New Review @ TCJ: Level Up

Here's a link to a new review at the Comics Journal: Level Up, by Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham.

Sequart #33: American Born Chinese

This review was originally posted at Sequart.com back in 2007.

Ultimately, the moral of AMERICAN BORN CHINESE is not especially profound. Gene Luen Yang's three storylines converge to deliver the message of be who you are. Resist the urge to assimilate. Be proud of your heritage and stop trying to deny it. What makes this such an enjoyable and effective story is the way he tells it. Yang throws three competing narratives at the reader, all of which wind up converging in exciting and unexpected ways. One of them is a slice-of-life account of a young Chinese-American student who moves to a new town and finds himself on the receiving end of his almost entirely all-white class. The second storyline involves a mythical monkey-king who is denied access to a party in heaven and responds by trying to elevate himself to a higher class of deity. The third storyline involves an all-American high school student who is tortured by his (inexplicably) Chinese cousin Chin-Kee, the personification of every negative Chinese stereotype imaginable.

This narrative strategy is what prevents the book from devolving into a heavy-handed exploration of both racism and self-hatred. By starting with the colorful tale of the Monkey King, Yang begins the book on a fantastical note. The story then shifts to Jin Wang, the young Chinese-American boy who only wants to fit in. Yang deftly folds humor into what is clearly a painful story to tell. Some of the humor winds up having unexpected repercussions, like when Jin Wang tells an apothecary's wife that he wants to be a Transformer when he grows up, and she tells him that he can do it easily, as long as he doesn't mind losing his soul--and he eventually does.

What really gives the book its power is Yang's shockingly awful Chin-Kee, a stereotypical buck-toothed, slant-eyed, yellow-skinned simpleton. This use of this out-of-nowhere boogeyman of a racial stereotype who comes along once a year to humiliate his blond & blue-eyed cousin Danny is an audacious choice by Yang. The use of a stereotype to attack stereotypes is a risky move, but the same technique of alternating narratives that breaks up the tone of Jin Yang's story serves to provide relief from Chin-Kee. He's funny and horrible and while clearly a satiric figure (who later serves a very specific and unexpected purpose), he also seems to be a bit of a cathartic exercise for the author.

Jin Wang meets a new boy in his class named Wei-Chen, who was sent to America from Taiwan. Jin initially wants nothing to do with him, but they eventually become friends. Meanwhile, we follow the Monkey King's saga as he's punished by god and buried under a pile of rock after he tries to be anything but a monkey. Things escalate from there in each of the three storylines as things go very wrong for all of our protagonists, but it's Jin selling his soul that proves to be a key moment for all three narratives.

Yang is a skilled storyteller, even if his art is so slick at times that it deflects emotional resonance. The stories are deceptively simple, but minor details later take on greater significance in clever ways. The end result is an examination of some very real and painful issues successfully integrated with memorable characters. I'm not sure the catharctic ending is entirely earned, but there's no question that the structure of the plot, the interweaving of the storylines, and the sheer power of attacking racist tropes with an outrageous satirical figure make this a compelling read.

Race, Rage & Fatherhood: Stuffed

Rob reviews the new book written by Glenn Eichler and drawn by Nick Bertozzi, STUFFED (First Second).

STUFFED is an interesting book that suffers from a couple of high concepts that didn't quite mesh. The first involves race: issues of assimilation, guilt and the ways in which we dance around both. The second involves fatherhood: in particular, the disconnect between fathers and their children and the ways in which our parents embarrass us. This book plays both ideas for laughs, dipping into humor of discomfort and humiliation. The reason why the combination of these concepts doesn't work is because Eichler doesn't take them far enough.

The basics of the plot involve a mild-mannered man named Tim estranged from his father who inherits a "museum" from his father upon his death. It's a museum of con-man curiousities, including "The Savage"--a stuffed & mounted African wearing ridiculous "jungle" clothing and holding what might be the shaft of a spear. It's a fully upright reminder of exploitation, colonialism and dehumanization. Tim tries to give it to museums and eventually is pointed to a PhD in anthropology who happens to be an African-American man named Howard, trying his best to assimilate in a mostly white environment. Toting the statue around, trying to get various countries to take the statue and the sheer spectacle of the "savage" are all fodder for any number of sight gags. Things take an extra turn for the wacky when Tim's hippy brother is summoned back to town, who then gets into all sorts of mischief. In the end, the "savage" is repatriated, the brothers come to terms with the awfulness of their father, and Howard learns to stand up for himself a bit more amongst his peers.

