and JH Williams III’s PROMETHEA, which I consider a game-changer in the presentation not only of female heroes in comics, but in the comics presentation of esoteric concepts. My first paper went much better than expected, despite the fact that my panel was at 8AM, and the altitude was making me feel high. It led to my first publication in a comics studies journal (the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics), but in retrospect, I think it was more significant because I met one of the greats of current comics scholarship, Rob Weiner.

He’s the area chair for Graphic Novels and Comics at the SWTX PCA, and aside from his varied pop culture scholarship and media involvement, he’s produced quite a few excellent books and collections of essays on comics scholarship and comics in libraries that have paved the way for younger scholars to feel grounded in this new field (most recently WEB SPINNING HEROICS, a collection of essays on Spider-Man) . Not only is he an invaluable resource, but he represents the inclusive attitude so vital in comics scholarship right now, seeing the potential in new ideas and giving comics primacy in study, rather than letting theory (so prevalent in “the academy”) dominate. He’ll be embarrassed by all my praise, but let’s be clear: I wouldn’t even be writing about comics without Rob, and writing about comics has changed my life, so I’m very grateful.

I’ve been back every year to the SWTX PCA, and followed them to the national conference occasionally (all lovely people there too). I’ve been very impressed by the way a substantial number of panels on comics scholarship have been run every year, and every year several of the panels have speakers claim to be “brand new” to talking about comics in a scholarly way. This year talks ranged from cultural understanding in TINTIN (bucking the trend in criticism of colonial ideas), to discussions of autobio comics I’d never even encountered (always good), as well as plenty of talks on X-Men, WATCHMEN, and more mainstream titles. The talks were all earnest, carefully researched and presented, and gave a little preview of where comics scholarship is headed, which is into increasing acceptance in academia as a “serious” subject.

When critiquing the current state of affairs with other scholars, we all agreed that we hope in the future scholars, regardless of their subject area backgrounds (from English Lit, to Film, Law, and Sociology) will really spread their wings and resist the ossification that adhering too strictly to theory-dominance creates. To explain that a little more, what we meant is that there’s a lot of pressure in all things academic to spend a lot of energy establishing theoretical framework, which becomes a form of peer pressure that can take away from an enthusiastic discussion of the subject being studied. It feels like putting the cart before the horse, and often takes the spotlight off the great art form that we love. There’s a place for theory, and it needs to be there for a detailed critique of what comics have accomplished as a “serious” art form, but it’s a fine line between using theory and theory using scholars. So much for our soap-box.

My own presentation this year was particularly exciting for me, creating the first ever academic discussion of Emmy-Award winning artist Dean Haspiel’s BILLY DOGMA comics. BILLY, featuring a bruiser hero with poetic prose and his fists of fury girlfriend Jane Legit, has been running for 15 years in various formats, and has increasingly challenged the way that relationships are presented in hero comics. My talk focused on the way that relationships can be handled seriously as part of the psychology of hero stories, rather than simply presenting miserable, failed relationships (typical in superhero comics focusing on a secret identity) or as a “happy ending” (like many folk tales involving heroes). There’s a strong middle ground where relationships can act as part of the heroic development of well-rounded individuals struggling with their own internal demons, but it doesn’t often find its way into hero comics. Long live BILLY!

I had plenty of great slides to use to illustrate my points, and this led to discussions with other scholars later about the increasing importance of using slides so the audience really experiences the comics being talked about. As surprising as it may sound, using visual slides in academic talks is a relatively recent thing. When I presented my first American academic paper on film studies back in 2007, there was no way to use Power Point in my conference room and using the DVD player to try to show clips of a film was a complete disaster. Things are slowly catching up- thankfully since comics scholarship needs these resources.

The feedback I hear every year at the SWTX PCA is that it’s a place to reconnect with like-minded people, who often become close friends over time (and I have made several there), and the “new” scholars in the panels I chaired also spoke about how the people they met made a big difference in inspiring them to continue in comics scholarship. It’s not the easiest road in the world, often facing scrutiny or stubborn lack of desire to understand from academic circles, but that’s changing, and the only way it’s going to really change is to keep on doing what we love.

One of the highlights of the conference, by the way, was a packed screening of the 1926 film THE BAT, a silent film whose talkie sequel was a big influence on the genesis of Batman as a character and a comic. Taking into account the various trends in pop culture that impact comics is very important, and keeping comics scholarship too narrow a field is a big way to miss out on gems like this.

