CSotD: A rant foiled
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All I really wanted was one David Bowie tribute that didn't suck, knowing that most of them would, so I could talk about that a little.
Instead, Antonio Rodriguez Garcia actually came up with one I really like. I hadn't expected that, but here it is.
(UPDATE: Antonio disclaims credit, saying he had simply passed it along without comment. I've since traced it back to Jen Lewis and a 2013 illustration celebrating the 40th anniversary of the release of Aladdin Sane. Apologies to her and to my readers. And it's still better than any of the obituaries I've seen, even if it wasn't intended as one.)
The first thing I realized yesterday was that this was a situation where it's not my deal, but I can understand it.
That is, I'm a bit too old: I left the party too soon to have had that gut-impact of growing up with Bowie, but even seeing him from the distance of a husband/father no longer in the scene, I recognized that — at a moment when a lot of people were trying new things and creating new personnas — he was genuinely doing things that mattered.
He truly was "protean," a word that comes from Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, the shape-shifter, and some of his shapes intrigued me and some didn't seem to work for me, but he just kept throwing things at the wall and I don't think he cared what stuck, as long as it was interesting at the moment. And it always reflected thought and effort and change, which is the most anyone can ask of an artist.
Not everyone got past the Hit Tunes, but I've certainly seen a lot of people posting, well, oddities.
My guess, based in part on what I've already seen and in part on guessing what will drift in over the next few days, is that we're going to see an awful lot of Major Tom cartoons.
But I like this one, though it robbed me of a wonderful rant about the inadequacy of obituary cartoons.
Never mind. I have another wonderful rant coming. Two, in fact.
First, an upbeat rant about children's literature
My world of blogging about cartoons and my world of editing children's writing have had a most pleasant collision: Graphic novelist/memoirist Gene Luen Yang has been named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, which means he'll tour around extolling the virtues of reading for young people.
It's a position created in 2008 by a group of children's literature advocates, funded by publishers and somewhat under the auspices of he Library of Congress, and it's been particularly saluted in cartooning circles as a sign, not so much that "graphic novels have come of age" as that "old farts now get it."
Everyone is used to the journalists who insist on leading off any article about graphic novels with "BANG! BOOM! POW! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!"
Because, y'know, Zap and Fritz and Peter Pissgums were so geared for the 8-year-old market that Maus and Persepolis just took us all by surprise.
But the flip side of that is the struggle in which "At least they're reading something" is the highest praise graphic novels can muster from the pedagogical crowd, and the awards in children's literature generally go to Very Serious Books About Very Serious Issues.
Which is to say, earnest books that teachers want kids to like, rather than books kids like. Too many award-winners embody Mark Twain's definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read," except they do because it gets assigned.
The choice of Yang will please the pedagogues, given that he is, as we say, "diverse," but he also follows his predecessor, Kate DiCamillo, as someone whom kids will actually want to read and not just because they're told they want to.
Neither is particularly silly in the way a lot of popular children's writers base a career on fart jokes, but they each have the gift of taking both their subject matter and their readership seriously without making it all seem terribly important and intensely meaningful.
Back when I coached youth soccer, I took an effectiveness course that said never to make kids run laps as punishment because it teaches them to view exercise as a bad thing.
Just as kids will get exercise in the course of playing a sport they love, so, too, they can learn about diseases and racism and learning disabilities and abuse and life in a war zone without the Requisite Uplifting Misery being laid on with a trowel.
In fact, while you're assigning them some paint-by-numbers award winner, they're reading "Hunger Games" and Harry Potter on their own.
In any case, I hope this move will help more educators stop seeing graphic novels as dessert, the reward for having read a "real" book, because they're missing a chance to make kids think, and read, and feel.
Not, mind you, that Yang doesn't provide a little dessert once in a while, as well. And there's nothing wrong with dessert.
Meanwhile, here is Michael Cavna's take on it, a good piece from NPR and the NYTimes article, also worth reading.
And Speaking of Harry
Super-Fun-Pak Comix takes a jab at fan fiction and ripoffs in general, which made me laff because I have already been imagining the flurry of cease-and-desist letters now that Star Wars is firmly under Disney control. (Rowling actually enjoys and encourages fanfiction; not sure how that fits Scholastic or Time Warner's take on it.)
For those who don't know, the big three copyright people you don't mess with are Disney, Dr. Seuss and the US Olympic Committee.
Disney in particular gets credit for the ridiculous extension of copyright in this country, and, while I am no fan of ripping off living creators, the idea that great-grandchildren should continue to control content is nonsense.
Over at Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson points to this piece from the Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain that lists all the things that would have entered public domain this year without the 1978 changes.
I'm far less concerned with not being able to draw my own Mickey Mouse cartoons than I am with the loss of minor works that should be available on-line or in cheap editions. It's not just that the Great Gatsby (1925) remains under copyright.
It's that non-best sellers and a lot of scholarly works are also protected, despite the fact that no commercial publisher has any interest in keeping them available.
It's stupid and it's wrong. And it's embedded in the system.
(As Bolling notes, parody remains legal.)
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