The Pope of Comics

Congratulations to my Catholic readers--if there are any who haven't been put off by my occasional references, when appropriate to the subject at hand, to my unashamed atheism and liberal politics.  Most Catholics I know are staunch Republicans and refused to even vote for one of their own for President back in 2004 because he belonged to the wrong party.  Not to mention that more than a few of them actually belief in God.

Sorry, got sidetracked again.  Happens a lot. Maybe I should hire myself an editor.  Anyway, as I was about to say, there's a new pope as of two days ago.  This is the fourth time during my lifetime, including twice in 1978 alone, that the cardinals of the Catholic church have gathered to select a new leader for their little cult. (If I had any Catholic readers left, they're gone now)  The first two times, I actually sort of cared.  Though, in retrospect, I don't think I ever really believed, I was raised as a Catholic and attended mass regularly until the mid-1980's when I went off to college and got away from parental influence. Plus, I did think that it was kind of cool that the second pope chosen in '78 was one of my people--a Pole.  

The history of the papacy during the past four decades has been one of precedents and historic firsts.  The election of John Paul I to replace the late Paul VI (I remember reading a satirical headline in National Lampoon that declared, "John Paul Elected Pope; George, Ringo Miffed") was pretty much business as usual for the church, until JP I, in turn, died a mere 33 days later.  Though the reign of Pope John Paul I was by no means the shortest in history, it is, according to Wikipedia, in the top ten.  John Paul I's tenure of little more than a month was followed by the election of the first non-Italian  pope in more than something like four hundred years.

I suppose you could call it ironic that one of the shortest papacies was followed by the second longest papal reign in Catholic history.  John Paul II served for over twenty-six years.

After JP II's death in 2005, he was followed by Benedict XVI, a German with a somewhat questionable past.  (He's in his 80's and from Germany...you do the math.)  After an eight year reign marked by all sorts of controversies, Benedict broke centuries of precedent by becoming the first Pontiff to leave the office standing up for almost six hundred years.  

The new pope, Francis I of Argentina, continues the tradition of breaking with tradition by being the first from the "New World" of the Americas, and the first from the Jesuit order.

What the bloody hell, you may be screaming at your computer screen by this point, does this poorly researched treatise on recent religious history have to do with comics, which is what this damned blog is supposed to be about?  Well, John Paul II, during his quarter century plus reign, became one of the most popular popes in history.  Not only was he beloved by Catholics, but he made quite an impression on non-Catholics as well.  He also ended up making a few appearances in comic books over the years, including two that recounted the story of his life.

The first of those was published in 1982 by Marvel as part of the short-lived line of hagiographic comics produced in co-operation with the Catholic church that also included the Mother Theresa comic I wrote about last year.  (...and, relevant to the new pope, I believe there was also a book about St. Francis of Assissi, after whom the new pontiff renamed himself)  I have not actually read this comic, but the cover blurb promises "The Entire Story! From his childhood in Poland to the assassination attempt!"  The Life of Pope John Paul II was written by Steven Grant.  Grant's other credits from the decade include the 1986 Punisher mini-series, among other, more typical mainstream comics fare.  (The Pope and the Punisher...Now there's a team-up I would've loved to see.  I mean, if Frank Castle can meet Archie Andrews, then why not?

The second sequential retelling of John Paul II's life, The Life of Pope John Paul II...in Comics!, was published in 2006.  As it came out after John Paul II's death, I imagine the latter volume offers a more complete picture of the pontiff's life. 

In addition to those two biographies, the Comic Book Data Base lists a handful of other appearances by John Paul II in some perhaps surprising titles.  These include Vertigo's Kid Eternity, DC's Wonder Woman, and Marvel's Thor.  I don't know the nature of his appearance in Thor, but its interesting to imagine one of the foremost representative of Christianity meeting one of those "other gods" inveighed against in the First Commandment.

On a completely different note, and totally unrelated to anything I've written here so far, there's one thing I've been wondering as I mentally composed this post.  Why do popes take a new name when they get elected?  Why couldn't I, if I became pope, just be Pope Raymond I?

Bechdel To Appear At Otterbein Tomorrow Night

I really should have written about this earlier, but I just found about it today when I finally got around to reading that copy of last Thursday's Columbus Alive that had been sitting at the bottom of my bag for the past four days.  Well, enough with the apologies, let's get to the news.

Alison Bechdel, whose graphic novel Fun Home was named by TIME magazine as the best book of 2006, will be giving a talk tomorrow (Tuesday, March 5, 2013) night at 7:30 at Otterbein University's Riley Auditorium.  The event is free and open to the public.

You know, its funny.  I've lived in Columbus for 21 years now, and until I looked up the press release about this event on-line  I really had no idea where the heck Otterbein University is.  I can find OSU, though.  That's just down the street.

GONZO: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson Reviewed

Here, then, before we get to the meat of the review, are the basic facts of the matter before us.  Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson, written by Will Bingley and  illustrated by Anthony Hope-Smith with an introduction by Thompson's former editor Alan Rinzler, was originally published a couple of years ago by a British outfit called SelfMadeHero, and has just been re-released in a new edition by Abrams here in the States.  The 192 page paperback will set you back $17.95 if you still want to buy a copy after reading what I've got to say about it.