I spent the last day and a half in New Mexico exploring some familiar haunts in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, basking in the intense sunshine (through my dark sunglasses- intense!) ,and taking in some museums where I got the appreciate the tumultuous history and amazing Native cultures of the Southwest. Talking with Pueblo culture craftsmen, eating some of my favorite Southwest foods and just reminding myself what a big world it is always adds to my experience of the conference when I go. It was another great year at the SWTX PCA and, yeah, I hope I’m there for many years to come. I hope next year there will be even more comics panels, even more unique and original ideas I haven’t heard before, and an increasing flow of newbies who pave the way for future appreciation of comics.

The TRIP CITY Interviews : Origin Stories

My origin story as a journalist is tied up in the history of TRIP CITY’s first year of digital life. I had done plenty of writing in my life, but there were two genres of writing I had completely avoided, pretty much on purpose: autobiography and journalism. I had learned to avoid autobiography laced into fiction or poetry mostly from watching friends get slapped across the face by angry partners at readings, or from writhing around thinking “TMI” if there were no altercations to break the tedium at the same readings. My antipathy toward journalism went back further to high school when I was forced into editing the school newspaper for a semester by pleading teachers and admin. It had started badly with a guilt trip because there was no one else willing to do the job, and it only got worse as I was forced to print retraction after retraction for being too candid in what I considered bare bones and dry as dust, yawningly boring accounts of school events. One rather imposing teacher even blocked the hallway and slammed her fist into a locker to make her point. I had gotten into the middle of some kind of teacher-world rivalry without realizing. Journalism was a bad word after that, and I’ll confess my attitude was snobbish. I didn’t see any room for creativity in that prison-like atmosphere.

There was a significant blip on the radar in my 20′s when I picked up a book by Hunter S. Thompson. It was actually a volume of his diaries and I started with that before reading whatever of his work I could get my hands on. I had never even heard of New Journalism. It was as if I had lived in a world without the concept. But I came to the conclusion, misguidedly, that it probably wasn’t possible to write like that anymore, since every piece of journalism I saw was as bland as I expected it to be. Thompson lurked somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, just a minor doubt, for another decade.

I heard about this event in Brooklyn in March 2012, a book launch with some readings, and decided to go since it involved my more recent love, comics. As soon as the thing started, I pulled out a notebook and started taking down notes, thinking I might do a book review, because I was becoming more and more astonished by what was playing out in front of me. The launch for LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS by Christopher Irving and Seth Kushner actually began with some live comics performances by TRIP CITY folks and friends, and by the time Seth Kushner started talking about the ground-breaking photo essay book, I was mezmerized and strangely uncomfortable. There was something about presenting all this as a live event that was getting to me. It’s strange when you can point to one moment in your life and identify a turning point that brought about a lot of personal change, even stranger when you can blame someone else for it. Dean Haspiel saw me taking notes and asked if I was a journalist. When I said, “no”, I was probably a little horrified. But he asked if I would write up the event for TRIP CITY. That I said yes to. Journalism was bland to me, but TRIP CITY, I could already see, was not. It was something remarkable I wanted to know more about.

Writing that article was pretty excruciating. I had no idea what I was doing since it didn’t fit any formal conventions I was used to. The challenge of capturing a live event in a way that made sense, and hopefully made people feel that they had been there made me feel like stopping before I even started. I came to the conclusion around 4 in the morning that the only way to do it was to include myself. Then I remembered Hunter Thompson and that old question in my mind. After that, the article wrote itself. That’s certainly not the end of the story, far from it, but that was the beginning of writing journalistically for me.

When TRIP CITY turned one year old, it was an honor to try to pry the literary arts salon’s own origin story out of the four founders and to look ahead toward the site’s future and goals. TRIP CITY breaks paradigms and brings the literary, visual, and aural arts together in new and unique combinations that you’d be very hard pressed to find anywhere else. That confluence brought me in, and changed my artistic direction pretty profoundly. I wanted to know how that happened, and for the most part, I got my answers.

For my initial essay about what TRIP CITY is and does from my perspective, check out “The Shock of the New“, which I wrote in November 2012 for The Beat.

In my interview with co-curators Jeffrey Burandt and Chris Miskiewicz, you can read about their take on digital multi-media here.

For my interview with co-curator Dean Haspiel, you can hear him talk “Around the Digital Campfire“.

For my interview with co-curator Seth Kushner, you can hear all about his “Male Uterus“, here.

I owe these guys a profound debt of thanks for the ways they altered my trajectory in life, even if they had no idea they were doing so at the time. It’s been a phenomenal year for TRIP CITY and I couldn’t be prouder of this one year old prodigy and all its diverse and dynamic contributors. Congrats!

