Why Comics?

7/19/2019
By Alex Ness

A rather long time ago I was told by a professor that serious minds need more than comic books to grow. I didn't disagree that we need more than comics, but I absolutely disagreed with the tone that came along with the dismissal of comics, as a whole. The final paper in his class earned me a bad grade.  Over time I've received lots of bad grades, so I don't really care. I've no doubt my intellectual refusal to abandon comics influenced his capricious grading of my work. I might not be a genius, but I had a friend who taught in university at the time, he read my work in question, and said, "There is nothing unscholarly about the piece. You chose a subject matter that challenged the reader, but probably, the reader who gave the grade wasn't interested in going beyond his preconceived ideas, both of your writing and his areas of interest and taste." It was still a class I got a B in, but, in almost all scenarios, the quality was there, it just didn't fit his paradigms. 

When in grad school I suggested to a professor, by using the mechanics of a RPG we might get the students to think like a character during a first contact event. I was told, RPGs or D&D as he referred to it, is for weak minds who need tawdry entertainment.  He then added, people who like them also like comic books, and low brow movies.  Then said, I need to be more serious in my thinking.

Well, I think both professors were/are wrong.  Even if I don't dispute the concept that most comics in the long timeline of their existence, weren't aimed at serious minds, it doesn't mean there have not been any comics created and aimed at them.  Comics are sequential art, paper based films, and might be created to entertain.  But my favorite stories of all time are far from superfluous or silly.  And even those few that could be perceived as silly, every could use a silly laugh now and then.  People who don't like to laugh need to go take a giant shit.

But I think more than just taste differences, people who hate comics, or just don't think they are anything worth reading, don't know how the art form has evolved.  They perhaps don't understand how reading words and pictures are not childish behaviors or mindsets, it is simply the medium's conventions.  I have read a comic with no words, so, if you prefer to think of comics as having art, it is art that tells a story by presenting it all in sequential pictures. I know no one in my present life who hates comics like the professors did, but I have no doubt their outlook is shared still by many.  That's fine.  My mind is as serious as it requires.  Which is more so than most, I am willing to bet.

I might be wrong, but everyone else probably knows what is right

For every inarticulate moron who despises people who are not their own same skin color, not their orientation, not their idea of gender, there are people who are actually worse, they are articulate and have all of those horrible triggers.  I was angered when a retailer who supported my work, and most of the creative work from many if not all of the local talents, fired someone for not sharing the sensitivity towards others that the present societal norms demand.  For me it is about differences in outlook not changing overnight and a need to be sensitive to both ends of the issue in question. To me it was sacrificing a quality person because he was slow to change.  There is a concept that I've been told about. I am not the originator of it. The person was a numbers/stats guru who called it "statistical quickening".  Two quick points, that may have been a word he just invented to explain to the moody illogical poet his concept. And, prior to this what I was made to think quickening was, had to do with a male organ when it is happy.  Apparently when social change happens, it isn't over night, it just feels like that. Imagine that it requires 2/3rds of a public opinion to cause a social change.  If you have a globe and it spins perfectly, it would be a state of opinion to be 50/50.  If you have 100 units, with 50 on each side it spins, there is no great movement, of any sort, there is stasis.  But as events change the topic, more units are added to the side that represents a new idea.  By the time social change has happened, you've shifted little by little, until there is a wobble, and eventually, the wobble leads to the globe upending and an broken circle, where used to be a perfect circle.

Anytime a slow unseen change in itself causes a change, little by little views change, without most people realizing it, and then, in the span of one or two months of time, what took 50 years of effort seems to change in 2 months.  If the change happens in this way, I promise there will be people left behind just by virtue of the speed of change.  There will be people who never change their views.  Those people who are offended by the change either have to leave the social grouping, or they will become hardcore anti change cause warriors.  Some will fight, others speak, but when society has an upheaval and disruption due to a massive wave of social change, you are not dealing with a rebellion, you are dealing with a counter rebellion.  Since the counter rebellion is based upon keeping the society that is changing, the bitter, refuse to change, warriors might be more aggressive and more willing to fight to the end, because if they lose they are lost forever. 

