Washington Post: “It turns out he’s not afraid of publicity so much as he’s horrified at being perceived as the kind of person who wants publicity. He treasures his literary license to kill but feels a twinge of guilt that it isn’t really a fair fight. He’s a genuinely humble know-it-all. His regard for injured soldiers is sincere, his knowledge of their lingo profound, almost as if he’s one of them; watching this, you can’t help but hear faint, soul-rattling echoes of Vietnam, which he escaped, like many sons of privilege, by gaming the system. He’s got the greatest job on Earth — no boss, his own hours, enormous clout, public adulation, a seven-figure income, absolute creative freedom — but he speaks with longing about a different career altogether, one that the huge success of ‘Doonesbury’ ensured he’d never have.”

Critic Rebecca Skloot doesn’t realize that we’re now living in the 21st century. Either that or her conservative view of what a novel is and should be prevents her from accepting a book on its own merits. She seems to think that those funny little comic things that all the kids are raving about (such as Alison Bechdel’s excellent Fun Home) can’t possibly qualify as novels.

Let’s set the record straight.

Here’s the definition of “novel” from dictionary.com: “A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters.”

In E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, Forster defined a novel as “any fictitious prose work over 50,000 words,” but even he was smart enough to note that this was too clinical a definition. “Part of our spongy tract seems more fictitious than other parts, it is true: near the middle, on a tump of grass, stand Miss Austen with the figure of Emma by her side, and Thackerey holding up Esmond. But no intelligent remark known to me will define the tract as a whole.”

David Lodge observes in The Art of Fiction: “However one defines [the novel], the beginning of a novel is a threshold, separating the world we inhabit from the world the novelist has imagined. It should therefore, as the phrase goes, ‘draw us in’.”

The fundamental difference between a graphic novel and a novel is that the former is constructed of pictures and captions and the latter is constructed of words. But books like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home share sustained narratives, with thoughts, speech, and consciousness presented through fictional characters. Are these to be discounted because their form is different? I’d argue that these two books certainly fulfill Lodge’s requirement of a reader being completely submerged into another world. As such, I think it’s safe to say that the two books can be quite judiciously deposited within Forster’s malleable tract.

I am troubled by the noun modifier “graphic” applied to “graphic novel,” but I do understand that it is necessary to draw people into the comics form. Hell, if a James Wood hard-liner like Mark can find a graphic novel to suit his tastes, then anyone can.

What I don’t get are critics like Skloot, who seem perpelexed by the notion that graphics or comics can’t be weaved into some kind of narrative form or that they can’t sustain an emotional resonance. Book critics of this ilk have no problems accepting the photographic nature of the film and appreciating that medium on artistic merits. Why then do they fail to make the jump into graphic novel form?

Of course, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then, by that token, Maus and Fun Home qualify as bona-fide epic novels.

Spidey outs himself as Peter Parker. He also reveals that Mary Jane Watson is a pre-op transexual.

Spider-Man 3: Behind the Scenes Video

I don’t care about how this revelation will be perceived by my readership, but I will confess that I was a huge fan of the Paramount Popeye cartoons growing up. It was Popeye who introduced me to the glories of spinach. It was Popeye who suggested to me that, even without spinach, it was okay to be a bit of a quirky bumbler. Of course, I was never really a fan of corncob pipes. But before Hemingway and Henry Miller, at the impressionable age of five, Popeye was my rather strange model for manhood. While it is true that there was only one instance where Popeye acted as a bullfighter (and required spinach to put the bull in his place), the point is that he didn’t have to put up any false machismo to work himself up. Really, it was the pesky Bluto figure who caused Popeye to eat his spinach. And Bluto, as we all know, was an extenuating circumstance.

In any event, none of this detracts from this fabulous news, uncovered by Something Old, Something New that the Popeye cartoons have been procured by Warner — i.e., the studio that put out those impressive Golden Collection DVD sets for its Looney Tunes that have had this grown adult reverting back to a five year old to nurse off occasional hangovers. No less a treatment, it seems, will be reserved for Popeye, as Warner is reportedly starting “work immediately on preservation and restoration activities.” Well, blow me down!

The Progressive Bank: “When I see this strip, I think of that poor bunny, and then I feel bad about him, and then I look at Ziggy and feel bad for making fun of him. He’s just some poor guy who’s trying to make a cake! And he’s smiling and keeping a positive outlook on things, no matter how much dirt life kicks in his face! Maybe I’m a softy, but I weep as I type this. Softly. For Ziggy. May Tom Wilson get punched in the eye so hard that he dies, ending your mercilessly long march on the mouse wheel of life.”

