Isegoria

Batman and Dostoyevsky — together at last:

Have you ever wondered what the great Russian novel, Crime and Punishment, would be like if the protagonist were Batman instead of that whining fool, Raskolnikov?

Wonder no more.

This re-imagining of the morality classic is brought to you by R. Sikoryak and presented in full over at the Again with the Comics blog.

As AWTC author, Brian Hughes, says, “This marriage of Classic Russian Literature and the Caped Crusader of Gotham also serves as further proof, if any were needed, that everything is better with Batman.”

In Japan, Ink, Daniel H. Pink looks inside the Manga-Industrial Complex, where amateurs self-publish comics known as dojinshi — and the big publishers let them use their popular characters, under an implicit agreement, or anmoku no ryokai:

However, because permitting — let alone encouraging — dojinshi runs afoul of copyright law, the agreement remains implicit: The publishers avert their eyes, and the dojinshi creators resist going too far. This anmoku no ryokai business model helps rescue the manga industrial complex in at least three ways.

First, and most obviously, it’s a customer care program. The dojinshi devotees are manga’s fiercest fans. “We’re not denying the viability or importance of intellectual property,” says Kazuhiko Torishima, an executive at the publishing behemoth Shueisha. “But when the numbers speak, you have to listen.”

Second, as Takeda put it at Super Comic City, “this is the soil for new talent.” While most dojinshi creators have no aspirations to become manga superstars, several artists have used the comic markets to springboard into mainstream success. The best example is Clamp, which began as a circle of a dozen college women selling self-published work at comics markets in the Kansai region. Today, Clamp’s members are manga rock stars; they have sold close to 100 million books worldwide.

Third, the anmoku no ryokai arrangement provides publishers with extremely cheap market research. To learn what’s hot and what’s not, a media company could spend lots of money commissioning polls and conducting focus groups. Or for a few bucks it could buy a Super Comic City catalog and spend two days watching 96,000 of its best customers browse, gossip, and buy in real time. These settings often provide early warnings of the shifting fan zeitgeist. For instance, a few years ago several circles that had been creating dojinshi for the series Prince of Tennis switched to Bleach, an indication that one title was falling out of favor and another was on the rise. “The publishers are seeing the market in action,” Ichikawa says. “They’re seeing the successes and the failures. They’re seeing the trends.”

Taking care of customers. Finding new talent. Getting free market research. That’s a pretty potent trio of advantages for any business. Trouble is, to derive these advantages the manga industry must ignore the law. And this is where it gets weird. Unlike, say, an industrial company that might increase profits if it skirts environmental regulations imposed to safeguard the public interest, the manga industrial complex is ignoring a law designed to protect its own commercial interests.

These Japanese manhole covers are so very, very Japanese.

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

Enjoy this Rare Bill Watterson Art — from before Calvin and Hobbes:

While a student at Ohio’s Kenyon College, Bill drew cartoons for the school newspaper The Kenyon Collegian and for the yearbook. Thanks to the generosity of Nat D., a schoolmate of Bill, here are scans of Bill’s work from that era.

The Wall Street Journal managed to get the extremely reclusive Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, to discuss David Michaelis’s new biography of Charles Schultz and The Grief That Made ‘Peanuts’ Good:

At that time, most of the strip went over my head, and I certainly had no understanding of how revolutionary “Peanuts” was or how it was changing the comics. “Peanuts” pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale — in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow. David Michaelis’s biography, “Schulz and Peanuts,” is an earnest and penetrating look at the man behind this comic-strip phenomenon. With new access to Schulz’s personal files, professional archives and family, Mr. Michaelis presents the fullest picture we have yet of the cartoonist’s life and personality.

Schultz was, apparently, a tortured artist:

Born in 1922, Schulz always held his parents in high regard, but they were emotionally remote and strangely inattentive to their only child. Schulz was shy and alienated during his school years, retreating from nearly every opportunity to reveal himself or his gifts. Teachers and students consequently ignored him, and Schulz nursed a lifelong grudge that so few attempted to draw him out or recognized his talent. His mother was bedridden with cancer during his high-school years, and she died long before he could prove himself to her — a source of endless regret and longing for him. As a young adult, he disguised his hurt and anger with a mild, deflecting demeanor that also masked his great ambition and drive.

Once he finally achieved his childhood dream of drawing a comic strip, however, he was able to expose and confront his inner torments through his creative work, making insecurity, failure and rejection the central themes of his humor. Knowing that his miseries fueled his work, he resisted help or change, apparently preferring professional success over personal happiness. Desperately lonely and sad throughout his life, he saw himself as “a nothing,” yet he was also convinced that his artistic ability made him special. An odd combination of prickly pride and utter self-abnegation characterizes many of his public comments.
[...]
Schulz’s fixation on his work was total, and his private life suffered as a result. Mr. Michaelis uncovers quite a bit of Schulz’s more personal tribulations. Schulz’s strong-willed and industrious first wife, Joyce, grew disgusted with his withdrawal, and she often treated him cruelly. As the marriage finally unraveled, Schulz had an unsuccessful affair, and he later broke up the marriage of the woman who became his second wife. Schulz’s life turned more peaceful after he remarried, but he never overcame the self-doubt and dread that plagued him. Work remained his only refuge. At the end, deteriorating health took away Schulz’s ability to draw the strip, a loss so crushing that it can only be considered merciful that he died, at age 77 in 2000, the very day his last strip was published.

