U-X-L Graphic Novelists: Profiles of Cutting Edge Authors and Illustrators [Vol 1, 1 ed.] 1-4144-0440-9, 1-4144-0441-7

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U•X•L Graphic Novelists

U•X•L Graphic Novelists A-H Volume 1

Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast Sarah Hermsen, Project Editor

UXL Graphic Novelists Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast Project Editor Sarah Hermsen

Imaging and Multimedia Dean Dauphinais, Mike Logusz

Composition and Electronic Prepress Evi Seoud

Rights Acquisition and Management Tim Sisler, Margaret Abendroth

Product Design Jennifer Wahi

Manufacturing Rita Wimberley

ª2007 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Pendergast, Tom. UXL graphic novelists / Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast; Sarah Hermsen, project editor. v. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. A-H – v. 2. K-R – v. 3. S-W. ISBN 1-4144-0440-9 (set : alk. paper) – ISBN 1-4144-0441-7 (v. 1 : alk. paper) – ISBN 1-41440442-5 (v. 2 : alk. paper) – ISBN 1-4144-0443-3 (v. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Cartoonists–Biography–Dictionaries. 2. Comic books, strips, etc.–Dictionaries. I. Pendergast, Sara. II. Title. NC1305.P46 2007 741.5’69730922–dc22 [B] 2006013711

This title is also available as an e-book. ISBN 1-4144-0620-7 Contact your Thomson Gale sales representative for ordering information. Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents Reader’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Manga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Graphic Novel Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii Words To Know. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiii VOLUME 1 Ho Che Anderson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Sergio Aragone´s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Brian Michael Bendis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Michael Brennan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Kurt Busiek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Paul Chadwick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 CLAMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Daniel Clowes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chuck Dixon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Colleen Doran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Will Eisner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Warren Ellis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Garth Ennis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Kosuke Fujishima. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Neil Gaiman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Fred Gallagher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Rick Geary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Larry Gonick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Jimmy Gownley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Matt Groening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Herge´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Lea Hernandez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 v

Los Bros Hernandez (Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez) . . . . . . . 211 Jay Hosler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

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VOLUME 2 Masashi Kishimoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kazuo Koike. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kazuhisa Kondo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joe Kubert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Kunkel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Kuper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harvey Kurtzman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeph Loeb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott McCloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Todd McFarlane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dave McKean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Mignola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frank Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hayao Miyazaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alan Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Grant Morrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Morse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ted Naifeh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jim Ottaviani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harvey Pekar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wendy and Richard Pini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trina Robbins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alex Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

231 237 245 253 263 271 281 289 297 309 317 325 335 343 353 365 373 381 389 395 405 413 421 429

VOLUME 3 Joe Sacco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stan Sakai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marjane Satrapi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeff Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuyumi Soryo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Art Speigelman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yukiru Sugisaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rumiko Takahashi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hiroyuki Takei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Naoko Takeuchi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bryan Talbot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tomoko Taniguchi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Osamu Tezuka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Craig Thompson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

439 447 455 465 473 481 487 495 503 511 517 523 531 537 545 551

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Yoshihiro Togashi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Akira Toriyama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Torres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miwa Ueda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Waid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chris Ware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yu Watase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andi Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judd Winick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marv Wolfman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

559 565 575 583 589 597 605 611 619 627

Where To Learn More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli

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Reader’s Guide Graphic Novelists contains biographical profiles of 75 notable people involved in the creation of graphic novels, a diverse and rapidly changing field. They represent the diversity of style, content, and intended audience of one of the most popular literary forms of the early twenty-first century. The novelists— who wrote for a variety of different ages, from pre-teen to adults—and their works represent three broad categories: superhero or action-oriented works; manga; and ‘‘independent’’ work, a broad category of graphic novels that simply fit nowhere else, and includes fiction, nonfiction, comedy, drama, romance, and others. The study of graphic novelists is an emerging field. Many of the graphic novelists we have profiled are as yet little known outside a narrow circle of interest, and there is still real debate about what a graphic novel is and what it can be. This is thus the rare reference book that jumps into a field while it is still fresh. Many of the graphic novelists profiled—24 of 75—agreed to be interviewed by us or our contributing writers, and the conversations that we have had with them were an invaluable addition to the book. The people profiled in this collection play a variety of roles in the creation of graphic novels. Some are authors; some are illustrators or artists; most are author/artists who have created both the words and the artwork in their books. Some even bind, market, and sell their own works, and operate their own Web site. Some work other jobs, and prepare their graphic novels in the evenings and weekends. Most are full-time creators, and for those who write and illustrate, their job requires long and sometimes tedious hours of drawing. ix

Some of the graphic novelists featured are tremendously popular among young adults, yet they have also created works that deal with more violence, drug use, and sexuality than is considered appropriate for middle school and high school readers. The more explicit works that are not widely read by young adults, or that are specifically marketed to adults are not discussed in detail. Each entry contains a Best-Known Works section that provides a short listing of the creator’s best-known graphic novels, in addition to other works that may be pertinent to their career as a graphic novelist. Also included are numerous sidebars that offer additional insight into the creative process, important collaborators and publishers, and conventions used in the creation and publication of graphic novels. The For More Information section provides a listing of sources consulted in the creation of the entry, as well as additional sources known to provide substantive information about the entrant or about topics discussed in the sidebar. Highlighting the text are over one hundred color and black-and-white photos as well as a words to know section defining terms used throughout the set, and a comprehensive subject index.

Acknowledgements Several skilled writers assisted in creating a number of essays, including Rob Edelman, Tina Gianoulis, Jim Manheim, and Chris Routledge. The Sno-Isle Regional Library system’s graphic novel collection was an important resource. Thanks also goes to the enthusiastic work of Conrad and Louisa Pendergast. Especially important to this set were the invaluable suggestions made by the advisory board to guide the content and structure of the book. They include: Philip Charles Crawford: Library director, Essex Junction High School, VT; author of Graphic Novels 101: Selecting and Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy for Children and Young Adults; author of the pamphlet ‘‘Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom’’ (http://scholastic.com/librarians/printables/downloads/graphicnovels.pdf); regular reviewer of graphic novels for professional journals; and frequent speaker at library and literature conferences. Essays*: Neil Gaiman; Dave McKean; Grant Morrison. Kathleen Fernandes: Assistant manager of adult and teen services, Sno-Isle Libraries, Marysville, WA. Kat Kan: Former young adult librarian and freelance graphic novel consultant and writer, whose column ‘‘Graphically Speaking,’’ has appeared in Voice of Youth Advocates since 1994. Essays*: Mike Kunkel; Hayao Miyazaki; Scott Morse; Trina Robbins; Stan Sakai. x

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Nicole Pelham and Danielle Pelham: Co-founders of NDP Comics, Seattle, WA, an artists group that publishes American manga and offers classes in manga drawing in the Pacific Northwest. The Pelham sisters have taught over 300 classes at such places as the University of Washington, the Seattle Children’s Museum, the Bumbershoot Music Festival, the Seattle Buddhist temple, and anime conventions. Essays*: Clamp. *Indicates essays written for Graphic Novelists.

Comments and Suggestions We welcome your comments on U•X•L Graphic Novelists as well as your suggestions for people and topics to be featured in future editions. Please write to: Editor, Graphic Novelists, U•X•L, 27500 Drake Road, Farmington Hills, Michigan, 48331; call toll-free: 800-877-4253; fax to: 248-699-8097; or send e-mail via www. gale.com.

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Introduction Midway through 2001 ICV2.com, a Web site that tracks the comic book industry, took note of a surprising new trend: sales of graphic novels were beginning to represent a significant percentage of all comic book sales. What’s more, graphic novels were far more likely to appear in the place where most Americans buy their books: the large chain bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, Borders Books, Books-A-Million, B. Dalton, and other giant retailers. In succeeding years this trend—at first apparent only to those immersed in the comic book industry—became widespread and unmistakable. In 2002, graphic novel sales in the United States reached $100 million, with half the books being sold in specialty comics stores, half in regular bookstores. A year later, bookstore sales alone topped $105 million, while the specialty stores sold $60 million. In 2004 sales soared to $207 million, outstripping those of comic books, and expectations were that in 2005 sales would top $300 million. Surging sales told only part of story. Across the United States, and in many European and Asian countries, bookstores and libraries were experiencing (and driving) the graphic novel boom. Large bookstores began to set aside sizeable sections for graphic novels, and their shelves overflowed with a diverse mix of works, from superhero fare from comic book giants DC Comics and Marvel, to manga titles from the likes of Viz and TokyoPop, to an eclectic mix of autobiography, fiction, and nonfiction from a range of publishers, large and small, committed to expanding the boundaries of the graphic novel form. At Borders alone, graphic novel sales rose 100 percent each year from 2002 to 2004. Librarians struggled to keep up with patron demands for new titles. xiii

Kathleen Fernandes, assistant manager of adult and teen services for Sno-Isle Libraries in Washington’s Puget Sound area, reported that Japanese manga titles were the most widely circulating books in the teen collection. Magazines used by librarians to help guide their purchasing decisions began to pay attention to graphic novels as well. Beginning in 1994, Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) began a regular column called ‘‘Graphically Speaking,’’ written by Kat Kan. By the late 1990s VOYA, Booklist, Library Journal, School Library Journal, and others began regularly to review new graphic novel releases. Mainstream magazines also took note: in 2001 Time magazine created a regular feature, written by Andrew Arnold, called ‘‘Time. comix’’; and in 2005 Newsweek offered a lengthy and glowing testimonial to the growing importance of graphic novels. Perhaps the most thriving source of information about graphic novels, however, is the Internet, where multiple Web sites dedicate their efforts to reviewing comic books and graphic novels, and interviewing comics creators (see Where To Learn More section for listing of some of these online sources).

What is a graphic novel? Ask anyone in the graphic novel industry—creators, publishers, reviewers—to tell you what a graphic novel is, and you’ll likely find yourselves in the midst of a maelstrom. Any inclination to call graphic novels a genre—which implies similarity in style or content, as in the genres comedy or science fiction—quickly runs aground. There is a dizzying variety of content found in graphic novels. In this collection alone you will find autobiography, science fiction, westerns, comedy, romance, and action-adventure. If there is one thing that the graphic novel has shown, it is that it is capable of taking on any number of kinds of stories. Moreover, stylistic differences abound. Calling the graphic novel a form of storytelling works somewhat better, for it accentuates the structure rather than the content. Clearly, graphic novels have a distinct form—in simplest terms, they combine pictures with words to tell a story. The only problem with this definition is that this form of storytelling has been around for ages and has gone by the term ‘‘comics’’ or ‘‘comic books.’’ There is no meaningful or valid way to distinguish the form of a comic book from that of a graphic novel, as many experts feel that there is no functional difference between the ways stories are told in comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. xiv

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Yet somehow, the sense that a graphic novel is something different and apart remains. The difficulties in distinguishing graphic novels from other forms of sequential art give credence to the suggestion that the term graphic novels is an ingenious device used by marketing departments at large publishers to boost sales. Such an approach to defining the graphic novel holds that it is a story told in comic book form, but packaged as a trade paperback, with higher print standards, better binding, and more pages than a comic book. This definition allows graphic novels to include a collection of comic strips about a common set of characters; a collection of comic book-length stories (that is, thirty-two-page stories) brought together in a longer narrative; and a single, sustained storytelling effort. This definition probably comes closest to describing the actual application of the term graphic novel in the world today, for it is the only one to acknowledge that graphic novels, as they are bought and sold in the marketplace today, are in essence long comic books.

A short history of the graphic novel While few can agree on what exactly a graphic novel is, there is wide agreement that the book that started the graphic novel boom in the United States was Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, published in 1978. Eisner joked that when he approached a publisher about the book, which brought together four stories about tenement life during the Great Depression (1929–41; period of severe economic hardship in the United States), he told them it was a ‘‘graphic novel’’ because he knew they would never publish a comic book of this length on this topic. Eisner was a comics creator who had made his name with the Spirit comic book series in the 1940s. But Eisner wanted more from his art than was available at the time: he wanted comics to take on serious subject matter, to deal with issues in a longer form, and to reach readers beyond their teenage years. These hopes have animated the field ever since. Eisner’s work was not without precedent. Belgian artist Hergé had been creating TinTin stories in Europe since the 1930s and these were published as ‘‘graphic albums,’’ the European corollary to the graphic novel. In Japan, Osamu Tezuka initiated the field of modern manga in the 1950s, and his works and the works of many other Japanese manga-ka (manga creators) were collected into tankobon (or graphic novels) beginning in the 1960s. In the United States, a growing underground comics, or comix, movement in the 1960s and 1970s prompted many other Introduction

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comic book writers to try to move away from the dominant trend toward superheroes and industry limitations on content imposed in the 1950s when prominent parents and educators became alarmed that comics might contribute to juvenile delinquency. Titles such as George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again, serialized from 1967 to 1972; Richard Corben’s 1976 Bloodstar; and Jim Steranko’s 1976 Chandler: Red Tide all pushed the boundaries of regular comics and explored more mature and complicated material. But it was Eisner’s work that seemed to indicate a new world of possibility. By the mid-1980s a flood began that has since continued unabated. Two works introduced in 1986 began the modern trend: Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, an interpretation of the Batman legend, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, a family memoir of the Holocaust that depicted Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. Within a year, Alan Moore’s The Watchmen was released as a graphic novel to great acclaim. The works by Miller and Moore breathed new life into a superhero genre that many thought was dying, and their long, fully developed stories focused more intently on characterization than ever before. Though initially released serially, they bore the marks of a graphic novel in their depth, complexity, and ability to sustain a narrative. Maus demonstrated to a broad public that a graphic novel could be personal, political, and poignant; it became the first graphic novel to win a major book prize when it won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Since 1986, a number of graphic novelists have continued to work in the superhero field, using larger-than-life characters with extraordinary powers as the focal point for storytelling that is sometimes merely amusing and escapist, and sometimes quite profound. Many of them are featured in this collection. For all their innovations in length and characterization, superhero graphic novels remained trapped within the rules of the superhero universe (which were sometimes quite carefully spelled out by the corporate publishers who owned the characters). It was in the so-called ‘‘independent’’ comic book world that creators truly began to explore new approaches to style, form, and narrative structure. Independent graphic novel creators have typically worked outside the mainstream comics industry, creating works that express their unique and sometimes intensely personal vision. Over the years, independent graphic novelists have been those most responsible for pushing the boundaries of what is possible in xvi

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the graphic novel form (though the superhero books still sell more). Wendy and Richard Pini, with their Elfquest series, and Colleen Doran, with A Distant Soil, explored the world of fantasy; Los Bros Hernandez (Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez) told rather realistic stories of Hispanic life in their series of graphic novels called Love and Rockets; Paul Chadwick blurred the boundaries between superhero and social/political commentary in multiple volumes of Concrete; Larry Gonick delved into such tough topics as history, physics, and sex education in his Cartoon Guide series of non-fiction graphic novels; Scott McCloud used comics to figure out how comics worked in Understanding Comics—the list could go on and on. These independent works have raised the intellectual standard for the industry: many are read by adults and reviewed in serious magazines and newspapers. (A number of them are intended for adults, with truly mature themes and images). The great majority of these pioneering independent graphic novelists either self-published or worked with small, dedicated publishing firms that backed their vision. But by the late 1990s, the publisher Dark Horse Comics had grown from its meager beginnings to become one of the largest publishers, and it continued to back the work of independent graphic novelists. Other independent publishers expanded the quality and number of their offerings. Even more significantly, major New York publishing houses (Random House in particular) began to recognize the legitimacy of graphic novels, and published Chris Ware’s strangely brilliant work Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth in 2000 and Marjane Satrapi’s groundbreaking Persepolis, the story of a girl coming of age in Iran during its Islamic Revolution, in 2003. By the mid-2000s the graphic novel boom had created the economic conditions that allowed creators of work that would once have been ignored to land their projects with a major publisher promising wide distribution.

Outside influences The comic book and graphic novel industry in the United States has long been remarkably contained. Other than Rene´ Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix the Gaul series and Herge´’s TinTin series, few graphic novels from Europe reached American shores for many years, and fewer still from other countries. (Great Britain, with its shared language, is the exception.) All that began to change in the 1990s, when Japanese manga (comic books) became Introduction

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the latest Japanese import to transform an American industry. Japan had a long tradition of embracing comics books and graphic novels (called tankobon in Japan), and such works made up 20 percent of the Japanese publishing industry in the 2000s. Since the 1960s, Japan had exported animated cartoons, or anime, to the United States, but in the 1990s they also began to export manga. The first manga series to gain real attention in the United States was Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub, a samurai action tale first issued in English translation in 1987, then later reissued in its entirety by Dark Horse beginning in 2000. For a time, Japanese works trickled into the United States, intriguing fans with their very different storytelling and artistic techniques. By the late 1990s teen readers had discovered manga, and demand soared. Two publishers—VIZ and TOKYOPOP—began translating and importing huge numbers of manga. In 2001, TokyoPop became the largest-selling publisher of graphic novels with 23.6 percent of the market, thanks to sales of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon. Fans were soon exposed to all varieties of manga, from the shonen action-adventure stories for boys to the shojo tales of romance for girls. They became familiar with the strange time lag in publication—a series might begin publishing in the United States years after it finished its run in Japan—and with the unique conventions and styles of manga (see Manga section for an introduction to this branch of graphic novels). By the mid-2000s, manga made up a large percentage of the graphic novels available in most chain bookstores, where they are especially popular with pre-teen and teenaged girls, long a neglected market. Moreover, publishers are beginning to publish American manga (manga-style stories created by English speakers) and to import manga from China and South Korea. (For more on manga, see ‘‘Manga: A Primer.’’)

The future of the graphic novel In 2005, the future for the graphic novel looked extremely bright. Sales of graphic novels were at their highest levels ever; graphic novelists were increasingly being signed with large, prosperous publishing houses; numerous movie adaptations—and not just of superhero stories—were being made, building on the success of such box-office hits as Ghost World, American Splendor, Sin City, and Hellboy; and several comics creators worked to explore the potential of the Internet as a medium for telling stories. It may be too soon to say that graphic novels have secured a stable place on bookstore shelves and lifted comics from the xviii

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margins of literary expression. As fans of the comics industry know all too well, there have been several booms over the years, followed by long stretches of disinterest and flagging sales. Yet the advances of the last several decades are undeniable: graphic novelists have produced a range of works for readers of all ages and all interests, and the quality of the writing and the art has improved dramatically. Once thought of as a medium only capable of telling light stories about powerful men in tights, graphic novels have now shown themselves capable of addressing the widest range of human experience, with the interaction between words and art contributing to the power of the stories that are told.

Works Consulted Books Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2004. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993; reprinted, New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Schodt, Frederik L. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983.

Periodicals ‘‘Comic Relief: Take That, Batman. Graphic Novels Are Moving Out of the Hobby Shop and into the Mainstream.’’ Newsweek International (August 22, 2005): p. 58. Kean, Danuta. ‘‘Get Ready for Manga Mania.’’ The Bookseller (November 19, 2004): p. 22. Wolk, Douglas. ‘‘Graphic Novel Sales Even Better Than Expected.’’ Publishers Weekly (June 21, 2004): p. 18.

Web Sites Arnold, Andrew. ‘‘The Graphic Novel Silver Anniversary.’’ Time. http:// www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,542579,00.html (accessed on June 9, 2006). Bussert, Leslie. ‘‘Comic Books and Graphic Novels: Digital Resources for an Evolving Form of Art and Literature.’’ Association of College and Research Libraries. http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/ Introduction

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backissues2005/february05/comicbooks.htm (accessed on June 9, 2006). Cohn, Neil. ‘‘Reframing Comics.’’ Comixpedia. http://www.comixpedia.com/ index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=554&page=1 (accessed on June 9, 2006). Couch, Chris. ‘‘The Publication and Formats of Comics, Graphic Novels, and Tankobon’’ (December 2000). Image & Narrative. http://www. imageandnarrative.be/narratology/chriscouch.htm (accessed on June 9, 2006). Duffy, Jonathan. ‘‘Return of the Dark Art.’’ BBC Online. http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/442081.stm (accessed on June 9, 2006). George, Milo. ‘‘In Depth: The Eddie Campbell Interview.’’ Graphic Novel Review. http://www.graphicnovelreview.com/articles/issue1/ campbell_interview.php?mode=full (accessed on June 9, 2006). ICv2. http://www.icv2.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Poitras, Gilles. The Librarian’s Guide to Anime and Manga. http:// www.koyagi.com/Libguide.html (accessed on June 9, 2006).

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Manga Most people familiar with American comic books and graphic novels immediately recognize that Japanese comic books—called manga—don’t play by the same rules. They begin at the end, the characters have huge eyes, and scenes seem to go on forever, often with no words. Japanese manga is, in fact, a sophisticated and welldeveloped form of storytelling, every bit as rich and complicated as the comic book/graphic novel tradition that developed in the West. It just operates on a different set of conventions and with a different history.

Manga and Japanese literary tradition Japan has a long history of sequential art, a term used by American comics creator Will Eisner to describe a sequence of artistic images that are united with words to tell a story. As early as the twelfth century, Japanese artista and illustrators had created small comic panels to offer information, convey humor, or make political statements. But Japanese manga—which in literal translation means ‘‘involuntary pictures’’—as it exists today really got its start in the years after World War II (1939–45), when the nation first encountered American comic books. Japanese writer and artist Osamu Tezuka—often called the ‘‘Father of Manga’’ or ‘‘God of Manga’’—was deeply moved by American comic books. In the decades after the war, he took this form, which had been primarily aimed at children and young adults, and infused it with the visual lessons he had learned from watching American movies to tell long, complicated stories of real substance. As a result, he created modern manga as we know it today. xxi

Tezuka’s great artistry won many readers, first among young people, and later among adults. Soon others followed in his footsteps, exploring new styles of art and storytelling. Slowly, the manga industry grew. Manga was easy to read and cheap to print, a virtue in a nation that was slowly recovering from the devastation of war. Manga stories were created for every imaginable audience. Manga magazines offered initial opportunities for young artists, many who got their first exposure by winning a contest. If their stories were popular the manga-ka, or manga creators, were offered a continuing story. The most popular manga-ka became very rich. Today, manga is a respectable form of reading material in Japan, where manga magazines and graphic novels sell millions and millions of copies every year. In contrast to the West, the manga industry in Japan is so popular that it is larger than the country’s film industry.

Reading from right to left Like all books in Japan, manga is read from right to left—exactly the opposite of reading material in the West. On a graphic novel page, your eye starts at the top right, moves leftward to the end of the panel, and proceeds in a zig-zag down the page. When translated versions of Japanese manga were first imported into the United States in the late 1990s, some publishers decided that their readers weren’t ready for this unfamiliar reading format and they ‘‘flipped’’ the story, rearranging it so that it read from left to right. But discerning readers soon realized that flipping distorted some of the artwork, making it appear that the artist didn’t know how to arrange a scene. As Western manga readers grew more sophisticated, they demanded that publishers offer manga ‘‘unflipped.’’ By the mid-2000s, the major manga publishers offered most of their manga in the original, right-to-left format. (Manga created by Americans, however, follows American left-to-right conventions.)

From magazines to tankobon In Japan, almost all manga are first published in manga magazines. These thick, cheaply printed black-and-white magazines bring together short installments of many different stories. Some of the stories are just a page in length, while others range up to twenty pages long. The magazines are sold on newsstands and even in vending machines all over Japan and are hugely popular with readers of all ages. Paul Gravett, in his Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, noted that in 2002 there were 281 manga xxii

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magazines published in Japan. If a story from a magazine catches on and becomes a fan favorite, many episodes are collected together and published as a tankobon, the Japanese equivalent of the graphic novel. If a story is very popular, it may go on for years and years, resulting in dozens of volumes of tankobon. Though translated manga magazines have had some success in Western markets, the two-hundred-page tankobon is the primary form in which Western readers get their manga.

Manga genres Unlike American superhero comic books—which many people assume are created primarily for adolescent boys—manga artists create works for a variety of different markets. The biggest segment of the Japanese manga market, shonen manga is focused on action and adventure, sports, and high-tech robots and other vehicles, and is marketed primarily to boys up to high school age. The second-biggest—and fastest growing—segment of the market is shojo manga, or manga for girls. Shojo titles tend to focus on romance and relationships, with some tales embrace action and fantasy as well. Kodomo manga is created for very young children. Japanese adults also read manga: both josei manga (for women) and seinen manga (for men) create more mature versions of the stories told to their younger counterparts, and both forms adopt a greater variety of artistic styles and a far more mature treatment of sexuality than in the titles for younger readers. These large categories of manga just begin to touch on the variety of specialty manga being published: in Japan, there are manga for gay and lesbian readers, and manga that focus specifically on religion, mechanized robots, magical girlfriends, and other such topics.

Sound effects Modern Japanese writing is a combination of three different scripts: kanji, or Chinese characters, and hiragana, a Japanese syllabary (set of characters that represent syllables), make up the bulk of the writing, while katakana, another syllabary, is used to represent sounds (‘‘splash,’’ for example), ideas (a light bulb indicating a thought), and words from other languages. In translation, kanji and hiragana are easily rendered in different languages, but katakana proves more difficult. It is often integrated into the artwork, rather than part of a word balloon. It is very difficult to remove the katakana from the artwork, or to translate it directly into another language, without destroying the overall balance of Manga

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the images. Publishers have tried several different approaches to dealing with these Japanese sound effects; some have left them intact and provided a glossary of terms at the back of the book, but this can be cumbersome; others have replaced the sound effects with translated words, but this seriously alters the artwork. Perhaps the best solution to the problem has been to provide small subtitles or footnotes, so that the reader can enjoy the original artwork and easily access the meaning of the words.

Big eyes, small mouth, and other manga conventions One of the first things people notice about manga is the unique way characters are portrayed: girls (and sometimes boys) have huge, expressive eyes, and most characters have small noses and mouths. While a number of explanations for this style have been offered—that eyes are the window into the soul, or that big eyes are a romantic contrast to the smaller eyes of Japanese people—the origins of the style are fairly straightforward. Osamu Tezuka, who introduced the style, simply wanted to model his characters on some of his favorite American cartoon characters, Betty Boop and Bambi. Other manga-ka followed and expanded on Tezuka’s lead. In shojo (girl) manga especially, eyes grew larger and larger, and the mouth shrunk in comparison. These large eyes were good at conveying emotion and feeling, and were used to draw readers into the emotions of his characters. Manga artists use an array of artistic conventions to give readers clues to the emotions of characters. The number of teardrops falling from a character’s eyes are used to indicate the intensity of feeling, and a large drop of sweat on the forehead indicates confusion, stupidity, or relief. When a male character develops a nose bleed, this is usually an indication that he is feeling lust for a girl. A large, cross-shaped mark on the forehead is used to indicate the throbbing of veins, as when a person is angry. In shojo manga, specific flowers are often used to refer to specific emotional states, and flames, sparkles, and starbursts contribute to the drama of the story. American readers are sometimes surprised to see some nudity in Japanese manga created for young people. Japanese culture tends to be more accepting to occasional nudity than American culture, and the display of the buttocks is often used as a joke. Female breasts are sometimes displayed even in manga for young adults, though the display of male and female genitalia are extremely rare.

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Mysterious manga-ka Unlike American authors—who frequently give interviews and discuss their upbringing and education—Japanese manga-ka (manga creators) tend to hide the details of their private life. Quite often, manga-ka do not release the year of their birth, divulging instead their blood type, which is thought to give a clue to their personality, somewhat like a Zodiac sign in the West. A common practice among manga-ka is to include brief personal notes within the text of their manga, but these notes are usually very cryptic, revealing little about their life. Tomoko Taniguchi, a manga author who we interviewed for this collection, noted that many Japanese authors ‘‘want to stay mysterious in order to let our work stand on its own.’’

American manga . . . and beyond Manga has become a huge cultural phenomenon in the United States in the first years of the twenty-first century. Some observers have compared the manga craze to the ‘‘British Invasion’’ of the 1960s, when British rock bands led by The Beatles had a huge surge in popularity in the United States. Like that invasion, the manga craze has encouraged American artists to follow in the trends initiated by the Japanese. Fred Gallagher’s MegaTokyo Internet comic strip, launched in 2000, is considered the first American manga, but it is hardly the last. A number of American graphic novelists have begun releasing works in the manga style, and in 2005 the publisher TOKYOPOP began to release a manga comic strip called ‘‘Peach Fuzz’’ to appear in American newspapers. Other publishers, including Antarctic Press and Seven Seas Entertainment, have published manga stories written in English. Perhaps the best gauge of the American adoption of manga can been seen in schools and libraries, where young people have avidly embraced the manga drawing styles. Manga from other countries is also beginning to appear in American bookstores. Chinese manga (manhua), with versions of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Shaolin Soccer, and Korean manga (manwha) are beginning to appear in the United States, and fans are coming to appreciate both the similarities and differences between these and Japanese manga. Clearly, manga has become a force to be reckoned with in American publishing.

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Graphic Novel Publishers The following is an annotated list of the major publishers of graphic novels in the United States. Graphic novelists featured in the book are indicated by bold face type.

Dark Horse Comics Founded in 1986 by Portland, Oregon-based comics fan Mike Richardson, Dark Horse Comics has distinguished itself over the years for its support of independent comic book and graphic novel creators. Dark Horse first came to attention when it published Paul Chadwick’s Concrete series, and it later published works by awardwinning authors including Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Stan Sakai, Sergio Aragone´s, Neil Gaiman, comic book legend Will Eisner, and many others. Dark Horse began publishing translations of Japanese manga in 1994, including the work of such notable manga creators as Kosuke Fujishima, Kazuo Koike, and Osamu Tezuka. Addresses: Office—Dark Horse Comics, 10956 SE Main Street, Milwaukie, OR 97222. Web Site—www.darkhorse.com.

Del Rey Judy-Lynn del Rey started Del Rey Books as a publisher of science fiction and fantasy with her husband Lester del Rey in 1977. In 2004 Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, entered into an agreement with Kodansha, one of Japan’s largest manga publishers, to publish English translations of some of Kodansha’s books. The success of the venture catapulted Del Rey to the top of manga industry in the United States by early 2005, with two of xxvii

its first four titles—Ken Akamatsu’s Negima and CLAMP’s Tsubasa— becoming the year’s top two bestselling manga. Addresses: Office— Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Web Site—http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/ manga.

DC Comics DC Comics, founded in 1935, soared to prominence when it introduced the character Superman in 1938, followed not long after by Batman. In the years that followed, DC Comics has continued to develop the superhero genre. To keep its oldest characters— including The Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Justice League of America (JLA)—fresh, DC Comics employed a number of talented writers, including Frank Miller and Chuck Dixon. While the company remained best known for its iconic superheroes, it did not shy away from innovation and introduced such award-winning books as Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Addresses: Office—DC Comics, 1700 Broadway, 7th Fl., New York, NY 10019-5905. Web Site—www.dccomics.com.

Fantagraphics Starting with the publication of The Comics Journal in 1976, Fantagraphics Books has grown to become a leading publisher of comics and graphic novels. The publisher’s focus has been on works that exhibited the high literary and artistic standards of literature, poetry, and historical and political writing. Among the notable creators published by Fantagraphics are R. Crumb, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Joe Sacco, and Chris Ware. Addresses: Office—Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115. Web Site—http://www.fantagraphics.com.

Image Comics Founded in 1992 by seven of Marvel Comics’ best-selling artists, Image Comics quickly grew to become a powerhouse among comics publishers. Image made a name for itself publishing creatorowned works in almost every genre, most notably Spawn by Todd McFarlane, one of Image’s original founders. Addresses: Office—Image Comics, 1942 University Ave, Suite 305, Berkeley, CA 94704. Web Site—www.imagecomics.com. xxviii

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Kodansha Started in 1909 by Seiji Noma as a publisher of magazines, Kodansha Ltd. began publishing books in 1949 and has since grown to become one of the largest publishers in Japan. The company remains privately owned and managed by the Noma family. In Japan, Kodansha published the works of such manga creators as CLAMP, Fuyumi Soryo, Kosuke Fujishima, and Miwa Ueda, among others. Addresses: Office—c/o Kodansha America, Inc., 575 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10022. Web Site—www.kodansha.co.jp; English site: http://www.kodanclub.com.

Marvel Comics Founded as Timely Comics in 1939, Marvel grew under the supervision of such influential editors as Stan Lee and Archie Goodwin to dominate the U.S. comics industry as one of the two largest publishers. Known for its superhero and action comics, Marvel Comics created its stories around its several thousand proprietary characters, including such superheroes as SpiderMan, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. Among the many authors and artists who have worked for Marvel are Garth Ennis, Mike Mignola, Grant Morrison, and Alex Ross. Addresses: Office—Marvel Entertainment, Inc., 417 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Web Site—http://www.marvel.com.

Oni Press Founded in 1997 by Bob Schreck and Joe Nozemack, Oni Press was created to publish comics for people who like to read. The books by Oni encompassed a wide range of genres including drama, romance, horror, and mystery by creators such as Lea Hernendez, Ted Naifeh, J. Torres, and Andi Watson. Addresses: Office—Oni Press, 1305 SE MLK Blvd., Suite # A, Portland, OR 97214. Web Site—http://www.onipress.com.

Pantheon A division of Random House, Pantheon published a range of graphic novels and memoirs by authors such as Daniel Clowes, Matt Groening, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, Alex Ross, and Chris Ware. The entrance of Pantheon into graphic novel publishing was widely considered as a sign that the graphic novel had gained mainstream respect. Graphic Novel Publishers

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Addresses: Office—Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Web Site—http://www.randomhouse.com/ pantheon/graphicnovels/home.html.

Slave Labor Graphics Started in 1985 by Dan Kado, Slave Labor Graphics grew into SLG Publishing in order to publish comics and graphic novels for mature audiences under the imprint Slave Labor Graphics and those for younger audiences under the Amaze Ink imprint. In 1995 Andi Watson became the first creator to publish under the imprint Amaze Ink. Addresses: Office—SLG Publishing, P.O. Box 26427, San Jose, CA 95159-6427. Web Site—http://www.slavelabor.com/index2.html.

TOKYOPOP Founded by Stuart Levy in 1996, TOKYOPOP has become a leader in the publishing and distribution of manga and anime in the United States. TOKYOPOP publishes Japanese manga in English translation by such creators as CLAMP and Yukiru Sugisaki. In addition, TOKYOPOP has developed a number of manga created by English-language authors and artists. In 2006 TOKYOPOP introduce the first American manga comic strip to American newspapers with ‘‘Peach Fuzz.’’ Addresses: Office—TOKYOPOP, 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2000, Los Angeles, CA 90036-5020. Web Site—www.tokyopop.com.

Top Shelf Productions Founded in 1997 by Brent Warnock and Chris Staros, Top Shelf has gained a reputation for publishing thoughtful, even arty graphic novels for more mature readers; titles in this vein include Blankets by Craig Thompson, The Barefoot Serpent by Scott Morse, and Tricked by Alex Robinson. Alan Moore, best known for creating Watchmen, has also published some of his experimental work with Top Shelf. Addresses: Office—Top Shelf Productions, PO Box 1282, Marietta, GA 30061-1282; Top Shelf Productions, PO Box 15125, Portland, OR 97293-5125. Web Site—www.topshelfcomix.com.

VIZ Media, LLC Owned by three of Japan’s leading manga and anime companies— Shueisha Inc., Shogakukan Inc., and Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. (ShoPro Japan)—VIZ Media is one of the largest xxx

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publishers and distributors of manga in English translation. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, VIZ Media, publishes manga in graphic novels and such magazines as Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat. VIZ has translated and published the work of such Japanese creators as Akira Toriyama, Hiroyuki Takei, Masashi Kishimoto, and Yu Watase, among others. VIZ also distributes anime videos, DVDs, and audio soundtracks, and in 2005 became the first manga publisher to team up with a large U.S. distributor when it signed an agreement with Simon and Schuster. Addresses: Office—VIZ Media, LLC, P.O. BOX 77010, San Francisco, CA 94107. Web Site—http://www.viz.com.

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Words To Know A anime: Japanese animated cartoons on television or film, often based on manga.

C coloring: A stage in the production of a comic book or graphic novel that involves adding color to the penciled and inked drawings. This stage can be accomplished by hand or with a computer. comix: A term used to refer to underground comics, a branch of comic books that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s in reaction against mainstream comics and was more adult-oriented in its themes and subject matter. creator-owned comic: A comic that is wholly owned by the comic creator, who retains all rights to licensing, movie reproduction, and future use. Creator-owned comics were created to escape the influence of major publishers who paid comic book creators a flat fee for their work, thus depriving creators from profits derived if their work became popular.

F fan service: In manga, these are illustrations inserted into the story that do not have any relation to the narrative but are there as a service to fans of certain characters or elements in the story. fanzine: An amateur magazine created by and circulated among fans of comics, movies, and television.

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G graphic album: The European, specifically French, equivalent of the graphic novel.

I inking: A stage in the production of a comic book or graphic novel that involves tracing on top of pencil drawings with a brush or pen filled with India ink, usually black, in order to emphasize certain elements of the drawing.

L lettering: A stage in the production of a comic book or graphic novel that involves adding word balloons and other letters to the drawn page. Lettering was once done solely by hand but is now often done on the computer.

M manga: The Japanese equivalent for comic books; the literal translation of the term is ‘‘involuntary pictures.’’ Unlike American comics, however, Japanese manga read from right to left on the page. It first became known for its immediately recognizable human characters with large eyes and small mouths and mechanized robot warriors. manga-ka: A creator of manga, or Japanese comics.

P penciling: An early stage in the production of a comic book or graphic novel that involves the creation of the initial drawings. Later stages include inking, lettering, and coloring.

S sequential art: The combination of pictures and words to tell a story; this phrase is sometimes used in place of comic book. shojo: A form of manga for girls that focuses on romance and relationships. shonen: A form of manga for boys that focuses on action and adventure.

T tankobon: The Japanese equivalent of a graphic novel, a tankobon typically brings together a manga series that has had initial success in magazine publication.

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Ho Che Anderson. Courtesy of Ho Che Anderson.

Ho Che Anderson Born 1969 (London, England) Canadian author, illustrator

A growing number of artists at work in the comics medium became more and more ambitious in the 1990s, expanding their range from traditional superhero themes to tackle serious fiction and nonfiction subjects. An excellent example is the work of Canadian artist Ho Che Anderson, whose three-volume biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was, in the words of Library Journal reviewer Steve Raiteri, ‘‘a milestone for biographical comics.’’ Anderson’s King, completed over a ten-year period, is a fully fleshed-out portrait of a complex individual. Moreover, it is a brilliant example of how graphic storytelling can be used to make a strong impact on the reader. Born in London, England, in 1969, Anderson was given his unusual name by his father, a politically active Jamaican immigrant (little is known about his mother). The name honors both North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and Cuban Communist

‘‘King’s world became mine. I read everything I could find, hungry for knowledge. I absorbed facts and times and dates and names. I looked at photographs and hours of documentary footage. I lost interest in the saint-like image and grew fascinated with the man behind the legend.’’

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Best-Known Works King, Volumes I-III (1993–2004); reprinted as single volume, (2005). Young Hoods in Love (1994). Pop Life (with Wilfred Santiago) (1998). The No-Boys Club (1998). Scream Queen (2005).

revolutionary Che Guevara. The family moved to suburban Toronto, Ontario, Canada, when Anderson was young. Growing up in a predominantly white area, Anderson benefited from his father’s belief that blacks should not be limited by societal expectations. ‘‘I want to make it clear: he was never anti-white, but he was very problack,’’ Anderson told Murray Whyte of the New York Times. ‘‘He believed that we as black folks didn’t take ourselves as seriously as we should, and we were often our own worst enemy, and we needed to get smart and start moving ahead.’’ As a child, Anderson read popular superhero comics by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Anderson’s family stressed education, but he dropped out of high school, determined to go his own way. Yet he fulfilled his parents’ dreams in one respect: he entered a line of work previously dominated by white artists. As a teenager, Anderson began drawing comics. He did his homework, studying the styles of classic magazine illustrators like Norman Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker and of superhero comics creators Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller. By his late teens, Anderson was writing his own comics and sending samples to publishers, hoping to break into the business.

Assigned King project Around 1989, one of Anderson’s samples went to Gary Groth, the Seattle-based publisher of Fantagraphics comics. Originally Anderson sent a pitch for an adult comic series, which was eventually published, but Groth had other ideas for his new hire. He had a series of historical biographies planned, and he suggested to Anderson that he draw the first one, a seventy-page graphic biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Groth thought of Anderson for the job not only because Anderson was one of the few active comic 2

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artists of African descent, but also because of his politically oriented first and middle names. Anderson was familiar with King’s accomplishments, but, he wrote in the Boston Globe, ‘‘in Canada we didn’t talk about King around the kitchen table—maybe other families did. TV supplied details of the legend, but I had no idea about the man.’’ At first, Anderson thought of the assignment simply as a financial breakthrough. ‘‘My inner mercenary accepted the job, unaware of the rigors of the task,’’ he wrote in the Globe. But he was primed for something more, having begun to sort out racial issues in his own mind. King began to take shape in Anderson’s mind at a critical moment in North American race relations. Anderson and his friends were strongly affected by the Los Angeles riots of April 1992, which followed the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers who were charged with using excessive force against black motorist Rodney King. Unrest spread not only to other American cities but also across the border to Toronto. When the verdict was announced, Anderson recalled to Henry Mietkiewicz of the Toronto Star, ‘‘I remember sitting around the TV with a couple of friends. We turned off the TV and had a discussion, and a lot of bile was spilled that night.’’ When rioting erupted in Toronto, Anderson and his friends drove to the area but remained on the edges of the crowd, observing rather than participating. ‘‘Am I angry about things? Absolutely!’’ Anderson told Mietkiewicz in 1993. ‘‘People sometimes expect when they meet me for me to be walking around with a rifle and my fist raised. But I can’t be p—-ed off like that all the time. I just can’t do it . . . . My own life today is not that bad.’’ Unsure about racial issues, Anderson used his work to explore his feelings. One result was a fourteen-page comic called Black Dogs, which featured a black man and woman debating racial violence. It was later incorporated into the first volume of King as a kind of introduction.

Absorbed King lore For six months, Anderson worked at learning everything he could about Martin Luther King Jr. ‘‘I’ve read as many books and articles as I could get my hands on,’’ he told Mietkiewicz. ‘‘And I’ve watched a lot of documentaries, because the scenes I draw have to be properly photo-referenced.’’ His conception of the book quickly outgrew the original 70-page framework, ballooning to a projected 150 and then 200 pages. The solution Anderson and Fantagraphics came up with was to publish King in three volumes. Ho Che Anderson

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Civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking outside of Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. in 1963. AP Images.

The first volume appeared in 1992, covering the civil rights leader’s early life against the backdrop of Southern segregation and his rise to prominence following the successful Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, concluding with King’s stabbing during a sit-in at an Atlanta, Georgia, lunch counter. The depth of historical background Anderson included is a distinctive feature of his work. The events of King’s life are filled out with surrounding events, both famous and unknown. One passage in the first volume of King deals with the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat in the back of a city bus—the event that led to the Montgomery bus boycott. 4

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Grasping Graphic Nonfiction As a young artist breaking into the business of comics, Ho Che Anderson had few graphic nonfiction models to draw on. Few other artists had used the graphics medium in works that contained a wealth of historical detail. Renowned artist Alan Moore put graphics in the service of history in Brought to Light, his 1988 exploration of the Iran-Contra scandal of the early 1980s (a complicated political scandal in which the United States sold weapons to Iran to fund secret political activities in Nicaragua). Another important nonfiction graphic novel was Don Lomax’s Vietnam Journal of 1990, a work that used a fictional observer to comment on historical events in the same way Anderson did later at several points in King.

However, when the first volume of King appeared in 1993, the most influential existing work in the field was Maus, (1986) Art Spiegelman’s family Holocaust memoir. Anderson’s King seemed to announce the maturing of the graphic biography and others soon followed. Canadian Chester Brown released Louis Riel, which told the life story of a nineteenth-century me´tis (mixed-race) leader in what became the province of Manitoba. And in 2005 the American publisher Hyperion, owned by the Disney corporation, announced plans for a series of biographies of major American historical figures. The Center for Cartoon Studies, a Vermont graphic arts school, was recruited to participate in the creation of the new series.

The Martin Luther King Jr. depicted in Anderson’s book is not the larger-than-life figure honored every year on the holiday celebrating his birth. At various times, King is depicted as a glutton (someone who eats a great deal), a womanizer, and what would later be called a male chauvinist—in one sequence early in the book he demands that his wife, Coretta Scott King, give up her musical ambitions to stay home in the role of a traditional wife. Anderson was not just trying to be historically accurate with these representations of King’s failings. He actually felt that by presenting King’s flaws, he made the civil rights leader easier to identify with for young people like himself. ‘‘I just can’t take someone seriously; I can’t look up to someone; I can’t relate to someone who is so perfect, who has never made a mistake, who has never stumbled, who has never fallen,’’ he told Liane Hansen of National Public Radio. The greater mystique that the memory of Malcolm X (1925–1965), a more aggressive and controversial civil rights leader, held for some young people, as compared with that of King, could be partly chalked up, in Anderson’s view, to the sanitized view of King that was passed along in official observances. Ho Che Anderson

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Forced to turn to other projects Anderson’s work stirred up interest with its wealth of detail; its use of huge, panoramic drawings to capture the feel of crowd scenes; and its human treatment of King, focusing on King’s flaws as well as his powers. In early 1993, however, the idea of using the comics medium for serious themes was still rarely encountered. Maus, Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust-themed graphic novel, had been published in the late 1980s, but was joined by few others. Although Anderson remarked that King’s story remained on his mind, he also faced the necessity of making a living. King was sold mostly in specialty shops devoted to comics, and profits from the book were small despite a 1995 Parents’ Choice Award (given despite the book’s use of profanity) and a round of radio interviews Anderson did during Black History Month. Due to financial crisis he moved in with his mother for a time, but he gradually began to find other drawing jobs. Working as a commercial illustrator, Anderson created a variety of other graphic projects. In 1994 he published a book of graphic short stories, Young Hoods in Love, and many of his works in the 1990s focused on urban life in Toronto. Anderson tried his hand at a juvenile graphic novel, The No-Boys Club (1998). He also illustrated a children’s book, Steel Drums and Ice Skates, which was written by Dirk McLean. Finally, after nearly ten years, Anderson returned to the King project. The second volume was published in 2002, and by that time, book buyers were more aware of graphic literature. This installment, which culminated in King’s ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech during the 1963 civil rights March on Washington, earned strong reviews. Raiteri wrote that ‘‘[Anderson’s] effort will convince skeptical adults of the value of comics as a medium.’’ New readers were amazed by Anderson’s unique drawing style, which incorporated hand-tinted copies of photographs and other images, creating a multimedia effect. Publishers Weekly noted that ‘‘Anderson combines illustrations and photocopy collage in a rugged chiaroscuro comics style.’’ (Chiaroscuro refers to the use of light and shade in a work.) Anderson’s high-contrast, mostly black-and-white drawings had a monumental quality appropriate to the theme of King’s life. In the second volume, Anderson included an imagined conversation between King and President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) that was hailed by some reviewers for its believability but also added an element of historical fiction to a biographical work. 6

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The last volume of King was released in 2003 and added to Anderson’s fame. Using color throughout, Anderson depicted King’s 1968 assassination in what Murray Whyte of the New York Times, described as ‘‘a chaotic wash of searing crimson that spills over four pages, seeming almost to seep from the book.’’ The three volumes of King were reissued as a single book in 2005, with some revisions and an introduction by the prominent African American cultural critic and newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch. King was issued not only in the United States and Canada but also in England, where critic David Thompson, writing on the Guardian Unlimited Web site, compared Anderson’s work to that of other graphic artists who used historical events and materials in their works. ‘‘Anderson splices his comic book chronology with archive material and anonymous witnesses addressing the reader directly with their own often contradictory reflections,’’ Thompson wrote. ‘‘This narrative technique exploits the unique advantages of the graphic form and . . . the results demonstrate what comics can do that literary fiction can’t.’’

Satisfied activist impulses in work Although he gained renown with his portrayal of an activist figure, Anderson was not an activist himself. In fact, he became interested in comics and graphic arts in the first place partly because he was rebelling against his parents’ political focus. ‘‘I’ve thought about hands-on activism in the past, but it’s just not me,’’ he told Andre Mayer of This magazine. ‘‘I admire people who get out and protest and speak out. I admire them more than anybody. But it’s not really part of my makeup.’’ Anderson felt that he could influence young people through the comics medium, telling National Public Radio’s Hansen that ‘‘I’m hoping younger people will be attracted to the graphics [of King]. I think it looks flashy and hopefully they’ll pay attention to the words.’’ After becoming famous beyond the world of comics and graphic literature, Anderson branched out in several new directions. He credited Martin Luther King Jr. directly with the inspiration for his decision to obtain his high school equivalency degree, a credential that helped pave the way for a general assignment reporter position with the Toronto Star daily newspaper. A film buff who named director Martin Scorsese as an influence on his drawing style, Anderson thought several times about enrolling in film school. In 2005, he worked on a play commissioned by the Canadian Ho Che Anderson

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Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio network, but it was shelved in the midst of labor unrest that plagued the CBC that year. Also in 2005, Anderson issued his first graphic volume since the completion of the King series: Scream Queen is a horror tale with a zombie theme. In 2005, he was also looking for a publisher for an already completed graphic novel called Corporate World, a sci-fi actionadventure epic. Having already gained respect for the new genre of graphic literature, Anderson seemed to be looking for new challenges.

