The Comics

Ever since I was a little kid, I've found refuge in the comics. As an adult, particularly when I'm down (I've decided to stop whining, effective now), I can still get a little suspension of belief by turning to what has become a new literary genre, the graphic novel.

In France, Tintin reigned. He was a young reporter who, with his dog Milou, his friend Captain Haddock and a list of colorful and not altogether healthy characters, traveled to all parts of the world and expounded what were then European colonial aspirations. He went to the moon, stopped slavers, found sunken treasures, hunted in the Congo, foiled opium traders in the Orient. He was completely sexless--no romantic interest ever entered life and the sole woman portrayed was an overweight opera singer whose stolen jewels he recovered.

In the States, the greatest and most original work was A Contract with God, by Will Eisner. Seeking a more mature expression of the comics' form, Eisner, a cartoonist whose works include The Spirit, Blackhawk, Sheena, and many others, spent two years creating four short stories of "sequential art" that became A Contract with God, first published by Baronet Books in 1978. In this book, with its 1930’s Bronx tenements and slice-of-life moral tales, Eisner returned to his roots and discovered new potential for the comics form — the graphic novel.

More recently, artist Neil Gaiman wrote and published The Sandman, the tale of Dream of the Endless, an amorphous creature who rules over the kingdom of dreams. There were 75 issues in all from 1989 t0 1996, and Norman Mailer described Gaiman's creations as "a comic book for the intellectual." The Sandman is one of a handful of graphic novels to ever make theNew York Times bestseller list. And of course there is also the Watchmen series, recently made into an unfortunate and incomprehensible movie.

Graphic novels are not for lazy readers. The images are far more complex than the text, which is often secondary, and the plots would daunt Dante. These books are put together by a team of artists--writer, drawer, inker, letterer, editor and each participant will probably have a impact on the book's lot and resolution. In some editions--notably Sandman--the writer invites several teams of artists to put together a given issue, so that by the time these are put into a printed collection, each issue has its particular look, style and voice. Imagine, if you will, Mick Jagger putting a different band together for each cut of the Stones' new CD and you'll get an idea of what publishers of graphic novels are offering today.

Interested? Here are some worth considering according to Time magazine:

 

Berlin: City of Stones by Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly; 2000)
Part of an incredibly ambitious, years-in-the-making project, this is just the first volume of a series of novels that will all take place during the combustible Weimar era of the titular city. Drawn with clean lines and an attention to architectural detail that pays homage to such European comics as Hergé's "Tintin," City of Stones follows a young woman art student who starts an affair with a weary leftist journalist against a background of boiling politics and decadence. Filled with rich characters and period detail, even if the follow-up books never come, it will still be one of the premier works of historical fiction in the medium.

Blankets by Craig Thompson (Top Shelf; 2003)
This semi-autobiographical novel set in the snowy hinterlands of Wisconsin tells the story of a lonely, artistic young man who struggles with his fundamentalist Christian upbringing when he falls in love. Fluidly told over 582 pages, Blankets magically recreates the high emotional stakes of adolescence. Thompson has set new bars for the medium not just in length, but breadth.

 

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (DC Comics; 1986)
One of the best-selling graphic novels of all time, this black comedy version of Batman's latter days masterfully combines satire with superhero antics without betraying it's central character's core of danger. Along with Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's Watchmen, it redefined the concept of "superhero," and helped spark the first wave of "serious" interest in comics. And, of course, it was made into a not-so-bad film.

 

David Boring by Daniel Clowes (Pantheon; 2000)
Although best known for his book Ghost World, thanks to the movie version, Dan Clowes' David Boring, about a guy in search of a woman while the world may be ending, marked his first truly novelistic approach to graphical storytelling. Peerless in his ability to create offbeat characters and write sardonic humor, Clowes has lately gotten more experimental in his form, but David Boring remains his most readable and unified book.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (Pantheon; 2000)
The most perfect novel yet seen in this format, Ware innovates in form and in content to create a uniquely American story, both tragic and gut-splittingly funny. Neither smart nor a kid, Jimmy reunites with his long-lost dad, finds him a great disappointment, and discovers an African-American sister he never knew about. Confronting race, history, and family this book proved incontrovertibly that the form could be as deep and complex as any prose novel.

