Iron Wok Jan!

Iron Wok Jan! Vols. 21 and 22, Shinji Saijyo. DrMaster, 2006. Each $9.95, 208 pages.

“What in the world type of secret is hidden in that fried shark?! The first thing he did was prepare the large stove for frying the shark…next, he went into the freezer…I’m not sure what he did in there but I bet it has something to do with those bean sprouts!!

“And then he fried the live shark whole!!“

Contest manga* is an enduringly popular shonen (boys’ manga) genre. Characters compete with one another in series of rounds, often in vast arenas, to prove their skills. Individual contests can last whole volumes or more, as we see the inner turmoil of the contestants, in-depth discussion of their skills, reactions from the crowds, and so on. The competitions aren’t limited to sports, either. There’s contest manga for fighting, music, pokemon, and no doubt even weirder stuff.

One of the weirdest contest manga around is Shinji Saijyo’s Iron Wok Jan!, a delirious mash-up of tv show Iron Chef and manga/anime Dragon Ball, with the volume turned up to eleven. And a half.

The series follows the adventures of eponymous protagonist, Jan Akiyama, on his quest to prove himself the greatest chef of Chinese cuisine in Japan. On his way to the top, Jan must defeat in cooking battle various opponents, each of them with their own distinctive style or “philosophy” of cooking.

As with all contest manga, the competitions are the main attraction to the book. And Iron Wok Jan! delivers gloriously, its cooking battles so over the top that they make books like Drifting Classroom or Nextwave look positively restrained. The recipes themselves, and the techniques involved in cooking them, are often outlandish. Even when the recipes are simple, with plain ingredients, Saijyo turns them into virtuoso performances, through liberal use of speed lines, close ups, and reaction panels and amazed commentary from judges, audience and other contestants. Contestants cook as if possessed by demons, while everyone else wonders what on earth they’re up to. Often one contestant will do something completely mysterious, building suspense for the whole battle. Finally, the cooking is done and the judges taste the food. Cue reaction shots from the judges as they place the first morsels into their mouths: “This—It can’t be!!–Impossible!!! No one could cook shao xing jiu and octopus intestine without curdling the milk!”

Twenty volumes in, this routine is by now, well, routine. But Saijyo injects enough dynamism into the battles that this familiarity doesn’t matter, any more that it matters to a sports fan that, in some sense, all cricket matches or soccer games are basically the same. Even when the outcome isn’t in question (Jan rarely loses), the reader still wants to know how we get to that outcome. The answer, in Iron Wok Jan!, is always exciting, in a “action-packed roller-coaster thrill-ride” sort of way.

In these two volumes, the final four contestants vie for the second annual all-Japan Chinese cuisine championship; by the end of volume 22 there will only be three contestants left. Expect to see shark-punching, hypothermia, meat that moves, and a mystery involving syringes and bean sprouts.

Saijyo’s art is nothing special, but that very straightforwardness suits the contest genre. Panels flow dynamically, with lots of transitions from character to action to character. The result is as kinetic as manga is stereotypically supposed to be.

Jan himself is an oddly compelling protagonist, portrayed throughout the whole series as a barely sympathetic arsehole. Arrogant, conceited, self-centred and cruel, he is drawn with a devilish face, Jack Nicholson eyebrows, pointy teeth and a constant, evil grin. He is all ambition, his cooking philosophy “cooking is about winning”.

Ambitious, monomaniacal characters like this generally end up learning important life lessons, usually about love and other people. This certainly seems in the cards for Jan, as his main rival throughout the series is the pneumatic Kiriko Gobancho, whose philosophy is “cooking is about heart”. There’s a love/hate relationship between them, which seems destined to end with Jan realizing that there’s so much more to life than winning cooking battles. Personally, I hope Jan stays a bastard to the very end.

Unless Jan and Kiriko get married and compete over who can cook the best wedding cake, using only bean sprouts, lamb tongue, and x-o sauce. That would be awesome.

* There’s got to be a recognised name for this genre other than “contest manga”. Anyone know what it is?

Recommended? A very pleasant guilty pleasure. Distribution is patchy, so you may well have to start with later volumes. While there is some minimal progression from volume to volume, you can mostly read any volume at random without having plot twists spoiled.

IYL: Iron Wok Chef, Nextwave, or if you’ve ever described anything as awesome.

PC Alert: (1) The two main female characters are strong, independent and highly talented (Kiriko is basically Jan’s equal). They’re still drawn with breasts larger than their heads. (2) Volume 22 has two gratuitous pin-up pages in place of the usual recipes and fan art. What gives? (3) These later volumes feature two very camp characters, somewhat stereotyped.

Clash of the independent titans!