An interview with MAD cartoonist Al Jaffee. (via Fantagraphics Blog)

Archive. (via MeFi)

Alan Moore talks Lost Girls: “I think it struck me that it was kind of unusual that there are all these relatively rarified areas of human experience that very few of us are actually involved in, such as being private detectives, space explorers, or vampire hunters. There are whole shelves full of books that are devoted to all of those exploits in every major city. However, we all have a sexuality, even if we’re celibate – that’s sexuality. And yet, the only medium – the only genre – that deals with sexuality is this grubby, under-the-counter genre in which there are absolutely no standards. It struck me that even though there have been many artists who’ve dabbled in the erotic and the pornographic in the past, most of them have done so anonymously, even if the work they’ve produced has been absolutely wonderful.” (via MadInkBeard)

Kimberly Chun talks with Daniel Clowes: “Being a cartoonist, except for the last couple years, was always a frustrating and humiliating field to be in. It was so impressed on me already — none of the big successes of last five years have any meaning for me. It hasn’t changed a thing. ‘Oh, I’m in the New York Times’ — it doesn’t help. My resentment was so deep for so long that I can’t shake it.”

Here’s a new blog I discovered with taut posts, many headlines and frequent posting: The Daily Cartoonist.

During our APE coverage, Our Young, Roving Correspondent talked with Top Shelf head Chris Staros and got the scoop on Alan Moore’s controversial new work, Lost Girls. What follows is the relevant portion (which can also be heard at the tail end of The Bat Segundo Show #31):

STAROS: For other new stuff, our really big book this summer is going to be Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, which has been in development for twenty years and is finally seeing print. It’s actually heading to the printer next Friday. We’ve just about wrapped it up and it’s going to be an absolutely beautiful book. Cloth volumes, hard covers, dust jackets, slip case. And it’s actually going to be larger than the absolute editions of Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. So it’s going to be in that class of product. It’s going to be beautiful.

OYRC: Now did Alan Moore go directly to you? Or did you have to fight to publish this book? Or what’s the situation?

STAROS: Well, you know, when Alan Moore left DC Comics the first time in the 80s and started to do his own work with Mad Love, his own publishing company, he did three things: From Hell, Lost Girls and Big Numbers. Those were the three projects he started. Now From Hell was eventually completed and published. And we were the publisher of From Hell now. And then Lost Girls and Big Numbers had fallen into limbo. Big Numbers was a project he didn’t want to pick up on. But about five years ago, I flew to England to meet Alan at his house in Northampton with the sole purpose of trying to convince Alan and Melinda [Gebbie] to pick up Lost Girls and finish it. Well, lo and behold, nobody knew, but they had actually been tinkering with it the whole time. They had never let it go. They’d just been working on it slowly, slowly, slowly. And they showed me how much they’d done of it and how absolutely beautiful it was. And so I said, “Would you allow Top Shelf to publish it? We would be honored to do a book this important.” And they said yes.

So ironically, the first time I ever got an Alan Moore autograph, which is something I always wanted as a fanboy, was on the contract to publish Lost Girls. One of his most important works ever. So Lost Girls is Alan Moore’s attempt — not attempt, his success to make pornography literary, human, thoughtful, and exquisite. And so it is something that’s never been done before. And Melinda Gebbie, his now fiancée, painted the book and it’s three 112-page volumes, all coming out at once. So 336 pages of fully painted, beautiful illustrations and some of Alan’s best writings in it. It’s quite extraordinary.

OYRC: Did you have any editorial input on this in terms of shaping it? Or was it pretty much hands off to let Alan do his thing?

STAROS: I am the editor on the book. But in that sense, it’s really more of a shepherding thing. Like getting the designers in, getting the book produced, helping the page docs, working with Brett [Warnock], my partner, as the art director of the thing to make sure it looks right. And, you know, hunting down typos and those kind of things. I don’t think I’d have the audacity to coach Alan on how to write the thing. I mean, he’s – he writes flawlessly to begin with. So he didn’t need any editorial input on that regard.

OYRC: It sounds like a pretty expensive volume to put out with all the color artwork. It seems to me almost like a big risk for you.

STAROS: It’s a very expensive book to produce. The most expensive book we’ve put out by a factor of about six or seven. So it’s huge. But if you’re going to do a high-risk project, there’s no better name to have attached to it than Alan Moore. And Lost Girls is a pretty safe bet in that even though it’s going to be highly sexualized, and there’s going to be some people and some stores that may have to stay away from it, the book has had such a reputation and has been building for so long. People have been anticipating it for so long that I think when it hits, everyone’s going to want it. Plus, when they see the package and how absolutely beautiful it is, it’s going to be an impulse buy that’s just going to. Probably the first printing’s going to sell out so quickly where we’re not going to know what happened to it.

OYRC: Now in terms of stocking this in stores, is this a problem possibly for you? That some people are going to say no because they will consider this to be pornography?

