Electricomics Market Questionnaire - Lend Your Voice!

Calling all comics people! Do you read, make, or sell comics? The Electricomics project needs your voice! Take a minute to run through this questionnaire and chronicle some of your consumer habits: how often, for how much, and where you buy digital comics, or if you buy them at all. Your input will be furthering the goals of a Digital R&D Fund for the Arts project, jointly run between the arts company Orphans of the Storm, the technology provider Ocasta Studios, and researchers from the UCL Institute of Education and the University of Hertfordshire

Read more on their Google Doc at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14jIUKgikjifUENFRRH-JM3ZzN6nAMv5AB2QtfVmVliM/viewform?c=0&w=1

Killing the Cover, What a Joke: Batgirl, Misogyny, and Everything DC's Readers Are Scared Of

By now most if not all of us have read at least one of the articles addressing Rafael Albequerque's recent Batgirl variant cover, which paid homage to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 one-shot The Killing Joke. We've read the artist's statement, and we've read DC's statement. We've perused the Twitter rants and familiarized ourselves with reader outrage about a multitude of things: the scared look on the heroine's face; her position of vulnerability; her position of vulnerability in relation to a man in power. It's been noted that this was put on a cover, the quintessentially unavoidable part of a comic, the bit you can't "opt out" of when you're browsing the shelves. I only recently started reading into this matter, a little late to the party, but the arguments I encounter most often are these: the readers don't want to see their heroine in this situation; they want to see her win a battle against a villain; the cover doesn't suit the intentions of the current Batgirl title; and the cover references dark events in the character's pre-New 52 origins, bringing readers back to a problematic story that they shouldn't have to wrestle with.

Damn right it does. What part of "villain" are we not understanding?

The Killing Joke is a brilliant story. It is also absolutely, fundamentally, a problematic story. For those of you who haven't read it, a brief synopsis: this is the tale of Oracle's origin, in which Barbara Gordon is attacked at home by the Joker, who shoots her through the spine and strips her, leaving her naked and paralyzed on the floor while he takes pictures...pictures he later uses to psychologically torment her father, Jim. It's a classic example within the comics canon of a woman being victimized simply to provide a point of pathos for a male hero. Barbara suffers greatly, and is left paralyzed for life, but her ordeal is inconsequential to the story; the focus is on Jim as he bears witness to his daughter's trauma. People are upset because this story bothers them. It should. It needs to bother us; we need to to be bothered by it; it is brilliant because it bothers us.

Stories that don't bother us are not worth writing

But people don't look back at the Lord of the Rings and gripe about Sauron's unconscionable actions. We don't threaten to boycott Indiana Jones if it doesn't stop portraying the cruelty of Nazis on the big screen. We all accept Nazis as evil, the "bad guys", and Tolkien was writing long before the era of Dexter and Hannibal. There's something else at work here. Has a cultural paradigm where we celebrate the villain led to us asking for villains whose actions we can condone? Because that's what the people opposing this cover are asking for: a Joker who is socially conscious, a homicidal, anarchist psychopath who won't oppress women. I figure what we're admitting when we demand this cover be pulled is that we're looking for villains who won't remind us of the problems inherent in our own culture. Aliens are alright. Fascists are fine. Crazy magical forces of evil are good to go. Heaven forbid we be confronted by a villain who embodies misogyny, though; that's way too close to home, let alone a villain who we understand is acting out that oppression because he is batshit insane.

Except that's the meaning of villainy. The bad guys should be exactly that: everything wrong with the world. Everything wrong with us. They should make us squirm. They should be a problem for us.

The cover is also, by nature, a cover; it's not doing its job unless it's in your face. I can't help you there; that's visual culture for you. But we live in a world of trigger warnings now, and that means it's becoming ever harder to talk about these things because once someone plays the Trigger Warning card, you can't speak out against them without coming across as the insensitive asshole at the table. We've built ourselves a fortress of insecurity, a honeycomb of carefully shored-up padded rooms where we can be kept far away from the things that cause cognitive dissonance, that force us to come to terms with whatever it is we've suppressed, in order to convince ourselves that everything's gonna be alright, that we're good people.

Look at this cover and tell me everything's gonna be alright.

