Little Toy Robot

(That’s the “royal we.”)

The only Web comic I’ve been able to read consistently for a long period of time is Cat and Girl.

Once, in Tower Records in Atlanta, I saw a guy walking around with a Cat and Girl t-shirt, but I didn’t say anything to him.

Anyway, the eponymous Girl is a very busy bee indeed, but my favorite side project is very small array, a sort of sketchbook blog.

The comic book anthology based on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, perhaps my favorite book of all time, has been cancelled. And thank god for that. Despite Chabon’s involvement and some industry awards, I haven’t really been impressed by the eight issues. Officially, it was cancelled because of poor sales, but I really think the sales reflect the fact that it’s something of a vanity project which would have been better served as a one-time thing.

A new storyline, authored by Brian K. Vaughan (yes, the Y and Ex Machina guy) and drawn by Steve Rolston, is going to continue as a regular monthly mini-series. The first installement in issue eight actually showed some promise, because it genuinely approached the source material in a different way, so I’m glad it will get a chance.

Lethem is penning a Marvel comic, Omega the Unknown, due in 2006. “Marvel dared me to put my love on the line,” says the author, who is reviving a little-known character from the ’70s. Omega is “kind of a meta-superhero,” he says, a “bewildered visitor to the Planet Earth” with–yes–a cape.

Michael Chabon is interviewed in the February issue of Alter Ego, “Roy Thomas’ Swingin’ Comics Fanzine.” This is a refreshing interlude to the deluge of Final Solution reviews and the typical comics-are-not-just-for-kids fluff pieces.

Roy Thomas focuses on the acknowledgements at the end of Kavalier & Clay, in which Chabon thanks several comics luminaries from the Golden Age and provides a bibliography. It’s an interesting insight into the genesis of the novel and the influence of specific creators like Will Eisner, Stan Lee, and Gil Kane, who all gave Chabon some of their time to discuss the good ol’ days. Chabon also discusses some of the books he used as references, such as Jules Feiffer’s well known The Great Comic Book Heroes. Thomas also probes Chabon about some of the throwaway superhero names and comic titles strewn throughout the novel.

This, however, is the most tantalizing bit of the interview:

Roy Thomas: I’ve heard rumors of a planned sequel to Kavalier and Clay. Are they true–assuming you don’t mind this being mentioned in the interview?

Chabon: I won’t rule it out. I would love to tell a story set in the New York of the early 70’s, about the guys, like this Thomas fellow [meaning the gentlemen who is interviewing him!], who were writing and drawing the comics I grew up loving.

Idle speculation, perhaps, from a writer who is not among the most prolific. However, the Kavalier and Clay postscript that made it into the catalogue of the exhibit at the Bremen musuem does in fact trace the story into more modern times, as do the occasional essays in the Escapist comic books, so you know it’s something that’s been on Chabon’s mind.

I like to take chances, but sometimes this means I get burned. The latest disappointment is–don’t laugh–Barnum, a six-part comic series written by Harold Chaykin and David Tischman. I am easily seduced by the circus and the carnival, counting books such as The Circus of Dr Lao, Geek Love, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Blind Voices, and Nights at the Circus among my favorites (before you ask: no, I haven’t read The Circus in Winter yet). I like the idea of spectacle and show, looking at stories like these as taking place at an intersection of the real and unreal. They question the nature of the mundane and the extraordinary through the lens of wonder. Whatever.

Barnum begins with promise, featuring an exciting cover and a moody, anticipatory first page. But by the second page, things begin to fall apart, as members of Barnum’s troop are introduced with quick thumbnails as if this were the marketing copy on the back of the book. There’s Span, the human acrobat! He looks like a Golden Age Marvel superhero. There’s Plastino, the obligatory ethnic contortionist and sword-swallower. There’s Primeva and Hypnosia, the large-breasted tamers of animals and men, respectively. There’s Colonel Dyna-Mite, “twenty-five inches high with the strength of ten men!” And there’s Chang and Eng. Yeah, seriously.

Unfortunately, none of these one-dimensional freaks, nor Barnum, nor his Bumbling business partner Bailey, elicit any sort of interest as they get caught up in a plot to stop the evil genius Nikolai Tesla (WTF?), whose weapon of choice is a joy buzzer, and his sidekick Ada Lovelace (WTF?) from taking over the American West. Barnum’s circus is recruited into the cause by a secret service agent named Firestone Kelly, and much football-stadium-like chanting along the lines of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” follows.