Celebrating Milestones in Comics: Eisner Night at MoCCA/Soc. Ill. and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

In the last days of Hurricane Sandy recovery on the East Coast, I set off from my motel room in exile for a celebratory night at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art/Society of Illustrators in NYC. The subject was the life and work of the comics phenomenon Will Eisner, complete with a screening of the excellent documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, directed by Andrew B. Cooke, including a delicious fall-flavored catered dinner.

It was a lovely evening, despite the howling Nor’easter setting in. In fact, the weather gave the city a feel reminiscent of the noir atmosphere of THE SPIRIT comics for which Eisner is best known. Hearing from comics veterans and educators Danny Fingeroth and Paul Levitz about one of their own personal heroes was also very enlightening, particularly since Levitz was responsible for bringing Eisner’s SPIRIT into DC collected editions for the first time. I reviewed both the documentary, and the evening’s event here for The Beat.

By the time the weekend rolled around, I was finally back into my house following 13 days of evacuation and power outages from the hurricane, and the 8 inches of snow dumped on New Jersey had melted too. I didn’t want to miss the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, since I hadn’t yet attended, but took a more circumspect attitude as a face in the crowd that day, just trying to get a feel for the event’s goals and aims compared to other indie comics events I’d witnessed and enjoyed in 2012. There was, however, one big draw that got me out of bed early: hearing Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, and Richard McGuire talk about “The Architecture of Comics” in a panel moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.

I waited in a crowd of fans and enthusiasts to see all these comics greats in conversation, and it was well worth the effort. Spiegelman was in top form, dealing out off-beat wit and wisdom, and praising the self-effacing Chris Ware about his new work BUILDING STORIES while talking about his own development as a sequential narrative storyteller. You can find my extensive coverage of the panel for The Beat, here.

The Festival itself was energetic, powerful, crowded, and ,to me, brought out a unique vein of comics production for the public to sift through. More than Small Press Expo, there was a distinct feeling of locality and underground production in the work. It was more edgy, more punk, if you will, and had its own unique vibe. I caught up with Dean Haspiel and Jay Lynch at the Toons table, and had some nice chats with Jim Salicrup of Papercutz who was there as a fan himself.

That evening, I had a welcome comixy focused meal with Dean Haspiel, Heidi MacDonald of PW and The Beat, Jim Salicrup, and a hearty group of Dean Haspiel’s students from his recent teaching gig at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Not only were they a lot of fun to get to know, but I was treated to insights into the character and comic SHIFTYGOTH, a new multi-contributor project taking wings online, and particularly through Facebook.

[Shiftygoth being Shiftygoth]

My venture to Brooklyn provided yet another piece of the indie comics puzzle, helping me create my first year’s impressions of where creator owned work in comics has come from and what’s on the way given the veritable explosion of indie shows in recent years. I’d highly recommend attending BCGF if you want to see diversity in comics, hand-made work, and just want to hang out with comics people devoted to their craft.

Heroes and Indies on TRIP CITY

It’s been a really busy autumn already in terms of cons, shows, expos, launches and the like. Since I haven’t been as acutely aware of it in previous years, I don’t know how this compares with other stats, but hearing things like “record sales”, “record numbers” etc suggests to me that 2012 has been a very big year for comics. I bit the bullet and tried to hit all the major events within driving range. It was a gaunlet that shuttled me between superhero cosplay and indie night-before stapling fests. I didn’t really have too much time to process what I was seeing, but I was trying to write about it on the fly. I just tried to stick to the facts and hold on for the ride.

But when my journalistic articles started coming out, I was making gaffs. Pretty embarassing ones. Sometimes I’d manage to get through one article without some mistake that showed how new I was to comics, and particularly to comics culture. Sometimes reading several collected volumes of your favorite author doesn’t exactly make you well rounded when it comes to mainstream issues and indie angst. I got a little despondent about it, even though these days you can fix mistakes with the stroke of a key and problem solved. I wondered if I just wasn’t ready to be writing about comics on a scale that really demands a degree of expertise. Maybe enthusiasm wasn’t enough.

I ended up talking to friends about it, of course, and pretty much assuming they’d agree with me, that I ought to back off for awhile. They knew a hell of a lot more than me and more often than not were providing the corrections when I needed them. But their answers were more or less even worse than telling me to call it a day. They suggested I tell everyone that I was new to comics and didn’t always know what I was looking at. In especially ungracious fashion, I got angry with them and told them off. Didn’t they know that would ruin my chances of ever being taken seriously by readers, much less by sites that might let me write for them? Suicide. A couple of days went by. It was one of those awful, good ideas that sticks in the back of your mind. It was like a dare, or maybe looking over a cliff and feeling that vertigo. I told myself I’d do it, but not publish these confessional articles. Well, you get how it turned out. I did it. I thanked them. They were right.

