"Graphic Novels" Part 1 of 4: An introduction to the term "Graphic Novel"...

Storytelling starts with a gathering: I attended a pleasant dinner party last night, close friends, good food, laughter. It is important for this story that I mention how exceptionally well read and intellectual my hosts and their friends are. I feel relaxed with these friends, but am aware that they are thoughtful and purposeful in their lives. In the world of letters and degrees and careers, I am the lightweight in the room. And they are kind, inquisitive, and plainly, just "good folk."

When conversation turned to comics studies and graphic novels, I shared that I have in recent years begun reading and enjoying graphic novels. I realized as I shared my thoughts that I was trying to "sell" the genre, and how hard it was to be concise, and how little I actually knew in this newly found appetite of mine. Their interest prompted me to try to articulate my new interest in these sorts of stories.

What I do know is that for a "graphic novel" to work for me, it has to have both story and art that intrigues me. A year ago I ordered a book by Warren Ellis, Global Freqiuency, which had  host of guest artists and very interesting—at times eye-popping—art, and sadly a boring, repetitively-themed, and un-compelling story. I wanted to like the book for the art and what it promised in moving the eye forward, but my brain was left idle...

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This is the first of a four week series: Here's my outline for trying to organize this new hobby of mine...

• Part 1: An introduction to the term "Graphic Novel" (with heavy Wikipedia Quoting).
• Part 2: Graphic Novels that have delighted my young children. (Recommendations with age appropriateness offered).
• Part 3: Complete Collections Recommendations (for adults).
• Part 4: Ongoing series (for adults) that I am currently reading...

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My relationship starts with a Christmas gift: About five years ago my younger brother offered a Christmas gift that was not from any list I had generated. He knew I had turned my son on to a graphic story that we each had enjoyed in the summer of '09, Bone [to be included in Part 2 of this series]. He also knew I was reading dystopian novels and offered a tangential book to those I had asked for, Watchmen by Alan Moore. It has been listed on Time magazine's 100 best novels, is currently being taught at my high school, and has made every list I have researched for the best of this genre. I do not wish to write a review of this book, as so many before me have done a better job of it. I mention it for a starting point to this conversation; it is so important for the increased interest in comics by many, including me.

It seems appropriate to use Wikipedia's entry on the term "graphic novel" here as it is clear mentioning some of the greats and represents the crowd sourced consensus on what this genre is all about:

A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" normally refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly, and includes fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work. It is distinguished from the term "comic book", which is used for comics periodicals.

The term "graphic novel" was first used in 1964; it was popularized within the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God in 1978, and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Spiegelman's Maus, Moore and Gibbons's Watchmen, and Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Book Industry Study Group added "graphic novel" as a category in book stores.

Controversy of terminology: It's not lost on me that some of my favorite writers in this genre somewhat resent the use of the term "graphic novel."

Writer Neil Gaiman, responding to a claim that he does not write comic books but graphic novels, said the commenter "meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening."^[31]

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My first may have been Watchmen, but it should have been Sandman: Neil Gaiman wrote Sandman, a series that a good college friend of mine recommended repeatedly back in the early 90s to me. I had little interest when I was 20, but have since made my way into Gaiman's work and found moments that were delightfully profound and well presented. Of particular note in his 75 issue story (collected in 10 volumes) was volume 3: Dream Country:

