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Column:
Special Feature
Extended Flashback: 2007 in Review
By Adam McGovern
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(Continued from Page 2)
Best Newspaper Comic:
“George Sprott (1894-1975)” by Seth, New York Times
Magazine, Sept. 2006 — March 2007
Since the paper of record finally got a comics section, it
hasn’t gotten finer than this collaged narrative of public lives
and remote truths. The whimsy of George McManus and the ambition of
Orson Welles make the kind of match that only comics are designed to
achieve (and still only a few cartoonists do).
Best Webcomic: The Process by Joe Infurnari
From the magic-mirror landing page to the meaningful
creative-process background notes to writer/artist Infurnari’s
fluid, free-associative storytelling, this is everything that
inventive online art and mind-opening comics are meant to be.
[theprocesscomic.com]
Best Comic Outside of
Comics: Ben Katchor in Metropolis
Magazine
It’s not exactly that setting is character for Ben Katchor,
but that cities of millions are one cacophonous, unknowably intricate,
intimately familiar mind whose buildings and billboards are the canvas
of its dreams. Katchor’s skylines and streetscapes are not
concrete structures of shelter and commerce but catacombs of meaning
and shifting ecosystems of desire, the street-signs and window-ads an
incidental autobiography of immigrant neighborhoods’ collective
family sagas; the skyscrapers, tenements and cultural landmarks
unconscious memorials to their inhabitants’ enthusiasms and
eccentricities. Katchor’s one-page strips for the architecture
magazine Metropolis are treasure maps to places that
don’t precisely exist, private divinings of public spaces we
think we know. Signature work from perhaps the most underrecognized
and surely most advanced writer-artist in comics today, and crying out
for a collected edition, from rooftops real and imaginary.
[www.katchor.com]
Best Adaptation of Comics Into
Other Media: Men of Steel,
March 15 — April 8, 2007 at Center Stage, New York City
Beowulf (co-written by comics scribe Neil Gaiman) was a
grand, Kirbyesque vision of barbaric folklore reflected through the
caffeinated culture of the barbarians’ contemporary mook
counterparts; Ghost Rider was gourmet junk food, fun-packed and
pretension-free; FF/Silver Surfer at least got its second title
character very right (significantly, by subtly adapting him rather
than literally transferring him from the paneled page); 30 Days of
Night had humanity, heart, style, suspense and a botched rush
ending; the strikingly designed, politically tampered-with 300
was, well, a great Lynn Varley movie. But the most satisfyingly pulpy
and intriguingly literate transformation of comics to live-action was
not on screen but on stage, with the New York-based Vampire Cowboys
Theatre Company’s production of playwright Qui Nguyen’s
Men of Steel. It was a Watchmen-level exploration of the
compromises, contradictions, comedy and commitment of those who pursue
the heroic ideal, covering the unquestioning loyalty of the lawful
goodguy, the unexamined wrath of the vigilante avenger, the sacrifices
and uncertain morals of those seeking human perfection and the courage
and casualties of those craving common humanity. And lots of thrilling
fights, sleek costumes and compelling melodrama, none of it not
brilliantly belonging there. With affectionate craft and important
questions, this was superheroes grown up but not outgrown.
[www.vampirecowboys.com]
Men of
Steel
Best Writing on Comics:
Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics (How Graphic Novels Work and What They
Mean) [Da
Capo Press]
When people wonder what comic it’s best to initiate new
readers with, I’m temped to say this book of essays instead.
Wolk is that rare critic who extends and complements the artistry of
the work in question, a gifted reteller whose words give context, not
get in the way of, this visual medium. From the perceptual puzzles of
Grant Morrison to the compositional innovations of Will Eisner, Wolk
is skillful and sometimes visionary in describing the intangible and
making sense of what he’s seen. Wolk is out to found a debate,
not fix a canon, but he provides a thoughtful and reliable guide to
what’s worth remembering that should open the eyes and lower the
eyebrows of geeks and snobs alike (Jimmy Corrigan and Adam Warlock
haven’t shared space in many books, but that now may change).
Wolk is capaciously well-read and it frees him to make novel yet
unforced connections. One pitfall of critics who literally know and
have seen it all is a forest-for-the-trees fallacy; especially in the
chapter on Alan Moore, Wolk’s cerebral consciousness of the
comics’ mechanics seems to interfere with his visceral
appreciation of their effects. But a multiplicity of experiences of
the work serves a fullness of perspective on the medium, and even when
you disagree with Wolk he asks all the right questions to get you
thinking about the artform and not just reacting to it. That’s a
good balance for this textual/sensual medium whose words and pictures
can’t do without each other, and fans serious about both their
artform and their entertainment shouldn’t be without this book.
Next: Page 4 of 6
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