The big problem with the book is that it doesn't go far enough in any direction. As a character piece, it's all too shallow, predictable and cliched. The character of the hippy brother is especially eye-rolling as he changes his name from one wacky cliche to the next ("Red wolf", then "Free"), and juxtaposing him against his tight-ass brother brings about expected results. Tim's anger buttons are pushed and he simply snaps. Eichler never lets that anger get out of control or even change relationships fundamentally, giving them all a happy ending that seems as pat as it is predictable. The wise and long-suffering wives of Tim and Howard felt like something out of a screenwriter's go-to cliche' bag than fully-developed characters, especially in the scene when they were drinking together and exchanging bon mots.

Thin characterization could have been forgiven if Eichler had gone the Ishmael Reed route and pushed the envelope on the discussion of race. Books like JAPANESE BY SPRING or MUMBO JUMBO are how-to guides on provocation, exposing our cultural guilt, self-hatred and fear and turning it into the most uncomfortable but hilarious of scenarios. The image of the "savage" in Harlem and the discomfort that evoked was one of the funnier scenes from this book, but it seemed as though Eichler didn't want to be too confrontational. He wanted us to like all of the protagonists despite their flaws (though he had no problem playing up the negative aspects of the characters we weren't supposed to like to the hilt), and that watered down the more dangerous aspects of the book that focused on race. The only character who pushed any kind of racial buttons was the hippy, someone clearly depicted as naive and buffoonish. So we're left with humor without enough bite attached to characters who didn't have enough depth.

Through it all, Nick Bertozzi did his best to bring the story to life. He expertly carried the few scenes that depended on social discomfort for their punchlines and was especially adept at making the characters expressive. The way he drew Tim in particular was quite clever, superimposing his father's face on him when he finally blew his top. There were other flourishes, like an exterior shot of the roof of the house coming off when his daughter screamed upon seeing the stuffed man.

There were some funny images and ideas in this book, but they felt watered down and padded in a book-length story. Eichler is a writer known for developing the cartoon DARIA and writing for the Colbert Report, and this book felt like trying to develop a topic discussed in THE W0RD into a full-length story. It also felt like a screenplay try-out, given the plot structure, easily pigeonholed characters and feel-good ending. As genre fiction, it felt flat. As satire, the points it made were all too obvious. It made have made a nice short story or sketch, especially if they focused on the more challenging aspects of the story. Any charm or bite the story had seemed to come more from Bertozzi's pencil than Eichler's word processor.

Expanding Pedagogy: Adventures in Cartooning

Rob reviews the young readers how-to guide/narrative, ADVENTURES IN CARTOONING, by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost (FIRST SECOND).



It's a golden age for comics in many respects, but it's especially a great time for comics textbooks. With schools such as CCS, SCAD, SVA and MCAD offering formal instruction and cartooning courses popping up everywhere, it makes sense that we should finally see some practical comics textbooks. From Ivan Brunetti's informal CARTOONING book to the densely-detailed DRAWING WORDS AND WRITING PICTURES from Jessica Abel & Matt Madden along with Lynda Barry's more general inspirational guide WHAT IT IS and Kyle Baker's goofy HOW TO DRAW STUPID, there's now an embarassment of riches for anyone designing a course for teens or adults. First Second, a publisher that has gone out of its way to publish a number of comics aimed squarely at children, has stepped up to supplement the Abel/Madden book with ADVENTURES IN CARTOONING, which is designed to both educate and inspire younger children as to the formal properties of comics while telling a story.



Not surprisingly, the book was put together by the head of the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), James Sturm, and two graduates of the school, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost. Frederick-Frost has already won a Xeric grant for his LA PRIMAVERA, and all three artists have collaborated here with a pitch-perfect blend of pedagogy and fun. The book starts off by asking if the reader can draw simple shapes and promises them the ability to draw comics if they can. ADVENTURES simultaneously folds in an adventure about a knight trying to rescue a princess from a dragon into a lesson about the basics of comics, with the knight as a stand-in for the reader and a magic elf as the instructor.


The reader learns about the basic unit of the page, the panel; how to depict motion against a background, the way text influences the way we perceive image, word balloons vs thought balloons and other concepts--all within the context of a comedic quest adventure story. It's actually a delightfully meta sort of story, like a less malevolent DUCK AMUCK, as the characters find themselves able to manipulate the rules of their world as they understand more and more about comics. The end result is extremely clever, as the book surprisingly becomes an exciting adventure story, a brief comment about gender equity, and an open-ended invitation to the reader to create their own stories. The book finishes with a handy appendix of other comics concepts (like gutters), and a step-by-step series of instructions on how to draw basic characters like horses and people. It's hard to tell what the division of labor was between the three artists. I recognize Frederick-Frost's brushstrokes in how the figures are finished, but the way the action is depicted makes it seem like Arnold did the layouts. Sturm may well have written it, given his recent background as an educator, though I'm sure all three artists had input in every segment of the book.




