Bill Randall

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1. The Comics Journal’s 291st issue appears online & in print this Monday. I have a long essay on Frank Santoro’s Storeyville, which was a pleasure to write, if just for an excuse to re-read an old favorite. Fanta has previews of the issue, and a fine orange soda.

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2. Book-of-the-Year: the disjointed, entrancing Red Colored Elegy hits stores this week. I’m still kind of amazed it has been translated. Way ahead of its time, it will rewrite many people’s understanding of the art form’s history.

Very soon in the Journal, I will have a long essay about the book, touching on the political context, the animation industry in the day, artist Seiichi Hayashi’s role in both, and some of his earlier work. So read the book now, mull it over, and maybe we can talk about it in a month or two.

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3. If I ever finish it, I’ll have an essay about Dousei Jidai, the other great youngsters-living-in-sin manga from the 70s, in a future issue.

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4. This week, I’ll have short snippets about the Finnish anthology Glomp #9 every day Monday-Friday. And sometime soon, a little note about the “1-2-3 Trio,” I suppose.

For reasons I’ll never understand, one of my teaching jobs occasionally pitted me against vicious packs of screaming teens expecting entertainment. So we played 5-Card Nancy instead.

Years ago, an old friend printed me a deck on company cardstock right before his employer went bankrupt. It turns out the deck’s a great teaching tool. Doing film, the Soviets, the Kuleshov Effect? Here’s Nancy, here’s a burger. Pacing? What happens if you put thirteen panels of Nancy walking in a row? Leibniz? Each panel’s a monad!

Most of the people I’ve played with don’t really know the strip. A few have never seen it before. But they all take to the game– that is, Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip– like it’s as natural as breathing. Everybody knows when a panel’s right, or wrong, or deliciously wrong.

Some panels are so right they don’t need anything else. Like this one, which I wish were on a 12×12 canvas hanging in my postindustrial loft:

Or better yet, on billboards all through the countryside, advertising Nancy’s absorbent hair as it drinks in the pathetic fallacy’s rotgut.

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There is an online version, in color, with its own clutch of panels. And a huge list of examples from someone’s LJ.

And I have trouble arguing with the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn, or even its video. Copacetic!

Regular blogging resumes Tuesday with a review of Geoff Grogan’s Xeric-winner, which I was pleased to find in the mail the day after our “tornadic event.”

Thanks to all who sent word, and the old farm boys (& ex-Marine) who plied chainsaws Saturday after, transforming walls of tree into house, yard, driveway. Of the 30-40 trees that went down, only 6-12 remain out back. They’ll wait.

The preacher saw it pick up a barn and drop it back down in pieces, with the overtones of Judgement.  I respect it as part of nature.  And I never, ever want to see one again. I’ve lived through two of the damn things, and I think no other natural disaster has the same sense of the world trying as hard as it can to kill you dead.

Me, that is.

I’m going to take a couple weeks off blogging and catch up on some yard work.

This one was actually quite terrifying, more than my five earthquakes and that time riding in a car in the mountains with some emotionally unstable dude drinking beers behind the wheel.

We were gonna take those trees out anyway.

The bottom of Tim’s trailer here (in Rick’s yard) put me in mind of a Mondrian.

It even took out the ivy by the roots. Anyway, stay safe and keep a flashlight handy, and if the sky gets black in an instant, run to the basement.

(The tree now on my front page is gone forever, but the house & all involved are mostly fine, and thanks to the chaps from the electric company for rolling up the wires so nothing burned down. Though why a company in Kentucky’s called Duke Energy is beyond me.)

A few notes:

*I made a dumb misread of the Tokyopop contract that doesn’t affect my larger point. Sorry about that; it’s now fixed.

*My website inches to completion; the Art section has stills from my films, and more photography. If the descriptions aren’t up yet, my people will have it up in a couple of days. If so inclined, take a look and invent your own versions of these films in your head.

*Thanks to my comrades from the Photogogue, I was able to enjoy a little of the NPPA conference the last few days in Louisville. This group of press photographers, training in multimedia so as not to follow the dodo, had an air of optimism and opportunity, a nice surprise given industry trends. I ate good food, ogled gear, and met good people, especially Tyler and Bob at breakfast.

