2001-05-02 8:36 a.m.
the future and geeking out

whoo...strange dream. I was somewhere tropical, and suddenly my laptop had big holes in the casing over the keyboard, which oddily enough, seemed to have been built with styrofoam. I thought I could fix it, so I popped off the keyboard, and found a weird assortment of parts, none of which seemed to fit spatially or make sense inside my computer! I also tried to put a normal fullsize desktop keyboard back in. it didn't work.

I also saw Fight Club before bed...probably my subconscious mind reminding me not to value possessions too much. I don't really, but my computer's a tool, and an important one. (I write a lot on the train by hand, though...so maybe the point is moot.)

left turn:

so where the hell are we going as a race, anyway? this has been on my mind lately...are we a train wreck on the evolutionary railroad, waiting to happen, an unswerving path toward choking to death on hair spray fumes and being vaporized by hyperintelligent billboards who decide that they can buy better than we can?

my latest tirade was with Chris yesterday. we were trying to figure out the future of comics, be it through book form, the usual pamphlet style, mini-comics, manga... my suggestion that we treat and write comics in brand-new ways, using the manga model but applying American culture to it, as well as pitching comics to book publishers, not comic publishers, is one way to go.

Another problem is simply content...how many comics are largely recognized outside of the comics world? Three this year: "Safe Area Gorazde" by Joe Sacco (a comics-journalism take on Sacco's time in Bosnia), "Jimmy Corrigan" by Chris Ware (widely considered one of the most interestingly designed, if not interesting, comics of the past few decades), and "Little Lit", an anthology hardcover of indie comic folks doing fairy tales (put out by a big name publisher too).

Sacco's work I love, because he's one of a few writer/artists (who I can count on one hand) that does political comics. So many people have never conceived of writing something with political import if it isn't published in a newspaper or on a Website. Jeez, what about a comic account of being on the campaign trail with George W or Ralph Nader? The half-life of books like that are such that, done properly, you can take away something from them, not like the books right now that are out, poking fun at W's malapropisms.

wow, I'm a wordy motherfucker.

the other two books are pretty, but I can take or leave 'em. they're garnering attention mostly because of design, high quality, and good PR. 90% of comics PR generally comes from local newspapers (buried on page 56) or music mags. where are the comics that'll appeal to DJs and indie rockers? why isn't The Waiting Place in every bookshop next to Sweet Valley High and selling out every month? what are we waiting for...the audience to get hooked on wetware movies that you can drink or give them stories with the complexity of Carla McNeil's "Finder" but in both palatable genres and easy to deal with formats?

The books don't write themselves.

a few years down the line, I'd love to teach a class on comic writing...assuming I know something about it by then, that is.