So the whole idea of the fake geek girl, that there are women who pretend to be geekish but are only doing it to be popular (!?), is one of the more moronic inventions of contemporary fandom. It’s the snobbishness of the smallminded, those who think life is an endless high school struggle between the cool kids and the chess club and are now recoiling in horror as the mundanes invade their domains. Hence you get all these sort of tests, almost exclusively aimed at women, to prove that somebody isn’t a real geek, for not knowning such essential things as who the first captain of the Enterprise was in some hideous real life version of the Eltingville comic-book-science-fiction-fantasy-horror and role playing club trivia-off.
And sometimes these feckers get it wrong, like here, when the “steampunk gender swapped Joker in a Willy Wonka hat” actually turns out to be another DC character all together and our trufan hero turns out not to know as much as he thinks he does…
First off, the word “muslim” is never implied. Second, the terrorists aren’t real. They are cartoons based loosely on the fact that there are people on this planet who will kill you because you don’t believe in their imaginary god. Again, they are CARTOONS. It’s complete fantasy.
The fact that the villians here are all brown skinned, bearded and wearing what certainly looks like stereotypical Middle Eastern clothing and come from “Ufukistan” — sheer coincidence. Also, you shouldn’t complain about these images because in the same issue Martians are also treated badly.
I mean…are YOU serious?? Are you suggesting that cartoon terrorists shouldn’t be depicted as something that’s relatively close to reality? You do realize it’s not a stretch, right? Maybe you don’t.
So it’s not real, but it is realistic. Gotcha. Jason Karns’ defence so far has hit most of the expected points: it’s only a story, it’s not real, actually, it’s taken from real life, pointing out racism is the real crime, criticism is censhorship, what about the Martians, but it doesn’t excuse the Planet of the Arabs imagery:
It’s even more insanely racist than it looks, and also it is insanely misogynistic, exploitative, misanthropic, nihilistic, antisocial, funny, engaging, shocking, dynamic, beautiful, inspiring, scary, and well-designed!
It’s the kind of comics that scared a generation into burning comics in the 50s.
These comics feel genuinely dangerous and entertaining like slasher movies and cheap, violent 80s action vehicles. I’ve never seen any other comics like these. I was happy to see comments that mentioned Crumb, Johnny Ryan, and Vigil’s Faust. This is divisive, complex work. It’s not for everyone. But it’s a reminder, like other great comics, of why I love the comics form. Images and drawings can be powerful. I think many cartoonists do not focus on that aspect of the form.
To be honest though, there was a lot of shitty comics being burned in the fifties as well. The grossout horror and real crime stories could actually be transgressive back then because comics were about the only medium not censored into pablum, largely beneath the notice of the censors, until Wertham found a way to sell more books. Karns’ work takes place in a completely different media environment, one in which anything goes and there’s nothing transgressive or radical about blood and gore, especially not when done by white dudes to brown villains.
Rugg’s comparison to “slasher movies and cheap, violent 80s action vehicles” is telling, because under the gore, violence and the occasional bare titties, these were some of the most conservative movies in the world. Slasher movies always killed off the girl who actually enjoyed sex first (but not after the topless shot, natch) for being a slutty slut who sluttily enjoys slutty sex, while eighties action movies were all about re-establishing American dominance over all the world villains, be they Russians, Cubans, East Germans, Arabs, Vietnamese, or, in Chuck Norris flick Invasion U.S.A., all of them. There’s nothing “dangerous” about imitating them, nothing of Karns I’ve seen so far that looks any more interesting than what Barry Blair did in the eighties black and white boom.
Even without the racism Karns work looks dull, a thirtysomething’s idea of what a thirteen year old would like; with the racism it just leaves a nasty taste in your mouth. It may have struck Tom Spurgeon as weird that you’d “dismiss the transgressive nature of something at the same time you’re trying to shout it down in some fashion“, but just because it annoys people it’s not transgressive, or all muzak ever would be. Nor are people necessarily trying to shout it down in the first place: criticism, even harsh out of hand dismissals, are not censorship. Karns has the right to make the comics he wants to; the rest of us have the right to think less of him for what he created.
If he really wants to shock and be radical and trangressive, why not have the same comic, but with the heroic defenders of Fukistani values defeating the evil forces of the godless west? Show some gleeful, lovingly dismemberment of US soldiers while Osama Bin Laden quips one liners? That would still be dull, but slightly more brave than just putting the boot into your country’s official enemies once again.