 

Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories by Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books; 2003)
A kind of über graphic novel that collects a series of smaller graphic novels all situated in a small town "somewhere south of the U.S. border," this giant tome by a seminal comic artist will likely be the author's magnum opus. Part of the creative team behind the deeply influential "Love and Rockets" comic book series (along with his equally talented brother Jaime) Gilbert has created a Pan-American epic that spans multiple generations of a family run almost exclusively by women. Hernandez' Palomar combines the look of Archie comics with Faulkner's richness of character and place into the melodramatic sweep of a sexy soap opera to create one of the most remarkable works of any narrative art.

Friends in Medium Places

I don’t have friends in high places anymore. I did, many years ago, when for a brief period I found myself hobnobbing with the high-and-mighty. In time, I discovered these relationships were at best transient and, honestly, brought little to the table. Now I know and rely on less stellar beings, the average-but-resourceful on whose help I can count on when the going gets choppy. I suppose you could call them friends in medium places.

Take, for instance, the mechanic at a local garage who for years has been putting my cars through the Virginia State inspection. It is cars, plural; I have three, none newer than 1989, and they’re well-loved but cantankerous. Mike the Mechanic—an alias—whips them through his service station, tells me what may need to be done, quotes a friendly price and advises me to shop eBay for replacement parts. I’ve followed his advice and saved hundreds. We talk about the weather, his wife and her latest weight-loss program, and his 16-year-old daughter whom he worries about. He knows I used to work in a drug rehab and a while back he asked me about the warning signs of marijuana use. We spoke and days later I gave him some literature as well as the name of a doctor I know who willingly talks to concerned parents.

Mr. T (really, it says that on his nametag) is a physically impressive clerk who works in a nearby post office. He has helped me figure out the sometimes Byzantine postal rates charged for shipping goods overseas, as well as the US Customs forms that need to be filled. Sending stuff has gotten more complex since the Homeland Security people have taken an interest in outgoing mail (it seems to me they should focus on the incoming stuff, but what do I know) and Mr. T has suggested ways to ship more cheaply and faster. I’ve seen him deal with the rush of Christmas package senders with the aplomb of Eliot Ness facing the mob. He has never once lost his cool; he shakes my hand, smiles and asks how I am every time we meet. Now that’s a friend…

At my food store, I ran into a young check-out employee whom I used to see when he worked at Borders, before that bookselling chain went out of business.  Charles is thin, intense, and even looks like a writer, and when he manned the store’s espresso machine, I could always count on a couple of free shots, as well as good conversation on the latest literary gossip. The economy has treated Charles harshly; newly married and living in his in-laws’ basement with his wife, he now handles carrots instead of Camus and Pepsi rather than Pepys, but he’s still full of good advice. Where he once he pointed me to the hidden Borders shelf where a couple of difficult-to-find hardback masterpieces were for sale, Charles now sends me to the grocery store’s olive counter. The big green ones stuffed with red peppers are on sale, he says, though not marked as such, and the gherkins are out of this world.

I know a lot people like Charles, Mr. T and Mike throughout the area. They’ve had—and continue to have—more impact on my daily life than the US Senators I used to play music with, or the Presidential candidate who wanted me to ghost-write a novel for him—free of charge, I might add.

I’m not sure what to make of this, and probably there’s nothing to be made of it at all. In the Washington area, there’s not seven degrees of separation, there’s one or two, three at most, and everyone knows someone who is intimately acquainted with the movers and shakers, or has a child that attends the same school as the President’s daughter. We like to be associated with the richer and more famous, without realizing that more often than not, these people are takers, not givers.

My playwright friend Paul this morning reminded me of what used to be called ‘the King’s touch,’ the belief  held in the Middle Ages that a touch from royalty could heal many diseases.  A few hundred years later, those with faith thought that a coin that had been touched by the monarch held much the same powers—cure by osmosis. I think the belief still holds true; we think knowing the highly placed will somehow better our lives.

Me, I believe in Mr. T the Mailman and Mike the Mechanic.

