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edenfallingI don't remember exactly when I encountered comic books as a concept. I know it must have been via my friend Cat, because she was the one who introduced me to... oh, pretty much any form of pop culture up until I was maybe twelve years old, at which point Vicky began to explore her own tastes and I started borrowing her books and sort of idly watching her shows. The part I remember most dramatically is when Cat talked me into watching the old X-Men cartoon on Fox, back around 1992. That was, quite literally, the first television I watched that wasn't either PBS or the evening news. (No, wait, I lie; I also watched the occasional football game with Dad.) Basically Cat wanted somebody to squee with and I guess she figured I was her best target in our mutual friend group.
She was right.
I assume she introduced me to comics around the same time, mostly in the form of various interrelated X-Men titles with a side order of Spider-Man. She was a Marvel girl through and through and I had no frame of reference for this strange new world, so I just read everything she owned. Then we squeed. And you know, in retrospect there was not a lot of great literary merit in, for example, the X-cutioner's Song crossover arc, but hey. It was a HELL of a lot of fun, and even more fun when shared. :D
But the thing is, comics were a secondhand obsession on my part. I didn't go to our local comics shop. Or rather, I did. Maybe once a year, in Cat's company, until I left for college. Each visit was screamingly uncomfortable, not because the staff was all 'eww, girls' or anything -- they were actually enthusiastically nice, at least to Cat, who was a regular with her own hold box and everything -- but because it was obvious that this was a close-knit subculture with its own shibboleths and I was presumed an interloper unless I proved otherwise. And I was wildly over-sensitive to potential embarrassment as a kid. I mean, I still get easily embarrassed, but it was much worse then. Like to the point where I once ran out of a classroom in tears because I happened to burp during a quiet moment and people turned around to look at me, and it took half an hour for anyone to persuade me to return.
I didn't want to spend my allowance on things I didn't quite understand, and I think the staff picked up on my discomfort and disinclination to become a customer and assumed that I wasn't interested in comics at all and was just there humoring a friend. (I sometimes wonder if they would have made that same assumption if I'd been a boy, but eh, it was twenty years ago; there is no way to know.) But whatever they may have thought, in reality I was desperately interested and equally desperately unsure of how to DO anything with that interest except what I was already doing: namely, reading every single one of Cat's comics shortly after she herself did.
This wasn't very hard. I was over at Cat's house a lot in elementary school, and then for 7th and 8th grade we walked home together five days a week and I hung out at her place for a couple hours before continuing up the hill to my own house. I was there so often I became her designated guinea pig hair-comber, for god's sake, because I was the only person heartless enough to keep combing out the knots in his fur even when he squeaked bloody murder.
But I never did get comfortable with comics shops. I never read comics in public, just in Cat's bedroom, or my own bedroom if I borrowed a whole story arc at once. And I never really developed my own taste since I was at the mercy of Cat's current interests. (This means, incidentally, that I read way more mid-90s Image and Wildstorm stuff than I think I would have if I'd been the one making the purchasing choices. It's probably not surprising that I remember very little of those stories.)
I grew less actively interested in comics during high school, but I drifted back again around 2001, a year after I moved to Ithaca. And that was entirely because of the internet. I couldn't tell you the details anymore, but I spent a while lurking on Warren Ellis's long-defunct forum and reading opinion columns about the comics industry and comics as a literary medium, and an artistic medium, and, oh, lots of random stuff. I finally had a way to learn things without either having to say to Cat, "Hey, please spend your own money on this stuff you're not interested in so I can figure out if I'm interested in it," or having to walk up to strange men and be all, "Please explain this stuff to me, a relatively cute girl who is woefully ignorant of the history and culture of comics," and hope they weren't condescending jerks. And having done some exploration, I finally bought some things of my own accord, mostly collected TPBs because I believe in books and bookcases rather than cardboard boxes and plastic storage bags. A few I bought in person, venturing downtown to a local comics shop in Ithaca: a couple volumes of Sandman, a couple volumes of Lucifer, one volume of Finder, a few monthly issues of The Flash. But I still felt weird there, like an outsider intruding on a prickly and defensive cult, so I did the bulk of my shopping online.
I don't really have words for how freeing it was to realize that I could browse and buy whatever I wanted, and nobody would look at me funny while I did it.
I've never had quite the same instinctive twitch-flinch reaction to manga, probably because they don't have nearly the same cultural baggage as Western (mostly superhero, but indie also) comics do. But I do have that twitch-flinch reaction in libraries when I browse their comics collections -- which EXIST now, and it has been AMAZING to watch them spring to life over the past ten or twelve years -- or pick up something from hold or interlibrary loan. It's that old feeling of, "I am not part of this tribe and they know it," even though I have loved comics since I was, you know, ten years old. Which is twenty-three years and counting, now. And there's also a helping of, "If you were a good feminist, you would like 'better' things than these simplistic masculine-coded power fantasies," which is stupid and self-defeating, and FUCK THAT VOICE IN THE EAR, okay, because I can love power fantasies for myself, and I do and always have, and yeah, there's a lot of problematic gender stuff in comics (and a lot of sheer WTFery) but the perfect is the enemy of the good and love is not rational, you know?