STAROS: It definitely could be a problem in some states. There’s potential that some people might have some problems with the interiors. But we’ve already had legal reads on it, you know, from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund attorney, Burton Joseph, who you know works for Playboy and so forth. And it is a legal book. But that doesn’t mean in this day and age when there’s a lot of conservatism going on and people challenging things, that we couldn’t not necessarily run into challenges. But we’re working really hard to make sure that the book gets a lot of mainstream press before it even comes out. So that publications like Entertainment Weekly and Publisher’s Weekly and Time and USA Today and Playboy and others get a shot at talking about it, reviewing it and discussing it in a free speech capacity, so that if we run into any problems with the book, it’s already got a nation behind it. It’s already got the industry behind it. It’s already got a big name like Alan Moore behind it. It’s not something that’s going to be easily attacked. So we’re trying to take an offensive-defensive posture, if you know what I mean.

OYRC: I gotcha. But as to the content itself, you say that it changes and transcends, sort of like the nature of pornography. Do you think – I mean, obviously, it’s kind of a strange question to ask of the publisher, because you have a self-interest in the answer. But maybe you can elaborate on this. How does it push boundaries?

STAROS: Well, it’s the story of Wendy from Peter Pan and Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Not so much named, but you kind of get an idea that it’s based on them, right? And about them all meeting in a hotel at the outset of World War I and really getting to know each other in a sexual sense and in an exploratory sense, and reflecting back on their lives and their stories. And a sense that their stories are really covers for the sexual revelations and the things that happened to them in their childhoods. So it involves a lot of reflections on them. So it can be considered, you know, controversial on a couple fronts there. But it’s truly a work of art. I mean, it’s unbelievable. I’ve read the thing several times myself already and I’m just amazed at how much of a commentary he does. Because it’s a book about, you know, the Western world’s hang-ups with sexuality and discussing sexuality. And it also makes the statement that war is the ultimate pornography. Not sex. And it really makes a strong statement about that. And also reflects upon itself as our own issues in our society with the legalities of pornography and obscenity. It kind of is a recursive thing in that it deals with magistrates and judges within the book itself. So it sort of is a reflection about the same point of people it has problems with. So it answers all of its own questions within itself, if you know what I mean.

OYRC: I think it will do just fine. [awkward aside about Homeland Security guy recently busted for child pornography elided to spare readers]

STAROS: The difference is when something is drawn, it doesn’t involve real people. And laws are designed to protect real people from being involved in these kind of things. So in this particular case, it’s just ink on paper. And in a country that respects the pen, then ideas should be protected at all costs. That’s what the First Amendment’s about. So I – this book is legal. It is safe. And if anyone wants to challenge that, we’re ready to fight that full-board.

OYRC: Rock on. Okay, thanks a lot, Chris.

I was beat to the punch by Powell’s, but the 2006 Eisner nominations have been announced. Warren Ellis and Chris Ware have landed the most nominations. But there are also nods to Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man is a Mabuse fave), Alan Moore, and Kyle Baker for two self-published efforts. Alex Robinson was also nominated for Tricked in the “Best Graphic Album — New” category.

And speaking of Warren Ellis, he’s put up three of his comics scripts for public perusal, if you’re of the curious persuasion.

The SFist offers a written APE Report to which we would have offered a parallel, had we not saddled ourselves with nearly four hours of audio to organize and sift through.

Interestingly enough, of our grandiose comics haul, Fart Party Comics, despite its nom des ordures, has proven to be one of our favorites, with its chronicle of twentysomething life and random violence. Fortunately, we did chitchat with Julia Wertz at one point.

Once [considered a lesser art form] [limited to superheroes and lasers], today’s comic books [are evolving into a bona-fide literary form] [are tackling personal stories in addition to superheroes] [are becoming more ambitious than their orignators].

[NOTE TO JOURNALIST: Insert quote here from major comic book source to justify lede. Source can be Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Alex Robinson or Marjane Satrapi. It is important that you get a quote so that our septuagenarian readers know that you’ve done the legwork.]

Comic books (use at least two of following) [are being taught in today’s classrooms] [are selling ___ copies (insert sales figure of your choice that you feel best reflect economic boom)] [are being compared against Ulysses (MANDATORY COMPARISON)] [appeal to the young at heart] [are a sexy alternative to the novel].

Comic books are more than just Superman and Batman. [NOTE TO JOURNALIST: Avoid esoteric superhero references here. Stick with the big guns.]

[Frank Miller reinvented the form with The Dark Knight Returns.]

[Art Spiegelman tapped into personal experience for Maus.]

[Chris Ware has now transposed his talents to The New York Times.]

I guess it’s safe to say that comic books aren’t just for teenagers anymore. They just might be [categorized as literature] [be more than a guilty pleasure] too!