All Things French

When I was a kid and first came to America with my mother and father, they quickly discovered that the Washington area, though provincial, had:

• Two French doctors (one male from the South of France, one female, from the North)
• A French dentist
• Three French real estate ladies
• Two French lawyers
• One French accountant
• One French-language book store
• One French butcher
• Two French handyman (though one was really Algerian)
• Several young French women who worked as maids, housekeepers and nannies
• A French lycée
• A French music teacher who played several instruments, none particularly well
• Two very ancient ladies of indeterminate nationality who spoke elegant French and had a curio shop in Georgetown.

Further search found a Hungarian surgeon who spoke French and dispensed prescription drugs with a certain abandon; a deposed French Premier and his wife (parents of the French dentist and one of the French real estate ladies); a gay restaurateur and his equally gay girlfriend who were ‘married’ for propriety’s sake; another doctor (ear nose and throat); a French-speaking Brazilian veterinarian who when invited came to dinner with her pet boa constrictor;  and a French Auto mechanic who refused to work on anything but Peugeot and Renault cars.

This was above and beyond the complement of French reporters, military men and diplomats that any capital city would harbor.

Food- and drink-wise, there was wine, of course, though rarely in the liquor stores. These carried a red alcoholic liquid so sugary it ran thick when poured, and the French families drinking such an abomination did so secretly. Good wine was shipped in, or purchased from diplomats who got their monthly allotment duty-free via the eagerly awaited diplomatic pouch. Twelve times a year, my father would visit a friend who worked at the French consulate and return with five or six cases of scotch, brandy, and assorted liqueurs, as well as a dozen bottles of decent Beaujolais and Medocs.

What was not to be found anywhere was bread, and this was a serious concern. There were rumkors that a bakery in faraway New York knew how to make croissants, but no baguette, batard or ficelle  existed within hundreds of miles of Washington, and the feeble attempts to make such a staple at home always failed. There were no cheeses, either, save the noxious Velveeta which my mother once mistook for a block of furniture wax, nor were there patés,  rillettes, escargots, saucissons, boudins, smoked salmon, quiches, nor even the makings of a decent cassoulet.  

I thought of this yesterday as I gazed at the cheese counter of a local food store, where for admittedly outrageous prices, one can purchase European goods once unheard of in this country. I spied a tiny wedge of Roquefort going for $17 and possibly worth it if it was real, since true Roquefort is of limited production and aged only in the French caves of Cobalou in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. Even more surprising was a smidgeon of Epoisses from the Côtes d’Or at $23. I am gratified that it took only a half century for Americans to discover the delights of truly stinky cheese.

Even more surprising is the wealth of baguette-like breads now on sale. Little ones, big ones, ones made of rye and whole wheat and even sourdough, which to the best of my knowledge is still unknown in France.  Add to this patisseries, the Napoléons and éclairs and choux á  la crème.

I have still to find a pet de none, precisely translated as a nun’s fart, a very light fried beignet that for decades has inspired guffaws from French schoolchildren. Perhaps some things are best left in France.

A Long Ago Christmas

Many years ago I lived in a big dilapidated house on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, across the street from a hospital with constant ambulance traffic, though it seemed no cured patients ever left the place. There was a Chinese carry out restaurant three doors down, and a laundromat where the machines malfunctioned and sent cascades of foamy water into the street.

We had a rotating cast of odd and odder people on the top two floors. The downstairs apartment was rented by a newly married and devout Jewish couple, both attending Georgetown University. She was twice her husband’s size, and he never spoke.  At any given time, up to a dozen youngish men and women rented rooms in the place, with a remarkable lack of sexual activity among them. In fact, I remember the waiter who lived in the floor above mine lamenting that if there was a sexual revolution going on, he had yet to find the front. The people there were nevertheless infused with a spirit of non-conformity, or perhaps total conformity for the times. We smoked a lot of dope, drank sugary wine from gallon bottles of Gallo, brewed potfuls of sour coffee, cooked vast quantities of pasta and tried to define what our futures would be. I drove a little silver Nissan convertible sports car with a loud eight-track cassette stereo and every Dylan song ever recorded, as well as some Moody Blues for lighter moments.

