CSotD: Stuff I like
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Okay, it's always stuff I like. That's the format.
But here's #4000 for Prince Valiant, which is not only an impressive record for a Sunday-only strip but a good example of a re-invigorated zombie strip as well as a strip that happens to be a foundation for my love of comics and a very fine piece of freestanding art in any case.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the strip's creator, Hal Foster, lived down the road from my grandparents in Connecticut, and my uncle was, as a lad, welcome in his studio. When Teddy came to live with us after his folks died, he brought with him some hard-cover Prince Valiant collections.
I don't know if they were signed or not, and I don't know what happened to them in the years since. However, they didn't need to be signed, since Teddy actually knew Foster and hadn't simply run into him at a ComicsCon, and, in any case, they were not put behind glass as collector's pieces but were read, loved, left on the floor and otherwise treated as part of the Kids' Canon in our house.
As a consequence, I've always been more aware of the strip than I might otherwise have been, and even of the Robert Wagner movie which mostly showed that a haircut that is perfectly credible in a comic can look pretty ridiculous in real life.
But worse things have happened to the strip over the years than that movie, which was actually a pretty good swashbuckler with a highly credible cast and Foster even credited on the screenplay.
Though we know how that can go: He is also credited on the 1997 adaptation, which apparently falls into the almost-amusingly-horrible category and perhaps shows how hard it can be to influence a script when you have been dead for a decade and a half.
In any case, the strip itself went through a period of strained writing in recent years that was never quite ludicrous enough to be entertaining but certainly bad enough to make the strip not worth reading. However, it's been back for a while now, the writing is more true to the original vision, and the art … well, just look.
Incidentally, I've got one of the new Fantagraphics reprints and will include it in some book reviews I'll be doing in a couple of weeks — in time for holiday shopping and coordinated to cover for me on a couple of days when I'm off the grid. Stay tuned.
From the sublime to the cinematic
Brewster Rockit has been playing with the concept of the film "Gravity" lately. I liked this one, in keeping with my love of stupid humor.
I've been hearing a lot about "Gravity," including an interview with Sandra Bullock on NPR which for some reason dwelt more on the complexity of the special effects than on the complexity of the character.
The critic I assigned to review it enjoyed the movie very much and she's an extraordinarily bright person, but she's also 10 years old. And even she said it was very important to see the 3-D version, which may be a first. Our young critics often say a film is more fun in 3-D, but I don't think any of them have ever said that it was crucial.
Perhaps the nuances of character and subtle symbolism of plot are more accurately conveyed in that more immediate format. It's certainly been true before:
Speaking of kids and stupidity
Michael Cavna has a worthwhile piece on Jeff Smith's appointment to the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. His series, Bone, has become very popular with kids through Scholastic's publishing, but even he tells Cavna he's run into censorship problems in school libraries.
“A school in Minnesota wanted to ban it,” Smith tells Comic Riffs this
week. “It was because [it depicts] cigars and beer…when it takes place
in a medieval town. And my main characters…don’t even partake.”
I can sympathize. I wrote an historical-fiction serial story two years ago based in Northern New York and set in the Prohibition era. The story was about a kid who gets drawn into the seemingly romantic world of free-spending bootleggers in flashy roadsters, only to realize that they are thugs and that he's better off listening to his customs-officer uncle.
It was about as strait-laced a lesson about avoiding gangsters and illegal substances as you could get, but a couple of newspapers turned it down, including the one in the town where it was based. The history was accurate, the message was positive, but, gosh, it mentioned liquor and therefore, kids shouldn't see it.
It's important to teach kids not to join gangs or sell illegal substances, but you mustn't ever mention either of those things in doing so.
You wouldn't like him when he's angry
Tom Toles is reputed to be a pretty mellow guy, but I think he's had enough. And, yeah, I really do like him when he's angry.
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