...
I mention this because I checked out two volumes of Mark Waid's Daredevil run this afternoon and am probably going to put hold requests on every other Daredevil collection the Finger Lakes library system has. And yeah, I got twitchy even though I used the self-checkout machine, and I will get twitchy again every time I get the little "your book is available" email and go in to pick up another volume.
And I am sick and tired of having that twitch-flinch reaction, and I wish -- you don't know how much I WISH -- that I knew how to exorcise it after all these years.
Also, recommend me some good power fantasies that feature non-sexually-objectified women, please, so I can maybe put hold requests on them too? (I can't buy anything, I'm broke, but at least these days there's a chance some library in the system might have copies of obscure things.) [ETA: I already know about Girl Genius, and yes, I am familiar with Elfquest; that was one of Cat's big things for a while, sometime after her Dragonlance obsession.]
She was right.
I assume she introduced me to comics around the same time, mostly in the form of various interrelated X-Men titles with a side order of Spider-Man. She was a Marvel girl through and through and I had no frame of reference for this strange new world, so I just read everything she owned. Then we squeed. And you know, in retrospect there was not a lot of great literary merit in, for example, the X-cutioner's Song crossover arc, but hey. It was a HELL of a lot of fun, and even more fun when shared. :D
But the thing is, comics were a secondhand obsession on my part. I didn't go to our local comics shop. Or rather, I did. Maybe once a year, in Cat's company, until I left for college. Each visit was screamingly uncomfortable, not because the staff was all 'eww, girls' or anything -- they were actually enthusiastically nice, at least to Cat, who was a regular with her own hold box and everything -- but because it was obvious that this was a close-knit subculture with its own shibboleths and I was presumed an interloper unless I proved otherwise. And I was wildly over-sensitive to potential embarrassment as a kid. I mean, I still get easily embarrassed, but it was much worse then. Like to the point where I once ran out of a classroom in tears because I happened to burp during a quiet moment and people turned around to look at me, and it took half an hour for anyone to persuade me to return.
I didn't want to spend my allowance on things I didn't quite understand, and I think the staff picked up on my discomfort and disinclination to become a customer and assumed that I wasn't interested in comics at all and was just there humoring a friend. (I sometimes wonder if they would have made that same assumption if I'd been a boy, but eh, it was twenty years ago; there is no way to know.) But whatever they may have thought, in reality I was desperately interested and equally desperately unsure of how to DO anything with that interest except what I was already doing: namely, reading every single one of Cat's comics shortly after she herself did.
This wasn't very hard. I was over at Cat's house a lot in elementary school, and then for 7th and 8th grade we walked home together five days a week and I hung out at her place for a couple hours before continuing up the hill to my own house. I was there so often I became her designated guinea pig hair-comber, for god's sake, because I was the only person heartless enough to keep combing out the knots in his fur even when he squeaked bloody murder.
But I never did get comfortable with comics shops. I never read comics in public, just in Cat's bedroom, or my own bedroom if I borrowed a whole story arc at once. And I never really developed my own taste since I was at the mercy of Cat's current interests. (This means, incidentally, that I read way more mid-90s Image and Wildstorm stuff than I think I would have if I'd been the one making the purchasing choices. It's probably not surprising that I remember very little of those stories.)
I grew less actively interested in comics during high school, but I drifted back again around 2001, a year after I moved to Ithaca. And that was entirely because of the internet. I couldn't tell you the details anymore, but I spent a while lurking on Warren Ellis's long-defunct forum and reading opinion columns about the comics industry and comics as a literary medium, and an artistic medium, and, oh, lots of random stuff. I finally had a way to learn things without either having to say to Cat, "Hey, please spend your own money on this stuff you're not interested in so I can figure out if I'm interested in it," or having to walk up to strange men and be all, "Please explain this stuff to me, a relatively cute girl who is woefully ignorant of the history and culture of comics," and hope they weren't condescending jerks. And having done some exploration, I finally bought some things of my own accord, mostly collected TPBs because I believe in books and bookcases rather than cardboard boxes and plastic storage bags. A few I bought in person, venturing downtown to a local comics shop in Ithaca: a couple volumes of Sandman, a couple volumes of Lucifer, one volume of Finder, a few monthly issues of The Flash. But I still felt weird there, like an outsider intruding on a prickly and defensive cult, so I did the bulk of my shopping online.