Dream Country is the third trade paperback collection of the comic book series The Sandman, published by DC Comics. It collects issues #17-20. It is written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran and Malcolm Jones III, coloured by Robbie Busch and Steve Oliff, and lettered by Todd Klein... ...It concerns [in part] the premiere of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we are told was commissioned by Morpheus as part of a bargain in which Morpheus granted Shakespeare his extraordinary skill with writing. Performed on a hillside before an audience of bizarre creatures from Faerie - including the very characters who appear in the play, Titania, Auberon, and the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow (Puck) amongst them - the Sandman's version of reality and Shakespeare's play are merged and interact with one another. Puck greatly enjoys the play and repeats the theme of the story that while the play does not directly reflect history or even some of the personalities of the characters it is still considered a true reflection of "reality". (In reality Puck is described as being a psychotic murderer and not a merry wanderer of the night.) Titania takes an interest in Shakespeare's son Hamnet, who plays a small role in the play. The issue received a World Fantasy Award for short fiction in 1991. Dream first meets Shakespeare in Sandman #13, "Men of Good Fortune," and the final issue, #75, "The Tempest," focuses on the second of the two plays commissioned by Morpheus.^[4]

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Alan has opinions too: Alan Moore's work is prolific, and many of his titles make the lists of "must reads" in the comic world. I have read V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,  and hope to read From Hell soon. I feel like my interest in his writing style is a little love/hate, but I am always interested in what he presents. He, like Gaiman, is critical of the term "graphic novel":

It's a marketing term... that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel Comics—because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel...."^[29

Looking Forward: Regardless of the term "graphic novel" or "comics," I have been supplementing my more traditional reading with graphically enhanced books since I started with Bone and Watchmen. I am always on the lookout for something else to add to my list.

Next week: "Graphic Novels" Part 2: Graphic Novels that have delighted my young children. (Recommendations with age appropriateness offered).

Photojournalism...

A simple current events entry today. I have been pushing my students in contemporary issues this year to be curious, to follow the news feed a little bit each day, and to identify their personal interest in a topic when presenting to others. I will follow my own advice.

I like to try new things. I like to sample the world. I like the buffet so I can sample a little of everything. I have had a gazillion desired "occupations" in my life (like I think many young people do). One that was inspired in part by Eugene Smith's work and the movie The Killing Fields was photojournalism. Instead of writing about myself too much this week I offer a few images and links that speak to my influences, ask that you indulge my wish to only briefly "show" my interest/passion for this topic, and read a short little personal story from today's news feed:

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Eugene Smith: "William Eugene Smith, was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs." 

My photography teacher in high school told me stories of Smith often being reprimanded by Life magazine for missing deadline due to his need to understand a subject before capturing it. I loved that for him, a photo needed to capture more than just a moment of light on a subject. His photos have so much soul in them I hurt in my jealousy for his talent. 

Here are 9 of my favorites... but goodness, it was so hard to pick, so these are almost random and in no particular order to offer a sample of his more famous topics:

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The Killing Fields: is a 1984 British drama film set in Democratic Kampuchea, which is based on the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. The film, which won eight BAFTA Awards and three Academy Awards, was directed by Roland Joffé and stars Sam Waterston as Schanberg, Haing S. Ngor as Pran, Julian Sands as Jon Swain, and John Malkovich as Al Rockoff. The adaptation for the screen was written by Bruce Robinson and the soundtrack by Mike Oldfield, orchestrated by David Bedford. (wikipedia)

A history teacher who my friends had recommended this film that came out when I was 12. I saw it when I was 13 (in ninth grade) and dreamed of using a camera to right the world's wrongs. I wasn't sure how to make this a job except by applying to a school with a good communications program. The school I looked at which might have offered me a path to photojournalism was too big for me, and the small school I went to led me to religious studies instead...

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Today's News Feed: [original source of the story at NPR along with audio]

'Always Giving Us Hope': 
Friends, Family Remember Luke Somers
December 06, 2014 5:13 PM ET
NATE ROTT

American photojournalist Luke Somers, who was killed by al-Qaida militants in Yemen Saturday, was described by those who knew him as passionate, inspiring and committed to the Yemeni people.

Somers had been held captive for more than a year. He died during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, along with a South African teacher who was also held hostage by the militants.

Somers was born in England and raised in the U.S., and he was always struck with a bit of wanderlust.

