Lady Gaga now "Lady Saga"

Who would have thought that the winner of the 2009 "best new artist award" would land her face on a comic book cover? Not me. I cannot consider myself a fan of Lady Gaga, but I was absolutely surprised after seeing sketches on Google news of the newest comic book to unfold in American culture, "Lady Saga." Well, believe it or not...it's certainly happening; the bleach blonde, scandalous singer has managed to take it to the next genre outside of her risque dancing and sex appeal.

Brian Einersen, an artist who focuses on the concepts of pop culture and fashion, has created the comic book character and supposed "heroine". Although the character was originally created in June 2009, the book has just begun selling exclusively at Marc Jacob stores across the nation. According to Brian Einersen's official site, the "Lady Saga" comic series is available in three colors: baby blue, youthful yellow, and octo-mom orange (what a color, can I get that to paint my living room?). Not totally sure why Einersen chose these particular colors; if I were imagining a Lady Gaga comic strip, it would be anything but ordinary.

After viewing the comic sketches that Einersen has posted on his website, I was really surprised that this comic book was being sold in the first place and especially surprised that it made it's way to the shelves of the Marc Jacob's stores. Here's the comics for your own viewing pleasures-














Now I can't say that I'd be particularly thrilled if I were Lady Gaga, because this comic book seems to be a poor representation of the singer's true attributes...say for example this beautiful hair she has pictured below:

But, whether we appreciate this new comic or not, I don't think it's going to have much of an effect on the singers outrageous album sales or her top chart ratings. What I do think is interesting is to see the overlap in the comic book/fashion industry in the last few months. Also in 2009, Tim Gunn, the "Project Runway" star was turned into a full blown iron man in a series called "Models, Inc." Can't say that I would run out to get a copy of this book myself, but it would be interesting to see how a fashion icon can go from a black suit and tie to a bulky, muscular iron man; especially Tim Gunn. In all reality, I can't picture this fashion consultant battling off Batman or Clark Kent.

I think it is interesting to see where comic book company's such as Marvel are spending their money now a days. For me, I would rather read the modern comics and steer clear of fashion icons pretending to be hero's while really just increasing their income by millions over yet another fad. However, maybe this is what the comic industry needs to get itself fired up. But honestly in all reality, do people truly want to see Lady Gaga as a heroine? Do people want to spend their time picturing the professional tailor Tim Gunn as the world's next Batman?
I really hope this is not where the industry is heading. Although comic book sales have seemed to decrease, I certainly hope that "Lady Saga" and "Models Inc." are not the reconstructing titles of our era.

Stephen King's The Stand Graphic adaptation

Over the summer I took a Graphic Literature course online and for my final project I did a comparison between Stephen King's novel The Stand and a graphic novel adaptation of the first few chapters. One of the main things that I focused on was how each work uses different conventions unique to their respective media in order to achieve the common goals of the horror genre in general.

Horror fiction in general tends to work towards the goal of somehow shocking or disturbing the reader. In the novel version of The Stand, one way that King achieves this through his prose is through the use of the grotesque simile. In describing the first real plague victims in the book he states that a character “opened the driver’s side door and the man behind the wheel spilled out like an old laundry sack.” This passage has the effect of forcing the reader to combine drastically dissimilar images in order to form a clear and disturbing picture of what is going on. It is an interesting process because in prose the reader must take the words on the page and use them to put together a mental picture for themselves. Devices like the grotesque simile help this process along but ultimately it is the reader who renders the images in their head and ultimately scares or disturbs themselves.

Unlike prose, the graphic medium can essentially assault the reader with disturbing images that they might not be expecting. Here is an image from the graphic novel Captain Tripps depicting the same scene described by the simile above:

Pretty shocking right? In the graphic novel this illustration takes up a full page so as soon as you turn to it it just kind of hits you. While good prose can make a reader scare themselves the graphic medium has the distinct advantage of using unexpected images that readers may not have been able to imagine to literally startle and disturb. If anybody is interested in this kind of thing and would like to check out more just reply to this and let me know. I'd be happy to post the full project.

Benny Goodman's Adventures in Comics did happen

from left to right: Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman

The comic strip about the adventures of Benny Goodman's rise to fame did in fact actually happen in real life. There are a few aspects of the comic that did not really happen at all in Benny Goodman's life, of which I will touch upon and give some insight into.

Benny Goodman, who is known both as a great jazz musician and as the "King of Swing" did not become known as that overnight. In the first panel of the comic (copyright restictions prevent me from posting the actual comic), Benny Goodman and his Orchestra are shown during 1934 at a concert at the Broadway Music Hall. As it appears, it seems the people who are watching are very disgusted by the music, as from the grotesque looks on a few of the audience's faces. One woman, who probably seems sympathetic, says it is musician's music, called "swing." When Benny Goodman first started playing as a leader with his own orchestra, the popular music of the time was very romantic music, sweet, sugary love songs (ie. Bing Crosby). This was something out of the ordinary to play this type of music in public. Black bands had been playing it for years, but because of the discrimination of the time, they did not get their due for many years. The second panel also shows the same confrontation that Goodman and his Orchestra encountered. To the romantic music lovers, they hated this music because you couldn't dance to it.