So, here for your perusal, check out the first article I did in this autobio vein pondering the superhero and cosplay aspects of Baltimore Comic Con that I took for granted until I looked more closely at a world I thought I knew:

“Looking for Heroes at Baltimore Comic Con”

[title image by Seth Kushner]

That one was scary enough to write, but honestly, the indie article was harder. That was the real plunge, because I hadn’t even seen an indie comic before spring of 2012 and here I was trying to write about MoCCA Fest and SPX as if I could process the wild world I was being introduced to. But it was maybe the most satisfying writing experience I’ve had yet because it was such an honest wrangling with my impressions. Here you can find:

“The Many Worlds of Indie Comics”

[title image by Seth Kushner]

A big thanks to Dean Haspiel and Seth Kushner at TRIP CITY who allowed me to air my laundry on these issues, proofread and gave suggestions about them, and particularly to Seth who arranged the images beautifully, as always. I also learned something about TRIP CITY doing this, by the way: they value earnestness. Add to that a serious respect for the hard work that goes into comics and all the arts. Just a few more reasons why I’m glad to be a part of a fantastic collective like this.

Asbury Park Comic Con: Groovy and Independent

Asbury Comic Con is the brain-child of independent comics guy Cliff Galbraith, who has been a long-time creator of RAT BASTARD, UNBEARABLE, and other comics, and has recently launched RAT BASTARD as an app for reading at NYCC 2012. He got tired of the big companies shouldering out smaller ones and indie creators at comic cons and had another plan in mind. He took over the Asbury Lanes bowling alley and music venue in Asbury Park, NJ, for the first time last spring with plenty of help from enthusiastic friends. The event was small, but had a remarkable vibe and attracted like-minded comics people. This second con, held September 29th built on that success and then some. With more tables, more comics artists and writers, and great food, it kicked ass.

Everyone involved had a great time, including TRIP CITY’s Dean Haspiel and Seth Kushner, who were there selling minis and books, and friends of TC George O’Connor of InkdTV and artist Reilly Brown. Add to that plenty of other comics stalwarts with a strong indie streak like Larry Hama and Evan Dorkin.

I was there for The Beat with several other Beat writers, and we had a blast. Part of the fun was digging around in long boxes and finding the most unlikely stuff. I ended up with some BEOWULF and Batman Annuals. Torsten Adair hit a goldmine of the bizarre and wrote it all up for The Beat as “Fool’s Gold” installments 1 and 2.

Attendees were into it and there were kids in costume this time, too. You never know what’s missing from an environment until you add kids having a good time with their parents, then you know a con has arrived. I also found some great old 8 Ball comics by Daniel Clowes, something I’d been hunting for, and Marvel graphic novels from the 1990′s. I have an obsessive collection of those- beautiful artwork! This time I got Daredevil by Bill Sienkiewicz and Frank Miller.

Some other indie friends enjoying the day and keeping tables busy were Dre Grigoropol and Sean Pryor. Sean’s a local and was looking forward the opening of an art show featuring his work. He also teaches art classes in the area.

After the con was just as much fun as the con itself. We headed down to the boardwalk after finding a restaurant too loud and uncongenial, led by Cliff Galbraith. We decided on hanging out in the warm weather under a dramatic moon/cloudscape and eating some really to die for Korean tacos. Here George O’Connor checks out the Batmobile.

Everyone broke out their cameras after nightfall to see if we could get any pictures of the moon, sea, and sand, and to our surprise, the pictures were excellent. It really set the tone for the whole con that lots of comics people got a chance to hang out and talk together about the history of comics and current work. Asbury Con was about similar goals and a desire to impact the community through comics. Big thanks to Cliff Galbraith for having this vision, and putting in all the energy to make it happen. Here’s to more years of Asbury Con. It’ll be moving to the convention hall next time due to its impressive successes, but for those of us who came to the Lanes, they’ll always have a special place in our experience of a new kind of con.

For my full coverage of the Asbury Park Comic Con for The Beat, please click here.

And I Survived…SPX!