Look at this cover and tell me the heroine would be better off if she never had to confront this shit. I wish I could have you look me in the eye and tell me you want a Batgirl who confronts violent, terrifying misogyny (the reality of this world we live in) with a carefree smile on her face. That shit is grim. Now, there's the perfectly valid argument that this cover is tonally disjointed from the rest of the Batgirl title so far. I haven't been reading it, but from what I have seen of Batgirl floating around the internet I would say that's an accurate statement. It will be interesting to see what's actually under that cover when the issue is released; if the cover accurately represents the story within, the younger crowd of readers who have been attracted to this heroine may be in for a shock. There will undoubtedly be fallout. Fans may feel betrayed, and the hard truth is this: you have no right to feel betrayed. DC Comics doesn't owe you a thing, even if they should (I'm an idealist; I think every storyteller and artist ought to be beholden to and mindful of his/her audience, to a degree. Rafael Albuquerque has been a brilliant example of this in his concern for his fans' response to the art, taking it upon himself to enter into discussion with the editors and have the art retracted). But they don't; that's the nature of the industry. This isn't some Kickstarter campaign where your donation entitles you to a reward; it's the publishing branch of a much larger company, owned by another company, owned in turn by the world's third-largest entertainment conglomerate. Any debt of gratitude you feel DC comics owes you for reading their material is illusory and sadly misplaced.

So, any backlash against this cover can't really be about enacting corporate change. The outraged parties got lucky this time around; they appealed to an artist inclined to take their pleas to heart, but I think what he managed to give them was their comfort. What I hear in the bulk of these arguments is a desire to get back to a utopian period in the history of superhero comics, but this cover undermines that mission. It was a time when heroes never lost their battles, when the bad guys weren't too upsetting, when a reader could open a comic and be sure that they wouldn't be confronted by anything that challenged them, made them squirm a little, made them doubt that law enforcement personnel were anything less that paragons of virtue or that the government was anything other than wholeheartedly devoted to the greater good. It was a time when comics built up hope in a reader, wrapped them a blanket of comforting narrative tropes and banality and let them know that everything would be okay. That is the kind of comics scene which this cover works against, and it must be pulled from the shelves and made an example of so that we can return to the golden era of...

The Comics Code.

Maybe you've heard of it? That asinine piece of legislature in the mid-1950s that gutted the mainstream industry, tying the hands of creators and forbidding them to write anything other than moralizing propaganda that fostered children's blind trust in the ethical authority of the state. I can't seem to shift my perspective on this cover to allow myself to see it as anything short of foreboding.

Alright, let's wrap this up. I want to address a couple of other internet articles here quickly. Bleeding Cool posted a great interview with Albuquerque in which the artist makes his position and his motivation for pulling the cover quite clear. He's eloquent and smart about it, which is refreshing. I can't say I agree with all of what he says, namely that, "A series aimed at the teenage female audience should not have a cover like this." Oh? Is it going to be too much for them to see one of their heroes confronted by the same oppressive, violent garbage they're going to have to deal with from men for the rest of their lives? That'd be terrible, wouldn't it? Can't have that.

I'm writing this largely in response to a pair of excellent blog posts by Adam Gorham. Adam wrote the first one in response to the cover debacle, and upon reading it I pitched some raw ideas at him on Twitter, to which he responded with the second post. I'm gonna pull a couple quotes from that second post, but you should go read both of them; they're short, and worth it. Adam, responding to my "what if the story should be a problem?" argument, says,

"The problem I have with that argument is TKJ isn’t about Barbara Gordon. She’s made a victim in service of a plot that focuses on the characterization of three men. Her suffering is merely a plot motivator for them to duke it out." 

He goes on to quote another fellow, John Lewis, who says much the same thing and caps it off with the observation,

"Which isn't to say anything about how completely tone-deaf the cover is given the current Batgirl comic, which has gone to great lengths to establish Batgirl as a strong, resourceful, positive role model for female (and male!) fans." 

I've chewed on that for a while, so let me spit it out and say: what better way to show what a heroine like Barbara Gordon is worth and how far the industry has come than to reprise the horrors of The Killing Joke and have Batgirl emerge victorious through her own suffering. That's the story I hope to see under that cover. I'm not holding my breath or anything, but it'd be nice for a change, wouldn't it? To not pull any punches, to have the Joker enter the scene as vile and demeaning as ever, and to have this strong, resourceful role-model for the up-and-coming generation of modern women stand up to that violation, defeat it, and emerge the stronger for it. Hiding from the cover is not the answer; facing down our demons is.

Electricomics - The Zine

In my earlier post on Electricomics, in which I reported on the Thought Bubble panel that I'd attended, I mentioned the zine I'd picked up from the Electriccrew at their table there. The booklet's available on  Alan Moore's online store, but it's likely that they're nearly out of stock. I've been asked if I could share the zine digitally, so I scanned it for your reading pleasure: an introduction to the Electricomics agenda, some wicked great art from Colleen Doran, an interview by Alison Gazzard, and a short comic about comics by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. Enjoy!

(This publication can also be accessed here?e=12419341/10540340)

Electricomics - Revelations From Thought Bubble

"Not so much pushing the envelope of comicbook storytelling as folding it up to make a nice hat."