For More Information Periodicals Anderson, Ho Che. ‘‘Drawing Board Capturing King.’’ Boston Globe (January 18, 2004): H4. Andrews, Jan. ‘‘That First Kiss . . . with an Up-to-Date Twist.’’ Ottawa Citizen (August 16, 1998): C15. Atkinson, Nathalie. ‘‘‘Cartoons’ Fit for a King.’’ Globe and Mail (June 7, 2003): D12. Mietkiewicz, Henry. ‘‘Comic Illustrator Takes Hard Look at a True Hero.’’ Toronto Star (September 26, 1993): E2. Publishers Weekly (November 1, 1993): 72; (May 13, 2002): 53; (February 14, 2005): 56; (May 30, 2005): 41. Raiteri, Steve. Library Journal (September 1, 2002): 148. Whyte, Murray. ‘‘King’s Life in Pictures of Every Kind.’’ New York Times (August 10, 2003): AR26. Whyte, Murray. ‘‘Not Your Average Superhero.’’ Toronto Star (May 30, 2003): J1.

Web Sites ‘‘Biography.’’ Ho Che Anderson. http://www.hocheanderson.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Gibson, Brian. ‘‘The Man Who Would Draw King.’’ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=1847 (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Ho Che Anderson.’’ Fantagraphics. http://www.fantagraphics.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Leshinski, Guy. ‘‘King of Dreams.’’ Exclaim! http://www.exclaim.ca/index. asp?layid=22&csid=20&csidI=1125 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Thompson, David. ‘‘The Dreamer Lives On.’’ Guardian Unlimited. http://books. guardian.co.uk/reviews/artsandentertainment/0,6121,1553067,00.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for the profile was obtained from an interview with Ho Che Anderson, conducted by Liane Hansen and broadcast on National Public Radio on January 16, 1994.

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Sergio Aragone´s. Ira Hunter.

Sergio Aragone´s Born September 6, 1937 (Castellon, Spain) Spanish American cartoonist

Sergio Aragone´s has achieved enormous success as a cartoonist. Legendary Peanuts creator Charles Schulz (1922–2000) told the Los Angeles Daily News that ‘‘Sergio’s one of the most admired cartoonists in the business.’’ Aragone´s first made a name for himself as a contributor to Mad magazine, starting in 1963, and went on to earn the comic industry’s highest accolades, winning the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society in 1996; a Will Eisner Award in 1992, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001; a Harvey Award for Humor in 2000 and 2001; and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame Award in 2002. Aragone´s has achieved special attention as a graphic novelist for his satiric tales about Groo, a bumbling barbarian who makes more trouble than he solves. Published since 1981, Groo has become a ‘‘classic comic character,’’ according to Publishers Weekly, and the Groo stories, which began as parodies of stories about Conan the

‘‘I don’t know precisely what caused Sergio Aragone´s to create Groo and I don’t know that he could tell you, either. But . . . I’m sure it had a lot to do with wanting to have a character he could call his own. Which, at the time, was not so easy to have.’’ MARK EVANIER, ARAGONE´S’S LONGTIME FRIEND

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Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Groo the Wanderer (1982). The Groo Adventurer (1990). The Death of Groo (1991). Groo the Wanderer (1991). The Groo Dynasty (1992). The Groo Expose´ (1993). The Groo Bazaar (1993). The Life of Groo (1993). The Groo Festival (1993).

The Groo Lunch Box (1999). The Groo Jamboree (2000). Groo and Rufferto (2000). Groo: Mightier than the Sword (2001). The Groo Kingdom (2001). The Groo Library (2001). The Groo Maiden (2002). The Groo Nursery (2002). Groo: Death and Taxes (2002). The Groo Odyssey (2003).

Groo: The Most Intelligent Man in the World (1998).

Other

The Groo Inferno (1999).

Boogeyman (1999).

The Groo Houndbook (1999).

Fanboy (2001).

Barbarian, have become some of the longest-running humorous comic books in history.

Started cartooning in third grade Aragone´s was born in Castellon, Spain, on September 6, 1937. A bloody civil war in Spain at the time prompted Pascual and Isabel Aragone´s to move with their six-month-old son to a refugee camp in France. As World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan) started to tear apart Europe, the Aragone´s family moved again, settling in Mexico. As a child, drawing became one of Aragone´s’s favorite pastimes. He found inspiration from Mexican comic magazines and U.S. comic strips. By the third grade, he entertained his classmates with his own cartoons, which included funny doodles of his teachers. He drew wordless cartoons in which his characters’ actions told the story. Aragone´s continued his cartooning into high school and developed a fan base with his classmates, one of whom was convinced that Aragone´s was good enough to turn professional and 12

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sent some of his work to a Mexican magazine. The magazine offered to buy some of his work, and at age seventeen Aragone´s sold his first cartoons for just enough money to take his friend to dinner as thanks for submitting his work. From that time on, Aragone´s sold his work to various Mexican publications. After high school, Aragone´s briefly studied engineering, then architecture at the University of Mexico, but he remained true to his first passion: cartooning. Aragone´s drew six cartoons each week for publication in Man˜ana magazine, a routine he maintained for ten years. In addition to his architecture studies and cartooning, Aragone´s learned pantomime (a performance art that uses body movements as the only means of communication) and performed on weekends with a professional troupe. By 1962, Aragone´s had determined that he wanted to become a full-time cartoonist, and after attending college for three years he dropped out. ‘‘I knew I was going to make it as a cartoonist,’’ he told the Los Angeles Daily News. ‘‘There couldn’t have been another life for me.’’

Immigrated to the United States Aragone´s moved to New York City to get himself started. As he shopped his cartoons around town, he made ends meet by playing a guitar for tips on the streets and at a Greenwich Village coffeehouse. It wasn’t long until he found a buyer for his cartoon work, however. Mad magazine contributor Antonio Prohias (1921– 1998), the creator of the wordless Spy vs. Spy series, admired Aragone´s’s work and showed it to his coworkers, including Mad editor Al Feldstein, who offered Aragone´s $200 for ten of his cartoons. ‘‘Wow, I couldn’t believe it!’’ Aragone´s recalled in Cartoonist Profiles. Aragone´s had long been a fan of Mad magazine, and he related to the Los Angeles Daily News that ‘‘I never ever fathomed I would work for them. They were too good and in another country in a language I didn’t know.’’ But Aragone´s’s drawings communicated without words. Through his characters’ actions, facial expressions, and the environments in which he placed them, Aragone´s poked fun at everything from politics, religion, school, and family gatherings, to film and television, and society in general. Since the January publication of Mad #76 in 1963, Aragone´s has published cartoons in the margins, between other comic strip panels, and in the corners of pages in each volume of Mad magazine except one. The only reason for his omission from that one volume was a delay in the mail service; he had tried to send his work to Mad while on a Sergio Aragone´s

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trip in Europe. His work in the margins of Mad brought him celebrity status in the comics industry.

Renowned work ethic Aragone´s developed a reputation for his near constant—and very speedy—drawing. ‘‘The only time I don’t use my pen is when I’m sleeping,’’ Aragone´s noted in Columbus Alive. Along with his furious output, Aragone´s prides himself on constantly coming up with new ideas. He noted on the Sergio Aragone´s Web site (which is maintained by Mark Evanier) that for each issue of Mad, ‘‘I send four pages of finished marginals and they select the ones they need. I have 40 years of unpublished material, the ones they don’t pick, and the reason I don’t redraw them or use them again is that I like to use my brain every day and come up with new jokes . . . . Sometimes, it fails but generally I know that what I produce is new. Of course, they are often variations on the same subject, as you can see. Maybe when I’m old (older) and my brain doesn’t work correctly, I’ll start using the unpublished gags in my files. Meanwhile, count on me sitting in the coffee house, thinking up new material.’’ For his inspiration, Aragone´s turns a critical eye to people’s everyday experiences. He explained to the Los Angeles Daily News that cartoonists are ‘‘critical of everything. They see the foibles of man. The weaknesses of man. The abuses that man inflicts onto men.’’ Keen observation is the key to Aragone´s’s research, which ‘‘takes a great percentage of my time,’’ Aragone´s related on his Web site. For his Mad Look At . . . series for which he drew several panels about a specific topic—sharks, for instance—from a variety of perspectives, Aragone´s spent weeks researching, reading, talking to people, watching television and movies, and visiting places such as flea markets. Knick-knacks he’s picked up in various places littered his workplace. He also relied on photographs from his travels—he’s visited more than one hundred countries over the years—and his collection of National Geographic magazines. Aragone´s’s work is noted for its freshness and spontaneity. Aragone´s never sketched his ideas in pencil first. For the most part he relied on his Pelikan fountain pen filled with Badger brand nonacrylic black ink to capture the essence of his ideas immediately on paper. ‘‘I believe in the sketch as the final form of art,’’ Aragone´s related to Cartoonist Profiles, noting that if he tried to ink over pencil sketches, his lines would lose their vigor. But Aragone´s noted on the his Web site that ‘‘Once in a while, I use a brush to 14

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Mark Evanier, Aragone´s’s Collaborator Sergio Aragone´s’s longtime friend, Mark Evanier (1952–), wrote the witty dialogue that complemented Aragone´s’s illustrated stories of Groo, as well as several other comic books. Just as Aragone´s knew from a young age that he would be a cartoonist, Evanier knew that he would be a writer. Less than a week after graduating from high school in 1969, Evanier sold his first magazine stories, and within a year he landed a job with comic legend Jack Kirby, becoming what he termed Kirby’s ‘‘utterlyunnecessary assistant,’’ according to his POVonline Web site. After apprenticing with Kirby for a few years, Evanier went on to write comics for Disney and Warner Brothers, including stories about the well-known characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Woody Woodpecker, and Scooby Doo. By the 1970s, he had begun writing scripts for film and television, but quickly sought out more comic book writing with Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics. Evanier described to Dark Horse editor Shawna Ervin-Gore how his collaboration with Aragone´s started. He met Aragone´s

in 1968 when Aragone´s spoke at the comic book club that Evanier presided over as president. ‘‘[H]e was one of the first professional cartoonists—alleged professional cartoonists—I’d ever met. We quickly became friends and for several years kept saying ‘you know, we oughtta work together some day.’’’ When Aragone´s first completed a story about his goofy barbarian, Groo, he approached Evanier, and said, ‘‘I’m not taking the rap for this on my own . . .,’’ as Evanier told Ervin-Gore. Evanier agreed to write the dialogue for the stories, and since the first publication of Groo the Wanderer in 1982, Evanier and Aragone´s have collaborated on what Evanier estimated to be eight thousand Groo stories, a comic series for Dark Horse called Boogeyman, and another for DC Comics called Fanboy. But, as Evanier confided to Ervin-Gore, his work with Aragone´s was really just an excuse for ‘‘Sergio to come over and we go to Sizzler [a steakhouse] and eat together and Sergio draws on napkins and we laugh and we call this a collaboration.’’

fill up large black areas.’’ And for his drawings that would be reduced to a very small size in the margins of Mad, he preferred to draw with a Rapid-o-Graph technical pen. While Aragone´s’s reputation was built on his work for Mad, his prolific output went far beyond the magazine. By the late 1960s, he began working on comic books for DC Comics. Although publishers asked Aragone´s to develop comic characters, he had refused because none would grant him the copyright to his creation. ‘‘The publishers just paid the artists a flat fee per page,’’ he explained to Sergio Aragone´s

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Sergio Aragone´s’s most famous character was Groo the barbarian. Dark Horse Comics.

Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times. ‘‘They didn’t share the royalties, like the paperbacks did. I wasn’t going to give away any creations like that.’’

Groo The difficulties of negotiating with publishers did not stop Aragone´s from imagining his own characters. Aragone´s’s years of drawing on napkins in restaurants, on hotel stationery, and on other scraps filled drawers in his studio and home. He kept them with the idea that someday they might prove useful. In 1976 or 1977, Aragone´s pulled from his files some pictures of a funny-looking barbarian character to show his friend, the comic writer Mark Evanier (1952–). In the late 1970s, Conan the Barbarian and other such warrior heroes were quite popular. Aragone´s wanted to use his character, which he named Groo, to poke fun at the barbarian hero genre. And he wanted to figure out a way to own the copyright to his creation. In the early 1980s, Aragone´s negotiated such a deal with the now-defunct publisher Pacific Comics in San Diego, California. Evanier agreed to write the dialogue for Aragone´s’s stories. Groo the Wanderer was introduced in 1982, and Aragone´s and Evanier have continued to publish new Groo stories ever since. Groo is a kindhearted but idiotic warrior hero whose attempts to save the day more often than not end up making things much worse 16

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in the fictional land of Plentia. Over the years, Groo has tried to save citizens from the evil ways of tyrants, to help the homeless, and has even fallen in love with a nasty warrior princess. And Groo’s destructive tendencies wreak havoc throughout every story. While Groo’s own, mostly accidental exploits are humorous in themselves, he is joined by a huge cast of comic characters, most notably his faithful dog, Rufferto, that make the stories even funnier. Groo’s misadventures have sunk the ships of both friend and foe, ruined ecosystems, destroyed whole towns, and even started bloody wars. While the characters’ temperaments remain constant throughout the stories, the topics explored are too numerous to count, and fans have come to expect the unexpected from Aragone´s and Evanier.

Looking toward the future Nearly five decades after publishing his first work, Aragone´s has yet to slow down. In an interview with Dark Horse editor Shawna Ervin-Gore, Aragone´s explained his work on Boogeyman, the humorous horror stories he started creating with Mark Evanier in 1998, and remarked that he would eventually ‘‘like to touch all the genres. . . . I’d love to do a whole series of stories that would be Westerns, and science fiction, and detective stories, and horror stories, and have them collected into books.’’ But as he looked forward to exploring new genres, Aragone´s told Ervin-Gore that he did not expect to stop working on new Groo adventures: ‘‘With Groo, all the stories come naturally. I can’t see quitting Groo. We have so many stories to tell about him.’’ And indeed, although Aragone´s has published an amazing number and variety of comic strips, Groo remained prominent among his work into the 2000s.

For More Information Books Evanier, Mark. Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2003. Meglin, Nick. The Art of Humorous Illustration. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1973.

Periodicals Cartoonist Profiles no. 97 and no. 98 (August, 1970). Greenberg, David. ‘‘What, Him Worry?; Mad Cartoonist Lets His Work Do the Talking.’’ Daily News (Los Angeles, CA) (September 27, 1998): p. L6. Sergio Aragone´s

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‘‘Malibu Comics to Debut ‘The Mighty Magnor,’ New by Mad Magazine Artist Sergio Aragones, in April on QVC Network.’’ PR Newswire (March 22, 1993). Mozzocco, J. Caleb. ‘‘Mad Man: Sergio Aragones Sketches Out Half a Life in Cartooning.’’ Columbus Alive (November 30, 2000): p. 13. Solomon, Charles. ‘‘Cartoonist Aragones Is Mad about His Work.’’ Los Angeles Times (August 7, 1987): p. 1. Woodard, Josef. ‘‘PROFILE Cartoonist Has Been on Cutting Edge for 30 Years Sergio Aragones of MAD Magazine Does His Work in the Margins. The Ojai Resident Is Being Featured in a Show at Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum.’’ Los Angeles Times (December 2, 1993): p. 9. Zaleski, Jeff. ‘‘Groo: Death and Taxes.’’ Publishers Weekly (June 2, 2003): p. 36.

Web Sites ‘‘Interviews: Mark Evanier.’’ Dark Horse Comics. http://www.darkhorse. com/news/interviews.php?id=674 (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Interviews: Sergio Aragone´s.’’ Dark Horse Comics. http://www.darkhorse. com/news/interviews.php?id=627 (accessed on May 3, 2006). POVonline (Mark Evanier’s Web site). http://www.povonline.com/ index.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Sergio Aragone´s. http://www.sergioaragones.com (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Brian Michael Bendis. Albert L. Ortega/WireImage.com.

Brian Michael Bendis Born August 18, 1967 (Cleveland, Ohio) American author, artist

In his graphic novels and comics, Brian Michael Bendis writes concise, colorful dialogue and conjures up stark, sordid urban environments. However, he is not just interested in creating stories about daring superheroes battling arch criminals. He is concerned with what goes on underneath the skins of his characters. As he explores their inner lives and demons and the personal issues they face, he adds a moral element to his narratives as his characters cope with the responsibilities inherent in being superheroes. Even though Bendis has earned his greatest fame for contributing to the revitalization of Spider-Man (in the freshly titled Ultimate Spider-Man), Daredevil, and other well-established Marvel Comics series, not all of his work features already-celebrated comic book icons. In his original creations, he blends characteristics of the superhero format with other popular culture genres: the police story, for example, in Powers, and the true crime story in

‘‘Comics need outside influences. . . . It doesn’t exist as itself; it’s not any type of art or writing. It’s not live art or it’s not computer art; it’s not painting, it’s not photography; it’s not screenwriting or poetry or prose, it’s all these things . . .’’

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Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Goldfish (1998).

Daredevil 9 vols. (2002–04).

The Jinx Essential Collection (1998).

Alias 4 vols. (2003–04).

Ultimate Spider-Man 13 vols. (2002–05).

Fire: A Spy Graphic Novel (1999). (With Marc Andreyko) Torso: A True Crime Graphic Novel (2000). Sam and Twitch, Book 1: Udaku (2000). Fortune and Glory: A True Hollywood Comic Book Story (2000).

The Pulse 3 vols. (2004–06). Ultimate X-Men 3 vols. (2004–05). Ultimate Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 (2005). Secret War: Book One (2005). What If . . .?: Why Not, Vol. 1 (2005).

Powers 8 vols. (2000–05).

Avengers Disassembled (2005).

Jinx: The Definitive Collection (2001).

The New Avengers 4 vols. (2005–06).

Elektra (2002).

House of M (2006).

Torso. He is an avid moviegoer and television-watcher, and he combines a sense of realism with film noir atmosphere (film noir is a style of filmmaking that emphasizes an ominous, dark atmosphere; noir is a French word meaning ‘‘black’’), pulp fiction dialogue, and the brand of drama found on television police shows. Occasionally, he directly references specific works that grab his imagination. One of his storylines in Daredevil is titled ‘‘Decalogue,’’ and is inspired by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue (1988–89), a ten-film epic that employs the Ten Commandments to tell modern stories that explore elements of human existence. Another Daredevil storyline, titled ‘‘The Golden Age,’’ is based on Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone’s operatic gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984). In reviewing Daredevil Volume 7: Hardcore in 2003, Publishers Weekly noted, ‘‘Bendis writes this series as though it is a film; the Kingpin’s return and rise to power are straight out of a movie like Scarface’’ [an acclaimed movie about the rise of a Cuban drug lord played by Al Pacino]. In the early 2000s, Bendis emerged as one of the most acclaimed of all comic book/graphic novel writers. In its 2004 review of Ultimate X-Men: Volume 7: Blockbuster, another Bendis updating of a popular Marvel series, Publishers Weekly observed, ‘‘Bendis is a 20

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pulpy, dialogue-driven writer. Each of his characters has a unique speaking voice, so he manages to deepen multiple characters even as he drives the suspenseful action forward. It’s a good mix.’’

Began writing comic books in grade school Brian Michael Bendis was born on August 18, 1967, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Like millions of youngsters, he was an avid comic book reader. Even though he began conjuring up his own storylines in third grade, he primarily aspired to draw his own comics. An early hero of Bendis’s was comic book artist George Perez (1954–). In a 2000 interview with Alan David Doane, which appears on the Silver Bullet Comics Web site, Bendis recalled that, ‘‘to me [Perez] was like a rock star, he’s Bruce Springsteen. I’m reading his stuff every week, I’m like, oh my God, I love this, I want to be this guy.’’ While in his teens, Bendis conjured up his own comic version of the action movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. This exercise enabled him to comprehend the intricacies of creating graphic novels and, specifically, how to construct and pace storylines. Added to the mix was his escalating interest in the crime fiction genre and the movie-going experience. He came to admire filmmaker Martin Scorsese and crime authors Jim Thompson, David Mamet, and Richard Price. ‘‘I am absolutely, totally, 100 per cent in love with non-linear story-telling in film and television . . .,’’ Bendis explained in a 2002 interview with Alex Hamby. ‘‘I get chills when I watch it and I wanted to try it in comics.’’ In the late 1980s, Bendis began studying at Cleveland’s Institute of Art. It was an experience he found less than satisfying. At the school, students focused on studying the Renaissance-era artists or the Impressionist and Expressionist movements, and on learning to draw from real life. Bendis’s infatuation with comic book art did not correspond with this curriculum, or with the interests of most of his fellow students. In fact, he found that his job as a clerk in a small comic book store was as valuable an experience as studying at the Institute. By observing the customers and how they responded to specific titles, he came to understand the importance of superior storytelling. Flashy art, he came to understand, was not enough to sustain a series.

Began publishing with Caliber and Image In the early 1990s, Bendis self-published his first comic books with Caliber Press, most memorably five issues of Goldfish, about a Brian Michael Bendis

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Bendis and Hollywood Bendis’s success at Image in the mid- to late 1990s grabbed the attention of the movie industry. ‘‘Hollywood came calling,’’ he told interviewer Alan David Doane in 2000, ‘‘and I was getting a myriad of bizarre phone calls, and half-offers and interesting notions and eventually actually, Miramax Films did option [my] work, and the process . . . was fascinating and silly—it was just ridiculous phone calls, and ridiculous meetings, and the whole process got me so many anecdotes. I mean, literally 150 pages worth of cartoon anecdotes. I said, you know, it’d be a waste [not to use] this material. . . .’’ Bendis’s experiences resulted in his autobiographical, bitingly satirical Fortune and Glory: A True Hollywood Comic Book Story, published by Oni Press in 1999. As he charts the plight of a young writer attempting to enter the movie industry, Bendis offers the point of view that the Hollywood powers-that-be have no understanding of a writer’s creativity. The quality of a script may directly lead to a film’s artistic success or failure, but in the Hollywood of

Fortune and Glory writers are callously disregarded. To express all this, Bendis filled Fortune and Glory with caricatures, or characters who had exaggerated or distorted features or personality traits. Observed David Walker in a 2004 profile of Bendis: ‘‘He knows more about the art and business of film than most people in the industry, and is quick to analyze what is wrong with most films—especially those adapted from comic books.’’ Still, Bendis’s less-than-glowing introduction to Hollywood did not completely sour him on the industry. In 2003, he penned the pilot episode and co-executive-produced the animated television series Spider-Man (also known as Spider-Man: The New Animated Series). In 2005, he reportedly was writing the screenplay for a movie based on Jinx, to star actress Charlize Theron (1975–). Despite these desirable assignments, Bendis has resisted the lure of settling in Hollywood. In 2001, he left Cleveland for Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Alisa, and daughter, Olivia.

sympathetic con man, and eight issues of Jinx which centered on a female bounty hunter. Both were noteworthy for their stark, filmnoir-like narratives. Another important Caliber release was Fire, inspired by real-life events in the American spy community during the 1980s, in which a young man is initiated into the world of international espionage. Bendis also wrote and drew a weekly comic strip for his hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Bendis then linked up with Image Comics, where he continued publishing Goldfish, Jinx, and Fire. In 1998, he and fellow comics writer Marc Andreyko created Torso, one of his most unique series. 22

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Torso is rooted in a string of real-life murders that occurred in Cleveland during the 1930s; they are viewed as the first examples of serial killings in the United States. The perpetrator was dubbed the Torso Killer because he dismembered the bodies of his victims. At the time, Eliot Ness—a U.S. Treasury Department agent whose exploits fighting organized crime were chronicled on the television series The Untouchables (1959–63)—was employed as the city’s public safety commissioner. His role in investigating the slayings intrigued Bendis and Andreyko, who made him the hero of Torso. The true crime subject matter explored in Torso was unusual for the comic book/graphic novel medium, as was the inclusion of photographs mixed in with artwork, an effect Bendis had previously employed in Jinx. In 1999, Bendis won his first of five (as of 2005) Eisner Awards for creative achievement in comic books. This initial prize was as a ‘‘Talent Deserving of Higher Recognition.’’ The following year, he created one final work at Image: Powers, illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming, in which there are numerous individuals endowed with superpowers. Most become media celebrities, but some turn to a life of crime. The villains are pursued by non-superhero police detectives. In Powers, Bendis surveys the nature and meaning of power. How can human beings know that supermen and superwomen are heroic? How do you distinguish the good guys from the bad, the benevolent powers from those that are destructive? Publishers Weekly noted in 2004 that Powers ‘‘explores questions raised decades ago by comic book writers Alan Moore and Frank Miller: how would ordinary citizens feel about sharing their world with people who have superhuman abilities? And what responsibility accompanies extraordinary power?’’

Moving on to McFarlane and Marvel Bendis’s work at Image caught the attention of Todd McFarlane (1961–; see entry), comic book publisher and the creator of Spawn. ‘‘He just really liked Goldfish,’’ Bendis told Alex Hamby, adding that ‘‘he really liked that kind of storytelling and he offered me a couple of projects.’’ Both were Spawn spin-offs: Sam and Twitch, about a pair of homicide detectives, and Hellspawn. Adding to this success, in 2000 Marvel Comics hired Bendis to update for contemporary audiences two well-established series, Spider-Man and Daredevil. He fashioned what came to be called Ultimate Spider-Man as a prequel to Spider-Man, which was created Brian Michael Bendis

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A 2001 drawing of comic superhero Daredevil. Bendis worked on the Daredevil series around this time. ª 2005 Marvel/Corbis.

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by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962. In Ultimate Spider-Man, adolescent hero Peter Parker must determine if his newly acquired superpowers will be a shortcut to riches and fame or a means to fight crime. Jeff Jensen, writing in Entertainment Weekly in 2000, observed, ‘‘It’s not unusual for comic publishers to relaunch classic characters for new readers. What is unusual is for them to be any good. Ultimate Spider-Man is a delightful exception . . . . Bendis’ dialogue and detail are top-notch . . . . he’s spinning one of the most emotionally resonant depictions of teendom in comics since Spider-Man’s debut thirty-eight years ago.’’ Ultimate Spider-Man was a tremendous hit, and it established Bendis at Marvel. His follow-up was a 2001 updating of Daredevil, which originally debuted in 1964. Here, blind superhero Matt Murdock spends his days working as a criminal lawyer. After office hours, he hunts down the villains who have eluded him in court. In reviewing Daredevil Vol. 9: King of Hell’s Kitchen in 2004, Publishers U X L Graphic Novelists

Weekly observed, ‘‘Bendis has transformed Daredevil into a gritty crime novel . . . . In (this) well-spun morality play, Bendis asks what happens when a superhero crosses the line from defender to boss, from benevolent defensive power to real, offensive vigilante. His dialogue and pacing is among the sharpest found in superhero comics. Bendis is essentially writing a short crime film with each issue.’’

Worked on other Marvel series While much of his early work was self-illustrated, Bendis’s Marvel acclaim has rested on his talent for conjuring up vividly written, tight-knit storylines. Primarily, he has come to be known as a writer who occasionally draws. He also has been prolific, often simultaneously writing five or more Marvel stories. One of them was Alias, which involves Jessica Jones, a disillusioned superhero who operates her own private investigation agency. Though Bendis’s Alias has no relation to the ABC-TV series of the same name, the television show paid homage to the comic on one episode when it featured a character named ‘‘Agent Bendis.’’ In 2004, Bendis replaced Mark Millar as the author of Ultimate X-Men, another revamped Marvel series. Appropriately, two of his characters were Spider-Man and Daredevil. In 2004–05, he contributed text to a couple of other reworked series: The Avengers (now called the New Avengers, with the characters Vision, Hawkeye, and Ant-Man done away with); and Fantastic Four (retitled Ultimate Fantastic Four). Commenting on the brisk sales of The Avengers on the Fanboy Planet Web site, Bendis observed, ‘‘I am glad people are buying it. There is no greater honor than people buying a book.’’ He added, ‘‘A lot of trust goes into someone buying something if my name is on it. I try to meet them more than halfway on my end . . . . This is how I live my life.’’ Also in 2004, Bendis authored Secret War, a New Avengers clone. In 2005, he created the concept for House of M, which unites characters and storylines from a range of Marvel series.

For More Information Books Bendis, Brian Michael. Total Sell Out (anthology of Bendis’s work), edited by Jamie S. Rich. Orange, CA: Image Comics, 2003. Brian Michael Bendis

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Periodicals ‘‘Daredevil: King of Hell’s Kitchen.’’ Publishers Weekly (October 4, 2004). ‘‘Daredevil, Volume 7: Hardcore.’’ Publishers Weekly (December 8, 2003). Jensen, Jeff. ‘‘The Week.’’ Entertainment Weekly (November 17, 2000). ‘‘Powers, Vol. 5: Anarchy.’’ Publishers Weekly (March 22, 2004). Tucker, Ken. ‘‘Q&A: . . . with Brian Michael Bendis, The Hairless Wonder Behind ‘Daredevil,’ the Cops-and-Heroes Comic ‘Powers’ and the Other ‘Alias.’’’ Entertainment Weekly (April 25, 2003). ‘‘Ultimate X-Men: Volume 7: Blockbuster.’’ Publishers Weekly (March 29, 2004).

Web Sites Doane, Alan David. ‘‘Brian Michael Bendis Goes Hollywood!’’ Silver Bullet Comics. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/ 94965455865261.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Encarnacion, Jonathan. ‘‘A Man of Ideas: Profile on Brian Michael Bendis.’’ Silver Bullet Comics. http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/news/story.php?a=602 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Jinxworld (Brian Michael Bendis Web site). http://www.jinxworld.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Walker, David. ‘‘Web Keeper: Comic-book Writer Brian Michael Bendis Talks about His Relationship with Spider-Man, the Pop Culture Icon.’’ Willamette Week. http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5262 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Caricature of Michael Brennan. ª copyright 2006 Michael Brennan.

Michael Brennan Born March 11, 1963 (Gloucester, Massachusetts) American author, illustrator

Electric Girl is ‘‘one of the easiest and most entertaining reads I’ve come across in ages. Intelligent, different and very funny, Electric Girl is one of the best comics out there.’’

Electric Girl creator Michael Brennan has carved a unique niche for himself in the world of graphic novels. Electric Girl follows the life of Virginia, a relatively normal girl who has the odd ability to conduct electricity through her body and is trailed constantly by a mischievous gremlin named Oogleeoog. While characters with superpowers and invented creatures such as gremlins abound in comics and graphic novels, Brennan has blended these elements with his own approach and style. Appropriate for all readers, Electric Girl stories explore everyday situations, such as the frustrations of burning toast, as well as more outlandish stories, such as the problem of what to do if your dog brought you the hand of a dead man. What Brennan does best in each story is give readers a chance to laugh. Brennan’s Electric Girl has been hailed by critics as refreshing, hilarious, fabulous, and funny.

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Best-Known Works Electric Girl Vol. 1. (2000). Electric Girl Vol. 2. (2002). Electric Girl Vol. 3. (2005).

Loved comics from an early age Michael Brennan was born on March 11, 1963, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Brennan grew up reading Marvel and DC Comics superhero adventures. C. C. Beck’s original Captain Marvel stories were to Brennan ‘‘the greatest things on earth,’’ he told Jamie Coville in an interview for the Collector Times. While those stories had hooked him as a kid, he found greater artistic inspiration from Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson had ‘‘pushed the comic strip back to a higher ground in terms of art and writing that hadn’t been around for some time,’’ Brennan told Coville. Brennan hoped to one day try his hand at such a feat. As a kid, Brennan loved to draw. ‘‘My parents were supportive of my desire to draw as it became apparent at an early age that I would not succeed in any sports-related activities. My mother always read comics, along with the novels she’d regularly read, so I had an additional amount of ‘tacit’ [unspoken] support via her enjoyment of the medium,’’ Brennan told Graphic Novelists (GN). His high school doodles often included superheroes of his own creation. Brennan loved drawing so much that he pursued it in college in the early 1980s; he earned a bachelor of fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Art, where he specialized in illustration. After college, Brennan took what he described on the Electric Girl Web site as ‘‘a 9 to 5 job at a large company.’’ The work didn’t thrill him, and he looked for other opportunities. He began taking freelance illustration jobs. To do this, he told Barb Lien of Sequential Tart, ‘‘I decided to market myself on my main strength, which is my ‘cartoony’ style.’’ The idea worked, and he landed increasingly more side jobs. To keep himself abreast of new illustration styles, Brennan devoured comic books and graphic novels, frequenting Million Year Picnic, the local comic book store in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was introduced to a variety of independent comics and international graphic novels. He was 28

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particularly drawn to those cartoonists who stood out from the crowd with their unique style. ‘‘It was the idea that you could actually draw a book in a manner that was so different from the standard stuff,’’ Brennan told Coville. He especially admired the work of Maurice Vellekoop, Jeff Smith, Philippe Dupuy, and Charles Berbe´rian, comics artists whose work was published often in Drawn and Quarterly magazine.

Started to draw his own comic strip Filled with inspiration from other illustrators and a desire to break away from his nine-to-five job, Brennan began writing and drawing the precursor to Electric Girl as a comic strip in 1990. He told Coville that ‘‘I had just reached that point where I realized that if I wanted to be a cartoonist, I’d actually have to do something about it.’’ He developed several weeks’ worth of his strip, read them, threw most of them away, and started again. His comic strip focused on the adventures of a gremlin named Oogleeoog. It took Brennan quite a while to decide what exactly Oogleeoog was. He settled on a tall, lanky creature with a humanlooking body, a heart-shaped head, and a big nose. Both Oogleeoog and his gremlin friends always wear a suit that resembles a child’s footy pajamas. The only way to tell Brennan’s gremlins apart from each other, aside from their strong personalities, is the shape of their noses. The gremlins are invisible to humans, but not to animals. Oogleeoog and his gremlin friends seem bent on making mischief, and Brennan’s early strips made the most of Oogleeoog’s glee in mucking things up for humans. Once he had a nice pile of work—nearly eighty strips about Oogleeoog’s adventures—he began approaching newspaper syndicates (businesses that sold stories and comic strips to daily papers). Every syndicate he approached turned him away, but Brennan did not lose his desire to write about cartoon characters. While he abandoned the idea of creating a comic strip, Brennan filled his free time reimagining his characters in a comic book. During normal business hours, Brennan worked on developing his own graphic design firm, called Stormship, in Medford, Massachusetts. He and several of his friends started the company in 1991. At first, Stormship focused on graphic print design, but by 2005 it had grown to include Web-based and other interactive design. Brennan presided over Stormship’s success as president. Michael Brennan

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The idea for Electric Girl Despite his long hours working at Stormship, Brennan continued to think about his cartoons. ‘‘I consider creating Electric Girl comics to be my second career,’’ Brennan explained to GN. ‘‘But since I’m also self-employed in my main career as a graphic designer/illustrator, balancing the two has always been very difficult. As many cartoonists have lamented, shelter and food come first, so I’m forced to put the work that pays faster in front of everything else.’’ For years, he played around with his Oogleeoog character, a dog he’d drawn in college, and a teenage girl named Virginia that he’d created for his earlier strip. Brennan developed what he described on the Electric Girl Web site as an ‘‘antagonistic friendship’’ between Oogleeoog and Virginia (who could see Oogleeoog), and started to craft stories focused on their relationship. In order to ensure interesting plot lines, Brennan looked for a gimmick to his stories. He decided to make Virginia’s body a conduit for electricity. That idea was the beginning of Electric Girl. Virginia’s ability became more of a source of frustration for her than anything, especially in humid weather when she shorts out air conditioners, radios, and computers, and shocks anyone who touches her. Brennan did not limit himself to a particular topic, theme, or timeframe for his comic. His stories meandered from such everyday things as naming a puppy—Oogleeoog named Virginia’s puppy Blammo, much to her dismay—or having nightmares, to more bizarre tales of a mischievous boy genius, a robot attracted to Virginia’s electrical output, or zombies. Brennan related to GN that ‘‘most of the ideas for EG stories come to me based on a scene that’ll pop into my head. Often, I tend to think of scenarios based on what would happen if someone with electric powers tried to do this or that and build from there. I then let the idea play around in my head for a while and if I don’t forget about it, it becomes part of a story. It’s not a formal process by any means.’’ Throughout his stories, Brennan highlights Virginia’s close relationships with friends and family and her irritability over Oogleeoog’s almost constant presence. Virginia’s electric ability, Oogleeoog’s antics, and Blammo’s normal puppy enthusiasm all add a humorous twist to the stories. Brennan has not followed a set chronology for his stories about Virginia’s life. He instead provides explanatory stories as needed. For instance, Brennan first conceived of Virginia as a teenager, and most of the stories revolve around her life as a college 30

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Character drawing of ‘‘Electric Girl,’’ written and created by Michael Brennan. ª copyright 2006 Michael Brennan.

student. But Brennan offers readers glimpses of Virginia’s early childhood to provide needed insights, such as how long she has had her electrical power, how Blammo joined her family, or when Michael Brennan

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Is Electric Girl a Superhero? Having grown up enjoying the likes of Shazam!, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel, and the other superheroes of Marvel and DC Comics, Michael Brennan granted Virginia, the protagonist of his own graphic novel, mysterious electric powers. But do these powers make her a superhero? While Brennan could see that the electric powers he bestowed on Virginia related to the superhero comics of his youth, he explained that instead of making Virginia a superhero, her electric powers were simply a concept for him to play with. On the Electric Girl Web site, Brennan noted that Virginia’s ability to conduct electricity doesn’t enable her to ‘‘really do anything,’’ but does ‘‘keep things interesting.’’ Rather than creating a superhero, Brennan had used Virginia’s superpower as a starting point, a familiar concept from the comics he loved as a kid to

get his creative juices flowing for his own book. Most readers do not consider Virginia to be a superhero. She lives by no moral code that sets her apart from others, and she has no drive to strike down imposing threats to humanity. Her powers come into play in more mundane, everyday situations: she can start a car’s battery with a single touch; she can short-out street lights, or zap them with a simple thought. Mostly, however, Virginia is reluctant to use her powers. Often her gremlin friend Oogleeoog cajoles or tricks her into using them, mostly to her great embarrassment or frustration. Perhaps Alasdair Stuart put it best in his review of Electric Girl for Robotfist!: rather than a superhero Virginia is ‘‘a reluctant lightning rod for all kinds of strangeness.’’ Brennan himself considers Electric Girl more of a humor than a superhero book.

Oogleeoog first started trailing her. About his approach to the Electric Girl stories, Brennan related to Jonathan Ellis in an interview for Pop Image that ‘‘Virginia has grown up with these (sometimes annoying) electric powers, so there’s no reason that we shouldn’t get to see her from different ages as she’s growing up and adjusting to them. Plus, I really enjoy coming up with these stories from her past.’’ The longer format changed the way Brennan thought about telling stories. Rather than thinking about the story as a series of single panels, Brennan could expand his ideas for many pages. ‘‘I wanted to have the freedom of using the full page to tell the story and not be limited to the strip format. Not that I’m big into experimental page layouts, but since I wasn’t satisfied with my strip attempt I wanted to try something different,’’ Brennan told Coville. Although Brennan confided to Ellis that he considered alternative formats for Electric Girl, he settled on the comic book 32

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because ‘‘Right now, I’m in the mode to tell stories that are best suited for the comic book format, so I’ll probably stick with that for a while.’’ Brennan experimented with the way he told his stories, varying their lengths and sometimes telling whole stories with pictures alone.

Self-published his first books After finishing his first story, Brennan tried to interest a small publishing firm in it, but a rejection letter convinced him to consider self-publishing. Brennan told Lien that trying to convince others to publish his work really bothered him: ‘‘I’d rather selfpublish and go broke than go begging for someone to look at my work. That and the fact that I’m very shy around strangers!’’ In preparation for his new venture, Brennan read David Sim’s Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing and other books and saved his money to fund it. Starting in 1998, Brennan began publishing the Electric Girl stories through his company, Mighty Gremlin Press. He wrote and drew the books, created the advertising, oversaw the printing, and marketed his work at conventions. After publishing his first book, Brennan related to Sequential Tart that self-publishing wasn’t something to take lightly. As he was still waiting to turn a profit, Brennan commented that he would only advise a person to selfpublish if ‘‘you really love it, because that may end up being your only reward!’’ After self-publishing the first nine Electric Girl stories, Brennan again sought to partner with a publishing firm. Brennan confided to Sequential Tart that self-publishing was a difficult, time-consuming, financially risky project. The tenth issue of Electric Girl was published by Ait/PlanetLar, and the first eight issues were republished as two trade books, basically paperback graphic novels. Wanting to spend his free time crafting his graphic novels, Brennan eagerly handed over the printing, marketing, and other business aspects of Electric Girl to Ait/PlanetLar. ‘‘I couldn’t resist the offer to divest myself of all the chores that are part of publishing the book,’’ he told Sequential Tart. By 2005, Electric Girl was Ait/PlanetLar’s best-selling title, according to ICv2, and Brennan was in negotiations with Cartoon Network about making Electric Girl into an animated series. Electric Girl, volume three, which includes issues nine and ten as well as new stories and illustrations of early character developments, published in September 2005. These stories feature Blammo Michael Brennan

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much more prominently and show a kinder side to Oogleeoog. The volume also includes an early version of a story about Virginia’s encounter with a bad-tempered child genius. For Electric Girl fans, the book highlights Brennan’s ongoing development as a storyteller. The Electric Girl stories have earned high marks from reviewers. Brennan’s skill as an illustrator has been especially well received. He draws his characters in a loose, easy style, but their facial expressions and movements are realistic. Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading praised him for his ‘‘excellent use of blacks and backgrounds,’’ adding that ‘‘I didn’t really notice the lack of color due to the artist’s facility with shading.’’ Greg McElhatton remarked on the iComics Web site that Brennan ‘‘does a great job integrating gray tones into his art, using them not just as shading but a way to actually impart additional texture and depth to the scenes he draws.’’ Brennan also received acclaim for his realistic dialogue and comic timing. In 2001, Brennan earned a Will Eisner Award nomination, the graphic novel industry’s highest accolade. Brennan still runs Stormship, and Electric Girl fans keep their fingers crossed that he continues to find spare time to share more of Electric Girl’s adventures. About his future books, Brennan noted to Pendergast that ‘‘I think it’s important to try something different in order to stretch your abilities now and again. I feel that, if nothing else, the experience will make any future Electric Girl stories all the better. While I’m still working on concepts for my next project, one of my goals is to make it different from Electric Girl in terms of style, theme, and genre.’’

For More Information Periodicals Gorman, Michelle. ‘‘What Teens Want: Thirty Graphic Novels You Can’t Live Without.’’ School Library Journal (August 1, 2002): p. 42. Web Sites Carlson, Johanna Draper. ‘‘Electric Girl: Comic Book Review.’’ Comics Worth Reading. http://www.comicsworthreading.com/?s=electric+girl (accessed on May 3, 2006). Electric Girl. www.electricgirl.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Electric Girl Being Developed by Cartoon Network.’’ ICv2. http://www. comics2film.com/FanFrame.php?f_id=8828 (accessed on May 3, 2006). 34

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Ellis, Jonathan. ‘‘Interview: Getting Electric with Michael Brennan.’’ Pop Image. http://www.popimage.com/content/arc3-2002.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Lien, Barb. ‘‘Electric Girl, Michael Brennan.’’ Sequential Tart. http:// www.sequentialtart.com/archive/may99/brennan.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). McElhatton, Greg. ‘‘Electric Girl, Volume 2.’’ iComics. http://www.icomics. com/rev_073002_electricgirl.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Stormship. www.stormship.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Stuart, Alasdair. ‘‘Review: Electric Girl’’ (April 1, 2002). Robotfist! http:// www.electricgirl.com/reviews/index.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through direct correspondence with Michael Brennan in September of 2005.

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Kurt Busiek. ª 2003 Kurt Busiek. Reproduced by permission.

Kurt Busiek Born September 16, 1960 (Boston, Massachusetts) American author

‘‘I didn’t get into comics because I had one particular kind of story I wanted to tell. I got into comics because I love the comics form, and I want to do all kinds of things with it.’’

You don’t have to have read every superhero comic ever written to appreciate Kurt Busiek’s stories, though you may suspect that he has. Whether he is creating straightforward superhero action tales or spinning alternate takes on the superhero genre, as he does in his best-known works Marvels and Astro City, Busiek has used his encyclopedic knowledge of superhero character and plot development to craft some of the most compelling stories of the 1990s and 2000s. His stories have focused intently on character development and on exploring the psychological ramifications of living with or as superheroes. Busiek has won nearly every award in the comics business multiple times, and comics critics credit him with leading the movement to reconstruct the superhero genre. But Busiek shuns such accolades, telling Comics Journal interviewer Ray Mescallado: ‘‘I write for me and for the readers, and I try to write honestly and well and in a way that’ll entertain and involve the 37

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Marvels (illustrated by Alex Ross) (1994; 2004). Editor, with Stan Lee, Untold Tales of SpiderMan (1997). The Wizard’s Tale (illustrated by David Wenzel) (1998). The Avengers: Living Legends (illustrated by George Perez with Stuart Immomen) (2004). Superman: Secret Identity (illustrated by Stuart Immomen) (2004). (With Carlos Pacheco) Arrowsmith: So Smart in Their Uniforms (illustrated by Jesus Merino and Alex Sinclair) (2004).

Conan: The Frost-Giant’s Daughter and Other Stories (illustrated by Cary Nord and Thomas Yeates) (2005).

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City Series (All illustrated by Alex Ross and Brent Anderson) Life in the Big City (1997). Confession (1997). Family Album (1998). Tarnished Angel (1999). Local Heroes (2005).

audience, and affect them with the story itself . . . . My job is to tell the stories . . . .’’

Apprentices in comics Though Busiek is known for his knowledge of comics’ past, he actually got a late start as a fan of comics. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 16, 1960, Busiek (pronounced BYOO-sik) was a voracious reader. He told Mescallado: ‘‘I learned to read at age three, and was reading my way through the children’s library so swiftly that when I was in school and they’d have prizes for the most books read over summer break, I got disqualified since I was already reading more books than anyone else.’’ He read everything but American comic books, which many people in the 1950s and early 1960s did not consider respectable reading for young people. His mother restricted her children from watching all but a few television shows and kept a tight rein on the kinds of comics they could read, allowing only newspaper strips like Peanuts, Pogo, Dennis the Menace, and some European graphic albums like Asterix and Tintin (graphic albums are the European equivalent of the American graphic novel). As he grew older and was allowed to visit friends’ houses, however, Busiek got to experience what he had been missing at 38

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home: unrestricted access to television shows and American comics. When he began a paper route at age fourteen, he took the money he earned and spent it on comics. He started with Daredevil #120, he recalled in an interview with Matt Osterberg for CC Productions: ‘‘By the time the [four-issue] story was finished, I’d found a comics specialty shop, picked up back issues of X-Men, Daredevil, and Thor, and was on my way to being hooked for life.’’ While attending junior high school, Busiek became good friends with Scott McCloud (1960–; see entry), who would go on to create comics and graphic novels of his own. ‘‘Scott was not a comics fan when I met him,’’ Busiek told Graphic Novelists (GN). ‘‘I pushed him into reading comics and surely ruined his life.’’ Together, Busiek and McCloud plowed through comic books and talked of one day creating their own. All through high school and on into college at Syracuse University in upstate New York, Busiek dreamed of working in comics. He and McCloud had worked on their own superhero comic in high school. It became clear that Busiek would be a writer and McCloud a cartoonist who would both write and draw. At Syracuse, Busiek took those courses he thought would best equip him for his future career, including classes in literature, mythology, and publishing. He penned reviews of new comics for fan magazines and sent scripts for stories out to comics publishers. His break came when he interviewed DC Comics executive Dick Giordano for a school paper. ‘‘He invited me to submit scripts, so I wrote four sample scripts and sent them to Dick,’’ Busiek told GN. One script found its way into the hands of an editor named Ernie Colon, who invited Busiek to create a backup story for the DC character Green Lantern. The result was Busiek’s first paid work, called ‘‘The Price You Pay,’’ for Green Lantern #162. Selling his first story didn’t make Busiek an instant success in the comics industry, but it was a promising beginning. In the early 1980s, he wrote a set of stories for Marvel’s Power Man and Iron Fist series, and during that time he kept developing stories of his own. Though he worked for a time as an assistant editor for Marvel Age Magazine, he was mainly a freelancer, taking writing jobs for a variety of different employers, including Disney’s comics publishing arm and the adult men’s magazine Penthouse. He also worked for several years as a literary agent, then returned to full-time freelancing. During these years, Busiek wrote comics stories about every possible topic. As he told Comic Book Galaxy Web site interviewer Alan David Doane: ‘‘I wrote everything from humor Kurt Busiek

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stories, to horror stories to superhero stories to Mickey Mouse stories, and that gave me a nice practical education in writing a lot of different varieties of material.’’ It was a long apprenticeship in comics writing and, after about ten years, Busiek began to see the payoff for all his hard work.