You may have heard of this project, Battle of the Independents, projected to appear in 2008. The basic idea behind it is this: “Why should Marvel and DC be the only companies with big stupid cross-overs? If only there were a cross-over between ‘independent’ characters!”

I barely registered this dopy conceit until I saw this article. Among the characters who’ll apparently be teaming up, fighting one another, then fighting some invincible cosmic menace or other, only to save the day at the last minute through some barely explained deus ex machina:

Madman

Savage Dragon

Shadowhawk

…

and

…

Cerebus

That’s right, the earth-pig born will live again! This can only mean two things:

1) The third issue of the series will be an all-text extravaganza in which the writer rails against the homosexualist-feminist axis, while praising US efforts in the “war on terror” as the expression of God’s will

2) If Cerebus is involved, then other genuine independents can’t be far behind.

Come on, I want to see Maggie and Hopey versus Jimmy Corrigan! Killofer versus the Superfuckers! Sinus O’Gynus and Loady McGee versus David B’s epileptic brother! It’s the battle of the century!

PS: I actually like Cerebus, even after the infamous #186.

Buy this book: Concrete, Vol. 6 Strange Armor

Concrete Vol. 6: Strange Armor, Paul Chadwick and Bill Spicer. Dark Horse, 2006. $12.95, 208 pages.

The thrilling conclusion of “Year One” Week! Who will live? Who will die? Who will behave completely out of character to serve the demands of plot?

***

The film critic Joe Queenan once coined the phrase cinéma des voisins to describe a genre of film he had newly discovered. The phrase literally means “cinema of the neighbours”, and describes films that Queenan’s neighbours would probably like; in his own words, “anything sensitive, quirky or ethnic always hits them [his neighbours] where they live”. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the acme of this genre–or maybe its nadir, depending on how you look at it.

Since I am a smart-arse snob like Queenan, I too have noticed a genre in my favoured medium that demands a pretentious French label. I call this genre bandes dessinées d’épinard which literally means “can you direct me to the restroom?” but, idiomatically, translates as “spinach comic books”.

You all know what spinach books are. Like spinach the vegetable, they’re good for you, wholesome, sustaining–and most normal human beings find them as exciting as half a strip of cardboard.

(Personally, I like spinach the vegetable. But I am a vegetarian and therefore not a normal human being. In any case, even if you like the vegetable, you get the idea)

For many years I assumed that Concrete, writer/artist Paul Chadwick’s long-running series about a bloke made out of rock, was pure spinach. What I heard of the series certainly encouraged that perception. Critics gushed about its quiet, meditative tone, or plots that revolved around environmentalism, population control, and the importance of eating your leafy greens.

No thanks, I used to think. I’ll skip to dessert.

Dark Horse’s recent re-release of the series in a cheap, convenient format of seven volumes has made me re-assess my earlier opinion. It did this through the revolutionary step of getting me to actually read the damn thing.

So let me first say this to anyone who’s stayed away from Concrete for the same reasons I did: Concrete isn’t just good for you, it’s good.

Chadwick’s stories are indeed contemplative and thoughtful, albeit often punctuated by bursts of action. But while too many books that try for such a tone end up wallowing in myopic introspection, Chadwick escapes this artistic dead-end through his passion for the world outside his studio, and by keeping his protagonists engaged in that world.

Concrete himself is a former speech-writer who, abducted by aliens, has his brain transplanted into a massive body made out of rock. Now possessed of inhuman strength and senses, Concrete does what anyone else would do in his situation. He becomes a celebrity. He also uses his fame, and the money it brings, to fund various National Geographic-style adventures.

Chadwick’s art is consistently excellent, looking especially luminous in black and white. He also knows when to break the tyranny of panels, often (but never gratuitously) using unframed panels or using the figures themselves as the frame. Likewise, Chadwick’s writing is always good, with a deft sense of pacing and strong understanding of human psychology.

With all that said, this sixth volume isn’t the very best of the series. Just over half the book is given over to a five-issue re-telling of Concrete’s “origin” (that’s why this is a “Year One” book, folks). Frankly, the world could have done without this. Chadwick himself, humble as ever, cops to this story’s weaknesses in his introduction. The plot evidently derives from an aborted screenplay, and so there are several elements foreign to Concrete‘s usual sensibilities, like an unequivocal bad guy.

But even among these concessions to conventionality are some quintessentially Concrete moments, such as the scene where he returns to confront his ex-wife in his new body. I won’t spoil it for you, but the resolution to that scene is much truer to the gently melancholic spirit of Concrete than the violent denouement of the main plot. The art, meanwhile, is as good as ever, particularly the scenes in the alien environment. This is drawn as a Steve Ditko-esque abstract landscape, and the aliens themselves even look a little like Ditko’s Nameless Ones.