"Luke was the friend that you had in high school or college that you would find kind of inspiring," says Shawn Gillen, who taught him at Beloit College in Wisconsin, "because he was willing to go the distance."

Somers worked as a salmon fisherman in the Arctic, lived in Jamaica and spent time in Egypt before moving to Yemen full-time in 2011. It was there that he took a hobby of photography and turned it into a career.

Tik Root, a freelance journalist who worked in Yemen at the same time as Somers, calls him "an extraordinarily passionate and thoughtful person."

"I think what really shone through was his love of Yemen and the Yemeni people," Root says. "He sort of felt at home there, it almost seemed to me."

Somers' sister, Lucy Somers, who still lives in the U.K., alluded to that comfort in a video she put out last week, pleading with al-Qaida militants to spare her brother's life, just days after U.S. special forces' first attempted to rescue him.

"When foreign nationals were advised to leave Yemen," she says, "Luke refused to go, saying he felt safe and at home there."

He also had friends there, including Fuad al Kadas, who spoke to NPR from Sanaa, the nation's capital. "He's different than the other journalists," Kadas says. "He makes friends, Yemeni friends, local friends.

"He [was] always giving us hope that things in Yemen will be good."

Kadas says that Somers was living with him before he was kidnapped in 2013. Ever since, when he goes out, friends ask about him — "Any news about Luke?"

"Every day they ask about him," Kadas says.

With Saturday's news, Kadas says, some were overwhelmed. "My dad couldn't speak," Kadas says. "My dad couldn't speak today."

Somers was 33 years old.

To get more of the facts on this story click on the link below:

NPR: The Two-Way
American Hostage In Yemen Killed In Filed Rescue Attempt

A moment of quiet sprinkled with a healthy dose of chaos...

Technology: So although I assimilate gobs of technological devices—[iPad (#2), Laptop (#3), Desktop (#5), double monitors at home and at work (so I can work 4 screens at times), GPS Road (#1), GPS Trail (#1), iShuffle (#1), Video Camera (#3), iPod (#2), xBox (#4 - 2 RODs), Blue Ray, DVD, Smart TV, 5.1 theater sound, stereo, etc. etc. etc.]—I DO not own a cellphone. It is a thing for me... I see their utility; I appreciate the wonder; I get that revolutions are coordinated with cells; I know that it may be the only device that works when the "wires are cut." I also know that a cell phone (especially a "smart" phone) would tie down this addictive soul to the point of not moving...

Tests: I've taken the Myers Briggs personality test twice, once when I was 20, and again ten years later. On both I scored almost the same. The latter test moved me slightly to the center on all indicators. The one indicator that surprised me—and seems to surprise everyone else also—is that I am a slight "I", introvert. I did not fully understand what that might mean until I read Susan Cain's Quiet. [I did not like her almost constant anti-extrovert jabs, but much enjoyed the value she places on the roll of introvert in society.] The Introvert/Extrovert indicator is more about where one recharges as opposed to being an indicator of perceived energy. Do you feel invigorated after that holiday party or drained by it? I get nervous, talk up a storm, make jokes, smile a lot [it's not faked], and drive home feeling exhausted and wishing I had listened more; I have long thought of myself as a wannabe Pooh trapped in a functional Tigger...

Pre-holiday storm: Wednesday night we had a pretty good snow storm. Roughly a foot of heavy-wet and then cold-frozen snow dropped in my area. The power went out; the candles were lit; the fire blazed in the stove; our phone line (and subsequently our internet) was ripped from the house and flung across the street (removing a little siding as well); ALL the devices failed to "connect" save my wife's cellphone...

Ack: I felt a little twinge of panic; the fire calls would be coming in any moment; my night was about to get crazy. I turned on the portable radio and listened to the communities around us called out over and over for burring lines, car crashes, a few small fires, some CO calls; we were not called out...