One chap rightly noted that Louisville is not a major city. Pleasantly pocket-sized, I usually give it short shrift for its basketball. Nonetheless, it offers abundant pleasures:

• People going broke at the horses, or the riverboat casino across the river
• The air of a Giant Robot store in Ultra-Pop, a boutique on Bardstown Road. We chatted with affable owner Paul, who’s celebrating the store’s first year in July.
• the cheese plate at Lilly’s on Bardstown, with ineffable friend KC
• the little punk bar on 3rd & MLK, though I was disappointed the punks weren’t all 50-somethings playing Minor Threat vinyl on sharpened dentures
• Finally, Maido, a relatively new izakaya (Japanese pub). My impression of Louisville’s Japanese food is pretty bad, barely a reminder of good Japanese. Compared to Lexington’s twin jewels of Sugano & Izakaya Yamaguchi due east, it’s embarrassing (thanks, Toyota factory). Despite my initial reservations– the bartender, stunning manager, and wait staff were no more Japanese than me– they do grilled & fried right. I’m told the co-owner’s the daughter of an Osaka restaurant czar. I only had a few favorites, and while the kimchee pork was a little dry, the miso eggplant was quite fine. Same for the tea. Even better were the takoyaki. If Maido were to shut down and reopen selling nothing but hundreds of little takoyaki, I would line up around the block.

I want join the chorus with a pox on the Tokyopop contracts for their “Shining Stars” program, which were issued in “hey dude” language from a company founded by a lawyer.

The “hey dude” language, utterly disingenuous from a corporation, reminds that Tokyopop is essentially a marketing firm: it exists, and has been successful, as an importer of a popular culture wholly created and owned by other people. Its unique contribution has been spin. For instance, when Japanese creators uninterested in other countries’ customs refused to flip their art, Tokyopop released it unflipped and spun it (quite successfully) as “authentic.” No matter one’s flipping preference, it is clear that Tokyopop’s approach stemmed from no principled commitment to authenticity. That matters if you’re interested in a business relationship with the company.

Then recall what Stu Levy, Tokyopop’s founder and CEO, said in Tom McLean’s Bags & Boards interview for Variety:

I was realizing at the time, well we’ve proven our name as Tokyopop, that we can market and we can distribute. But a lot of people, especially in Japan, were treating us like we were a distributor, maybe even like we were an agent.

So I decided that, yeah, it’s important for us to prove that not only can we work with finished product and adapt it, but we can work with creative people and we can express ourselves creatively as well and become more of a studio. … We think we understand the secrets of the success of Japanese manga, and why it resonates worldwide, so let’s take a stab at it.

To put it differently, and simply, if Tokyopop only licenses, packages and redistributes Japanese-owned goods, then it has no company assests. If it loses a few of its top licenses, it could sink the company. The logical step is to own properties, so that their work building the company isn’t wasted. They have already taken this step with OEL manga, in a co-ownership arrangement. Whether these manga are “authentic” or not has given way to the “manga lifestyle,” Levy’s phrase, with the implication that this lifestyle is not (owned by) Japanese.

A paragraph later in that interview, Levy talks about copyright.

…my personal view on how to approach copyright is I really tend to lean towards opening it up and embracing fans expressing themselves creatively with [intellectual property] that other people have created.

This is in the context of fan-made tributes, mash-ups, and dojinshi, and my pointing it out is perhaps unfair. But I would hope that the creators of characters and stories (”intellectual properties”) might have the same consideration as fans and pirates.

Tokyopop does promise co-ownership, vaguely. However, their goal is clearly the development of related properties, like film and television. It brings to mind “Hollywood deals,” “Hollywood contracts,” all shorthand for getting ripped off. I fully admit the bizarre, sleazy Americana of the place and the industry, but at least they have SAG, DGA, WGA, and other assorted unions that ensure things like residuals and health care. Yes, they are very hard to get into, and no, just because you can get SAG rates doesn’t mean you’ll work every day, or even any day, but at least there is a strong institution with leverage in that industry.

Comics creators have no similar institution protecting them. They also don’t have the same barriers of entry into their field. Creating a movie requires piles of money and the cooperation of talented, unionized craftspeople. Comics require pen and paper. The tradeoff in making a movie is that you don’t own it, but it gets made, and you get paid (usually). The tradeoff in comics, in the case of this Tokyopop deal, is a lot less clear. What do you get, their distribution might? From a company who has produced exactly zero breakout hits in OEL manga? In order to consider signing away the rights, I would hope they would offer a hell of a lot more than they are.

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The Hollywood comparison reminds me that Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton both owned and had creative control of their movies (until Keaton signed with MGM and lost both). So everyone in the Bay Area please please please check out the San Francisco Silent Film Festival coming up in July. I wish I could be there to watch The Unknown, The Man Who Laughs, and even– HER WILD OAT!