Stronger than the main story is the miscellaneous material that fills out this volume. One untitled story shows off Chadwick’s visual flair, with panels filled with Kirby-tech. In another story, “I strive for realism”, creator meets his creation a la Dave Sim or Grant Morrison. This story, along with the volume-closing “The building that didn’t explode”, presents Chadwick’s worldview.

For writers like Sim, Morrison, or for their fellow-traveller Alan Moore, the real world of science and nature isn’t interesting enough. They must resort to super-nature, to gods or God or mad ideas, one-part hooey to one-part hogwash, with a little delusional thinking for good measure.

For Chadwick, by contrast, the world is just as it seems in nature documentaries. Once you get past the macguffin of the aliens who transplant Concrete’s brain into his new body, there are no pixies, no fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is just the world, unadorned and as it is. Mystery and beauty, in Concrete, are immanent in the world itself, which needs no human invention to dress it up.

Hence “The building that didn’t explode”, which tells of how Chadwick and some fellow artists narrowly averted disaster in their youth and then ponders why they were spared:

“Was it destiny? The divine plan, that these stellar artistic creations were meant to shiningly soar forth, bringing light to dreary lives?

“No, that’s bullshit.”

Chadwick goes on to lay out his view of the world, which couldn’t be further from the hazy mysticism of Sim/Moore/Morrison. It is a “crazy casino” offering “capricious gifts” with no sense beyond what we put into it.

“I strive for realism” similarly aims to undercut superstition. When Sim and Morrison wrote themselves into their stories, meeting their characters, they used their soapbox to voice grandiloquent theories about the narrative structure of the real world.

By contrast, Chadwick’s biggest flourish in this story is an illustration of relativity theory, showing Concrete as a four-dimensional worm in time-space (a little bit like in Donnie Darko), extending in as many directions as Concrete has been in the past. A nice visual effect–but then Concrete himself points out that the artist has visually assumed motion relative to the earth. Since the earth itself is in motion, Concrete’s four-dimensional worm would actually carve out a “compound helix” path through space.

Such stories show Chadwick’s scientific rationalism, but Concrete is at its very best when Chadwick lets loose his naturalist passion, contrasting the rock-steady Concrete against nature, vast and unknowable. Chadwick’s keen eye for negative space effectively highlights nature’s majesty and scope in these scenes, whether on the ocean floor, deep in a woodland, or on the heights of Everest. His characters also often rhapsodize nature, as in the story in this volume where Concrete quotes at length from Frederick Harrison on mountaineering. Characters aren’t always mouthpieces for their author, but they’re surely voicing the author’s passions here.

The most striking story in this volume, however, is what at first glance appears to be a piece of fanfic, of all things about fourth-string X-Men character Dazzler. No, really.

The pseudo-Dazzler story doubles as an artistic manifesto from the young Chadwick for all his work (it was originally published in 1986). His Dazzler stand-in is a young mutant woman, “hated and feared because [she] can project light”, who only wants to be a performer. She complains about having to fight fantastic characters and wonders, “Have we nothing better to do?”

She certainly does, as she uses her powers to conjure up fantastic montages of surrealist scenes and realizes that her creative potential is unlimited. She can project whole films from her own imagination, without worrying about budget or temperamental actors:

“No limits! No budgets! No politics, no edicts and orders…a lifetime of pure, creative decisions…exploring what’s promising, what moves people, thrills them, amuses them…astounds them!”

Obviously, this character is really talking about the potential for comics. For more than twenty years, Chadwick has been tapping that potential to project a vision like nothing else, in any art form.

And that, my friends, ain’t spinach.

Recommended? Definitely. Readers new to Concrete, however, are advised to start with even stronger volumes in the series, such as any of 2-5.

IYL: Love and Rockets; “smart” sci-fi by Morrison or Moore; nature documentaries

Pee Jar: Year One

Fair Weather, Joe Matt. Drawn and Quarterly, 2003. $16.95, 128 pages.

Yes, it’s “Year One” week here at LY&HF.

***

What do Oprah, Freud, and the Catholic church have in common?

They all share a psychological theory I call the disclosure theory. Here’s the theory in a nusthell: you’ve got to let it all out. Bottling up your feelings and past can only harm you; the truth must out. Self-disclosure brings happiness, or at least some reduction in one’s load of misery. And the dirtier the laundry you air, the better you’ll feel.

This theory has proved enormously popular in Western cultures, especially the modern US. So entrenched is the theory in our cultures that we see it as a self-evident truth of human nature, rather than a culturally specific theory (and a theory which may well be false).