This year I attended my first Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, in what seemed like only a couple of days after the phenomenal Boston Comic Con. I drove down a little ahead of the Expo in order to attend Dean Haspiel’s talk at the Library of Congress, celebrating the donation of over 600 minicomics from his personal collection to the Library, but also the ongoing collection that will house Ignatz Award nominated comics and other worthies drawn from SPX each year. It was a proud day for comics, and plenty of other comics folks turned up for a tour of the impressive comics holdings the Library already had on offer. If you’d like to see my coverage of that event for The Beat, you can find it here.

After returning to the hotel for a spell, some of us headed back into DC for the Literary Death Match event featuring Dean Haspiel and the Beat’s Heidi MacDonald as judges. It was a hilarious event hosted in pro fashion with a whole cast of talented cartoonists competing through wits and art.

When SPX finally opened the next morning, the crowds were impressive and I realized right away how special the Expo was. I’m new to indie comics, and this was a premier festival for creators and fans of the self-published, off-the-beaten path and even hand-made in comics. I was overwhelmed by the well of creativity I saw there, and tried to pick up a wide selection of minis produced in different ways. I talked to lots of creators, hearing their stories and motivations in the creative process, but I also saw the way in which everyone enjoyed seeing and talking to each other in an environment in which their efforts were understood. Add to that the all-star cast of famous names attending SPX this year from Daniel Clowes to the Hernandez Brothers and Chris Ware. It made for an ebullient atmosphere. It wouldn’t be far fetched to call the event one big comics party, but a party where people made record sales from interested attendees. This really signals a rise in popularity and recognition for indie comics.

I spent a lot of my time attending fabulous panels, hearing straight from veteran comics people about their careers and the future of the form, and covered lots of them for The Beat. You can see my day one coverage and day two coverage with pictures if you’re interested.

I also covered the entertaining Ignatz Awards which was one of the most up-beat ceremonies I’ve ever witnessed, not to mention the sprawling late into the night parties that followed. It left me broken down by Sunday morning, but ready for more knowledge. A full day of panels (reinforced by a great cooked breakfast) kept me on the move.

[These fine fellows are Jim Dougan, Dean Haspiel, and Joe Infurnari, all of whom create comics]

Driving back, my mind was literally still spinning with all the wit and wisdom I’d been a party too. As Warren Bernard said to me, it would be very very hard to top SPX this year, and as people started responding to the event online, it was clear that everyone had just as good a time as me. It was a crowded, lively, welcoming Expo, bringing in new readership and talent. I’d highly recommend people interested in comics attend in future years, whatever genre you’re into. It’s increasingly evident to me that comics is actually a fairly small world and if you want to hang out with like minded people, SPX is a premier place to do just that. Two thumbs up!

 

 

Dean Haspiel and Warren Bernard Bringing Indie Comics to the Library of Congress!

On the Friday before Small Press Expo, a celebrated independent comics publication show in Bethesda, Maryland, Dean Haspiel addressed the public at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in conversation with Small Press Expo guru Warren Bernard. Bernard had helped arrange Haspiel’s donation of more than 600 mini comics to the Library of Congress and this donation will form part of an ongoing collection. It was an historic day for comics, and an impressive event. Many of the comics creators already in town for the Expo took the opportunity to take a tour of some of the great comic art preserved in the LoC also.

Find a complete account of the event, photos, and its context in my article for The Comics Beat, here.

And I Survived….Baltimore Comic Con 2012

Baltimore Comic Con was a big eye-opener for me. I had only been to really large or really small cons before, and I didn’t realize there could be a convention of that size and stature that was tailored just to comics and had comic writers and artists in mind. Not only that but the fans and attendees all had a very upbeat attitude. There was tons of cosplay, no pushing or shoving in lines, and even white table cloths on the rest area tables (yes, they even had a rest area!!). I couldn’t recommend BCC highly enough if you are a serious comics fan who would like signatures or commissions. The panels were equally great, featuring top talent from both Marvel and DC, and what’s more- even Stan Lee! The man was in fine form for his adoring fans.