Michael was a photographer working at the Washington Post. I worked there too. Martha was an airline attendant; Christine was trying to break into modeling at a time when black models were a rarity. Narji, who smelled of horse liniment and kept a Western saddle in his bedroom, wanted to be a circus performer. Michael’s younger brother, Bart was going to make a fortune dealing dope, more specifically marijuana and procaine as he was afraid selling cocaine, the real stuff, could get him into serious trouble. Joe, who worked at a nearby Safeway stocking shelves, was perfectly happy to stay there. He had figured out that after 20 years, he’d be making enough to buy a place in Florida where the rest of us could come to vacation. It seemed like a plausible plan at the time, so we were encouraging, even as we urged him to steal food and laundry detergent for us from the Safeway. Musicians came and went and Saturday nights were often a cacophony of electric guitars, bongo drums and harmonicas. The songs Joni Mitchell, Tim Buxley and the Stones were savaged. Candles flickered, the wine flowed and people slept on the floor. It was, in many ways, the best time I had in my life. Until Christmas rolled around.

By December 21, most of the people had taken cars, buses and planes to be with their families and the house on Massachusetts Avenue became a bastion of crushing loneliness.  There were more ambulances and more sirens wailing. I would go to Jenkins’ Hill, a nearby bar owned by an acquaintance, get stupidly drunk on Irish coffees, stagger home in the wee hours and then, blasted by caffeine, lay awake in my bed until it was time to go to work. I would do this for the entire holiday week, surviving on street-vendor half-smokes during the day and Chef Boyardee ravioli at night. It was not a pretty sight. In early January, the room-mates would return with stories of epic meals and dysfunctional families. I would tell them of my adventure with a pot of pasta left to smolder overnight on the stove, which explained the strange smell in the kitchen.

One early spring, the third year I was in the house, it all began to fall apart. Marty announced she was leaving; she’d be moving in with three other flight attendants in a townhouse closer to the airport. Narji got a job at a stable in Maryland and left behind only a faint aroma of leather and saddle soap, though weeks after his departure we found a bag of filthy and reeking laundry in the back of his closet. Bart simply vanished leaving all his belongings behind. We feared he’d been killed in a bad dope deal but Michael wasn’t worried. He told us that was how his brother behaved; sometimes he simply left town.  Christine fell in love with a soul singer and followed him to Detroit. To this day I am still not sure whether Michael seduced the young Jewish woman who lived downstairs, or vice versa, but they ended up in bed together, and the thin, silent husband found out—or perhaps she told him. One morning soon thereafter a regiment of young, wiry men wearing yarmulkes and work gloves converged on their apartment and the couple was gone by late afternoon. Michael was not home that day, so the young husband, in a Lutherite epiphany, Scotch-taped a list of wrongs done him on my room-mate’s door. The waiter moved to New York, and Safeway Joe found a managerial position at a Food Lion in the Virginia suburbs. My Datsun convertible caught on fire while sitting at a red light on Massachusetts Avenue. Smoke poured from the air vents and the car expired with muted hissing and popping sounds.

For a month or two, various people and friends of friends were at the house for a day or a week. One absconded in the middle of the night with the living room curtains and the entire contents of the fridge. In May, the owner of the place sent a letter saying the house had been sold and the tenants had two weeks to leave.  

Seven months after that I drove by and the house was gone. In its place were three small townhouses and a six-car parking area.

Michael died in a car accident six years later. I never did see Bart again.

Ten Questions for the NRA

Ever since the Newtown massacre, I’ve had disturbing image of Mr. Preston, my high school English teacher, toting a Glock. Mr. Preston was a spindly, tight-lipped man who once told me I was the best French student in his English class. His compliment launched my writing career, though it did not escape me that I was also the only French student in his class.  Mr. Preston was known to have bad reactions if his class was unruly. He would yell, harangue and occasionally throw blackboard erasers at his pupils. He once drew three large Xs with an indelible Magic Marker on the forehead of a particularly rambunctious teen.   