I think we have a world that experienced numerous changes during the years of President Obama.  The first was the ultimate arrival of blacks as being equal to whites with the election of Obama.  Then there would be a variety of change in the realms of LGBTIQ being recognized, acknowledged, even to the extend of gay marriage arriving as being legitimate.  Lastly, there were numerous jobs opened to,  education opportunities for, and equal treatment of women.  All of the change, combined with the potential of greater change upon the horizon, led to two great things.  There was a feeling on the part of those who were in favor of change, that there was momentum, and it could not be stopped.  And there were those who voted for Trump, whatever they might have believed, because he promised to stop most of the momentum.  Momentum is an important concept here.  The quickening makes it feel unstoppable.  I think this partially contributed to the hatred of Trump, beyond the usual product of the divide in America.

How the statistical quickening functions in the changes in Nerd media is that by simple mathematics and changed social movements, no retailer could ever hold the line and keep the old gang in power.  The power of capitalism in regards to social change is really simple.  If you say we are going to ignore the groups who now have momentum, those groups will go to whatever retailer does not ignore them.  And by losing sales, losing their simple math of how to survive, they will change. The grudging but perhaps eventual complete adoption of the momentum groups, will add weight to the power of change, and this change that has happened will feel overnight. But it wasn't.  Gays and Lesbians openly fought for rights since the 1960s. Blacks have struggled for their rightful equality since they were stolen as slaves.  And women have been fighting the inequality since creation/ evolution/ origins sans reason. But fighting for the cause would not have happened without certain firsts, and Obama was the first that meant the most.  Everything changed after him.

A result of change has seen new loud angry people with access to blogs and public airwaves who choose to fight.  Many people, almost all of them bitter about the changes in society, write that Transgenders are freaks, and will write about them and their problems with absolute glee.  Because women are normal.  Blacks, for most people, are normal.  Gays are becoming more normal.  But Transgenders are people who visibly represent the change, and they are hated most of all for that.  They are not the rightful target.  The rightful target for the hatred of transgenders is the concept that humanity has come to a realization that humans are born with certain rights, certain dignity, and certain abilities, and that nothing can be done to stop that natural flow. The dissent from the mainstream happens from many different sources.  These are some examples of the dissent.

Author Germaine Greer is particular virulent in her debate against Transgender people. 

Vox Day speaks about race, is unashamed of the concept of "white culture".  He might be intelligent, he might be able, and he clearly is articulate.  I believe that he wants to hold to the world that once existed, not the one that does now.  I don't see him in the fully evil context others tell me has to be there.  But I am concerned enough, regardless of sincere caveats. 
 
YourRGPisshit was a blogging site that was carried out by someone who clearly hated people who were so called others.  But in gaming this is a more vile issue.  Vox Day is a writer, he fights outside of comics, or games, he is interested in fiction, but speaks about his views.  The writer on YourRpgisShit hid behind anonymous status.  And tried to suggest that Transgenders, LGBTQI, Women and various ethnic people had no right, no idea what real gaming could be.

I've written in a voice here that isn't aimed at emotional support for the mainstream or the counter revolution.  I think there needs to be nuance on all great debates. But ... if we are this great society where democracy allows the best idea to rise up because of the marketplace of ideas works, we need to talk.  We need to accept that some don't change, that some don't want change, they like breaking things... and some believe in change, we need to discuss it. The mantra I heard growing up was that deep down in everyone is the same. Well bullshit. We are nowhere near the same.  But we are all the same in deserving dignity, respect, and fairness.  We don't do that either, but we should.  I always knew gay marriage would break the hold religious values had upon society.  Not because of gays, but because as Americans we tend to want, at least, things to be fair.  And it became clear to me, you could not deny other Americans the right to marry, whatever their gender.  Hell, I was asked if we should then allow polygamy.  What the hell do I care?  I can't make one wife happy, let alone more than that.  So how will we fix things?  I think society, if the cause is right, fixes it.  And while I am not a great big capitalist, there are consequences, financially, from not doing the right thing. We just need to be aware that everyone doesn't change as easily as others do, nor for the same reasons.