If you've been following the Electricomics project at all, you've probably realized by now what a strange beast it is: hard research, solid comics theory, coding and programming, all addressing the public in the sultry and whimsical tones of every comics reader's favourite British warlock and mall santa, Alan Moore. I didn't know much of anything, really, about Electricomics until last weekend's Thought Bubble comic art festival in Leeds, where I was able to attend a panel hosted by five members of the Electricrew (not my word): Mitch Jenkins, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Leah Moore, John Reppion, and Pete Hogan. The infamous Mr. Moore himself wasn't there, as will surprise exactly none of his fans; a good portion of that infamy is the man's reputation as a recluse. What he did send along as a token of his involvement was 500 pre-signed "zines", stapled 14-page A5 booklets containing some gorgeous art by Colleen Doran, an exclusive interview with Moore, and a new comic about digital comics written and illustrated by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey.

Not a bad companion for my morning cuppa

The panel set out to answer some unresolved questions for those in attendance about what exactly it was that Electricomics is attempting to do. I suspect I was one of the least informed people in the hall, having only read (so far as I can recall) this article which seemed to revel in the ambiguity of the information available in the days immediately following the project's press release...

"almost all of the information is coming from a press release, which tells us Electricomics is “an app that is both a comic book and an easy-to-use open source toolkit,” before focusing on the app, then abruptly telling us “Electricomics will be a 32-page showcase with four very different original titles.” By the end of the press release, you can probably piece together that we’re talking about a self-published anthology that will be released on the app, also called Electricomics. Even then, we’re told that Leah Moore, Alan’s daughter, “will edit the project.” Presumably, this means the comic called Electricomics, not the app — which the previous paragraph was talking about."(Sequart)

So, yeah. That's what we had to work with.

The biggest bit of new information to come out of the panel at Thought Bubble, or at least what stuck with me the most, is that this is not a commercial venture. It's an academic one. All the money for Electricomics is coming from the Digital Research and Development Fund for the Arts (something I would have known if I'd read their website), and as the project's press release explains, "As a publicly funded research and development project, Electricomics will be free to explore the possibilities of the comic medium, without the constraints of the industry". Because I'm a nerd for this kind of thing, I was stoked about the scholarly possibilities for this platform when I still thought we were being told this is gonna be Alan Moore's Comixology knock-off. So I almost wept with joy when I realized that a) Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, an incredibly sharp theorist (and cartoonist) specializing in the mechanics of digital comics is part of their development team, and b) that because the project is grant-funded they will be producing detailed documentation of the entire process, success, problems, solutions, the whole shebang. It's going to make great reading someday.

Those of you picturing Alan Moore hunched over a computer workstation writing code with his beard nearly hiding the keyboard, stop it. Don't be ridiculous; that's what he has code demons for (No, seriously, a shed full of 'em. It's in the zine.). Mr. Moore may not be a wizard of the tech variety, but it seems his self-proclaimed alienation from modern forms of media has allowed to conceive this project relatively unpolluted by the endeavours that precede it. He doesn't know Comixology, Madefire, or Manga Studio. He knows comics. That's something that was made crystal clear through the course of this panel, the idea that, if you could distill from the form the Essence of Comics, then that would be the driving technology behind this project. That's what a couple top theorists, legendary writers (did I mention Garth Ennis?), and hotshot programmers are doing with a bundle of government money: not an exercise in visual FX, motion graphic, music, flashinglight and pretty colours, but attempting to take the narrative structural and spatial freedom of a digital workspace and make it understandable and accessible to you through...an app.

Which is going to come to you in two parts, apparently: Electricomics and Electricosmos. The former is a creative suite, a toolset with which you can make, well, comics. We're not entirely sure yet what all the tools are going to look like, what kind of canvas you'll have to work with, but the idea is (as I understand it) if you can conceive of the idea, and it can be done as a comic, then you can make that comic here. Which leaves rather a lot of possibilities. Some people are getting hung up on the "page" issue; namely, if this isn't just a scan-your-physical-comic-and-make-it-digital-here deal, but a born digital creation platform with infinite canvas, then why is Moore announcing a 32-page comic released along with the app? The only answer I've got is...it's not that simple. There's an excellent essay posted on the Electricomics site which I highly recommend reading, co-written by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Alison Gazzard, concerned with the concept of digital "pages":

A useful definition of the page comes from Charles Hatfield (2009), who observes that:
‘The “page” (or planche, as French scholars have it, a term detonating the total design unit rather than the physical page on which it is printed) functions both as sequence and as object, to be seen and read in both linear and nonlinear, holistic fashion.’ 