I couldn’t wait to be finished with the sixth and final installment of the story, since I had long since ceased to care and found no redeeming elements in either the artwork or the writing. There are some decent action scenes, of course, including an exploding dirigible, but it all led me to believe that since superhero-team steampunk adventures are derivative in the first place (reimagining historical figures and tropes), it simply won’t do to have them be doubly derivative by copying more successful experiences which blur historical fact and fiction like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Of course, the reason League succeeds is that it is plot- and character-driven, in addition to being clever; it’s not just a gimmick or a game. The excretable Image (is that redundant?) series Alternation, which tries to build an American League and doesn’t know when to stop, is a shining example of How Not to Do It, and Barnum is no better.

It appears that the last thing Will Eisner wrote was a Spirit/Escapist crossover story for Michael Chabon’s quarterly comics anthology:

Before Eisner entered the hospital for his heart surgery, he finished one last story, set for publication in April by Dark Horse, in which The Spirit meets Chabon’s fictional brainchild, the Escapist, and the two characters wrestle with society’s need for superheroes and simple solutions in a complex age.

That issue of The Escapist (#6) should appear in April. In the meantime, issue #5 is scheduled for a 2/23 release and features contributions from Howard Chaykin, Jason Hall, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Thomas, Eric Wight, Paul Grist, Jeffrey Brown, David Hahn, Shawn Martinbrough, and others. [via]

This lovely lady makes an appearance in the very first Flash comic, from 1940. On the right is Jay Garrick, Flash’s alter-ego. Charming feller, ain’t he?

This weekend I finished up the McSweeney’s book and was pointedly underwhelmed by the Oates and Straub efforts. Now that I’m done I’ll stick with my initial prognosis that only the Mitchell, Handler, Roberts, and Mieville stories are any good. The quality of the collection is anemic compared to the first one, and compared to anthologies in general. Very disappointing.

On the other hand, I have found some gems in the most recent Escapist comics. (In other words, I spoke too soon.) It all started way back in the second issue, with Glen David Gold’s story. (That man hasn’t disappointed me yet!) There are still some unimaginative duds, but some individual contributions are stand-outs. I’m looking forward to rumored future developments:

• Stories written by Jonathan Lethem and Dave Eggers
• An entire issue written by Michael Chabon
• Long-term story arcs, which are of course more the norm for comics these days. This would make the effort feel less like a novelty and more like a comic book.

“Uh oh,” I thought, looking at the outrageously priced catalogue of the exhibition on Sunday. “It’s an article, not a story. It’s not what I thought.”

I was fooled.

The promised postscript to Kavalier & Clay turned out to be a well fabricated “Talk of the Town” piece from The New Yorker, which looked all too real at first.

A friend in Pittsburgh writes:

Last week, at IronCon, a convention of comic book dealers and fans held annually at the Hotel Duquesne, I screwed up my courage and …

I thought it was an early non-fiction piece by Chabon, but if I had persevered for just a few more words I would have realized that it was indeed a fiction, a completist addendum to the Kavalier & Clay story bringing it extraneous and excessive closure. (I bought it anyway.) I should be used to this after following a year of the Escapist comic, loyally but not always happily, in which Chabon, often listed on the masthead as the publication’s “Escapologist,” fills in the story of the Escapist and friends in excruciating detail up to the present time under the pseudonym of Malachai Cohen.

The exhibition, which was good, was passed mainly in the endeavor of poking fun at the bright-eyed optimism of the early comic book heroes, keeping well away from the fake kryptonite, and appreciating the paranoid world of my grandparents which feels a little less strange after these past few years.

The highlight of the catalogue, however, was not Chabon’s piece, which, as I said, I was compelled to collect even as my enthusiasm for the comics related portion of K&C has worn off (my favorite scene was the party with the Salvadore Dali Incident). The highlight (except for either a failing pun or a loud typo in its last line) was Jules Feiffer’s “The Minsk Theory of Krypton,” which actually articulated the point of the show, if you couldn’t figure out why you were in a Jewish museum staring at pop art created by men with distinctly familiar ethnic names ending in “-witz” or “-ov” (or “-off”) or “-berg” or “-stein”:

Superman was the ultimate assimilationist fantasy. The mild manners and glasses that signified a class of nerdy Clark Kents was, in no way, our real truth. Underneath the schmucky facade there lived Men of Steel! Jerry Siegel’s accomplishment was to chronicle the smart Jewish boy’s American dream. Acknowledge that, and you can better understand the symbolic meaning of the planet Krypton. It wasn’t Krypton that Superman came from; it was the planet Minsk or Lodz or Vilna or Warsaw.

Michael Chabon’s latest update, on his very own Web site, is filled with nothing but goodness. Buried among the myriad exciting facts and relevations is this:

What else? An apocryphal epilog to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay can be found, not perhaps without a certain amount of difficulty, in the catalog to an exhibit currently on view at Atlanta’s Breman Museum. I can’t give the title of the exhibit because it’s too embarrassing, though the show itself looks terrific.