My opinion, I must say, seems to be in the minority.  I Googled the title and found several reviews written around the time of the original edition's release, and most of them are, if not glowing, at least positive.   I myself found little of value between those bright orange covers other than Rinzler's introduction, which I shall deal with in more detail presently.  First though, I must dash off my dismissal of the main body of the book.  

Bingley and Smith attempt with this book, as they state in this interview, to get beyond the public persona of "Dr. Gonzo" that Thompson built up around himself and that is perpetuated in such films as Where The Buffalo Roam and Terry Gilliam's version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to, in Bingley's words, "tell a more interesting story."  There is a more interesting story to be told, but you won't read it here.  Bingley's narrative is written in the first person as if by Thompson himself in a semi-convincing pastiche of Thompson's style at its most lucid that may fool some with only a passing familiarity with his work into thinking that they are reading some sort of lost manuscript by Thompson himself.  However, Thompson's seemingly dashed off prose style was deceptively easy to imitate on the surface, but full of depth of meaning and insight combined with an inventive use of  language that his imitators, myself at times among them, rarely even attempt to duplicate beyond repeated and inappropriate use of the word "shitrain" and references to "bad craziness".  Ultimately, Bingley barely manages to scratch the surface, failing to capture the true complexity of Thompson's life and work.

The book focuses mainly on the 1970's, which I suppose is only right as this was his most productive period.  However, the final decades of his life are also important to an understanding of the man and his ultimate fate and deserve better than to be dismissed in a couple of scratchily drawn and sparsely captioned pages.  The book ends, of  course, with Thompson's death at his own hands.  Bingley seems to be among those who want to paint Thompson's end as some sort of noble or brave and heroic act, when, in fact, suicide is neither of those things.  I will have to admit that as much as I continue to admire Thompson's literary accomplishments, I lost some small measure of respect for the man because of his final act.

Of course, Bingley's failure to capture the essence of Thompson's soul is no surprise if he can't even get straight the basic biographical facts of the man's life. On page 17, "Thompson" states, "My first job was as a sportswriter in New Jersey in   1957," which is not accurate, or even true. While it is certainly a fact that Thompson began his civilian career as a journalist in the small town of Jersey Shore, that town is, as I learned in college when I met a young woman who had grown up there (and I wish I could remember her name), neither in New Jersey nor anywhere near a shore.  Instead, it is located near the center of my home state of Pennsylvania.  Apparently, Bingley wrote his caption based on an assumption made by simply looking at the town's name rather than doing any actual tedious and time consuming research.

I came away from this book with no greater understanding of its subject than I'd had before.  The only real insight into Thompson's personality is offered in the introduction by Alan Rinzler, who was Thompson's editor on what he calls "...four of his best books": Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72, Amerika, The Great Shark Hunt, and The Curse of Lono. The intro seems a bit odd to me, as it reads as if it were not specifically written for this particular book.  At the very least, Rinzler appears not to have even read the volume he's supposed to writing an introduction to.  Not once does he make any reference to the book we are about to read or its authors, focusing instead on his personal recollections of working with Thompson.  Sadly, though, those scant eight pages of prose give us more insight into who Thompson truly was than the entire 180 page sequential narrative that follows.

The one good thing I got out of this book was a renewed desire to re-read some of the classic pieces by Thompson referenced within.  Thus, I set out to pick up a new copy of The Great Shark Hunt, which, as far as I'm concerned, is, along with Campaign Trail, Hell's Angels and Songs of the Doomed, all the biography of Thompson that anyone really needs. For in Thompson's case, more than for any of the other so-called "new journalists" with whom he is often lumped in, his life and work where truly of a piece and inseparable.

If Gonzo inspires anyone else to go out and re-read, or, better yet, discover for the first time, Thompson's literary legacy, then I suppose that its existence will have been justified.  Personally, I would advise anyone curious about Thompson to skip this book and use the eighteen bucks you save to purchase the books I make reference to above.  That would be a much wiser investment of your cash and reading time.

The Influencing Machine

My  two main sources of news and entertainment these days are comic books and National Public Radio, and one of my favorite NPR programs, due both to the subject matter it covers and to the way said subject matter is presented by hosts Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, is On The Media.  (Though, due to the fact that my local NPR station no longer carries OTM, I have to keep up with it by subscribing to the podcast.) Combine all of that and you get a book that I just knew from the moment that I learned of its existence that I absolutely had to read: The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld.  A couple of weeks ago, I finally aquired a copy and have read it through from cover to cover twice now, partly to prepare to write this review, but mostly because it is a fun, engaging, and informative book that I absolutely love, as I knew I would.

In the world of graphic nonfiction, dominated mostly by self-indulgent autobiographical comics, the only thing comparable to The Influencing Machine is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which also seeks to translate complex ideas and theories into sequential art form.  However, while, in retrospect at least, the idea of doing a book on comics theory in comics form seems something of a no-brainer, The Influencing Machine, which distills Gladstone's quarter century of writing about media into an examination of the media's past, present and future and our relationship to it then and now, seems a slightly riskier proposition to attempt as a comic. It is, however, a gamble that pays off. 