I spent time between legging it to panels hanging out with some talented guys from TRIP CITY who kindly let me crash at their booth even when I was underfoot. I got to see firsthand reactions to the new works they were presented at the con. Dean Haspiel was debuting the gorgeous wide-screen print version of his monograph from his BILLY DOGMA series, “The Last Romantic Anti-hero” alongside copies of the first TRIP CITY VISITOR’S GUIDE which appeared at MoCCA Fest 2012 but is still for sale. Joe Infurnari (MUSH!, MARATHON) brought out the full-color, newly detailed print limited edition of his riotous TRIP CITY digital series TIME FUCKER, and Seth Kushner brought his debut of debuts- his first ever mini comic, a collection of three stories from his TRIP CITY series THE SCHMUCK DIARIES gorgeously drawn by contributing artists. Artist Reilly Brown made a quartet of the folks at the table, bringing out his new sketchbook and handling a tide of Deadpool commissions. “The Last Romantic Anti-hero” was a no-brainer for fans already standing in line for Haspiel signatures and commissions, but the TRIP CITY VISITOR’S GUIDE was a nice surprise for those who hadn’t heard of the all-original collections of comics, stories, and art out of Brooklyn. There was a fair amound of tittering and chat about TIME FUCKER and THE SCHMUCK DIARIES. You know- the sort of reaction when people look, start to draw back from a book, then look again, closer, in disbelief and end up turning the thing over a few times before yes, buying it. Brown hardly had a moment to notice one way or the other, he was so in demand.

I took in several panels, the Harveys, and the general climate of the floor gathering coverage for The Comics Beat. I was overwhelmed by the sense of appreciation and commitment to comics I felt walking around the tables and listening in to the panels.

Baltimore is a comics fan’s con first and foremost, and since comics creators are comics readers, it’s for them, too. See my detailed coverage in the following articles, too, on The Beat:

*The Harvey Awards 2012

*Baltimore Comic Con, Day One (featuring Marvel Now! DC’s New 52, and Stan Lee)

*Baltimore Comic Con, Day Two (featuring Tom Brevoort and the Marvel method of editing)

Does It Really Matter What Happened to the Suit?

(Haspiel’s Spider-Man)

It’s a mystery. But it’s only a minor mystery: the evidence for that is how long it took any one to answer the question. On the occasion of Spider-Man’s 50^th anniversary, do we get more than a minor footnote, little more than an errata, and the convenience of a short story in a long career? There’s something a little more disturbing than the average dramatic gesture at the inception of this mystery. Any Spider-Man fan should flinch a little seeing the Spider-Man suit draped over a grimy trashcan in issue #50. It’s extreme enough to mean something, to hit home as a resonant image, but to leave it there? Yes, that’s enough to haunt the back of one’s mind. For the same reason we don’t leave flags lying on the ground, someone needed to pick up that suit. Thankfully, that person was Dean Haspiel.

Spider-Man #692, celebrating 50 years of Spidey’s legacy in comics, was released this month with 3 stories, 3 writers (Dan Slott, Dean Haspiel, and Joshua Hale Fialkov), and a number of artists (Humberto Ramos, Dean Haspiel, Nuno Plati et al.) all making a team effort as tribute to the web-slinger. Haspiel’s story, both written and drawn by him, steps back in time to a missing night in the life of Spider-Man’s costume. In Spider-Man #50, an oppressed Peter Parker, worried about Aunt May’s deteriorating health, hounded by society under the influence of J. Jonah Jameson’s Daily Bugle campaign to malign him, and failing at school makes a radical choice: to walk away from his life as Spider-Man. Leaving his suit in a trashcan in the rain, Peter seems to make some headway in his personal life. Aunt May’s health improves, he and Gwen Stacy manage to finally spend some time hanging out, and he settles in for a night of being a good student when his Spidey instincts keep prompting him to leap to the aid of the innocent. He resists, but by the end of night, suit or not, he’s scaling a building on behalf of a threatened security guard. The time away from his suit teaches Peter something, perhaps that being Spider-Man isn’t about the suit. It’s not something he can just strip off and walk away from.

(Amazing Spider-Man #50, 1967)

Haspiel’s story intersects with the themes and ideas of issue #50 in some unpredictable ways. It’s not a rehashing or a retelling from the perspective of the suit in any literal sense. If anything, this is an opposite story told in a kind of bizarro perspective, homing in on the unexpected to illustrate to the reader just how unfamiliar this story can be. It delves a little deeper into the context of that night in Peter Parker’s life even though Peter is only present in the first panel of the story. Firstly, it’s a world where Spider-Man has become a hated figure. In that sense, it is already a world upside down for Peter, a reversal he can’t quite handle. That makes it the most unlucky time in super history for someone to wear the spider-suit. In an upside down world for one upside down night, the upside down version of Peter finds and puts on the suit for his own ends. Who exactly is the opposite of Peter? Not a savage teen with a devil-may-care attitude (we see that guy briefly in Spider-Man’s origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15), but someone who closely resembles in appearance and behavior the very robber who killed Uncle Ben. If the reader is unconvinced that he’s Peter’s opposite act, the story will convince you, and show the even more surprising ways in which the two are connected.

