Profiles in “courage”

Many on the political left are angry with the United States House of Representatives for the passage of a truly henious bit of nonsense. In particular, the House Democratic leadership is taking heat for their capitulating and cowardly response to one of the most pressing issues of our time.

I speak of course of this:

Congratulating and recognizing Mr. Juan Antonio Chi-Chi Rodriguez for his continued success on and off the golf course, for his generosity and devotion to charity, and for his exemplary dedication to the intellectual and moral growth of thousands of low-income and disadvantaged youth in our country.

How dare they? Do these people truly have no shame?

Wait, what did you think I was talking about?

Kirby: King of Comics, by Mark Evanier

I’m not sure I can remember the first Jack Kirby comic I ever read. It was probably in a mass market paperback sized reprint edition of the Fantastic Four, but maybe I’m overlooking a standalone issue of something. For years after that, I was aware of Jack Kirby among the pantheon of comics greats, just one more name among a group of legendary names. Not fully knowing why he was special meant that I didn’t comprehend how much of the visual architecture of the comics I read during my first great comics awakening in the 1970s and 80s was sunk into the bedrock of Jack’s Kirby’s work.

It wasn’t until I read the Kirby tribute issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that I began to understand that he was a breed apart within his field. I know that the first time I read a Jack Kirby comic and really got it was in my early 20s when I got my hands on a copy of a Marvel anthology that included “This Man…This Monster” from Fantastic Four #51.

I also know this makes me a bandwagon jumping poseur — it’s sort of like acclaiming Groucho as one’s favorite Marx Brother, as though 95% of the world didn’t share that view — but there is a reason that certain things are acknowledged for their greatness.

There is a lot of greatness on display in Mark Evanier’s oversize biography of Mr. Kirby. First of all, the dimensions of the book, more coffee table book than traditional biography, allows the reproductions of Mr. Kirby’s work to be shown to great effect. Showcasing early comic strips drawn under a series of aliases in a range of styles to pin ups, commissioned pieces from late in his career, and countless stops in between, the art in Kirby: King of Comics almost makes the story of Mr. Kirby’s life and work superfluous. Almost.

Mr. Evanier, Mr. Kirby’s former studio assistant and friend, writes something more akin to a biographical sketch than to an exhaustive exhumation of every facet of Mr. Kirby’s life. It is a narrative that seeks to illustrate the illustrations it accompanies, or perhaps the illustrations are intended to narrate the narrative. Either way, like great comics, the text and image complement each other and convey a more comprehensive sense of story than either alone might have accomplished.

Because this is a book written by an interested party, it is largely favorable, but also seems largely honest while still doing honor to its subject. If Mr. Evanier avoids putting Jack Kirby on a pedestal (if only because Mr. Kirby’s drawing table is a more appropriate venue) he similarly refrains from casting a cartoonishly villainous light onto any of Mr. Kirby’s collaborators and employers. While Mr. Kirby failed to share in the financial rewards his work generated for his employer, especially in the area of derivative and licensed work, Mr. Evanier is honest that this resulted not only from ungenerous business practices on their part, but also from Mr. Kirby’s lack of business acumen. But these controversies, while noteworthy and significant, are in some ways extraneous to the powerful, dynamic work Mr. Kirby produced, or the ways that work defined — and continues to define — a medium.

The Jack Kirby story as presented by Mr. Evanier seems tailor made for the sort of biopic treatment Hollywood has given to individuals such as Ray Charles and Bobby Darin. His life had the arc on which such films so often rely; humble beginnings, personal drive, early struggles paving the way for tremendous success, mastery of chosen profession conflicting with the unkind realities of the biz, the ebb and flow of the later career culminating in acknowledgement of the proper place in the history of his craft. The only difference is that Mr. Kirby seems not to have needed to tame his personal demons in the same way as these performers.
While his life would be fodder for a film, I personally hope such an endeavor does not come to pass. Perhaps the recent success of films based on Marvel Comics properties (with more to come now that the success of Iron Man validated the profitability of the Marvel Studios financing endeavor) will limit interest in such a project. To tell Mr. Kirby’s story in the Hollywood way would necessitate exploring his relationship with Marvel, and the — how to say this diplomatically? — disproportionate nature of his compensation relative to his contributions. Such a story carries with it the sort of controversy that large companies seek to avoid in order to ensure or improve profitability. Thus, were such a film ever proposed, it’s not difficult to imagine Marvel’s owners attempting to derail the effort in order to keep the grazing pastures for their herd of cash cows verdant.