I'll be curious to see what sort of effect this book has on children, and what the best age group would be for it. I'm guessing that the ideal group would be somewhere between seven and ten years old. The book is probably a little too simplistic for anyone older, but I'm not sure its ideas will sink in with anyone younger, unless they have an adult working with them. I do like that there's a sample of an actual child's story based on the book's characters in the back, showing a reader that their own work doesn't have to be as exact as the creators of the book. That said, the only flaw of the book is that it may not be interactive enough to really force the reader into making their own strip. The reader is introduced to a number of concepts, shown how they can work in a story, but then gets swept along with the story. At the very end, the book asks the reader to create their own stories, but this requires a bit of a leap for a child that doesn't already draw. On the other hand, the book could be a way to get children to "turn your doodles into comics!" as the front cover suggests. It's supposing that most children will have the raw material to want to start to draw comics, just not the tools. As such, ADVENTURES IN CARTOONING is more of a toolbox (or perhaps toybox) than a textbook, explicitly providing aspiring cartoonists with the fundamentals an implicitly showing them how to write the sort of story that they'd want to read.

Three Views of Escapism: The Eternal Smile

Rob reviews THE ETERNAL SMILE, a collection of three short stories written by Gene Luen Yang and drawn by Derek Kirk Kim (First Second).


With THE ETERNAL SMILE, Gene Yang cements his place as a sort of O. Henry of comics. He has a knack for setting up quickly identifiable characters and situations, then turns them on their head with a clever twist. AMERICAN BORN CHINESE had three apparently unconnected short stories that dealt with identity, shame and trying to fit into a foreign world that linked together in unexpected and touching ways. There were times in which the story's elements felt a bit too on the nose, a bit too heavy-handed in pushing its themes, yet there was no denying Yang's skill as a storyteller. THE ETERNAL SMILE has a number of the same virtues and problems, as it presents three stories with vivid characters, wholly unexpected plot twists (reality twists, really) and sometimes pat handling of the notion of escape and escapism. Yang is aided by the stunning visuals of Derek Kirk Kim, who draws each story in a style so dramatically different that it's hard to believe that it was the same artist all along.


The first story, "Duncan's Kingdom", was originally published a decade ago by Image. The concept is as strong and clever as ever: a young knight is sent to avenge the death of the king, hoping to win the hand of the beloved princess in marriage. All is not as it seems, as young Duncan wins a bit too easily and is faced with the bizarre specter of a bottle of something called Snappy Cola. Aided by the mysterious, masked Brother Patchwork, he starts to question his world and finds it crashing down around him. The story is undone at the end, without revealing its twist, by an unearned and treacly sentimentalism. The character details dumped on the reader toward the end just felt cliched, as Yang stacked the deck in creating the reasons behind the escapist scenario.


If "Duncan's Kingdom"'s main thrust is the way escapism can literally imprison someone, then "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is about how a dream can ultimately push you beyond the limitations of your life. This story starts as an affectionate tribute to the Scrooge McDuck stories of Carl Barks and then starts to uncomfortably twist the greed of his stand-in (an anthropomorphic frog named Gran'pa Greenbax) until the story careens to a halt after a shocking acts of violence. Kim's skill really carries the story at this point, simultaneously making the violence both cartoony (and hence funny) and visceral (and thus shocking). The story is successful because it subverts the familiar elements of Barks ("profitable adventures", over-the-top set-ups, cute sidekicks and most especially a pool full of cash), taking them to their logical extremes. That level of attention to detail extends to the way the story's colored (evoking 4-color comics) and even the "cover", mimicking old Gold Key Disney comics. The real twist of the story (beyond the obvious deus ex machina halfway through) is that it's a scathing parody of religion-as-corporation and corporation-as-religion (specifically, Disney). Gran'pa Greenbax's burning desire to swim in a pile of cash winds up masking another, more primal desire--one achieved to the great surprise of the story's antagonist.



The most successful story overall was "Urgent Request", a story about a meek programmer named Janet who is pretty much made to feel utterly insignificant by everyone around her. Kim's visuals once again really stand out here, using a cartoony, blobby character design and a violet wash that gives the story a certain solemnity until the story turns and we are smacked in the face by vivid color. The story's about Janet falling for the old "Nigerian prince" internet hoax and plunging a bunch of money to a grateful "prince" in Africa. Feeling special for the first time in her life, even though deep down she knew it was all a lie, Janet goes all-out in her identification with Africa and imagines a romance with "Prince Henry". Yang walks a careful line with Janet, making her a sad sack that we can't help rooting for because she's trying so hard, but avoids making her completely pathetic. Even in the moment of what should have been her greatest humiliation, the good will that Yang built up for Janet allows him to instead make this a moment of transformation.