I have no idea whether cartoonist Joe Matt feels better for letting it all out. But, if the disclosure theory is correct, then he ought to be the happiest guy on the planet. For over a decade now, Matt has let it all out. And then some.

In his long-running autobio series Peepshow, he has consistently portrayed himself as a grossly tight-fisted, mean-spirited loser with emotional problems. And I do mean grossly, so tight-fisted that he (notoriously) pisses in a bottle to save flushing the toilet.* More recent issues of Peepshow have focussed on another of Matt’s personal issues, his self-confessed addiction to porn. The gruesome details therein, including cum rags and wankathons, are not for the squeamish.

All of which probably sounds excruciating, the comicbook equivalent of getting cornered at a party by someone going through the 12 Step program. Luckily, Matt the cartoonist possesses a self-awareness that Matt the character lacks. Which means that Matt the cartoonist is funny, perfectly willing to play his grotesque quirks for all the laffs he can get.

In Fair Weather, which reprints four issues of Peepshow, Matt turns his steely comedic gaze on his younger self, growing up in the 1970s. The plot is simple, mostly a framework to hang the period detail and minor incident typical of this sort of autobiography. Over the space of a single weekend, the young Matt hangs out with his best friend, argues with his parents over chores and comic books, and waits for the annual church fair

The cartoonist is no kinder to his young self than he is to his old one. He depicts young Matt as a bed-wetting cry-baby, a coward, a cheapskate who exploits his poorer best friend and thinks nothing of double-crossing him for profit, a brattish ingrate with no emotional allegiance to anyone beyond himself. No porn addiction yet, but only because he’s still pre-adolescent here.

As with much of the self-mutilation school of autobiography (think R. Crumb, Larry David and Woody Allen), the humour in Fair Weather often comes from the sting of recognition. Readers may never have threatened to burn their parents’ house down, as Matt does in one memorable scene, but we all acted like selfish brats at one stage or another.

Fair Weather isn’t just a belated apology for juvenile misdeeds, however. As the main character, Matt’s assorted flaws are naturally placed in the foreground, but the background is his family, friends and a 70s childhood. And this background allows for–no, practically demands–the usual tropes of the growing up genre, including fraught friendships, sexual confusion, and nostalgia. This is nothing ground-breaking; in fact, nothing that will be unfamiliar to anyone who’s ever watched The Wonder Years. Still, Matt handles it so deftly that the standard descriptions apply: the book is “evocative”, “poignant” and so forth.

What keeps it from schmaltz or staleness is the clash between the cartoonist’s genuine nostalgia for his youth, and his natural cynicism about his younger self. The distance between cartoonist and subject gives the cartoonist room to feel sorry for the little bastard at times–but he still knows he was a little bastard. And although there can be no loss of innocence for those who were never innocent, even little bastards face growing pains.

Matt has long been pals with fellow autobiographers Seth and Chester Brown. All three are published by Drawn and Quarterly, and routinely pop up in one another’s books. While Brown gets praise for his ethereal, otherworldly style, and Seth for his olde-timey New Yorker schtick, Matt’s art is often overlooked.

This does disservice to Matt, whose self-effacing visual style hides its own skill. His Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt shows a nimble visual imagination but Matt generally supresses such formal tricksiness in favour of the traditional virtues of good story-telling.

His panels are clear and flow well in the (mostly) six-panel grid he adopts here. Figures are drawn with a thick, smooth, cartoony line with little or no shading. As a result, they pop nicely against their surroundings, and can show expression with a minimum of detail. This is especially true of Matt himself, with his blank, white face hidden behind a large pair of glasses. A hint of raised eyebrows, or hatching on those otherwise blank cheeks, can speak volumes for the character’s mental state–as a rule, either: embarrassment, self-righteous (and misplaced) anger, craven fear, or greed.

Maybe Joe Matt feels better for putting this stuff out there, in the same way that Crumb (Matt’s biggest thematic influence) used to do. I don’t know whether the disclosure theory is right or wrong. But we can be thankful that Matt believes it’s right.

He must do. He’d be crazy to make himself look like such an arsehole if he didn’t believe it.

* Matt’s pee-jar was further immortalised in Johnny Ryan’s autobio/war movie mash-up strip, PeeJarHead, collected in Comic Book Holocaust

Recommended? There are worse ways of spending your $16.95, especially if you like this kind of thing. Just don’t expect anything too grand; the book is very low-key, even in the context of Matt’s own oeuvre.

IYL: The growing-up sub-genre of autobiography, e.g Stand by Me or, yes, The Wonder Years; confessional misanthropic comedy in the vein of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Robert Crumb.