In interviews at the time of the book's release a few months ago, Gladstone stated that she chose to present what she calls her "media manifesto" in comics form in order to foster the same kind of intimate relationship with readers that she feels she attains with her radio audience.  In this regard she succeeds even more fully than she might have hoped, due to the nature of comics, which is what Marshall McLuhan termed a "cool" medium, which more fully engages the reader's mind than the "hot" medium of radio and and creates an even more intimate connection between author and audience. 

This is my first time seeing Josh Neufeld's art, but whoever brought him and Gladstone together should get a bonus as he seems the perfect choice to convey Gladstone's message and create that intimate connection with the reader which she sought.

It goes without saying by this point that I highly and heartily recommend this book to one and all.  To whet your appetite, here is an animated version of the book's intro from YouTube:

Mother Teresa in the Mighty Marvel Manner

Webster's Dictionary defines hagiography as: "Biography of saints or venerated persons."  The word is often used by critics who want to demonstrate how much smarter they are than their readers by showing off their huge vocabulary, like me, as a condemnation of any biography that paints an overly rosy picture of its subject.

To call the Mother Teresa of Calcutta, on the other hand, a hagiography is to neither condemn nor praise it.  It is simply to state a fact.  Published by Marvel Comics (believe it or not) in co-operation with the Catholic Church in 1984 as part of a short lived series of sequential biographies of religious figures that also included volumes on the lives of Pope John Paul II and Saint Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a reverent retelling of the controversial nun's life up to that point in time.  The comic was written by David Michelinie from a story by Franciscan priest Father Roy Gasnick and pencilled by John Tartaglione with inks by Joe Sinnott.

To frame Mother Teresa's story, Michelinie and Gasnick introduce the reader on the first page to Nick Bugatti, a reporter for the fictitious World Cable News.  After meeting Mother Teresa in Beirut, Nick drags his comic relief cameraman Marty along on a worldwide quest to determine just what makes her so "special".  The pair travel to Yugoslavia, Ireland and finally to India, gathering biographical details along the way.  These details are presented to the reader in a linear fashion, tracing Mother Teresa's life from her birth in 1910 to winning the Nobel Prize in 1979.  

In the end, Nick does, in fact, uncover what makes Mother Teresa so "special".  What is her mysterious secret that took this ace reporter forty-eight pages to figure out?  "She cares."  Of course, by the time the story got to that final page revelation, I really didn't. 

Since the book is written in such an earnest, reverential manner, there are a number of unintentionally hilarious moments. For instance there's the panel where Mother Teresa and an associate are shown leaving a village as the angry villagers throne sticks and stones at them and she calmly concludes that, "I don't think God wants us to have a leper clinic here!"  However, the book never reaches the level of high camp that I was hoping for.  

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is not really a bad book for what it is, but its definitely one for true believers only.

Comic Book Comics # 5

One of my favorite items in The Onion's look back at the 20th Century, Our Dumb Century, is an article headlined "Siegal, Shuster Sign Lucrative Publishing Contract."  The piece details how Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster signed over to DC Comics "rights to their fantastical 'Superman' character in perpetuity" for $25 and a sandwich.  It's the kind of piece that almost makes you want to cry even as you're rolling on the floor laughing over it.  The sad part is that it's not all that far from the truth.  Siegal and Shuster received a mere $130 for the very first Superman story and all rights to the character, which has netted untold millions for the company  over the last seven decades.

In Comic Book Comics #5, the most recent installment of their six issue comic book history of  the comics industry, Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey detail the struggles of Siegal and Shuster, and their heirs, to gain their rightful due for creating one of the most well known and beloved fictional characters of all time.  Siegal and Shuster's tale, though, is only part of an overview of the history of creator's rights and copyright disputes throughout the history of the comics industry.  Van Lente and Dunlavey also cover the dispute between Jack Kirby and Marvel over rights to the characters he created for them and the return of his original artwork, the case of the Walt Disney Company versus the underground cartoonists collective calling themselves The Air Pirates, the famous court battle between DC and Fawcett over Captain Marvel and the tangled legal web that, until recently, has ensnared the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman. They also touch on the disputes between Joe Simon, Marv Wolfman and Steve Gerber and Marvel and Dan DeCarlo and Archie Comics.

Van Lente's clear, concise text provides an easily grasped introduction to these complex issues.  As the artist, Dunlavey may have the harder task. He has to find a way to somehow illustrate abstract legal concepts.  Fortunately, he is up to the task, with drawings that emphasize and enhance the key points of Van Lente's essay.

This is the only issue of Comic Book Comics I've read so far.  I picked it up because the subject matter was on my mind after re-reading Sirius Entertainment's similarly themed Trademark & Copyright Book.  However, if the rest of Van Lente and Dunlavey's history of the comics industry is as entertaining and informative as this issue, I'm definitely interested in reading more.