And the employee who was slow to change? I've never seen more women and people of color and people of different orientations, genders, and outlooks at the store he was fired from.  I might not always see the big picture.  The big picture is, the employee was making known his refusal to change,  and by doing that people were going to go elsewhere.  I was correct in saying that the person is a moral decent person, and I know he is a good person, and had encyclopedic knowledge of comics, he'll be missed, for those good portions.  He won't be missed for the public face of that store.  He was telling them by his words that everyone wasn't welcome.  That was not something you want for your company.  Anywhere.

Mid Summer Fantasy Readathon

MORE FANTASY

 
Click on all images for original size

It's odd, because it seems that every time I mention getting emails people send me emails saying how hard it was finding my email.  It is kind of the chicken and egg scenario. To make it easier, my email is AlexanderNess63@gmail.com.  I could tell you the email of my partner Kurt Wilcken, but if I did I'd have to kill you thereafter.  So we'll leave that for now.

I received quite a number of emails regarding the last article about fantasy as a genre.  More than anything the emailers asked very specifically, what are some books featuring short stories, limited series or collections as opposed to many volume length sagas, perhaps a response to Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time length series.  However good the Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones are, and I am saying nothing about quality, we live in a world where we seem to be migrating towards 140 character tweets, video clips, texting, and our focus is narrowed. So, this article will show some collected works that are self contained, satisfying, and offer more if you wish to pursue such.  This isn't saying these are the greatest works of fiction in the fantasy genre, just that, if you go to Amazon or Ebay, or a paperback exchange, you can probably find tons of these books, at a reasonable price, and you'll find a reward for your reading of good to great entertainment.Of course your mileage may vary.

One of the common lessons for writers is make the readers love or hate your characters, because they'll see the world through those eyes.  And I think the best of these works shown have great characters.  I also think that in our own lives, which are the source of knowledge and experience,  the best stories might have thoroughly despicable horribly flawed humans who would lead to disgust and disdain, if their story were told.  And yet, it isn't our victories or defeats that reveal our character, I think it is entirely possible to tell a story of epic quality without great characters.  I think we all have potential heroism or evil within us, and any great story will have those qualities.

MARGARET WEIS AND TRACY HICKMAN
THE DRAGONLANCE SAGA and DARK SWORD TRILOGY

This might be the most difficult and expensive of the collections to find, but I've seen all of these books at bookstores, for about $15 each.  Good luck finding them if you decide to try them out!

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman  are talented authors, their greatest talent, from my reading, is composing a work that has tangible world and with a sense of history, geography, as well as heroism, as well as villainous behavior. More so, while it didn't move me for reasons of such, the DragonLance stories could be viewed in a context of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons statistics, and they can be played using the various game campaigns and manuals to reproduce.  I am not someone who ever tried to play the iconic characters from fiction in role playing adventures, since for me the point is writing your own characters.  DragonLance's world of Krynn possessed unique races, legends, lore, and worth exploring.  While over 150 novels have come out for the series, finding and or buying the three omnibus books would give you a healthy amount of tales.  The Dark Sword trilogy is an interesting story that features a magical world, a magicless man, and the prophecies how the one without magic will change or destroy the world.  It was a fun read.

ELIZABETH MOON
GIRD AND PAKSINARRION

The greatest aspect of the characters of Elizabeth Moon is found in the inner qualities they possess, and the military realism of the setting, wherein the characters are forced to fight and perhaps die for others.  The world she creates here is fully realized, and the characters she creates have motives and reasons for all they do that are consistent, and thorough.  The world of Gird and Paks feels real, so every action that takes place has an impact that is felt by the reader, as if their own world is the one experienced.

DENNIS MCKIERNAN
MITHGAR

I've read numerous snobbish reviews of the Iron Tower trilogy of Dennis McKiernan, and most say nothing more than "this is an epic quest such as Tolkien and others might have composed".  Well, for me, those are false in aim, and are of a sort of review that is unworthy of the work.  In no way did McKiernan suggest the concept was original.  But it was original in adding pure and true emotional energy to the epic clash between good and evil.  The two omnibus suggested for your quest have two distinct, powerful, fun quests. Beyond the two omnibuses suggested McKiernan has many books that fill his world of Mithgar, and while I have not read all of them, all that I have read are fun, and worth the time I'd spent reading them.