By 1935, Benny Goodman and his Orchestra headed out for a tour that would lead him and his band to the West Coast of the United States. The band was exhausted, tired and ready to give up playing the music they loved to play. That all changed, because the kids in Los Angeles were buying Goodman's records and listening to his radio shows. By the time they went back to New York later in the year, as depicted in the third panel, Benny Goodman became a huge star. Almost every concert they went to, the kids would be standing outside in line waiting to get in. Once they got inside wherever the concert was being held, they would be dancing in the aisles while people would be watching the dancers from their seats. It was truly a "madhouse," as one of the young kids says in the third panel.

The fourth and last panel is dedicated to Benny Goodman's small groups, of which will be forever noted in history books. Benny Goodman, although not one of the first white musicians to play with black musicians, was one of the first to present them in public. The certain lineup of the small group in the last panel did not actually exist in real life, although all of these musicians did play with Goodman at one time or another. Even the musicians in this particular lineup are actually caricatures of their original selves. In reality, Count Basie, who was somewhat a bit overweight in real life, is depicted as thin. Only Lionel Hampton's and Benny Goodman's caricatures are anything what they looked like in real life. I can't say about the other men in the band, as I have seen only a few pictures of what they looked like.

Anyways, this comic I think was meant to perserve Goodman and his real life adventures. It was released in an edition of either a magazine or comic book called "Picture News" in 1946, of which would mark the 10th anniversary of Benny Goodman's popularity in the music world. I am glad that such a comic was perserved for future generations who may want to learn about Benny Goodman or vintage jazz music in particular.

Art in Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes

Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes is most famous for its hilarity. However, the more one reads the strip, it is noticed that Watterson is fascinated with the art in his strips. The artwork is most prevelant in the Sunday strips he did, as he was alloted more space and time to meet deadlines. Some of the work he does in his Sunday strips is not only funny, but a very serious piece of artwork from a somewhat hidden artist!

This strip focuses on the artwork more than the punchline. Aside from kazam, only three things total are said in the strip. This gives the reader no choice but to derive his ideas about the strip from the artwork. Ending the strip with the huge landscape of something from another planet is very atypical in Sunday comic strips, and leaves the reader sort of gazing into Watterson's art

The realism in this strip is what makes the art noticeable. Calvin and Hobbes is a cartoon comic, with generally no realism in the usual characters. Watterson again stresses the art over Calvin and Hobbes, only including them in one panel of the strip. This forces the reader to recognize and somewhat appreciate the art.
The gothic artwork in this strip is pretty impressive. Shows what Calvin is really thinking when playing with his tinkertoys. He has his parents fooled, as they think he is going to grow up to be an architect. According to the strip he would rather grow up to be a dictator of some sort, or more preferably an ancient god... who demands sacrifice. Again, the sketches in this strip must have taken quite some time, and for Watterson to still not lose his excellent sense of humor is awesome.
This strip, aside from being amazingly clever in Wattersons ability to write poetry, has some interesting art in it. Its quite scientific, with the Earth being drawn well in the first panel, the draining of the ocean, and the futuristic space ship. Watterson dumbs this down in the last panel, showing the old fashioned megaphone that comes from the spaceship. Funny. Notice the "end is nigh" character in the third panel! Priceless.
In Watterson's tenth anniversary book, he talks about a comic strip this is based on. I cannot recall which it is based on, but it is supposed to be a parody of it. According to Watterson, the other strip is extremely boring, which made his parody an easy one. The strip is quite funny, i love how the irony progresses until the end of the strip. The art in this one goes without saying, the realism is there. The angles of the artwork would make for a difficult draw, but Watterson does a good job for being someone who primarily writes comics.
The art in this strip speaks for itself. Only three panels are devoted to the punchline, and even those three panels are a quarter of the size of the ones Watterson devotes to the artwork. It seems it would be difficult to fit the scene to the panel size, but Watterson does it perfectly and makes it look easy. The punch line is in and out, and not to mention quite funy.I put these two strips in here to really show how much Watterson knows about art. In his tenth anniversary book he really shows how wrapped up he is with art, even though he does not express it too much in his strips. I think the second strip here is just to blow the reader away with a bunch of nonsensical art vocabulary, which is intended to confuse, thus making it funny. I could be wrong, perhaps if I understood the vocabulary it would be even funnier. Feel free to comment if you understand it!