I don't really have words for how freeing it was to realize that I could browse and buy whatever I wanted, and nobody would look at me funny while I did it.
I've never had quite the same instinctive twitch-flinch reaction to manga, probably because they don't have nearly the same cultural baggage as Western (mostly superhero, but indie also) comics do. But I do have that twitch-flinch reaction in libraries when I browse their comics collections -- which EXIST now, and it has been AMAZING to watch them spring to life over the past ten or twelve years -- or pick up something from hold or interlibrary loan. It's that old feeling of, "I am not part of this tribe and they know it," even though I have loved comics since I was, you know, ten years old. Which is twenty-three years and counting, now. And there's also a helping of, "If you were a good feminist, you would like 'better' things than these simplistic masculine-coded power fantasies," which is stupid and self-defeating, and FUCK THAT VOICE IN THE EAR, okay, because I can love power fantasies for myself, and I do and always have, and yeah, there's a lot of problematic gender stuff in comics (and a lot of sheer WTFery) but the perfect is the enemy of the good and love is not rational, you know?
...
I mention this because I checked out two volumes of Mark Waid's Daredevil run this afternoon and am probably going to put hold requests on every other Daredevil collection the Finger Lakes library system has. And yeah, I got twitchy even though I used the self-checkout machine, and I will get twitchy again every time I get the little "your book is available" email and go in to pick up another volume.
And I am sick and tired of having that twitch-flinch reaction, and I wish -- you don't know how much I WISH -- that I knew how to exorcise it after all these years.
Also, recommend me some good power fantasies that feature non-sexually-objectified women, please, so I can maybe put hold requests on them too? (I can't buy anything, I'm broke, but at least these days there's a chance some library in the system might have copies of obscure things.) [ETA: I already know about Girl Genius, and yes, I am familiar with Elfquest; that was one of Cat's big things for a while, sometime after her Dragonlance obsession.]
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 03:13 pm (UTC)Female-led comics:
Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel, which is the current benchmark for taking a ridiculous character -- Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel, aka Binary, aka Warbird, aka the prisoner in Rogue's mind, aka.... -- and turning her into a reasonable, formidable character. No love interest, lots of incredible secondary female characters supporting the story, and she's amazing.
G Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, which is a direct result of the above. Kamala Khan, Pakistani muslima teenager living in Jersey City, superhero fanfic writer and a young woman who wants to be like all of the other (secular) girls, and what happens after she develops superpowers. It's the superpowers-as-puberty parable but with superb cultural complexities and a knowing nod. Charming stuff.
Brian Michael Bendis's Alias, which is about to be turned into another Marvel Netflix series ('AKA Jessica Jones'). It's about a woman with a stereotypical origin story, but who instead of having a stereotypical superhero story follow, is pretty much @$%$-up by everything, from that origin point on. She's a mess when we meet her and only slowly stops being a mess and as the true depth of what she's been through is revealed, she stops being a trainwreck and you realize what kind of a hero she is even since she stopped wearing a costume. It's definitely adult in theme and tone, but not for the male gaze and not without an emotional component.
Anything Greg Rucka writes with female leads, really. His Wonder Woman books, especially The Hiketeia, but also all of the TPB from his run on the series. His current Image title Lazarus is superb.
I'm a huge fan of Ed Brubaker's Velvet, also an ongoing from Image, because noir stories are my crack and Brubaker is the best at it in the comics business. Imagine the 1960s Miss Moneypenny was really the Black Widow.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-10 06:20 am (UTC)I will also check out Comixology; thanks for the tip!
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 02:44 am (UTC)I'm having trouble getting print copies through ILL, because it's released digitally with print following slowly. But you might have more luck. And it's not, TECHNICALLY, a female power fantasy, but has plenty of strong women.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-10 06:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 03:40 am (UTC)Have you tried Elfquest? Www.elfquest.com - awesome storytelling, strong characters of both genders, and the entire 30+ year run (minus the current story arc) is available online.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 03:45 am (UTC)But yes. We were both way into fantasy so the combination of fantasy and comics was right up both our alleys. I have no idea how much I'd still like the story today, but if it's available online for free, hey, I might as well go take a look. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 05:38 am (UTC)I find it holds up pretty well. It had a lot of stuff that went straight over my head when I was younger, and a lot more that has been added since Kings of the Broken Wheel. The storytelling just keeps getting better, IMHO. If I had the cash, I'd get the whole series in print... and this is from a woman who sold her entire comic collection except the EQ because I hadn't bought any comics in years and would happily get her library to buy them if it weren't for those awkward little things like elf-orgies, free love and same-sex relationships. (Not that I have any problem with any of these things personally, but putting something like that in the teen section of a library in the buckle of the Bible Belt seems... unwise.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 06:18 am (UTC)It's kind of a toss-up whether things are alphabetized by title or by creator's name. The trend is toward manga and indie stuff filed by author, and Marvel and DC stuff filed by title, but that's not a hard and fast rule so the catalog is your best bet for finding anything specific. Also, many of those books circulate A LOT, so hold requests are your friends. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 05:08 pm (UTC)And yes, you're right about the reason for the comics & graphic novels being at 741.5 because of the art books - that got started before comics and graphic novels were really popular. Our library is a bit different, we have them all in a collection and we categorize them as fiction.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 05:11 am (UTC)(And, honestly, even if I hit the powerball tomorrow I don't think I'd start again. The stories and characters I grew up reading have almost all been retconned, reimagined, or reset-buttoned a half dozen times over, and sometimes you really can't go home again)
Also, most of what I know about DC I learned watching animated Batman, because (barring the odd rich kid with enough allowance to collect one of everything) I think Marvel/DC is just one of those things you pick as a kid that stays with you always. (Coke/Pepsi, PC/Apple, and Stones/Beatles being a few of the others)
All of that longwindedness aside, the only four books that I actually committed the money to shell out for entire series runs of:
Garth Ennis' Preacher, which, in many ways, is Ennis' ode to the American Western mythos, the way the Dark Tower is Stephen King's, and also dovetails very nicely with my own religious views.