Quiet with dashes of chaos: I heard a loud crackle and then a pop. Again. And again. The whole family went out to listen to the storm created by the trees yielding to their wet burden. The others went in after a few minutes. I stood by the fire I had built, and  then proceeded—after a few—up to the ridge above my house, placing me a good ten feet above the roof. I could see down into town, and down onto our lot. No street lights; little traffic; flickers of flame from my neighbors' windows; and the trees continued to pop all around me. Huge limbs crashed across the way, echoing in the muffled quiet of a snow storm. Medium sized limbs nearby; it was a symphony of clacking cotton woods and poplars, and cracking pines. The cascade of surrendered snow finished off each break with a "shhhhhhhh" giving the visual feedback of how close I was to the drop. The quiet of the night broken in sporadic moments was exquisitely recharging; it was a lot "Pooh" with frequent splashes of "Tigger". Ahhhhhhh...

Photo Credit: James Kurella

A moment of gratitude: Thanksgiving was just the five of us who usually live in my house. It was quiet. The power was back on. The internet still down. It was refreshing to have many of the devices "out of service" for a while. I revel in my ability to reach out to the world, but rejoiced in the quiet served by be forced from the "feed" for a few days...

A Parting: For this moment I offer a photo borrowed from a friend from college who appreciated my energies both wild and quiet. The subject of the image is "Middle Path". Appropriate, no?

Tomorrow is December 1: The holiday madness is upon us with named days to do crazy shopping. Don't forget to find the quiet; don't forget to sip your hot beverage of choice; don't forget to find the little lights in the darkness. They're pretty, eh?

"Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words."

1" Miniatures

Blogging Angst (#FirstWorldProblems): What to write? The week is a blur. The holidays approach and I strive to live in the moment, but the moment keeps showing up in the form of sleeping in, and wasting good lighted hours that could be spent growing my fatigue. Inspiration, Literary Heroes, Freedom, Control, Truth... Ack! I tried to explain to my mother what this blog is for... sorting out the mishmash of "stuff" in my noodle. I am not sure if it is working, but I am having fun trying... but it is madding... like three cups of coffee and trying to paint detail work on 1 inch miniatures. Thank goodness I am only trying to paint figuratively right now. The soundtrack for the moment is One Hundred Years by The Cure. If you wish to listen, read slowly as there is a an acceptance speech that you need to watch below and the song is almost seven minutes long. If you are talented you can get the audio balance right and have the soundtrack back the speech. That would be cool...

On Freedom and Childhood: When I was young I was afforded a lot of freedom by very caring and mostly hands-off parents. "Where are you going?" My mom might ask. "Bike riding," my reply, before taking off for hours to some construction lot or wooded space in the city to try stupid stuff (that rarely caused more injury than that to my pride).

We always returned home for food: Sometimes I would make my way to an unexplored space and sit down to watch the people from another neighborhood, imagining... wondering if their experience was different from mine several miles away in a different part of Baltimore. I am not sure how these scenarios appeared to my parents, but my perception was that I could pretty easily come and go as I wished with little or no interference. Each excursion was a mini adventure, exploration, experiment. Impulsive at times, dangerous occasionally, mostly harmless... We always made it back home in time...

Damage and growth: My use (abuse?) of freedom created a few major problems at times as I exercised poor judgement in exploring the world; but my freedoms also formed in me a successful independence that I value even more than the stumbles I endured (and inflicted on others) along the way...

Safer Adventures: My father would often finish his work at his desk in time to sit on the bed and watch the evening news. The TV announcer would ask "It's 11 O'clock. Do you know where your children are?" Meanwhile my mother, the night owl, would be doing her own thing downstairs, dishes? budgeting? reading? needlepoint? (I should ask her at some point... I have no idea.) I would be in bed reading as late as I could manage. My mom would head up to the third floor where I slept, long after my father had given into his own fatigue, and say "It's time to turn off your light soon." That was it. I could go for another hour if I wished, as long as I didn't draw attention to myself. And I would usually only make it a few more minutes before crashing into uneasy darkness...