Hey, I thought to myself, I LIVE IN ATLANTA! I work three blocks away from said Museum. I’ve been saving it for a rainy weekend, but I think I’ll go soon. Or at least get my hands on the catalog.

Also of note:

Down the road: an introduction to a proposed reissue, by NYRB, of one of the most important books of my childhood, that dark and luminous compendium, the D’Aulaires’ Norse Gods and Giants, which has somehow, shockingly, gone out of print.

This is exciting because I have been annotating Chabon’s Summerland on and off for the past year or two, with the goal of putting it on my Web site to show how cool I am and to attract members of the opposite sex. Recently Chabon namechecked Trickster Makes This World, and I’ve been reading the book with a recognition of its relevance to Summerland, which is a story that mixes baseball with mythology and has an important trickster character. The mythology is partially Norse, so I am very happy to find, in the D’Aulaire book mentioned above, another possible source to apply to my annotations.

And if that wasn’t enough Chabon for you, Scott Esposito recounts Chabon’s one and only appearance for his book, The Final Solution, at Cody’s in California.

At the Breman Museum:

zap! pow! bam! the superhero:
The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938—1950

Opening October 24, 2004

The Breman’s unique special exhibition, ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938—1950, the first in-depth exhibition of its kind, will invite visitors into the world of super heroes, illuminating the creative processes and influences that drove their young creators to provide America with an escape from the despair and helplessness of the 1929 stock market crash.

The exhibition will present original comic book art, culled from major collectors, representing the most well-known Super Heroes, including Superman, Batman, Captain America, The Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.

Also on display will be rare, never-before-seen original comic book art, objects belonging to the first comic book creators and publishers, as well as superhero memorabilia. In addition, the exhibition will feature 1940s serials produced in Hollywood, video interviews with some of the leading comic book artists and writers of the days, and a number of interactive features for children and adults to enjoy.

In no particular order:

Warren Ellis.

Adult Swim panel. Clunky Robot, along with a group of misfits ranging from mcchris (very funny) to Billy West (possibly psychotic). Maybe I’m a simple man, but I had a great time simply watching the Adult Swim promos in a huge room with a few hundred other fans, laughing and hooting along with them. The panel discussed some of the future development and programming plans. Worth noting: Read or Die (the series) coming this fall!

Warren Ellis.

I was delighted to unexpectedly encounter George Lowe, the voice of Space Ghost (in his Coast to Coast reincarnation). The voiceover god and all-around funny man was eating a turkey sandwich and signed two Space Ghost pictures for me (one for work, one for home). Not one to simply scribble his signature, he took a few minutes (between bites of his sandwich) to talk with me and a friend and wrote and drew all over the pictures to ensure I had a very unique souvenir of the experience. This made me extremely happy.

Warren Ellis.

I got to see Bernie Wrightson a few times. He’s the co-creator of Swamp Thing, and he also did some well-known illustratons for Frankenstein and Stephen King’s The Stand.

Warren Ellis.

Three costumes of note: A man soaking up attention as Doc Ock, a man dressed as The Tick, and a combination Elvis-Stormtrooper getup. As for the other costumes… well, I’ll quote Warren Ellis: “Klingons are not on Atkins. And neither are Stormtroopers. There are an alarming amount of very thin young girls wearing elf ears.” [Update: See Lady Crumpet for some pictures!]

All in all I enjoyed the time I was there, even though most of it was not to my taste. I’ll definitely go again, though I’ll probably just get a day pass.

Jesse Barrett calls Michael Chabon’s Escapist a sell-out. Little Toy Robot pretty much agrees.

[…] it’s high-concept pomo gamesmanship whose rewards are still unclear. After the first two issues, the safest conclusion is that the execution hasn’t equaled the concept.

The problem is that the stories are boring. By which I mean they operate at a very low level of excitement and didn’t keep my interest.

However, the reviewer and I and other people agree that the whole thing is not a washout. At the very least, the art is good, there are a few stand-outs, and there is still some potential for the quarterly anthology. [via Booklut]

The utterly selfless and unironic people behind 826 Valencia, a free writing lab in San Francisco linked to the McSweeney’s scene, have built 826 NYC in Brooklyn. 826 Valencia has a storefront billed as “San Francisco?s only independent pirate supply store,” and the new center has the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company:

As the name says, we will be a supply store for superheroes in need of capes, masks, utility belts, grappling hooks, and whatever else their crime fighting tasks call for. Visitors will also be able to read books, magazines, and student publications on display or explore the mysterious contents of the store, before passing through the secret passage to the more serious activities within the tutoring center.

“Too late, too late,” whimpers a grown up Dylan Ebdus.