Comics, not Comics?

 (There are times when one finds oneself looking in the mirror and asking:"well..how did I get here?" This is one of those times.)

"korumbu! confesses" by geoff grogan; from pood #3.

My wife often tells me that I don't make comics. "You do something else-but it isn't comics" She'll point to some book or another on my shelves-more likely than not something by Jack Kirby or Gilbert Hernandez or Seth or Chester Gould or,or, or.... -and very confidently state: "This is comics. Look at what you do. You don't do that."
Then she'll say-that "...if you want to make comics you should just make comics..."---implying that I should stop screwing around with this other stuff and get back to telling a story with boxes and word balloons. "A comics audience won't be interested in this work because its not comics. Its something else--like painting."

"secret romance" by geoff grogan; from pood #2.

I admit--in my most recent pages for pood--I'm not trying to construct a sequential narrative,  so much as undermine sequence and narrative--and still make comics. I do want these pages to hit you all at once-like a painting--but utilize something of the sequential imperative of comics via discrete "stops" (or stoppages--to borrow a term from Duchamp).
These "stops" in the composition--should move the reader around the page--but not necessarily in a defined-a to b to c -style sequence, but like painting---in more random fashion, determined by the viewer's eye- so that there's no real beginning-and no real end.
This isn't to imply the piece lacks "meaning"-but rather that meaning is elicited via the methods of visual art, suggestion and association, rather than in the more direct fashion of traditional narrative structures.

"See what I mean? not comics!" she says. "and you're not drawing either.  What's with the collage?"

"fandancer" by geoff grogan; page 26

sigh. well, yeah.  I'm doing comics with collage. Old photos, old comics, even old word balloons, cut and pasted rather than drawn.  I've done the traditional method, of course--but while working on fandancer, I made a conscious decision to work with the actual material of comics-so as to make explicit my interest in the language of the media, the conventions of genre and their workings as both sign and symbol.
 Collage introduces a level of conceptual distance and unpredictability--and works to undermine  traditional  narrative - opening the story up to a wide array of suggestions and ideas-many of which I never would have conceived of had I been writing in a traditional
way.  In fandancer, the "narrative" actually percolates beneath the surface incongruities and absurdities, providing subliminal continuity but allowing myriad interpretations and associations that move the piece in multiple directions at once.
Obviously, I'm not a big believer in rock-solid "do's and don'ts"-- in comics --or in art, for that matter. There are many roads to the destination--and even then, not everyone is interested in going to the same place.

"fandancer" by geoff grogan; page 27

"fandancer" by geoff grogan; page 28

Comics? Not comics?   It only matters in so far as it means someone will (or won't) pick up the book and take it home.




*(and despite periodically playing devil's advocate, my wife deb is actually the biggest, best supporter anyone could have--and the most likely to say"stick to your guns! you've gotta do what you've gotta do-otherwise, what's the point?"  hell, she's only stuck it out for 25 years! thanks, love!)

culture shock: MAD

I'm ten years too young for the original Mad, but these comics were still around, in one form or another, throughout my childhood in the 1960's. I think my first exposure to the original Mad was via those great paperback collections somebody's older brother had. They got passed around the neighborhood

--the way most comics did in those days. Somebody had a comic book, it was community property. Passing comics around was a way in which we educated each other--and developed a shared sensibility. We didn't want to keep them to ourselves.
Matter of fact, I think my first exposure to a lot of Mad--and other comics too; Peanuts, B.C., Fantastic Four and a lot of other Marvel stuff- was in those b&w paperback collections floating around the neighborhood.   I know for a fact that's where I first learned who Jack Kirby was--and then who Chic Stone was.(I could've cared less about Stan Lee.--but Chic Stone was tops!)

 Even in the '60's, when Mad magazine was in its heyday, -and my friends and I sat on each others stoops going over every single gag in every single issue--these original Mads were special. They seemed like relics from a different, somehow more subversive, era--a little less predictable than the Mad we knew; wilder, not quite as formulaic.  They had super-heroes! "Super-duper Man" and "Melvin of the Apes". And the art was just great, stuffed to the brim with little jokes and funny goings-on in the background. We'd look at them for hours because we kept finding some new joke in there that we hadn't seen before. Astounding images--drawn by some guy named "Wood"--and boy did he draw great looking women("Lois -Hah!-Pain!") and great shadows and great everything! And man--they were so funny, funnier than Mad magazine, funnier than anything we knew. A kind of manic funny--wise-ass in a way the magazine of the '60's was not. Reading those original Mads, you got the feeling the people behind those comics had spent a lot of time in after-school detention, they shot spit-wads in Sunday school and had absolutely no use for authority figures, and as adults they were probably just this far from giving some bureaucrat at the DMV a hotfoot.

*This one was a good deal trickier to draw than it looks!

Life after Previews

Leave it to me to start a publishing company during an economic avalanche and at the same time that print is sounding its death knell. Not to mention that the largest single comics distributor is effectively eliminating the small press from its catalogue( a development that seems to be welcome to everyone but small press publishers).
Yet is strikes me that Rahm Emanuel has it right when he says that every crisis offers an opportunity (or something to that effect) and for those well positioned, now would seem to be the time for the establishment of a serious and distinct small press/alt-comics distributor.
What would that look like? For starters, I imagine an online only catalogue;-a fully functioning, well maintained and attractive website that presents its vendors well and is user-friendly for retailers and potential customers. In order to draw customers to the site it would have to offer at least a few big independent publishers and a number of well-known independent creators. There'd have to be a big promotional push, advertisements and interviews, signings and events.
I'm not a distributor, nor do I know the intricacies of coordinating hundreds of publishers with thousands of retailers. It takes organization, a good chunk of money and decent technology. It takes more than one person in the office. But there are people out there doing this already-it would seem that now is the time to step up the effort and while it sounds crazy, put some money into the enterprise. It might require small press publishers to pay some kind of annual fee-$100. or so-as in a co-op. Obviously this wouldn't cover expenses for the distributor-but it might fund the website. and that's a start.
Easier said than done, no doubt. But as the mainstream has its single source in Diamond, perhaps if there was a single source for alt-comics, interested retailers, art galleries and bookstores would be able to locate and order our work easily.

Freedom from the mainstream might also encourage the cultivation of a broader array of retailers. Jettisoned from comics shops, alt-comics might begin to find a place in galleries, bookstores, coffee shops and other venues. The model exists, undergrounds sold out of head shops-why shouldn't alt-comics sell out of bookstores and art galleries?

My feeling about Ka-Boom ( the POD printer that has recently announced a direct-market distribution service) is that there are too many limitations. Distribution with Ka-Boom requires printing with Ka-Boom and while that works for some things, I couldn't have done "Look Out!Monsters" or "Nice Work" under those circumstances. No, I don't think tying POD to distribution is appropriate to a movement that seeks to break with the norms in all manners of packaging and content.
These are random thoughts, not fully thought out, admittedly--but the important point is that there exists an opportunity in the fallout from this economic wreck. What form it will take-that has yet to be determined. More web-comics? you bet. An "Image"-style publishing house for art-comics? Hey-that's a whole 'nother post. But ideas are flying now--and its time to contribute to the discussion.
While the dust continues to settle-I'll be in Artist's Alley at the NY Comic-Con this week--with the entire line of L.o.M. books--"Look Out!Monsters (made it onto another "best of 08" list! check out Adam McGovern at Comiccritique.com ), Nice Workand Dr. Speck, the all ages alt-comics "super" hero (well-- his head inflates, what kind of power is that?)--and I'm introducing some brand new posters. In these dour times, I'm looking to have some fun--and what better place to find it than at the Javits Center this weekend?