And then I would introduce a character called “Mary-Sue”, who would totally rock

A propos Bat-Mite: Year One, more “Year One” books that wouldn’t suck:

Superman, written the way he was when he started out. A fighting mad liberal who’d beat the hell out of racketeers, war profiteers and slumlords, then go and trap some plutocrats down a collapsed mine. Have some truth, social justice and the New Deal way, capitalist pigs!

Wonder Woman, also in the original style. Wholesome, kinky fun for the whole family. Drawn by Melinda Gebbie.

Runaways, back when little Molly was just a twinkle in her parents’ gametes, and the rest of the kids were wearing nappies (that’s “diapers” to you Americans). Written and drawn by Jack Mendelsohn.

Uncle Scrooge. Oh wait, there’s already a pair of young Scrooge books, and they’re excellent.

And, all right, yeah, I’d buy more early Batman stories by Tony Millionaire.

Any other suggestions?

If Watchmen were one of the Beatles, which one would it be?

Kevin Church to super-hero fans: When I slap you, you’ll take it and like it.

Right-thinking types should agree with most of what he says, but what really struck my eye was this description of Watchmen:

“Superhero comics have their very own Finnegans Wake and The Crying of Lot 49 rolled into one, beautiful piece of work”

Finnegans Wake? Uh, yeah, except that Watchmen is actually, you know, readable. If we’re going to compare Watchmen to literature, surely the comparison should be that other Joyce book, Ulysses.

But this is a moot point, since everyone knows that Watchmen is the Citizen Kane of comics. Come on, Church, didn’t you get the memo? Comics nerds aren’t going to get your highfaultin book-learning, but we sure like them moving pictures.

Now, if Watchmen is the Citizen Kane of comics, then Citizen Kane must be the Watchmen of cinema. Which explains why there were all those grim and gritty copycat films in the 40s and 50s about media magnates and sleds called “Rosebud”…

…hmmm. Maybe Watchmen is just the Watchmen of comics.

BTW, it would definitely be Ringo.

Batman and the Monster Men, or, Year One ruined comics

The internet’s self-professed Hate-monger has called me out for my no-post post yesterday, which he reckons was a non-no-post post. All right, “Dick”, it’s on. Just wait until the shocking reveal, when the world will finally see the man behind the mask.

And now, a review.

Batman and the Monster Men, Matt Wagner, Dave Stewart and Rob Leigh. DC, 2006. $14.99, 144 pages.

Frank Miller has a lot to answer for.

And not just the sub-noir narration, casual sexism, the goddamn Batman, and Holy Terror. No, Miller’s greatest crime against comics remains Batman: Year One.

By itself, Year One is a decent slice of semi-sophisticated super-heroics, detailing the first time Batman wore his underpants on the outside. The subdued tone of Miller’s scripting was nicely matched by moody, European styling from artist David Mazzucchelli and colourist Richmond Lewis. Originally published in serial form in 1987, Year One was an obvious and heavy influence on Christopher Nolan’s film Batman Begins. This influence ranged from several scenes and set-pieces, which the film reproduced wholesale, to the focus given to noble-but-flawed Commissioner Gordon.

But if the influence of the book on film was generally positive, its influence on comics has been disastrous.

Comics aficionados often acknowledge its bad influence, lumping it together with Miller’s other big Batman book, The Dark Knight Returns, and Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. These books heralded a dreary age of “grim and gritty” writing, or so the common wisdom goes. Legions of lesser talents tried in vain to ape their “dark” surface, while ignoring everything that was actually interesting about the books, namely the thematic and formal depths beneath that surface.

The common wisdom is mostly right, but that’s not the worst of Year One‘s influence. The worst of its influence has been that every second Batman story since then has been set in the character’s past.*

Seriously, look at the DC solicitations for titles coming in May 2007. Of twelve books in the “Batman family” (including Robin, Catwoman and so on), five of them occur in the “past”. Sure, some of that is due to the relisting of several Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale books, but the point holds generally–especially of the countless spin-offs, graphic novels and mini-series published alongside the continuing Batman series.

Since Year One, we’ve seen the early days of Robin, the early days of Batman and Robin, the early days of Commissioner Gordon, the early days of Catwoman, the early days of the Joker, the early days of Two-Face, and no doubt also the early days of Bat-Mite, Ace the Bat-Hound, the utility belt, and the aftershave Batman uses when he’s out on “patrol”.

And now, thanks to Matt Wagner, the early days story we’ve all been waiting for in Batman and the Monster Men, the early days of Hugo Strange.

Hugo who?

Well, exactly. A stock mad scientist figure, Hugo Strange was one of Batman’s very first recurring villains. They fought a couple of times in the 40s, after which Strange didn’t reappear until the 70s, in the fondly-remembered run by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin.