URSULA K. LE GUIN  THE EARTHSEA 

As I've shared before, I am a sucker for great cover art. The original art for the EarthSea books moved me, and that artist's work was used for books that were ancillary to the central series.  While I was not immediately excited about the work as much as the art on the outside of the book, I was stunned by the depth of characters, Le Guin's amazing ability to create a setting, and create real feeling events in their life made this series an epic of quality.  There have been attempts to adapt it, but it was never good.  While some books can't be adapted for the idiosyncratic aspects of their totality, Earthsea wasn't about a single character, it wasn't about a water world or medieval fantasy setting.  It was a beautiful 3 book length poem, without rhyme or form.  It was beauty in words.

ANNE MCCAFFREY 
DRAGONS OF PERN

If you are fascinated by dragons, if you like strong women lead characters, and if you like worlds that are similar to our own but composed in an entirely different fashion than our own, Anne McCaffrey's work should inspire you. Although it is rarely spoken of, the commonly held tropes of fantasy are rather limited in Pern.  The writing has been referred to as lyrical and layered in soft, sensuality without it being erotic or sexual.  The world of Pern possesses medieval era towns and fortress cities, anachronistic technology, and four distinct groups of humans.  Dragons are the power, but there are humans who can control them.  There is a complexity of story, where allegiance and control are a dance, and all inhabitants of the world face similar threats, despite the particular sides of conflict.

R.A. SALVATORE
DRIZZT DO'URDEN

I like the work of R.A. Salvatore.  He has a range of skills that allows him to depict action, show emotions, express romance, and creates characters that resonate.  The major character he has created is the lead throughout many of his works is a dark elf, talented and dangerous, from the Underdark Realms where evil and darkness is the constant.  Drizzt Do'Urden is not a hulking beast of a warrior, he is fast, agile, and almost dancer like in his enormous grace.  He also is moral, in an exceedingly immoral world, and from a place where morals are counted as weakness.  There is a lesser dealt with context of how a dark elf exists in a world of prejudice towards those of his kind.  However, the issue there is that the vast majority of dark elves are completely evil.  So, this aspect of the character's story has to be exceptionally nuanced, because if you are the sole exception, or nearly so, it isn't a stereotype held against a race, but a common trait.  The omnibus collections mean you can find a work, read a work that presents a character who inspires, excites, and deserves being in the pantheon of great characters of fantasy.

MICHAEL MOORCOCK
ELRIC AND CORUM

I could tell you how great of a writer Michael Moorcock is, and I think it could be easily proven to be true.  But he writes characters that do not resonate with me.  However, if you are moved by people without those danged morals or haughty high goals, he writes for you.  I do like comic book adaptations of his work, so, I think there is something in his work that is perfectly interesting, and the characters are facing a higher enemy than simply angry men.  Elric is the final monarch of a dying race, and his heart, though he wishes to be more than a member of race of extreme high levels of development in magic and court ritual.  He is unable to move beyond because he is a tragic prince, fated to kill, destroy, and cause the end of an age.  This weighs upon him deeply.  Corum is a member of a hunted people, and he goes through torture and horrors while fighting those who destroyed his people.  All of the characters of Moorcock have a great canvas upon which they are painted.  For me, the stories are great, the characters are very powerfully written, I guess I just like morals and honor. 

LORD DUNSANY
TIME AND GODS

Anyone reading Lord Dunsany and liking it probably loves the English language.  He told stories with a lush language, rich in detail, and concepts that were idealistic in its moral heights, and demonic in the evil when faced or found.  I can say for me, his works are book length poems, with characters that challenge the common hero. They have flaws, but more so, they have flaws that should mean they never are able to rise above and defeat the foe.  Time and Gods is a title that reflects the powers we do not command, that affect every life upon the planet.  His mythic tales move me spiritually, and even when poetry is not able to move my heart, Dunsany tales lift me above the horizon.  As with every author, your mileage might vary.

