A few random things.

• Franklin Harris has posted a New Bastard Manifesto over at his blog. There's definitely parts I agree with, but I think I'd lose my Official Indie Hipster Cred Card if I didn't take part of it and discuss it to death:

4. Non-superhero comics are great, too. I read more non-superhero books than I read superhero books, especially horror/dark fantasy titles published by Dark Horse, Vertigo and IDW.

5. But autobiographical "art comics" like anything written by Harvey Pekar and "Blankets" suck ass. You're a fucking comic-book artist/writer. Who the hell gave you the idea that your life is worth an autobiography? Have you ever seen a prose autobiography by a writer who does nothing but write his own autobiography? Of course not. If you're looking for a sign of the artistic poverty of comics, it isn't the dominance of superhero comics. It's the praise heaped upon books that are nothing but cartoonists bitching and moaning about their lot as cartoonists.

Of course, I'm down with #4. Aside from the horror/dark fantasy thing, I'm right there with Harris--I can count my regular monthly superhero comics reading on one hand. But, shit, this kind of sweeping statement is as crazy as saying that superhero comics instantly suck because they're about superheroes (and, boy, say that and you'll find people who get the hair on their asses to stand straight up like a Labrador Retriever in guard mode).

"Who the hell gave you the idea that your life is worth an autobiography?"

With the right style, focus and editing, anyone's life can make for interesting reading, whether they're doing the writing themselves or someone else does it for them. That's the hard part--making a compelling story out of something real, rather than something imagined. Our lives aren't stories, exactly, but they can be shaped into them.

And, let's face it--in a way, Franklin's right. A straight autobiographical comic would be boring. The thing is, though, that there really aren't any autobiography comics. Getting pedantic, an autobiography is a life's story, not a scene from a life, or moments from a life brought together and shaped around a theme. Instead, what people typically refer to as autobiographical comics are really memoirs--gathered moments that tell a story as opposed to an account of things that happened. Blankets isn't Thompson's life story any more than Carnet de Voyage is.

"Have you ever seen a prose autobiography by a writer who does nothing but write his own autobiography?"

Plenty, particularly if you take the memoir angle most "autobiographical" comics do. Kate Simon was primarily known as an author of memoirs (although she's written travel guides as well), including Bronx Primitive and A Wider World. Frank Conroy's first book was his memoir Stop-time, so at that point he was just writing stuff about himself. The same goes for Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi, the work for which she's most known. And let's not talk about the McCourt brothers...

Taking it one step further, Thompson isn't only doing autobiography comics. There's Goodbye, Chunky Rice and his work for Nikelodeon. So, if you look at it that way, you can include writers like Harry Crews, Tobias Wolff, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs...

Kicking it back to comics, let's not forget that there are people doing shitty autobio memoir comics or autiobiographical fiction comics, but there are people doing good ones, too. I mean, it's not as if the "drawing from one's life" set of comics begins with Pekar and ends with Thompson. Just to through some names out there: Phoebe Gloeckner, Eddie Campbell, Tom Beland, Chester Brown, Marjane Satrapi, David B., Seth... it's a list that could be much longer, and I have trouble imagining anyone who can't find at least one autobiographical comic they like (provided, of course, that they aren't only reading superhero comics, in which case they're pretty much stuck with Seagle's It's A Bird...; from what I understand, there are some autobiographical manga out there as well, but I'm not in-the-know enough to discuss that).

"If you're looking for a sign of the artistic poverty of comics, it isn't the dominance of superhero comics. It's the praise heaped upon books that are nothing but cartoonists bitching and moaning about their lot as cartoonists."

And if you're looking for a sign of intellectual poverty in comics writing and fandom, it's the fact that people feel the need to find a source of intellectual poverty, rather than accepting that there's just bound to be shitty work no matter what kind of stories are being told.

• I was going to do a scorecard for the Comics Boredom Watch, but I got bored in the middle of archiving it. In short, people are still cranky. Do you really need more doggy pictures?



• Something I wasn't bored by was my trip to Riot! Comics & Culture. I'd be lying if I said part of me wasn't somewhat hesitant--I didn't know if it would be able to live up to the hype. I felt much better about it once I got there and saw what Jason Richards has put together. The store hasn't reached its full potential yet, but it's well on its way. While there, I kicked it with Jason and Jog, watched some of the '60s Batman movie (so now I get the "shark repellent" jokes), and did the chit chat thing, which was a nice way to spend a Saturday. I picked up a t-shirt, trades of Last of the Independents, Scooter Girl, Sleepwalk and other stories to replace some missing Optic Nerve, an Mark Campos's Moxie, My Sweet and the first issues of Hero@Large, The Winter Men and The Surrogates. Oh, and one of those "Excelsior!" wrist things for the wife, as she's suddenly fixated on those wristband things for whatever reason. Riot! was definitely worth the two-hour trip, so I'll be headed back there again.

• As found on the internet by Neilalien, there's a rapper on the west coast who's taking his cue from Dr. Strange (of course): Akword Strange. I'd comment, but I'm waiting for my commute tomorrow to listen to any of it.

EDIT: I listened to Akword Strange on the ride down today... All in all, not bad--some songs (like "Mind Control") are certainly better than a lot of the hip hop one hears on the radio today, and the instrumentals gave me an excuse to make with the crappy nerdy freestyle for the last leg of my commute. I now have one more thing to check out if I ever make it to San Francisco.



Speaking of tomorrow, it's my third wedding anniversary, which means I'll be leaving work early to take my wife out to dinner. We're going where we go every year, to the cafe that catered our wedding. I'm still kind of fond with her, you know, even if we don't dance anymore.