New life for the superhero genre By the early 1990s, comic superheroes had been around for more than fifty years. The character Superman made his debut in 1938 in comic books published by DC Comics, and he was followed within the year by a series of superheroes introduced by Marvel Comics (see sidebar), DC’s big rival. Over the years, the number of superheroes multiplied, and DC, Marvel, and other comics publishers released issue after issue of superhero stories. By the 1970s, many felt that the superhero genre, or category of story, had run its course, because so many of the stories were repetitive or boring. In the 1980s—following a trend begun by Frank Miller (1957–; see entry) with his Batman story The Dark Knight Returns (1986)—a number of comics creators breathed new life into the genre by breaking it down: they explored the dark side of superheroes’ motivations and did not shy away from the violence of the superheroes’ world. But within a few years, even these stories began to seem formulaic. Kurt Busiek, however, had an idea to revitalize the superhero genre. Busiek’s idea was to view the superheroes from an entirely new angle: that of a human living in the midst of a world populated by superhuman beings. He imagined that a photographer named Phil Sheldon was present in 1939 at the arrival of the first Marvel Comics hero, the Human Torch, and later at the emergence of all the other Marvel Comics heroes. Sheldon and the other humans looked upon the activities of these superheroes with both wonder and horror, respect and sometimes distrust. The stories that Busiek told were not about the superheroes so much as they were about the lives of normal people living in a world that was deeply influenced by superheroes. Busiek teamed with another relatively unknown comics creator, artist Alex Ross (1970–; see entry), to create Marvels. The first volume in the pair’s four-part miniseries tracked Sheldon’s observations of the first generation of Marvel heroes. In subsequent volumes, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men all enter Sheldon’s world, and he tries to publish a book on the group he calls the Marvels; humans begin to get suspicious of the 40

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Marvel’s Superheroes Marvel Comics was the biggest comic book publisher in the United States in the 2000s. But in the late 1930s, when it started, it was playing catch-up with DC Comics, which introduced Superman in 1938. Founder Martin Goodman started the company, then called Timely, in 1939 by introducing its own superheroes, including the Human Torch, created by Carl Burgos, and the Sub-Mariner, created by Bill Everett. In late 1940, Marvel added Captain America, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. During World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan), Marvel superheroes supported the war effort by waging war against German and Japanese forces. This patriotism helped their popularity and boosted sales during the war, but by the late 1940s, Marvel’s superhero comics were selling very poorly and the Marvel line dwindled through the 1950s.

In 1961, Marvel made a stunning comeback in the world of superheroes when Marvel writer-editor Stan Lee teamed with artist Jack Kirby to introduce a new generation of heroes, called the Fantastic Four. Marvel followed these first with the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man, and then later with the X-Men, Iron Man, the Avengers, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer. The introduction of all these superheroes prompted comics critics and readers to label this the ‘‘Silver Age’’ of comics, second only to the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of the 1930s and 1940s. Not only did these superheroes gain huge numbers of fans, but comics creators Lee and Kirby became known as some of the great figures in comics history. Marvel remains a major entertainment corporation, producing comics, television shows, movies, and merchandise. Yet most of the Marvel heroes have been around for years, proving that certain American superheroes really are timeless.

motivations of the Marvels, even as the heroes battle against the evil menace, Galactus; and Sheldon follows the emergence of the most modern Marvel hero, Spider-Man. By the time the series was complete, Busiek had retold major portions of the history of the Marvel superheroes in a single compelling narrative. The volumes, published as the graphic novel Marvels in 1994, firmly established Busiek’s reputation as a major comics creator. Marvels was greeted with great acclaim in the comics world. Busiek was hailed for his storytelling skills, and Alex Ross was identified as a major new artistic talent (he has gone on to become perhaps the best-known comics artist of the 1990s and 2000s). Comics critic Ray Mescallado and others claimed that Marvels offered a new approach to the superhero genre, which he called Kurt Busiek

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Kurt Busiek has written a few issues of the mainstream superhero tale Avengers. Marvel Comics.

‘‘nuevo [new] traditionalist’’ or ‘‘reconstructionist.’’ The ‘‘reconstructed’’ superheroes imagined by Busiek had the capacity to inspire admiration and awe, as they did in their early days, but readers could also see the uncertain influence that their actions had on the world of mere mortals. As Busiek told Marv Wolfman in 42

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an interview on the Silver Bullet Comic Books Web site, ‘‘We put [superheroes] back as figures of wonder, without losing a sense of humanity.’’ Though many comics creators cite him as an influence, Busiek told Mescallado, ‘‘I don’t feel terribly like a trailblazer . . . . I wouldn’t mind being an influence in terms of technique, or in terms of people keeping their mouths shut about upcoming plot twists, but as far as direction goes, I’d just as soon people found their own, and embraced what works for them.’’

Creates a world of his own In Marvels, Busiek inherited an existing set of superheroes; in his next series, Kurt Busiek’s Astro City (later renamed simply Astro City), he invented a whole new world of superhero action. Astro City was based on the same premise as Marvels: that it would be interesting to tell superhero stories from the perspective of those living in their world. In the foreword to the first collected volume, called Kurt Busiek’s Astro City: Life in the Big City (1997), Busiek offered this explanation of his intent in the series: ‘‘We’ve been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it’s time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it’ll do.’’ With Astro City, Busiek invented an entirely new locale, Astro City, which was guarded over by the Samaritan, Silver Agent, The Black Rapier, Cleopatra, and an ever-shifting array of additional heroes. Because these superheroes had no backstory (the historical record of their deeds from other comic books), Busiek was able to introduce them and tell their stories strictly through the eyes of the citizens of Astro City. The material that Busiek discovered in Astro City was so rich that it has allowed the Astro City series to continue publishing, intermittently, from the first issue in 1995 up to 2005. Over the years, the series has also been collected into graphic novel format five times, and all five remain in print. Unlike Marvels, which was told by one character, the stories in Astro City are told by many characters, each with their own perspective on the strange universe they inhabit. In Astro City: Local Heroes (2005), for example, the first story, ‘‘Newcomers,’’ is told by a doorman at a local hotel. As he watches the superheroes of Honor Guard battle with colossal stone villains, he notices a small girl lying in the path of danger. Risking his own life, he rescues the girl from danger, then goes back to his job, thoroughly satisfied. In ‘‘Shining Armor,’’ an aging lady tells her lesbian daughter how she Kurt Busiek

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tried to win the heart of a superhero named Atomicus, only to drive him away, from her and from Astro City, by trying too hard to prove herself to him. The lady thinks she has failed, but Busiek reveals at the end of the story that the daughter has learned a great deal from her mother, and uses what she has learned as the superhero Flying Fox. Like all of Busiek’s Astro City tales, these focus on the human feelings of accomplishment, loss, and learning—feelings that are enriched by the characters’ encounters with and reactions to the superheroes that live and fight amongst them. In Astro City: The Tarnished Angel, Busiek demonstrates the flexibility of his approach by telling a novel-length tale through the eyes of a villain called the Steel-Jacketed Man—Steeljack for short. When the story begins, Steeljack is an aging and bitter man, just released from prison and eager to rebuild his life away from the crime of his youth. But it’s hard to find a regular job, and he is lured back into the criminal underworld of Astro City, only to uncover a plot by a failed superhero hoping to redeem his reputation by killing every criminal in the city. Determined to save the lives of downtrodden people who have made bad choices by turning to crime, Steeljack must overcome his own feelings of failure and uselessness in order to save the lives of his friends—with some help from Astro City’s superheroes. By the end, Steeljack has worked through his feelings of despair to find a reason to go on living. He has become, in his own way, a hero. Over the years, critics and reviewers in a variety of comics Web sites have heaped praise on the Astro City series. Reviewers have praised Busiek and his artists for creating an entire world from scratch, and they have acknowledged Busiek’s great skill at using everyday characters to help readers explore and understand their own fascination with comics and with superheroes. Mainstream reviewers have sometimes been less kind, when they’ve paid any attention at all: Library Journal’s Stephen Weiner found Astro City: Family Album ‘‘too slow’’ and only partially successful, and other reviews have been unenthusiastic. This mixed reaction illustrates the gulf that still exists between comics fans and the mainstream book-reviewing magazines. Like so many comics, Astro City is not the creation of a single man, despite the original title. Brent Anderson (1955–) has been the lead artist behind the project from the beginning, always providing the penciling (the pencil drawings) for the series, and sometimes completing the drawings with inking. Alex Ross—Busiek’s companion on Marvels—has created cover art, Will Blyberg 44

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has been the inker, Alex Sinclair has provided color, and the design studio Comicraft has provided lettering and design work.

Other stories, other battles While Marvels and Astro City have won Busiek acclaim for his creative vision, they are far from the only work he has done since his breakthrough in 1994. In fact, much of Busiek’s other work is also in the superhero genre, though typically in sequential stories that have seen multiple writers over the years. For example, Busiek has written single issues or sets of issues for Iron Man, Spider-Man, Avengers, and Thunderbolts. These more mainstream superhero tales, in which the superhero is the center of the action, provide Busiek with a way to keep in touch with the kinds of characters who form the supporting cast in his other work. In 2004, Busiek penned a heroic fantasy titled Arrowsmith: So Smart in Their Uniforms, illustrated by Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino. Set in 1915, Arrowsmith imagines a young flying ace who goes to fight in World War I (1914–18), though in Busiek’s alternate world the war is fought with magic, sorcery, zombies, and vampires as well as military weapons. Reviewers praised both the book’s storytelling and artwork. One of Busiek’s consistent interests has been bettering comics creators’ ownership and control of their work. ‘‘Traditionally, American comics have been overwhelmingly publisher-owned, with writers and artists having little if any control of their own work, or financial benefit when well-loved characters become movies, television series and such,’’ Busiek told GN, ‘‘unlike, say, book publishing, where it’s traditional for an author to own his or her work.’’ While this has been changing over the last few decades, the majority of mainstream comic books are still company-owned. Busiek and several other comics stars, among them George Perez and Mark Waid, decided to do something about their frustration with typical publishing arrangements. In 1999 they formed a publishing partnership called Gorilla Comics, which promised full creative control and financial benefits to creators. With Gorilla, Busiek teamed with illustrator Stuart Immomen to release six issues of Shockrockets, a science-fiction adventure about a teenage boy who joins an elite squadron of pilots, flying hi-tech aircraft built from salvaged alien technology and protecting Earth in the wake of a devastating space war. Almost immediately, however, Gorilla’s financial backing dried up and the partnership disbanded. Fans of Shockrockets were pleased when the series was published as Kurt Busiek

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the graphic novel Shockrockets: We Have Ignition in 2004. School Library Journal reviewer Matthew Moffett wrote that ‘‘this welldetailed, well-thought-out title stands to rival many of today’s better science-fiction novels.’’ Following the demise of Gorilla Comics, Busiek continued his intermittent work on Astro City and teamed with publisher Dark Horse to release a new set of stories about Conan, a barbarian swordsman who pits his strength and wits against wizards, monsters, and corrupt civilization in an ancient fantasy world. Busiek and artists Cary Nord (penciller) and Dave Stewart (colorist) made no attempt to account for the many variations on the original Conan stories that have appeared over the years. Instead, they returned to the originals, created in the mid-1930s by Robert E. Howard (1906–1936). In an interview posted on the Comic Book Resources Web site, Busiek claimed that he saw a long life for the series and said ‘‘I’d love to be around for the whole thing. Beginning to end, from the birth of Conan on a Cimmerian battlefield to the adventures Howard hinted he had after the last Conan story, ‘The Hour of the Dragon.’ It’d take years—more than 20 years, I’d guess, to tell it all—but I think it’d be a blast.’’ With Busiek’s prolific storytelling ability, it seems that comics fans know what to look for in the bookstores in years to come.

For More Information Periodicals Flagg, Gordon. ‘‘Busiek, Kurt and others. Local Heroes.’’ Booklist 101, no. 12 (February 15, 2005): 1070. Moffett, Matthew L. ‘‘Busiek, Kurt. Shockrockets: We Have Ignition.’’ School Library Journal 51, no. 3 (March 2005): 239. Weiner, Stephen. ‘‘Kurt Busiek’s Astro City: Family Album.’’ Library Journal 124, no. 7 (April 15, 1999): 82.

Web Sites ‘‘Astro City #1/2.’’ DC Comics. http://www.dccomics.com/features/astro/ astrocity05.pdf (accessed on May 3, 2006). Astro City Rocket. http://www.astrocity.us/cgi-bin/index.cgi (accessed on May 3, 2006). Brent Anderson Art. http://www.brentandersonart.com/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). 46

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Doane, Alan David. ‘‘The Comic Book Galaxy Interviews: Kurt Busiek.’’ Comic Book Galaxy. http://www.comicbookgalaxy.com/busiek.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Lewis, A. David. ‘‘To Be Kurt, Not Short.’’ PopMatters. http://www.popmatters. com/comics/interview-busiek1.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Mescallado, Ray. ‘‘Trimmings: Kurt Busiek.’’ The Comics Journal. http:// www.tcj.com/3_online/t_busiek.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Osterberg, Matt. ‘‘An ‘Astro’ Interview with Kurt Busiek’’ CC Productions. http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/3362/kurt.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Wolfman, Marv. ‘‘Speaking with . . . Kurt Busiek—Part One.’’ Silver Bullet Comic Books. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/wolfman/ 103145870776678.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Yarbrough, Beau. ‘‘Swords and the Sorcerer: Busiek’s Fantastic Worlds of ‘Conan’ and ‘Arrowsmith.’’’ CBR. http://www.comicbookresources.com/ news/newsitem.cgi?id=2772 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through direct correspondence with Kurt Busiek in September 2005.

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Paul Chadwick. Paul Chadwick. Reproduced by permission.

Paul Chadwick Born September 3, 1957 (Medina, Washington) American author, artist

Concrete is the most unlikely of heroes. On the outside, he is a rock—literally. He is a giant man made of stone, weighing fully 1,200 pounds, and capable of regenerating chips and fractures in his stony exterior. On the inside, he is a man, full of self-doubt and longing, vulnerable to emotional slights, yet aspiring to somehow live up to the expectations created by his weighty physical presence. In the series Concrete, published intermittently since 1986, author/artist Paul Chadwick has created one of the most compelling, complex, and likeable characters in modern comics. Along the way, he has also earned several prestigious Eisner Awards for his work on the series, as well as two dozen other industry awards and nominations. According to comics giant Frank Miller (1957–; see entry), who wrote the introduction to the graphic novel compilation Concrete: Killer Smile, ‘‘Concrete is one of several comic books that re-defines the superhero genre, taking it light-years

‘‘Concrete [is] such a vastly unusual and personal interpretation of the superhero that there is some debate as to whether or not Concrete is a superhero comic at all.’’ RENOWNED GRAPHIC ARTIST FRANK MILLER

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Best-Known Works Concrete Graphic Novels Concrete: Fragile Creature (1994).

Concrete: Short Stories 1990–1995 (1996).

Concrete: Killer Smile (1995).

Other

Concrete: Think Like a Mountain (1997).

The World Below (1999).

Strange Armor: The Origin of Concrete (1998).

The World Below II (2000).

Concrete: Human Dilemma (2006).

(Writer) Star Wars: Empire. Vol. 2 (graphic novel) (2004).

Concrete Compilations Concrete: Complete Short Stories 1986– 1989 (1990).

(Penciller) Y: The Last Man—One Small Step (2004).

The Complete Concrete (contains Concrete #1–10) (1994).

(Scriptwriter) The Matrix Online (online video game) (2005–).

from its origins, imbuing [filling] it with an articulate, adult sensibility and a modern understanding of politics, environment, and human psychology.’’

Plans to become an illustrator ‘‘I had the classic background for someone who spends their life up to their elbows in fantasy and the imagination,’’ Paul Chadwick commented to Graphic Novelists (GN). Chadwick was born on September 3, 1957, in Medina, Washington, a wealthy suburb of Seattle that lies on the eastern bank of Lake Washington. In the 1990s, Medina became known as the suburb of choice for wealthy Microsoft executives when company founder and billionaire Bill Gates (1955–) built his massive, half-underground mansion there. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, it was a modest community for engineers working for Boeing, the local aerospace giant. Chadwick was the youngest of two children. His parents divorced when he was just five, and his mother’s remarriage when he was eleven left him with a great deal of time to himself. As he told GN, ‘‘Comics, science fiction, and, importantly, fanzine fandom were my emotional sustenance.’’ (Fanzines are amateur magazines created by comic book and science fiction fans to share their interests and thoughts with fellow fans.) 50

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By the time he began to think about choosing a career, comics had lost some of its fascination. ‘‘The field seemed to be dying in the 1970s, for one thing,’’ Chadwick told GN, ‘‘and I felt a pressure to spend my life doing something more ‘adult.’ ’’ Still interested in art, however, he thought that he would pursue more legitimate, or mainstream, illustration: creating movie posters, magazine art, book covers, and other such work. He got a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Art Center College of Design— one of the nation’s leading commercial art programs—in 1979, though he also spent one year at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he drew illustrations for the school paper, The Daily. During his teen years and through college, Chadwick stayed in touch with friends from his fanzine days, including the members of an amateur press alliance called Apa-5, many of whom would go on to form the comic book and graphic novel publishing house Dark Horse Comics. Fresh out of college, Chadwick gained valuable experience in a variety of commercial arenas. He provided illustrations for video packages, magazine covers, and movie posters. For a time he worked as an art director and storyboard artist for movie producers. (A storyboard artist illustrates the scenes that will be filmed so that the director can plan filming angles and lighting.) He also worked briefly at Walt Disney Studios and did freelance work for other major Hollywood studios. Chadwick contributed to films such as Strange Brew (1983), Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), The Big Easy (1986), Miracle Mile (1989), and After Midnight (1990). By the mid-1980s, the comic book industry—which Chadwick had once feared as a career dead-end—was undergoing a period of revitalization. Creators such as Frank Miller and Alan Moore (1953–; see entry) were introducing critically acclaimed works, and publishers began to realize that they could market comic books to more mature and discerning readers. Moreover, some comic book artists were leaving the big publishing companies like DC Comics and Marvel to take full creative control over their creations. Chadwick—friends with many of those involved in this revolution—saw what was happening and decided it was time to join in. ‘‘It was worth leaving the thrilling and lucrative movie business . . . to craft stories that were all mine, requiring minimal intervention by others on their trip from my mind to the reader’s,’’ he was quoted in Authors and Artists for Young Adults. With this decision, Chadwick was on the road back to the world of comics. Paul Chadwick

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Turns to Concrete Chadwick developed the idea for Concrete in 1983 but, despite sending it out to many publishers, he could find no one interested in the work of a rookie author/artist. Believing that he needed to establish a name in comics, Chadwick landed a job working with Archie Goodwin (1937–1998), a legendary comics writer and editor who was then the publisher at Marvel Comics. They teamed up on a comic called Dazzler. Though Chadwick loved learning from Goodwin, he hated the silly superhero heroics of the book, and he hated to see the way his careful penciling (the line drawings that form the basis for comic art) was muddied and obscured by careless inkers (who filled in the drawings with color or shading). Perhaps more than anything, this early work convinced him to devote more effort to Concrete, where he could control the entire creative process. Chadwick’s efforts to develop his Concrete stories continued, but not without a major misstep along the way, as he related in an interview on the Movie Poop Shoot Web site. ‘‘I developed my Concrete ideas in a sketchbook. I carried it everywhere. To my horror, I left it in the studio audience seating of the JEOPARDY! quiz show, when my girlfriend was a contestant. I never got it back. She lost. Man, we were depressed.’’ By 1985, however, he had managed to interest a number of publishers in his series. After getting publishing offers from eight companies, Chadwick narrowed down his list to two: Marvel Comics, one of the giants in American comic book publishing; and Dark Horse, a new company founded by some young comics lovers who wanted to give artists more creative control of their work (see sidebar). Despite being a start-up publisher, Dark Horse matched the money offered by Marvel and, Chadwick told Movie Poop Shoot, they ‘‘just wanted it more. Being appreciated matters. . . . Dark Horse has been wonderful to me.’’ With a firm publishing agreement for Concrete in hand, Chadwick returned to live in his native Washington, and he now lives on one of the San Juan Islands with his wife, Elizabeth, and his son. The very first Concrete story, ‘‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’’ appeared in Dark Horse’s early comic anthology, published in 1986. It introduced the series’ three main characters: Concrete, who began life as Ron Lithgow, a speechwriter for a U.S. senator, now a man of rock after being transformed by aliens living in an underground cave (though his cover story is that he is a cyborg created by the U.S. government); Dr. Maureen Vonnegut, 52

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A New Horse in the Race Ever since the late 1930s, two comic book publishers—DC Comics and Marvel Comics—had thoroughly dominated the comic books market. But by the early 1980s, a number of comics fans had grown tired of the same old superhero stories cranked out by these comics factories. One comics fan who decided to do something about it was Mike Richardson. Richardson owned a string of comics shops in the Portland, Oregon, area, and he decided that someone needed to step up and encourage more innovation in the comics industry. In 1986, he founded Dark Horse Comics, and among the first people he signed up was Paul Chadwick, creator of Concrete. Dark Horse began by publishing anthologies, or collections of innovative comic

work by a variety of authors. Soon, it began to produce comics series of its own by such big names in the industry as Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Sergio Aragone´s, Neil Gaiman (see entries), and many others. Dark Horse was a major contributor to the boom in comics that revived the industry in the late 1990s, and it also helped feed the graphic novel boom of the late 1990s and 2000s. Over the years, Dark Horse has grown considerably. By the mid-2000s, the Oregonbased company had become the third-largest comics publisher in the United States. Dark Horse also produced books, publishing a number of titles under license—including Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer— and produced comics-related merchandise.

a biologist who sees Concrete as a living laboratory, and to whom Concrete is deeply if secretly attracted; and Larry Munro, a literature grad student who is hired to look after Concrete’s affairs and becomes his best friend. It also introduced readers to the main concerns of the series: to the physical difficulties Concrete faces as he learns to live in a world in which his size and strength render him a monster, and to the psychological difficulties he faces as he comes to terms with the claims others make on him, but also as he reconciles his own aspirations toward heroism and greatness with his essentially shy, retiring nature. This story set the stage for one of the most interesting comics of the last decades.

Expanding Concrete’s world Concrete began as a series of short stories, published in Dark Horse anthology magazines, though they soon began to be published individually, as Concrete comic books. With time, Chadwick realized that he wanted to develop longer, more complicated stories, and these stories lent themselves to being collected in graphic Paul Chadwick

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novel format. Concrete: Fragile Creature brought together the four stories in this series in 1994; Concrete: Killer Smile brought together four more connected stories in 1995. Concrete: Think Like a Mountain collected the seven stories in this series and appeared in 1997 to great acclaim; it was the longest, most ambitious work yet. Chadwick told Comics Journal in the late 1990s that it was his best work to date: ‘‘There’s the most substance there, and I think my artistic skills had finally arrived, and I just put my heart and soul for many years into that one.’’ After Think Like a Mountain, Chadwick’s production on the series slowed as he ventured into other, higher-paying work. Finally, late in 2004, Chadwick began publishing the individual stories of Human Dilemma, which had reached six issues by late 2005 and was set to release as a graphic novel in April 2006. Whether they are in graphic novels or in the several collected volumes of stories, all of Chadwick’s Concrete work remains in print. Fans and critics of comic books, especially superhero comic books, often speak of character development, but in most superhero comics, character development is incidental to the main story—it is something that happens in the brief gaps between fight scenes and the main business of saving (or destroying) the world. In Concrete, the ratio of action to character development is almost completely reversed: Concrete acts—he climbs Mt. Everest in ‘‘Everest, Solo’’; he walks across the bottom of the sea in ‘‘The Transatlantic Swim’’; he apprehends a madman who threatens his friend Larry in the graphic novel Concrete: Killer Smile—but the action is not the center of the story. Instead, we learn what it feels like for Concrete to act: we see and hear him ponder the challenge of a mountain, for example, and we sense his reluctance to resort to violence in order to save Larry. In Concrete: Think Like a Mountain, Chadwick devotes much of the story to unfolding Concrete’s reluctant embrace of environmental activism. Concrete is not the only character to develop, either: over the course of the series, readers learn a great deal about Larry—who begins bumbling and self-absorbed, and who is improved by his interactions with Concrete—and Maureen— whose clinical detachment in dealing with Concrete slowly breaks down as she comes to recognize the humanity that lies inside his rocky exterior. Chadwick’s focus on characterization, both within individual stories and graphic novels, and over the course of the series as a whole, has led reviewers to point to Concrete as one of the best examples of the ability of comics to transcend the limitations of a genre that many consider only good for simplistic, 54

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Author and artist Paul Chadwick’s award-winning comic Concrete depicts an unlikely hero, made of rock on the outside and man on the inside. Dark Horse Comics.

juvenile stories. As Andrew Arnold wrote in a review of Concrete: Human Dilemma on the Time Web site: ‘‘Paul Chadwick’s . . . Concrete tales prove the superhero genre has no inherent literary limitations except the ones brought by a character’s real-life role in the culture.’’ Paul Chadwick

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Another hallmark of Chadwick’s work on Concrete has been the willingness to have his characters explore difficult psychological and political issues. In the early days of the series, Chadwick was keenly interested in how people reacted to Concrete, and how his sheer physical density impacted the world. Others are constantly using Concrete—as an attraction at a party, as a bodyguard, as a spokesperson for their cause—and he battles with his conflicted desires to do the right thing, to advance causes he cares about, while still protecting his self-respect and dignity. One of the most powerful emotions Concrete experiences is longing, especially his longing to be treated as a normal person once more. The greatest object of Concrete’s longing is, of course, Maureen. One of the running side stories is Maureen’s failure to see Concrete as more than an object of study, and Concrete’s intense awareness of her as a woman. The tensions of this relationship—sustained for nearly two decades— were resolved in Concrete: Human Dilemma (2004), when Maureen finally acknowledged Concrete’s sexuality. Concrete’s other great desire is for communion with the earth. When he is most estranged from society, Concrete lies flat on the earth, feeling its stillness, allowing animals to run across his rocky skin. In Concrete: Think Like a Mountain, he covers himself with earth, thinking ‘‘Wish I could bury myself. Be part of this hill, aloof. See the pain of the world as transitory, trivial. Like passing weather.’’ In numerous still, quiet scenes scattered through the series, Concrete longs to merge with the earth around him, for it is only the earth and its creatures that don’t judge him to be some kind of freak. Concrete’s complex personality and his longing to do good have several times led him into complex political situations. In Think Like a Mountain, Concrete is approached by members of the radical environmental group Earth First! who want him to write a story that will help them stop the cutting down of a tract of virgin forest in Washington state. Concrete fears the extremism of the group and tries to keep his distance from them, but he is slowly drawn in by their love of the earth. In the end, the forest is saved, but not before Earth First!’s tactics and Concrete’s motivations are put to the test. In Human Dilemma, Concrete takes on the role of spokesperson for an organization dedicated to population control. He is soon plunged into the high-pressure world of media exposure, which sorely tests his commitment, as do the side stories of Concrete’s realization of a physical relationship with Maureen and Larry’s own problem with getting a girlfriend pregnant. Reviewing the work on the ComicReaders Web site, Chad Boudreau noted that 56

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‘‘Paul Chadwick and his character Concrete don’t try to be a political voice or social conscience on [population control.] Together they offer up the idea for discussion, and even though Concrete himself will most likely come to a decision, Chadwick presents enough information on both sides of the cause that you are able to sit down and ask questions of yourself. . . .’’ Chadwick’s capacity to address serious political issues in all their complexity, all the while telling compelling, character-driven stories, makes him a real rarity among graphic novelists.

Beyond Concrete Critics and Chadwick himself recognize that Concrete is by far his most important work. But this does not mean that Chadwick has not tried his hand at a variety of other work. Between 1999 and 2000, Chadwick worked with his wife, herself an artist, and Ron Randall on a series called The World Below; darker and more sinister than his other work, the series lasted eight issues before it folded. At about the same time, Chadwick began to seek out more collaborative work. In an interview on the Silver Bullet Comics Web site, he told Mike Jozic: ‘‘This is a lonely business. You sit in a room, alone, for long hours. We’re wired by evolution, endless generations going out on group hunts, to thrive in activities involving a shared goal. It’s really the only way people feel entirely fulfilled.’’ Fans of Chadwick’s solo work are likely to find some of his collaborative works less than satisfying. Chadwick joined the vast Star Wars franchise in the early 2000s when he wrote six issues telling the story of Biggs Darklighter for the Star Wars Empire monthly graphic novel series. Chadwick told Jozic that working for a story where so much that happens was determined by others was ‘‘somewhat agonizing.’’ Chadwick as much as admitted that he was not the best fit for the series, for while the morality of the Star Wars universe is simple and clear-cut, ‘‘I see the world as paradoxical and ironic. Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. Anger is right sometimes, wrong other times,’’ he told Jozic. Chadwick also filled in for original artist Pia Guerra on several issues of the series Y: The Last Man, which Guerra created with Brian K. Vaughan. Other collaborations of Chadwick’s have been far more successful. For example, Chadwick has worked since 1999 with the Matrix movie creators Andy and Larry Wachowski to create several comic books based on the movies, and also to write an ongoing series of scenarios for the hugely successful Matrix video games. Chadwick has also hinted that he has been working with science fiction writer Harlan Ellison on a comic series called Seven Against Chaos, Paul Chadwick

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a story inspired by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film Seven Samurai. Over the years, Chadwick has also lent his talents as both a writer and an artist to a variety of other comics. In the end, however, both critics and Chadwick recognize—as Chadwick once told Comics Journal—that Concrete ‘‘is my one shot to be remembered at this point, and to effect the wider culture, and just get my view of the world into the most minds.’’

For More Information Books Chadwick, Paul; introduction by Frank Miller. Concrete: Killer Smile. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 1995. Periodicals Buckendorff, Jennifer. ‘‘Choosing the Red Pill.’’ Seattle Times (March 14, 2005): E1. Earth First! (June 20, 1996): 33. ‘‘Interview with Paul Chadwick.’’ Computer Gaming World (January 1, 2005). Review of The Complete Concrete. Booklist (May 1, 1998): 1511.

Web Sites Arnold, Andrew. ‘‘Heavy.’’ Time. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/ arnold/article/0,9565,1070506,00.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Boudreau, Chad. ‘‘Comics with a Social Conscience.’’ Comic Readers. http://www.comicreaders.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1269 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Dark Horse Comics. http://www.darkhorse.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Hick, Darren. ‘‘Trimmings: Paul Chadwick.’’ Comics Journal. http:// www.tcj.com/3_online/t_chadwick.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Jozic, Mike. ‘‘A Conversation with Paul Chadwick.’’ Silver Bullet Comics. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/ 105223922414535.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Mason, Marc. ‘‘Comics Interview Special: Paul Chadwick.’’ Movie Poop Shoot. http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/movie/98.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained from direct e-mail correspondence with Paul Chadwick in September and October of 2005. 58

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CLAMP AGEHA OHKAWA Born March 2, 1967 (Osaka, Japan) MOKONA Born June 16, 1968 (Kyoto, Japan) TSUBAKI NEKOI Born January 21, 1969 (Kyoto, Japan) SATSUKI IGARASHI Born February 8, 1969 (Kyoto, Japan) Japanese manga creators

The Japanese manga team CLAMP is arguably the most popular creator of manga in the world, and certainly the leading creator of shojo manga, or manga intended for girls (though CLAMP produces all varieties of manga). Hugely popular in their native Japan since the early 1990s, CLAMP’s works first came to the attention of American readers in 1996, when the publisher Viz released an English translation of X/1999. After 1998 the publisher TOKYOPOP (then known as Mixx) bought the U.S. rights to CLAMP’s works and began to publish a wide variety of their titles, beginning with Magic Knight Rayearth. As with many Japanese manga, a number of CLAMP’s works have also been made into anime (animation), either as a television series or, as with X, as a featurelength film. As with many Japanese manga artists, CLAMP maintains a low public profile. While their works are wildly popular among young readers and are carried by most major bookstores and libraries with good graphic novel collections, the authors themselves remain little known. Japanese manga artists are known to maintain a certain air of mystery around their personal lives, but the members of CLAMP take this to new levels.

Tokyo Babylon ‘‘is a prime example of the sheer talent that makes CLAMP such a publishing phenomenon here in the States.’’ JOHN PARKER

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Best-Known Works Graphic Novels (with dates of English publication) X/1999 10 vols. (1996–2005). Magic Knight Rayearth I and II 6 vols. (1998–2003). Cardcaptor Sakura 6 vols. (2000–04). Clover 4 vols. (2001). Wish 4 vols. (2002–03). Angelic Layer 5 vols. (2002–03). Chobits 8 vols. (2002–03). CLAMP School Detectives 3 vols. (2003). Cardcaptor Sakura: Master of the Clow 6 vols. (2004). Tokyo Babylon 7 vols. (2004–05). Legal Drug 3 vols. (2004–05). Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle 7 vols. (2004–05). XXXHolic 5 vols. (2004–05). CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators 3 vols. (2004–05). RG Veda 3 vols. (2005). Please note: CLAMP’s works were published in a different order in Japan, and many series are ongoing.

Origins of CLAMP CLAMP originated in 1989 as a twelve-woman group known as Amarythia. Amarythia was a dojinshi, a Japanese term for a group of manga fans who self-publish their work. Most dojinshi only share their works with friends and fellow fans, but Amarythia was one of the few groups to find a publisher and make a living from their work. Over the course of their first year, the group changed: by 1990 it was down to seven members and had changed its name to CLAMP. The group’s first original manga was titled RG Veda. Loosely based on the Vedas (Hindu religious texts), RG Veda is a fantasy tale about an epic battle between the gods. Like many of CLAMP’s works, it combines stories of love and romance with intense action scenes, some of them quite violent, which is typical 60

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of Japanese manga. RG Veda was published in ten volumes in Japan, though only the first two volumes have been released in the United States. Despite the success of their first major work, three more members of CLAMP left the group by 1993. The four members of CLAMP who continued the group were Ageha Ohkawa, Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi. (These are the names each member was using as of 2005, but it should be noted that in 2004 the members all changed their names slightly to celebrate the team’s fifteenth anniversary. Ohkawa was formerly Nanase Ohkawa; Mokona was Mokona Apapa; Nekoi was Mick Nekoi; and Igarashi’s name was unchanged in English.) Each of the members plays a distinct role on the team: Ageha Ohkawa is the team leader; she creates the stories and scripts and manages the business of the group, including sales and distribution. Mokona is the lead artist; she is in charge of character design and coloring for book titles. Tsubaki Nekoi is primarily the art assistant and chibi artist (the artist who draws young children), but she was the lead artist on the titles Wish and Legal Drug. Satsuki Igarashi is the art and design assistant, working on all areas of the detailed illustrations in the CLAMP publications. In Japan, manga stories are first published in manga magazines, which may be issued weekly or monthly. These magazines range in length from 200 to 850 pages and contain a number of stories from various authors and artists. CLAMP published most of their works in such manga magazines. Once a story has run for a time, it is collected in a tank obon, or compilation volume, which brings together a set of stories in a series. It is these tankobon that have provided the basis for the CLAMP manga that has been published in the United States. Many of CLAMP’s stories began, and some ended, in the 1990s, and some continue to publish through 2005 (including Kobata, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, and XXXHolic). But the stories that reach the United States are those that CLAMP’s American publisher, TOKYOPOP, feels will be a success (see sidebar).

CLAMP in the United States The first CLAMP story to become a success in the United States was Magic Knight Rayearth. It featured three fourteen-year-old girls—Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ryuzaki, and Fuu Hououji—who were transported to the world of Cephiro to become the Magic Knights. Along the way the girls run into a number of interesting and dangerous characters and they learn how to deal with themselves and those around them. The book combined beautiful panel work CLAMP

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TOKYOPOP, Viz, and Del Rey: Bringing Manga to the West Though manga has a long history in Japan, dating back to the nineteenth century, it is still a fairly recent phenomenon in the United States. In Japan, millions of people read manga every day, and the most popular stories are converted into anime (pronounced an-i-may), or animated cartoons on television and film. In the United States, anime was popular long before manga books were available. Television cartoons such as Kimba the White Lion (1965) and Speed Racer (1967–68) are some of the most popular early anime series to have reached the United States. There are a number of obstacles involved in translating Japanese manga for an English-speaking audience. All the word balloons must be erased and English words inserted in their place. Sound effects rendered in Japanese characters make no sense in English, and they are often removed or left, untranslated. Moreover, in Japan manga, comics read from right to left, both on the page and in the book as a whole. When this format was transformed into the left-to-right style used in the West,

some of the transitions no longer made sense. Finally, Western readers are not accustomed to the Japanese openness about sexuality and nudity, and many titles have been considered obscene, though they are intended for a general reader. Despite these obstacles, by the 1990s several publishers began to publish translations of Japanese manga in the United States. The first to succeed on a large scale was Viz, an affiliate of Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. Viz was followed into the American market by Mixx, which became TOKYOPOP. Based in Los Angeles, TOKYOPOP is credited with successfully marketing manga to American teenagers, leading to the current popularity of the form. Beginning in 2004, Del Rey Manga (a division of publishing giant Random House) entered the manga market by promising books that were truer to their original form than those offered by the competition. Two of their first four books were created by CLAMP, one of Japan’s most popular manga creators.

and outstanding inking to draw the reader into the magical battles and mystical world, and introduced American readers to the combination of romance, humor, and action that has become CLAMP’s trademark. Magic Knight Rayearth is six volumes long; the anime series based on it contains forty-nine episodes. The next CLAMP series to be successful in the United States is called Chobits. Chobits tells the story of a struggling male student named Hideki Motosuwa who happens upon a persecon in a junk pile—a persecon is a walking computer that looks like a young girl and is designed to perform errands. He takes her home to his 62

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apartment and names her Chi. It turns out that Chi is an extremely unusual persecon, and Hideki spends the rest of the manga trying to figure out Chi’s origins while developing a very interesting relationship with the persecon. Published in eight volumes, Chobits was a major hit in Japan and is one of CLAMP’s best-selling manga in the United States. Though created to appeal to teenage boys, Chobits has a huge fan base of older fans, both male and female. One of the earliest of CLAMP’s manga series, CLAMP School Detectives, was published in Japan in 1992 but did not reach the United States until 2003. The story is set in an all-ages school that attracts the best and brightest students from all over Japan. Among the top students are three friends, aged ten through twelve, who join together to form a detective agency. The three-volume story allows the detectives to solve a variety of crimes. In his review of the series in Library Journal, Steve Raiteri feels that though the leading characters are very mature, ‘‘their intelligence, humor, and respectful treatment of others make this charming rather than strange. The stories can be silly, but they’re light and sweet.’’ The series has found adoring readers in the upper elementary and middle school age range. CLAMP

A young girl reading one of CLAMP’s comics. AP Images.

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CLAMP’s bold worlds intertwine As stories like Magic Knight Rayearth, Chobits, and CLAMP School Detectives reveal, CLAMP is a group that is capable of creating material for all ages, dealing with all kinds of subject matter. Though they are particularly noted for the quality of their shojo manga, which focuses on clothing, romance, and emotion, they are equally skilled at action-packed stories. One such story is X/1999, which began publication in 1992 in Japan and has already reached eighteen volumes; publisher Viz released this series in the United States beginning in 1996. X/1999 is an extremely complex story about six characters, all with magic powers, who converge on the city of Tokyo to fight to either save or destroy the human race. Unlike many other CLAMP stories, this series is extremely violent, containing numerous bloody scenes, and isn’t typically considered for younger readers. In 1996—with the creation of the series ongoing—X/1999 was made into an anime movie in Japan, and then repackaged for release in the United States in 2000. Reviewing the U.S. version, Variety’s Dennis Harvey wrote that the film ‘‘will satisfy diehard anime fans,’’ but ‘‘Western viewers will likely find disjointed climax after climax mindless diverting for a while, then ponderous.’’ Harvey’s reaction to the film characterizes many Western reviewers’ reactions to manga as a whole: unless the reader is immersed in the story and the storytelling conventions of manga, it can sometimes be difficult to comprehend. Beginning in 2004, the Del Rey manga publisher began to release in the United States two innovative new series from CLAMP: XXXHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Tsubasa brings back the most popular CLAMP couple ever, Sakura and Syaoran, in a new story in which ‘‘Princess’’ Sakura loses her memories in a mysterious way. Devastated by the loss, Sakura and friends set out to get her memories back by traveling to different worlds that just happen to contain all of the CLAMP characters ever created. XXXHolic is in many ways a companion story, and it tells the tale of Yuko, a witch who grants wishes, and Watanuki Kimihiro, a teenage boy who sees visions and wants to get rid of them. As Watanuki and Yoko come to know each other, their adventures lead them into contact with characters in Tsubasa and a range of other CLAMP stories. For longtime CLAMP fans, these two new series offer a great chance to relive their enjoyment and knowledge of past works, inviting them into a complicated universe of CLAMP’s making. Fans have followed 64

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the cross-connections and have tracked them on several Web sites devoted to CLAMP and its works. Del Rey’s work with CLAMP was praised for staying closer to the Japanese publication style than other publishers, and it included original Japanese sound effects, colored pages, notes from translators, and a range of other aids to help the reader appreciate the cultural differences. CLAMP has published many other series in the United States, and even more in Japan. In 2004 the group released a new series in the United States called Tokyo Babylon. Its works are also sold in the United Kingdom and Australia, and are finding readers in Spanish translation in South America, especially Brazil and Argentina. According to Nicole Pelham, manga author and publisher with NDP Comics in Seattle, Washington, ‘‘The key to CLAMP’s popularity rests on the storylines; their plot twists and inner stories have you waiting on bated breath for the next issue. CLAMP also does a great job of creating characters that are easy to relate to, and characters that struggle with every day problems like love, friendship, and self image while being thrown headlong into fantastic scenarios. Finally, the group’s three artists mesmerize readers with their ability to bring the stories to life.’’ With such skills, the women of CLAMP seem likely to have a long career bringing Japanese manga to the United States and beyond.

For More Information Periodicals Harvey, Dennis. Review of X. Variety (May 1, 2000): 33. Mitchell, Elvis. ‘‘Even Animated, Poor Tokyo Can’t Get a Moment’s Peace.’’ New York Times (March 24, 2000): B16. PR Newswire (September 16, 2003). Raiteri, Steve. Review of Clamp School Detectives. Library Journal (November 1, 2003): 60; (September 1, 2004): 128.

Web Sites Avila, Kat. ‘‘15 Years of the All-Woman Manga Studio CLAMP.’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/nov04/art_1104_4.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). CLAMP. http://www.clamp-net.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Del Rey Online. http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/manga/index.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). CLAMP

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Smith, Lesley. ‘‘Happy Birthday, CLAMP!’’ Animefringe. http://www. animefringe.com/magazine/2005/04/feature/01.php (accessed on May 3, 2006). TOKYOPOP. http://www.tokyopop.com (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this essay came from direct correspondence with manga author and publisher Nicole Pelham in September of 2005.

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Daniel Clowes. ª Jody Anthony Cortes/Corbis.

Daniel Clowes Born April 14, 1961 (Chicago, Illinois) American author, illustrator

Even though he was not yet born in the 1950s and was a mere youngster throughout the 1960s, Daniel Clowes has created a sharp-eyed view of the American popular culture of these two decades—and beyond. He does not, however, present this culture as kitsch (something that is of poor quality or appealing to those with little taste). Rather, he fashions morality tales that comment on the ironies and hypocrisies of American life. He examines a range of themes, including the alienation of youth, the tackiness of middle-class America, the pressure to conform and suppress one’s individuality, the subtle and not-so-subtle cruelties that people impose on each other, and the ultimate, profound aloneness of the individual. Clowes’s characters do not live in fantasy worlds populated by muscle-bound superheroes or alien invaders. They are, instead, prisoners in cheerless worlds. They are isolated, dejected, and

‘‘I felt these really talented people would do comics and then they would just stop at the level designed for a 13 year old. They would assume there was nothing more you could do with it than do superhero comics . . . . I just felt there was so much more you could do with it if you just kept going with it and trying new things . . . .’’

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Best-Known Works Graphic Novels The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection (1989). Lout Rampage! (1991). Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993). The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn: A Golden Treasury of His Complete Works (1994).

Other (Contributor) Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly (2000). (Screenplay, with Terry Zwigoff) Ghost World (2001). (Compiler, with Elder) Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art (2003).

Ghost World (1997). Caricature: Nine Stories (1998). David Boring (2000).

(Screenplay, with Terry Zwigoff) Art School Confidential (2005).

20th Century Eightball (2002). Ice Haven (2005).

ever-so-slightly off-center: not so much characters as broadly conceived caricatures of an array of American archetypes (model character types). Clowes draws attention to the airheads and phonies who embrace shallowness, vanity, and mediocrity— and, on more than one occasion, he has even made fun of himself and his own admitted eccentricities. Yet his primary characters, usually articulate, nerdy outsiders with entertainingly fleshed-out personalities, are deeply human in their desires and feelings. The younger ones may relish their outsider status, but their older counterparts are in no way role models. They are outcasts and tragic figures. Appropriately, Clowes’s most prominent drawing style is strictly mid-twentieth-century American: straightforward and graphic, and inspired by 1950s advertising art. Depending upon his subject matter, however, he has utilized a range of styles. His drawings can be grotesquely cartoonish or can employ intricate coloring and shading. Even though his perspective is strictly alternative and independent, Clowes is one of a select group of comic artists whose cutting-edge work has earned him acknowledgement outside the sometimes closed world of comic book/graphic novel fans. In fact, his creations have adorned the pages of such establishment publishing pillars as The New Yorker and Esquire. 68

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Is captivated by comics Daniel Clowes was born in Chicago on April 14, 1961, and grew up on the city’s South Side. His artistic vision is a by-product of a dysfunctional childhood. His parents divorced when he was a year old; he was a shy child and a loner. Around the age of three, he became fascinated by his older brother’s comic book collection. He was too young to decipher the words accompanying the images, so he concocted his own plot lines. Eventually, he began sketching replicas of his favorite comics. In particular, he was an avid reader of Mad magazine and Superman. After his stepfather died in a stock car race crash, young Daniel spent quality time with his grandparents. They gave him the attention he otherwise lacked, and their traditional way of life fascinated him and further sparked his creativity. Life was far less pleasant when he spent time in the homes of his mother and biological father, where he was given little attention. Clowes was forming a view of the world that would manifest itself in his comics. By the time he reached high school, he was drawing regularly. He was determined to see his work published and submitted his creations to magazines, though without early success.

Attends art school After completing high school, Clowes entered Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He was determined to polish his skills and become a comic strip artist but was discouraged by his teachers, who viewed his chosen field as a questionable art form. ‘‘Every professor I had discouraged me and said, ‘You’ll never make a living from that; nobody cares, nobody will think of you as an artist’, ’’ he explained to Carina Chocano in a 2000 interview on the Salon Web site. ‘‘And now I realize, when I look back on them, that they were absolute failures.’’ Clowes graduated from Pratt in 1984 and spent the next year attempting to jumpstart his career as a freelance illustrator. Eventually, he returned to Chicago. Starting in 1985 and continuing for four years, he contributed to Cracked, a Mad magazine clone. Also in 1985, he submitted several comic strips to Fantagraphics, the Seattlebased comic publishing house. His strips featured a character named Lloyd Llewellyn, a 1950s-1960s-style private detective. Happily, Fantagraphics agreed to publish Lloyd Llewellyn. The character was unveiled in issue #13 of the comic book Love & Rockets, and then debuted in its own series in 1986. Clowes’s elation was short-lived, however, as the comic was cancelled after six issues. Daniel Clowes

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The 1999 graphic novel Caricature contained nine different comic stories. Fantagraphics Books.

Earns initial acclaim Clowes responded by creating Eightball, his breakthrough series, which Fantagraphics first published in 1989. Over the years, Eightball has featured an array of characters and continuing storylines. ‘‘With Eightball,’’ Clowes told the Designer Magazine Web site, ‘‘I wanted something where I could just do anything that came into my head with every issue. . . . I wanted it to be like the very early Mad magazine where it was all this crazy stuff by different 70

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artists . . . except in my case it was all by the same artist drawing in different styles.’’ Eightball was a runaway success, with Clowes quickly winning recognition as a worthy successor to the legendary R. Crumb (1943–) and other cutting-edge 1960s underground comic artists (underground means that their works were published outside of normal channels and had more mature, innovative content). He released a new comic book every few months, with stories from them eventually becoming incorporated into graphic novels. The graphic novels included Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, published in 1993 and consisting of stories from the initial ten issues; here, a character named Clay Loudermilk sets off on a surreal, nightmarish odyssey after being jarred by the content of a film he has just watched. Pussey!, from 1995, features the exploits of Dan Pussey, a nerdy comic book artist who appeared in nine early issues. In its review of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Publishers Weekly dubbed Clowes ‘‘one of the most talented among the comics artists who emerged in the 1980s.’’ Meanwhile, his personal life was falling into place. After a failed first marriage, he met a young woman named Erika in 1992, while in California on a booksigning tour. They eventually wed, settled in Berkeley, California, and later moved to nearby Oakland. They have a son, Charlie. Meanwhile, one of Clowes’s follow-up graphic novels seemed destined to be his masterpiece: Ghost World, which first appeared in issues 11 through 18 of Eightball. Ghost World—which critic after critic has compared to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye— is a sympathetic portrayal of Enid Coleslaw (an anagram for ‘‘Daniel Clowes’’) and her friend Becky Doppelmeyer, two eccentric, disaffected adolescent girls coming of age in an American landscape rife with conformity and monotony. While all of Clowes’s work has been well received, Ghost World was especially popular. It sold well over 100,000 copies, making it one of Fantagraphics’ all-time best-selling books.