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Also: if anyone has had good or bad experiences with Tokyopop or other OEL manga publishers, on or off the record, please drop me a line. I’m working on an article that is leaning in that direction, and I’d like to hear from you.

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EDIT: At first glance, it brought to mind the pay-to-play reading fees for contests in literary journals. Except that economics says these journals can’t afford contests without entry fees, as their readership fits in a pickup truck. By contrast, Shining Stars looks like trawling for marketable properties with a very wide net by charging the people who just aren’t good enough.

I misread and then misrepresented this part of the contract about the “pilot fee,” for which I apologize; it is evidence of my non-legal mind and perhaps the fact that “hey dude” is actually just as confusing as legalese.  Fortunately for my credibility, it was not my main argument.

I would still like to hear from OEL manga creators (and publishers) about their experiences.  For the record, it is not a Michael Dean-esque work of investigative reporting; I’m a critic, not a journalist. Normally I just read a bunch of books in context and react; in writing for the first time in several years on the English-language manga industry, it is becoming clear that the context of English manga centers on creators’ rights and licensing.

Dirk at Journalista!, the blog of the magazine I write for, has declared it “Garo Week” after lucking into a copy of the late, lamented, legendary manga anthology for the avant set. I figured I’d join him. He’s posting whole stories, but I’m too lazy for that. Besides, I never like more than half an issue– some artists I revere, others I loathe.

Its covers, however, I love unreservedly. Shonen Magazine had a better run when Tadanori YOKOO took the point, but Garo ran great covers for over 25 years. The last few years sucked, and some of the early ones were hit-and-miss, but the best could make a great coffee-table book. Considering half the artists inside couldn’t really draw, that’s saying something.

I have just a very small collection of Garo, picked up mostly at the Osaka Mandarake when I was on an IGUCHI Shingo kick. I paid less than they cost back in the day. Some I got just for the covers, like this one. More after the jump, from May ‘68 to the mid-90s.

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I’ve been watching the small row about the upcoming Kramers Ergot 7, the influential art-comics anthology. Chris Mautner has the best summary, with his own thoughts; the short version is that it’s an expensive book, so some readers feel priced out. More interesting, others see a tension with comics’ populist roots. At least one person thought art should reach as many people as possible. Others spoke of a need to expand the audience.

I suppose people who can will buy Kramers and the rest will borrow it and conveniently lose touch. But the row raises the question of whom art, any art, should reach.

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First, charging for art is always dicey. Gallery artists know this better than anyone, with wealthy buyers speculating on art like stock options or oil futures. But art is only treated like a commodity; good luck making a living with it. Many artists moonlight: Rimbaud (quit poetry to run guns), Joyce (taught at Berlitz), and half the comics artists now working (drawing spot illos). But the right combination, like a dog and a bald kid, can lead to absurd riches.

I know no better chart of these tensions than The Gift by Lewis Hyde, a mix of anthropology, economics, and poetic associations. Hyde supported his own art– criticism– with straight jobs as an electrician and carpenter before becoming a teacher. Read it, and keep in mind that music, like air, apparently wants to be free; that playing in the Hollywood sandbox now costs upwards of $100 million dollars; and that some artists make works that exist for just a few minutes before they wash away.

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Second, on Koya-san, the mountain at the center of the Shingon Buddhist universe, scores of monasteries have unimaginably beautiful religious art. I used to live by the foot of the mountain, but I saw little art. My trips up usually ended with ten empty cans and the shakes next to a coffee vending machine. I can’t read Buddhist art well, my own limitation, so I probably got as much out of the coffee as I would have out of the art.

The writer Alex Kerr has a better Koya-san story in his book Lost Japan. He’s taking some friends there (pardon if I misremember parts) from Osaka to show them Traditional Japan. During the train ride, he gripes about the cancerous urban development. Once he arrives, he gripes about the crummy town. Eventually, he lucks into seeing a particularly fine statue of the Buddha. It’s beautiful; he’s moved. The next day he discovers that they only reveal this statue for one day every few hundred years. The rest of the time it stays hidden from everyone, even the monks.

Another Japan observer, Chris Marker, notes in his film Sans Soleil that “censorship is not the mutilation of the show, it is the show.  … It points to the absolute by hiding it.”  He’s reading soft porn, and the Vatican’s treasures, and old Shinto sex totems, but the idea expands past that. One could say it might be better that a work of art not be seen.