[...]In the early stages of the Electricomics project, we’re in the process of transitioning from traditional page to digital planche. In this transition we’ve observed a tension between the comics creators, who take a holistic view of the page, and the technology partners, who are keen to deconstruct the page into separate assets and mechanics that will need to be implemented in the toolset.

When it comes to comics theory, listen to the French.  And Charles Hatfield; he's a sharp dude. The gist of what's being said here is, let go of whatever you thought a page was, at least in a physical sense. There are going to people coming to this from webcomics backgrounds and from ink-and-paper background (like yours truly), and from what the team's saying the tools should feel natural to all of us. Knowing Daniel and the research I've seen from him in the last month, they're covering their bases over there, and we've got nothing to worry about.

Join the Electricrew; pick up some badges over at Orphans of the Storm

Now the second part of all this is Electricosmos, which is a little bit less defined even than Electricomics. It's the publication and social network platform into which the toolset feeds. You make comics in the app, and you share them out...here. In this space, which doesn't have any rules as yet, or an interface, or an idea of exactly how right to your intellectual property are going work. They're working on it, though; if there's one dude you can bet your soul on being picky about IP laws and comics, it's Moore. There's a lot of work being done, they said, around contracts, given the online collaborative nature of the space they're building. Someone asked a question about content vetting, and got a reply that said "we're working on it, we'll get back to you in seven years." Not in those exact words, but that's the sentiment: the team is treading on such unfamiliar terrain at this point that they simply can't answer questions regarding how their network of multiple millions of creator-owned online comics is going to work when they haven't put the first tool into beta yet. The release of Electricosmos to the general market is a long way down the road. And it may never happen. It's a research project, not a commercial enterprise; failure is an entirely viable option. As Moore states in the interview found in the zine:

We may end up creating something that isn't technically a comic at all but that's not a bad thing.

Dare I say...Nemo?

Visit the project at www.electricomics.net

New Websites and Research Plans

It was never my plan to abandon this blog and all you wonderful readers entirely, but unfortunately, that seems to have happened. I just don't have the time to maintain an online presence in five places at once, and this blog has been pushed to a back burner as I've focused on posting daily visual content to Off the Sketchpad. I don't know how many of you are following that blog. I bought a new domain and everything for the site, and now it's starting to feel like my internet home, at least more than it did. You can now visit the site, and keep tabs on my various projects, new pieces, and whatever beer I'm drinking as I read new additions to my bookshelf, at www.ajkomics.ca.

That's not the only new domain announcement I have! Clearly, I've been away far too long... Sacred & Sequential has launched our new website at www.sacredandsequential.org! We're all very excited about this. I had a draft blog post from way back when sitting, unfulfilled, that read,"even if the site doesn't look like much yet, we are developing more content" and now Voila! the site is full of content. A. David Lewis, the mastermind behind Sacred & Sequential, has done a superb job of gathering religion-and-comics-focused articles together into a formidable archive on the site. You can find all our stuff in one place: information on the ISIS death fatwa issued against The 99 creator Dr. Naif Al Mutawa; an interview with Dr. Christine Hoff Kraemer concerning Alan Moore's spiritual philosophy, her interactions with the famed comics writer and Magus, and the "gap in Moore scholarship"; and news on courses in the areas of religion and comics (preferably overlapping), such this one being offered by Dr. Jeffrey Brackett at Ball State University. All this and much, much more. Suffice it to say I have a lot of reading to do to get myself caught up.

In other news, I've pulled out of the 3rd global conference on The Graphic Novel at Oxford. Which is something I never thought I'd hear myself say, that I was letting go of the opportunity to present research at Oxford, yet here I am. It's the downside of being both a student and an independent scholar; when an $1100 conference opportunity comes your way, you either get a grant or you don't go. So that's a shame. BUT...the research planned for that project will continue, and will pick up speed when I return from my year abroad and can settle in again with proper resources and all of my Digital Humanities comrades here in Kelowna. For those of you in the dark, the plans to which I'm referring involve encoding Canadian "Golden Age" comics, the black & white classics known fondly as the "Canadian Whites", using John Walsh's Comic Book Markup Language. Initially, those plans involved only one title, cartoonist Adrian Dingle's Nelvana of the Northern Lights, recently collected and reprinted in a gorgeous hardcover volume by Canadian comics historians Rachel Richey and Hope Nicholson. Hope and Rachel were wonderfully supportive when I pitched them my idea back in March. Now, with Rachel working on a reprint of Johnny Canuck and Hope tackling the classic Brok Windsor, my idea is...evolving. I'm stepping away from it for about a year while I study in England, and you'll see a new and more fully developed iteration of it sometime down the road. So many ideas, so many grant applications to write...

I think that brings us at least somewhat up to date. I'll try not to be AFK for so long this time. I'm sure I can think of something else to write about. There's always something.

Cheers!
Asher