From underground to above ground In 1998, Newsweek dubbed Clowes ‘‘the country’s premier underground cartoonist.’’ Yet at the time, he was in the process of earning entrance into the mainstream. That same year, he wrote and drew ‘‘Green Eyeliner,’’ the first comic strip ever published in Esquire magazine’s annual fiction issue, and he debuted in The New Yorker in 2001. His propensity for publishing works that originally appeared in Eightball was further illustrated by the appearance in Daniel Clowes

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Maintaining Artistic Integrity In 2001, Ghost World became a film. It was scripted by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, who also directed. Seven years earlier, Zwigoff had directed Crumb, an acclaimed documentary on noted underground comic artist R. Crumb (1943–). From the beginning of their efforts to make the film, Clowes and Zwigoff encountered obstacles. ‘‘I always thought there were really smart people working in Hollywood who were just really cynical, and they knew that the movies they were making were not that good, and they were doing it because they tested well,’’ Clowes explained to Salon.com. ‘‘But mostly it’s a very middlebrow to lowbrow kind of town. And they’re making films that they approve of.’’ It didn’t help that Hollywood studio heads seemed to willfully misunderstand the screenplay. ‘‘They treated Ghost World

like it was this outrageous art film that nobody would get . . .,’’ he continued. ‘‘They would say, ‘Oh, it’s great, we’ll get Jennifer Love Hewitt.’ And we’d think, ‘Wait, that’s what this is opposed to!’ I’m sure she’s a nice person and everything, but she’s got the opposite personality than these girls have! And they would say, ‘Oh. I thought she was supposed to be really pretty.’’’ Clowes and Zwigoff refused to compromise their screenplay, and they eventually found satisfactory financing and distribution. Not only was the film highly acclaimed, but reviewers consistently noted that it was a refreshing departure from the endless line of insipid Hollywood coming-of-age teen comedies. Clowes and Zwigoff even won Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nominations.

1999 of the graphic novel Caricature: Nine Stories, consisting of eight Eightball stories and ‘‘Green Eyeliner.’’ Clowes’s next major creation was David Boring, a chronicle of the ordeals of a 19-year-old antihero as he searches for meaning in a bizarre, arbitrarily cruel world. The character first appeared in issues 19 through 21 of Eightball, and was published in 2000 as a graphic novel by Pantheon Books. David Boring was a representative Clowes creation. ‘‘Clowes’s characters, rendered with cool facility, move stiffly and stare blankly, either half-lobotomized or simply stunned by their crushing reality,’’ noted Dave Eggers, reviewing the novel in the New York Times. ‘‘Boring is Clowes’s emptiest vessel yet, making his moments of emotional clarity . . . even more powerful.’’ The release of David Boring by Pantheon further signified Clowes’s growing status as a mainstream cartoonist. This standing also was confirmed with his contribution to Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale 72

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Funnies, a compilation of fairy tales presented comic book-style, which also hit bookstores in 2000. Clowes offered his interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. Writing in the New York Times, Leonard S. Marcus described it as ‘‘a harrowing post-script to the classic story. . . . Clowes’s hard-edged, cloyingly colorful drawings aggressively pit the banality of the tale’s ‘happy couple’ against the hog-ugliness, and pure savagery, of the prince’s mother. The result is a highly stylized, expressionist form of storytelling that . . . easily gets under our skin.’’

A second collaboration In 2002, Clowes published Twentieth Century Eightball, consisting of several dozen stories published in Eightball from 1989 to 1996. Here, he lampoons everything from professional athletes (in ‘‘On Sports’’) to art schools as places of learning (‘‘Art School Confidential’’). Clowes reteamed with Terry Zwigoff to write a screenplay for the Zwigoff-directed feature Art School Confidential (2005). He also was one of the film’s producers. As Art School Confidential was readied for theatrical release, Clowes continued to adapt Eightball stories into graphic novels. Ice Haven, published in 2005, highlights a group of eccentrics inhabiting a dull American town, with a storyline inspired by Leopold and Loeb, the real-life 1920s child murderers. Yet again, Clowes explores such themes as disaffection and isolation. ‘‘The creator of Ghost World has done his usual meticulous job of nailing character, tone, and inner monologue,’’ wrote Whitney Pastorek in Entertainment Weekly. ‘‘But his Art Spiegelman-like experimentation with different illustration styles—without losing his own unique line—is what make the pages such jewels.’’ Amy Benfer, writing on the Salon.com Web site in 2002, summed up Clowes’s artistic output by noting that his ‘‘stories are complex, sustained works and prove Clowes to be the equal of the best fiction writers working today.’’

For More Information Periodicals Eggers, Dave. ‘‘After Wham! Pow! Shazam!: Comic Books Move Beyond Superheroes to the World of Literature.’’ New York Times (November 26, 2000). ‘‘Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron.’’ Publishers Weekly (April 12, 1993).

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Marcus, Leonard S. ‘‘Brazenly Ever After.’’ New York Times (November 19, 2000). Pastorek, Whitney. ‘‘Ice Haven: Daniel Clowes.’’ Entertainment Weekly (June 10, 2005). Van Boven, Sarah. ‘‘Daniel Clowes Wows ‘Em with ‘Ghost World.’’’ Newsweek (April 27, 1998).

Web Sites Benfer, Amy. ‘‘Worth a Thousand Words.’’ Salon.com. http://www.salon. com/books/feature/2002/11/21/comics (accessed on May 3, 2006). Chocano, Carina. ‘‘Brilliant Careers: Daniel Clowes.’’ Salon.com. http://www. salon.com/people/bc/2000/12/05/clowes/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Daniel Clowes.’’ Designer Magazine. http://designermagazine.tripod.com/ DanielClowesINT1.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Daniel Clowes.’’ Fantagraphics Books. http://www.fantagraphics.com/ artist/clowes/clowes.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Chuck Dixon Born 1954 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) American author

Chuck Dixon has made a name for himself in the comics industry as one of the fastest, most consistent action-adventure writers. He is best known for writing about such iconic characters as Batman and Robin, and for the new adventures he created for these characters in the Birds of Prey, Nightwing, and Robin series. Dixon has not limited his prolific output to known entities, however; he has also created his own characters for such comics as Akota, about barbarians crossing the Bering Strait; El Cazador, about swashbuckling pirates; and Iron Ghost, about a man seeking vengeance against the Nazis during World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). For nearly two decades, Dixon has pumped out six or seven comics each month for the most respected publishers in the industry, including DC Comics, Marvel, Cross Generation Comics, Eclipse, and many others. His success stems, perhaps, from his unashamed love of his job. When asked which of his current comics he liked most, Dixon told Sequential Tart ‘‘It sounds corny, but all of them.’’ And when Fanzing interviewer Michael Hutchison asked Dixon what he would do if he stopped writing comics, Dixon replied simply: ‘‘Die.’’

‘‘This is the medium I love. It’s the only way I think of telling stories.’’

Falls in love with comics as a kid Chuck Dixon was born in 1954, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On his Web site, Dixonverse, he described his early years as ‘‘unremarkable.’’ But it was during his youth that his deep love of comics started. A sickly child, Dixon missed so many days of school that his advancement from first grade was in peril. With their son recuperating at home, the Dixon parents came to an agreement with the school: if Dixon could learn to read at home, he could 75

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Valkyrie: Prisoner of the Past (1988).

Robin: Year One (with Scott Beatty) (2002).

The Punisher: Kingdom Gone (1990).

Nightwing: The Hunt for Oracle (2003).

Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Broken Bat (with Doug Moench) (1993).

Way of the Rat: The Walls of Zhumar (2003).

The Punisher: A Man Named Frank (1994).

Batgirl: Death Wish (2003).

Batman: Knightsend (1995).

Batgirl: Year One (with Scott Beatty) (2003).

Batman: The Joker’s Apprentice (1996).

Crux: Strangers in Atlantis (2003).

Batman: Bane (with Rick Burchett) (1997).

Brath: Gladiator Triumphant (2004).

Nightwing: A Knight in Blu¨dhaven (1998).

Crux: Chaos Reborn (2004).

Birds of Prey: Black Canary, Oracle, Huntress (1999).

El Cazador: Blood Red Sea (2004).

Nightwing: Rough Justice (1999). Green Lantern: Emerald Allies (2000). Nightwing: Love and Bullets (2000). Robin: Flying Solo (2000).

Way of the Rat: The Dragon’s Wake (2004). Way of the Rat: Haunted Zhumar (2004). Nightwing: On the Razor’s Edge (2005). Nightwing: Year One (with Scott Beatty) (2005).

Alien Legion: Force No Mad (2001). Nightwing: A Darker Shade of Justice (2001). Batman—Bruce Wayne—Murderer? (2002). Invasion ‘55 (2002).

Comics Dixon has written hundreds of comics, from single issues to contributions to longstanding series.

move on to second grade the next year. To meet this goal, Dixon remembered his parents offering him armloads of comics of every sort. His father would bring home huge piles of old comics bought from the local flea market or saved from the junkyard. Dixon pored over them, and he learned to read. What’s more, he discovered that he wanted to become a comics creator himself. ‘‘I fell in love with the medium and studied it by reading and re-reading the same comics over and over again until I understood how all those great stories were told in those little static pictures,’’ Dixon told Broken Frontier, Industrial Evolution columnist Mike Bullock. 76

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Dixon’s interest in comics only grew with time. He amassed an enormous collection. He particularly admired the work of Steve Ditko (1927–), especially his work on the characters Amazing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Dixon started writing his own stories, filling notebooks with his work. These stories were mostly about war, as Dixon remembered to Broken Frontier. ‘‘You know, planes strafing [firing at ground troops from low altitude] outrageously dressed Nazis with those little dotted lines leading from the plane’s wings toward the bad guys and the Nazis all going ‘AAAAH!’ ’’ He linked his interest in war to the stories he heard his father and the men in his neighborhood telling about their service in World War II. ‘‘You could just hang out on the front step or around the kitchen table and hear these first hand accounts of Iwo Jima or the Bulge [Battle of the Bulge]. So, I think the idea of historical adventure comics was a natural for me,’’ he added in Broken Frontier. At age thirteen, Dixon turned a critical eye toward his work and determined that no amount of practice would make him as good an artist as Ditko. He gave up drawing and focused on becoming a writer. ‘‘When I realized I wasn’t that talented at drawing I aspired to be the next Archie Goodwin’’ (1937–1998), Dixon told Broken Frontier, adding that he was ‘‘still working toward that goal.’’ Goodwin’s success was inspiring. He made a name for himself in the 1960s writing for Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and Batman, rising in the industry to become, in 1975, chief editor at Marvel Comics, a position from which he presided over numerous comic creations into the 1980s. In remembering Goodwin as a major influence on his work, Dixon told Alexander Ness on the Slush Factory Web site that ‘‘He understood how to write briskly entertaining stories that took full advantage of the comics medium; a perfect melding of words and pictures.’’ Throughout high school and into a few semesters of college, Dixon never lost his love of comics. He bounced from one odd job to the next—from driving limousines, to manning the cash register at 7-Eleven, to installing roofs, to selling mail-order T-shirts—all the while thinking about comics and adding to his own portfolio. About his pursuit of comics, Dixon told Ness that ‘‘I was never serious about any other career.’’

Takes ten years to become a professional Over the years, he tried to interest various publishers in his writing. He did land a few professional writing jobs, scripting several commercials and creating children’s books about Raggedy Chuck Dixon

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Ann and Andy for Golden Books, and Winnie the Pooh for Platt and Munk. But these were not comic books. ‘‘I hated kids books. . . . I love comics and they’re really all that I want to write,’’ Dixon confided to Ness. He landed his first comics industry job in 1977, writing and drawing three of his own stories for GASM, a magazine put out by Country Wide Publications. These writing jobs ended, and by the mid-1980s Dixon’s odd jobs remained his main source of income. Dixon’s breakthrough moment came in 1985, when he was hired to write stories for Savage Sword of Conan. Dixon’s first stories for the well-known series about Conan the Barbarian centered on the older character, Kull the Conqueror. These were the stories he had been waiting to write: real action adventures. And they made him a full-time comic writer. ‘‘When Larry Hama gave me the monthly lead in Savage Sword of Conan, I was already writing the Kull back-ups. That added up to a whopping fifty-eight pages a month and the book also paid royalties so it was in no danger of cancellation. I was able to quit my job and propose to my wife,’’ Dixon told Michael May in an interview for Comic World News. He continued work on the Conan stories until 1991. Dixon soon took on more work in 1986 when he teamed with Timothy Truman on a revival of Airboy, a comic series from the 1940s about a young World War II fighter pilot and his plane Birdie. The pair would write fifty issues of Airboy before the publisher dissolved in 1989. The revived series had been welcomed by fans of the young hero, as it traced the son of the now-dead Airboy as he discovers his father’s past and takes over his mantle as a modern-day Airboy. Airboy had been a critical success when it ended, and with the rights to the character sorted out again, Dixon took up work on a graphic novel about the Airboy characters, titled Airboy ‘42: Best of Enemies, due for publication in 2006.

Builds reputation as ‘‘action master’’ Working on Carl Potts’s Alien Legion, a comic series about the foreign legion in space, Dixon had the chance to work with his mentor Archie Goodwin at Marvel Comics. In action-packed stories, Alien Legion explores the benefits of democracy even in the face of maintaining that form of government in a world made up of different alien species. The series became very popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s and helped to solidify Dixon’s reputation as ‘‘the action master,’’ as Potts dubbed Dixon in an interview with Jonathan Ellis for Popimage. 78

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In the 1980s Chuck Dixon took on authorship for The Punisher series, a continuing story about ex-Marine Frank Castle, a vigilante bent on destroying criminals to avenge the death of his family at the hands of mobsters. ª 2005 Marvel Comics.

Dixon confessed to enjoying action comics to Graphic Novelists (GN), saying ‘‘I like a good shoot-em-up, what can I say?’’ But more than just appreciating action comics, Dixon had devised a specific approach to writing them: ‘‘I feel that a mainstream comic book requires a certain amount of visual action. I build my stories around the action set pieces.’’ Action is a necessary component to compelling Chuck Dixon

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comic storytelling, Dixon explained: ‘‘Comics are a static medium and don’t lend themselves to long dialogue or pastoral sequences. The reader needs to see something happening and happening with every detail shown.’’ With his growing reputation for solid storytelling and his capacity to churn out stories at record pace, Dixon took on more work for Marvel. He found that he could write numerous stories at the same time. In the late 1980s, he took on authorship for The Punisher series, a continuing story, begun in 1974, about ex-Marine Frank Castle, a vigilante bent on destroying criminals to avenge the death of his family at the hands of mobsters. Dixon wrote as many stories as editor Don Daley ‘‘could throw at me,’’ Dixon remembered on Dixonverse. Before writer Garth Ennis took over the series in the early 2000s, Dixon wrote nearly one hundred issues of The Punisher. Although Dixon moved on to other projects, he remembered his work on The Punisher with fondness. In a Comic World News interview, Dixon said, ‘‘The Punisher was also a lot of fun and still my favorite character.’’ Dixon became best known, perhaps, for his work at DC Comics. Starting in 1990 he began work on the Detective Comics series, which included Batman and all his cohorts. Having been created in 1939 by DC Comics cartoonist Bob Kane (1916–1998), the Batman character and the tone of the series was well established when Dixon began writing for the Detective Comics series. But Dixon provided new angles on the series’ minor characters and his fresh approaches revitalized the series. For Batman’s faithful sidekick, Robin, as inhabited by the character Tim Drake, Dixon created Robin, a miniseries that told of Drake’s adventures in growing up and revealed a widening rift between Batman and Robin as the youth matured. Dixon also explored the rift between ward and guardian in Nightwing, a new series about Robin as an adult named Dick Grayson who patrols Gotham’s neighboring city of Blu¨dhaven. Dixon later wrote Robin: Year One to reveal more about Grayson’s youth. Dixon also created Birds of Prey, a series about three women living in Gotham City who unite in bonds of friendship to serve justice to a variety of criminals. And to the Batman cast of evil villains, Dixon added Bane, Batman’s greatest threat. By creating Bane as a character with a tragic past (he was born in a prison), Dixon was able to create stories that allowed readers to have sympathy for his villain. In doing so, Dixon was able to use his stories to highlight the vulnerabilities and darker sides of both his good and bad characters. In Knightfall Part I Bane even defeats Batman, breaking the hero’s back. After eleven years working on the Batman titles, Dixon left DC Comics in 2001 to pursue fresh opportunities. 80

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Takes on new projects After leaving DC, Dixon immediately took up work on a handful of new titles for Cross Generation Comics, including a series about martial arts called Way of the Rat, and he was soon creating even more comics for other publishers as well. In 2003, he introduced the first comic series about pirates since the 1950s with El Cazador. The story followed the adventures of a Spanish donessa (noblewoman) who takes command of a pirate ship to seek out those who abducted her family. It earned Dixon and co-creator artist Steve Epting a nomination for an Eisner Award, the comics industry’s top award, in 2004. In 2005, Dixon prepared to launch his own comic book line with the startup company Shooting Star Comics. That year Dixon was writing Akota: Wargod of the Lost!, a series about barbarians crossing the Bering Strait; Junior Pirates!, a series of graphic novels about young pirates; and The Iron Ghost, a story about the search for a murderer of Nazis during the fall of Germany at the end of World War II. Dixon also started work on a genre he had long loved, the Western, with Wyatt Earp: Dodge City, a series about one of the most respected lawmen of the Old West. While part of Dixon’s legacy as an action comic writer in dozens of stories is best described as dark in tone, his more recent writing revealed lighter, more humorous elements. Dixon explained his early writing to GN as simply providing what editors requested of him. ‘‘I was starting out,’’ Dixon noted. ‘‘I wrote what editors wanted. And they wanted dark and grim.’’ Dixon used humor in his later writing to add contrast to darker story elements, and his writing for younger readers revealed even lighter storylines. Although Dixon stopped drawing long ago, he never forgot the intimate connection between text and image in comics, and his storytelling reflects this. Dixon often leaves good portions of a story for the artist to reveal in the pictures, and strives never to describe in words what a picture could reveal best. Dixon told Hutchison that ‘‘The thing that really shines about [writing comics] above all else (and 99 percent of comic writing is nothing short of rewarding) is seeing my words turned into pictures by some of the greatest talents in the business. If you had told me when I was a kid that Joe Kubert or Russ Heath or John Severin or John Buscema would one day illustrate what I had written I wouldn’t have believed it possible. And I work with some of the greatest guys today. Nothing tops that.’’ Throughout his decades in the comics business, Dixon has come to be the quintessential action-adventure writer. He revealed Chuck Dixon

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Plotting for Pirates El Cazador opened Chuck Dixon to a world filled with real-life adventure. His diligent research revealed the life of pirates in the 1600s, the time period of the series, to be difficult and dangerous. Rather than reveling in the romantic notions of life on the high seas, Dixon composed his stories around the real troubles of sailing a vessel in rough waters, navigating with rudimentary instruments, fighting aboard a rocking ship, and enduring the slow pace of travel that plagued pirates of the era. Dixon confided to Silver Bullet Comics that El Cazador included some writing challenges: ‘‘El Cazador presents some unique pacing problems. Because sailing is not exactly the fastest mode of travel known I have to consider time as a factor more than is usual. Things have to be timed so the appearance and convergence of characters and subplots is believable in a world where time is measured in months not moments.’’ But with his noted eye for action, Dixon exposed the horrors and drudgery of living as a pirate without dampening the thrill of the golden age of pirates.

To add to the intrigue, Dixon created a host of characters from various countries so the series not only included the usual pirate stories of vengeance, kidnapping, and treasure, but also political controversies. The myriad of characters also presented difficulties in writing the language of the series because each character used the dialect of their country of origin. Dixon told Corrina Lawson of Sequential Tart that it was writing the ‘‘language of El Cazador [that posed] the greatest challenge,’’ adding that he wanted it to ‘‘sound right’’ and to keep it ‘‘vivid and engaging and understandable to modern audiences.’’ El Cazador quickly became a top-selling series for CrossGen; sales of the first issue sent the publisher back to the printer three times. As the Wizard Universe Web site noted: ‘‘Chuck Dixon and Steve Epting have crafted an epic right from the get-go.’’ Despite its popularity, the series ended after six issues when Steve Epting left to work exclusively with Marvel Comics.

some of his writing secrets to Sequential Tart: ‘‘I don’t like to be bored writing and I figure if I move a story along briskly then the reader has to follow at my pace. I’ve learned what to leave out of a story to keep it moving.’’ On his Web site, Dixon offered to aspiring writers his ‘‘Ten Commandments of Comic Book Scriptwriting,’’ most of which illustrate the method he developed over the years for quickening the pace of his stories and developing his characters over time. While Dixon continued to refer to the late Archie Goodwin as one of the best men in the business, many younger writers could now draw their inspiration from Dixon himself. 82

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For More Information Web Sites Bullock, Mike. ‘‘Industrial Evolution: Across the Dixon-Verse.’’ Broken Frontier. http://brokenfrontier.com/columns/details.php?id=146& PHPSESSID=c848e4c1852206de05771dbf14d3fe0a (accessed on May 3, 2006). Dixonverse: The Official Web site of Chuck Dixon. www.dixonverse.net (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘El Fantastico.’’ Wizard Universe. http://www.wizarduniverse.com/ magazines/wizard/WZ20031204-csl.cfm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Ellis, Jonathan. ‘‘Interview: Carl Potts.’’ Popimage. http://www.popimage. com/may00/interviews/pottsinter.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Hutchison, Michael. ‘‘Chuck Dixon: The Interview.’’ Fanzing. http:// www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing20/iview.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Lawson, Corrina. ‘‘The Sigilverse Is Dead. Long Live the Pirates!’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/feb04/cdixon. shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). May, Michael. ‘‘A Yo-De-Ho Kinda Mood.’’ Comic World News. http:// cwn.comicraft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?column=interviews&page=60 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Ness, Alexander. ‘‘Thoughts from the Land of Frost: Chuck Dixon.’’ Slush Factory. http://www.slushfactory.com/content/EpuZuylAupzIpQgwoU.php (accessed on May 3, 2006). O’Shea, Tim. ‘‘Chuck Dixon on El Cazador: Interview.’’ Silver Bullet Comics. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/news/107891679583754.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained from correspondence with Chuck Dixon in September and October of 2005.

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Colleen Doran. Courtesy of Colleen Doran. Reproduced by permission.

Colleen Doran Born July 24, 1963 (Cincinnati, Ohio) American author, artist

‘‘I want to give my readers the same sensation of immersion as film. From costumes, to set design to characterization, to casting, I want a complete, storytelling experience on every level . . . .’’

Colleen Doran’s career as a writer and illustrator of comic books and graphic novels began at a very young age. An early love of animation gave way to a fascination with comic books, and by the age of twelve she had begun work on the story that would later become the acclaimed A Distant Soil series. Doran’s work on A Distant Soil, along with her illustration of many other comics and graphic novels, has been an important part of the evolution of the American comics industry toward the deeper character and story development of the graphic novel. Her influences come from both the superhero comics she loved in her youth—which created an uproarious, larger-than-life world, where anything is possible— and from Japanese manga—stark, intense comic books featuring black-and-white illustrations and long, complex storylines. Combining these very different styles, Doran has increasingly used her highly developed artistic skills to create new worlds in comics. 85

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels A Distant Soil: The Gathering (2001). A Distant Soil: The Ascendant (2001). A Distant Soil: The Aria (2001). A Distant Soil: Coda (2005). Orbiter (with Warren Ellis) (2003). Reign of the Zodiac (with Keith Giffen, Bob Wiacek, and Tony Harris) (2003). The Essential J.R.R. Tolkien Sourcebook: A Fan’s Guide to Middle-earth and Beyond (with George Beahm) (2003). The Book of Lost Souls (with J. Michael Straczynski) (2005). Comics The Legion of Superheroes (various issues) (1980s–90s).

Robotech Art II (1987). The Amazing Spider-man (1991). The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country (with Neil Gaiman, Malcolm Jones III, Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Steve Erickson) (1991). The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You (with Neil Gaiman, Samuel R. Delany, Shawn MacManus, Bryan Talbot, George Pratt, Stan Woch, Dick Giordano) (1993). Wonder Woman: The Once and Future Story (with Trina Robbins and Jackson Guice) (1998). Nonfiction (With Lee Townsend) Drawing Action Comics: Easel Does It (2005).

Begins to draw Colleen Doran was born on July 24, 1963, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Times were hard for the Dorans during the mid-1960s. Colleen’s parents, Ron and Anita Doran, could not find work, and for a time the family was homeless, sleeping in friends’ living rooms and even once sharing a pigeon coop with the birds that lived there. While Doran was still an infant, her father heard that many Southern police departments, overwhelmed by the social tensions caused by the civil rights movement and racist whites who opposed it, were desperate for new recruits. He took a job as a police officer in York County, Virginia, and the Dorans moved south. While Bob Doran established a successful career in law enforcement and Anita worked as a veterinary assistant, young Colleen Doran began to develop her artistic skill. Anita Doran was also an accomplished artist who had attended art school, but she had received little encouragement to make a career from her art. However, she still had books from the Famous Artists School, a respected art course designed to learn at home, and she encouraged her 86

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daughter to develop her artistic talent. Studying her mother’s books and using the backs of her father’s criminology papers for canvas, Colleen Doran began to draw. Her earliest ambitions were to become an astronaut, but she also harbored a desire to work for Walt Disney, creating the animated cartoons she loved. At the age of five, she won her first art contest, sponsored by the Walt Disney Company. There were few comic books available in the rural Virginia of the early 1970s, and Doran’s interest in comic art did not develop until she came down with a severe case of pneumonia at the age of twelve. While she was confined to bed for several weeks, a friend delivered a big box of comic books to help pass the time. Not only did Doran fall in love with the flamboyant superheroes and their dramatic storylines, but soon she began to draw and write her own comics, complete with misunderstood teenagers who have superpowers. That first comic evolved into the four-volume series titled A Distant Soil. The superhero protagonists were Jason and Liana, the son and daughter of a human mother and an alien father who came to Earth as a refugee from the planet Ovanan. The teens’ psychic powers mark them as the heirs to a powerful dynasty on their father’s planet, where there are jealous enemies who seek to destroy them. As the story developed over several decades, it reflected Doran’s increasing interest in character development and intricate storytelling. However, many elements and even several core characters remained remarkably similar to those created by the twelve-year-old artist recovering from pneumonia.

Lands first art job at age fifteen While educating herself as an artist, Doran was an independent and impatient student at school. She made good grades with little study, responded with active interest to the teachers she liked, and did little for the teachers she disliked. However, her teachers soon learned to make use of her artistic expertise and often traded grades for Doran’s designs on posters and displays. At the age of fifteen, while displaying her artwork at a science fiction convention, she received her first commercial job offer from an advertising agency. Doran continued to work professionally through her high school years, illustrating a wide variety of projects from a police Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team training manual to a Planned Parenthood brochure. After her graduation from high school in the 1980s, she attended Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, where she began to study business. She Colleen Doran

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received special permission to use her commercial art as part of her class credit. However, she soon had so much commercial work that she quit college to work full time. Along with her ad agency work, Doran was also hired to draw comics and continued to work on her science fiction series. Graphic novels still interested her for several reasons. She knew from her own childhood love of comic books that the comic format created an instant bond between book and reader, even those who did not read well. Comic heroes and their adventures became a vehicle through which readers could feel themselves to be special and powerful. Doran also felt that graphic novels combined words and pictures in a unique way. As she said in an interview with Graphic Novelists (GN): ‘‘We watch films and plays that have that combination of the visual and the verbal. The difference with graphic novels is that the reader participates a great deal more in a comic or graphic novel than they do in a film. A film is paced exactly as the filmmaker wants to pace it. The reader paces the story in a graphic novel, depending on how they choose to read the panels and turn those pages. It’s more interactive than just watching a movie.’’

Publishes first graphic novel During the early 1980s, Doran signed a contract to publish The Rebels, Doran’s original title for A Distant Soil. But after the publication of nine issues of the series, Doran was unhappy in her relationship with the publisher. She entered into a legal struggle that resulted in her withdrawing from her contract. She reworked all of the published material to create new books that she then published with a different company, Image Comics. Image had been founded by a group of comics illustrators who had become upset over publishers’ misuse of their work. At Image, Doran felt that her right to control her own work would be respected. The resulting series, collected in four volumes—A Distant Soil: The Gathering; A Distant Soil: The Ascendant; A Distant Soil: The Aria; and A Distant Soil: Coda—have sold more than 500,000 copies. The first volume has been translated into Spanish and Italian. Though the series is a science fiction fantasy, A Distant Soil confronts many real-life concerns of its readers, such as bigotry, political corruption, and gender identity issues. Liana, the heroine, along with other strong female characters, has made the series extremely popular with teenage girls. During the 1990s, the outspoken girl magazine Sassy named A Distant Soil one of the five 88

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best comics for girls. Doran’s sensitive handling of several gay and bisexual characters led to the series’ nomination in 2001 for a Spectrum Award for best science fiction. Spectrum Awards are given by the Gaylactic Network to honor science fiction, fantasy, and horror publications that demonstrate positive handling of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender characters and issues. Unlike many other graphic novels, A Distant Soil has earned respect as a literary work and was profiled in the quarterly journal of the Young American Library Association. Alasdair Stuart, of the Ninth Art, described the first volume, The Gathering, as ‘‘intelligent, mature storytelling with its own unique voice.’’ He also noted that Doran had a ‘‘clean, striking art style and skill for storytelling composition.’’ What makes A Distant Soil unique among hundreds of science fiction comics and graphic novels is Doran’s painstaking and confident technique. Doran, who said in an interview with GN, ‘‘I study more now than I ever did when I was in school,’’ draws on many influences for both her art and her story, from pictures taken on her travels to great literature. She uses the comic format to fill her panels with drama and movement, advancing the story through understated contrasts, often telling part of the story in the word balloons, while letting another part unfold in the carefully drawn background. Drawn in black and white, the panel art is simple, yet vivid, and filled with subtle details that advance the story. Though A Distant Soil continues to be warmly received by critics and fans, Doran earns the major part of her living drawing the artwork for other writers in a wide variety of comics and graphic novels. Fulfilling her childhood dreams, she has illustrated such classic comics as The Legion of Superheroes, The Amazing Spiderman, and Wonder Woman: The Once and Future Story. She has also illustrated such important graphic novels as Orbiter, written by Warren Ellis; Reign of the Zodiac, written by Keith Giffen; and The Book of Lost Souls, written by J. Michael Straczynski. In these works, she has demonstrated her versatility as an artist, often surprising critics with the ease with which she can change her style from project to project, whether portraying fantastic imaginary worlds or the concrete hardware of the NASA space program. As a working artist, Doran has often found illustrating the work of other artists to be less demanding than creating her own story. ‘‘In some ways,’’ she told GN, ‘‘doing A Distant Soil is harder than anything I’ve ever done, because I’m responsible for everything . . . . When I get something from a writer, some of the thinking has Colleen Doran

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Pencillers, Inkers, and Colorers As an illustrator of comics, Colleen Doran has often become frustrated with the traditional method of creating the drawings that fill the panels of comic books and graphic novels. In many comics, the original artwork is lightly drawn with extra-hard graphite pencils by the ‘‘penciller.’’ The drawings are then sent to the ‘‘inker,’’ who traces the pencil lines with India ink, using both pens and brushes. If the comic is not to be done in black and white, the inked artwork then goes to a colorer, or colorist, to receive the vibrant colors often associated with the comics. Pencillers, inkers, and colorists are all artists, and each may add to the quality of the finished comic panel. However, because it is in the nature of an artist to want control over his or her creation, there is often tension

among the three types of artists working on comics. Pencillers often worry that a careless or unskilled inker will destroy the subtle lines of their fine pencil drawings, while inkers complain that pencillers do not respect their art. Confident artists like Doran have begun to streamline the process by creating their own ink drawings, eliminating the need for an inker. Computer technology has further simplified the illustration process, by allowing the artist to work in any size and send the finished artwork to the publisher by email. Colorists who once added color to comics illustrations with brushes and ink now use programs like Photoshop, which allow them to experiment with colors and textures easily.

already been done for me.’’ Graphic novel writers typically give their illustrators a basic design for the finished book, detailing the number of panels to a page and the general content of each panel. They also give a brief description of each character, upon which the artist can elaborate. Because she has supported herself through her work in the comics business since she was a teenager, Doran has always been willing to share her experience with other artists who are working to create graphic novels. As part of this effort, she writes a regular column for Slush Factory, a comics Web site, advising other artists about such practical topics as organizing a home office and avoiding procrastination. Doran’s knowledge of these matters has been gained through her own years of hard work as an independent artist. Often describing herself as a ‘‘workaholic,’’ Doran spends long hours in her studio, once working for three months without a day off in order to meet a deadline. Though deadlines can be stressful, Doran welcomes them as motivation to immerse herself in her work, ‘‘I need something to 90

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push against, or I stop pushing completely . . . . I prefer to be a little overbooked,’’ she told GN. Spending one’s workday alone in a studio can be isolating for an artist, but Doran is a natural loner who appreciates solitude. In the early 2000s, she moved to a tiny town in Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, where she is surrounded by peaceful beauty while imagining the distant planets and fantastic characters that populate her work.

For More Information Books Rosenberg, Aaron. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Colleen Doran. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2004. Periodicals Raiteri, Steve. Review of Orbiter. Library Journal (September 1, 2003): 140. Web Sites A Distant Soil. http://www.adistantsoil.com/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Colleen Doran. http://www.colleendoran.com/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Doran, Colleen. ‘‘The Home Office.’’ Slush Factory. http://www. slushfactory.com/columns/cd/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Epstein, Daniel Robert. ‘‘A Chat with Colleen Doran.’’ UnderGroundOnline. http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/features/colleendoran/interview. asp (accessed on May 3, 2006). Mason, Jeff. ‘‘Interview with Colleen Doran.’’ Alternative Comics. http:// www.indyworld.com/comics/doran.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). O’Shea, Tim. ‘‘Colleen Doran: Working Hard.’’ Silver Bullet Comic Books. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/106515332492810.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Stuart, Alasdair. ‘‘The Friday Review: A Distant Soil: The Gathering.’’ Ninth Art. http://www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=281 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through an interview with Colleen Doran on August 6, 2005.

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Will Eisner. Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

Will Eisner Born March 6, 1917 (Brooklyn, New York) Died January 3, 2005 (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) American author, illustrator

‘‘[The comics form is] a combination of two of the most powerful means of communication we have, words and pictures, which accounts for the endurance of this medium and the progress it’s making.’’

Will Eisner is widely considered the father of the American graphic novel. When Eisner began his work, comics were looked down on by those who worried about what young people were reading; by the 2000s, however, Eisner was widely appreciated as the man who elevated comic book methods—telling stories with words and sequential pictures—to respect in the form of the graphic novel. In a career that spanned seven decades, Eisner pioneered many of the techniques that became widespread during the graphic novel boom that began in the 1990s. In the late 1930s and 1940s, he invented a not-so-super hero called the Spirit to compete with Superman. In the Spirit stories, Eisner proved that comics could tell intelligent stories about serious themes like loneliness and doubt. In the 1950s and 1960s, he left comics to experiment with sequential art—the term he used to describe using a 93

series of illustrations to tell a story—as a means of educating adults. Then, in 1978, he published what is considered the first graphic novel, A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories. From 1978 until his death in 2005, Eisner’s experiments with the graphic novel form gained him the admiration of comics artists around the world. Eisner’s impact on the comics community is so great that the leading award given to graphic novels is called the Eisner Award.

Helps invent the modern comic book Will Eisner was born on March 6, 1917. The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Eisner grew up in the tightly packed working-class tenements (apartment houses) of Brooklyn, New York, where he roamed the city streets, immersing himself in the hustle and bustle of urban life that later would become a large part of his work. Eisner was an avid reader from an early age, reading everything from classic literary works to pulp novels, the mass-produced detective stories that were printed on cheap paper, called pulp. While attending De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx borough of New York City, Eisner developed an interest in art, especially cartooning. After high school he briefly studied art at New York’s Art Student’s League, but in his family college education was a luxury, not a necessity. He left school to take a job in the advertising department of a local newspaper, the New York Journal American, but soon quit this position to draw comics for Wow, What a Magazine!, a periodical that quickly went bankrupt. Eisner had gotten his first taste of drawing comics for Wow, and he never looked back. In 1937, he convinced a friend from Wow, Samuel ‘‘Jerry’’ Iger (1903–1990), that they should produce their own comics and sell them to newspapers. Iger was afraid of committing his scarce money to the project, especially since the nation was suffering through the Great Depression (1929–41), the worst economic recession in American history. ‘‘So I said I would put up the money,’’ Eisner recalled in an interview posted on the TwoMorrows Web site. ‘‘It was my money: $15. Which paid the rent for three months for a little office, a very tiny office.’’ The pair called their enterprise Eisner & Iger; Eisner did the drawing and writing, and Iger did the lettering and marketing. Their first comics series were called Muss ‘Em Up Donovan, Blackhawk, Sheena, and Hawks of the Seas. Though the pair didn’t make much money from their fledgling business, Eisner was able to make important connections with others in the American comics industry. 94

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Best-Known Works Comics The Spirit, published serially (1940–52).

The Building (1987).

Spirit: Color Album. 2 vols. (1981–83).

The White Whale: An Introduction to Moby Dick (1991).

The Spirit: The Origin Years (1992).

Invisible People (1993).

Will Eisner’s The Spirit Archives 4 vols. (2000).

A Family Matter (1998).

Graphic Novels A Contract with God and other Tenement Stories (1978).

The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote (2000). The Name of the Game (2002).

Life on Another Planet (1981).

Nonfiction Comics and Sequential Art (1990).

New York: The Big City (1986).

Graphic Storytelling (1996).

In 1939, the Quality Comics Group offered Eisner an opportunity he could not pass up: he was to create a comics series that would appeal to those young readers being drawn away from newspapers by comic books, then slim paperback magazines sold at newsstands and drug stores. Quality Comics wanted Eisner to create a series that would be inserted in newspapers and compete with the new comic book sensations Superman and Batman, which were introduced in 1938 and 1939, respectively. Eisner did not want to create just another superhero, however. Instead, he created the Spirit, a series about a middle-class private detective named Denny Colt whose crime-fighting alter-ego was named the Spirit. Though Quality Comics insisted that the Spirit wear a mask and gloves, this was the only acknowledgement of superhero conventions: the Spirit had none of the superpowers of Superman or the equipment and wealth of Batman. And the stories, wrote David Hajdu in the New York Review of Books, ‘‘tended to focus on psychological themes such as loneliness, betrayal, and despair.’’ The Spirit was a huge success. According to comics expert Denis Kitchen, Eisner’s longtime agent, ‘‘At its height the Spirit insert appeared in twenty major market newspapers with a combined circulation of 5 million readers each Sunday, quintupling the circulation of America’s best-selling monthly comic book.’’ Unlike the superhero comics, what distinguished Eisner’s series was its intelligence Will Eisner

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and imagination. In one 1941 story, for example, Eisner imagines German dictator Adolf Hitler traveling in disguise to New York City where he realizes the folly of his attempt to conquer all of Europe and the error of his plan to exterminate European Jews. Eisner constantly explored new ways of presenting his stories and new illustration techniques. Hadju quoted fellow comic book creator Alan Moore (1953–; see entry) as saying that Eisner was the ‘‘single person most responsible for giving comics their brains.’’

Takes comics in a different direction Eisner may have given comics brains, as Moore suggests, but he bristled at packaging his sophisticated ideas in the comic book form. ‘‘I was after an adult reader,’’ Eisner explained to the Onion A.V. Club Web site interviewer Tasha Robinson. Comics were often looked down on by adults as a ‘‘trashy’’ form of literature; some people even believed that they caused juvenile delinquency. Eisner went in search of an adult audience. By 1942, he had left much of the work on the Spirit to assistants, though the series continued publication under Eisner’s leadership until 1952. Eisner found his adult audience while serving in the U.S. Army during World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). From 1942 to 1945, he used his artistic skills to create training manuals in the U.S. Army. While creating these manuals, Eisner experimented with using the comic book form for educational purposes. In 1952, Eisner left the world of comics to create the company American Visuals. For the next twenty-six years, Eisner dedicated himself to using sequential art to educate adults. Eisner took complicated military instruction manuals and turned them into lively illustrated guides. Instead of five pages of text telling a soldier how to repair a piece of equipment, for example, Eisner’s guide would use one page of illustrations and words to make the procedure perfectly clear. Eisner also produced instructional books for other government departments and for corporations. Most of the copies of these works have been lost or destroyed, though there are copies of PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly that circulate on auction sites on the Internet. Comics scholars who look upon Eisner as one of the masters of the trade have complained that his years in private business were a waste of his talent, but Eisner told Hajdu ‘‘the commercial comics industry [in the 1950s] was a wasteland . . . . I saw an opportunity to show that comics could be an effective teaching tool as well as an art form.’’ 96

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Invents graphic novel By the mid-1970s, Eisner had enjoyed a long career as a graphic artist. He was often invited to appear at comic book collectors’ conventions on the strength of his work on the Spirit, and it was at such a gathering that he received his next great inspiration. Eisner ran across the works of a new generation of comics artists who were creating underground comics, or comix, a term used to distinguish them from mainstream comic books and comic strips. These rowdy, sometimes crudely drawn comics, including works by Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, are not intended for children. They explore racy topics such as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. These works inspired Eisner with their energy and their willingness to take on issues that traditional comic books would never touch. He decided to take a year off from his work to focus on some stories that had been in his mind. The result was the creation of the graphic novel. By 1978, Eisner had created four stories to make the collection A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories. The stories relate some of the experiences from his youth growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. The title story is about a man whose pact with God fails when his beloved daughter dies; the other stories tell of a young male singer’s romance with an aging woman, a schoolmaster’s inappropriate affection for a student, and vacationers experiencing class conflict. These were serious stories— literature—put to comic book form. But they weren’t a comic book, Eisner realized as he presented the collection to potential publishers. Instead, Eisner called his collection a ‘‘graphic novel.’’ Eisner’s graphic novel represented a new phenomenon in publishing. As in comic books, Eisner tells his stories using a sequence of images combined with words, but the subject matter is so much more serious, or novelistic, that it represented a real departure from what most people recognized as comic books. A Contract with God represented a departure from Eisner’s early work as well: like many of the comix, it is drawn in black and white, and it avoids the elaborate detail and full color of the Spirit. The illustrations in A Contract with God are spare and stark. The words were given equal weight with the illustrations, thus perfecting the marriage of art and story that Eisner had been working on for years. Eisner’s work represented a whole new direction in graphic storytelling.

Perfects the form Until his death in early 2005 Eisner concentrated on perfecting the graphic novel form that he created. His work moved in two 98

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Eisner’s Influence In 1973, when he was still best known for the Spirit series of the 1940s and early 1950s, Will Eisner began to teach a course at New York’s School of Visual Arts called ‘‘Sequential Art,’’ the art of using a series of images to tell a story. Over the seventeen years that he taught the course, Eisner thought deeply about his craft. He created a series of lessons about how to use images to supplement storytelling; how to work within the frames of a comic strip, and how to break free of the frame; when to use detail, close-ups, and empty space to tell a story; and many other conventions of the trade. He used these insights to create a framework for thinking about an art form that was still struggling for acceptance. Numerous of his students went on to create comics after taking his class, and his influence is widely acclaimed within the industry. Eisner spread his influence and shared his years of study in two important works:

Comics and Sequential Art, first published in 1985 and still in print today, and Graphic Storytelling, published in 1996. Eisner not only provided wise guidance, he also asked penetrating questions, such as ‘‘unless comics address subjects of greater moment how can they hope for serious intellectual review?’’ He suggested that ‘‘the future of this form awaits participants who truly believe that the application of sequential art, with its interweaving of words and pictures, could provide a dimension of communication that contributes—hopefully on a level never before attained—to the body of literature that concerns itself with the examination of human experience.’’ These were lofty goals for an art form that had once been happy with caped superheroes and comic stunts. Yet judging from the popularity of the form, one of the hottest publishing trends of the 2000s, many practitioners took up Eisner’s challenge.

major directions, toward serious works for adults and adaptations of literary works for younger readers. Perhaps his most important works were those that followed in the footsteps of A Contract with God. These were works for adults, exploring issues of ethnicity, class conflict, and psychological drama, and nearly all were set in the New York City of Eisner’s youth. Notable works in this realm were New York: The Big City, The Building, Invisible People, A Family Matter, and The Name of the Game, among others. Explaining his subject matter, Eisner told Robinson, ‘‘I’m dealing with the human condition, and I’m dealing with life. For me, the enemy is life, and people’s struggle to prevail is essentially the theme that runs through all my books.’’ Written over a span of nearly twentyfive years, these works saw Eisner continue to experiment with different graphic techniques for telling his stories. Will Eisner

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Though many of Eisner’s works dealt with serious themes that were considered more appropriate for adults, he came to believe that graphic novels would be a great way to reach young people who might not otherwise read. In an interview with writer Judy Cantor, he recalled going to a teachers’ convention and being scolded by a teacher who shook her finger at him and told him that comic books were destroying children’s imagination. Yet Eisner had a vision for the comic book form, one that he hoped would encourage young readers to explore deeper, more lasting issues than those typically found in comic books. Eisner sought to prove this point when he adapted several classic works of literature— including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote—as full-color graphic novels. Though graphic novel readers in today’s libraries might not find many of Eisner’s books in their local collection, his legacy lives on. The influence that Eisner had on other graphic novelists, for example, was tremendous. From 1973 to 1994, Eisner was an immensely influential instructor at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught students the complex language by which graphic novelists reached their readers (see sidebar). In 1987, leaders in the comics industry recognized his importance when they named an annual industry award in his honor. The Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards are now considered the most prestigious awards given to graphic novelists. Happily, Eisner lived to see the medium he loved so much gain respect. Graphic novels occupy large sections in most book stores, and librarians across the country scramble to keep their shelves stocked with the latest titles. In 2003, Eisner commented to Cantor: ‘‘I believe this medium is the new literacy in this country. Words themselves are not able to keep up with the speed of information. This combination of words and images will continue to grow and it will dominate.’’ Eisner died on January 3, 2005, following complications from heart surgery. He was survived by his wife of many years, Ann Louise.

For More Information Books Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. Milwaukie, OR: M Press, 2005. Eisner, Will. Will Eisner’s Shop Talk (interviews). Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2001.

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Greenberger, Robert. Will Eisner. New York: Rosen Publishing, 2005. Yronwode, Catherine. The Art of Will Eisner. Princeton, WI: Kitchen Sink Press, 1982.

Periodicals Hajdu, David. ‘‘The Spirit of the Spirit.’’ New York Review of Books (June 21, 2001). Web Sites Cantor, Judy. ‘‘The Amazing Adventures of Will Eisner.’’ (November 7, 2003). Judy Cantor Navas, Writer. http://www.judycantor.com/moxie/ books/the-amazing-adventures-of.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Depelley, Jean. ‘‘Will Eisner Speaks!’’ TwoMorrows. http://www. twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/16eisner.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘What Are the Eisner Awards?’’ Comic Con International. http:// www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisnersfaq.shtml#oscars (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Will Eisner.’’ DenisKitchen.com. http://www.deniskitchen.com/docs/ bios/bio_will_eisner.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Will Eisner, RIP (1917–2005). http://www.willeisner.com/ (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Warren Ellis Born February 16, 1968 (England) British comic book writer

Warren Ellis is among the most prolific comic book writers of his generation, producing graphic novels, contributing to existing comic book series, and publishing essays, prose fiction, blogs, and other online material at a remarkable rate. He began his writing career in 1990 with the story ‘‘United We Fall’’ (published in Deadline magazine) and spent the following few years writing stories for series such as Judge Dredd and Doctor Who. By the mid-1990s he was a regular contributor to Marvel and DC comic books, but he is well known for his dislike of traditional comic book superheroes. Ellis began to break free of the genre in the late 1990s, following the success of The Authority.

‘‘Here [in Transmetropolitan] is the finest, blackest humor, and the purest hate, and a sense of justice hissed through gritted teeth.’’ COMIC BOOK/GRAPHIC NOVEL AUTHOR GARTH ENNIS

Re-invents the superhero It is no secret that Ellis doesn’t care for the clean-cut, strongjawed superheroes that long defined comic book publishing, and in 1995 he was given the opportunity to express his views in the Marvel comic book series Doom 2099. Based on the evil character Dr. Victor von Doom from the earlier Fantastic Four comics, this series was taken over by Ellis with issue number 26. Ellis made an immediate impact on the story, introducing Captain Marvel as a drug-addicted U.S. president who is a puppet of big business. Ellis told Melanie McBride in an interview on the Mindjack Web site: ‘‘I want something with a little more muscle and bite than standardissue power fantasies, whimsical romance, the autobiographies of people who never do anything and things with elves . . . . Not many comics reflect the fact that I live in a multicultural society fitted with a global communications net, nor do they reflect the fact that I don’t own a pair of Superman underpants.’’ But while Doom 2099 and his work on the X-Men book X-Calibre go some way to revising the comic book superhero, it was in his 103

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Lazarus Churchyard (illustrated by D’Israeli). Vols. 1–6 (1992). Transmetropolitan (illustrated by Darick Robertson and others). 11 vols. (1997– 2002).