He drew much of his material quite directly from his own life:

We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.

Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder’s commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but also to the fact that his musical genius is performed on a child’s toy (not unlike a serious artist drawing a comic strip). Schroeder’s fanaticism is ludicrous, and Lucy’s love is wasted. Schulz illustrates the conflict in his life, not in a self-justifying or vengeful manner but with a larger human understanding that implicates himself in the sad comedy. I think that’s a wonderfully sane way to process a hurtful world. Of course, his readers connected to precisely this emotional depth in the strip, without ever knowing the intimate sources of certain themes. Whatever his failings as a person, Schulz’s cartoons had real heart.

Jose Luis Calva of Mexico City is under arrest after performing some extremely thorough research for his horror novel, Cannibalistic Instincts:

An aspiring horror novelist was arrested after police discovered his girlfriend’s torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box, the city prosecutor’s spokesman said Thursday.

He told police he had boiled some of his girlfriend’s flesh but that he hadn’t eaten it — yet.

(A tip of my sombrero to Enrique.)

I’d been meaning to read The Circus of Dr. Lao for a few years now, and with Halloween on the way, I decided to pull it off the shelf and to move it to the top of the reading stack. I must say that it’s quite an unusual book, one that seems well ahead of its time in any number of ways.

A few of the reviews on Amazon ably make the point, like this review from Steven R. Dandois, ostensibly of Zothique:

File under “Apocalyptica Sardonicus”
Reading the other reviews here reminds me of the old saw about the blind men and the elephant — how one (feeling its legs) describes it as resembling a tree; one (feeling its trunk) describes it as like a rope; et cetera. The simple fact is you can’t experience this particular elephant unless you read it for yourself. It is truly sui generis.

As for the negative comments that some have lobbed at this book, I can only laugh bitterly and loudly. For the whole concept of the book is about a small-minded town that’s exposed to an act of real and genunine magic — and how the town misses the point utterly. They’re limited by their blinders, and perceive only that which can be easily categorized within their existing worldviews. Draw what parallels you may….

Be warned that despite its labelmates in the Bison series, this “Circus” has as much in common with William S. Burroughs as Edgar Rice… and psychedelic/anarchist philosopher Robert Anton Wilson owes this slim tome a debt of gratitude. (His “catalog” of characters and ideas at the back of his “Illuminatus! Trilogy” is an obvious homage to the similar catalog appendixed here.)

The “Circus” is luminous and lyrical, shifting gears from rhapsodic flights of fantasy to bitter and insightful jibes at humanity’s foibles. And it’s probably my all-time favorite book, ever. It invites and withstands re-reading after re-reading.

This review by Mark Shanks also hits its mark:

Amazingly bitter, cynical, and sardonic — I loved it!
Finney writes as though he had been possessed by the spirit of Ambrose Bierce, and to me, that’s a good thing. More of a short story than a novel (I last read it in the space of a single afternoon), “The Circus” shines light in many directions and is best appreciated after more than a single reading. Frankly, I’m astonished that it got published in the first place, and even more surprised that it here receives what amounts to a “Criterion Collection” sort of treatment, including reproductions of the illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff from the first edition.

The citizens of Abalone (plus a few visitors) are scathingly protrayed in amazingly understated passages. Presented with actual unicorns, satyrs, sea serpents, mermaids, and other “fabulous” creatures and miracles, hardly any of the townspeople can muster more than a yawn and a shrug. The ultimate spectacle, the sacrifice of a virgin to the giant bronze god of the rotten-to-the-core city of Woldercan, is absolutely a gem.

The use of several racial epithets does nothing to reflect on Finney — it doesn’t take a super-astute reader to understand Finney is reflecting on his characters, yes, even in 1935.

As most reviewers have noted — this is not a children’s book. And while the Tony Randall film of 1960 has some of its own charm (thank you, Barbara Eden!!), it is a kiddy-fied, watered-down version of this story. It was probably Finney’s experience as a newspaperman that soured him on human nature — it must be an occpational hazard, since he shares that experience with the afore-mentioned Bierce as well as with another arch-cynic, Cyril Kornbluth of “Marching Morons” fame. The writing style varies (intentionally) from pulp to inspired to crisp and concise, sometimes all on a single page. Obviously not a book for everyone, but I find it refreshing, enlightening, and supremely entertaining.

The Tony Randall movie, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, was, despite all the wonderful five-star reviews, almost unwatchable.