(Haspiel’s Spider-Man)

Our robber, fleeing from a crime in a somber, close fitting body suit and black ski-mask that bears more than a passing resemblance to a dark spidey-suit, comes upon Peter’s discarded hero costume and puts it on to evade capture. He doesn’t realize that he’s doing a rather unlucky thing, taking on a hated role. The persecution the robber faces from a policeman as Spidey hits home despite its comedic value: “Go home, ya freak”. It’s comedic because our robber deserves a little persecution. It’s painful because what we “see” is Spider-Man being rapped on the hand and treated like a lackey by a policeman. There’s something very wrong with that. What’s wrong centers around the suit.

When readers of Spider-Man #50 saw the suit hanging out of a garbage can, they felt the seriousness of that image. Things weren’t made right again until Peter scaled the Daily Bugle building to redeem the suit that a child has brought in to Jameson. In Haspiel’s story, we know we are dealing with an impersonator, but something still happens—for us—when the robber puts on that suit. We see Spider-Man. He’s not Peter, but in some sense, he’s still Spider-Man. And he’s being grossly mistreated by the society he has thus far protected. However hokey it may sound, the suit has magical properties in terms of storytelling and ideas, and, as we see by the end of Haspiel’s story, that’s a force to be reckoned with.

(Haspiel sketch)

So, just how is the robber Peter’s opposite act? The reader gets that sense, firstly, when the robber appears in a dark body-suit, and secondly when, once wearing the Spidey-suit, he picks up a gun. Haspiel gives that moment full visual attention because it should be arresting. The image is familiar—it’s Spider-Man—but  unfamiliar: he’s holding a gun. Not only that, but he also picks up a bag of stolen cash. Violence and personal gain are two things that Peter vanquished early-on in the trials he faced becoming Spider-Man. Could it be that the suit is leading its new inhabitant through the same processes? It’s not a true heroic origin story for our burglar, but a mock version with some points to make.

Let’s note one strange connection between Peter and the burglar, though: motivation. Peter has given up being Spider-Man partly out of concern for the sickly Aunt May, who he can’t really help with his spider-powers, but he can help through simply being her nephew and standing by her. We learn that our burglar is motivated by “Olivia”, later revealed to be his granddaughter, another suffering invalid. He desires the power to help her, and money seems the only way to do that. He may even have been driven to this criminal lifestyle to pay for her “treatments”.

Our burglar attempts to knock over a pawn shop to pay for Olivia’s “treatments”, and again, the reader is faced with the shocking image of Spider-Man leveling a gun at someone. There are no innocent people in this panel, or on the page, for that matter. With real vitriol the shopkeeper and a female customer insult Spidey. Sure, he deserves it as the burglar, but they are not just insulting his current behavior. There’s a strong sense that they had already made up their mind about him. There’s a certain degree of sympathy for the burglar because of their unwarranted bitterness. When the shopkeeper gains the burglar’s gun and, firing it (another alarming image of real violence) finds that it either doesn’t work or isn’t loaded, we’re left with the possibility that the burglar was carrying a dummy gun all along. In some ways, it’s all an act to carefully divide our absent hero from our present criminal in a superficial way that’s then stripped away to reveal similarities.

(Amazing Fantasy #15)

But this breaks down an old dynamic at the heart of the Spider-Man origin story. Couldn’t the shopkeeper have just as easily been Uncle Ben and the robber the very robber who shot Peter’s uncle? It’s a loaded scene in many ways, a retelling, and re-shaping of possibilities. In this case, the robber isn’t evil, just inept, and the potential victim isn’t a saintly mentor, but an easily led hater. Spider-Man’s origin story, however, also contains some of these ambiguities. Isn’t it Peter who has to learn “great responsibility”? He’s hardly heroic in his early decision-making. If Peter’s no saint then the robber who kills Uncle Ben is no super-villain. There will be others to fill that role later on in the Spider-Man narrative.

(Amazing Fantasy #15)

To backtrack, in Haspiel’s story, when the robber puts on the Spider-Man suit, he says, “If I look like a super hero, then I am a super hero”. He’s not commenting on a desire to become a virtuous man. Instead, he means that he expects to be recognized as a hero by society if he puts on the costume. It’s a pre-packaged role that he simply needs to step into to take advantage of. The suit is like an expensive sports car left in an alley, engine running. No wonder he thinks he’s hit the jackpot. But of course his words become a haunting meditation and a question. To what extent do the clothes make the man? In Spider-Man #50, we learn that the clothes do not at all make the man; Peter finds that the heroism is inside of him, and inescapable. His “power” is still with him, and so also therefore is his sense of “responsibility”. But what power does this opportunist have, and to what degree does he have any responsibility to uphold?