Warren Ellis’ Frank Ironwine #1 (illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin). (2004). Warren Ellis’ Quit City #1 (illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin). (2004). Warren Ellis’ Simon Spector #1 (illustrated by Jacen Burrows). (2004).

The Authority (illustrated by Bryan Hitch and others). 12 vols. (1999–2000).

Other

Planetary (illustrated by John Cassaday and others). 3 vols. (1999–2004).

Available Light (short stories and photography). (2002).

Global Frequency (illustrated by various artists). 2 vols. (2002–04).

Mindbridge (PC game).

Apparat Comic Books Warren Ellis’ Angel Stomp Future #1 (illustrated by Juan Jose Ryp). (2004).

Ellis has also created several of his own comic book series and contributed to numerous existing series.

White Wolf’s Adventure (role-playing game).

own creation The Authority that Ellis most strongly influenced the genre. Taking the Jenny Sparks character from an earlier series called Stormwatch, Ellis created a team of superheroes whose aim was not just to save humanity from villains, but to take over completely, even going so far as to challenge a God-like figure known as ‘‘The Creator’’ in the final episode. Like some of his other work, The Authority has an element of optimism and idealism that sits a little uneasily with the violence and cynicism of many of the storylines. Traditionally in comics, the superhero, just like the oldstyle Western hero, defeats a villain then moves on; whereas Jenny and her team attempt to fix the deeper causes of the problem. In this case Jenny and her team aim to bring global peace, harmony, and cooperation, a radical departure from traditional superhero plots. Ellis and graphic artist Bryan Hitch worked together on the first twelve issues of the series before it was passed on to others. Ellis was born on February 16, 1968. Little is known of his childhood, save for the fact that his parents divorced when he was fourteen. He lives with his wife and daughter in Southendon-Sea, a resort town to the east of London, England, but a great deal of his work is set in the United States. He is best known as the 104

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author of Transmetropolitan (or ‘‘Transmet,’’ as its many fans call it), which first appeared in 1997; upon its completion in November 2002, the series had run to sixty episodes. Illustrated by Darick Robertson, Transmet features Spider Jerusalem, a gonzo journalist, who comes out of retirement and returns to the City in a near-future world of corrupt politics, violence, sex, drugs, and rampant consumerism. First published under DC Comics’ Helix imprint and later DC’s Vertigo label (which publishes comics for mature audiences), Transmetropolitan set a benchmark for Ellis’s political edge.

A political cartoonist Spider Jerusalem is a hard-drinking, drug-taking, unstable character, and his violent methods of investigation could not be further from Superman’s clean-cut heroics, but nevertheless his primary motivation is the struggle for truth and justice. Working for The World newspaper in an unnamed city that resembles New York, Jerusalem uncovers corruption and criminality at the heart of two presidencies and lives in a society where almost everyone is driven by greed, selfishness, and aggressive sexuality. Describing Spider Jerusalem on the Artbomb Web site, Matt Fraction explains: ‘‘Spider Jerusalem, outlaw hero of the new scum, finds himself with just enough arrogance and just enough hubris [exaggerated pride] to think that Truth matters in the world of politics.’’ Many of the political figures featured in the series resemble real political leaders, such as British prime minister Tony Blair (1953–) and U.S. president George W. Bush (1946–). Ellis’s favorite targets are threats to civil liberties, the failure of journalism, and exploitation. But while Ellis’s voice is often direct and politically tough, his work is also full of dark, adult humor. For example, one storyline in Transmetropolitan concerns Jerusalem’s attempt to rescue the last living prostitute who serviced the president. Ellis’s next major project was a series called Global Frequency, which first appeared in 2002 and can be seen as a response to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, D.C. Unlike Transmetropolitan, which developed a single storyline over five years, Global Frequency consists of a series of stand-alone episodes. The idea behind the stories is that an international intelligence organization exists to investigate and prevent various threats to world peace. These range from illegal weapons systems to paranormal events and terrorist cells. The organization consists of 1,001 anonymous members connected by video cell phones and is broadly approved by the world’s leading Warren Ellis

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nations, though it operates independently of them. Though often violent, gory, and based on the idea that traditional values and beliefs are useless, Ellis’s work is also quite optimistic; in this case, a terrorist-style network of unknown agents works for international good. Ellis’s hard-hitting style gained him a large following among science fiction and horror fans, but he is also capable of more speculative work. The series Planetary, for example, centers on a group of researchers who call themselves the ‘‘archaeologists of the impossible.’’ Planetary is an organization whose aim is to uncover secret histories and make new discoveries for the good of everyone. What this involves is a rewriting of comic book and popular culture history. The Planetary team finds out the truth or in some cases multiple truths about superheroes such as Superman, Wonder Woman, the Incredible Hulk, and other characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan. Planetary, which is illustrated by John Cassaday, first previewed in 1998, but became a series for DC’s Wildstorm imprint in 1999 with a potential run of twentyseven volumes. In early 2004, Ellis began a project in association with Avatar Press to launch his own line of books using a variety of artists. Called ‘‘Apparat,’’ the series tries to imagine what comic books might have been like without the superhero comics of the early twentieth century; the four books in the series thus focus on crime, science fiction, and detective themes. In 2005, Ellis produced the first episode in a new long-term series called Desolation Jones, based on a futuristic character of the same name who is an ex-British secret service agent relocated to Los Angeles, which is an open prison for ex-intelligence community members. Jones becomes involved in the search for German leader Adolf Hitler’s homemade pornography, kept hidden by military intelligence, but now stolen.

Beyond comic books Perhaps what marks Ellis as one of the most distinctive and challenging voices of his generation is the range of media in which he works. He told the Slashdot Web site: ‘‘I want to try all media. I’ve done journalism, I once did a little ghostwriting for radio, I’ve done short fiction, I’ve done a book of photography . . . I want to give everything a crack. I want to make a music video. I want to write feature films. I want to write a novel . . . I want to do more in animation.’’ In this respect Ellis’s approach mirrors the content of his 106

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Looking Through the Electric Window Ellis has often commented that he uses science fiction to discuss contemporary politics and society and to suggest directions in which it might be moving. But he is also interested in the way technology transforms the way people interact and conduct their lives. He told an interviewer on the popular science and technology news Web site Slashdot: ‘‘So what I wanted to do is use science fiction as a tool with which to look at our own society. And if you take as your basis the assumption that human society will do the most absurd thing possible with any technology . . . then you see how I approached the ‘extrapolation’ of [Transmetropolitan]. I really just sat down and made [stuff] up, knowing full well that truth is always stranger than fiction.’’ Ellis’s involvement with online publishing, including his own Web site, and the frequent celebration of technology in stories such as Global Frequency place him at the forefront of artists engaging with aspects of life that barely existed before the 1990s. A self-confessed information addict, Ellis told Melanie McBride: ‘‘The internet changed everything for me. All the things I wanted to know about but couldn’t obtain through traditional media or communications are right there. I would have killed for this when I was nineteen with no money and dying to fill my brain with new things from all over the planet. With this electric window, I can literally see across the world.’’

works. He describes worlds flooded with information and overloaded with technology, in which humanity follows political and corporate leaders uncritically and without regard for the future or the past. Most importantly though, Ellis is fascinated by the absurdity of such excess. Since 1990, Ellis has created some of the grittiest and most political works in the industry and has worked with some of the most accomplished and skilled graphic artists. He has written more than thirty graphic novels, contributed to many long-running comic book series, and written shorter comic strips. He has also been involved with several online projects. He is a co-founder and consultant to Artbomb, a Web site dedicated to making sophisticated and diverse graphic novels available to a wider audience, has Warren Ellis

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several online journals, and has created an official website, www.warrenellis.com. He has developed computer games, is developing television adaptations of his work, and runs The Engine, an online forum for professional comic book creators to discuss comic book work outside of the superhero genre. Ellis has won many awards, including the Don Thompson Award for Best Writer, 1998. He was featured as one of Entertainment Weekly’s 100 Most Creative People in Entertainment in 1999, and in Rolling Stone’s ‘‘Hot List 2000’’ of creative professionals. In 1999, he was awarded the International Horror Guild award for graphic narrative, and Salt Lake City Weekly named him Best Comic Book Writer of 2004.

For More Information Periodicals Jensen, Jeff. Review of Planetary. Entertainment Weekly (March 24, 2000): p. 96. ‘‘Q & A . . . with Warren Ellis.’’ Entertainment Weekly (February 21, 2003): p. 157. Raiteri, Steve. Review of Global Frequency: Planet Ablaze. Library Journal (July 2004): p. 61. Raiteri, Steve. Review of Orbiter. Library Journal (September 1, 2003): p. 140. Yayanos, Meredith. ‘‘Transmetropolitan’s Warren Ellis.’’ Publishers Weekly (December 18, 2000): p. 36.

Web Sites Artbomb. http://www.artbomb.net (accessed May 3, 2006). Butler, William Patrick. ‘‘The Desolation Hasn’t Happened Yet.’’ Jackson Free Press. http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php? id=5214_0_8_0_C (accessed May 3, 2006). McBride, Melanie. ‘‘The Transmetropolitan Condition: An Interview with Warren Ellis.’’ Mindjack. http://www.mindjack.com/interviews/ellis.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Slashdot: Warren Ellis Answers. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/ 05/09/1727245 (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Straight to Hell: Interview with Warren Ellis.’’ InsaneRantings. http:// www.insanerantings.com/hell/interviews/hwarren.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Warren Ellis Bibliography. http://www.fourteenseconds.com/warrenbib.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). WarrenEllis.com. http://www.warrenellis.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘World’s Finest: A Look at the Best in Comic Books from 2004.’’ Salt Lake City Weekly Editorial. http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2005/ arts_3_2005-01-06.cfm# (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Garth Ennis. Ira Hunter.

Garth Ennis Born January 16, 1970 (Belfast, Northern Ireland) British comic book, graphic novel author

‘‘If you need someone to write about heaven, hell, revenge or redemption, Garth Ennis is your man.’’ REVIEWER GEORGE A. TRAMOUNTANAS

Irish writer Garth Ennis has made a career out of telling gritty, violent action stories that explore the meaning of duty, bravery, and honor. Whether he is exploring the motivations of a fallen preacher on an angry journey to track down God, as in his Preacher series; tracking Frank Castle on his mission to wreak vengeance on the criminal world in The Punisher ; or following former criminal Jimmy Kavanagh as he tries to protect his kids from the psychotic killer Stein in Pride & Joy, Ennis brings his distinctive sensibility—a combination of foul language, extreme doses of violence, and a strong commitment to old-fashioned ideas like honor and duty—to comics and graphic novels. Ennis was one of the most popular writers of action comics through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, and several of his projects have been turned into major motion pictures. 111

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Graphic Novels Troubles 2 vols. (1990). True Faith (1990). John Constantine, (1993–2005).

Hellblazer.

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vols.

Preacher. 15 vols. (1996–2001). Hitman. 5 vols. (1997–2001). Unknown Soldier (1998). The Punisher. 10 vols. (2001–05). Dicks. 5 vols. (1997, 2002–05).

Ennis has written hundreds of comics, from single issues to contributions to longstanding series, including the Crisis series, (1989–91); Judge Dredd series, (1990– 93); Medieval Spawn/Witchblade, #1–3 (1996); Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, #91–93 (1997); The Worm, (1999); Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, #1–3 (2000); Just a Pilgrim, #1–5 (2001); Star Wars Tales, #10, #11 (2001–02); Thor: Vikings, #1–5 (2003); and many others.

Pride & Joy (2004). War Stories, Vol. 1. (2004). 303. 3 vols. (2004–05).

Other Co-author of screenplays for The Punisher, 2004, and Constantine, 2005.

Ghost Rider (2005–).

Develops distinctive voice early Ennis was born on January 16, 1970, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was an only child, and he and his parents moved out of Belfast to the suburban town of Hollywood when he was just a toddler. Ennis told the Comics Journal in 1998 that ‘‘there are no tales of childhood trauma that explain the horror of [his published work]. Nothing out of the ordinary.’’ This may be a classic understatement, for during the time of Ennis’s childhood—and through to the 1990s—Northern Ireland was the site of ongoing violence between Protestants and Catholics over access to political power. Both sides formed paramilitary organizations (civilian fighting forces) to fight for their cause, including the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), considered by many to be a terrorist group. Violence, including bombings, assassinations, riots, and shootings, was a regular part of life in the region. Those who were religious tended to get drawn into the politics of the area, but Ennis, raised in a family that did not believe in God, managed to avoid taking sides. In many of his later stories, however, Ennis expressed scorn for organized religion, which he often depicts as fueling violence, rather than preventing it. 112

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As Ennis finished high school and entered college, he had no clear plans for what he would do with his life. It was at this time that he discovered the world of comic books. He began to read widely in comics, from the political British comics like Crisis to American stories like Concrete, Watchmen, Elektra: Assassin, and other works that came out of the comics publishing boom of the mid- to late 1980s. Ennis thought that he could write a comic about Northern Ireland, a subject he’d rarely seen treated in comic books. ‘‘It wasn’t really my intention to become a political writer,’’ he told David Carroll, in an interview on the Tabula Rasa Web site. ‘‘It was, to be honest, a fairly cynical move . . . . I thought, if I could present them with this, they’d jump at it, and I was right, and after that it was a case of being in the right place and the right time . . . . They just grabbed the first half-decent looking thing they got, phoned me up, and I was on a plane to London, within a couple of days. Straight over, sorted it out, and home again, and the rest, as they say, is history.’’ Ennis’s first comics work was published in 1989 in issues 15-20 and 22-27 of Crisis, the British anthology, and later republished in graphic novel form as Troubled Souls. Troubled Souls is a serious story about the unlikely friendship that develops between Tom, a Protestant, and Damien, a Catholic, and their realization that the political violence of Belfast is a force that destroys families and friendships without cause. Ennis’s follow-up to Troubled Souls, called For a Few Troubles More, was published in 1990 and offered a different view of the troubles of Belfast. In this second story, the political troubles form the backdrop to the crude and bawdy lives of Belfast’s citizens, like a violent nightmare that only occasionally erupts into normal life. With these two works, both illustrated by John McCrea, Ennis established a distinctive comic voice that would grow and develop in years to come.

Lured to U.S. comics Ennis’s work was well received in Britain, and the money he earned allowed him to drop out of college and commit himself to writing comics stories full time. Over the next several years, from 1990 to 1993, he wrote dozens of stories in the Judge Dredd series, published in the British comics weekly 2000 AD (see sidebar). Judge Dredd acts as the judge, jury, and executioner in the futuristic Mega-City One, and the character allowed Ennis to work out his writing style and explore themes of justice and retribution. Perhaps more important to his later work was the 1990 publication of True Faith. True Faith tells the story of a man driven insane by Garth Ennis

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the death of his wife, who then launches a series of fiery attacks on churches in order to get revenge on God. The book was intentionally inflammatory, Ennis admitted to the British magazine New Statesman & Society: ‘‘Oh, I was having a go all right . . . . I don’t like evangelicals, I don’t like the Church [of England], I don’t like Christianity.’’ Defenders of religion took Ennis’s bait and drummed up a campaign to ban the book and prosecute its author. One British religious leader, quoted in the same article, said ‘‘The book is undoubtedly a classic example of bad taste, it denigrates the faith of many, it’s unlawfully blasphemous and would create deep offence to all who retain a belief in God.’’ The publisher of the book, Fleetway, withdrew the book after protest from church groups. This action only increased its fame. Grant Morrison, in the introduction to the book, provided a different perspective on the whole affair when he wrote, ‘‘Above all, it’s a bloody good laugh and if you can’t see the funny side of crucified Alsatians [a breed of dog], burning churches and mass murder then you’re probably well enough to go home. As for me, I’ll stay here and gloat over this ruthless, shameless desecration of everything that normal, decent folk hold dear.’’ Poking fun at established values and religious piety, and finding humor in violence and gore, proved to be hallmarks of Ennis’s growing body of work, and it brought him to the attention of the much larger and better-funded American comic book industry. By the early 1990s, American comics were considered to be in one of their periodic slumps, and they turned to Britain to find a new generation of writers. As Ennis told Carroll, ‘‘DC [Comics] needed some fresh blood, so they sent Karen Berger and a couple of people over to England with a big chequebook, just to sign up every writer and artist in sight . . . . And because the rights and conditions you worked under, in terms of money and freedom and decent treatment by editors, were ten times better at DC and most American publishers than you would get in the British ones, people were quite happy to drop what they were doing.’’ Ennis didn’t quite drop what he was doing—he continued to do occasional stories for British publishers—but he did begin a long and very productive relationship with DC Comics beginning with the series Hellblazer. Hellblazer is an ongoing series about a social outcast/con-man/ sorcerer named John Constantine who tries to survive in a morally complicated modern world. The series has been published since the 1980s by Vertigo, the ‘‘mature audiences’’ branch of DC Comics. Ennis was brought on to write the series when the original writer, 114

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Jamie Delano, left the project. Ennis, paired with artist and frequent collaborator Steve Dillon (1962–), wrote issues 41 through 46, and issues 62 through 133, which were collected in a series of graphic novels. Ennis attacked the project with verve; he told Carroll that he thought ‘‘you’re really only going to get one shot at this, so you better impress the hell out of them first time, and do something extreme, and do something radical.’’ He reshaped the character of John Constantine, making him more fun loving yet still with a ‘‘miserable doomed heart.’’ Booklist reviewer Gordon Flagg, reviewing Hellblazer: Rakes at the Gates of Hell (2003), wrote that ‘‘Ennis gave Constantine cheeky irreverence, especially evident here in his confrontation with Satan, and perfectly captured the character’s mordant [biting or sarcastic] charm.’’

From preacher to punisher Ennis’s Hellblazer stories were a huge success for DC, and they offered Ennis the opportunity to create his own comic series with artist Steve Dillon. ‘‘I felt it was time to do something, the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to do—a comic that will entertain me,’’ Ennis explained to Carroll. The result was Preacher, which Washington Post comics reviewer Mike Musgrove called ‘‘just about the best thing to come along since comics started finding their way into books.’’ Preacher is the ongoing story of Jesse Custer, a fallen preacher who becomes host to a strange spiritual force called Genesis, itself a product of the love affair of an angel and a demon. Jesse Custer travels the United States with his girlfriend, Tulip, and a hard-drinking Irish vampire named Cassidy, in search of God’s reasoning for allowing the world to become corrupt and fallen. The sixty-six-issue Preacher series, published in serial form from 1995 to 2000 and collected in a series of graphic novels, features Custer in a number of violent, profanity-ridden encounters with corrupt corporations, morally bankrupt religious leaders, and crooked lawmen. Musgrave wrote that the series is ‘‘part buddy movie, part private-eye mystery and part existential drama—and all three parts work exceedingly well.’’ According to Ken Tucker, reviewing the series for Entertainment Weekly, ‘‘Preacher features more blood and blasphemy than any mainstream comic in memory.’’ In his confrontations with killers and angels, and even when he comes face to face with God, Jesse Custer holds fast to the notion that there is right and wrong in the world, and he tries his best to do what is right, even if it means murder. In the midst of the mindless violence and the endless stream of profanity, this Garth Ennis

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2000AD Like so many British comic book writers and artists, Garth Ennis published much of his early work in 2000AD, a comic weekly that ran continuously from February 1977 through September 2005, when it reached prog (issue) number 1457. The comic was started by IPC Magazines, which later changed its name to Fleetway, then was sold to Rebellion Developments in 1999. Under the ironic editorship of Tharg the Mighty, an alien from Betelgeuse, 2000AD has introduced a number of popular series and characters, many of them science-fiction related, including Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Sinister Dexter, Strontium Dog, and many others. 2000AD was known for its hard-edged wit and innovative approaches to contemporary issues in the late 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, 2000AD had become so popular that the American comics industry giants DC Comics and Marvel Comics began to lure the magazine’s best writers with higher pay and greater creative control. Among the writers to have started at 2000AD are Alan Moore (1953–; see entry), Alan Grant, Cam Kennedy, Grant Morrison, Bryan Talbot, and of course Garth Ennis. 2000AD continues to publish today, and can be viewed online at www.2000 adonline.com.

moral center to Custer’s quest elevates the Preacher to something more than mere blood and guts. When they finished their work on the Preacher series in 2000, Ennis and Dillon were widely acclaimed as the new masters of the tough-guy comic. Their reputation made them the perfect pair to take on The Punisher, a long-running Marvel Comics series that had nearly died in the late 1990s due to lagging sales and several unsuccessful revivals. The Punisher series centered on the murderous career of Frank Castle, a veteran of several campaigns in the Vietnam War (1954–75; a controversial war in which the United States aided South Vietnam in its fight against a takeover by Communist North Vietnam) who turns vigilante (a self-appointed doer of justice) after his wife and children are killed by the mafia. Castle is a highly trained killer with a thirst for blood, though his 116

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targets are all criminals or wrongdoers. Comic book critics are divided over whether Castle himself is a hero or a criminal; most label him an antihero, or a hero who is lacking any noble qualities. Ennis told an interviewer for the Maxim Web site that what drew him to the series was the fact that ‘‘he kills a lot of people and he does it proactively, not in self-defense . . . . [I]n the onestep-removed-from-reality world that the Punisher lives in, you can dunk a man in a piranha tank and he’ll come out a skeleton. You can punch a bear in the face and get him angry enough to rip your opponents to pieces.’’ Of course, Ennis’s treatment of Castle, who had been in comics since 1974, wasn’t all blood and guts. Wrote Publishers Weekly in a 2004 review of The Punisher: Streets of Laredo (2003), ‘‘Ennis adds a bit of dimension and soul to this cold, calculating man by revealing details of his life and world through the eyes of the people the Punisher encounters.’’ Ennis and Dillon teamed on multiple issues of The Punisher, resulting in ten graphic novels collections between 2001 and 2005, with more to come.

New frontiers in the tough-guy world Ennis is nothing if not prolific. His work on the Preacher and The Punisher series—while the most popular of his efforts— represents just a portion of his output since the late 1990s. In 1996, he began work on Hitman, the story of an Irish-American hired killer working in Gotham City—home to many DC Comics superheroes—and usually failing to utilize the superpowers he received after being bitten by an alien. Illustrated by John McCrea, Hitman is considered to be funnier than many of Ennis’s other works. He told Steve Johnson, in an interview on the Mania Web site, that ‘‘a big attraction of the book for me was the lead character, Tommy, and his whole attitude, his rather light-hearted, not taking anything too seriously, laughing at superheroes.’’ Ennis has also shown an enduring interest in war stories, once a staple of the British comic scene. In 2004, he published War Stories, Vol. 1, a collection of four stories that are based on true events from World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan); each is illustrated by a different artist. Booklist praised Ennis for the way he ‘‘reinvents the war comic for current sensibilities,’’ and took note of the careful research that underlay the book. Fans can look forward to additional volumes of War Stories, but they don’t have to wait Garth Ennis

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for Ennis to take on additional war comics. In 2004, Ennis teamed with artists Jacen Burrows and Greg Waller to introduce a new series, called 303, a reference to the .303 caliber Enfield rifle that was the favorite weapon of the British armed forces for many years. ‘‘303 begins as a war story, but changes halfway through into something I’m still not certain of myself,’’ Ennis explained in a preview on the Avatar Web site. ‘‘It’s the tale of a soldier who’s been fighting for nothing all his life, but now believes he’s found his purpose, and the one man who can stop him, a worn-out hero filled with fatal sadness. But it’s also the tale of two great countries [Russia and Afghanistan], one locked in long and terrible decline, one with a sickness in its heart; and the champions who do battle for their nations in the dark and secret places no one ever goes.’’ Beginning in late 2005, Ennis was at work reviving yet another Marvel comic line: the Ghost Rider series. The Ghost Rider movie starring actor Nicholas Cage is set to release in February 2007. In his fifteen years in the business, Ennis has succeeded at pushing the envelope for acceptable content for comics with a teenaged readership. ‘‘We’re constantly having to justify the violence, the sexual context, and the use of Christian icons’’ in Preacher, he told Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly in 1996, but ‘‘we can get away with a lot because it’s selling well.’’ That his works have not been the target of greater criticism from those concerned about the content aimed at young readers may be largely due to the fact that, for all the violence and profanity in his morally complicated worlds, Ennis’s heroes consistently uphold values of duty, honor, and integrity. Perhaps these values, as much as the violence, are what keep readers coming back for more.

For More Information Periodicals Comics Journal no. 207 (1998). Flagg, Gordon. Review of War Stories. Booklist (February 1, 2004): 961. Musgrove, Mike. ‘‘Graphic Novels.’’ Washington Post (January 11, 1998): X04. Tucker, Ken. ‘‘Extreme Comix.’’ Entertainment Weekly (June 28, 1996): 76. Tweed, James. ‘‘True Faith?’’ New Statesman & Society (February 15, 1991): 19. 118

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Web Sites Carroll, David. ‘‘Trail Blazers: Interviews with Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis’’ (first appeared in Bloodsong, no. 8, 1997). Tabula Rasa. http://www. tabula-rasa.info/AusComics/Hellblazers.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Darius, Julian. ‘‘Belfast and New York, Ireland and America, and the Strange Phenomenon of ‘Irish Studies’ as Seen in the Graphic Fiction of Garth Ennis.’’ Sequart. http://www.sequart.com/articles/index.php? article=597 (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Garth Ennis.’’ Avatar. http://www.avatarpress.com/www2/categories/ garthEnnis/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Garth Ennis.’’ Read Yourself Raw. http://www.readyourselfraw.com/ profiles/ennis/profile_ennis.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Garth Ennis’ 303.’’ Avatar. http://www.avatarpress.com/303/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Garth Ennis General Bibliography.’’ EnjolrasWorld. http://www.enjolrasworld. com/HTML%20Bibliographies/Garth%20Ennis%20Bibliography.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Johnson, Steve. ‘‘Garth Ennis Writes Heroes without Costumes.’’ Mania. http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/sputnik/53/scifi/g_ennis.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). Tramountanas, George A. ‘‘Seeking Vengeance: Garth Ennis Talks ‘Ghost Rider.’’’ CBR. http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem. cgi?id=5846 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Kosuke Fujishima Born July 7, 1964 (Chiba, Japan) Japanese author, illustrator

Kosuke Fujishima’s Oh My Goddess! manga series has brought him enormous success in both Japan and the United States. Noted for his beautiful artwork and humorous, good-natured storylines, Fujishima has become one of the leading manga, or Japanese comics, creators. In August 1994 Oh My Goddess! began its monthly publication in the United States, and it was still running in 2005, making it the longest-running manga series in the country. It remains Fujishima’s main focus and his greatest success. Fujishima was born on July 7, 1964, in Chiba, Japan. As with other manga creators little is known about Fujishima’s youth or family life. Few manga creators reveal these personal details to the public. What is known is that Fujishima became an editor for Puff, a comics news magazine, directly after his graduation from high school. While interviewing the much-admired Japanese manga creator Tatsuya Egawa for a magazine profile, Fujishima boldly asked if Egawa needed an assistant. Upon seeing Fujishima’s portfolio of sketches, Egawa offered him a job. Fujishima developed as an artist under Egawa’s tutelage, helping with work on Egawa’s popular Be Free! manga, a Japanese style comic. When Be Free! was made into a live-action movie, Fujishima created a manga that offered fans behind-the-scenes insight into the making of the film. The manga was published in Comic Morning in 1986 to great fan approval; one of the fans’ favorites was a policewoman character Fujishima had created. He quickly developed a storyline around the policewoman and began publishing his first original manga series, You’re Under Arrest!, later that same year. The first issues appeared in Morning Party Extra magazine, one of many Japanese manga magazines. In Japan, manga stories are first published in manga magazines, which may be issued 121

Best-Known Works Oh My Goddess! Graphic Novels

Vol. 12, The Fourth Goddess (2001).

1-555-Goddess (1996).

Vol. 13, Childhood’s End (2002).

Vol. 1, Wrong Number (2002).

Vol. 14, Queen Sayoko (2002).

Vol. 2, Leader of the Pack (2002).

Vol. 15, Hand in Hand (2003).

Vol. 3, Final Exam (2002).

Vol. 16, Mystery Child (2003).

Vol. 4, Love Potion 9 (1997).

Vol. 17, Traveler (2003).

Vol. 5, Sympathy for the Devil (1998).

Vol. 18, The Phantom Racer (2004).

Vol. 6, Terrible Master Urd (1999).

Vol. 19/20, Sora Unchained (2005).

Vol. 7, The Queen of Vengeance (1999).

Vol. 21, Peorth Is Back! (2005).

Vol. 8, Mara Strikes Back (2000).

Vol. 22, Oh My Goddess! (2005).

Vol. 9, Ninja Master (2000).

You’re Under Arrest! Graphic Novels

Vol. 10, Miss Keiichi (2001).

The Wild Ones (1997).

Vol. 11, The Devil in Miss Urd (2001).

Lights and Siren (1999).

weekly or monthly. These magazines range in length from 200 to 850 pages and contain a number of stories from various authors and artists. Once a story has run for a time, it is collected in a tank obon, or compilation volume, which brings together a set of stories in a series. It is these tankobon that have provided the basis for the CLAMP manga that has been published in the United States.

Develops first manga title You’re Under Arrest! focuses on Miyuki Kobayakawa and Natsumi Tsujimoto, two policewomen in the Tokyo City Police. Miyuki is a level-headed senior officer and an adept mechanic, calmly teaching the ropes to her rookie partner, Natsumi, whose hot temper and amazing strength create as much trouble as they solve. The series offers exciting chases and action-packed storylines—with special attention given to detailed drawings of racing cars and motorcycles—but the thrust of the series is the relationship between the two women, whose intelligence and independence interested fans. ‘‘The Japanese are fascinated with the fictional idea of strong women—it does seem to appeal to them in a very strong way,’’ translator Toren Smith told Dark Horse interviewer Michael Gilman. 122

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Fujishima enjoyed a modest amount of success with You’re Under Arrest! The manga stories that first appeared in magazines began to be collected in tank obon in 1987. Despite this, Fujishima soon found himself at work on what would become his greatest success. To promote a contest to win You’re Under Arrest! paraphernalia in 1988, Fujishima drew characters from his manga praying to a goddess in hopes of winning the prizes. Fujishima especially liked the goddess and developed a new manga that would feature her prominently. The first issue of the resulting manga was published in 1988 in Afternoon magazine. The series, titled Oh My Goddess!, quickly made Fujishima a household name in Japan because it struck a chord with so many fans. For the next few years, Fujishima simultaneously worked on You’re Under Arrest! and Oh My Goddess! But the stunning popularity of Oh My Goddess! prompted him to stop publication of You’re Under Arrest! in 1992, after seven tank obon volumes.

Oh My Goddess! Oh My Goddess! is the story of Keiichi Morisato and his life with three goddesses. The series begins when Keiichi, an awkward college freshman, attempts to dial a fast-food delivery service to order his dinner; instead he mistakenly reaches the Goddess Technical Help Line. The goddess Belldandy grants him one wish. Girlfriend-less Keiichi wishes that the goddess remain at his side forever. Although seemingly a dream come true, Keiichi soon realizes that life with the goddess is more complicated than he imagined—especially when her two sisters, Urd and Skuld—move in with them. The series is a lighthearted comedy, following the trials and tribulations of Keiichi and Belldandy’s life together: the complications introduced by Belldandy’s magical powers, the disruption of Urd’s attempts at meddling in their life with magic potions and spells, Skuld’s interfering gizmos and gadgets, and the change introduced into every one of Keiichi’s previous relationships with friends and family now that he has goddesses in his presence. Barb Lien, in a Sequential Tart review, praised the Oh My Goddess! series for being ‘‘intelligent and funny’’ and ‘‘consistently entertaining.’’ And Lisa Martincik, writing in Voice of Youth Advocates, noted that ‘‘The stories in Oh My Goddess! are simple, but not without sophistication, and are always beautifully drawn.’’ In Japan, manga series are created for specific audiences, divided by age and gender. Oh My Goddess! straddles these boundaries. It has been described as part of the shonen genre that is developed for Kosuke Fujishima

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The Goddesses Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld are based loosely on Norse mythology. They represent the Norns, three sisters who are associated with the past, the present, and the future. Urd, the oldest, is associated with what was. Verdande (which has been translated in Oh My Goddess! as Belldandy) is associated with all things in the present. And Skuld, the youngest, is associated with all things that have yet to come.

a male audience younger than age sixteen, as well as for the seinen genre, which means literally ‘‘young adult’’ and describes manga targeted at males over the age of sixteen. Like shonen manga, seinen manga often have a male protagonist with stories about some type of action, sport, or romance. Shonen has a younger protagonist and more innocent encounters, while seinen usually has a college-age or adult male protagonist and more overt sexual elements. Oh My Goddess! features older characters, but unlike other seinen stories, it does not include blatant nudity or offensive language. Julie Newcomb of GreenCine describes the animated series of Oh My Goddess! as being part of an ‘‘important subset of the shonen genre giving rise to what’s been dubbed ‘harem anime,’ in which one hapless young man finds himself surrounded (usually living in the same house) with a bevy of beautiful girls.’’ In general, critics agree that Oh My Goddess! includes such appealing storylines that the series appeals to a broad range of male youth as well as to female audiences. The success of Oh My Goddess! in Japan spawned an industry of related trinkets, television shows, videos, and a movie, making Fujishima well known throughout his country. Manga importer Toren Smith took notice of the series and began translating it for American audiences in the early 1990s. Oh My Goddess! first published in the United States in monthly comic book form, with subsequent collection in graphic novels published by Dark Horse Comics. By 2005, Oh My Goddess! stopped monthly publication as single comic issues in favor of regular publication in longer graphic novel format. That same year, the popularity of Oh My Goddess! prompted Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) to introduce an animated version of the manga titled Ah! My Goddess to U.S. television viewers. The popularity of the anime (animated cartoon) prompted TBS to broadcast a second season of the show starting in the spring of 2006. 124

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Comes a long way The success of Oh My Goddess! in both manga and anime form increased U.S. distributors’ interest in Fujishima’s earlier, lesspopular series You’re Under Arrest! Fujishima, however, did not like his earliest stories and would not agree to republish them in English translation. However, Fujishima did agree to publish enough of You’re Under Arrest! in English translation to fill two graphic novelsize volumes. Toren Smith told Gilman that fans should not fret over the exclusion of the earliest issues of You’re Under Arrest! from the U.S. market because Fujishima’s artistic style had changed so dramatically since his early stories. He explained that Fujishima ‘‘felt that volume 5 was where his art really began to come into his own . . . . The art is so different in the earlier books that people wouldn’t even recognize the characters. That’s no exaggeration, by the way.’’ Fujishima’s refined artistic style has brought him critical acclaim. A reviewer for Manga Maniacs Web site praised Fujishima’s work for Oh My Goddess! as having ‘‘top notch design’’ and ‘‘exquisite wet ink shading and highly detailed costumes and settings.’’ Publishers Weekly commented on Fujishima’s ‘‘airy and elegant’’ artwork. In his earlier work, Fujishima used bolder, sharper-edged shading contrasts, and his characters were noted for having more prominent features than the softer forms of the later series. The one aspect of Fujishima’s designs that has consistently received high marks from reviewers is his depiction of automobiles. Fujishima is a noted fanatic of cars and motorcycles, owning ten himself, and his drawings of them are vividly realistic. Fujishima did not limit his work to manga. He developed characters for several video games and created anime series for both You’re Under Arrest! and Oh My Goddess! He also created an original anime story called eX-Driver about a future in which cars run on electricity and are smart enough to drive passengers themselves. Though these other works occasionally diverted Fujishima’s attention, Oh My Goddess! remained his main focus. About Fujishima’s other work, Smith told Dark Horse that American audiences should not expect Fujishima to create any product specifically for an American audience. Even if You’re Under Arrest! became wildly popular in the United States, for example, Smith did not expect Fujishima to write more issues for that series. ‘‘The U.S. market— even for the most successful manga artist—represents an insignificant fraction of his market in Japan, and there’s no point in the artist spending any time at all doing anything specifically for the U.S.,’’ Smith explained. This news sat well with many American Kosuke Fujishima

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manga fans, who appreciated that manga offered them insight into a culture very different from their own. Fujishima’s popularity remained high in both Japan and the United States in late 2005, which may lead to the translation of some of his other work into English.

For More Information Periodicals ‘‘Oh My Goddess!: Traveler.’’ Publishers Weekly (February 23, 2004): 54. Weiner, Steve. ‘‘A Friend in High Places.’’ School Library Journal (October 2004): 29.

Web Sites Gilman, Michael. ‘‘Interview with Toren Smith.’’ Dark Horse. http://www. darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=622 (accessed on November 22, 2005). Newcomb, Julie. ‘‘Anime.’’ GreenCine. http://www.greencine.com/static/ primers/anime.jsp (accessed on November 22, 2005). ‘‘Oh My Goddess!’’ http://www.mangamaniacs.org/reviews/omg.shtml (accessed on November 22, 2005).

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Neil Gaiman. AP Images.

Neil Gaiman

‘‘We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.’’

Born November 10, 1960 (Portchester, England) British science fiction and comics, graphic novels writer

Many consider Neil Gaiman to be one of the greatest writers in the field of comics and graphic novels, and he is certainly one of the comic industry’s biggest stars. His career began in 1987 with the publication of Violent Cases, a graphic novel illustrated by Gaiman’s frequent collaborator, Dave McKean (1963–). When Gaiman began writing, comics were still considered by many to be an inferior form of storytelling, suitable only for children, but Gaiman helped to change people’s perception of the medium by creating works of high artistic and literary quality. Black Orchid, The Books of Magic, and The Sandman are examples of Gaiman’s early work. Gaiman is a prolific author whose versatile range includes fantasy novels, children’s books, graphic novels, short stories, and screenplays. His works American Gods and Coraline dominated the New York Times best-seller list, and both were honored with the Bram Stoker Award and Hugo Award. Gaiman is probably best 127

Best-Known Works for Young Adults Graphic Novels Violent Cases (1987).

Marvel 1602 (2004). Novels

Black Orchid (1991).

American Gods (2001).

The Sandman 11 vols. (1991–96, 2003).

Coraline (2002).

The Books of Magic (1993). The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch (1995). Death: The High Cost of Living (1996).

Picture Books The Day I Swapped Two Goldfish for My Dad (1997). The Wolves in the Walls (2003).

known for The Sandman, a graphic novel series that The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Literature in English has praised as ‘‘the most accomplished work of pure fantasy the form has yet produced; complex, dream-filled, and demanding.’’ The series has attracted a large international readership and has been honored with numerous literary awards. The Sandman series—with ten graphic novel volumes published between 1991 and 1996, and an eleventh added in 2003—has been published in thirteen languages in nineteen countries; as of 2003, the series had sold more than seven million copies.

An aspiring young writer Neil Gaiman was born on November 10, 1960, in Portchester, on the southern coast of England. From a very early age, Gaiman was encouraged by his mother to learn to read and write. He had learned to read by the age of three and was writing poetry a year later. By the age of five, Gaiman had read C. S. Lewis’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. Throughout his childhood, he made frequent trips to his local public library, where he would eventually read every book in the children’s room before being set loose on the adult section. Gaiman loved stories involving magic and fantasy, especially the works of Lewis Carroll, James Branch Cabell, C. S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. At the age of seven, Gaiman discovered a whole new form of storytelling: the American superhero comic book. A family friend lent Gaiman a box of comics that contained stories featuring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Included in the box 128

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was the Justice League of America number 47, guest-starring DC’s original incarnation of the Sandman, as well as Marvel’s The Mighty Thor, a series that inspired Gaiman to read about the world of Norse mythology, a body of stories and legends passed down from early Scandinavian peoples. Gaiman became so entranced with comics that by the age of eleven he decided that he wanted to write them for a living. In 1975, Gaiman met with a high school guidance counselor to discuss his dream of writing American superhero comics. Instead of encouraging him to enroll in a college writing program, the counselor strongly advised Gaiman to forget about comic books and begin training for a career in accounting. Discouraged, Gaiman stopped reading comics for the next nine years, though he didn’t give up his dream of becoming a writer. Instead, Gaiman turned his attention to reading science fiction, and was especially inspired by the fiction of J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Samuel R. Delany, and Roger Zelazny, writers who questioned the value of technology and focused on the emotional lives of their characters. Shortly after high school, Gaiman begin writing his own stories, which he submitted to various magazines. After eighteen months of rejection, Gaiman decided to change his approach and pursue journalism. As Gaiman recalls in The Sandman Companion, ‘‘Either I have no talent—which I do not choose to believe—or I’m simply not going about this the right way. I am going to switch to journalism, and in the process I’m going to figure out how the world works—how magazine articles get assigned, how books get published, how television scripts get sold.’’ He purchased a copy of Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and began actively contacting editors. His efforts eventually paid off and he began getting writing assignments for British publications such as Time Out, The Observer, and The Sunday Times of London Magazine. During the early 1980s, Gaiman also started writing short stories for men’s magazines and publishing monthly interviews with popular science fiction writers like Harry Harrison, Terry Jones, and Douglas Adams. ‘‘I was very lucky,’’ Gaiman told Claire E. White on the Writers Write Web site, ‘‘because I made [the decision to become a journalist] at a time in England when lots and lots of magazines were getting stuff done by freelancers.’’

Rediscovers comic books In 1984, Gaiman again began reading American comic books, an event that would change the course of his writing career forever. Neil Gaiman

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One afternoon while waiting for a train at Victoria Train Station in London, Gaiman happened upon a comic book called The Saga of Swamp Thing, number 25. Intrigued by the cover, he read it while standing at the newsstand, greatly admiring the quality of fellow Brit Alan Moore’s writing. Moore (1953–; see entry) brought a fresh, innovative approach to storytelling unknown to comics at that time. As Gaiman recalls in The Sandman Companion, ‘‘I fell in love with comics again. It was like returning to an old flame and discovering that she was still beautiful.’’ By issue number 27, Gaiman began buying Swamp Thing on a regular basis and was reinspired to write comic books. ‘‘Moore’s work convinced me that you really could do work in comics that had the same amount of intelligence, the same amount of passion, the same amount of quality that you could put in any other medium,’’ Gaiman was quoted in Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Soon after, Gaiman began corresponding with Alan Moore, and the two developed a close friendship. Moore became Gaiman’s mentor and helped teach him about the techniques needed to write comic scripts. Gaiman has been married to Mary Therese McGrath since 1985, and they live near Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they have raised three children, Michael, Holly, and Maddy. In 1986, Gaiman met the artist Dave McKean at a pub near his favorite comic shop. They quickly discovered that they shared a passion for comics and began working on their own comics, developing a partnership that has endured for twenty years. Later that year, an editor at Escape magazine offered them the opportunity to create a five-page comic strip for the magazine. Gaiman and McKean developed the project that would eventually become their first graphic novel, Violent Cases. Published in 1987, the graphic novel Violent Cases is about an unnamed adult narrator who looks back on his childhood memories about a visit to a doctor whose clientele included the notorious gangster, Al Capone. Their work caught the attention of Karen Berger, an editor at DC Comics, who had been working with Alan Moore. On the recommendation of Alan Moore, Karen Berger and Dick Giordano (the vice president of DC Comics) met with Gaiman and McKean to discuss working on projects for their company. Berger and Giordano proposed that Gaiman and McKean create a story to relaunch Black Orchid, a short-lived series from the early 1970s. Gaiman and McKean’s critically acclaimed Black Orchid was published as a four-issue mini-series. In the introduction to the trade paperback edition, Mikal Gilmore noted: ‘‘Reviewing this work 130

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now, it is clear that Black Orchid—like Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Dark Knight and Alan Moore’s Miracleman, Swamp Thing and Watchmen—is one of those books that has helped break modern comics history in two and signaled the rise of a new courage and a new spirit of aspiration within the medium.’’ To help promote Black Orchid, Berger felt that the unknown Gaiman needed a regular monthly series to help establish his name, since a regular series would attract more readers than a mini-series. Berger offered him the chance to write The Sandman.

The Sandman The original Sandman was a minor character invented in the 1940s and largely forgotten by the 1980s. It thus provided Gaiman with a blank slate on which he could inscribe his own vision. Drawing on his love of mythology, Gaiman created a family of characters known as ‘‘The Endless.’’ This pantheon included Lord Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams (also known as the Sandman), and his siblings Desire, Destiny, Despair, Destruction, Delirium, and Death. These beings are not gods; rather, they are ‘‘endless beings,’’ or immortals who represent constants in human life. Originally published as a monthly comic book, the series debuted in 1989 and ran for seventy-five issues, ending in 1996. In 2003, Gaiman added a new volume to the series when he released The Sandman: Endless Nights, a graphic novel that contained a story about each of the Endless characters. Though the series is very popular among young adults, its content is very mature, with direct and sometimes explicit treatments of violence and sexuality. Gaiman combined elements from literature, mythology, fantasy, family drama, philosophy, and horror to create a unique blend of storytelling that had never been seen in comics before. Working with a diverse group of illustrators such as Sam Keith, Kelly Jones, P. Craig Russell, and Jill Thompson, Gaiman created stories about the Sandman, a thin, pale, black-clad immortal who reigns over the world of dreams. Hy Bender noted in The Sandman Companion that ‘‘The Sandman violates all the rules about what makes a character popular in the superhero-dominated comic industry. Instead of fighting criminals, or saving lives, his sole concern is to maintain ‘The Dreaming,’ which is the infinite, ever-changing psychic landscape we visit every night while asleep. Rather than being muscular, cheery, and colorful, he’s thin, humorless, and perpetually dressed in black.’’ The Sandman stories vary in length from single-issue short stories to novels told over the course of six or Neil Gaiman

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more issues. Some stories are set in the present and some in the past, occurring in a variety of settings, including the realm of dreams, New York City, Shakespearean England, and even Hell. 132

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Gaiman has commented that he kept taking the series to new places to see how far it could stretch, and he never found its limits. Every issue of the series, as well as the graphic novel collections, features innovative collage-style covers by Dave McKean, though the stories are illustrated by a variety of artists. Gaiman developed an approach to creating his comic scripts that he called ‘‘full script,’’ according to Authors and Artists for Young Adults. ‘‘You start with page one, panel one, and you describe everything in the panel. And you tell the artist what to draw. Then you go on to panel two. And you may well tell them what size the panels are, what kind of feeling you’re after, etc.’’ The level of detail that Gaiman provided meant that creating a script was incredibly time-consuming. He estimated that the entire script for The Sandman series was more than two thousand pages long, or more than a million words. The result was a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed fantasy series that attracted a wide readership of both males and females who ran the gamut from comic book fans and college students to university professors. Over the years, reviewers lauded The Sandman with accolades rarely granted to comics. In 1995, Commonweal book critic Frank McConnell called the ongoing story ‘‘the best piece of fiction being done these days,’’ adding that with these series Gaiman has established ‘‘the fact that a comic book can be a work of high and very serious art.’’ A contributor to the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers wrote that The Sandman stories ‘‘are almost uniformly excellent and any one of them would make a good starting point for those readers who . . . have yet to discover the rare but powerful joy inherent in a great comic book.’’ The Sandman series garnered many awards, including The World Fantasy Award, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, and the Harvey Award. It also made Gaiman a celebrity; handsome and always willing to attend book signings and comic conventions, Gaiman became immensely popular among comics fans.

Beyond Sandman The Sandman is Gaiman’s best-known and most-popular creation, though it is hardly his only contribution to the world of literature. He has written widely for adults, penning novels, short fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. Gaiman has also created several titles for younger readers. His graphic novel The Books of Magic introduced readers to Timothy Hunter, a teenage boy who Neil Gaiman

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learns that he is destined to become the world’s greatest magician. The book provides an engaging and sometimes frightening look at the world of magic. In Death: The High Cost of Living, Gaiman borrows the character Death from his Sandman series. In this graphic novel, Death appears on Earth as a sixteen-year-old girl who befriends a potentially suicidal teenage boy in order to show him that life is worth living. In the graphic novel The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, Gaiman and Dave McKean create an unsettling story about the cruelty of life as seen through the eyes of a young boy. McKean’s use of painting, photography, and multimedia collage created one of the most unique experiments in the world of graphic novels. Gaiman’s prose works include the children’s horror novel Coraline, about a young girl who discovers a dark and strange parallel world that exists on the other side of a door in her house. His children’s picture book The Wolves in the Walls combines elements of humor and horror as the young protagonist, Lucy, battles the wolves who have taken over her family home. In American Gods, Gaiman explores the landscape of American culture and the mythologies that have shaped it. Gaiman’s projects in the early 2000s include the graphic novel Marvel 1602, which imagines what it would be like if the Marvel superheroes X-Men, Daredevil, Doom, and others were sent to work in early seventeenth-century England; Anansi Boys, a sequel to American Gods; and the film Mirror Mask, a collaboration with Dave McKean.

For More Information Books Bender, Hy. The Sandman Companion. New York: Vertigo/DC Comics, 1999. McCabe, Joseph. Hanging Out with the Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2004. Olson, Steven P. Neil Gaiman. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2005.

Periodicals Brown, Scott. ‘‘The Best Comic Book Ever Returns.’’ Entertainment Weekly (October 3, 2003): 36. McConnell, Frank. ‘‘Sandman.’’ Commonweal (October 20, 1995): 21. 134

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Thompson, Kim. ‘‘Neil Gaiman Interview.’’ The Comics Journal, No. 155 (January 1993).