This has led me to wonder about the obscene proposal put forth by the National Rifle Association that teachers and principals should be armed while at work. I use the word obscene selectively. Until recently, I thought it connoted some sort of offensiveness, with sexual overtones. Now I see it as better defined by the Encarta Dictionary: disgusting and morally offensive, especially through an apparent total disregard for others' rights or natural justice.

Enough etymology, I have several questions for Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA.

1. Who decides which teachers/administrators will be selected? Will it be voluntary or mandatory? Will it be included in their résumés?
2. Who screens the teachers and roots out the pederasts, molesters and the potentially violent?
3. Who trains these newly armed persons; who pays them, buys guns for them. (Here, a suggestion: Let the NRA and the gun manufacturer pay for all of the above. Let them also be responsible for the inevitable lawsuits, hospitalizations, funeral costs, psychological treatment and any other negative outcome of putting so many more weapons in people’s hands.)
4. Where will the weapons be kept during the school day? Will there be a gun locker in every classroom or a sort of armory closet in the hallway? Or will the teachers keep them in their desk drawers next to the cheese and cracker treats and the breath mints? Might they simply wear the guns in holsters during classroom hours?
5. Do the teachers/administrators take the guns home at night? Will they be given gun safes for their homes?
6. Will every school have an armed guard during off-hours and vacation days to deter would be gun thieves?  Because make no mistake, there will be gun thieves.
7. And what kind of weapons are talking about anyway? Assault rifles, automatics, single shots or sawed-off shotguns?
8. What will be the protocol? Shoot first, ask questions later? Try to reason with the assailant as others draw a bead on him?
9. Will they be shooting to kill or merely to wound?
10. And of course, will the official shooter benefit from Good Samaritan laws? This is bound to be a hotly contested issue.

So those are the first 10 questions. There will be more.

And now for a request. Mr. LaPierre, on behalf of millions of French people, I respectfully request you change your name to something less Gallic sounding. You’re giving a bad name to a nation that long ago realized that guns do indeed kill people, and frankly, we want nothing to do with you.

 

Guns

Not too long ago, a man whose name I have deliberately forgotten wrote a book whose title I have also deliberately forgotten endorsing the concept that laws restricting gun sales and ownership actually promoted gun violence.  

This makes as much sense, of course, as suggesting one diet by having a fridge full of lemon meringue pies, or dealing with alcoholism by stacking cases of Jack Daniels in the drinker’s living room. It’s the kind of rationale the National Rifle Association as well as the powerful gun lobbies will happily espouse, and it is sheer crap.

Guns kill people. That’s what, for the most part, they’re designed to do. The idea is to send a fast-traveling projectile through someone else’s soft tissue with corresponding consequences. Yes, there are hunters, and yes, there are target shooters, and collectioners, and others who may have a legitimate reason to have guns, but they’re the minority. Unless we as a nation are at war at home and protecting ourselves from invading enemies, a lot more people are going to be injured by guns than will be protected by them.

It struck me during the latest outrage—yet another mass killing, this time mostly of children—that one of the appeals of firearms is that you don’t your hands dirty. They work from a distance. You will not be plastered by the victim’s blood and guts, and you can walk away with the crease in your jeans unsullied. That’s appealing, this idea of doing dirty work without getting soiled, and it goes a long way towards explaining why I have never seen a headline that read, Man Armed with Baseball Bat Kills 15 or Knife-wielding Youth Goes Berserk at Mall.

I don’t own a gun. If I did, it would be in a locked gun cabinet, and if my home were invaded, I would have to politely request that the offender allow me to put my pants on and get my guns from the locker, unfasten their trigger guards, and load them. Then we could get down to business. The point here is that gun safety is a handy oxymoron. If a weapon is to be used in an emergency, it has to be close at hand. If it is close at hand, it can be found and used by people whose mental capacities are doubtful at best—children, depressed teenagers, vengeful husbands.

Worldwide, seven out of the top 12 gun-related mass killings have occurred in the United States. Despite this, I fear that within days we will be back to business as usual. It’s merely mildly comforting to think that only a socially challenged miscreant would think of killing kindergarten children with a semi-automatic weapon, and, by definition, it is probably true.

