50 in 05: Martians, etc.

Summertime! Summer is when I buy lots of books--Morrison's 7 Soldiers series, Disinfo's Book of Lies, and Chomsky's What Uncle Sam Really Wants, most recently--but the actual reading goes slowly. It's hot and I'm sweaty and I'm daydreaming of going really fast in a car that's really cool.

#17: A Princess of Mars and #18 The Gods of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Martians! These are the first books in a series that originally appeared in pulp magazines starting in 1914. Burroughs later created Tarzan, but he kept returning to these stories of John Carter, the Warlord of Mars. Carter is a Civil War veteran hailing from Virginia, and one day while on the run from Indians in Arizona, he is bodily transported to far-away Mars, called Barsoom by its natives, where he discovers he is Awesome at Everything and goes on to conquer everyone he meets and marries a princess. Huzzah!

Actually, they're pretty good. I think they would be more enjoyable when read as intended, or at least as originally published, in cliff-hanging excerpts from issue to issue. It's fun, sci-fi adventure stories for boys, before the trappings of sci-fi choked the genre into complacency. I also appreciate how BANG! the adventure begins right away--there isn't 50 pages of getting John Carter to Mars, or worry about how he got there. He's just there, and the story unfolds. Part of that is due to the format, the getting-to-the-point of it made necessary by serialization, but even that can go wrong--see superhero comics these days, and stories that are "written for the trade."

Odds are, you can find these stories cheap, too. There are something like 12 or 14 books in this series, but I've seen a collection of the first three floating around. And as good as it is, they are adventure stories for boys--after reading two I was more than ready to move on to something else for a while.

Next--Brautigan, Abortions, Steinbecks!

Moxie Crimefighter

According to Neil Gaiman congratulations are in order, and I believe him. So: congratulations to Penn and Emily Jillette on the birth of their daughter; but mostly congratulations to their daughter on being named Moxie Crimefighter Jillette.

SWEAT

SweatSweatSweat.

The Rogue Reading, being the brainchild of one Eric S., was a lot of fun this past Saturday. Approximately 3% of the promised readers actually showed up and read, but those of us who did are the more and cleverer for it. Rumor has it the Earl of Wessex is still half-full of beer, and a post-party gathering may be required to topple him.

Summertime does strange things to a man's brain. I'm never as reflective at the end of December as I am in the beginning of June.

50 in 05: Mystic River and Will in the World

The smell of deadlines is in the air, so I haven't been good about blogging lately. I'll try to catch up on a few of the books I've finished lately:

#15: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: It's the sort of book that you read because of the plot, because of what it's telling, and not how it's told. But the moral seems to be that kids are killing kids because of video games. No kidding:

"Sean looked into the bloody face of Jimmy O'Shea and what he saw there scared the shit out of him. There was nothing there. Probably never had been. The kid wouldn't pull the trigger because he was angry or because he was scared. He'd pull the trigger because Sean was just a six-foot-two video image, and the gun was a joystick."

Ugh. Skip it.

#16: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt. On the other hand, this is an excellent book--the best I've read in a long time, and one of the best non-fiction books I've picked up period. It's a lot of conjecture and what-ifs, but it goes into the life Will Shakespeare led, what he was doing when he was writing some of his plays--who Falstaff was based on, at least partially, what the deaths of Christopher Marlowe and Will's son Hamnet meant to him and how they can be seen reflected in his work. Will's religion, or lack of it, his brushes with the scheming politics of his day, what set him apart from other writers, both then and now. Anyone who likes Shakespeare (and if anyone *doesn't* like Shakespeare, it's because they haven't seen it done well), or anyone who is a writer, would appreciate this book. I kept putting it down to take notes. It led me right into reading Richard III and writing a play about Los Bros Booth, Edmund, Brutus, and John Wilkes. I can't recommend this one more.

To All Who Are Literate, and Most Who Are Not

Come, read, enjoy. Most of the above faces will be there.

(invitation crafted by Erin Howk)

50 in 05: Oxherding Tale

#14: Oxherding Tale, by Charles Johnson. It's mostly out of print these days, I think. I read it for school. I liked most of it. Sometimes it made me laugh. It strikes me as the sort of thing best enjoyed on a second read though, and I don't think I liked it enough for that.

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie and though, "That was good," and genuinely meant it, but then never thought much about it again? That's how this one felt. Not that it's fluffy, just that it was good, but still didn't particularly tickle my fancy.

Bevare . . . bevare!

Sequential Heart

If you're interested in comics, I'll be writing about them at Sequential Heart. And if you're interested in writing about comics, let me know--we're looking for folks to contribute to this groupblog and raise the online dialogue about comics--any kind of comics--above the general message board negativity you find in most internet circles.