Web Sites The Official Neil Gaiman Web site. http://www.neilgaiman.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). White, Claire E. ‘‘A Conversation with Neil Gaiman.’’ Writers Write. http:// www.writerswrite.com/journal/mar99/gaiman.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Fred Gallagher. Kevin Lillard.

Fred Gallagher

‘‘I think that there is a lot of subtlety to manga and anime that American artists tend to gloss over when trying to mimic it.’’

Born 1968 (Long Island, New York) American author, illustrator

Fred Gallagher did not set out to become the biggest name in American manga, a form of comic art originating in Japan. In fact, he had to be pushed and prodded into posting his first comic on the Web by his friend and early collaborator, Rodney Caston. Within a few comics, however, Gallagher’s strip, called Megatokyo, had been linked by a major Webcomic site, Penny Arcade, and it began to draw first hundreds, then thousands, of visitors. Soon, Megatokyo became one of the most popular Webcomics. (A Webcomic is like a daily comic strip in a newspaper, only it is posted to a Web site.) Though he later broke from his early collaboration with Caston, Gallagher has posted Megatokyo continuously since August 14, 2000, and published three collections of the strips as graphic novels. Megatokyo begins when two twenty-something American young men named Piro and Largo fly to Japan on a whim. Piro—based on 137

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Megatokyo 1 (2004). Megatokyo 2 (2004). Megatokyo 3 (2005). All strips in the Megatokyo series are available at no cost at www.megatokyo.com.

Gallagher himself—is a sensitive soul who is obsessed with Japanese manga, and with its animated counterpart, anime. Largo— based on Caston—is a computer-gaming addict who swills beer and sometimes confuses the line between reality and the virtual reality of his game worlds. Neither brings much money to Japan, so they find themselves stranded there. Megatokyo tells the story of their many adventures in Japan as they seek to earn enough money to make their way back home. With multiple story lines, imaginary characters embodying the consciences of the main characters, and occasional appearances by a quirky character named ‘‘Shirt Guy Dom,’’ Megatokyo deftly combines insights into the worlds of gaming and computer hacking with romance and humor in a comic that is unlike anything else being published.

Early career as an architect Fred Gallagher was born in 1968 in Long Island, New York, where he spent his early years. By the time he was seven years old, Gallagher’s family moved first to Ohio, then to Michigan, where he has lived ever since. Unlike many popular American graphic novelists, Gallagher did not have an early interest in American comic books. But he did have a real love for both drawing and writing, he told Graphic Novelists (GN). ‘‘All kids draw; I just never stopped. I think that a lot of young people stop drawing at some point, because it is just one more thing that other kids can pick on. Art is a kind of exposure of your inner feelings, and I think it’s a shame that so many kids stop drawing and creating things because of the critiques of others.’’ By high school, Gallagher had gotten a computer and began writing stories as well. ‘‘I always had stories of some sort running through my head,’’ he told GN, ‘‘but getting them into some sort of format from which I could communicate 138

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them to others was always difficult, if not impossible. It’s through my art that my ideas came clearest.’’ During high school, Gallagher dreamed that he might one day become an animator. ‘‘Unfortunately, this was back when animation in the United States was completely dead,’’ he told Joe Curzon, who interviewed him for the Anime Digital Web site. Gallagher decided instead to pursue a career as an architect. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning (now called the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning), earning his bachelor’s degree in 1990 and adding a master’s degree in architecture from the same school in 1992. While in graduate school, the Disney film The Little Mermaid (1989) was released, and Gallagher experienced a pang of regret that he had not followed his dream of becoming an animation artist. Instead, he built a career as an architect. He worked for an architectural firm near Ann Arbor, Michigan, for several years, working on a variety of projects, mainly hospital renovations. In 1998, he finished the last portions of his architectural licensing exams and officially became a licensed architect in the state of Michigan. After moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1999 to work as a project manager for an Atlanta firm for a year, Gallagher returned to Michigan in 2000 to work for an Ann Arbor-based firm. It was upon his return to Michigan that he first started work on Megatokyo. Making the transition from being an architect to an author/ illustrator may seem like a stretch, but for Gallagher it made a great deal of sense. Gallagher told GN that his work as an architect constantly forced him to suppress his more creative side. ‘‘You find that your ideas and your creative efforts are tempered by so many constraints—budgets, the wishes of the client (who often doesn’t want to do anything ‘unusual’), code requirements, existing conditions, alternatives offered by contractors . . . sometimes, the only real creativity you can manage is tile patterns on bathroom walls. You had to learn to quell your creative side more often than not, and drawing and writing was my creative outlet—the thing that I could do and have no one question it or make me change it.’’ He discovered Japanese manga and anime, both of which were beginning to be available in the United States in the 1990s. He watched whatever anime videos he could find at video stories and began importing manga books from Japan. ‘‘My first ‘wow’ moment was when I visited a big Japanese book store in New York and was Fred Gallagher

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In 2005, Booklist magazine named Megatokyo 2 one of its top ten graphic novels of the year for young adults. Dark Horse Comics.

overwhelmed with just how MUCH manga there was . . . and I brought back a suitcase full of Japanese manga that I couldn’t read,’’ he told GN. The style of Japanese comics illustration—clean black-and-white line drawings and characters with large eyes and stylized hair—began to influence his work. He did not attempt to imitate the manga style so much as he used his love for that style to 140

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influence his own work. Gallagher also discovered the Internet, which made it easy to buy manga from Japan, read Webcomics, and chat with people using early forms of bulletin boards and instant messaging. It was on the Internet that Gallagher met Rodney Caston, a fellow manga fan.

Begins Megatokyo ‘‘The early beginnings of Megatokyo were not the result of some grand plan and months of exhaustive development,’’ wrote Gallagher in the foreword to Megatokyo 1, the first graphic novel collection of the series. ‘‘I started work on Megatokyo simply to get Largo (Caston) to stop bothering me about it.’’ (Caston, who liked Gallagher’s ideas and drawings, had badgered Gallagher to help him create a comic strip.) What began as a chore for Gallagher soon became a Webcomic phenomenon, as fans flocked to the site. Gallagher and Caston decided that they would update their strip three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Caston wrote the strips, and Gallagher created the artwork. By the seventh four-panel strip, Piro and Largo found themselves on a plane bound for Japan, the result of an impulsive decision. (In the print version, in which Gallagher provides a running commentary of how the strip was created below the actual frames of the cartoon, the author notes: ‘‘Ah, the days when I didn’t worry about setup for directional changes in the plot.’’) Not long after they began, however, the nature of the story began to change. ‘‘From the start, Rodney was very much mainly interested in doing gag type humor,’’ Gallagher told GN. ‘‘I wanted to do story. The thought was we could mix the two, that he could come up with the funny stuff, the crazy wild ideas, and I would layer my story next to it. Over time, as the story started to take root, it became harder for Rod to really come up with gag ideas, and I was bending a lot of things to try to fit in his more wild ideas.’’ Over time, the strip became something more than a series of gags; in fact, it became an increasingly complicated, carefully drawn story of two very different young men exploring a peculiar yet strangely familiar culture. Cultural differences are in some way what Megatokyo is all about—and what make the series so popular with young people who belong to the subculture depicted in the strip. American manga fans love the series because it renders recognizably American characters in a manga style, and because manga-crazed Piro makes all kinds of knowing references to manga and anime Fred Gallagher

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conventions, such as cosplay, in which manga fans dress up like their favorite characters. (Fans of the series do this with Megatokyo characters as well. Gallagher told Lisa Pickoff-White of the Echo Online Web site that ‘‘seeing someone wear a costume that you had scribbled together on a couch not six months prior . . . still kind of weirds me out.’’) Computer gaming fans embrace Largo, who is so deeply involved in the world of gaming that he sometimes forgets that he is not a hero in one of his favorite Playstation 2 (PS2) games. Largo also speaks a kind of lingo called ‘‘1337’’ or ‘‘L33T,’’ a number-based dialect used online by a subculture of gamers (see sidebar). Female readers like the series for its unusually strong female characters, and for being so up-to-date on Japanese fashions. (Gallagher gets reports from friends in Japan on changes in fashion, and he updates the outfits of his characters regularly.) As of September 2005, there were 760 strips in the series, and Gallagher continued to update the series on the www.megatokyo.com Web site. At first, plot was downplayed in favor of character development and gag jokes. Reviewing the first collected print edition, Megatokyo 1, Publishers Weekly hailed the strip as a ‘‘series of deft and sensitive character studies, whimsical portrayals of young people learning about themselves and their emotions.’’ Gallagher has commented that he is interested in exploring the characters’ relationships, not directing the series toward climactic moments. ‘‘It’s the trip that matters, not finding out what happens,’’ he told Applelinks interviewer Bill Stiteler. ‘‘I could rush things more, but then it might not be so interesting.’’ Despite the focus on character, Gallagher has tightened the plot considerably over the years. ‘‘I realized after about episode #623 that I needed to tighten things up and drive the story forward. I feel that this has really improved the comic. I have a lot of story to tell, and I realized that I was being way too timid with it. Contrary to my worries that it might hurt things, it’s actually made the story come alive better than it was before.’’ One of the more intriguing elements of the series is the blurry line that exists between Megatokyo characters and their creators. Gallagher readily admits to modeling Piro on himself, and Largo is a stand-in for Caston. In the book Megatokyo 1, Gallagher and others appear as characters, commenting on the creation of the strip in cartoons that fill the margins of the book. Online, Gallagher identifies himself as Piro when he chats with readers on his online forums, and he is often called Piro in interviews. Similarly, other characters are modeled on friends and coworkers: 142

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‘‘Does Anyone Here Speak L33T?’’ In one of the first strips of Megatokyo (strip 9, dated September 1, 2000), Largo stands up from his plane seat, clutches his chest, and calls out ‘‘D4 P41|\| !!!’’ An airline stewardess asks if he needs a doctor, and Largo answers ‘‘3Y3 |\|33|> h3[P!’’ After listening to a further string of this strange language, the stewardess cries out, ‘‘Does anyone here speak L33T?’’ Like many of the readers of the strip, Piro answered ‘‘j0.’’, or ‘‘yo.’’ L33T—usually known as leet or leetspeak in normal English—is a specialized form of spelling developed by computer gamers and Internet users. The term ‘‘leet’’ is a shortened version of the word elite, used to refer to elite computer users who had mastered the language. Leetspeak evolved alongside the Internet as a form of specialized communication. Leetspeak has a number of benefits: it can only be understood by those who commit themselves to learning the conventions of the language, such as using 3 for E, and |\| for N, and thus is used to confuse outsiders to a

discussion; also, the strange spellings allowed users to ‘‘sneak’’ words past Internet filters designed to screen out coarse language. Leetspeak began to change almost as soon as it was adopted, as experienced users continually invented new spellings to screen out new users, or ‘‘noobies.’’ Various forms of leetspeak and other variations on standard English still exist, and they are widely used for text messaging on cell phones and instant messaging on the Internet. Megatokyo made a few leet jokes early in its history, and some actually credit the strip with making leet known to a larger audience. But Gallagher and Caston soon moved on, and once Caston left the strip in 2002 Gallagher rarely made reference to leetspeak. ‘‘I could have easily done L33T jokes until the end of time,’’ he told Anime Digital, but ‘‘it just didn’t seem like the type of thing that I thought would help the comic grow or give people what they were really looking for.’’

Seraphim, Piro’s female conscience, is modeled on Gallagher’s wife, Sarah. Shirt Guy Dom is based on Dominic Nguyen, who helps Gallagher with the strip by writing Shirt Guy Dom comics when Gallagher falls ill or faces writer’s block. Just as characters in the story confuse the line between their reality and the reality of gaming and manga, Gallagher and his readers blur the lines between their life and Megatokyo. This blurring seems to promote a real devotion to the series, as many fans comment regularly on the series on its Web site, clearly taking an active interest in the Megatokyo community. Over time, creators Gallagher and Caston had developed different visions of the series: Caston wanted more gags and less reliance Fred Gallagher

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on the ongoing stories; Gallagher wanted to develop longer, more character-based plots, with less emphasis on humor. Somewhere between episode 269 and 271, in June 2002, Gallagher and Caston parted ways, leaving Gallagher in full ownership of the series. The first publication of Megatokyo in book form was in 2002, by I.C. Entertainment; the initial print run of 11,000 copies sold right away, and 11,000 more were ordered. Troubles in getting the book into stores ended the relationship between Gallagher and I.C., however, and Gallagher signed with graphic novel publishing house Dark Horse, which has released three volumes of Megatokyo strips. Perhaps most notable to readers is the improvement in Gallagher’s art. He has progressed from a simple four-square-panel style in the early days to a free-flowing style similar to Japanese manga, and the quality and clarity of his drawings has improved dramatically. ‘‘Gallagher’s pencil drawings grow in their command of manga style and are impressive for both sensitive line work and his bold depiction of comical action sequences,’’ wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer in 2003. New York Times Book Review contributor John Hodgman noted, ‘‘The pleasure of watching what began as a lark, an exercise in the typical ‘Bloom County’ kind of four-panel gag, as it literally outgrows its borders into a lushly penciled full page, the story maturing into the exuberant, addictive soap operatics of the manga that inspired it, and becoming an unintentional whole.’’ In 2005, Booklist magazine named Megatokyo 2 one of its top ten graphic novels of the year for young adults. Thanks to the positive reviews, increasing book sales, and the stable arrangement with Dark Horse, in 2004 Gallagher began to commit himself to producing Megatokyo full time after getting laid off from his position as an architect (he had been spending more than twenty hours a week producing the strip after work). Gallagher had no plans to stop giving away his work for free on the Web, however. ‘‘I like the idea that you don’t have to spend a dime to be an MT fan,’’ Gallagher told Anime Digital, ‘‘but I know people do.’’ Indeed, fans support Megatokyo financially by buying shirts, mouse pads, and stickers at the Web site, and by buying the print editions. During the early years of the series, Megatokyo gear was licensed to another online store, but in 2004 Sarah Gallagher spearheaded an effort to sell the goods directly to fans online. ‘‘It’s part of our commitment to deal directly with our readers as much as possible,’’ Gallagher told GN, ‘‘and we think people like that about our site.’’ Gallagher expects to continue working on Megatokyo into the future, but he told Anime Digital 144

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that if it all fell apart, ‘‘I would just go back to architecture, I wouldn’t go into comics and try and work for somebody else, I don’t think I could do it . . . . I prefer just to do my thing and let people decide whether they like it or not.’’

For More Information Periodicals Coleman, Tina. Review of Megatokyo. Booklist (May 1, 2004): 1555. Hodgman, John. ‘‘No More Wascally Wabbits.’’ New York Times Book Review (July 18, 2004): 14. Review of Megatokyo: Volume 2. Publishers Weekly (February 23, 2004): 53. Zaleski, Jeff. Review of Megatokyo: Volume 1. Publishers Weekly (February 24, 2003): 55. Zvirin, Stephanie. ‘‘Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth.’’ Booklist (March 15, 2005): 1304.

Web Sites Adams, Cecil. ‘‘What the Heck Is ‘Leetspeek?’’’ The Straight Dope. http:// www.straightdope.com/columns/030110.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Brotman, Alex. ‘‘Manga on the Web: MegaTokyo.’’ Animefringe. http://www. animefringe.com/magazine/02.04/feature/1/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Caston, Rodney. ‘‘The Truth about Megatokyo?’’ TypeRCaston.com. http:// www.rcaston.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article& sid=71&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Curzon, Joe. ‘‘An Interview with Piro and Seraphim.’’ Anime Digital. http:// www.digital.anime.org.uk/talkingtopiro1.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Fey, Chris. ‘‘Interview: Fred Gallagher.’’ Anime News Network. http://www. animenewsnetwork.com/feature.php?id=182 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Megagear. http://www.megagear.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Megatokyo. http://www.megatokyo.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Pickoff-White, Lisa. ‘‘Web Comics Attract Devout Fans.’’ Echo Online. http:// easternecho.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?1337 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Stiteler, Bill. ‘‘Fred ‘Piro’ Gallagher.’’ Applelinks. http://www.applelinks. com/iconversations/piro.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through e-mail correspondence with Fred Gallagher in July 2005. Fred Gallagher

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Self-portrait by Rick Geary. Rick Geary. Reproduced by permission.

Rick Geary

‘‘I tend to avoid the direct representations of gore and violence. Not that I’m squeamish about such stuff . . .’’

Born February 25, 1946 (Kansas City, Missouri) American author, illustrator

Graphic novelist Rick Geary has made a name for himself with a series of books that explore the dark side of life in the nineteenth century. The seven books in his Treasury of Victorian Murder series offer an extensively researched glimpse into some of the most famous and mysterious crimes of history, including the cases of Jack the Ripper (the nickname for a man who murdered five prostitutes in London, England, in 1888) and Lizzie Borden (a young lady who is reputed to have murdered her parents with an ax in Massachusetts in 1892). With Geary’s deadpan narrative and his intricately detailed black-and-white drawings of the crime scene and its surroundings, the stories have all the qualities of the best documentary films. Geary was born on February 25, 1946, in Kansas City, Missouri. Though his father had studied to be a lawyer he actually worked as a banker, and changes in his work required the family—including 147

Best-Known Works ‘‘Treasury of Victorian Murder’’ Series Graphic Novels A Treasury of Victorian Murder (2002). Jack the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders, 1888–1889 (1995).

known to the World as H.H. Holmes . . . (2003). The Murder of Abraham Lincoln (2005). Books for Children

The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892 (1997).

The Mask series. 3 vols. (1994–95).

The Fatal Bullet: A True Account of the Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death, and Burial of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States; Also Including the Inglorious Life and Career of the Despised Assassin Guiteau (1999); reissued as The Fatal Bullet: The Assassination of President James A. Garfield (2001).

Illustrated Works

The Mystery of Mary Rogers (2001). The Beast of Chicago: An Account of the Life and Crimes of Herman W. Mudgett,

Spider-Man series. 3 vols. (1995–96).

Keller, David. Great Disasters: The Most Shocking Moments in History (1990). Dickens, (1990).

Charles.

Great

Expectations

Bronte¨, Emily. Wuthering Heights (1990). Wells, H. G. The Invisible Man (1991). Lakin, Patricia. Harry Houdini: Escape Artist (2002). Richardson, Mike. Cravan HC (2005).

Geary’s mother, Helen Louise, a housewife, and his sister—to move several times. Geary lived in Chicago, Illinois, until he was six; then the family moved to Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. When Geary was twelve, the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and it was there that Geary finished his high school education, graduating from Southeast High School in 1964.

Searched for a career in art ‘‘I don’t know that I was a terribly good student,’’ Geary told Graphic Novelists (GN) interviewer Tom Pendergast. ‘‘I seem to remember that I mostly daydreamed and drew scribbles in my notebook.’’ Geary went to the University of Kansas in Lawrence; he was attracted to that school because both his parents had gone there and because the school’s fine arts program had a good reputation. He received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1968 and liked college so much that he stayed on, completing his master’s degree in film studies in 1971. 148

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Geary had always been a film fan, but as he finished his degree it had become clear to him that he did not want to be a filmmaker. ‘‘The more experience I had making movies,’’ he told GN, ‘‘the more I grew to dislike how mechanical, technological, and collaborative it was. I learned that I didn’t like to worry about working with other people.’’ He turned back to his art, especially illustration. ‘‘I’m essentially a pen and ink worker,’’ he explained. ‘‘I use the Rapidograph pen pretty much exclusively.’’ Armed with his pen, he soon got the break that would allow him to turn that hobby into a career. In 1972, Geary got a job as an illustrator with a Wichita weekly newspaper called the New Newspaper. Geary was the paper’s jackof-all-trades: he penned a political cartoon, drew illustrations for stories that had no photos, and made brief comics. The New Newspaper folded after a year and a half, but Geary soon found similar work with another weekly, the Wichita Independent. It was while working for the Independent that Geary made a trip west to visit San Diego, California. ‘‘The small coastal communities were in their post-hippie, artsy stage, and they were so laid back,’’ remembered Geary to GN. He so loved the lifestyle in the area that he stayed. On January 11, 1987, he married teacher Deborah Lee Chester; except for a four-year stretch living in New York City, Geary has always lived in San Diego.

Illustrations with a dark side Drawing comics and illustrations for a weekly paper has never provided Geary with full-time work, so he combined it with a wide range of freelance work. In the beginning he worked for advertisers and small magazines in San Diego; he has done a weekly illustration for Reader magazine since he arrived in San Diego in 1975. In 1977, he began to work full time as a freelancer, selling his work to a variety of buyers. At first his cartoons followed no distinctive pattern, as Geary experimented to define his own personal style. ‘‘My work was too wholesome to be considered underground,’’ Geary told GN, referring to a style of comics that was highly political and often depicted sexuality and drug use, ‘‘and too strange or weird to be mainstream.’’ Geary has claimed as his biggest inspiration Edward Gorey (1925–2000), whose works are known for their sinister imagery and dark humor (see sidebar). In 1979, Geary began to write a regular comic strip for National Lampoon, a New York–based humor magazine that became very popular in the 1970s. Geary had no set characters or themes, but was free to experiment in the space given to him, usually a Rick Geary

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Edward Gorey’s Dark Vision Years before Rick Geary published his first works on Victorian murders, Edward Gorey (1925–2000) was heralded as the master of the dark side of Victorian life. In a series of small books published over a span of nearly fifty years, and in the pen-and-ink illustrations he provided for several magazines (most notably the New Yorker) and for book covers, Gorey established a unique place in the world of comic illustration. He was known for creating thin, long-limbed characters who faced dark threats from a strange world. Among his favorite subjects were the terrors faced by children left unattended by their parents. In one of his ‘‘Alphabet’’ collections, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, for example, he noted that ‘‘M is for Maud who was swept out to sea. N is for Neville who died of ennui.’’ Many of his works were written for young people, including The Doubtful Guest and The Hapless Child, yet he found most of his fans among adults, who perhaps better understood the dark sense of humor that lay beneath Gorey’s depictions of the mishaps facing children.

half-page or a page. He worked on this strip, later called ‘‘Excursions,’’ until the magazine folded in 1992. His work with National Lampoon was a springboard to more work, and he contributed cartoons to a variety of magazines, anthologies, and comic collections. The fruits of these labors can be seen in several of Geary’s collections, including At Home with Rick Geary (1985), Rick Geary’s Wonders & Oddities (1988), and Housebound with Rick Geary (1991).

Explores Victorian murders Geary had learned a great deal during his career as a cartoonist and illustrator, and beginning in 1987 he began to apply all that he had learned to what would become a series of groundbreaking graphic novels. The first of this series—from which it took its name—was A Treasury of Victorian Murder, published by NBM. In it, Geary explored three different mysteries. The book and the series that followed ‘‘offered me a really good opportunity to indulge in my obsessions,’’ Geary related to GN. He had long been fascinated with tales of true crime and with mysteries, and he had 150

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also nurtured a fascination with the history of the Victorian Era (1837–1901), a time period known for its rigid moral codes, but also for the explosion of modern cities and modern journalism, the latter two forces contributing to the rise in murder and a public fascination with the details of those murders. Geary developed a large collection of books and photos from the period, and he used those collections and this research as the basis for his graphic novels. Eight years passed before the publication of his second Victorian murder novel, Jack the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders, 1888–1889. Geary presented the novel as an adaptation of the journals of a resident of London during the time of the murders. The entire text consists of dated entries from this journal, which narrates a series of brutal murders committed by a mysterious butcher who called himself ‘‘Jack the Ripper.’’ The immediacy of the text—which seems to be written by someone with extensive knowledge of the case—is well matched with the illustrations, highly detailed black-and-white images that are bathed in the blackness of the night in which the murderer worked. The drawings, which Publishers Weekly described as ‘‘brooding,’’ capture not only the investigation of the murders, but the mounting hysteria of the public reaction to the murders. Geary followed with The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892. In it, Geary recounts the ax murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and the trial of Borden’s daughter, Lizzie, that ended in acquittal. As in his earlier work, Geary provided striking illustrations of the setting and the crime, paired with text that seemed to offer direct insights into the motives of those involved. A Booklist reviewer noted that Geary’s concise narration ‘‘cuts away all but the essentials, thereby beating longer verbal treatments soundly at [offering] a basic understanding of the crimes and their context.’’ As in all of his Victorian murder stories, Geary managed to evoke the horror of a brutal murder without resorting to graphic visual details. ‘‘I’ve always felt it best to use restraint when depicting physical violence,’’ Geary told GN. ‘‘I believe in the old dictum that what the imagination conjures up is far more effective than that which is made explicit.’’ Following The Borden Tragedy, Geary released a new volume in the series every other year. In The Fatal Bullet: A True Account of the Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death, and Burial of James A. Garfield (1999) and The Murder of Abraham Lincoln (2005), Geary unpacked the mysteries surrounding the assassination attempts on two of America’s presidents. In The Mystery of Mary Rogers (2001) Rick Geary

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Book illustration from The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892, written and illustrated by Rick Geary. NBM Publishing. ª 1997 by Rick Geary. Reproduced by permission.

and The Beast of Chicago (2003) Geary turned to lesser-known crimes, though he treated them with the same careful research and attention to detail. Upon the completion of the aforementioned, Geary was at work on the next two titles in the series: one would tell the story of Madeline Smith of Glasgow, Scotland, who poisoned her lover; another would tell the story of the 152

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‘‘Bloody Benders,’’ a family who ran a grocery store and wayside inn on the Kansas prairie and who are believed to have killed a number of travelers who visited their remote outpost. In a publishing marketplace where muscle-bound superheroes or large-eyed manga characters tend to grab the most attention, Geary has established a quiet section for himself as the Victorian true crime graphic novelist. ‘‘My greatest goal is to capture the tone of the times with clarity and accuracy,’’ Geary told GN. ‘‘That’s why I love maps and overhead views.’’ At the same time, Geary recognizes that it is his nature to tell his stories with a sense of detachment. ‘‘I like defusing the heat and emotion out of the stories,’’ he mused. His concern for detail and his detached approach are part of what make the stories in this series uniquely appealing to readers. In addition to his true crime work, Geary has also had success with adaptations of the work of several famous nineteenthcentury literary works. He has adapted works by Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and Emily Bronte¨ into graphic novels. His goal with these adaptations has been to remain true to the original work while shortening the text dramatically. As always, Geary uses the detail of his illustrations to carry some of the work of the storytelling. Geary’ illustrations, like those for his others works on that time period, were well suited to the detached, formal style of the authors. For more than thirty years Geary has worked to perfect his craft. He rises early and works a full day at his desk. With his graphic novels he first writes the text, compressing it to get the most from every word. He then begins the laborious process of creating the illustrations, first sketching out the drawing, then inking in the broad outlines and solid black areas with a thick pen, and finally using a fine-tipped pen for fine details and texture. In his free time Geary reads and watches movies. Each year he operates his own booth at Comic Con, the annual comic industry convention, where he chats with fans, signs books, and sells illustrations and postcards.

For More Information Periodicals Booklist (December 1, 1997): 604–06. Rick Geary

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Finz, Stacy. ‘‘Everything Under the Sun.’’ Los Angeles Times (July 30, 1987): 10. Publishers Weekly (October 13, 2003): 59; (June 6, 2005): 57. School Library Journal (November 2003): 174. Spikol, Liz. ‘‘Holmes Sweet Holmes.’’ Philadelphia Weekly (November 4, 2003): 30.

Web Sites Rick Geary. http://www.rickgeary.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Rick Geary.’’ NBM. http://www.nbmpub.com/mystery/geary.html (accessed on on May 3, 2006). The Very Odd World of Rick Geary. http://tralfaz-archives.com/comics/ geary/geary_pages.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained from an interview with Rick Geary on August 3, 2005.

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Larry Gonick. Photo by Patricia Koren. Courtesy of Larry Gonick.

Larry Gonick Born August 24, 1946 (San Francisco, California) American author, illustrator

‘‘Larry Gonick’s cartoon history. . .is one of the most amusing, provocative surveys of the planet’s progress ever made . . . .’’ BOOKLIST REVIEW, SEPTEMBER 15, 1990.

Many school textbooks read like a slow stroll through a musty museum, a tour led by a graying scholar determined not to miss the complexities of the topic, but not those by author/illustrator Larry Gonick. Gonick’s treatments of history and science take readers on a madcap dash through a funhouse of ideas, a whirlwind tour led by a merry band of characters offering essential insights and funny asides along the way. In books like The Cartoon History of the Universe, Larry Gonick breathes new life into those topics that you have to study in school—history, chemistry, physics—by joining fast-paced narrative with sometimes crude but always humorous drawings. In a dozen books written over a span of thirty years, Gonick has proven that the graphic novel form is uniquely suited to nonfiction. Gonick does more than put historical facts into graphic novel form, however. In addition to providing ‘‘the facts’’—something 155

Best-Known Works Books (With Steve Atlas) Blood from a Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform (1972). The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science (1983). The Cartoon History of the Universe vols. 1–7. (1990). The Cartoon History of the United States (1991). (With Art Huffman) The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1991). (With Mark Wheelis) The Cartoon Guide to Genetics (1991). The Cartoon History of the Universe II (1994). (With Christine DeVault) The Cartoon Guide to Sex (1999). The Cartoon History of the Universe III (2002). (With Craig Criddle) The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry (2005).

Kokopelli and Company in Attack of the Smart Pies (2005). Comic Strips Boston Comix (weekly political commentary) (1971–74). Yankee Almanack (weekly cartoon series on colonial Massachusetts and the American Revolution) (1975–76). Flashbacks (1990–94).

(weekly

historical

panel)

Science Classics (bimonthly two-page cartoon feature on science) (1990–97). Kokopelli and Company (monthly one-page strip) (1996–). CD-ROMs Dr. Sulfur’s Night Lab (simulated chemistry set with games and experiments) (1998). The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1995). The Cartoon History of the Universe (1994).

reviewers regularly praise Gonick for getting right—Gonick and his co-authors pack competing interpretations and insights into tightly structured explanations of the events, conflicts, and policies that make history and science so fascinating. In his explanation of America’s westward expansion in the nineteenth century in The Cartoon History of the United States, for example, he notes that while the U.S. government created the Monroe Doctrine to keep European nations from meddling in the Western hemisphere, other Western nations ‘‘took this to mean that all future pillaging would be done by the U.S.A. alone.’’ A caricature of President James Monroe protests: ‘‘Oh, nothing could be further from the truth,’’ but his fingers are crossed (meaning that he is, in fact, not telling the truth). This complex portrayal of American foreign policy—showing official U.S. policy, the reaction of Western 156

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opponents, and the author’s own opinion—is all accomplished in half a page. Gonick’s childhood prepared him to understand that human history is riddled with conflicting motives and interests. He was born in San Francisco, California, on August 24, 1946, and he grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. His parents were both teachers: his father, Emanuel, taught chemistry at a junior college while his mother, Mollie, taught fifth grade in a public school. Gonick’s parents’ politics put them at odds with their local community: Phoenix was a politically conservative town, and both parents had been associated with progressive political causes. According to Tommy Cragg’s profile of Gonick in the SF Weekly, Emanuel Gonick had come under Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) scrutiny when it was discovered that he had lived for a time in the Soviet Union, a Communist nation considered an enemy of the United States after World War II (1939–45). And Mollie Gonick was chastised by some parents for displaying a United Nations flag in her classroom, at a time when conservatives in the area rallied behind a call to ‘‘Get the U.S. out of the U.N.’’ Like his parents, Gonick developed the sense that he was an outsider, someone prone to question the dominant values of his culture. Gonick was an only child, and in an interview with Graphic Novelists (GN) he remembered: ‘‘I had both lots of attention and plenty of time alone. I do remember at one point that my folks took me to a therapist because they thought I was spending too much time lying around reading!’’ He was a lover of comics from the time his father introduced him to the Sunday funnies in the Denver Post at the age of three or four; his favorites, he told GN, were Li’l Abner—‘‘back when Capp was a liberal’’—and Gordo. ‘‘My parents were pretty open-minded and had no particular bias against comics—except the kind that freaks kids out.’’ Gonick avoided the gruesome comics like Tales of the Crypt, recalling that the illustrated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was scary enough to keep him awake at night. As a teenager, Gonick hung out with a group of friends he characterized as ‘‘proto-hippies,’’ referring to the long-haired dropouts who would become a cultural symbol of youthful revolution in the late 1960s. Gonick listened to jazz and rhythm-and-blues music at a time when that music was still considered ‘‘far out,’’ but he was a good student, earning his way into Harvard University following his graduation from high school. He graduated summa cum laude (Latin for ‘‘with highest distinction’’) with a bachelor’s Larry Gonick

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degree in math from Harvard in 1967, the same year that he married Francine Prose (they separated in 1972 and later divorced).

Discovers cartooning As a boy, Gonick had begun to draw cartoons, but he didn’t keep up with his hobby while an undergraduate at Harvard, noting to Craggs that his time there ‘‘was poisonous to my creativity. I didn’t do much creative in those four years.’’ His creativity and his political consciousness were recharged in the coming years, however. Gonick stayed at Harvard to pursue graduate studies in math, and he received his master’s degree in 1969. Over time, politics captured more of his attention. ‘‘The political turmoil was really, really getting out of hand’’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he told Craggs, referring to the protests against the Vietnam War (1954–75), the civil rights movement, and the youth movement. At the same time, his cartooning was getting better. He had a friend, ‘‘a natural-born cartoonist’’ named Kim Stapley, who wrote him long letters illustrated with cartoons; Gonick began to reply in kind. Gonick was also inspired by a book called Cuba for Beginners, written by Rius (1934–), a Mexican cartoonist who used humor to criticize his government and promote his radical politics. ‘‘When I saw this particular use of the medium, it was like a great light going off in my head,’’ Gonick told GN. Charged up about politics, and devoting more and more of his time to cartooning, Gonick dropped out of graduate school in 1971. ‘‘I quit math as soon as I had my first regular paycheck,’’ Gonick told GN. He began earning $50 a week drawing the Boston Comix strip, published in Boston After Dark (also called Boston Phoenix). From the early 1970s on, Gonick has made a living through his cartooning. It wasn’t always a good living, Gonick relates, but at first he kept his costs low, living in a commune and paying just $33 a month for rent. He soon acquired more cartooning work: in 1972, he paired with Steve Atlas to produce his first book, Blood from a Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform, and in 1975 and 1976 he drew the Yankee Almanack series for the Boston Globe newspapers. (Gonick joked to Craggs that the book was on tax reform ‘‘because it was the dullest subject [his coauthor] could think of.’’) In 1977, Gonick moved to San Francisco, the city of his birth and the home of a thriving new style of cartooning known as underground comix. Unlike mainstream comic books that were 158

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Mexican Cartoonist Rius The single greatest influence on Larry Gonick’s work was a Mexican cartoonist known as Rius (1934–; his full name is Eduardo del Rio). Rius is a prolific author/ artist who has published more than one hundred works since he began drawing cartoons for the Mexican magazine Ja-Ja in 1955. He first came to the attention of the world in 1965 when he published the work Cuba para principiantes, translated into English as Cuba for Beginners. The work tried to explain the socialist revolution that had recently placed Fidel Castro (1926–) at the head of the Cuban government. It was the first of many works in which Rius would try to explain the political principles of socialism and communism, political philosophies that were widely attacked in the United States for their chal-

lenges to capitalism and big business. Rius later published Marx for Beginners (his biggest seller) on the famous political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883). Rius’s subjects have ventured well beyond radical politics. He has used his distinctive combination of words and pictures to write about women’s rights, vegetarianism, and atheism, among other subjects. In 2002, Rius told School Library Journal interviewer Ernesto Priego, ‘‘I like knowing that I have changed my readers’ minds, that I have turned them into vegetarians, or that I have interested them in leftist politics.’’ Among Rius’s favorite cartoonists is American Matt Groening (1954–). ‘‘I think The Simpsons is the greatest novelty. I love its ferocious critique of everything.’’

created by teams of writers and artists and focused on superheroes, underground comix were usually created by individual author/ artists and focused on political, social, or personal issues. Noted comix artists included R. Crumb, author of Zap and Mr. Natural, and Gilbert Shelton, author of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Gonick became immersed in the underground comix scene at the Rip Off Press in San Francisco, and it was during this time that he began to work on his cartoon history of the universe. He published the first volume of the series in 1978 and released additional volumes in comic-book versions in the years that followed. In 1978, Gonick married his second wife, Lisa Goldschmid; the couple has two daughters. The history of the universe books wouldn’t be collected within one cover for several years, but in the meantime, Gonick produced several book-length treatments of scientific subjects. In the Cartoon Guide to Computer Science and the Cartoon Guide to Genetics (written with microbiologist Mark Wheelis), Gonick unpacked complicated, serious topics for general readers. In the Genetics book, for Larry Gonick

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Artist Larry Gonick working in his California studio in 2002. AP Images.

example, the authors explain how scientists James Watson and Francis Crick used scale models of atoms to, quite literally, construct a model for DNA, one of the basic building blocks of life. Gonick’s drawings—one shows Watson and Crick ascending a spiral helix staircase—pair with the text to allow readers to visualize this complicated chemical discovery. Reviewer Tabitha M. Powledge, reviewing the 1991 revised edition for the Genome News Network Web site, wrote that ‘‘the drawings by Larry Gonick are close to brilliant at presenting the physical events of the cell and the gene.’’ These and Gonick’s other scientific works have been well accepted by scientists and teachers, who often use them to help open the difficult subjects to students challenged by more conventional material.

A big break from Jackie O Gonick made a living with his early cartoon guides but, as he told GN, ‘‘It was all pretty close to the edge until well into the 1980s.’’ He got his big break when Jackie Onassis bought The Cartoon History of 160

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the Universe: Volumes 1–7 for the publisher for whom she worked, Doubleday. ( Jackie Onassis was the widow of assassinated U.S. president John F. Kennedy; she later married a Greek shipping tycoon and then went into publishing.) The book begins with the big bang and follows the development of life on Earth up until the reign of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. According to the frazzledlooking narrator who stands in for the author, the history covered ‘‘13 billion years of time travel in 350 pages.’’ Gonick explores reputable theories about the origins of life and discounts the disreputable theories in wicked asides. He depicts early humans facing problems—How do we deal with cold? Where do we store this grain that we have grown? How do we divide up food among people?— and shows that the solutions they came up with defined social organization. Gonick takes a humorous approach to explaining the myths and sometimes brutal customs of early Egyptian, Greek, and Persian empires. Throughout the book he pairs the narrative offered by his frazzled professor of history with caustic comments from a vast cast of characters and interesting footnotes giving background information—and indicated by a foot drawing an asterisk. The book was an immediate success. Gossip columnist Ann Landers mentioned the book in her popular column, and sales took off; before long, it had sold more than 100,000 copies. Entertainment Weekly reviewer Ken Tucker called it ‘‘a work of scholarship and looniness,’’ and a wide range of reviewers praised both its history and its humor. One of the most striking features of Gonick’s historical books is the way that he uses the various speakers in his work to tell multiple stories at once. The narrator might explain how slavery came to exist in ancient Greece in the same frame that a Greek warrior tells a slave to wash his socks and a chained slave sarcastically comments ‘‘I’ve always wanted to travel.’’ The multiple perspectives allow Gonick to present and criticize past actions all within one comic frame. In Gonick’s works, history is not told just by the winners, but by all the participants. Though he began his cartooning career writing brief comic strips, Gonick told GN that he prefers the expanded opportunities offered to him by his longer history and science projects. ‘‘The longer form allows for big-time, complicated story-telling,’’ he explained. The first step in preparing to write one of his works is a ‘‘big reading binge’’ (the traces of which show up in the bibliographies that conclude his books). Then he writes the entire text of the books. Though Gonick may use more words than many graphic novelists, he still has to leave a great deal out. ‘‘The number of sentences has to Larry Gonick

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be pared to a minimum; lots of stuff gets thrown out. But when that happens, hidden connections can magically appear, so I’m not complaining.’’ Once he has his first draft done, he starts to figure out the pagination (the way the story fits on the page). Parts of the story must fit onto one page or one double page, and the text must be trimmed to fit. As he cuts, he pencils in the text on the pages; from there he fills in the characters and ‘‘snide comments.’’ Finally, he inks the pages. It’s a long, arduous process that has been made only slightly easier over the years by computers. ‘‘The very hardest part is starting the first draft,’’ says Gonick, ‘‘and the most fun is thinking up jokes and ideas that make me laugh out loud.’’ Gonick has drawn several follow-ups to his breakthrough history work, adding the Cartoon History of the United States and taking the Cartoon History of the Universe up to the fifteenth century CE. Plans for the future include two additional volumes of his cartoon history, to be called The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Book I and Book II, which will bring him up to the present. In addition to his historical works, Gonick has written or co-written several books related to the sciences, including The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1991) and The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry (2005). Gonick told GN that the science books are a bit easier to write, because he always has some diagram or other graphic in mind as he writes, rather than thinking ‘‘what the %$#@ am I going to draw in this panel?’’ In addition to his nonfiction work, Gonick has worked since 1996 on a lighthearted monthly strip for Muse magazine called Kokopelli and Company; in 2005, he published a short novel featuring these characters, called Kokopelli and Company in Attack of the Smart Pies. Though he has been cartooning for more than thirty years, Gonick constantly aims to improve his art. He insists that page composition and backgrounds remain a challenge, though observers can chart real development in his work over the years. On a deeper level, Gonick professes to grander goals: he writes in order to change the world. Readers of his works can imagine that if Gonick succeeds in reaching that goal, the world will be altogether more equitable, just, and color-blind than the history he has so ably portrayed.

For More Information Periodicals Booklist (September 15, 1990). 162

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Entertainment Weekly (November 11, 1994): 11. New York Times Book Review (December 18, 1994): 15. Priego, Ernesto. ‘‘The History of Mankind for Beginners.’’ School Library Journal (April 2002): S25.

Web Sites The Cartoon Guide to Genetics: A Soft Approach to Hard Science. http:// bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/Biotech/cartoon.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Craggs, Tommy. ‘‘Gonick’s Comic Creation.’’ SF Weekly. http:// www.sfweekly.com/issues/2003-08-20/news/feature.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Larry Gonick: History, Science and Nonsense. http://www.larrygonick.com/ index.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick. http://www.msri.org/ext/larryg/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Powledge, Tabitha M. ‘‘The Cartoon Guide to Genetics.’’ Genome News Network. http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/08_00/cartoon_ genetics.php (accessed on May 3, 2006). Sallis, James. ‘‘Larry Gonick: Arabia to Columbus, a Cartoon History Installment.’’ The James Sallis Web Pages. http://www.grasslimb.com/ sallis/GlobeColumns/globe.04.gonick.html (accessed May 3, 2006). Surridge, Matthew. ‘‘Trimmings: Larry Gonick.’’ The Comics Journal. http:// www.tcj.com/3_online/t_gonick.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through direct correspondence with Larry Gonick in July 2005.

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Albert Uderzo. Eric Feferberg/ AFP/Getty Images.

Rene´ Goscinny Born August 14, 1926 (Paris, France) Died November 5, 1977 (Paris, France) French author

‘‘Cartoons, especially humorous cartoons, were not very good at the time [the late 1950s] in France. Our ambition was to really bring up the standards.’’ ALBERT UDERZO

Albert Uderzo Born April 27, 1927 (Fismes, France) French artist

In the years following the end of World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan), the French people wanted to recover from their country’s occupation by the German Nazi forces and rebuild their national identity. In 1949, a law was passed in France to govern the types of characters acceptable in children’s literature. It banned characters like Batman and Tarzan, who represented 165

Best-Known Works The Aste´rix Series (Goscinny and Uderzo) Aste´rix le gaulois (1961), as Asterix the Gaul. 1969.

Aste´rix legionnaire (1967), as Asterix, the Legionary. 1970. Aste´rix aux jeux olympiques (1968), as Asterix at the Olympic Games. 1972.

La Serpe d’or (1962), as Asterix and the Golden Sickle. 1975.

Le Bouclier arverne (1968), as Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield. 1977.

Aste´rix et les goths (1963), as Asterix and the Goths. 1974.

Aste´rix et le chaudron (1969), as Asterix and the Cauldron. 1976.

Aste´rix gladiateur (1964), as Asterix the Gladiator. 1969.

Aste´rix en Hispanie (1969), as Asterix in Spain. 1971.

Aste´rix et Cleopatre (1965), as Asterix and Cleopatra. 1969.

Aste´rix chez les helvetes (1970), as Asterix in Switzerland. 1973.

Le Tour de gaule d’ Aste´rix (1965), as Asterix and the Banquet. 1979.

La Zizanie (1970), as Asterix and the Roman Agent. 1972.

Aste´rix et les normands (1966), as Asterix and the Normans. 1978.

Les Maisons des dieux (1971), as The Mansions of the Gods. 1971.

Aste´rix chez les bretons (1966), as Asterix in Britain. 1970.

Le Devin (1972), as Asterix and the Soothsayer. 1975.

Le Combat des chefs (1966), as Asterix and the Big Fight. 1971.

Les Lauriers de Cesar (1972), as Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. 1974.

physical strength and perfection and were a reminder of the kinds of images used by the Nazis in their wartime propaganda. The law also tried to shield French children from American culture, which was seen by many in France as a threat to their traditional way of life. So, as Russell Davies explains in The Times Literary Supplement, when Rene´ Goscinny and Albert Uderzo began working on Aste´rix together in the late 1950s they were under pressure to create something that was both recognizably French and contained no physically attractive characters. Aste´rix, Obelix, and their many strange-looking friends who inhabit the dozens of books that make up the long-running and best-selling series were the result. 166

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Aste´rix en Corse (1973), as Asterix in Corsica. 1979.

Le fils d’Aste´rix (1983), as Asterix and Son. 1983.

Le Cadeau de Cesar (1974), as Asterix and Caesar’s Gift. 1977.

Aste´rix chez Raha´zade (1987), as Asterix and the Magic Carpet. 1988.

La Grande Traversee (1975), as Asterix and the Great Crossing. 1977.

La rose et le glaive (1991), as Asterix and the Secret Weapon. 1991.

Obelix et compagnie (1976), as Obelix and Co. 1978.

La gale`re d’Obe´lix (1996), as Asterix and Obelix All at Sea. 1996.

Rene Goscinny et Albert Uderzo presentent les douze travaux d’Aste´rix (1976), as Rene Goscinny and Albert Underzo Present the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. 1978.

Aste´rix et Latraviata (2001), as Asterix and the Actress. 2001.

Three Adventures of Asterix. 1979.

Aste´rix et le ciel lui tombe´ sur la tete (2005), as Aste´rix and the Falling Sky. 2005.

Aste´rix chez les Belges (1979), as Asterix in Belgium, 1980. The Aste´rix Series (Uderzo alone, but credited as Goscinny and Uderzo) Le grand fosse´ (1980), as Asterix and the Great Divide. 1981. L’Odysse´e d’Aste´rix (1981), as Asterix and the Black Gold. 1982.

Aste´rix et la rentre´e gauloise (2003), as Asterix and the Class Act. 2003.

Movies Aste´rix le gaulois. 1967. Aste´rix et Cleopatra. 1970. Douze Travaux D’Aste´rix. 1976. Aste´rix in Amerika. 1994. Aste´rix and the Vikings. 2005.

´ Goscinny Rene Rene´ Goscinny was born in Paris, France, in 1926. His parents were both from Eastern Europe and met in Paris. His father, Stanislas Goscinny, was a Polish chemical engineer from Warsaw, Poland, and his mother Anna came from Ukraine; Goscinny also had an older brother, Claude. In 1928, the family moved to Argentina when Stanislas took a job there. Goscinny finished his secondary education at the College de Francais in Buenos Aires, but began to work as an assistant accountant at the age of seventeen after the sudden death of his father. He parlayed his self-taught drawing skills into a job working as an illustrator at an advertising agency, then moved with his mother to New York City in 1945. He also traveled Rene´ Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

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to France, where he joined the French army in 1946. After his return to New York, Goscinny struggled at first to find work as an illustrator, but in 1948 he became art director for Kunen Publishers, produced cartoons for MAD magazine, and began writing books for children before returning to Paris in 1950.