The harsh reality is that our political system thankfully makes it impossible to chart the movement of would-be criminals, be they sane or not. But we can take away these people’s weapons, or render them unavailable. We can also enact legislation that makes any criminal activity involving repeating firearms worthy of a punishment so stringent that it will make anyone contemplating such a crime think twice. You want to knock over a 7/11 using your Glock? Think about spending the next 50 years in prison.

We can institute buybacks. We can insist that the same restrictions involving buying and driving an automobile apply to guns. If you want a weapon, learn how to safely own and operate it; be licensed; carry insurance so that if the weapon is stolen and used in a crime, some of the damages might be covered. Control the flow of ammunition, and make its purchasers identify themselves and sign a release guaranteeing that no crime will be committed with their purchase. If one is, punish the buyer who did not take the necessary steps to stop its theft or use.  Tax the hell out of firearms, and make sure the tax—like that on a car—is paid annually. Close gun shows where guns can be purchased with no other qualifications than cash on hand. Once a gun-related crime has been tried, destroy the weapons involved. Apply the three-strikes-you’re-out laws not to drug users but to gun wielders. Personally, if I have a choice between a pothead walking the streets or a guy with a gun, I’ll take the pothead any day.

Yesterday evening in his speech in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama called for ‘something to be done’ without specifying what that something may be. Let that something be gun control. As it stands, any measures taken will not see results for years to come. Let’s start now. It’s already almost too late,

 

 

  

Neighbors

Just for the record, the neighbors on my right are delightful people. We exchange information on tomato blight, the state of the world in general, and the fact that the street we live on has unfortunately become a thoroughfare. I watch their house when they’re away; my cat has adopted them, and vice versa. When they found out earlier this year that I had cancer, they brought over pastries. You can’t have better neighbors than that.

The neighbors on my left are spawns of hell from one of those former Soviet bloc countries that has four syllables without vowels and sounds like a sneeze. I don’t know how many of them live in their three bedroom house, but there are six used Japanese cars in various states of decay parked in their driveway and on the street. When they first moved in a decade or so ago, they cut down the two large cedars flanking their house, thereby giving me an unobstructed view of a wheezing AC unit and their trash and recycling bins.  Then they painted the house bile yellow with puke green trim, and began building a grape arbor that they never finished. The four-by-four posts that were supposed to anchor the trellis are now festooned with poison ivy vines, and the cement sacks left behind have disintegrated and formed large, grey puddles of stone on their lawn. The family, I have noticed, also collects road detritus, which is the only way to explain the array of empty plastic bottles and Mickey D wrappers festooning their front yard. Last year, an inflatable Santa on their front stoop ran out of air and collapsed on the lawn, a sight to frighten small children who might believe old Kris Kringle had been assassinated. The carcass remained in their yard until Easter.

Here’s what sealed the deal, though. About a month after they slithered into the neighborhood, the man of the house asked to borrow my truck, a gorgeous old Chevy Suburban that I had customized inside and out. When he returned the vehicle, there was a sizeable dent on the left rear fender. He denied having anything to do with it, claiming it was there before. It wasn’t. I let it go. Three weeks after, someone in the house took up the drums.

I’m a musician. I’ve played in bands since I was 16, and over the years I’ve been subject to my fair share of cacophony. My experiences have also led me to believe drummers are unusual people to begin with—anyone whose avocation is beating on the stretched skins of dead animals with sticks is bound to be a bit strange. In fact, I can say that, after having been musically involved with at least 20 drummers over the decades, I am convinced drummers are marginally dangerous people with deep anger issues. The one next door has never once managed to carry a four-four beat. What comes from the neighbors’ basement is an explosion of meaningless sounds resembling mines going off in a war-torn country. There’s a full set of cymbals, too, which he/she whacks with primitive abandon.

Twice I’ve been at their door to complain about the noise. I’ve written letters and threatened lawsuits. The neighbors lull me into a sense of complacency by ceasing to drum for a week or two, and then starting again with added fury.

We are at war.

I have no plans for an outright invasion, but I’m a big believer in guerrilla tactics, which include the possibility of using a blower to move leaves from my yard to theirs while they are worshipping their evil deity on Friday nights. That’s all I have come up with so far, and I welcome suggestions.  Stay tuned.