The Sameness

    Both as writer and reviewer, I am familiar with the practice of taking an excerpt from a review and putting it on the cover of a book.  Sometimes it's just a word ("spectacular") or a generic thought ("I couldn't put it down," "a real page-turner"), sometimes it's a bit longer and more specific ("fluid writing and thoughtful characterizations help make this a captivating read").  At any rate, the motive behind the cover excerpt is clear and relatively unassailable (from a marketing perspective, at any rate).  But often enough, the chosen excerpt (and not generally chosen by the author, I might add), focuses on how the work in question is just like something else.

     The quote on the cover of the paperback edition of Those That Wake, for example, is "[Karp's] Global Dynamic smacks of Asimov's psychohistory while the entire tone seems like something out of Philip K. Dick."  Now, the review this came from (School Library Journal's) also included phrases like "Karp has created a terrifically gloomy set and peopled it with ... very real characters" and "plenty of action, challenging ideas, and bizarre antagonists" and even "should appeal to a broad section of teens."  Other reviews (like Booklist's), meanwhile, even went so far as to say "intriguing, original and thought-provoking."
     A quote from a review I wrote for Booklist for the book Pang, the Wandering Shaolin Monk Volume 1 by Ben Costa appears on the cover of Volume 2 and reads "Usagi Yojimbo if illustrated by Art Spiegelman," referring to two other names in the comic book galaxy that potential readers are likely to know.  This was chosen from a review that included such possible excerpts as "a charmingly human character" and "astonishingly animated action sequences."  My book and Mr. Costa's are, of course, just two examples from a much larger pool. 
     While it is surely flattering to be compared to the likes of Asimov, Dick, Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and Spiegelman, and while such comparisons are fair enough and might be helpful in a review (I did, after all, make the comparison in the first place), what I'd like to call into question is the idea that the work's similarity to another is the most salient, positive or helpful thing you can say about it.  I mean, if you're going to focus on one thing to support the fact that this is a worthwhile piece of work and to attract new readers, is the very best you can do to say that the work in question is just like something else?  This seems rather cynical to me, highlighting sameness, rather than distinctiveness, or even just general quality.  Is that all we're looking for as readers, something that is comfortably familiar?

The King in Yellow

     Shared mythologies are narrative continuities created by one person and then used by many others, maybe over the course of decades or even centuries.  H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is a prime example of this, as is the Wold Newton Universe (a family tree that establishes the genealogical connection between centuries' worth of literary heroes).  These mythologies are compelling and powerful because of the great sense of size and history they can evoke; creations that are larger than any single person (even their creators) that go on to have a life of their own.
     The King in Yellow was a book of short stories written by Robert W. Chambers in the late 19th Century that center around a play (that goes by the same title) which, when read, tends to cause insanity in and chaos around the reader.  The king himself is a mysterious figure who never really appears and the snatches of play that Chambers included merely deepen the eeriness.  Since the stories were first published, they've inspired writers from Lovecraft to Thomas Ligotti with, if not direct storylines, then certainly a tone and scale of weirdness, and furnished many others writers with characters, details and ideas to flesh out their own tales.
     HBO's True Detective is the latest and, perhaps, largest-scale entertainment to make use of this mythology and they are using it to excellent, unsettling effect so far.  It also makes for an excellent opportunity to revisit the original.

The Damned Coolest

     I have students (from four-year-old to graduate) ask me all the time, as well as friends, seminar attendees and fellow comic appreciators, what my favorite piece of comic art is.  What they seem to mean is, not for craftsmanship or invention or draftsmanship, but for pure superhero-loving impact of image, what is the damned coolest piece of art I've seen in a comic.
     Well, if we're talking about artists overall, I have to go with the great John Romita, Sr., who brought a sense of clean action and clarity of narrative like no one else, mainly through his work on Amazing Spider-Man.  But as a single image, it's got to be this one by George Perez, the cover of JLA/Avengers 4:

     Hopefully, this image speaks for itself.

Humanitechnology

     In the February 4, 2014 issue of the New York Times, David Brooks wrote about technology and people in a particularly illuminating way.  Recognizing that there are things that machines can and can't do and that there are things humans can and can't do and, most importantly, there is no stopping technological progress (even if you wanted to), Mr. Brooks discusses what human traits are becoming increasingly important in a cultural delineated by technology.  Have a look for yourself right here. 

Daily Battlefields

A Hard Day's Work by Steve Huston

     Somewhat apropos to the thoughts from last week's post, Robert Louis Stevenson, writer of -- among other things -- Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, had this to say: "And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out to your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout your coming when you return from your daily victory and defeat."
     Everyone needs a little bit of heroism to make it through the day, sometimes, and all the more so to make the world work in little ways.  This sort of heroism is often invisible, something I'm reminded of frequently, as I work with teachers and watch them struggle toward their daily victories (and defeats).