Albert Uderzo Albert Uderzo’s family came from Italy, but he was born in Fismes, near Reims, in northeast France, on April 27, 1927. At the age of fourteen, Uderzo went to Paris and, like Goscinny, found work as an advertising company illustrator, despite suffering from color blindness. When the Nazi occupation began he fled to Brittany with his brother, Bruno; Uderzo would later make Brittany the setting for the village in which Aste´rix lives. After World War II he worked as an engineer before returning to work as an animator and illustrator at various magazines and newspapers. In France, comics (the French call them bande dessine´e) appeared in magazines and newspapers either as comic strips or as single illustrations; there was not yet a steady industry for book-length comics. He created several comic characters in the late 1940s, including Clopinard, a one-legged, aging soldier from the Napoleonic wars whose battling spirit has been likened to Aste´rix. Goscinny and Uderzo met in the early 1950s, when they were both working at the Paris office of Belgian publisher World Press. Goscinny continued to work for American publications, including writing the ‘‘Lucky Luke’’ cowboy comic strip from 1955 until his death in 1977. The pair also began to develop projects together, including ‘‘Jehan Pistolet,’’ for La Libre Junior, and ‘‘Sylvie’’ for the women’s magazine Bonne Soire´es. In 1955, along with Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean He´brard, they formed their own advertising and press agency, Edifrance/Edipresse, which provided them with an outlet for several comic strips, including ‘‘Bill Blanchart’’ (Goscinny and Uderzo), and ‘‘Clairette’’ (Charlier and Uderzo). In the early 1950s, Goscinny and Uderzo worked on a strip called ‘‘Oumpah Pah le Peau Rouge’’ (‘‘Oumpah Pah the Red Indian’’), which was abandoned for several years but eventually appeared in Tintin magazine in five episodes ending in 1962 (the magazine was started by the great Belgian comics creator Herge´ whose Tintin books were among the most popular in Europe). ‘‘Oumpah Pah’’ is set in eighteenthcentury North America among French colonists and centers on the hero Oumpah Pah, whose tribe must learn to live alongside an occupying force. There are a lot of similarities between this and the 168

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French author and illustrator Albert Uderzo standing behind a cardboard showing his comic heroes Asterix and Obelix. AP Images.

small Gaulish village of the later and much more successful Aste´rix stories. Just as Aste´rix irritates the Romans, Oumpah Pah gets mixed up in various adventures, most of which involve making fun of the colonists. The series was translated into several languages and even appeared in English in the United States. But possibly because of its questionable view of Native Americans, the series did not last long. Rene´ Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

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Invented very French hero The strip ‘‘Aste´rix’’ first appeared in Goscinny and Uderzo’s magazine, Pilote, on October 29, 1959, and quickly became the most popular comic strip in France. As Goscinny’s Times (London) obituary notes: ‘‘From the first appearance of Aste´rix le Gaulois in [1959], the exploits of the Gaul whose village has never surrendered and will never surrender to the Romans, were translated into 15 languages . . . . Like Popeye and his spinach, Aste´rix, his magic potion and the tortuous jokes put into his mouth by Goscinny, became household figures.’’ Set in Gaul, France, in 50 BCE, the stories center on Aste´rix, a plucky little warrior with a large nose. The main characters live in a small village that is managing to resist the Roman occupation of Gaul only through defiance, ingenuity, and a potion devised by the druid Getafix (Panoramix in the original French) that gives anyone who drinks it enormous strength. Obelix, a huge block of a man and Aste´rix’s sidekick, fell into the potion as a baby, making the effects permanent. As a result, he has carved out a career as a delivery man, toting huge rocks for use in building dolmen (monuments made from large pieces of stone). Aste´rix is partly a comment on the wartime Nazi occupation of France, but it is also an affectionate nod toward France and its attempts to hang on to its own identity in the face of a tidal wave of American popular culture. When in 1989 the theme park Parc Aste´rix opened near Euro Disney in northern France, it made a point of including ‘‘inventions that are 100 percent made in Gaul.’’ In fact, one of the few places where ‘‘Asterix’’ has not been a largescale hit is in the United States. Some observers have commented that the differences between Aste´rix and Mickey Mouse say more about Europe and America than first appears, for Aste´rix wants to be left alone to do things his way, while Mickey is more approachable. Helen Laville, of The New Statesman, makes the point that ‘‘Aste´rix is not so much French as non-American. And we are just as much in need of this non-American hero [in 2001] as in 1959.’’ The comic album (the European equivalent of a graphic novel) series began with Aste´rix the Gaul in 1961, which had an initial print run of six thousand copies. Its popularity grew quickly, and by 1967 Goscinny and Uderzo felt confident enough to concentrate on Aste´rix as their primary work. Russell Davies notes in the Times Literary Supplement that by the mid-1970s the first album in the series alone had sold 23 million copies, roughly the same number as the entire Tintin series sold over a period of forty years. Those 170

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French Humor At first the Frenchness of the humor in the Aste´rix books stood in the way of translating Goscinny’s and Uderzo’s creation into other languages. Aste´rix is full of puns and word games that are specific to the French language. Even the names of the characters did not always translate directly. For example Obelix’s dog is called Idefix in the original French editions, a pun on the French phrase that translates as ‘‘fixed idea’’ in English. Because ‘‘Fixed Idea’’ is not a good name for a dog, the translators Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge changed the name to ‘‘Dogmatix,’’ making a pun similar to Goscinny’s on the English word ‘‘dogmatic.’’

Much of the humor in the series is in the names, and these vary even between British English and American translations. For example, a character who sells fish is called ‘‘Unhygenix’’ in England and ‘‘Epidemix’’ in the United States; ‘‘Arthritix,’’ the village elder, is known as ‘‘Geriatrix’’ in England. Even the accent over the ‘‘e’’ in Aste´rix’s name was removed in English translation, becoming Asterix. But whatever the language is, the playful spirit of these bad-yet-good puns, combined with Uderzo’s distinctive drawings, helps make Aste´rix the best-loved comic series of all time in France, and a popular series throughout Europe.

sales figures seem even more remarkable when it is remembered that Aste´rix is a celebration of French culture, pokes fun at obscure elements of French life, and features jokes in Latin.

´rix adventures Fifty years of Aste Each of the albums takes Aste´rix on a new adventure, often to a new part of the Roman Empire, with some of the notable volumes being Aste´rix and Cleopatra (1965), Aste´rix in Britain (1966), and Aste´rix in Spain (1969). Each of the stories makes fun of the mannerisms, traditions, and obsessions of the nations Aste´rix visits. The English, for example, drink hot water and milk because tea has yet to be discovered; in Spain, Aste´rix invents bullfighting. In other books, well-known characters from real life, classic literature, the entertainment world, and other comics appear as caricatures (exaggerated representations of themselves). For example, wartime Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) appears as a Roman centurion in Aste´rix and the Big Fight (1966), Thompson and Thomson from the Tintin comic album series appear in Aste´rix in Belgium (1979), while actor Sean Connery (1930–) appears as a spy in Aste´rix and the Black Gold (1981). In the early 1970s, Goscinny and Uderzo also had success with a spin-off series featuring the dog, Idefix. Rene´ Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

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Goscinny died suddenly from a heart attack on November 5, 1977, leaving behind his wife, Gilberte, and his daughter, Anna (born in 1968). After Goscinny’s death, Uderzo completed Aste´rix in Belgium, drawing in the book’s final frame a small, lonely rabbit in an empty field. This represents Gilberte Goscinny; her husband’s pet name for her was ‘‘petite lapin,’’ or little rabbit. Uderzo did not return to the Aste´rix series until 1980, with the book Aste´rix and the Great Divide. Uderzo retired temporarily in 1991 following the publication of Aste´rix and the Secret Weapon. By 1995 he decided he had been too hasty in retiring Aste´rix and revived the series with Aste´rix and Obelix All at Sea (1996). Since that time, he has continued to produce albums: the thirty-third in the series, Aste´rix and the Falling Sky, came out in 2005 and was, like so many others, an immediate success. All of the albums produced by Uderzo continue to carry Goscinny’s name as a loving tribute to his former partner. Although Uderzo’s solo output of Aste´rix books has been much lower than during the years of his partnership with Goscinny, the series has retained its popularity, especially in Europe. The most recent album sold more than 5.5 million copies, and only half of these were in French. In France it is by far the most popular comic book series, and the French are so proud of the little hero that the first French satellite, launched in 1965, was named Aste´rix. The Aste´rix books have been translated into one hundred languages and are the basis for a multi-million-dollar European franchise that includes toys and memorabilia, a series of movies, and computer games. Unusual for a comic book series, Aste´rix has also been used in education, to teach history, Latin, and other languages; the books have even appeared on college history course reading lists.

For More Information Books Duchane, Alain. Albert Uderzo. Paris: Le Chane, 2003. Kessler, Peter. Complete Guide to Aste´rix. London: Hodder, 1996.

Periodicals Davies, Russell. Times Literary Supplement (London) (April 2, 1976): p. 384. Horn, Caroline. ‘‘The Obelix Man: Albert Uderzo.’’ The Bookseller (July 15, 2005): p. 24. 172

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Laville, Helen. ‘‘A Little Star.’’ New Statesman (London) (June 4, 2001): p. 42. Obituary. Times (London) (November 7, 1977): p. 17.

Web Sites Aste´rix International. http://www.asterix-international.de/index.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Aste´rix: The Official Site. http://gb.asterix.com/index1.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Parc Aste´rix. http://www.parcasterix.fr/v2/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Selles, Hans, and Hendrick Jan Hoogeboom. Aste´rix Around the World. http://www.asterix-obelix.nl/ (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Jimmy Gownley Born February 5, 1972 (Pottsville, Pennsylvania) American author, illustrator

Walk into any bookstore and you will probably find a long section of shelving dedicated to graphic novels. Flip through a few and you’ll see a range of thickly muscled caped avengers, comic barbarians with large noses, well-endowed women dressed in scanty outfits, and a range of other realistically drawn or more cartoon-looking folks. These characters populate stories that range from funny adventures for children to horrifying stories with plenty of blood and gore. Bookstore shelves do hold some graphic novels suitable for preteen readers, but they’re hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Jimmy Gownley, the creator of Amelia Rules!, knew this, and he has done something about it. Amelia Rules! is a graphic novel series about a nine-year-old girl named Amelia Louise McBride. The stories follow Amelia as she comes to terms with the emotional upheaval caused by her parents’ divorce and her move from Manhattan to a new life with her mom and Aunt Tanner in a small town. She has a host of new friends: Reggie Grabinsky, her new best friend; Rhonda Bleenie, her pal and competition for Reggie’s affection; and Pajamaman, a silent friend who only wears footy pajamas. With her buddies, Amelia experiences life like any other normal girl: she plays freeze tag, goes on camping trips, goes to school, rakes leaves, and of course, dresses up like a superhero. As part of G.A.S.P. (Gathering of Awesome Super Pals), Amelia is Princess Powerful, ‘‘the dazzling beauty who enchants the boys even as she bashes them,’’ as Gownley described her in The Whole World’s Crazy. Gownley gives the reader much more than just the silly situations of childhood; he reveals what it feels like to be a kid living in an adult’s world. Amelia is comforted by bedtime stories, gets a little frightened on

‘‘Childhood is back . . . comics are for kids again . . . and Amelia rules!’’

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Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Shades of Gray: Days to Remember (1995). Shades of Gray: A Healing Presence (1997). Shades of Gray: Fiction Part 1. Amelia Rules! The Whole World’s Crazy Vol. 1 (2002). Amelia Rules! What Makes You Happy Vol. 2 (2003).

Halloween, wonders about the existence of Santa Claus, grieves the loss of a family member, and misses her dad and her old neighborhood friends. Gownley has worked hard to make adults understand that his graphic novels have a place on every kid’s bookshelf. As he told Anisa Brophy of the Sequential Tart Web site: ‘‘I believe we can shake this industry out of its ‘steroids and spandex’ daze. We can rise above the Fantagraphics gloom. We can look at the books on the comic shop walls and say Childhood is back . . . comics are for kids again.’’ Gownley explained his mission further: ‘‘I think there’s a huge, huge opportunity for kids’ comics, which is a huge opportunity for comics in general. No one’s going to read Love and Rockets or Sandman [popular series for more mature readers] if they don’t read some junior version of that. I think the time is now.’’ To get the word out about the value of graphic novels for kids, Gownley even started his own G.A.S.P. Success came when Gownley’s lobbying led to his books being shelved in the children’s section of bookstores. His efforts were again rewarded in 2004 when Amelia Rules! became the first graphic novel to be selected by Children’s Book of the Month Club.

Always wanted to create comics James Gownley was born on February 5, 1972, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the only child of James ‘‘Rock’’ Gownley and Anna Mae Gownley. He grew up and attended twelve years of Catholic school in the small town of Girardville. His parents fretted over their only child’s socialization and encouraged him to fill his life with friends. He did, as he informed Sara Pendergast in an interview for Graphic Novelists (GN): ‘‘My cousins used to come and 176

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spend weekends with us, and when I was school-aged there were always other kids at my house . . . . I was also a very active kid, playing basketball (which I particularly loved) and baseball as well as being active at school and the Catholic Church I attended.’’ However, Gownley added that ‘‘being an only child, you can’t help but spend time alone. I think it was a good balance. Because of my interest in drawing, I never had problems entertaining myself . . . . I drew pretty much every day.’’ Comics enthralled Gownley from an early age, especially Peanuts, which he credited for helping him learn to read. His father bought him DC and Marvel Comics at a corner store, and Gownley remembered particularly liking The New Teen Titans and Elfquest. But none of Gownley’s friends read comics, and Girardville didn’t have a specialty comic book store. It wasn’t until Gownley was fourteen that he entered his first comic book store: Gene Satzko’s Gema Books in the nearby town of WilkesBarre. ‘‘Going into that shop was a key moment in my life,’’ Gownley related to GN. He bought his first copies of Zot, Love and Rockets, and Cerebus. ‘‘They all blew me away, but Cerebus in particular had a huge effect. I bought two issues of Cerebus (#66 and #80); the newest issue I could find, and the oldest issue I could find . . . . I was mesmerized by the art, and fascinated that even though those issues were over a year apart, it was clear they were part of the same story. Plus, #66 was the funniest comic I had ever read. After Peanuts, those ‘Church and State’ issues of Cerebus have had the greatest influence on me as a cartoonist.’’ Gownley’s interest was raised again when he visited his first comic book convention about a month later. There, he came to know Watchmen, The Rocketeer, and The Spirit. ‘‘It was all over at that point. I had found what I wanted to do.’’ Gownley started in on drawing and writing his own comic book, creating a story with mythical, fantastic characters. He showed some of his early pages to his high school friend, Tony Graziano. Graziano complimented Gownley but ‘‘seemed reserved,’’ Gownley remembered. He told GN: ‘‘When I pressed him on it, he admitted that the sci fi/Tolkienesque rip-off type story I was working on was just not his scene. He suggested I write a comic book about ‘Us.’ I don’t think he meant autobiography, just a type of story that would appeal to ‘civilians.’ ’’ Gownley was keenly interested in making comic books that his friends—none of whom were comic book fans—would enjoy, and so he took his friend’s criticism to heart. Gownley trashed his early work in favor of a fresh idea: realism. Jimmy Gownley

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Creates Shades of Gray Gownley’s new idea turned into Shades of Gray Comics and Stories, a series of stories about teenage friends growing up in the small town of Pleasant Valley. The stories revealed the ups and downs of the teenage years, as the friends bickered, fell in love, ate greasy fast food, and pondered life in general. And Gownley drew his characters to look like real teenagers living in a realistic-looking town. By age fifteen, Gownley had his first issue ready. He’d read up on selfpublishing but wanted some reassurance before taking the plunge, so he sent out about fifty copies of his work to professionals in the comics industry. ‘‘I received only two replies—one from Dennis Kitchen and one from Dave Sim. Dave’s was really inspiring as he espoused [championed] the joys of self-publishing and that attention probably spurred me into printing the book,’’ Gownley told Jennifer M. Contino in Sequential Tart. Bolstered by his correspondence with Sim, Gownley published his first issue. He sold it at the local grocery stores, a video store, out of his locker at school, and Gene Satzko, of Gema Books, helped him figure out how to get the Heroes World store [a now nonoperational comic book store chain] to distribute the first issue as well. Gownley sold a few hundred copies of that first issue and published two more before graduating from high school. In his first years of college at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Gownley took a break from comic book production. But after two years as a journalism and broadcast communication major, Gownley felt that he had made a mistake and switched gears his junior year to take a major in commercial art and illustration. He had missed his art and took up work on Shades of Gray again, self-publishing more issues starting in 1993. Gownley had grown as an artist and revamped Shades of Gray over the years. Gownley told Contino about the changes he made to the series: ‘‘I loved the characters and the setting, but wasn’t thrilled with the stories I had written in my two high school issues. So, I took the concept and reworked it for its national debut. The major difference is that there was no Megan character in the high school books.’’ Gownley went on to publish sixteen more issues of Shades of Gray with stories revolving around brothers Peter and Richie Henderson, Peter’s girlfriend Marie Rigby, and best friends Freddy Maxwell and Megan McLean. His work soon won over some readers. Beth Hannan Rimmels praised his efforts in a 1997 Long Island Voice review: ‘‘I’m reluctant to read anything that reminds me of how painful my teen years were, no matter how well written. But Shades of Gray is so good . . . . I’d subscribe in a heartbeat.’’ 178

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Superb Innovations Innovation was a key part of James Gownley’s strategy to attract readers to Amelia Rules! Gownley tweaked the conventions of comic books in hopes of elevating his graphic novels to a status comparable to literature. His experimentation, both with his visual techniques and story topics, has attracted critical attention. He combined realistic and cartoon-like images together in scenes to draw attention to particular aspects of the story. He also worked to make his pictures and words work closely together to create mood and enhance meaning in his stories. An especially telling example of his stylistic innovation can be found in his ‘‘Joy and Wonder’’ story in Part 5 of Amelia Rules!: What Makes You Happy, Volume 2. In ‘‘Joy and Wonder,’’ Amelia takes her new friends to visit her father in New York. Gownley infused his illustrations of the story with all Amelia’s memories of her old neighbor-

hood and her emotions about her parents’ divorce. And within the story, Gownley drew the pages of Amelia’s Aunt Tanner’s scrapbook. But instead of photos, the scrapbook pages are filled with old comic strips telling the story of Amelia’s family history. Gownley told Graphic Novelists that his scrapbook idea was unique to Amelia Rules!: ‘‘I’d never seen anyone do that before, so it was thrilling to put down on paper. It is my favorite device I’ve come up with so far.’’ ‘‘Joy and Wonder’’ as a whole effectively addresses one of Gownley’s goals for his comics. As he told GN: ‘‘I read an interview with Neil Gaiman once, where he said a criticism he’d heard about comics was that they couldn’t be emotionally effective enough to make a reader cry. I’m proud that several people have told me ‘Joy and Wonder’ made them cry.’’ The comics industry took notice of Gownley’s work; he was nominated for Eisner Awards in 2003 and 2005, and Harvey Awards in 2004 and 2005.

Even though Gownley had found moderate success with Shades of Gray, he put it on hold in 1997. He decided instead to pursue a job in graphic design, taking an art director position with ABCChannel 27 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. But Gownley did not let go of his interest in comics. While keeping his day job, he continued to draw and to think up ideas for comic books. Gownley soon struck on a new idea. ‘‘I was working on Shades of Gray. Just sitting there drawing, and I suddenly thought ‘Hey, there’s no really good comics for girls right now,’ Gownley related to GN. ‘‘I doodled Amelia, pretty much exactly how she appears now, and showed it to Karen [his wife]. I said, ‘What do you think of her?’ She liked the drawing. I said, ‘What should I name her?’ We both simultaneously said, ‘Amelia.’ That was pretty spooky, so I thought this is something worth pursuing.’’ Over the following three years, Gownley set aside Shades of Gray to develop Amelia Rules! Jimmy Gownley

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Amelia Rules! Once he developed the characters, Gownley developed great aspirations for his new creation. For Amelia Rules! Gownley kept his focus on the drama of life, as he had for the stories he wrote so well for Shades of Gray. But these stories were told from a younger person’s point of view, and Gownley consciously filled them with outright goofiness and humor. Balancing the funniness of his storylines with deep emotional subjects, such as divorce, Gownley set out to change graphic novels. With Amelia Rules! ‘‘I really hope to expand what people think of as a ‘kid’s’ comic and write a story that’s more in line with what I consider to be quality juvenile fiction,’’ Gownley told Bill Baker of World Famous Comics. Moreover, Gownley set out to bring a greater number of young, female readers to graphic novels by centering his stories around a strong, young female. In order to maintain the greatest amount of control over his vision, Gownley began an independent publishing firm in 2000 called Renaissance Press, with his friend, comic creator Michael Cohen, and his wife, Karen Applegate-Gownley, who took charge of the firm’s marketing. In 2001, Gownley published the first issue of Amelia Rules! It quickly won over critics. In his review for Grasshoppers Comics, John Riley wrote: ‘‘All in all Amelia Rules! is one of those rare books which seems to strike a cord in everyone who reads it.’’ By 2004, Gownley had published a second volume of Amelia Rules! and continued on his campaign to attract new readers to graphic novels. As he told Sequential Tart, ‘‘You have to look at it like a political campaign, and our platform is ‘Look, comics are great and comics are great for kids.’ They’re good as entertainment, they’re good for educational and moral purposes, and that’s what we’re trying to get the general public to realize.’’ Gownley has plans for many more Amelia Rules! volumes, and he continues to work as art director for ABC-Channel 27.

For More Information Periodicals Rimmels, Beth Hannan. ‘‘Feeling the Power of Reality: Review of Shades of Gray.’’ Long Island Voice (December 18-24, 1997). Web Sites Baker, Bill. ‘‘Baker’s Dozen: Queen of the World, Jimmy Gownley on Amelia Rules!’’ World Famous Comics. http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/ bakersdozen/back20040128.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). 180

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Brophy, Anisa. ‘‘Interview: Childhood Is Back, Jimmy Gownley.’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/june04/jgownley.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Contino, Jennifer M. ‘‘Making New Rules: Jim Gownley.’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/oct01/gownley.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through correspondence with Jimmy Gownley in August and September 2005.

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Matt Groening. ª Reuters NewMedia/Corbis.

Matt Groening Born February 15, 1954 (Portland, Oregon) American cartoonist, writer

‘‘I always think it’s a mistake for cartoonists to demand cartoons be treated as art. Cartoons are cartoons . . . . They’re the most fun thing out there.’’

Few cartoonists have had such a far-reaching effect on the popular culture of their times as Matt Groening, creator of the cynical and silly worlds of Life in Hell, The Simpsons, and Futurama. Groening, who freely admits to a lack of ability to draw, has nonetheless managed to use a skillful pen to communicate his painfully humorous outlook on every institution of modern life. While none of his characters are drawn realistically, each of them has become a distinct and memorable personality, and each speaks a bit of truth that is both touching and humorous. Groening’s work is widely respected and has influenced many creators of graphic novels. While most comic artists consider themselves lucky to earn a living at their art, Groening has become a multi-millionaire from his work on The Simpsons, one of the longest-running television shows in the history of the medium, along with the 183

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Love Is Hell (1986).

Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror: A HeebieJeebie Hullabaloo (1999).

Work Is Hell (1986).

The Simpsons Forever! A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, Continued (1999).

School Is Hell (1987). Childhood Is Hell (1987). Akbar & Jeff’s Guide to Life (1989). The Big Book of Hell (1990). Binky’s Guide to Love (1994). Love Is Still Hell (1994). Simpsons Comics Extravaganza (1994). Simpsons Comics Strike Back! (1996).

Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror: A Spine-Tingling Spooktaculer (2001). Simpsons Comics Unchained (2001). The Big Book of Bart Simpson (2002). The Simpsons Beyond Forever! A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family—Still Continued (2002). The Big, Beefy Book of Bart Simpson (2005).

Simpsons Comics Simps-O-Rama (1996). The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family (1997).

Television Shows

Simpsons Comic Wingding (1997).

Futurama (1999–2002).

Simpsons Comics Big Bonanza (1998).

Comic Strips

Simpsons Comics on Parade (1998).

Life in Hell (1978–).

The Simpsons (1990–).

dozens of comic books and graphic novels generated by the show. Ever the comic book fan, Groening has used his wealth to create two comic publishing companies, called Bongo and Zongo. That wealth has also allowed him to keep his first love, the alternative strip Life in Hell, as funky and unconventional as it was in 1977 when it was a hand-stapled, self-published zine, or amateur comic book. Groening was born on February 15, 1954, in Portland, Oregon, where he grew up with his parents and four sisters and brothers. His father, Homer, mother, Margaret, and sisters, Lisa and Maggie, would later be immortalized as The Simpsons. Homer Groening was a creative man who encouraged creativity among his children. He was an advertising writer, a filmmaker, and a cartoonist, and young Matt began drawing cartoons on his first day of school. 184

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Groening’s upbringing was middle class and fairly conventional, but at an early age he rebelled against institutional rules he found petty and frustrating. Elected as student body president during his senior year at high school, he jokingly tried to amend the school bylaws to declare himself all-powerful president for life. However, he had a large group of creative friends and was active in the Lincoln High School Film Group. A childhood love of comic books turned into a teenage fascination with alternative comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Robert Crumb’s Zap comics. Groening and his friends began to draw their own cartoons and formed the Komix Appreciation Club at school. Together, they published an underground newspaper called Bilge Rat. In 1971, Groening left Portland to attend college at Evergreen State University, a liberal college in Olympia, Washington. He was an irreverent and unconventional student, who often took class notes in the form of comic strips, and Evergreen’s free-form academic structure appealed to him. While at Evergreen he met another alternative cartoonist, Lynda Barry, who convinced him that it might be possible to get his work published. Groening was influenced by the simplicity and warmth of Barry’s work, which seemed more personal and less harsh than the alternative comics he had read previously.

Cartoons as comments on life Groening’s main ambition was to become a writer, and after graduating from Evergreen in 1977, he headed south to Los Angeles, California, hoping to find writing work. Life in L.A. was not easy; Groening had little money and worked a variety of lowpaying jobs while trying to become a writer. The first Life in Hell cartoons were letters that Groening sent back to his friends in Oregon and Washington, describing the difficulties of his new life in California. The characters in these cartoons were the same ones he had created in high school—large, upright rabbits with buck teeth and big eyes. He had chosen rabbits because they were the only easily identifiable animals he could draw. However, though Groening’s art seems on the surface to be simple, even childish, he is skilled at revealing personality and emotion with just a few lines. His first character, Binky, expressed all of his own grouchy exasperation with the unfairness of the world. Binky was soon joined by other rabbit-like characters, a girlfriend named Sheba and a one-eared son named Bongo, who was dropped off one day by Binky’s partner Matt Groening

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in a forgotten one-night stand. Later, the family was joined by Akbar and Jeff, gay lovers whose love-hate relationship is made all the more hysterical by the fact that they look exactly alike. As they negotiate their always tempestuous relationship, Akbar and Jeff do work well together as enterprising merchants who sell everything at their ‘‘hut’’ shops, from ‘‘Tofu Hut’’ to ‘‘Liposuction Hut.’’ Still later, Groening himself would join the cartoon cast, as a bearded rabbit, usually talking with his (rabbit) sons, Will and Abe. The popularity of Groening’s cartoon letters home spread, and soon he was sending them to hundreds of recipients. He put together a zine of collected Life in Hell strips and sold it in the punk music section of the record store where he was working. Indeed, there did seem to be a connection between the angry satire of the late 1970s punk rebellion and Groening’s adorable yet hostile bunny people.

First books published In 1978, a small alternative newspaper called the Los Angeles Reader, where Groening wrote a music column, agreed to publish Life in Hell as a weekly cartoon. By 1986, alternative papers all over the country had picked up Life in Hell, and Pantheon press had published Love Is Hell and Work Is Hell, bitingly funny graphic novels about the dangers in relationships and the workplace. These were soon followed by School Is Hell and Childhood Is Hell. One of the major ways in which Groening’s work in the Life in Hell series stands out from other cartoons and comics is his refusal to choose a format and stick with it. Life in Hell is a constant challenge to publishers and a delight to readers because it looks different almost every week. Sometimes the strip is a single potent panel, such as the frequently recurring image of the rebellious child named Bongo, tied and gagged in a chair in the middle of a cell, while invisible authorities speak to him through a slit in the door. Sometimes, it is a series of small panels crammed full of dialog, such as the many Akbar and Jeff panels in which they berate each other over and over for their many faults before finding their way back to love. Sometimes, the cartoon is in the form of a magazine cover, such as ‘‘Lonely Tyrant: The Magazine for Abusive Bosses Whose Employees Hate Them.’’ And sometimes it is simply in list form, like ‘‘Childhood Trauma Checklist.’’ Groening’s humor in the Life in Hell books is often bitter and depressed, but his skill as an artist allows him to soften what appears to be an angry and hopeless comment on life with an expression of goofy optimism or sad lovability on a character’s face. 186

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Television success In 1987, film director James Brooks was working on the FOX network television comedy, The Tracy Ullman Show. Seeking an interesting animated segment to insert between the show’s comedy skits, he approached Groening about creating an animated version of his popular weekly cartoon. Groening agreed, but when he learned that FOX would own the rights to the finished product, he was reluctant to give up control of Binky and his friends. To solve the problem, Groening created a new set of characters, a family called the Simpsons, and named them after members of his own family. The troublemaking young boy started out as Matt, after himself, but was soon changed to Bart, an anagram of ‘‘brat.’’ The characters were crudely drawn, with the trademark overbite, hair as stylized as Binky’s ears, and bright yellow skin, so that they would be unique among TV cartoons. Matt Groening

Matt Groening sitting with his famous cartoon creation The Simpsons. ª Douglas Kirkland/Corbis.

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The Simpsons and Futurama: Alternative Comics on TV Being the creator of two popular television cartoon shows has meant both reward and frustration for Matt Groening. He has received money and fame far beyond the dreams of the average comic artist, but in exchange he has had to struggle with network executives to keep the shows true to his original vision. In May 2005, The Simpsons became the longest-running situation comedy in the history of television. The show’s popularity is largely due to its large cast of colorful characters, the sly humor of its satire, and the subtle cultural references. Each scene of The Simpsons is packed with sight gags and in-jokes that exercise the observation skills of audiences of all ages. Though every character in The Simpsons bears the unmistakable imprint of Groening’s artwork, he has not drawn or written an episode of the show since the early 1990s. Co-creators James Brooks and Sam Simon, executive producer Mike Scully, and an army of writers and artists including George Meyer and John Schwartzwelder have been the driving forces behind the show. As Groening told Brian Doherty of Mother Jones, ‘‘I have less to do with The Simpsons every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it’s just trying to

keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.’’ Groening’s experience with Futurama was much more difficult. In 1999, FOX bought the first few episodes of Futurama, a science fiction cartoon created by Groening and David Cohen, a writer and producer from The Simpsons. An avid science fiction fan since his youth, Groening had spent several years doing research to create Futurama, a story of a modern-day pizza delivery boy who finds himself transported to the year 3000. While The Simpsons is a family comedy, Futurama is set in the workplace, as Fry, the pizza delivery hero, gets a job on the crew of an intergalactic delivery service. Soon after buying Futurama, FOX executives became nervous that the show might not be as successful as The Simpsons. They badgered Groening about the show’s style and content, and, once the show began airing, they moved it from Sunday to Tuesday night, making it hard for viewers to find it. After three difficult years, FOX cancelled Futurama, and production stopped on the series. FOX’s cancellation hardly killed the series, however, as it continued to air in syndication (or reruns) in television stations all over the world through 2006 and DVD sales soared.

The animated segments were a success, and when the The Tracy Ullman Show was cancelled in 1989, FOX persuaded Groening to make the Simpsons into a full-length show. The Simpsons debuted in January 1990 and within two months had become one of the top fifteen shows on television. Groening, who had considered himself successful just to have several comic collections published, became a millionaire. 188

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In 1993, Groening founded his own comic book publishing house, named Bongo (after Binky’s son). Bongo publishing is mostly devoted to Simpsons-related titles, releasing monthly issues and collections of The Simpsons, Itchy and Scratchy, Bartman, Radioactive Man, Lisa Comics, and Krusty Comics. These monthly comics allowed some of The Simpsons’s lesser-known characters to have their own stories. Like the weekly show, these comics and the many Simpsons collections are filled with satire and subtle cultural references. For example, one story is a satiric replica of a 1960s Marvel Comic with Krusty the Clown in the role of secret agent. True to his alternative roots, Groening followed Bongo publishing in 1995 with the establishment of Zongo, a comic publishing house devoted to independent alternative comics. Zongo has published such titles as Gary Panter’s Jimbo, Stephanie Gladden’s Hopster’s Tracks, and Mary Fleener’s Fleener. Groening’s television success has made him a very wealthy man. He has joked that he may one day open a Simpsons’ Theme Park, modeled on Disneyland, but in the meantime he devotes his time and attention to his wife, Deborah Caplan, whom he married in 1986, and to their two children. More than the wealth it has brought him, Groening’s success at taking a comic strip and turning it into a cultural icon is encouragement for all those comic artists and graphic novelists struggling to make a living.

For More Information Books Groening, Matt. The Simpsons Forever! A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family—Continued. Edited by Scott M. Gimple. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999. Keslowitz, Steven. The Simpsons and Society: An Analysis of Our Favorite Family and Its Influence in Contemporary Society. Tucson, AZ: Hats Off Books, 2004. Turner, Chris. Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004.

Periodicals Foote, Jennifer. ‘‘A Doodle God Makes Good: Welcome to ‘Life in Hell.’’’ Newsweek (September 28, 1987): 70. Hamilton, Tish. ‘‘Rabbit Punch: Matt Groening’s Cartoon Strip ‘Life in Hell.’’’ Rolling Stone (September 22, 1988): 81–84. Matt Groening

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Harris, Jessica. ‘‘Check Him Out, Man! He’s the Wacky Guy Behind the Simpsons.’’ National Geographic World (July 1994): 8. Paul, Alan. ‘‘Matt Groening: Life in Hell.’’ Flux Magazine (September 30, 1995). Shepherdson, Nancy. ‘‘My Life’s Work: Bart’s Creator.’’ Boy’s Life (August 1992): 33. Zehme, Bill. ‘‘The Only Real People on TV.’’ Rolling Stone (June 28, 1990): 40.

Web Sites Chocano, Carina. ‘‘Matt Groening.’’ Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/ people/bc/2001/01/30/groening/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Doherty, Brian. ‘‘Matt Groening.’’ Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones. com/arts/qa/1999/03/groening.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). Scott, A.O. ‘‘Matt Groening: When Reality Grows Cartoonlike, a Realist Cartoons.’’ Slate. http://slate.msn.com/id/23430/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). von Busack, Richard. ‘‘Life Before Homer.’’ Metroactive. http://www. metroactive.com/papers/metro/11.02.00/groening-0044.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Georges Re´mi, aka Herge´. ª Sophie Bassouls/Corbis.

Herge´ GEORGES RE´MI Born May 22, 1907 (Brussels, Belgium) Died March 3, 1983 (Brussels, Belgium) Belgian author, illustrator

‘‘Tintin is me when I want to be heroic, perfect; Thompson and Thomson are me when I am dumb; Haddock is me when I need to act out.’’

Georges Re´mi, the Belgian cartoonist who published under the penname Herge´, is best known for creating Tintin, a character who is well-known throughout the world. Starting in 1929, Herge´ published twenty-four volumes exploring the escapades of Tintin, a boy reporter who travels the world. The satirical stories expose the failures of Russia’s Communist state, with its floundering economy and brutal police force; explore Egyptian tombs in search of drug runners; depict the glory and wonder of space travel; reveal the exotic lands of China and Tibet; and illuminate the depths of the world’s oceans, among other things. With each adventure, Herge´ perfected his drawing style, called ‘‘the clear line.’’ 191

Best-Known Works Tintin graphic novels, 23 vols. Originally published 1929–1976. Tintin et l’Alph-art (1986), as Tintin and the Alpha-Art (1990).

Becomes a Boy Scout Georges Re´mi was born on May 22, 1907, in Brussels, Belgium, and grew up in a Catholic family of moderate means. His mother, Elisabeth, died when he was young, and little is known about his life with his father, Alexis. He had no siblings. Finding his school work boring, young Re´mi sought diversions and found drawing and Boy Scouts to be his favorite activities. In an interview with Numa Sadoul published in Comics Journal, Herge´ recalled the Scout movement, which he joined at age eleven, as ‘‘an excellent school of life for me.’’ He took the Boy Scout Oath and Law very seriously and attempted to live up to all aspects of them: to be brave, clean, courteous, faithful, helpful, kind, reverent, and trustworthy, among other things. His second wife, Fanny Rodwell, told The Mail on Sunday that Herge´ remained faithful to the Boy Scouts’ ‘‘moral code’’ throughout his life, the organization having served as an ‘‘outlet’’ from his ‘‘grey’’ childhood. Herge´ had little formal artistic training; instead he diligently practiced drawing the things that interested him, which turned out to be almost anything that moved. While still in high school, he published his first drawings in the Belgian Boy Scouts magazine in 1921. By 1924, Re´mi had begun signing his artwork as Herge´, which was the French phonetic spelling of his reversed initials: R. G. (pronounced air-JAY or air-ZHAY). Herge´ created a comic strip about an energetic Boy Scout character named Totor in 1926. But before he did much to develop this character, Herge´ spent about a year serving in the Belgian army. Herge´ returned to Brussels in 1928, where he joined the staff of a conservative Catholic newspaper called Le Vingtie`me Sie`cle. To increase interest in the newspaper, the editor, Father Norbert Wallez, asked Herge´ to develop a special section for children that would be inserted inside the newspaper each Thursday. Herge´ oversaw the first edition of the comic-filled supplement, called Le Petit Vingtie`me, on November 1, 1928. For the supplement, Herge´ soon created Tintin, a character based on Totor. Tintin was a boy reporter who would travel the world with his faithful but distractible pooch, Milou, a white 192

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Display of various comic books about reporter Tintin. Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images.

terrier (called Snowy in the English translations). The first Tintin comic strip appeared on January 10, 1929.

Injects freshness into European comic art With the comic strip Tintin, Herge´ introduced European readers to a new type of comic art: one that combines the Herge´

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The Clear Line Herge´’s Tintin adventures looked like nothing Europeans had ever seen before. Herge´ created a unique graphic style for which fellow cartoonist Joost Swarte coined the term ‘‘the clear line’’ in 1977. Herge´ did not use his pen to make shadings or sketchy marks to create depth and interest; instead he ‘‘enclosed every particle of the visible, no matter how fluid and shifting, in a thin, black, unhesitating line,’’ as Luc Sante put it in his analysis of Herge´’s work in Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! Herge´’s style distilled the essence of objects into their basic elements. For example, when he drew Tintin in a room, each element—the window along the back wall, a bed with fluffy pillows, a suitcase on the floor, a shoe—would be depicted with simple black lines of the same thickness, without shading or using differences in line thickness to offer clues to the importance of each different object. The effect, according to the Village Voice, made Herge´’s drawings ‘‘crystalline in their precision.’’ Sante went on to call Tintin’s adventures ‘‘an Eden of the graphic eye, in which every object—each shoe, each road, each flame and book and car and door—is in some way the first, the model that instructs the beholder on the nature of the thing and makes it possible to grow up knowing how to cut through fog and perceive essentials. What Herge´ did is as serious and as endlessly applicable as geometry.’’ Herge´’s visual legacy of the clear line served as inspiration for the cartoonists and illustrators who have followed him, including the Belgian artists Edgar P. Jacobs and Bob de Moor and the Dutch artists Joost Swarte and Theo van den Boogaart.

artwork with the story. Influenced by American comic strips and films, Herge´ introduced such novelties as word balloons for dialogue, close-ups, pictures drawn in a variety of perspectives, and sound effects, such as ‘‘Pan! Pan!’’ for gunfire. These features made Tintin a novelty never before seen in Europe. Some of Herge´’s inventions caused concern among editors. His use of word balloons struck the editors so oddly that they wanted to publish ‘‘explanatory notes underneath the picture, thinking readers would not be able to understand the story,’’ Nick Smurthwaite noted in Design Week. In the end, no notes were published, and Tintin soon developed a huge fan base, sending subscription numbers soaring. 194

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Each Thursday starting in 1929 the strip appeared with a new installment of Tintin’s adventures in the Soviet Union (a powerful union of Communist states led by Russia). His adventures found him on the run from the Soviet police, the secretive OGPU. Along the way, he discovers the Russian state to be an industrial failure run by power-hungry thieves who hoard riches stolen from Russian citizens and who use ‘‘stage effects’’ to ‘‘fool the poor idiots who still believe in a ‘red paradise’’’ (red was a symbol for the Communist Party that ruled the country), according to Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Calling the country ‘‘dreary,’’ ‘‘unfriendly,’’ and a ‘‘stinking cesspool’’ in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Herge´’s anticommunist sentiment caused great alarm among some later critics (communist China censored the book in 2001), but at the time of publication was a tremendous hit among Europeans who enjoyed the story as a parody of the Soviet Union. ‘‘Overnight, or almost, he became a national icon,’’ according to Luc Sante in Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! So large was Tintin’s fan base that by the end of his Russian adventure, the newspaper editor Wallez hired an actor to play Tintin in a publicity stunt in which fans could welcome Tintin ‘‘home’’ from the Soviet Union at a Brussels train station. Expecting only a few children, the publicists were surprised when thousands gathered at the city’s train station to greet Tintin. In 1930, the strip was soon collected into a comic album called Tintin au pays des Soviets (later published in English as Tintin in the Land of the Soviets).

Develops cultural sensitivity From this first success, Herge´ began producing a new Tintin adventure each year. Although first published in weekly installments, the adventures were conceived as compelling and fully developed stories that unfolded over the entire year. Each adventure was then published as a separate comic album. (The comic album was a precursor to the graphic novel.) Herge´’s next adventures included an expedition to the African Congo, which was under Belgian rule at the time, and a visit to America, where Tintin meets gangsters and Native Americans. Herge´ had not traveled to these places, nor to the Soviet Union for his first book, but he studied pictures, films, catalogs, and travel stories to create images for his stories. Although the realistic nature of Herge´’s drawings of such details as native clothing, cityscapes, and cars are universally praised, these early adventures are also condemned for their stereotypical portrayal of Africans and Herge´

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Chang Chong-Chen holds up two adventures of Tintin. Chang is the inspiration for the character of Chang in the two books. ª Langevin Jacques/Corbis Sygma.

Native Americans, for the anticommunist statements in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, and for racism in Tintin in America. Herge´ took these criticisms seriously and began investigating the cultures of his chosen lands more carefully. For his 1936 book The Blue Lotus, Herge´ interviewed Chang Chong-Chen, a Chinese student studying at the Acade´mie des Beaux-Arts in Belgium, in order to depict the Chinese culture accurately. Chong-Chen opened Herge´’s eyes to Chinese culture. Herge´ later wrote: ‘‘I discovered a civilization that I had completely ignored,’’ according to Smurthwaite. The experience forever changed the way Herge´ approached a new project: ‘‘I undertook research and really interested myself in the people and countries to which I sent Tintin, out of a sense of honesty to my readers.’’ Herge´ would later revise his 196

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early stories to tone down the stereotypes and cultural offenses. His commitment to cultural sensitivity was especially noticeable after The Red Sea Sharks (1958), which Marc Romano of the Village Voice pointed to as the volume after which Herge´’s books show ‘‘avoidance of any potential cultural slight—in The Castafiore Emeralds even Gypsies, that most maligned of European peoples, are treated sympathetically.’’ By the 1940s, Herge´’s stories about Tintin had become hugely popular in the French-speaking market and were becoming popular in translation among Dutch, Swedish, and Flemish readers. But a pall of gloom cast over Herge´ when Nazi German forces occupied Belgium during World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). The occupation brought an end to the circulation of Vingtie`me Sie`cle and Herge´ soon found work in 1940 as chief editor of Le Soir Jeunesse, a youth supplement similar to Le Petit Vingtie`me, but controlled by Nazi forces. After the defeat of the Nazis, Herge´ and his colleagues at Le Soir Jeunesse, like many others who worked during the occupation, were labeled as Nazi collaborators and suffered occasional arrest, investigation, and blacklisting from jobs. Although he was ‘‘ultimately exonerated,’’ according to Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier in The Pocket Essential Tintin, the ‘‘connections were to haunt Herge´ for the rest of his life, though he was never a fascist [a believer of a political philosophy that supported a strong centralized government led by a dictatorial leader], let alone a Nazi,’’ as his second wife, Fanny Rodwell, recalled to The Mail on Sunday.

Introduces comic companions Herge´’s career took off again in 1946 when he began weekly production of Tintin magazine, and circulation soon hit one hundred thousand copies per week. Though the strip developed and became more complex, Tintin remained constant: he sported his characteristic strawberry blond tuft of hair and was depicted wearing the fashionable schoolboy garb of the 1930s, baggy plusfours (mid-calf pants) and knee socks with practical oxford shoes—unless he was cunningly disguised. He was always a boy reporter, always bent on doing the right thing, and as was noted in the Village Voice, ‘‘unremittingly good—a fitting model for Catholic youth, but rather one-dimensional.’’ To round out the stories, Herge´ added a cast of flawed characters to accompany Tintin and Milou. In 1934, the twin detectives Dupont and Dupond Herge´

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(Thompson and Thomson in English translations) added comic relief as they fumbled in their attempts to apprehend villains. Captain Haddock, an obnoxious, whiskey-drinking character introduced in 1941, serves as Tintin’s partner of sorts and injects the adventures with colorful comic relief, yelling such odd exclamations as ‘‘Bashi-bazouks!’’ and ‘‘Ectoplasm!’’ at villains. In 1945, Professor Tournesol (Professor Cuthbert Calculus in English translations), a timid, partially deaf, mathematical genius, entered the series; he offered Tintin wonderful inventions for his adventures, such as a submarine, a rocket, and rocket-powered skates. Tintin’s appeal continued to grow internationally. The first English translations were made in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, and the stories became available in the United States in the 1960s. To help him with the production of the stories, Herge´ opened Herge´ Studios by 1950. With a handful of illustrators, Herge´ worked on Tintin’s adventures, filling his studio with snippets of material to help him draw or understand the places he would send Tintin. Herge´ was ‘‘perhaps the most accuracy-obsessed cartoonist ever,’’ according to Glenn Dixon in the Washington City Paper, and he had certain staff members focus on drawing vehicles from real life or from technical catalogs, while others built scale models to guide future drawings, and others were sent to interview specialists or scout foreign lands to gather necessary information for the stories. Dixon wrote that when Herge´ ‘‘was accused of having gotten the facts wrong . . . he took it personally.’’

Led a private life Herge´ led a simple, private life. He was married twice and had no children. Herge´ married Germaine Kieckens in 1932. Kieckens also worked at Le Vingtie`me Sie`cle, as a secretary. When Herge´ met and fell in love with another woman, Fanny Vlamynck, a woman who had worked as an illustrator in his studio since 1955, he resolved to end his first marriage. But the breakup caused Herge´ great distress; he lost sleep from troubling nightmares and sought psychoanalytical help. Nevertheless his new love brought him great happiness. He separated from his first wife in 1960 and finalized his divorce in 1975. In 1977, Herge´ married Vlamynck, and they remained together until his death on March 3, 1983. (Vlamynck later remarried and became Fanny Rodwell.) When he died, Herge´ had nearly finished his twenty-fourth volume of Tintin’s adventures. Popular comic series are often 198

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assumed by other artists after the originator’s death, but Herge´ expressly wished for the Tintin series to end with him; his final rough draft was left unfinished and unpublished until 1986, when his notes were collected and published as Tintin and l’Alpha-art, the skeleton of a story about Tintin exploring the world of modern art. No new Tintin adventures have been made, but Herge´’s legacy lives on: a statue of Tintin and Milou stands in Brussels and his books remain in print. By 2005, the stories had been translated into more than forty languages and had sold more than two hundred million copies.

For More Information Books Assouline, Pierre. Herge´: biographie. Paris: Plon, 1996. Farr, Michael. Tintin: The Complete Companion. London: John Murray, 2001. Peeters, Benoit, ed. The Making of Tintin, 3 volumes; translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper. London: Methuen, 1983–89. Sadoul, Numa. Entretiens avec Herge´. Tournai, Belgium: Casterman, 1989. Special Herge´: Vive Tintin! Tournai: Casterman, 1983.

Periodicals Cripps, Charlotte. ‘‘Exhibition: The Comic that Made Waves; The Adventures of Tintin at Sea Marks the 75th Birthday of the Boy Reporter.’’ The Independent (London) (March 24, 2004): p. 18. Dixon, Glenn. ‘‘Tintinspotting: Tintin; the Complete Companion; by Michael Farr.’’ Washington City Paper (August 8, 2002): p. 50. ‘‘Georges Re´mi.’’ Time (March 14, 1983): p. 97. ‘‘No Bashibazooks.’’ Economist (August 26, 1989): p. 74. Rodwell, Fanny. ‘‘Blistering Barnacles Snowy! Herge’s Fallen for the Girl Who Colours Me in; as Tintin Turns 75, His Creator’s Wife Reveals Their Secret Passion—and the Nightmares that Inspired Him.’’ The Mail on Sunday (London) (April 4, 2004): p. 60. Romano, Marc. ‘‘Who Was Herge´?’’ Village Voice (July 9, 1996): p. V14. Sadoul, Numa. ‘‘The Herge´ Interview.’’ Comics Journal (February 2003): pp. 180–205. Sante, Luc. ‘‘The Clear Line.’’ In Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! Edited by Sean Howe. New York: Pantheon, 2004, pp. 24–32. Herge´

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Smurthwaite, Nick. ‘‘Reluctant Hero: Tintin Isn’t a Typical Comic Book Character, but His Creator’s Painstaking Approach Turned the Cub Reporter into a Household Name. Nick Smurthwaite Relives 75 Years of Plucky Adventures.’’ Design Week (February 5, 2004): p. 18.

Web Sites Tintin. http://www.tintin.com (accessed on May 3, 2006).

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Lea Hernandez. Kevin Lillard.