A woman. Traveled across country (alone?) to the biggest, most vital city in the world at the time. Got a job on a paper run and staffed by men. Cartooned. She did all this in the 1880s through the early teens. American women got the right to vote in 1920. Got it? Okay, let’s go on.
Mary Williams adopted the name “Kate Carew” and wrote candid, witty interviews with luminaries of the day, including Mark Twain, Pablo Picasso, and the Wright Brothers. She adorned her interviews with her unique “Carewatures,” and often drew herself into the scene. Imagine Oprah Winfrey as a liberated woman caricaturist-interviewer in 1900 and you have an idea of who Kate Carew was.
But she turns out to have been amazing, a cartoonist who in the 1900s and 1910s interviewed all the celebrities of her day. The Wright Brothers! Jack Johnson! (Q: was he “anxious to undermine the supremacy of the Caucasian race” with his boxing? A: No) Picasso! She even tricked Mark Twain into an interview.
I was a comparatively harmless painter person who had set up a studio in New York with a single eye to serious work-art with a capital “A,” you know–and in a mischievous moment I inked over some grotesque sketches of an actor which I had made on the margin of a theatre programme, and sent them to a newspaper, hardly expecting ever to hear of them again.
But lo! I did, and the sequel throws a light on the hunger for novelty which is the ruling passion of the bright young editors trained up by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World. It was to the World that I had sent my sketches. They fell into the hands of an editor whose hunger for novelty was especially poignant, and within two days I was engaged at what to a lowly painter of portraits seemed a ridiculously handsome figure, to supply the paper twice a week with two columns of theatrical caricature seasoned with frivolous comment. I awoke to find myself pseudonymously famous. The alias with which I had signed the sketches–I had selected it a random–shouted at me from advertisements and posters, and “The Only Woman Caricaturist” was flaunted before the public with a persistence which made me thank my stars I had not signed my real name.
Kate Carew also worked in comics, which was why she was mentioned in that TCJ review in the first place, with her best known comic being Angel Child:
All of which is enough for an independent movie company to make a documentary about her:
I emailed Howard Chaykin a single sentence one time and he wrote a single sentence back correcting my grammar, and it was at that moment that I knew I had won the contest of who gets to have the best conversation with Howard Chaykin, because I would rather have that one sentence back and forth than any long conversation where I told him about how much I liked The Shadow and he pretended he cared and then maybe I brought up some random part of his career that I bet not a lot of people ask him about and oh aren’t I so clever that I asked the question that a lot of people don’t ask, unlike all those proles who bring up American Flagg, everybody talks about American Flagg, look at me how special it is that I know the name of the thing that is different from the other thing and now maybe I can be best friends with the comics artist or cup my hot mouth on him or just hold his head down in a bowl of warm sand or whatever, however that fantasy plays out.
Aaand we’re back. So sorry, my provider went for a hissy fit just as I went on holiday with not enough internet to do anything about it. It’s fixed now, but if anybody has a good, cheap host they can recommend?
This was the first time I’ve been on holiday with my family since (thinks) 1994, back when we we’re last all living together. This time, we instead got my foster brother and his family, my sister and her family, as well as my parents and youngest brother; luckily we weren’t all staying in the same holiday house, but it was still a concentrated blast of family I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Fun was had by all, but two weeks were just long enough for me. It’s interesting to spent so much time together now we’re all in our thirties and see how easily we still somehow slip in our old roles sometimes…
Anyway, going to France meant of course buying some comics; and unlike the last time we went on holiday there, this didn’t mean buying French copies of Marvel titles (I was fourteen). Instead I went to a very nice comics shop in Montpellier, Azimuts, where the woman vbehind the counter was very enthusiastic about Baru, also one of my favourite cartoonists. So here’s what I got:
Two Baru books recommended to me: Fais péter les basses, Bruno! and Quéquette blues
Finally, Le Bleu est une Couleur Chaude by Julie Maroh, which has already been made into a movie.
That last one is the one I’m most excited about, though it’s hard reading what with my fairly limited high school French. Oh well, at the very least I can look at the artwork, which is brilliant.
What I also noticed in France was how manga were everywhere; even the local hypermarket had several shelves full of them, more than of French comics, with all the popular series (One Piece, Naruto, etc) you’d expect.
