Please pardon me while I get a little more rambling than usual: I have a window full of open tabs waiting to be blogged about, but I don’t really have the time or inclination to blog about them right now. (I haven’t even finished my write-up on the ICA conference from last weekend!) So, here’s a mish-mash of interesting links worth taking a look at sometime, with a minimum of commentary.
Category: Comics
Emphasis on the “Sub”
Comicon.com’s The Pulse has an interview up with the creators of a comic book called SubCulture, a story about media fans.
KEVIN FREEMAN: The primary focus is on fans of comics, gaming, anime, science fiction, and the like. As a group, we’re an interesting lot, and deserving of a closer look. But we wanted the book to be more than a series of jokes. Yes, there’s humor, but it’s set within the confines of a more serious story. […]
THE PULSE: Do you think people like to laugh at themselves and see comics like this? Are you worried you might be offending your target audience with their portrayal in SubCulture?
FREEMAN: I like to think that most of us don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re an odd lot, but most of us embrace that fact. We like being different. I admit, the book does take a dangerous path. But I think the story is written in such a way that it ultimately portrays fans in a positive way. Sure, we’re all a little strange, but we’re also genuinely good people. I hope that’s what the readers get out of it.
STAN YAN: Honestly, I think that many of us that do take ourselves too seriously might not be able to see ourselves in the characters that share our “quirks”.
Mostly I’m just linking this because I like to keep track of when people specifically link the audiences of what are ostensibly diverse media (what do games have to do with comics?). It’s also interesting to note how the people involved in this interview all fancy themselves as part of the group being poked fun at here, but are still aware that some people might not find it so funny.
I’m inclined to agree with Freeman that the kind of folks who would even pick up a (somewhat harder-to-find) comic in the first place are also probably used to making fun of the stereotypes associated with fandom, especially as the creators are clearly part of the in-group. Certainly enough people can get behind that sentiment that you can sell t-shirts about self-deprecating geek humor. Maybe it helps to go the extra mile by portraying an avatar of yourself as the demented nerd in question.
Webcomics as a Geek Market
Jason Wray has a post up about why webcomics won’t break into other media and find broader audiences, for the most part. (Link via Journalista.)
Thoughts on Entertainment Advocacy and Activism
Video game fans can be pretty vocal on blogs and in casual conversation about how gaming doesn’t get the respect it deserves—people think games are for kids, have stupid plots, make you lazy, make you violent, etc. Video game fans have slowly begun to follow the example of comic book fans, however, in practicing grassroots activism and advocacy to change such perceptions. See, for example, the recent news about a gaming advocacy/protest rally in New York:
Empire Arcadia Inc. will gather as many gamers as they can in New York City at Bryan Park on Saturday May 5th, 2007 at 1pm. There we will protest, morn [sic] and show how real gamers play videogames peacefully and responsibly. This demonstration is to show that gamers will not take the blame of this tragic matter but we will do what we can to help put an end to terrible events like this. We reiterate and urge that all leaders of gaming communities, organizations down to the last gamer to set aside 10 hours of this day to pay respect and come together not just as gamers but as HUMAN BEINGS for peace.
Empire Arcadia calls for gamers to unite! Official NYC Gathering:
Fellowship of the Gamers
I’ll get back to the issue of offering this event as a response to a tragedy. For now, I just want to comment on how this relates to gaming fandom more broadly.
Continue reading “Thoughts on Entertainment Advocacy and Activism”
It’s Like “The Sixth Sense” Meets “Unbreakable,” Only More Derisive
NBC’s Raines episode 4, “Stone Cold” (viewable free online right now) leads the detective to investigate the murder of a kid who’s studying comics in college.
Raines says he didn’t know people could study comics in college, and the victim’s girlfriend explains that he was studying perceptual psychology and color theory, defensively insisting that it was hard work. She then goes on to explain that he was working on a superhero called “Payback” who eats toxic waste to live and who is getting revenge for his murdered family. She also explains that the victim’s best friend is a former comic creator who owns the local comic store, Geek Farm. At the store, Raines sees employees peevishly explaining that removing comics from the bags to read them reduces their value, and he overhears the owner relay to a phone caller, “Tell him that if he comes in it costs more because I have to look at his big fat face.” The victim’s friends include a bunch of stoners with a PSP. To get an expert opinion on comic collecting, the detective visits a guy who lives with his mother, recognizes the price guide value of a comic at first glance, and counts the number of times Raines insults him. He refers to the comic book store owner as “a jedi level nerd” who would “never go to the dark side” of selling forged comics. The vicim turns out to have been killed by fantasy weaponry sold by the comic store. The murderer instructed a friend to dump the murder weapon, but the friend kept it because “it’s a collectible, man!” We also get a bonus shot of the detective playing a collectible card game which completely baffles him. Really, the episode is mostly about how the victim is killed for his involvement with drug dealing.