FRITZ LEIBER
FAFHRD GRAY MOUSER

I included Fritz Leiber's works because they utilize short stories and delightful tales.  But I've read that there are modern readers who think them sexist, and that his women characters are ornaments rather than fully able humans. I can see that. However, I read stories from many eras and think them all products of the era they were written in.  For what they are Leiber's characters are fully wrought, funny, interesting, and worthy of being read.  A giant of a man who has skills more than simply of that of a warrior, and small male friend, a master thief, and charismatic sort, who is a great swordsman.  These two lost souls meet and become strongest of friends and allies. Lankhmar is an ancient city within which they explore, scandal, discovery and adventure.  It is filled with secret cults, undead beasts, and the most dangerous of sorcerers.  If you like great writing and can forgive the limitations, I recommend Leiber's work.

ROBERT E. HOWARD
CONAN AND ASSORTED SHORT STORIES

Robert E. Howard is probably in my top five authors of all time. While I realize his work isn't seen by many high minded critics as great literature, few writers, let alone any of those same critics have created nearly so memorable a group of characters.   There are more than one collections of Conan, while he wrote numerous stories only a few were of Conan.  His short stories are fabulous, cover horror, western, historical, fantasy, and even boxing and big game hunt.  He has a way that is direct, perfect in action descriptions, and resonates I think in ways that we often think are not modern.

RPGs changed your entertainment world

Roleplaying games have a relatively short history, in terms of books, dice, paper and pencils.  While many give people like Gary Gygax of TSR fame most of the credit, that would be wrong.  There were others like Dave Arneson, M.A.R. Barker, Ken St. Andre, who all created worlds and rules to experience them, similar towards, superior to, perhaps they were even independent of contact with Gygax.  I am not attacking Gary Gygax, what he did was absorb all of the ideas he came in contact with and place them in a context that was to become the template for all games thereafter.  However changed, they had an origin, and usually were variations upon his publishing product. *1 (I am fortunate to have interviewed both Gary Gygax and Ken St. Andre.  While the Gygax interview was lost when PopThought was hacked, the St. Andre interview is still on this site.)  From the middle 1970s companies such as TSR, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, White Wolf, Game Designer's Workshop, Game Workshop, R. Talsorian Games, Steve Jackson Games, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Atlas Games and many more contributed to providing an enormous choice of systems, settings, and games.  Games such Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, Runequest, Ars Magica, Chivalry and Sorcery, Arduin, Talislanta, Empire of the Petal Throne, Jorune, and many more offered worlds and systems to explore, conquer, build for players of all sorts of interests.

Some will point to an origin of the concepts of fantasy, in the original literature of such, as found with J.R.R. Tolkien, Roger Zelazny, Lord Dunsany, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Michael Moorcock, and of course many more.  While these are all great writers, with impact upon the concept of fantasy, they weren't placing their work in a concept of how to play or live or adventure in their worlds.  If you assume all fiction is in various ways open to development and open to being playable, perhaps it might be, it is still not the same as having a game to adapt such fiction for use.

You might ask what is the big deal with this all, it is just a game, right?  Well, no.  It isn't.  The concepts of all these game creators and world designers weren't just one and done, played and left behind.  They inspired much of the fantasy RPGs on computer and video games.  Even if the games have internal algorithms to decide outcomes, they use the same concepts that the original game creators used.  Knowing all this might be simply extra facts to you.  You might have use of it, or probably don't.  That isn't important.  What is important, is that in this throw away society we ignore those who created what we wish to play, read, watch, listen to, and perhaps do so so we won't think about the cost of being a creative talent. *2

I am also pointing this out because society tends to look at things backward.  Examples would be, the movie Andromeda Strain is just like Outbreak.  Or, the Spartans remind me of Nazis.  But that is, of course, backwards.  And yet, it happens all the time.  Even more oddly to me, I've met born again Christians who tell me playing Dungeons and Dragons is evil, or from the devil. Yet, they watch fantasy movies, read fantasy books, and play video games based upon the concepts that Dungeons and Dragons used, and popularized. If you are playing a fantasy adventure game, in video or computer game form, think about the facts of what went into your being able to play it.

Lastly I suggest that without the doors opened by fantasy RPGs to the common person, we might never have had the film series of Lord of the Rings, nor perhaps Game of Thrones.  It bears consideration, what effect the power of creative role playing has had throughout all media.