Lea Hernandez Born March 11, 1964 (Alameda, California) American author, artist

‘‘With Rumble Girls, Lea Hernandez has once again shown exactly what a creative woman in comics can do.’’ REVIEWER BARB LIENCOOPER

Most readers of comic books appreciate the chance to throw themselves into uproarious adventure fantasy. Many imagine themselves as a powerful hero who steps from behind a secret identity to save the day. Lea Hernandez’s dreams went beyond imagining that she was the hero in the comics she read. Growing up during the 1960s and early 1970s, when women’s job choices were often limited to a mother, a nun, or a checker at the grocery store, Hernandez wanted to tell stories with pictures. More, she wanted to create heroes like herself—female, creative, and strong in the face of difficult experiences. Inspired by the anime ( Japanese animation) that she had watched as a child, she began to create her own comics, filled with complex characters and subtle plot development. These stories, with names like Rumble Girls and Killer Princesses (co-created with Gail Simone), are filled with a rich combination of adventure, romance, and social satire. They 201

Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Cathedral Child (1998, 2002). Clockwork Angels (1999, 2003). (With Gail Simone) Killer Princesses (2002). Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie (2004). Nonfiction Manga Secrets (2005).

entertain a wide variety of readers in the best traditional comic style. They also fulfill one of Hernandez’s most important goals as an artist: they have spread beyond comic stores and into bookstores, where thousands of female readers have discovered them.

Early years Born in Alameda, California, on March 11, 1964, Lea Hernandez spent her early years living on the U.S. Navy base, N.A.S. Lemore. When she was five years old, her father left the Navy and the family moved to Texas, where young Lea grew up in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. Her mother was an artist who demonstrated her creativity in everything from commercial art jobs to elaborate Christmas decorations for the family home. Her father was an engineer for Texas Instruments who later worked in technology manufacturing. In his leisure time, her father enjoyed riding his motorcycle and in later years became an amateur drag racer. Young Lea was influenced by both her mother’s artistic talent and her father’s thirst for thrills, she related in an interview with Graphic Novelists (GN). Hernandez spent her early years in a Catholic elementary school that was taught by nuns. This fairly sheltered beginning left her feeling isolated when she entered a public middle school. Her classmates, who had attended public school for years, seemed more worldly and sophisticated, and they often picked on other students, like Lea, who were different. Determined to make a place for herself, Hernandez made friends with other outcasts, students 202

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who, because of race or disability, were snubbed by their classmates. She often found herself spending her school days counting the hours until art class, where she felt comfortable. Contributing to the difficulty of her school years, Hernandez herself had a hidden disability, a condition that wouldn’t be diagnosed until later in her life: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). People with ADHD often have difficulty concentrating and paying attention. Children with ADHD may have an especially hard time in school, where students are expected to sit still and focus their attention for long periods of time. At the time when Hernandez was in school, however, little was known about ADHD, and it wasn’t until the late 1980s that treatments had been developed. Though ADHD made Hernandez’s school years tough, it also gave her a bright and active mind; she could invent complex stories and had the energy to put those stories on paper in hundreds of detailed drawings.

Discovers Japanese animation While still a young child, Hernandez fell in love with the animated cartoon shows she saw on television. Though she loved early Disney creations like 101 Dalmatians and Bambi, her favorite cartoons were those created by Rankin/Bass, an animation studio founded during the early 1960s by Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass. Rankin/Bass produced such holiday specials as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. Many of the Rankin/ Bass productions were animated by Top Craft, a Japanese animation studio. Hernandez was immediately drawn to the Japanese cartoon style. She loved the way movement was portrayed and liked the endearing quality of the big-eyed characters. As Japanese animation, or anime, began to find its way onto American television, Speed Racer became Lea Hernandez’s new favorite. Speed Racer had started as a Japanese manga, or comic book, called Mach Go Go Go. Dubbed in English for American television, it enthralled Hernandez with the simplicity of its lines and the depth of its characterizations. Cartoons made in the United States tended to follow a predictable formula. The characters remained basically the same from show to show: each episode, they embarked on an adventure or solved a mystery, then ended up back where they had started. In Speed Racer, the characters changed and grew and experienced difficult emotions like anger. Plots were interesting and surprising and often developed slowly, through several episodes. Lea Hernandez

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Hernandez had drawn pictures from her earliest childhood, often copying her favorite animated characters. She decided she did not want a career in animation, however, because she thought that she would get bored drawing the same picture over and over, changing only tiny things to produce the illusion of movement. Her family’s budget had not allowed her to buy many comic books, but she had read and loved them on long car trips. She was especially drawn to girl heroines, like Batgirl, and she determined that she would create comics with the heroines and stories that she wanted to read.

Works in the comics studios After graduating from high school in 1982, Hernandez attended various Texas colleges. She began her college career close to home at Richland Community College in Dallas, transferred to East Texas State University, and then moved back to her parents’ home in Garland and began to commute to North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas). At every school, she studied illustration. However, her still-undiagnosed ADHD and her difficult experiences in school had left her with little confidence in her work. She became so nervous that she was often physically ill at exam time. In 1982, Hernandez entered a comic book store for the first time. There she discovered alternative comics, such as Elfquest and American Flagg, which revealed exciting new possibilities in the medium of comics. In 1983, she read a book called Manga! Manga! by Fred Schodt. Schodt’s book introduced Hernandez to Japanese manga, comic books that echoed the simplicity of design and complexity of character and plot that she had loved in the Japanese anime she had watched on television. Hernandez developed a new ambition—to be a manga artist. Eventually, she began to feel that attending college classes was only postponing her career. A friend who was an editor told her about a manga letterer named Wayne Truman who lived near her Texas home, and she found the courage to seek a job as an assistant letterer. Truman hired her to work on Xenon, a comic published by Eclipse/Viz. Comics letterers are the artists who put the dialog into word balloons, write in sound effects, draw in panel borders, and often fill in large areas of black in the artwork. As an apprentice letterer, Hernandez pasted in lettering and retouched artwork, a job that required considerable artistic skill. 204

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Comic book illustration of Tansie the warrior in Rumble Girls: Silkie Warrior Tansie, written and illustrated by Lea Hernandez. NBM Publishing.

The Texas steampunks In 1985, Hernandez had begun work on her own projects, the comics that would become the graphic novels Cathedral Child, Clockwork Angels, and Rumble Girls. Though creating these books quickly became Hernandez’s most involving and satisfying work, she was not able to find a publisher for them until the late 1990s. In the meantime, she supported herself working as a manga retouch artist and rewriter, occasionally adding to her income by Lea Hernandez

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working as a security guard. In 1989, she moved to California to be closer to a center of comic publishing. She took her work to studio after studio, seeking a job as an artist. She was hired for freelance assignments by several publishers, including Disney, Marvel, Dark Horse, Eclipse, and Viz. Cathedral Child and Clockwork Angels became the first two ‘‘Texas steampunk’’ novels. Steampunk is a comic art term that refers to science fiction tales set during the 1800s. Originating with such works as the 1954 Walt Disney film of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine (1990), steampunk stories assume an alternate reality in which fantastic inventions exist alongside the simpler technology of the Victorian Era (1837– 1901). The term steampunk is a lighthearted take-off of the term cyberpunk, which describes a rebellious computer-centered science fiction. Where modern fantasies revolve around computer technology, the Victorian science fiction is powered by steam. Hernandez set her steampunk books in an alternate past, that of 1890s Texas, because she loved the rich diversity of Texas history. As she said in an interview with Karin Kross: ‘‘The state’s history is so rich, so full of characters, so full of both good and bad. We had our own alien invasion (by which I mean spacemen, not immigrants). The Texas Rangers (the lawmen, not the baseball team) . . . . There’s a bottomless well to draw from!’’ Cathedral Child is a romantic adventure dominated by Cathedral, an elaborate thinking machine named for the building it inhabits. Clockwork Angels continues the story, following the adventures of two fairly minor characters from Cathedral Child. Hernandez’s Japanese-influenced art style lends itself perfectly to the magical steampunk stories, giving the characters and the enormous ancient computer a dreamy and romantic quality. She moves the story along quickly by the use of many irregularly shaped panels on the page, adding a dynamic sense of action. In some sections she abandons the use of panels to give a more expansive feeling, as in Cathedral Child when the machine Cathedral begins to discover itself as a personality. In her other graphic novel series, Rumble Girls, Hernandez has created another alternate reality, one that allows her to sharply satirize such aspects of modern society as gender roles, corporate media, and celebrity worship. Unlike the steampunk books, Rumble Girls is clearly futuristic, portraying a high-tech society where a major form of entertainment involves watching competitions 206

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Comics on the Web During the 1990s, as use of the Internet expanded and developed, comic artists began to post their comics on the Web. Improved browsers made web viewing of comic graphics more and more accessible, and comics like Doctor Fun, Where the Buffalo Roam, and Netboy were widely viewed. Web comics had many advantages over print—they were easy and inexpensive to distribute to a large audience and there was no censorship or publisher control of the comic’s content. Comic portals like Keenspot and Modern Tales offer sites where viewers can see the latest installment of their favorite comic adventure. Some comic sites are free and some charge a subscription fee,

but even artists on free sites can earn money for their comics, with web ‘‘tip jars,’’ where appreciative viewers can leave money with a credit card. In addition to her work as editor of the female-oriented Girlamatic Web site, Lea Hernandez pioneered another way that comic artists can use the Internet. Hernandez began to promote herself by publishing the first ten pages of her books on the Web, allowing buyers for comic stores and bookstores to see a sample of her work at no charge. Readers could access the pages as well, giving them a chance to begin a story online and then finish it when they bought the book.

between fighters wearing oversized, robotic armor. In the first Rumble Girls graphic novel, Silky Warrior Tansie, the heroine, Raven Tansania Ransom, is an outcast at her exclusive boarding school, much as Hernandez herself had been. Raven’s skill at fighting in the robotic ‘‘HardSkin’’ wins her a role in a popular TV action soap opera. This complex setup allows Hernandez to poke fun at many aspects of high school, celebrity, and popular culture. True to her Japanese manga roots, Hernandez develops the characters in Rumble Girls with complexity and depth. While the artwork has the appealing cuteness associated with manga, the satire has a perceptive bite that comes from the artist’s own experiences. Hernandez has filled Rumble Girls with challenging details, from the post-modern technology that serves as background detail, to the use of the Unifon alphabet (a forty-letter alternative alphabet based on phonetic sounds), to characters who change identity and gender from time to time.

Finally publishes While earning her living at various studio jobs, Hernandez tried to sell her own work to publishers during the early and mid-1990s. Lea Hernandez

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Two different companies expressed interest, but things did not work out with either of them. Finally, in 1997, just as Hernandez had decided to self-publish her work on the Internet, Image Comics agreed to publish Cathedral Child, followed by Clockwork Angels, which Hernandez had finished after moving back to Texas in 1999. In 2000, Image began to publish Rumble Girls in serial form, followed in 1998 by a graphic novel version of Clockwork Angels. Hernandez and Image publisher Jim Valentino decided to try an innovative format for her graphic novels. Instead of printing them in the usual American comic book size, they released the Texas steampunk stories in the smaller, paperback-book-sized format most commonly used in Japan for manga. Hernandez liked the smaller size because it made her graphic novels appear more like books and less like thick comics. Though these Image publications did fairly well, true success of her Texas steampunks came when Hernandez moved them to Cyberosia Publishing. Cyberosia re-released Cathedral Child and Clockwork Angels, greatly improving the reproductions of Hernandez’s artwork. Also, Cyberosia made an effort to place Hernandez’s works into bookstores, not just comic book stores. ‘‘Girls don’t go to comic stores, they go to bookstores,’’ she said to Daniel Robert in an interview on the Suicide Girls Web site. Traditionally, comic book stores have been eccentric, male-oriented establishments. Girls often did not feel comfortable in this type of comic store, but they quickly discovered the Texas steampunk novels on the graphic novel shelves of their local bookstores. The first printing of Cathedral Child quickly sold out. In 2004, Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie was published by NBM, one of the oldest and largest graphic novel publishers in the United States. NBM felt that Hernandez’s book would be an important ‘‘American manga’’ title that would help them sell more comic books to girls. Hernandez lives in Texas with her husband and two children. She has continued to bring her intricately crafted combinations of humor, romance, and girl power to a wide variety of readers. In addition to illustrating comic books and graphic novels for other writers, she has begun the next installments of the Texas steampunks and Rumble Girls, continuing to tell the stories that she wanted to read as a girl. In March 2003, she became the editor of Girlamatic, a branch of the Web comics site Modern Tales, which highlights comics that appeal to a female audience. 208

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For More Information Periodicals School Library Journal (August 2004): p. 148. Web Sites Atchison, Lee. ‘‘Romancing the Industry: Lea Hernandez.’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/feb99/hernandez.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Contino, Jennifer M. ‘‘Rumble Girlamatic: Lea Hernandez.’’ http:// www.sequentialtart.com/archive/mar03/leahernandez.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Epstein, Daniel Robert. ‘‘Lea Hernandez: Creator of Rumble Girls.’’ Suicide Girls. http://suicidegirls.com/words/Lea+Hernandez+-+Rumble+Girls/ (accessed on May 3, 2006). Girlamatic. http://www.girlamatic.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Kross, Karin L. ‘‘An Interview with Lea Hernandez.’’ Bookslut. http:// www.bookslut.com/features/2003_11_000970.php (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Lea Hernandez.’’ Web Comics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation. com/divalea/nlexd/series.php (accessed on May 3, 2006). Lien-Cooper, Barb. ‘‘Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie.’’ Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/reports.php?ID=2998&issue=2004-03-01 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Steampunk. http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/STEAM.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was obtained through an interview with Lea Hernandez on August 13, 2005.

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Gilbert Hernandez. Albert L. Ortega/WireImage.com.

Los Bros Hernandez

‘‘We’re inspiring a new generation that is taking comics pretty seriously, like real fiction’’ JAIME HERNANDEZ

GILBERT HERNANDEZ Born August 14, 1957 (Oxnard, California) American author, artist JAIME HERNANDEZ Born April 27, 1959 (Oxnard, California) American author, artist

The brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez—often recognized simply as ‘‘Los Bros Hernandez’’ or ‘‘The Hernandez Brothers’’— are best known as co-creators of one of the most influential comic series in recent decades: Love and Rockets. Its introduction in 1982 was a breakthrough. For the first time, comics portrayed realistic stories about human relationships. What’s more, the Hernandez brothers write about distinctly Latin culture. But ‘‘the gender slant of their work was more revolutionary than the ethnic slant of their work,’’ Tony Davis, co-owner of The Million Year Picnic comic book shop, told the Cartoonista Web 211

Best-Known Works Comics Love and Rockets, Vol. 1, #1–50 (1982–96). Love and Rockets, Vol. 2, #1– (2001–).

Locas (2004). Graphic Novels: Gilbert Hernandez Chelo’s Burden (1986).

Graphic Novels: Jaime Hernandez

Tears from Heaven (1988).

Music for Mechanics (1985).

Duck Feet (1989).

Las Mujeres Perdidas (1987).

Blood of Palomar (1989).

House of Raging Women (1988).

X (1993).

The Death of Speedy (1989).

Poison River (1994).

Flies on the Ceiling (1991).

Luba Conquers the World (1996).

Wigwam Bam (1994).

Girl Crazy (1997).

Chester Square (1996).

Fear of Comics (2000).

Whoa, Nellie! (2000).

Luba in America (2001).

Locas in Love (2000). Dicks and Deedees (2003).

Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003).

site, adding that ‘‘the strongest and best realized female characters in comics in the ‘80s and ‘90s were being done by two Latino men from California.’’ Love and Rockets is the series title for a number of comic books created by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. Each issue features at least one story by each brother. Jaime Hernandez’s stories revolve around Hispanic culture in Southern California, and Gilbert Hernandez’s stories focus on the inhabitants of a small Central American town he calls Palomar. Love and Rockets stands out in the comics industry because both Hernandez brothers create such realistic, sympathetic characters, people with human strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair, futures and pasts. Through these characters, the brothers offer readers insight into such gripping issues as domestic violence, Catholic guilt, gang membership, immigration, long-term relationships, marriage, poverty, prostitution, and racism. Neither of the Hernandez brothers turn away from the gritty, dark, and troubling aspects of real life. Love and Rockets is thus rated ‘‘for mature readers’’ for the use of coarse 212

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language, sexual content, and mature topics. By showing some of the horrors of real life, the brothers are able to convey the joys of everyday life in a truly realistic way, revealing the strength of the human spirit. Quoted in the Los Angeles Times renowned graphic novelist Alan Moore (1953–; see entry) put it: ‘‘Instead of implying that the only real human heroism comes with transcendence into a super-human state of grace, [Gilbert] Hernandez uses a genuinely poetic eye to show us all the rich and shadowy passions that surge behind the bland facade of normal life . . . . (He) shows us a little of what humans are actually worth, and while some of it, predictably, is bad news, there are moments of understated optimism that are both touching and illuminating.’’

Growing up on a diet of comics Born in Oxnard, California, in the late 1950s, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez enjoyed the warmth of their large, close-knit family. Their neighborhood was filled with Mexican Americans who shared a strong cultural bond. Although their father died when the boys were very young, their mother maintained a solid family life for the six Hernandez children. ‘‘We saw the world through our mother’s eyes,’’ Jaime Hernandez told Hispanic magazine, ‘‘how everything was run by her, how she reacted to things.’’ Both brothers would later credit their mother for influencing the strong female characters in their work. The brothers had been reading and drawing comics since their youth. Their mother had been a fan of comic books and dreaded the memory of her own mother’s disapproval of the medium, so she encouraged her children to indulge themselves, even allowing them to read comics at the dinner table. Although the boys had begun by drawing superhero comics, they eventually decided to draw their own life experiences. Gilbert Hernandez related to Publishers Weekly that creating comics ‘‘was such a part of me growing up that I never thought of it as a vocation or anything. I thought of it as amusement or to impress other kids.’’ The boys kept their creations. ‘‘We didn’t know what we were going to do with them,’’ Jaime Hernandez told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ‘‘because we never thought we were professional enough.’’ But the brothers did not have strong aspirations for a different career. ‘‘Growing up,’’ Gilbert Hernandez remembered in an interview with Los Angeles Times writer Sheila Benson, ‘‘the future didn’t look too good to me. I thought I was destined for a life of odd jobs and drawing for fun. I did have a full-time job once, as a janitor, and it completely drained all the energy I had for drawing.’’ Los Bros Hernandez

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Creating Love and Rockets In their late teens and early twenties, the brothers became selfdescribed ‘‘punks,’’ a distinct youth culture that developed in the late 1970s and centered on punk rock music and rebellion against norms in clothing and behavior. The brothers joined a rock band and collected a diverse group of punk friends who populated ethnically mixed neighborhoods around Los Angeles. Jaime Hernandez commented to Colorlines that, at the time, ‘‘the life we were living was more interesting than the comics we were reading.’’ So the brothers decided to write their own comics, populating their stories with characters based on other punks they knew. With the urging of their brother Mario and financial help from their brother Ismael, Jaime and Gilbert self-published the first volume of Love and Rockets in 1981. They sent a copy to the influential Comics Journal for review; what they received was a contract to publish their comic with the then-fledgling publisher Fantagraphics. The success of Love and Rockets was enormous. The brothers were soon able to live off of the income from their comics work, an unusual feat in the alternative comics industry. The brothers started their individual stories as short comic books made in monthly or bi-monthly installments. Mario occasionally contributed stories, but Jaime and Gilbert were the main creators. The two started out telling their own stories about the lives of the people they knew. The early stories mixed everyday trials and tribulations with science fiction storylines involving rockets and dinosaurs, common to most comics at the time. Bolstered by fan interest and approval of their characterizations, the brothers quickly rid their stories of the fantastic elements in favor of more realistic stories about their characters’ lives. Jaime’s stories focused on the people living ‘‘alternative’’ lifestyles in Southern California, whereas Gilbert began to concentrate on Hispanic culture ‘‘back home,’’ as he told the St. Louis Dispatch. Jaime Hernandez set his stories in the southern California community of Barrio Huerto, or Hoppers 13, as it came to be called after all the neighborhood low-riders (customized cars that sit low to the ground and are made to hop with the help of hydraulics or loose springs). The stories focus on the relationship between bisexual Margarita Chascarrillo, or Maggie, a mechanic who can repair just about anything, and her friend and sometimes lover, Esperanza Leticia Glass, or Hopey. Hopey holds a variety of jobs over the years, including one as a punk band member. The stories 214

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include a huge cast of ethnically mixed characters, including a variety of bandmates, a billionaire’s wife, a dizzy blonde, and a struggling author. Each of Jaime’s stories focuses keenly on the interactions and ongoing relationships between the various characters, revealing the intimate story of their personal lives. Gilbert created the Central American village of Palomar as the home for his characters. He explained to Publishers Weekly that ‘‘the reason I chose to go with Palomar was that I could put enough of my own experiences and observations into a comic strip in a simple and direct way, using a small village.’’ He added, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, that ‘‘by making it an almost primitive little town, I could draw whatever I wanted. But I was also trying to make it feel like home to the reader: The most important thing was to make the reader feel he’d been there or that there could be such a place.’’ Gilbert Hernandez populated his town with a number of distinctive characters, including the leading characters Luba and Chelo, two strong women who begin the series sharing the same profession—women who give baths to the townsfolk—but evolved into Palomar’s mayor and sheriff, respectively. Gilbert told Publishers Weekly, ‘‘As things went on, I always felt guilty about abandoning characters, so the cast became huge.’’ But in addition to the relationships between the townsfolk, the Palomar stories explore gang violence, political turmoil, and threats to entire communities, such as an at-large murderer. The brothers have shared a work ethic and approach over the years. Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez create their comics sitting at simple writing desks with paper and pen to draw bold black-andwhite images and write their text. Gilbert Hernandez estimates that it takes him about three months to complete a twenty-four page story. Both brothers prefer to write stories that come out in serial form first and are then collected into a larger graphic novel, mainly for financial reasons. But Jaime Hernandez commented to A.V. Club that ‘‘I would be too anxious. I’d be like, ‘God, I’ve got 50 pages of work here that nobody’s seen.’ It would just drive me nuts. I like chunks of it coming out little by little.’’ Over the years, the brothers’ drawing styles changed. But Jaime revealed to A.V. Club that he never intended to stick with a consistent style. ‘‘I think if I had thought about the art having to be same from issue one to issue fifty, it would’ve drove me crazy. I just let it happen, and it gradually changed, because that was how I felt. There were times when I was dropping out all the cross-hatching because I just found it unnecessary after a while. But it was all natural, the way it happened. No game plan.’’ Los Bros Hernandez

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The Hernandez brothers not only introduced the qualities of realistic literature to the comics industry, they set the standard for the literary graphic novel. In the magazine The Stranger, Bret Fetzer praised Gilbert Hernandez’s narrative talent: ‘‘The emotional power that accumulates over the course of Hernandez’s Palomar stories is truly wrenching—he’s one of the most gifted storytellers in comics, able to follow the paths of multiple characters through intricate plots.’’ And by 1998, critic Patrick Markee noted in the Nation that ‘‘the Mexican-American Hernandez brothers’ work is among the most vibrant literature published in the United States in the past fifteen years.’’ In the 1980s, the Hernandez brothers began earning the industry’s top awards for their work, and they continued to receive accolades decades later. In 2004, the brothers shared a Harvey Award for the best single issue or story of the year, for Love and Rockets, Vol. 9. In addition to the brothers’ influence on the content of graphic novels, their artistic innovation also transformed the medium. Gilbert Hernandez draws vivid landscapes, placing his characters in the larger context of their history. His hash marks and shadings convey the mood of his stories. Gordon Flagg commented in Booklist that among Hernandez’s great strengths are his ‘‘expressive cartooning’’ and ‘‘masterful design sense.’’ Jaime Hernandez has a cleaner, bolder style that captures the emotional shifts of his characters especially well. His artwork has received a great deal of industry attention and praise. Scott McCloud (1960–; see entry) told the National Public Radio program Weekend All Things Considered in 2002 that ‘‘there had been black-and-white comics before, but most of the black-and-white scene was really color comics waiting for color. When the Hernandez brothers worked in black and white, it was black and white. There was real sensibility to figure-and-ground relationships. Jaime was a real influence on a lot of artists who learned the value of spot blacks and contrast.’’

A five-year hiatus The Love and Rockets stories have been likened to a soap opera. In both Jaime’s and Gilbert’s stories, the characters change, age, grow fat, dye their hair, get ill, and change careers. But after more than fifteen years and fifty issues of Love and Rockets, the Hernandez brothers had grown weary and in 1996 decided to stop publishing Love and Rockets. Gilbert Hernandez explained the decision to Noel Murray of the A.V. Club: ‘‘I just didn’t want to 216

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Comics for Kids Love and Rockets, the work on which the Hernandez brothers built their reputation and which changed the standards for graphic novels, is most appropriate for adults. It contains mature themes and images. However, both Hernandez brothers have created books for younger readers. Gilbert Hernandez created Yeah!, a children’s book about an all-girl rock band and their adventures in outer space. ‘‘It’s sort of a modernized Josie and the Pussycats meets the Spice Girls,’’ Hernandez told Los Angeles Times contributor Jordan Raphael. Jaime explored the world of women’s wrestling in an all-ages book called Whoa! Nellie, which won critical praise for its vivid wrestling sequences.

ruin it. I didn’t want to continue on like a television show that people enjoy and then they complain about the last two seasons or whatever. Or a great comic strip that just should’ve ended at a certain time. You know, an artist doesn’t know his own decline. So I basically destroyed the town with an earthquake. I wouldn’t be able to return to it if I wanted to, except maybe in flashback stories. The only regret I have is that there are characters I left there. Carmen and Heraclio and Sheriff Chelo I miss dearly, but I can’t figure out how to do them again without making it too easy, like bringing them to America.’’ For five years the brothers worked on their own separate titles. Jaime Hernandez developed some of the minor characters from Love and Rockets more fully. Every year between 1998 and 2001, his series Penny Century, about one of Maggie’s friends becoming a superheroine, won a Harvey Award. Gilbert Hernandez did a variety of adult comics, including a new comic for publisher DC Comics. The two also created their first stories for a younger audience (see sidebar). Their solo work never caught on with the public in the same way that Love and Rockets had, however. In 2001, they decided to reintroduce Love and Rockets. Gilbert Hernandez told the A.V. Club that ‘‘We did a few years of our own comics, but for some reason, Love and Rockets is such an iconic title. It’s the perfect umbrella for our readers to go to us, find our work, and read what they want to read. Doing the separate comic books, we sort of scattered our Los Bros Hernandez

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readership, and they never came back. It was difficult to sell those books, because readers didn’t even know they existed. I’d do a six-issue miniseries and no one would know about it. Basically, the title Love and Rockets was bigger than we were. We brought back the title, and boom, the readers came back.’’ Returning to Love and Rockets, the brothers took up where they left off. Maggie and Hopey had become middle-aged and Luba started new adventures in America (since Palomar had been destroyed). Neither brother had distinct plans for the future of their characters or the variety of other storylines and characters they might devise. But Jaime noted to the Los Angeles Times, ‘‘My only plan is that Maggie lasts forever—other than that, anything can happen.’’ With the reintroduction of Love and Rockets, both brothers published compilations of their earlier stories as graphic novels. Gilberts’s Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories came out in 2003, and Jaime’s Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories the following year. While the Hernandez brothers were joined by other seriousminded graphic novelists in the 2000s, Patrick Markee noted in the Nation that they remained the only recognized creators of ‘‘a rich and all-too-rare portrayal of Latino lives in all their messy, unrepresentative splendor.’’ Gilbert Hernandez related to the Los Angeles Times that ‘‘I know it’s important to have a Latino comic book out there; it’s very important to me. When I throw up my hands in disgust at the market or changing tastes, I remember that if we don’t do it, nobody else will.’’

For More Information Periodicals Artze, Isis. ‘‘Building Characters.’’ Hispanic. (October 2000): 36. Benson, Sheila. ‘‘A Novel, Realistic Approach to Comics Books.’’ Los Angeles Times (July 16, 1991): 6. Chang, Jeff. ‘‘Locas Rule: Los Bros Hernandez’ Love and Rockets Is Back, and the Timing Has Never Been Better.’’ Colorlines, vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 39. Fetzer, Bret. ‘‘Screw the System: Indie Comics vs. Respectability.’’ Stranger (Seattle, WA; September 2–8, 2004): 25. Flagg, Gordon. Review of Luba in America. Booklist (April 1, 2002): 1291. 218

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Markee, Patrick. ‘‘American Passages.’’ Nation, vol. 266, no. 18 (May 18, 1998): 25. McDonald, Heidi. ‘‘Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar.’’ Publishers Weekly (October 20, 2003): S12. Raphael, Jordan. ‘‘Get Ready for the 21st Century.’’ Los Angeles Times (June 13, 1999): 2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (January 3, 1993): C4.

Web Sites ‘‘Drawing on Culture.’’ Cartoonista. http://www.cartoonista.com/about/ article.bostonglobe.html (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Gilbert Hernandez.’’ Read Yourself Raw. http://www.readyourselfraw. com/profiles/hernandez_g/profile_hernandezbeto.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Interview by Michael Gilman: Gilbert Hernandez.’’ Dark Horse. http:// www.darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=619 (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Jamie [sic] Hernandez.’’ Read Yourself Raw. http://www.readyourselfraw. com/profiles/hernandez_j/profile_hernandezjamie.htm (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Los Bros Hernandez, Interviewed by Noel Murray.’’ A.V. Club. http:// avclub.com/content/node/23357 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other ‘‘Profile: Return of the Comic Book Love & Rockets.’’ Weekend All Things Considered. National Public Radio (March 31, 2002).

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Jay Hosler. Photo courtesy Juniata College.

Jay Hosler

‘‘I have never understood the divorce that we seem to have instituted between fun and learning. I look at them as one and the same.’’

Born November 21, 1966 (Huntington, Indiana) American author, artist

At first glance, the writing of biology professor/cartoonist Jay Hosler may appear less adventurous than most graphic novels. His first book, Clan Apis (2000), explores the life cycle of honey bees; his second, The Sandwalk Adventures (2003), recounts a series of conversations about evolution between follicle mites and nineteenth-century scientist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). But Hosler makes the topics fun, filling his graphic novels with a combination of goofy humor, keen scientific observation, and profound insight into the human longing for meaning. Clan Apis won a Xeric Award and was named one of the 25 Best Graphic Novels of 2002 by the Young Adult Library Services Association, and Hosler has been nominated for the prestigious Eisner Award six times. Hosler is one of a handful of author/artists who have tackled nonfiction topics and managed to create compelling graphic novels. 221

Best-Known Works Clan Apis (2000). The Sandwalk Adventures (2003).

Cartoons from an early age Hosler was born on November 21, 1966, in Huntington, Indiana, a small town in the north central part of the state. His father, Scott Hosler, was a sixth-grade teacher, and later a junior high school counselor who also coached basketball. His mother, Madonna Hosler, was a social worker who later went to work in the public school system. ‘‘My parents were sort of my heroes,’’ Hosler told Graphic Novelists (GN). ‘‘They knew everyone in town, and I was always proud of the positive influence they had on so many kids.’’ The impact that his parents had on the community was part of what drove Hosler to become a teacher. His parents, and his younger sister Heidi, still live in Huntington. From a very early age, Hosler loved to draw. ‘‘In elementary school, I was known as the kid who drew dinosaurs,’’ he told GN. In fact, as a second grader he was asked to give a talk about dinosaurs to a class of fifth graders. ‘‘The fact that they didn’t beat me up shows what a nice town Huntington is ’’ he joked. Like many kids who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hosler was a fan of the Peanuts comic strip drawn by Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000), and especially the main character, Charlie Brown. ‘‘I connected with him because like most kids growing up we feel alone and unliked. Charlie Brown was a hero to me because he endured. He got frustrated, but he usually bore the indignities of life with an intellectual stoicism that reflected a wisdom I aspired to,’’ Hosler explained on the SciScoop: Science News Forum Web site. Later, Hosler admired Peter Parker, the high school science geek who was transformed into Spider-Man by a spider bite. In fact, one of his first books as a kid was a Spider-Man comic. ‘‘My parents liked to say ‘there’s always money for books,’’’ Hosler told GN. ‘‘So I tested their theory: I asked them to buy this comic book, Marvel Teamup #19: Spider-Man in Savage Land, where Spider-Man fights a dinosaur.’’ By the time he got to junior high school, Hosler had been turned away from his early love for art. ‘‘I had a teacher who turned art 222

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into a competition,’’ he lamented to GN, ‘‘and I actually got a C on an assignment because this teacher didn’t like my skin shading. It’s sad that I quit taking art classes, because it has really limited my skills. I’d love to have some skill with a brush.’’ Hosler was still a success in school: he played French horn in the school band; he played basketball and was an all-state hurdler on the track team; and he graduated from Huntington North High School in 1985 as the class valedictorian. After graduating from high school, Hosler attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, a small town west of Indianapolis. Most of his friends attended the state’s bigger schools, Indiana University and Purdue University, but Hosler liked the small school and the chance to break free from who he had been in high school. It was while in college that Hosler discovered both of his future loves: science and drawing comics. He graduated with honors in biological sciences in 1989 and traveled north to pursue graduate studies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. In 1995, he received his doctorate in biological sciences. While at DePauw, he also began to draw cartoons. He did a daily strip for his undergraduate school newspaper, and in graduate school he wrote and drew a daily strip called ‘‘Spelunker’’ for the school paper and another weekly strip called ‘‘Cow-Boy’’ for the Comic Buyers Guide. ‘‘None of the strips were all that satisfying for me,’’ he told Marcia Allass in an interview on the Sequential Tart Web site. ‘‘I wanted to draw and write but I hadn’t found anything that someone else didn’t already do much, much better.’’ Still, creating comics became a pleasant diversion from his main focus on science—and has remained so ever since. When Hosler began his graduate studies at Notre Dame, he studied frogs. Then he transferred his studies to a different lab, where he began to study electrical currents generated by the movement of insect muscles. ‘‘This was really my cup of tea because I was watching real electrical events in real time,’’ he related to Allass. Among his favorite objects of study were honey bees. ‘‘As I was familiarizing myself with the intricacies of honey bee natural history,’’ he told Allass, ‘‘the story that would be Clan Apis started to take root and grow.’’ Following graduate school, Hosler worked from 1996 to 2000 as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ohio State University Rothenbuhler Honey Bee Research Laboratory. (This is where he discovered that he was allergic to bee stings, as he relates in the story ‘‘Killer Bee,’’ which is available for viewing at the cartoonist side of Hosler’s Web site, www.jayhosler.com.) Jay Hosler

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Then, in 2000, he took a job as assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Juniata College in Huntington, Pennsylvania, where he still teaches. He lives in Huntington with his wife, Lisa, and their two sons, Max and Jack.

Clan Apis Clan Apis is, in simplest terms, the story of the life cycle of a honey bee. It begins with a honey bee named Nyuki being sealed into her larval cell, going through metamorphosis (the process through which some life forms transform from one physical state to another, usually before birth or hatching), emerging as a bee, learning how to be a good hive member from her mentor, Dvorah, and finally dying beneath her favorite flower. But Nyuki is no ordinary honey bee: she is wisecracking, full of questions, and eager to avoid danger. When mentor Dvorah pushes Nyuki down into her larval cell so that she can begin her transformation from larva to bee, Nyuki cries out ‘‘Help! Heeeeelp! I’m being buried alive!’’ Later, when she realizes there are predators outside the hive, Nyuki refuses to go outside, proclaiming ‘‘Nothing is getting me out of this hive, Dvorah, and that is final!’’ These interchanges—between Nyuki, Dvorah, other hive members, a hungry praying mantis, and a helpful dung beetle—and the growth that Nyuki goes through over the course of the story bring humor, warmth, and compassion to this tale of honey bees, ultimately making it a compelling narrative that just happens to impart a great deal of accurate scientific information along the way. Part of what makes Clan Apis so successful is that it works on several different levels. Very young readers enjoy the rowdy antics of Nyuki as she learns how to fly and explores the outside world. In one especially hilarious encounter, Nyuki and Sisyphus, the dung beetle, debate which is more disgusting, making honey from bee vomit or feeding off a ball of cow poop. Older readers more interested in facts about bee development will also learn a great deal. Over the course of the narrative, Hosler offers precise descriptions of the roles of various types of bees, including the drones and the queen, and of the important life functions of the hive. In the back of the book, he offers more detailed information on bees as well as a bibliography. Finally, Clan Apis also packs an emotional wallop, as Nyuki comes to terms with the role that death plays in rejuvenating the hive. As her wings inevitably wear down, Nyuki herself peacefully seeks a place to die. Humorous to the end, Nyuki makes one final observation: ‘‘It’s funny. Looking back on 224

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my life, I only have one major complaint. The ending stinks.’’ Hosler told SciScoop that ‘‘All of the stories I write need to have layers for me to find them interesting. With Clan Apis there is the straightforward coming of age story, but layered on top of that is the biology of honey bees, my own feeling/fears of change and mortality as well as what it means to have a purpose and where that sense of purpose comes from.’’ Clan Apis first appeared as a series of five short comic books, and funding for the initial chapter came from an award from the Xeric Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle creator Peter A. Laird to help people selfpublish their comics. The first installment, published in 1998, sold out its first printing, and subsequent chapters sold just as briskly. Once the series began to gain attention and won several Eisner Award nominations, Hosler and his publishing partner in Active Synapse, Daryn Guarino, decided to issue the series as a graphic novel. The book has sold more than five thousand copies—a large number for a small publisher—and received numerous favorable reviews. Commented Mike Lavin in Capper’s magazine: ‘‘What I liked about [Clan Apis] was that it did such a great job of teaching Jay Hosler

Three comic books and an illustration (Sandwalk Adventures and Clan Apis) by Jay Hosler. AP Images.

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science but not being obvious about it. The science was just an underlying part of an otherwise interesting story.’’ Perhaps most pleasing to Hosler, who is keenly interested in the educational value of his work, the book was used in high school and college biology classes. Ohio State University biology professor John W. Wenzel told Capper’s that his students ‘‘learn more from Jay’s comic books than from reading scientific textbooks.’’

The Sandwalk Adventures If Hosler’s first project grew out of his fascination with honey bees, his next one grew in part out of his frustration at the way biological theories of evolution were being distorted in schools and in American public life. The teaching of evolution—in short, the theory that changes in life forms occur gradually over time due to natural selection—has long been controversial in American schools, despite the fact that a vast majority of scientists support its explanatory power. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, backers of a non-scientific theory of biological development called intelligent design (which proposes that natural forces alone could not explain the sophistication of higher life forms) found some success in placing limits on the teaching of evolution. For Hosler, this questioning of science was an outrage. ‘‘Can you imagine the response of parents if some group wanted to stop the teaching of gravity?’’ he asked in his SciScoop interview. ‘‘We would howl at the absurdity! But, it is the same science, the same method that elucidated and explained both ideas. We can’t pick and choose what we believe from science just because some ideas make us uncomfortable.’’ The Sandwalk Adventures is Hosler’s response to attempts to discredit the theory of evolution—but, as in Clan Apis, it is also a humorous story that offers profound insights into human nature. The Sandwalk Adventures begins with a preposterous creation story told to a family of follicle mites (tiny invertebrates that live on human hair) living in the left eyebrow of famous British scientist Charles Darwin. Darwin hears the mites, and begins a series of conversations with two of the young mites in which he tries sets them straight about their creation: he isn’t God, Darwin explains, and he didn’t create Earth and sky. What Darwin offers instead is a recounting of the slow process through which species change and adapt into new species. Luckily for the reader, the mites aren’t about to take Darwin’s story at face value. If they are going to give 226

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Creationist Comics Jay Hosler didn’t invent the idea of using comics to address the controversy over evolution. In fact, supporters of creationism—the idea that a supernatural god created life on Earth in its present forms— and intelligent design—the idea that evolutionary theory does not account adequately for the complexity of life forms, so that an intelligent creator must have existed at some point—have also published comic books and graphic novels over the years. Jack Chick (1924–) is a Christian evangelist noted for producing a string of comic books, called Chick Tracts, that promote his religious views. In Big Daddy? (1972) and Primal Man? (1976), Chick argues against evolution. He points to a variety of ‘‘evidence,’’ most of it debunked as false, to show that scientific claims about the age of Earth and variations in human development could not be true. He also presents scientists as evil schemers out to ruin America’s children with their lies.

Reviewers such as Robert Ito in Los Angeles Magazine took note of Chick’s work only to point out his distortions and to protest his anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and racist ideas. What’s Darwin Got to Do with It?: A Friendly Conversation about Evolution, (2000) created by John L. Wiester, Jonathan Moneymaker, and Janet Moneymaker, also attempts to refute evolution, though without the angry edge of Chick’s work. This attractively packaged graphic novel offers a debate between a young, attractive proponent of intelligent design and a combative and easily fooled professor who supports evolution. The conclusion comes down strongly on the side of intelligent design, though the arguments for intelligent design are not based on science. These books and Hosler’s The Sandwalk Adventures offer distinctly different opinions on one of the most controversial issues in American education.

up everything they’ve ever believed, they want evidence. Darwin provides it. Like Clan Apis, The Sandwalk Adventures functions on multiple levels. There is no lack of humor, from Darwin’s reluctance to accept the absurd notion that he is debating evolution with follicle mites—it’s so crazy that he’ll only talk to them while walking on his favorite path, the sandwalk, away from his family—to the wild misunderstandings of evolution that the mites try to pass on to their kin. The book provides glimpses into Darwin’s personal story, with insights into his personal struggle to embrace the full implications of his discoveries and his relationship with his wife and children. On a more subtle level, the book is a meditation on Jay Hosler

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the human need for stories. ‘‘So much about what we believe and how we interpret the world around us depends on the types of stories we tell,’’ Hosler told the CBR Web site, and his book balances the complexity of evolution’s stories against the simplicity and drama of creationist accounts. First and foremost, of course, the book provides an accurate explanation of the building blocks of evolutionary theory that Darwin proposed, and that have since become such an important foundation for modern science. The Sandwalk Adventures brought new levels of media attention to the professor who combined science with comics. He was interviewed by National Public Radio and his book was featured in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among other national publications. Reviewers noted that the young mites, with their wide-eyed and innocent questions, served as perfect stand-ins for students who themselves struggle to understand evolution. Skeptical Enquirer reviewer Jerry Kurlandski noted that ‘‘as a reader, you sense that [Hosler’s] had to introduce the theory to students many times, and, in so doing, he’s figured out how to present it in an interesting manner without sacrificing accuracy.’’ Glenn Branch, writing about Hosler in the journal BioScience, observed: ‘‘The Sandwalk Adventures serves as a rebuke to creationism, but it is sympathetic to the feelings behind it, the social and emotional significance of the creation myths by which people live.’’ Hosler has plans for future combinations of science and comics, though his busy life as a professor and father makes it difficult to put out books quickly. He told SciScoop in 2004 that he was working on a story about Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934), ‘‘Spain’s greatest scientist and the father of modern neurobiology,’’ that would explore the ways that Cajal balanced his love of science and art. In 2006, he will begin a year as ‘‘writer in residence’’ (an honorary position that provides the writer with time to write in exchange for him or her interacting with the college community, often including teaching a course) at his alma mater, DePauw University, which should allow him to finish that work. He was also hard at work on his ‘‘beetle epic,’’ The Age of Elytra. The story is ‘‘an epic adventure journey for a group of beetle scientists,’’ he told GN, who attempt to figure out evolution for themselves, but are blocked by a beetle villain named Owen, the head of the ministry of science who is also the leader of a secret order that fights against science. The story allows Hosler to continue to work out his frustration with the intelligent design movement, which 228

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Hosler insists is anti-scientific: ‘‘You can say that God directed evolution if you want,’’ he told GN, ‘‘but don’t say there’s any evidence for it, because there’s not.’’ ‘‘I would love to make a zillion dollars (for my family and [publishing partner] Daryn [Guarino]’s family), have my work widely known and preach the wonders of biology to the world,’’ Hosler told SciScoop. ‘‘That is our hope when a project is completed and sent out into the world. However, that isn’t really my goal in the creative process. In fact, I am sure I would be making these books even if we hadn’t had success. This stuff is inside and I gotta let it out!’’

For More Information Periodicals Biemiller, Lawrence. ‘‘Darwin’s Talking Mite.’’ Chronicle of Higher Education (June 13, 2003): A48. Branch, Glenn. ‘‘Flycatcher Explains It All.’’ BioScience (October 2004): 963. Eakin, Emily. ‘‘Pow! Splat! Take That, You Darwin Disparagers!’’ New York Times (November 30, 2002): B11. Ito, Robert. ‘‘Fear Factor.’’ Los Angeles Magazine (May 2003). Kurlandski, Jerry. ‘‘Darwin as Comic Book Super-Hero.’’ Skeptical Inquirer (May 1, 2004): 57–58. Lavin, Mike. Capper’s (September 14, 2004): 16. Mautner, Chris. ‘‘Interview: Jay Hosler.’’ Comics Journal no. 261 (July 2004).

Web Sites Allass, Marcia. ‘‘Mites and Bees: Jay Hosler.’’ Sequential Tart. http:// www.sequentialtart.com/archive/oct01/hosler.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Allass, Marcia. ‘‘To Bee or Not to Bee: Jay Hosler.’’ Sequential Tart. http:// www.sequentialtart.com/archive/jan01/hosler.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). ‘‘Interview: Cartoonist/Scientist Jay Hosler Answers.’’ SciScoop: Science News Forum. http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/2/28/73554/0027 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Jay Hosler: Biologist, Cartoonist. http://www.jayhosler.com (accessed on May 3, 2006). Jay Hosler

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McElhatton, Greg. ‘‘Sandwalk Adventures #1.’’ iComics.com. http:// www.icomics.com/rev_121801_sandwalk.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006). Ulaby, Neda. ‘‘Holy Evolution, Darwin! Comics Take on Science’’ (with link to audio file of radio interview). NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/ story/story.php?storyId=4495248 (accessed on May 3, 2006). Weiland, Jonah. ‘‘‘The Origin of Species,’ Comic Style with Jay Hosler.’’ CBR. http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=796 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other Additional information for this profile was gathered from an interview with Jay Hosler on October 5, 2005.

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Where To Learn More Books Baetens, Jan. The Graphic Novel. Louvain, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2001. Crawford, Philip Charles. Graphic Novels 101: Selecting and Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy for Children and Young Adults. Salt Lake City, UT: Hi Willow Publishing, 2003. Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse, 1985. Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse, 1996. Goldsmith, Francisca. Graphic Novels Now: Building, Managing, and Marketing a Dynamic Collection. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2005. Gorman, Michele. Getting Graphic! Worthington, OH: Linworth, 2003. Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2004. Lent, John, ed. Themes and Issues in Asian Cartooning: Cute, Cheap, Mad and Sexy. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1999. Lyga, Allyson A.W., and Barry Lyga. Graphic Novels in Your Media Center: A Definitive Guide Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2004. McCloud, Scott. Making Comics. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2006. McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics. New York: Perennial, 2000. xxxvii

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993; reprinted, New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Miller, Steve. Developing and Promoting Graphic Novel Collections. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2005. Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1996. Schodt, Frederik L. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983. Weiner, Stephen. Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: NBM, 2003. Weiner, Stephen. The 101 Best Graphic Novels. New York: NBM, 2005. Witek, Joseph. Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Periodicals Amazing Heroes. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics, 1981–92. Back Issue Magazine. Raliegh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2003–. Comic Book Artist. Raliegh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 1998–. Comicology. Raliegh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000–01. Comics International. Brighton, United Kingdom: Dez Skinn and Quality Communications, 1990–. Comics Journal. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics, 1976–. Comics Spotlight. Clifton, CO: Ground Zero, 2002–. Graphic Novel Scene: The Guide to Trade Paperbacks, Manga, and Original Graphic Novels. Florence, KY: Blue Line Pro, 2004, 2006–. Indy Magazine. Bellefonte, PA: Calliope Comics, 1993–. Time. Published regular feature called ‘‘Time.comix’’ by Andrew Arnold. 2001–. Wizard. Congers, NY: Wizard, 1991–. xxxviii

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Web Sites ArtBomb. http://www.artbomb.net/home.jsp (accessed on June 9, 2006). Broken Frontier. http://www.brokenfrontier.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Bussert, Leslie. ‘‘Comic books and graphic novels: Digital resources for an evolving form of art and literature.’’ American Library Association (C&RL News). http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/ backissues2005/february05/comicbooks.htm (accessed on June 9, 2006). Comic Book Resources. http://www.comicbookresources.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Comic World News. http://www.comicworldnews.com/cgi-bin/ index.cgi (accessed on June 9, 2006). Comicon.com. http://www.comicon.com/index.html (accessed on June 24, 2006). Comics International. http://www.qualitycommunications.co.uk/ci (accessed on June 9, 2006). The Comics Journal. http://www.tcj.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Graphic Novel Review. http://www.graphicnovelreview.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Graphic Novels. http://graphicnovels.info (accessed on June 9, 2006). Indy Magazine. http://www.indyworld.com/indy/index.html (accessed on June 9, 2006). The International Comic Arts Association. http://www.comicarts.org/ index.php (accessed on June 9, 2006). Movie Poop Shoot. http://www.moviepoopshoot.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Ninth Art. http://www.ninthart.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). No Flying, No Tights: a website reviewing graphic novels for teens. http://www.noflyingnotights.com/index2.html (accessed on June 9, 2006). Pop Matters. http://www.popmatters.com (accessed on June 9, 2006). Sequential Tart. http://www.sequentialtart.com/home.php (accessed on June 9, 2006). Where To Learn More

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Sidekicks: a website reviewing graphic novels for kids. http://www. noflyingtights.com/sidekicks/index.html (accessed on June 24, 2006). Silver Bullet Comic Books. http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com (accessed on June 9, 2006).

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