50 in 05: The Bluest Eye

#13: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. Someone saw me reading THE BLUEST EYE and asked how I liked it.

"I like it okay," I told them.

"I heard Toni Morrison is too wordy," they said.

I don't know what that means, but what I said in response was, "Well, if you've got two-hundred blank pages to fill, you might as well be wordy, I guess."

The woman smiled and said, "Yeah, I guess so," and we went back to not talking.

I like THE BLUEST EYE because it's built with a structure I would never think to write a story with. The novel revolves around Pecola, but it opens and closes and is interspersed with first-person accounts from Claudia; we jump back in time and hear the stories of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove; we hear a conversation between Pecola and her madness. It's like an experiment (or a dozen experiments) that collate into a complete novel.

Before I read it I was told it was autobiographical fiction tied to a place instead of a life, but to me it was the feeling that came through--autobiographical fiction tied to alienation and fear and potential lost. That said, I didn't read the author's afterword. I don't mind talking about a novel or a play or any piece of art--I like it a lot--and I like it when an artist talks about creation in a general sense, or with regard to their own process. But at the same time, when I order a bowl of soup I don't want the cook to come out before, during, or after to tell me all about what's in the soup. I just want to eat the soup, you know? And if I choose to discuss what I liked, disliked, or was indifferent to about the soup, that's my own business.

I spent a week living with this book and there are still things I can't get out of my head. Cholly's chapter, Soaphead Church . . . yeah. Way to pick 'em, Oprah.

50 in 05: Marvel 1602

#12: Marvel 1602, by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, and Richard Isanove. This one is pretty short--because this is a fun book. It's flat-out for folks who like Marvel Comics and who know how the Marvel Universe got its start. It's not a love letter to superheroes, and it's not a love letter to comics, it's a love letter to the Marvel Universe--and it works really, really well. It leaves me wanting more, but not in a "sequel" sense--in a "I want to pour my G.I. Joes out on my bed and continue these adventures after supper" sense. It's neat seeing Andy Kubert's art find its way as the story moves along, too. There are still a few story points I don't quite understand, and I'm a little iffy on the hook of the Forerunner, but this was a really fun comic book.

50 in 05: Miniature Sulk

#11: Miniature Sulk, by Jeffrey Brown. If you're looking for The Next Jeffrey Brown Book, this is not it. SULK is a collection of stories that seem to be about Jeff's childhood and current relationship with his brother(s) and his family, but unrequited crushes quickly turn up, and then it turns into what looks like a collection of his sketchbook material. There are a few comic strip-ish short bits, including two panels featuring "Sensitive Guy" that I thought were really funny--Sensitive Guy stops a girl about to unbuckles his pants because he's written her a poem--but overall, it seems like the Top Shelf folks were just filling up pages on this one. I don't mind collections of miscellany at all, but this one seems extra unorganized, especially towards the end. The funniest bits are those that are most surprising--Jeffrey Brown diving out of the sky to knife his arch-enemy, for example--but I was really hoping this book wouldn't turn into Brown's comic book alter-ego pining after girls who don't love him. "Clumsy" and "Unlikely" are already prime examples of that--I'd much rather see more strips about Jeffrey growing up with his kung-fu brother.

Sandman!

Ain't It Cool reports that Thomas Hayden Church, he of SIDEWAYS, will be playing Sandman in the next Spider-Man picture. I always liked Sandman--I hope he wears that green shirt. And I have a soft spot for THC, as well--and it's a lot better than the earlier rumor that Venom was going to be the SM3 villain.

Heidi has a side-by-side comparison at the Beat.

RQL needs blood of the living to survive

Hello All,

Some of you might have heard of Real Quick-Like before--it's a fiction zine I'm helping my pal Annie D put together. We put out the call for short works of fiction written for the theme "Last to See Them Alive" and we have the 8-or-so pieces we want to use for the first issue--now what we need are black and white illustrations to accompany them.

RQL is going to be printed and distributed by us, sold in places around Chicago like Quimby's and Chicago Comics. It will go out to other cities depending on where we know people--so if you're interested in taking a stack to your local book/record/comic shop, let us know. No one is making any money on the project, but it gives us a chance to put out something we're all proud of for other folks to see.

So if you're interested in drawing a one-page black and white illustration for our first issue, and if you have the time to do it in the month and a half or so, please let me know--we want an illustration to accompany each story, and I'd love to get a story in your hands to inspire you as soon as possible. And if you know anyone else who would be interested, send them my way as well.

Your friend in the small press,
Matthew Jent

Gmail

I don't trust it. It kind of creeps me out--from what I understand (and when it comes to the interweb, I understand very little), some sort of microscopic internet spirit who lives in the sky will kindly allow me to see advertisements based on the content of the email I send and receive. Not to worry, however, for said email is entirely, 100% safe, secure, and private.