To his credit, Wagner at least seems to recognise how unnecessary this book is, a tale of the first battle between Batman and this fourth-tier villain. In fact, it’s even less necessary than that, it’s a re-telling of their first battle.

There’s a nice two-page gag early on, demonstrating Wagner’s attitude to the material. The first page is a sequence featuring a shadowy figure in athletic training, complete with hard-bitten, Miller-esque narration boxes: “I am a product of this city. My early childhood scarred by trauma” etc. We naturally assume this is Batman himself, until we turn the page to find that it’s actually Hugo Strange, a little bald geezer with glasses.

The message is clear: this is not the portentous dreck we usually get from Batman stories, particularly the Year One variety. There will be no brooding on vigilantism, hearts of darkness or urban ennui, no laboured parallels drawn between Batman and his foes. This is pulpy fluff, pure and simple, with no greater pretension than to entertain.

That it does, well enough. Wagner’s work here isn’t spectacular, but his Toth-influenced clean line propels the action competently. And the script doesn’t insult the reader’s intelligence too much–given that she’s reading a book called Batman and the Monster Men in the first place.

Dave Stewart’s colouring scheme, by contrast, is a curious choice. Most pages are washed-out monochromes, in which one colour prevails, typically faded greys, blues, greens and browns. It’s not obvious what effect Stewart is going for–homage to Lewis’ colouring on Year One? General visual cue that this story takes place in the past, like a faded photograph? Whatever the intended effect, the actual effect is to dull the action, and action is everything in a book like this.

For what it’s worth, Batman and the Monster Men mostly delivers what it promises. Batman meets Hugo Strange, fools around with Julie Madison, fights some monster men. Faces are punched, batarangs are thrown.

The problem is, that ain’t worth much. This is six issues re-telling what was originally, what, a throwaway ten-page story with a decidedly minor villain? What next, a ten-part series revealing what happened between panels 5 and 6 of the back-up story in Detective Comics #136?

On the other hand, I would totally buy Bat-Mite: Year One.

*Granted, there was always a market for “untold stories”. Hence all those goofball silver age stories where Bruce Wayne’s dad, in bat costume for a fancy dress pretty, foils a robber, or where we see the origin of the Batphone, or whatever. But there wasn’t as much of this stuff back then as there is now, and they generally didn’t just retell still older stories

Recommended? Not really, unless you’re really jonesing for an adequate, meat-and-potatoes retelling of an old Batman story. Then again, given how bad most super-hero comics are these days, maybe you are.

IYL: Batman: Year One, competent super-hero stories

My very first “no post” post!

Wow, I really feel like a blogger now! Only a few more weeks before I start posting random panels from Silver Age strips for “humorous” effect. Or talking about how TOTALLY cute my cat is.

No, I don’t own a cat. I’ll have to get one, that’s how dedicated I am.

Anyway, the real world is kicking my arse all over town, so you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow for the review of Batman and the Monster Men which I was going to post tonight. In the meantime, two three links to keep you entertained and fill the void.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the blog of the mysterious XyphaP, about whom two questions loom large: (1) How do you pronounce his name? Ksi-fa-pee? Or, in that annoying way people pronounce “Xavier”, Eks-i-fa-pee? (2) How in the hell did he get such good taste and critical acumen while still in high school? When I was 18, I could barely string a sentence banana the the saegq

Going to Clusterfuck Year Two, aka the New York Comic-Con, this weekend? Looking for somewhere to party on Friday evening? Then look no further: Bootie is coming to New York. NYC has long needed its own mash-up/bootleg night, and we’re finally getting it. The line-up’s not as good as what was originally promised (Lenlow and DJBC, but there were scheduling conflicts). It should still go off.

Or, to put in terms the comics blogosphere will understand: it should be AWESOME.

(Oh, and despite the url, that second link is totally safe-for-work. Unlike this one)

Bring on the chickens!

Part 2 of 3. Nothing will ever be the same!

Like a Neil Gaiman miniseries, this series has blown out to an extra part. Jesus, don’t the editors here do anything for a living?

Oh wait, I don’t have an editor. (Post your own cheap shots in the comments, kids!)

For those who claim in late, this is a series about sexual morality in comic books. Part 1 dealt with domestic assault, sexual assault and sexual morality. It claimed that sexual assault in the West is generally seen as a violation of sexual morality, and therefore highly morally charged.

But I mostly waved my hands about what sexual morality is: sexual norms that have been moralized. This raises several questions which I’ll answer in this part: what is a sexual norm, what it is to moralize one, and which norms get moralized? In Part 3, I’ll talk about sexual morality in funnybooks.