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Finally, on some obscure Greek island there’s a movie screen in a field. Robert Beavers, the protege and lover of Gregory Markopoulos, has been following the elder filmmaker’s last wishes and restoring his life’s work for display. On 27-28 June 2008 he will show the final parts of ENIAIOS to those who want to come. Campsites are available.

The site is called the Temenos, and watching these movies thus becomes a pilgrimage. I’ve only seen one; it relied on lush images and classical allusions. I understood only parts. Were I to travel to Lyssaraia to watch the 80-hour film cycle, I would certainly educate myself better, rather than rely on travel to make sure I’m worth what I’m watching.

Of course, Beavers could just upload them all to YouTube so the maximum number of people can watch them while simultaneously downloading porn and getting their scores. Now that we can fit the Complete Works of Humankind on the head of a pin, there’s no reason not to, if it’s just information, another commodity.

But there are different kinds of information. Some asks to be free; some asks to be enclosed. Some is enclosed, in a market, a box in a monastery, or a small community of people with the tools to read and appreciate it. By being so enclosed, it can increase its force, for those able to understand and see it, like water flows faster when it’s focused, like when as kids we put a thumb on the end of a hose and ran through the spray.

This would have been more substantial, but I’m gobsmacked after receiving today the fourth bill from a random-violence-related emergency room visit. From November! The fourth!

Also, it is due last week.

I want to believe in the free market, but why hasn’t it ground the medical establishment into dust? Everyone I know regards hospitals as a place you go to die, or at least pick up MRSA. Next time I’ll just pay my Chinese doctor fifty bucks to stick needles in my head, even if it’s a sucking chest wound.

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Figure 1.  The Emergency Room. 

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Anyway, spellcheck thinks the article I just finished should be about this:

• Yoshihiro Tatum, from the legendary mange anthology Agro
• translated and edited by Yuji Oink and Adrian Domino
• the artist Mesozoic Furukawa
• Geiger, the “dramatic” version of mange, and:
• the founders of Geiger Studio, like Slouchy Sakurai and Takao Satin, whose violent fantasy Olga 13 now defines “Geiger” more than Tatum’s grim realism.

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Also, I just finished John Nathan’s new memoir, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere. He has lived a singular life, traipsing to Japan at 22 and soon after translating heavyweights like Yukio MISHIMA and Kenzaburo OE. He makes a memorable cameo with Kobo ABE in the film The Face of Another and became a filmmaker himself, making some classic documentaries. A philosophical, sometimes regretful tone doesn’t change the fact that many of his stories are an utter scream, whether about pitching to Hollywood, Saul Bellow being scum, or fighting with his blind grandmother-in-law.

His translation of Oe’s A Personal Matter helped secure the Nobel, but Nathan has his own voice.  This book was a pleasant surprise, unlike random bills and that dude standing at the top of the escalator at Chinatown Station for those two minutes I was distracted, feeling pretty good about the world.

On Wednesday, I’ve been invited to lecture at a small college out in the sticks, so Tuesday’s post will appear Wednesday, with notes on the talk. It’s a pleasant lecture about ethics and the documentary image, not a stern one about cleaning your room. Until then, some notes:

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In the inbox moments ago, Warren Craghead has released another downloadable, do-it-yourself mini of his fine drawings. Time to break out the saddle stapler.

Also, his Postcard project has recently appeared as a blog (link pilfered from Tom Spurgeon).

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The Economist gets in on the Murakami=Warhol kick. May soon become subscriber only. The title, “Infantial Capitalism,” scans well, and the reviewer notes that M.’s a better theorist than artist, but nothing much new save the copperplate prose.

More interesting that the Warhol angle: manga artist Eiji OOTSUKA elevating four-panel cartoonist Takashi MURAKAMI over the gallery artist. This will get even more interesting if Western critics throw their hands up and say, “we don’t get it,” while M.’s work becomes seminal in the East. In a way, it’s moot, because his sources are already that influential, even if his take on them falls away.

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I translated David B.’s “La Bombe Familiale” for a friend ages ago, and I have a book of anime scripts lying around from back in the day.  So the existence of the collaborative translation site Comics Influx came as a pleasant surprise.  Especially nice is how it skirts the scanlation conundrum of people reading and not buying these things (at least the Japanese ones).  (Link trail: Dirk > Katherine Farmar)

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Finally, preparing for this lecture, I’ve been watching When the Levees Broke, which is remarkable for both its restraint and its comprehensiveness. Movies suck at not shoehorning everything into an ill-fitting box, but this one manages to give things shape without distorting the things themselves.