Haspiel’s most humorously rendered scene in a comic with quite a few humorous scenes, depicts pseudo-Spidey (whose age and paunchiness by the way may well suggest the hero himself 50 years on), fleeing from a hail of golf clubs. The irony of course is that, the “menace to society” that Jameson has declared Spidey to be has become a fact when a criminal dons the Spidey outfit. Our burglar has proven that he can be a menace to society (though society seems at least equally mendacious), but can he be anything else?

(Haspiel’s Spider-Man)

A strong visual link brings us around to the idea of a “broken” Spider-Man, and it might well remind the reader of Peter’s own psychological struggles walking away from the suit, when our burglar steps on and breaks a Spidey action figure in his granddaughter’s bedroom. If there hasn’t been enough refraction and multiplication of the Spider-Man role in the story from the broken toy and stolen suit, there are also the large Spidey posters, dolls, and memorabilia owned by the adoring Olivia. Spider-Man seems to be everywhere, to the point that the robber externalizes and talks to the ideal of Spidey in doll form, saying, “She loves you”. For her grandfather, that’s enough motivation to try to actually—act—like a hero rather than just look like one.   But Olivia’s reaction to her grandfather’s impersonation of Spider-Man is ambiguous, and leaves the reader with some room for interpretation. She assures him that there are “only so many people a super hero can save in one day”. Does this mean that she doesn’t expect to be saved, and yet loves Spidey anyway? If so, this suggests that she loves him for who he is—a hero—not for what he could do for her. She values his character above his actions. Spider-Man means something to her as an idea.

That obviously has an impact on the robber, who returns the suit to the trashcan where he found it, presumably so that Spider-Man can find it again, but at least in some kind of gesture of reverence for its symbolic value. His words also leave plenty of room for interpretation “It takes more to be a superhero than just dressing like one”. This isn’t a simple gloss on what Olivia said to her grandfather, but a statement about the whole story arc. Even Olivia, who loves Spider-Man, acknowledges a limitation in the super hero role, that Spidey can’t save everyone, and she’s ok with that. It doesn’t diminish her sense of what a super hero is. For her grandfather, this seems to increase his sense of reverence. Spider-Man might just be a guy in some way. It humanizes the hero. Once the robber realizes that, it seems to dawn on him just what Spidey has managed to accomplish. He knows that the suit can’t turn him into a hero. Peter Parker, learning his own lesson that night, learns that taking off the suit can’t “un-turn” him into a hero, either. The suit’s a symbol, of course, for something, a hero, and not the thing in itself.

(Amazing Spider-Man #50)

So, does it really matter what happened to the suit that night? On Spider-Man’s 50^th anniversary as a hero, is a minor mystery worth exploring? Why not take on a bigger gap in his long history? Depending on the details and what the story of the suit contained, it could have just been an amusing anecdote, and a particularly satisfying one, especially if it was clever, as this story is. But the story that Haspiel creates opens up the can of worms that Spider-Man #50 opened and carefully resealed about the nature of heroism, and the convoluted and ambiguous relationship between symbols and actions. As a character, part of Spider-Man’s appeal is that he does not always dish out simple paradigms for heroism. In this story, even Olivia’s aware of that. There’s little doubt that, in Spider-Man #50, Peter Parker is actually quantifiably more heroic when he leaps into action out of costume. It’s equally true that, in Haspiel’s story, the robber becomes potentially heroic when he takes that costume off, too. Does that mean that the costume’s unnecessary, something that should be discarded? No. It means that the costume actually does mean something beyond itself. It’s transcendent, and that’s a hard lesson for both Peter and the burglar. It’s a crushing, overpowering thing that can’t be expelled, eliminated, or thrown out, and it’ll change those who get in its path.

One final stroke of genius from Haspiel is the solemn truth that even in absentia, Spider-Man has stopped another criminal from future violent deeds, thereby safeguarding the innocent. Just the idea of Spider-Man converts the burglar toward some higher form of understanding. At a point in Spidey’s story where he is considered little better than a criminal by society, why not let a criminal take the role for a spin? Why does it matter what happened to the suit during the time Peter tried to escape the role? Because Spider-Man #50 may show us that Peter can’t escape the role in costume or not, but Haspiel’s story shows us that no one can escape the role and impact of heroism. Even the burglar acknowledges that is a big, big responsibility.

(Amazing Spider-Man 50th Anniversary cover, issue #692)