Between the line about color theory and the first mention of Payback, I kind of expected this to go in a different direction—maybe something about Will Eisner, Chris Ware, Scott McCloud, or a dozen other names that come to mind when you think about the phrase “sequential art.” In the end, though, it unaffectionately reproduces a bunch of stereotypes, with a cursory nod to the “comics as art” camp with a gallery-style showing (in Geek Farm) of the victim’s drawings at the end. I have been getting the impression that such portrayals of comics fans in popular media are less common than they used to be, though I guess they haven’t disappeared entirely.
I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Would Accept Me As a Founder
Joystiq links to an article in the Harvard Crimson about the University’s Interactive Media Group. I can thus add Harvard to the growing list of schools hosting neat clubs I can’t attend. My old stomping grounds even hosts the Hi-Score Game Development Club and a newly revived UMass Comic Art Society (which I founded my senior year before seeing it run into the ground within a couple years of my graduation).
I’d love to find something like these at Penn; a game development group seems particularly plausible, considering the growing number of interested parties majoring in Digital Media Design and working on masters degrees in Computer Graphics and Game Technologies. On the other hand, maybe it’s tougher to get club-style groups together in places that already include game design as part of the curriculum. Sadly, given my own research schedule, I’m unlikely to start another club up anytime soon.
Nerd Wars II
Online comic Cat and Girl rails against “the Berlin Wall of Geekdom”—art geeks versus science geeks.
Which Blogs and Cons Should I Be Visiting?
As of now, my dissertation will probably be focusing on some of the various cultures surrounding computers, video games, comics, and sci-fi TV/film. I’ve definitely had interviews (or have them lined up) with appropriate people for these topics, but I need to stay more continually plugged in to these industries and cultures than a few interviews allow for. That means attending some conventions and following some blogs, hopefully including the best trafficked of each.
In terms of cons, I’ve already attended the Penny Arcade Expo, the San Diego Comic Con International, the Big Apple Con, the Come Out and Play Festival (where I shot a short movie), and the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (no movies or music for me.) Depending on how certain things shake down, my travel plans for this year potentially include Wizardworld Philly (June), another trip to San Diego for Comic Con (July), Defcon in Vegas (August), the Tokyo Game Show (September), and the Small Press Expo (October). If some of that falls through and I could actually afford to go to PAX again, that’s another possibility. (I’ll also be going back and forth to Boston to visit friends and family, heading to San Francisco in May for the International Communication Association 2007 Conference, and doing research with Annenberg’s Summerculture program in Lisbon, Portugal for about half of July.)
As for web sites, I regularly sift through feeds from Joystiq, Kotaku, Game Politics, The Comics Reporter, and a number of sites maintained by academics I admire, such as Henry Jenkins’s Confessions of an Aca/Fan, Nancy Baym’s Online Fandom, and Jane McGonigal’s Avant Game. More recently, I picked up the feed for Slashdot, plus subscriptions to the print editions of Wired and Geek Monthly. I occasionally visit a number of other sites, including The Escapist, Journalista, and MacUser. (And that’s all on top of the design sites, traditional news sites, and web comics, which I won’t even get into here.)
Clearly, though, I’ve been more deeply involved with the comic book and video game scenes than the others. So I turn to you: got any suggestions for cons and web sites I should visit to get a better angle on what’s geeky about TV, film, and/or computer culture and industry?
“I Prefer Looking at Drawings”
Over at Design Observer, Dan Nadel offers some harsh criticism of the graphic design world based on a particular exhibition, calling its “selections in graphics and pop culture […] conservative and long out-of-date.” He calls one set of works “blatant Chris Ware rip-offs” and suggests some works that would better represent “current trends in graphic visual culture,” such as Matt Brinkman’s posters and Kramers Ergot. He also notes that the history of design and visual culture should include 2000 AD and other illustration-oriented publications.
Some of the graphic designers who read Design Observer, of course, are less than happy to be accused of being part of an insular world. One suggests that an alternate title for the piece could be “I prefer looking at drawings,” which doesn’t seem entirely unfair: before reading this article, I was familiar with Nadel mostly for his writing on comics in Print and The Gansfeld, and his suggestions here are closely connected to movements in art comics.
Part of what I find really interesting about this, though, is that this doesn’t fit so neatly into the classic story of “the mainstream” ignoring the beleaguered “junk medium.” Browse around some design sites, and it becomes pretty clear that graphic designers are similarly lamenting that they’re ignored by “the mainstream.” You even hear some of the same discussions going on at design conferences that you hear at comic cons, with people debating the relative merits of doing work that is more challenging versus work that encourages more widespread “literacy.”
I wonder, though, if comics creators are becoming more design literate through the influence of artists like Chris Ware and the mini-comics and web comics scenes, while the art and design worlds might still need to brush up on their knowledge of comics. In Design Literacy, Steven Heller relates how he had to work hard to get the rest of the judges on the Chrysler Award panel to even consider that Gary Panter’s work is more than just funny drawings. That was awhile ago—but if Nadel’s comments are indicative of anything besides his personal preferences or that particular exhibition, perhaps not much has changed.
Geek Studies 