If superhero comics are a form of modern mythology — at its best, Mr. Kirby’s talent certainly elevated the characters and stories he depicted to that level, both explicitly (Thor, New Gods) and implicitly (X-Men) — it is equally the case that Mr. Kirby’s own life and work embodied a uniquely American mythology. As work, his career reflected the defining ethos of the 20th century: work hard, make money, provide for your family, don’t rock the boat too much, ensure your family’s security after you’re gone. As art, his work continues to fuel the production and articulation of new mythologies. Not bad for a kid from Yancy Delancey Street.

We interrupt this broadcast

I don’t receive many comments to the Bowleg, and I’m rather draconian in my moderation of those few comments that come my way. I can’t imagine censoring comments that disagree with me, so long as such comments are interesting, challenging, or creative in their challenge to my point of view. As I see it, disagreements implies that a reader not only read what I wrote, but was sufficiently affected by it to express an opinion. That’s all to the good.

Disagreements that bore me, on the other hand, aren’t worth my time or attention.

In realty, such disagreements as arise are few and far between. Most comments that I receive and subsequently delete fall into two categories: obvious spam and advertising/self promotion. I don’t have ads on the Bowleg, and I don’t see a need to let someone else use my soapbox to sell their soap.

Earlier this week, I received a comment from the author of a recently-released novel inquiring whether I ever did book reviews for local authors (presumably on the basis of the fact I occasionaly write about Berkshire County). My first impulse was to consider this gentleman’s query more soapselling and delete it out of hand. On reflection, though, I decided his comment deserved more of a considered response.

Having pondered the matter, I’m disinclined to review this book for several reasons:

1) I write about books, not very well. I write about food, not very well. I write about movies, and comics, and current events, and art, and museums, and life in the Berkshires, not very well. As you can see, while the subject matter of my writing tends to vary, there is a common theme that ties it all together: it’s not very good.

For an author, it’s hard enough to actively promote your own work without having to also do damage control because some pinhead with a blog completely missed the point of what you were trying to accomplish with your work.

2) While I have written reviews in the past, I don’t consider the things I currently write, which are primarily for my own edification, to be reviews. They’re observations, opinions, and digressions, with limited critical benefit. By and large, I try to capture a quick impression of the books I happen to read, without much effort or thought put into coherent analysis.

Again, I feel it would be a disservice to this author to subject his work to my usual half-assed and slapdash criticism. Besides, a review written at the direction of the author is fraught with pitfalls. Write a glowing review, and I’ll seem like a shill. Write a negative review, and I’m picking on someone who never did me any harm. Write a balanced review, and I’m too chicken%$#@ to commit to an opinion. Any way you slice it, it doesn’t end well for me.

3) When I have written reviews in the past, they have come about in one of two ways; either an editor has assigned me a particular book to review, or the editor has provided a list of advance reader copies or new releases they happen to have on hand, and asked their reviewers to claim treasure from the trove. Without an editor, my book selection is based largely on whim and word of mouth. While this author’s communication arguably qualifies as word of mouth, we’re back to the whole question of soapselling.

4) Bart Modern is demonstrably not an opinion maker. On its best day, the Bowleg received 63 hits. As of this morning, it has received just over 3,650 hits over the course of almost 18 months. Contrast this with a popular blog like John Scalzi’s Whatever. In May of this year, Mr. Scalzi received just shy of one million hits to the Whatever (999,808 to be scrupulously exact). That’s an average of over 32,000 hits per day, over 1,300 hits per hour on average. To put it another way, John Scalzi attracts more visitors in three hours than the Bowleg has received in its entire life to date.

This is not to suggest that this author should necessarily run straight to the Whatever to promote himself and his work, merely that anyone in his position should focus their effort on maximizing the ripple effect by making sure they throw their stone into the right pond. There are only so many hours in a day, and limited opportunities to reach a potential audience. The puddle maintained by a guy who gets a handful of hits a day is to shallow to produce meaningful ripples.

Still, I admire this gentleman’s tenacity. He wrote a book, and that counts for something in my book. He obviously believes in his work, and is putting in the effort to get it in front of as many people as he can through as many channels as he can. I don’t think I’m the best person to help him do it, but I also believe his effort deserves some acknowledgement.

So, Bowleggers, at the risk of selling some soap, here’s the deal: there’s this guy name of Peter Clenott who wrote a book called Hunting the King. Make of this information what you will.

Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Coben’s books since friends of mine who used to own a bookstore recommended his first Myron Bolitar novel, Deal Breaker, to me. I generally enjoy both the Bolitar series and Mr. Coben’s other, largely standalone, thrillers. Like people who complain that they like Woody Allen’s funnier movies best, I have a slight preference for some of Mr. Coben’s earlier works, which are lighter in tone and substance than his more recent fare, but even his darker stories are engaging (if that sort of thing appeals to you).