But today, the good stuff. Chicken-f**king. Uh, this post is borderline NSFW–but it’s all for science.

As I use the phrase, a sexual norm is just a norm governing sexual behaviour. Sexual norms can cover things like: what sort of physical contact is acceptable in public (kissing is okay, oral sex is generally not, at least not in my neighbourhood); what sort of behaviour is acceptable in the bedroom; and who has to sleep in the wet spot. Sexual norms differ from culture to culture. Public displays of affection between heterosexuals are generally allowed in the West, but not in some other cultures. Sexual norms can also differ from sub-culture to sub-culture. Public displays of affection between homosexuals are acceptable in some parts of the US but not, alas, in others.

Not all sexual norms are moralized. This is nicely shown in some lovely experiments by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. For nearly fifteen years Haidt has been investigating human “moral psychology”–the mental processes involved in our judgements of right and wrong. He’s one of the nicest guys you could meet, but beneath that lovely exterior lies a seriously sick mind.

Which makes him an excellent experimentalist.

In one of his early, now notorious experiments, Haidt described to subjects a series of scenarios, and then asked them some questions. Here is one of the scenarios:

“A man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a dead chicken. But before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he cooks it and eats it.”

Questions: (1) Is it very wrong, a little wrong, or is it perfectly OK for the man to do this? (2) Should he be stopped or punished in any way? (3) Suppose you learn about two different foreign countries. In country A, people have sex with chicken carcasses very often, and in country B, they never do that. Are both of these customs OK, or is one of them bad or wrong?*

If you’re like me, this is probably your reaction to the scenario: “Gross! That’s wrong. But, no, I wouldn’t say he should be punished. It’s f**ked up…but I guess it’s not morally wrong. And, yeah, if they do it all the time over in some other country, then that’s all right for them.”

Most of Haidt’s college student subjects had this kind of reaction, too. By contrast, subjects from lower socioeconomic status–poorer, less educated folks, basically–thought it was wrong, and that the chicken-f**ker should be punished. This was an especially common reaction in Haidt’s other subject population, in Brazil.

In other words, most of us–well-educated Western liberals–don’t moralize the sexual norm here. The norm being: don’t f**k chickens. We think it’s inappropriate to f**k them, but not morally wrong.

Unless you’re Gonzo the great. In which case, it’s A-OK.

One of Haidt’s interesting claims is that moral judgements in general–”murder is wrong”, “he’s a bad guy”–are driven by emotions, not reasons. And different cultures differ in which emotions they moralize, or the extent to which they moralize different emotions. That is to say, different cultures build their morality on different emotions.

In modern Western liberalism, there are just two important emotions: responses to suffering, like empathy and compassion; and responses to injustice, like anger. Western liberal morality is built around the domains of harm and justice, and the emotional responses to violations in those domains.

So we don’t generally moralize our disgust. But we do moralize compassion and anger.

This means that sexual norms invoking disgust won’t be moralized. Hence the norm against chicken-f**king isn’t part of our sexual morality.

But sexual norms invoking compassion or anger will be moralized. In fact, most of liberal sexual morality can be summed up thus: as long as no one gets hurt, then it’s morally permissible. It may not turn me on, hell it may even turn my stomach, but you can do whatever you want to do within the privacy of your bedroom, with consenting adults (or by yourself).

That’s why bestiality, necrophilia, rape and pederasty evoke extreme moral outrage even from liberals. For in those cases, there is no consent–they are unjust, and they cause harm. So the norms against them are part of our sexual morality, and indeed highly morally charged.

By contrast with liberals, Jon Haidt claims that conservatives in the US moralize their disgust a lot more.** That’s why they’re against gay marriage and why they were against miscegenation. Such acts, for conservatives, are seen as disgusting violations of sexual norms; and, moralizing their disgust, conservatives therefore see those acts as morally wrong.

Summing up: every culture has sexual norms. Modern Western liberalism is culturally unusual in that it doesn’t consider all sexual norms to be moral norms. We generally only consider sexual norms to do with harm and justice as moral norms, because harm and justice is all we tend to care about. So–for the most part–our entire sexual morality concerns only consent, autonomy and harm.

Next time: I unconvincingly shoe-horn comic books into this discussion. Yeah, I’m going to talk about Dr. Light. Deal with it. But I’ll talk about other comics too. Plus: consensual incest.

Hey, at least you got to read about a cool experiment, huh?

* Haidt asked a series of questions, of which these are the most relevant here.

** That’s not the only moral difference, of course

Buy This Book: Phoenix Volume 9

Check back later for Part 2 of the senses-shattering series on sexual morality. In the meantime, this is supposed to be a review site, so here’s a review.