1- The Interview with Ken St. Andre
2- Mass interview about Gary Friedrich deals with Marvel

WHAT IF War Comics, Updated and Revised edition

I was asked by someone following the release of the recent two articles here featuring comic book dystopias and utopias, if there were comics that asked WHAT IFs about World War Two.  This then is a reprint of an article, but updated to reflect more books to consider.

As a historian I have always had an interest in the conflicts of humankind.  War is savage, brutal, terrible, and it is something that you cannot look away from.  It involves us all, and if we watch as wars happen and have no passion or sorrow, we really have no heart.  One of the ways of measuring the impact of wars, is to demonstrate what would have happened had the event in question not had the result that in reality it did.  What if George Washington had been killed at the battle of Trenton.  What if America never entered the First World War?  What if King Harold was not shot throw the eye and died at the battle of Hastings?  Every change has an effect down the line.  What Ifs, or, Alternative History allows the viewer, from scholar down to casual reader, to see the importance of what actually happened. World War Two was a savage, world wide war, that saw the deaths of more than 60 million humans.

In Storming Paradise by Chuck Dixon and Butch Guice, DC Comics, present a story of enormous change.  First the Manhattan Project fails.  Then the Americans are forced to invade Japan, and find a country that is stubborn and unyielding.  There is no doubt that the atomic bombs were horrific.  But the consequences of failure of the Manhattan Project allows the reader to see how horrible the invasion and result would surely be.

In the Avatar Press series UBER by Kieron Gillen and Canaan White, the end of the war is seen within the grasp of the Allies, when a final wonder weapon is unleashed.  This wonder weapon is not a missile, a giant tank, or new bomb.  It is people who are imbued with super powers, and they are unleashed upon the forces of the Allies, to enormous grievous loss to Allied troops.  The only answer, to the Allies, is that they must develop a similar program and fight fire with fire.

Roy Thomas's Anthem is another superhero story, with a setting of the streets and sewers of America, where the super heroes had to flee at first to escape the Nazi juggernaut as it invaded the US, and succeeded.  Roy Thomas's other comic work often featured WWII, and for my money it was magnificent.  But in this case, sadly, Roy Thomas was given artists who, if talented, were so raw, that much of the time the story was lost for the lack of art skills.  The concept however, and the setting is worthy of being read.  Although I suspect it is hard to find, and won't be expensive, it is a work that leaves the reader both intrigued and frustrated.

Luftwaffe 1946 is by Ted Nomura and Ben Dunn, through Antarctic Press.  The work is somewhat less serious than it should be, but, this work shows the evolution of warfare should the Nazis have held out, and the world not be finished with war, either in Europe or Asia/Pacific.  The fears of how the Nazis might explode, innovating new and deadlier technology is only made worse by the realization that the Holocaust would have been over, not due to liberation, but by completing their endeavor to destroy the Jews.  I liked this series, and rarely had issues with anything technical. 

Ministry of Space from Image Comics, sees the war in Europe end differently than in reality.  This difference, which I do not wish to spoil, save to say, somehow the Nazi scientists are recovered by the British rather than the Americans, and the British use this technological explosion to become the first nation into space, and beyond.  The writing by Warren Ellis is smooth, and very much able to tell a story that is less ingenious as it is seamless.  The art, that of humans in the military and the machinery of the Ministry of Space, is amazingly drawn, by Chris Weston.  With his penchant for knowing how to depict military machinery and detail every aspect of the world, allows the reader to suspend every ounce of disbelief.  While some reviewers found the end of the work somewhat glib and heavy handed, it worked for me, because the verisimilitude that had been created.  All in all, this work is among my favorites of all time.  Your mileage may vary.

Royals: Masters of War was an exciting, if limited story about the super humans who won World War  Two.  It doesn't really break new ground of any sort, but it is entirely worth reading.

World War 2.2 asks a very important question, if Hitler had died at the start of the Second World War would the Germans have stopped the war, would they have gone on to fight essentially the same war, or would the lack of Hitler in fact improve the result for the Germans, and against the well being of the rest of Europe?