[Digression: I can't prove it, but I suspect the influence of all the procedural shows on television raises -- or possibly lowers, depending on your point of view -- the bar for thrillers. Part of crafting effective procedurals week after week is coming up with new mysteries to unravel, or finding a new angle on the old mysteries that make them fresh enough to keep the audience coming back week after week. One of the ways to twist the mystery is to make it more shocking, and to plumb the depths of human depradation and inhuman morality. As this has become the norm on television, it seems it has pushed print authors in the same direction.]

Mr. Coben’s latest thriller continues his strong track record. At the same time, I take slight exception with the book. Mr. Coben is an alumnus of Amherst College, although I try not to hold that against him when I read his work, much as I can appreciate the achievement of Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale despite Mr. Helprin having written speeches for Senator Bob Dole during the 1996 presidential campaign.

However, as a resident of Berkshire County, and as someone who has a theoretical rooting interest in certain of this region’s institutions, I take slight exception to the sociopath/villain/narrative instigator of Hold Tight being an alumnus of Williams College. It’s not so much the sociopathy that bothers me as much as the cut-rate, cartoonish nature of it.

Bookdump

I fell out of my habit of obsessively documenting every book I read, as though there was some inherent merit in the act of such documentation. In case there is, here is a quick catch up on some of what I’ve read lately:

• SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil (collected edition), written and drawn by Jeff Smith: For all the hype this mini series generated when it came out, I was expecting something more. The story is fun, in a way that too few comics are fun these days. It is appropriate for younger readers without being childish or condescending. It definitely has respect for its original source material, the Captain Marvel comics of the 1940s; it’s firmly rooted in the history and conventions of those stories, while giving the whole thing a thin veneer of modernization to bring the good Captain and his exploits into a more contemporary setting. Taken separately, these are all great accomplishments. Collectively, they promise more than they deliver. Maybe on some wacky meta-level, that is the triumph of the series: it hearkens back to the days when comics were disposable culture, when stories were meant to be read and set aside in preparation for the next issue’s adventure. Of course, if that was part of the goal, it’s hard to understand how to reconcile disposable culture with a $25 price point for the collected edition (which I borrowed from the library).
• Harlan Ellison’s Watching, by Harlan Ellison: This collection of essays on film from the 1970s and 1980s are didactic, opinionated, and unapologetic. They’re also damn good reading, made so because Mr. Ellison has the chops to back up his opinions. Like reading all the best critics, one may not always agree, but there is value in trying to see a film from such a critic’s point of view. If there is a weakness in the collection, it is that like all writers, Mr. Ellison has certain tics of phrasing and stock quotations he turns to with some regularity. When these essays came out months and years apart in the publications for which Mr. Ellison wrote them, such repetition was likely all but unnoticeable to any but the most keen-eyed readers. In a collected edition read over the span of a few days, these phrases become…conspicuous.
• My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, by Kevin Smith: More than most people want to know about Mr. Smith’s copulatory, eliminatory, and gustatory life, his work, and his poker-playing fortunes. The book, reprinted from Mr. Smith’s online diary is a comprehensive catalogue of daily minutia, from his first morning trip to the bathroom, to the film or television show to which he fell asleep on a given day. Only here’s the thing: such detail should be incredibly boring, and queasily intimate, but it’s fascinating nevertheless. I don’t think it’s so much a voyeuristic fascination as it is an appreciation of Mr. Smith’s willingness to be so candid. It raises the question of where the public persona ends, and the authentic person, the one that only his inner circle of close family and friends ever sees, begins.
• Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman: Short stories by Neil Gaiman. Mr. Gaiman writes good short stories.
• Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George: Ms. George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries are less about the stone of murder being dropped into a still pond (home, office, family, community) and far more about the ripples caused by the crime. Many times, the identity of the killer becomes the least interesting puzzle to solve among all the secrets, lies, conflicting loyalties, and destructive revelations that come out about the victim, and those whose orbit intersected theirs. Some people are destroyed by what the crime brings to light. Others find resolve, strength, and liberation through the investigation. Often, the people who are destroyed are the ones who seem most in need of saving, and vice versa. This book is no exception.
• Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril, by Jim Butcher: These are the first three books in Mr. Butcher’s Dresden Files series about Chicago-based freelance wizard Harry Dresden. The stories are entertaining, and well thought-out, with interesting — or at least not annoying — twists on werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts, and fairies, along with a nicely noir sensibility. It is clear that Mr. Butcher has a plan, and is building slowly (too slowly in some cases, with plot setups and secrets teased a bit too much without developing [yet] into anything satisfyingly substantial) toward an epic story. The books work best because the main character is engaging. Harry Dresden is heroic, but also not immune to making mistakes. The mistakes are what help to set up the epic, the (flawed) heroism is what will hopefully keep the character from falling to far.