This story spells out Yang's view on escapism, that it's less an abandoment of how things really are and instead a different way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective. Sometimes, this shifting of perspective blinds one to what's really going on, while at other times this shift is the only way one can extricate oneself from misery. Sometimes taking oneself out of character (and the story one's created) is the only way to achieve the happiness we seek, and sometimes creating a new story is what's needed. Yang implies that it's how active one is in applying this perspective is how positive it winds up becoming. Duncan's story was one of passivity, something that he had to shed. Gran'pa Greenbax was spinning his wheels in pursuit of happiness and had to think laterally and take a leap of faith to extricate himself from his life. Janet Oh created a reality around a hoax presented to her and made it become a sort of incubator for the person she wanted to become. For Yang, it all boiled down to faith in something beyond our immediate narratives and selves: escape as an activity, not a soporific.

The Examined Life: Alan's War

Rob reviews the translated edition of Emmanuel Guibert's ALAN'S WAR, his adaptation of the memories and stories of Alan Cope (First Second).

ALAN'S WAR is a triumph, though not necessarily for its surface qualities. As Tom Spurgeon noted in his review, this isn't really a World II book or even a typical biography. I saw it as a personal manifesto of sorts, a conversion narrative. Religious conversion narratives have certain common characteristics no matter the belief, and one of the cornerstones is that the narrative must be told and retold. Alan Cope, the subject of this book, went through a process of deconversion from standard religious practice but took many years to become "reborn", in his own words. The flashpoint of that rebirth was his dawning understanding that personal relationships were not only the foundations of life's meaning, but that he himself had held the key all along to his happiness. That key was personified in the way Cope had the uncanny ability to befriend so many different kinds of people. That ability was due in no small part to Cope's natural ability as a storyteller, someone that people wanted to talk to. His ability to spin interesting anecdotes was his way of applying flint to steel, sparking conversation that might lead to friendship.

Indeed, near the end of his life, that's precisely how Cope became friends with the artist Emmanuel Guibert. A chance meeting led to Cope regaling Guibert with a few stories, and Cope immediately realized what he had on his hands. Cope had spent his later years focusing on his memories, which were no doubt shaped by his new outlook on life. Guibert met Cope on an island off France and learned that Cope was an American who had left his country for good nearly fifty years earlier. Guibert offered to illustrate Cope's memories of World War II and the two men became close friends. There's a sense in which one can sense how much Cope loved telling his story because he was telling it to his friend. It's obvious that Cope regrets what he considers years of lost opportunities to stay close to many of his friends. That sadness pervades the last section of the book, along with anger towards older belief systems that he now views as hindrances. That sadness is tempered by the sense that Cope is finally getting it right with Guibert, giving even the most downbeat of sections a certain bounce.

Guibert's art in this book is simple but stunning. Certain sequences have a level of detail that's breathtaking, while much of his figure work is iconic but expressive. Guibert flips back and forth from pages with no backgrounds (even when climbing a mountain, which was a stark and interesting choice) to panoramic scenes of nature. The book has a washed-out appearance, perhaps mimicking an old book of photographs. That washed-out appearance is literal, this film clip demonstrates his technique. Using that waterjet device to etch the paper with an impression and applying ink to make images appear seemingly out of nowhere is an apt description of what Cope does.

Cope's skill as a storyteller does not lie in the ability to render the quotidian poignant. Rather, it's his ability to bring others to vivid life in his recollections that makes each tangent and detour so compulsively readable. He was naturally drawn to outsiders, individualists, iconoclasts and artists. Even when he was a fundamentalist Christian, he couldn't help but want to be around people who had a certain sensitivity. While they would certainly wind up having a significant influence on his beliefs, the mere fact that he was drawn to them showed that he wanted his beliefs to be challenged. The setting of war, one where an individual is supposed to mold one's identity in the image of his country, was a sharp contrast to the memories that were important to Cope. The way he disobeyed orders and made friends with a local German family and the warm affection he felt toward them was one of the most striking sequences in the book.

One thing that is unspoken but still felt was the way Cope evolved the further he got away from the U.S. and spent time abroad--both in distance and time. The kind of people he met and interacted with, especially as he got away from the army, reflected Cope's own growth and interests. He left America ostensibly because of what he felt was the pernicious influence of fundamentalism and a shallowness of thinking. While this conclusion was certainly valid, leaving America would seem to have concretized his own initial transformation. Abandoning his old country was a boldly symbolic way of abandoning a way of thinking and living that he had come to hate in himself, and this is what America became to him.

Two future volumes are planned, one about Cope's childhood in California and another about the friendship between Cope and Guibert. It's clear that these books are true labors of love for Guibert. The responsibility and opportunity to record and immortalize the stories of his friend are something he obviously takes very seriously, but Guibert never forgets to let each page breathe. There's nothing ponderous about these books, which owes as much to the playfulness of Guibert's style as it does to the breeziness of Cope's storytelling style. A subtle and dry wit pervades every story, making Cope and Guibert perfect complements and collaborators. ALAN'S WAR is a powerful testament to the way memory shapes identity and vice-versa and the way
friendship enriches lives and creates meaning.