Ennis's Hitman, a portrait of Gotham, seen from its seedy underbelly, through the often bleary and hungover gaze of Tommy 'Hitman' Monaghan, who might be the only person in the history of comic books who got superpowers, (x-ray vision and low-grade telepathy) shrugged, and went back to his day job. Almost as weird as Preacher, (maybe moreso, given it's actual, tangible connection to DC continuity proper) funnier, (the Christmas issue, written entirely in Seussian rhyme and featuring lines like 'Word.' said his homie. 'I've got my nine. We'll bust a cap in the nuclear swine.') and which, sadly, has not returned, Jason Todd-like, in any of the new incarnations of the DC universe.
Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, which is basically the adventures of a taken up to eleven version of Hunter S. Thompson set in a dystopian, post-cyberpunk future.
And, last but not least, the late great Drew Hayes' Poison Elves, which is sort of a reaction to the Tolkienian version of elfdom, and a musing on the question 'Does it matter if you're immortal if all you have to look forward to is an eternity of poverty, racism, random violence, one-night stands, and terrible cheap whiskey?'
Sadly, Hayes died abruptly in 2007, leaving the series abruptly in mid-arc, but what there is up to that point is worth the ride.
(I'd recommend some webcomics, which I got into around the time I quit collecting the regular kind, but most of the ones I used to read are probably long-gone now, and the archive panic required to pick up one from scratch is daunting)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 05:25 am (UTC)Hitman: read and enjoyed maybe half of it, then got bored and never finished
Transmetropolitan: read about 3/4 of it, next volume wasn't out yet, started feeling preached at upon rereading the earlier volumes and never finished
Poison Elves: never heard of it until now, but it sounds like it might be interesting. Thanks for the rec!
I think you are right about Marvel/DC being one of those childhood imprinting things you can never quite shake. I mean, I have read and enjoyed a bunch of DC stuff over the years (more if you count Vertigo) but the DCU is not my heart's home. As I have said in other contexts, a tiny corner of my soul is in hock to Marvel, and I'm largely okay with that. *wry*
(I am also okay with archive panic, so please feel free to rec any webcomics you like.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-07 11:44 pm (UTC)If you liked Sandman, there's actually a prequel series currently running called Sandman: Overture, which is quite good.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 04:10 am (UTC)*makes note to get someone to buy me the Sandman thing as a present once it's collected*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-08 09:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 04:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-08 11:42 am (UTC)Umm, don't know if it counts as a power fantasy, but you might like J F Rivkin's Silverglass series. Two women (big-and-boisterous and sly-and-witty) wandering around a fantasy world having adventures and bromancing it up, while tracking down someone's fiance in an enchanted wood, solving riddles for the hell of it, exploring haunted ruins of doomed cults while taking time off from a grape harvest... Both of them get laid a lot (setting is easygoing about such things), but the sexualisation is for them, I feel.
Speaking of twitch-flinch reactions - I refuse to feel ashamed of liking the Barbie movies. (Pretty music and independent female characters. I like what I like.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-08 11:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-08 09:44 pm (UTC)While a lot of characters are having a lot of sex, it cuts to fade-to-black very quickly, and the emphasis is very much on the bromance (sismance?).
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 04:23 am (UTC)(And hey, the non-sexualized was mostly in regard to comics where there is a really tiresome tradition of drawing female characters like pinup models whether that makes any sense for their characters or not, and also sticking them in T&A poses that you'd never catch male characters dead in. *sigh* I am not opposed to characters having sex, just to... eh... I think sexual objectification would be a more accurate term for what I'd rather avoid.)