But sometimes I had an adventure that could keep me tuned in long past the usual time that sleep pulled me under. The safe adventures of a great story told on the yellow pages of an acidy paperback; 4" x 7".  You know, that story that you read more times than people believe if you confess it? That story that gets better the more you are familiar with it? That story that you give to your girlfriend (read wife now), and push on your children the minute you think they are ready for it? For me that story is the Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin. Any attempt I try to sell it further would do it disservice. Let my review rest with the statement that few works early on shaped my understanding of the world and beyond, and although hers is one of magic, I read more truth in Le Guin's world than in most other worlds (including our own) that I have read about.

Today: And so in a mid-morning conversation with my mother today, literally just after I began trolling the inter-webs for inspiration, I stumbled upon this... Choose to listen to one of my literary heroes, or read her words in print, but please do not tune her out. She specks truth and is honest in her truth. "Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words." 

parker higgins dot net: The following post is reproduced from a blog parker higgins dot net. The specific post, “We will need writers who can remember freedom”: Ursula K Le Guin at the National Book Awards: The video is from youtube.

Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped. As far as I know it’s not available online yet (update: the video is now online), so I’ve transcribed it from the livestream below. The parts in parentheses were ad-libbed directly to the audience, and the Neil thanked is Neil Gaiman, who presented her with the award.

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.)

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.)

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

Thank you.

Wow! Should anyone feel the need to comment, please do so on Ursula K. Le Guin's words today and not mine. :)

A quiet pleasant melancholy...

Googling My Brains Out

The Week: It snowed this week. The leaves have finally given up their grip. The branches drum in the wind while the roots quietly and softly hum. The nights are getting longer, and the little lights that warm the cold nights haven't been put out yet. It's a shoulder's-up head-down wool cap kind of feeling; a quiet book in the lap, let your eyes close, dog by the hearth scene.

I think we all have those places, moments, smells, memories, imaginations, dreams that bring us our quiet peace... 

More of the Week: I struggled this week with lessons of ethical conduct and conflict of interest, free speech and slander, the roll of teacher and of regular person. I haven't figured out the best path for teaching my charges while honoring my own emotions as a person... and that brings unrest to my mind. 

The art offered here is a doodle I did a few years ago after spending a solid day surfing, searching, browsing, the internet. Although I like the aesthetic of the doodle, the chaos reflects what a day in front of my screen does to my peace. I labeled it "Googling my brains out." And yet it's amazing what can soothe the disruptions of an agitated mind...

Hearth Scene

The Week's End: I watched a troupe of actors grades 7 to 12 present a delightfully humorous and at times sorrowful rendering of The Winter's Tale by the Bard. It is like Oedipus reversed, with a happy ending save a reasonably hysterical death by full ingestion by bear. Goodness, it was nice to escape my head for two hours. And then, spending time outside with a fire doing some cold yard work, putting order to the chaos; having healthy conversations with my son like two adults, realizing that he is a young man who can handle the complexities of life pretty well these days; shooting with a friend at 40 yard targets and getting a pretty good cluster of arrows; watching my daughter play some sweet indoor soccer while remaining tough even as she was traded to the other team to keep sides balanced; sharing a caesar salad with the best wife ever, basking in the realization that we are best friends and can exist near/with each other, often without needing to explain ourselves...

From the Past: I choose to dig out a moment from about 25 years ago. It sums things up pretty perfectly for me as we shuffle out of Autumn.

Do you remember those days
when in the morning it rained
and then stopped,

and the leaves were changing their
colours and beginning to fall,

and there was a warm breeze,
but because of the wet
it was damp,

and someone built a fire,
and the wet kept the smell
down, where we could
smell it,

and we would feel tragic
yet happy in the quietness where
voices traveled across whole fields,
and the leaves sang
with the breeze,

and we felt nostalgic of that
same feeling the year before?

Do you remember those days?