Yes, that means no chicken-fucking today, either. But this book comes close, my friends–very close (check out page 224).

Phoenix Volume 9: Strange Beings/Life, Osamu Tezuka. Viz, 2006. $14.99, 208 pages.

***

Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix is one of comics’ great unfinished epics, fit to take its place alongside such literary oeuvres incomplètes as Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. Like those works (Musil’s in particular), Phoenix is broad in scope and ambition, a vast, mad novel of ideas. Also like those works, Phoenix is not altogether incomplete. Although he may not have finished the entire series before his death, Tezuka did leave us with several relatively self-contained volumes, as vital and essential in their own right as anything else in comics.

He finished twelve volumes, in fact, between 1967 and 1988, which are being reprinted by Viz in new English translations. The latest volume, which contains the stories Strange Beings and Life, is the ninth in the series.

New readers will understandably be reluctant to pick up a series nine volumes in, but the Phoenix series is modular by design. Each volume stands alone and can be read independently of any of the others (except for the story Civil War, published by Viz in two volumes). Certain themes and characters recur from volume to volume, and Tezuka apparently planned to tie them all together in the end. But, as the series stands, there is no ongoing continuity of plot. None of the volumes spoils previous plots or assumes familiarity with what has gone before.

If anything, this ninth volume is, as marketing folks like to say, a natural jumping-on point. Its two stories perfectly illustrate the series’ range in setting, tone and genre. Strange Beings takes place in the Ashikaga shogunate (specifically, it seems, the fifteenth century), Life in the twenty-second century. Strange Beings tells the story of a young woman trapped in a temporal anomaly of which Alan Moore would be proud. After assassinating a nun for reasons not immediately obvious, Sakon no Suke must repent by developing compassion. Along the way, she will meet various strange demons out of Japanese folklore. Life, on the other hand, is an uncannily prescient bit of science-fiction, foretelling a not-so-distant future of clones and exploitative reality television. A cynical television producer, Aoi, tampers with human cloning for entertainment value. He, too, pays a terrible price and must flee civilisation to survive.

The stories are linked thematically, as Tezuka notes in a brief afterword, both featuring protagonists punished for their disrepect for life. They also both illustrate the quasi-Buddhist moral convictions of the entire Phoenix series: life demands respect, suffering demands compassion, worldly temptation leads people astray, the pursuit of immortality is folly.

Linking them further, as in all the Phoenix stories, is the mysterious figure of the Phoenix herself. Tezuka imagines the Phoenix as a sort of demi-god, representative of the life force, and cosmic moral arbitrator. In keeping with her mythic roots as symbol for immortal life, the Phoenix’ body has miraculous restorative and rejuvenating powers. These powers drive many of the Phoenix stories, as characters pursue her feathers, blood, the animal itself–a pursuit doomed to failure.

(Regular readers of the series will be pleased to note that the big nose character also appears in both stories, in different incarnations. No Mustachio, alas)

This simultaneous scope and unity is typical of the Phoenix series. Other volumes feature space travel, robots, aliens, reworking of Japanese myth, and quasi-historical incidents, all of them joined by a common philosophical core and the Phoenix herself. And as in most of Tezuka’s work, each volume itself varies in tone, with goofy slapstick, fourth-wall-breaking humour and cartoony flourishes page-by-page with psychedelic freak-outs, bloody violence and emotional heartbreak. Phoenix contains multitudes.

Tezuka wrote and drew both stories in this volume around 1980, so he’s in full command of his mature talents. There are hectic action sequences, two-page landscapes, sixteen-panel pages, violent motion that breaks the panel, cutesy character design, innovative framing and shading to mirror characters’ internal states. A special treat here are the Strange Beings themselves. Tezuka cuts loose with these bizarre, comical/sinister figures; a good comparison for Western audiences are the equally goofy/creepy demons in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

The Phoenix series is like little else in comics, with its combination of cosmic metaphysics, oddball spirituality, moral message, comic touch and genre tomfoolery. Apart from Tezuka’s own Buddha, the closest thing is Dave Sim’s and Gerhard’s Cerebus–not a combination that will endear Phoenix to many readers, but apt nonetheless. Unlike Cerebus, however, Phoenix never tries the patience of its readers, is much less polemical, and–it should go without saying–is infinitely more feminist.

Plus, it’s a billion times better than a certain other 1970s cosmic Phoenix epic.

Recommended: Absolutely. Buy this book. And then buy all the other Phoenix volumes.
IYL: Comic book epics like Cerebus or Sandman. Meaning-of-life books like Promethea or The Invisibles. Jim Starlin’s 1970s trippy, cosmic stuff.