Er. Right then.

However! Gmail storage is ridiculously large, so when my pal Jodi (let's hear it for Nashville!) sent me a Gmail invitation, I happily accepted. I like it a lot better than hotmail for my junk mail, giving-out-of-my-email-on-websites, and things of that sort. All of this is to say, if anyone else wants a gmail account, let me know--I seem to have 50 invitations I can send out. Drop me a note at matthewjent@gmail.com if you're interested. But if you just want to tell me how much you like me, show me pictures of your boobies, or tell me secrets about your boy/girlfriends, keep using the old one.

50 in 05: SPX 2004

#10: SPX 2004: War!, edited by Greg Bennett, Charles Brownstein, and Chris Pitzer. Usually I'm right on top of the SPX collections--they're published in conjunction with the Small Press Expo every year and they showcase new and indie comics folks. But somehow this one slipped past me, so I finally picked it up as part of Top Shelf's big sale a while back. So that means it's been two years since I picked up an SPX anthology, so one of two things has happened--my tastes are evolving, or the SPX gang put together a very, very sub-par book last year. Or maybe the contributors to this volume fell victim to the idea that writing is easy--of the 27 stories, only three have a writer AND an artist, and it shows. Now, I'm not writer-snob--some folks get by just fine without a collaborator, and some are better than those who only write. art spiegleman, Frank Miller, Carla Speed McNeil--none of them, however, are in this book. I read it in a day and most of the entries were poorly thought out, amateurish morality tales.

The theme for 2004 was "War," so we got things like an Asian couple sneaking across the border into Wisconsin--"Patriot Act Free Since 2006!" and an American pilot surprised at how much he liked a Serbian man, in spite of following orders to drop bombs on the man's country. Nothing new or poetic here.

The stand outs were few--"Building It Up Just To Tear It Down" by Alex Lukas, about the construction and deconstruction of the railroads before and during the Civil War was one. My personal favorite was "The Holy Kingdom," by Bruce Mutard, concerning a Christian soldier rethinking his place in the Crusades in 1191. I got the sense that it was a piece of a larger work, and I hope it finds its way to the reading public someday soon. I'm not sure if SPX 2005 is available yet, but if it's no better than 2004, and this anthology is truly a barometer for the work being done in the alternative comics scene, indie comics might be in for a rough patch for the next few years--until the folks currently being influenced by manga start putting out work.

50 in 05: The Bell Jar

#9: The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. What the shit? How did this one get away from me for so long? Where were you, my trusty readers, a few months back when I was looking for female coming-of-age stories? Well, in case y'all didn't know, Sylvia Plath is really funny. This was on my reading list for a class on Autobiographical Fiction, and being a class full of writer-types, you'd be surprised at how much of the conversation was stuck in "she writes very accurately about depression" mode. One fella even said that the depressed tend to see the world very objectively, since they know they can't change anything. He also has chronic stomach problems.

I'm not a big fan of poetry, you know? I like a few poets--I like listening to Saul Williams rather than reading him, and I like reading Raymond Carver's poems rather than watching a movie about his stories. I haven't read any of Sylvia's poems, but she writes a balls-out novel. It's the lack of likes that really get me--her doctor's desk is an acre, her chair is cavernous, Esther would see a tiny Alp in her eyeball after she visited Europe. It's all true and factual, the metaphors are real and not metaphors at all. I mean, they *are* metaphors, but, you know--there's a big difference between BEING and BEING LIKE, and it's of such a size you often don't see it until it's right there in front of you.

In my own work, that specific word choice signifies a certain confidence in language. I remember being in class when it first happened, when I saw the difference the absence of 'like' could make. I said, "It's making the metaphor real," and my teacher Carey said, "Yeah," and then I said, "Yeah!" and, and holy shit, man! That's magic! It carries greater weight in first-person accounts. It imbeds you deep in the perspective of who is telling the story. It's a reminder that the story is subjective, that it's a perception being reported. I like that reminder.

So, the Bell Jar: really, really good book. And if you've ever read Sylvia's journals, you know she went on a lot of blind dates. Those are really funny, too.

New Roommate

Wolf is hiding in the bathroom . . .



. . . and Lola is hiding under my bed.

*glk*

My birthday present to myself was the hiccups.

Dateline: 1995!

While I'm at it, I thought it would be neat to think of the titles, ten years later, that sparked my love for comics all over again. Not that I ever really stopped, but these were the books that sent my brain spinning into completely different directions.

Dateline: 1985!

I ripped this idea off of Dean Haspiel's blog--the idea is to find the first five comics that started you down this dark, seductive path. I found all of the covers from the wonderful comics.org, which seems to have scans of every comic book cover you could possibly want.