Comics Do Not Equal Sub Standard Visual Art

I find the idea that all comics are nothing but sub standard visual art ludicrous. First off there are many different styles of comics from the simple "meat and potatoes" art style of well known and loved comics like Peanuts and Dilbert. To the surprisingly detailed work of artists like Jim Lee of Batman. And who are we to judge what art is sub standard and what is a masterpiece. Just because some comics have simplified images or caricatures does not mean that the artwork is any better or worse than pieces done by artists in other genre's of art.
A lot of the art found in comics and graphic novels can often be surprisingly detailed and masterful pieces of art, some examples include as i mentioned above the work of Jim Lee on batman and superman comics and Alex Ross who has done work for both Marvel DC and his own original comics.
Of course there are comic books that have been made that you wouldn't consider to have especially impressive images in them. But putting down the entire genre because some of the comics don't have amazingly detailed painted images in them is ridiculous.

Why Stereotypes Suck Through All Genre

In A Comics Studies Reader, we read an article that listed four main misconceptions, a stereotypes if you will, of all comics. One of which I can agree with to a certain level but, most I must disagree with.

The first Thierry Groensteen listed of these stereotypes is that "It is a hybrid, the result of crossbreeding between text and image." This makes comics sound like a science experiment gone array. Yes, comics do have the characteristics of text and images but, so do many other genres of literature. This is one of the aspects I at times struggle with while understanding comics. However, it is the use of the text in correlation with the image that will help the reader understand. With any piece of prose, it is good writing that allows the reader to follow along.

This is why I think the second stereotype: "its storytelling ambitions seen to remain on the level of a subliterature" is absolutely wrong. Just because it isn't in the technical vein of a novel, does not mean it is a lower class genre. Breaking conventions does not necessarily mean crude language structure or intellectually inferior.

The third stereotype is that comics are a "inferior branch of visual art, that of a caricature." Though comic books aren't my first choice for visual art, it is still art. Someone who can do something better than me and do it well, I give respect too. It not only involves drawing characters and action sequences, you also have to fill in the gaps of the story that the text does not provide. The sheer design of colors and patterns will effect the mood the whole tone of a scene and convey some emotions a lot better than a limited vocabulary of words.

And the last stereotype that "even though they are now frequently intended for adults, comics propose nothing other than a return to childhood" is not exactly correct. There are comics that are directed towards younger children and adults who read these may from time to time feel nostalgic but, the reader is still able to distinguish himself from the former child he once was. Most comics, in my limited experience with them, contain a lot of violence and ideas that more than likely aren't suitable for younger children. In group discussion today, someone mentioned the use of political cartoons and the messages they convey. Those are a perfect example of why a adult mentality is needed while reading most comic books. Children would not have the knowledge to know political reference or the association of some images.


In a social atmosphere, in my opinion I don't think children today would even have the imagination to be able to fill in the gaps, to figure out what is waiting in the gutter. With kids learning to use computers at the age of 3, numerous social network and media sites and the mass consumption of cartoons, how many kids do you know who still go outside and pretend in general? It's hard to have someone use their mind while a solution can just be laid out in front of them.

In my opinion, then people put a stereotype of something, it usually means they do not understand it in some way and this usually leads to distaste for it. Like comic books in general. I have always heard they were for the dorks and nerds who all they do is sit with they couple of friends, having "nerd-versations" and conceptualizing. my friend would call it "traveling into the Dork Forest." I do not know much about comic books, even having doing the reading but, I am not going to discount it's credibility or integrity because I do not get it. Once I actually read some comics, maybe that will change. It certainly did for fantasy.

Welcoming New Student Authors to sf@SF

This semester I'm teaching 2 courses that are going to stretch the boundaries of this blog's "science fiction at SUNY Fredonia" focus. American Popular and Mass Cultures looks at fantasy, comic books, video games, tv, and film in addition to science fiction, while Major Writers: Tolkien, Donaldson, Pullman focuses primarily on fantasy. In both courses, I'm requiring a certain number of blog posts from everyone--whether here or on their own blogs (which I'll link to)--and expecting everyone to be reading, commenting on, and responding to each other's writing. The dialogues that I hope to see emerge here will be the public face of what goes on in class discussions and on our ANGEL discussion forum, which are for class members only, but will hopefully go beyond the limitations of the 50-minute class meeting or the quick-hit nature of a discussion board. Our common text to start the semester, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring (and the Peter Jackson movie based on it) should give us enough of a common ground to get some discussions going. Let's see what comes of them!

American Otaku and American Imperialism

I found pretty amazing the juxtaposition between this Wired article on the popularity of otaku culture in the United States and this American Prospect article on the ways in which the new Iron Man movie tiptoes around the comic book's legacy of wrestling with the legacy of Vietnam and the tradition of American imperialism. It raises questions for me about the relation between different popular media, how their fans interpret and respond to them, and their larger political ramifications in the U.S. But above all it makes me wonder to what extent Americans' consumerist culture and subcultures might constitute a critique of imperialism, an extension of it, or a new phase of it.

Hey Kids, Warren Ellis Is Giving out a Free Post-Apocalyptic Comic Book Online

Freakangel. 'Nuff said.