Part Two: The Line That Blurs

I happened upon a group of college-age convention patrons sitting on the floor of a merchandise room and decided to see what they knew about webcomics. They were open to being a group interview, which would make for good “round-table” discussion sort of tape, so I sat down with them and began to ask them questions.

Aysha Nasir’s favorite webcomic is Questionable Content, a slice-of-life comedy about a twenty-something musician and his many sassy female friends. She thinks the publishing on the web and in print have their merits. “It’s nice to be able to hold something in your hand but I think webcomics are definitely a big part of the industry because their free and they reach so many people,” she says. I later learned that her father is a science fiction novelist.

“You don’t need to find a distributor or a publisher,” adds Gaylen Fabick. “People just come to your site and that’s your publishing right there.”

“And if you want to get really environmental, you don’t waste a bunch of paper!” says Aysha.

Sarah Zimfer likes Megatokyo, a webcomic with an art style influenced by manga, or Japanese comics. It’s set in a fictionalized Tokyo, and revolves around Japanese and American characters who are video game enthusiasts. “Once I found out that [creators Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston] actually started publishing the books and it wasn’t just online anymore, I went looking for it … I couldn’t find it for a couple of years because it’s not big, but I love being able to take it with me where I’m going.”

They not only had read a wide range of webcomics, they seemed to also be generally knowledgeable of creating webcomics from the perspective of the cartoonist. It’s not too surprising. On webcomic sites, the cartoonists tend to maintain blogs, with entries appearing right underneath their comics, allowing their readers into their lives. They discuss politics, annoyances with the comic and film industries, announce their plans to visit upcoming conventions, and relate anecdotes explaining where they get their ideas.

With art in any medium, they knew that trying to find comics that they enjoy takes time and a lot of clicking on links. They’re certainly not snobs though. Gaylen appreciates the comedy of Cyanide and Happiness, even though he says the art style is simplistic.

Lorna Drackett points out that with webcomics, the pull is more often the ideas and humor than how well they are drawn. “If they can get across their idea clearly with whatever they’re using it doesn’t matter. Sometimes simpler art can get across something in a funnier way.”

After I finished the interview, I answered the usual post-interview questions like ‘When is this going to air?’ and ‘ Aysha also asked me why NPR wanted to do a piece on webcomics. I admitted that it was mostly my baby. Being an avid reader of comics and a webcartoonist myself, I’d decided to make my Intern Edition piece something I already knew a lot about but wanted to know more about. I decided to shamelessly self-advertise, borrowing a piece of paper from Sarah, and quickly sketched my main characters, then wrote the web address in the corner, and she showed me the drawings she kept in her folder as well.

It was quite late at night by this point, and I was thinking about moving on to interview other patrons of the con. I saw, though, that I was running out of space on the flash card I had brought with me, and that I would need it in the morning when I returned to record a webcomics panel which would include Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi, the two webcartoonists I’m profiling for my piece. I had already seen most areas of the hotel that were open to con-goers, and when I looked at the schedule, none of the remaining events for that evening looked all that appealing. And as I chatted with the people I had just interviewed, I found that they reminded me of my friends from college. The line between journalist and subject blurred. I stuck around with them, trading jokes and memories about classic animes like Dragon Ball Z. We went to the art auction room to see the fan-created art of popular characters that the artists were selling, lamenting how so many of the artists’ suggested starting bids undersold their talents.

The night wore on though, and as much fun as it was to hang with them, I needed to get home and get some rest because I would be back early in the morning. I didn’t see anyone from their party again until around the same time the next night, when I happened upon them at a nearby McDonald’s that was pretty much packed 24/7 with people from the convention. Sarah had her laptop, and she and her friends were looking at a Word document she had full of quotations from movies, books, and people she knew that she found funny or compelling. She invited me to add one. I couldn’t think of anything other than something from my own webcomic, so I put that in, with the URL once again, hoping that maybe somewhere down the line, long after the convention was over, I’d get an e-mail from someone I had met here that said even something as simple and to the point as ‘Hey, great comic!’ so I’d know I had been more than a mere observer and recorder for that long weekend.

Part One: Getting In(to Character)

On the night of Friday, February 15, the day after Valentine’s Day, I took the Metro to the Adams Morgan station on the red line, with my flash recorder slung around my shoulder. It was in the early evening, and I was still dressed in the clothes I had worn to the office that day, but with the added accessory of the headphones on my flash recorder around my neck, the only place they would fit. The train hadn’t passed too many stops before I began to see teenagers dressed as pink-haired samurai and robots made of plastic and foil climbing on. They were clearly headed to the same place I was, the Omni Shoreham Hotel, for Katsucon – the biggest Japanese pop culture convention of the season.

As I rode the escalator up out of the subway, holding my coat closed in the cold, I recognized even more familiar characters from Japanese animation. At least four or five Uzumaki Narutos, ninjas young and loud; a gang of death gods from Bleach, their soul-sealing swords at their waists; Sailor Moon and the Supremes…I mean, fellow Sailor Scouts, ready to fight with love and honor against the insidious Queen Beryl. This wasn’t the first time I’d been to an anime convention – there was one every year at Smith College, just a few hours away from Amherst, my all-too-recent alma mater. But it was definitely the first time I’d gone as a reporter.

When I entered the lobby, I asked around and managed to locate the Operations desk, where I got my press pass, and with it, the right to enjoy the con for free, and to skip any lines for any of the events that were being held there. I walked around the first floor of the hotel, feeling in the convention but not quite of the convention, my microphone sending everything I heard through the filter of my headphones as I recorded the convention’s ambient sound. My Marantz seemed to serve as a small, solid state screen, that separated me from the rest of the patrons. But even if I had come as myself, and not a representative of National Public Radio, and paid full price to get in, I wonder if I really would have felt like I belonged there any more than I did.

I do enjoy anime and manga, but my fandom is nowhere near that of the young man I met late in the evening, who walked around with a printed list of nearly two terabytes of anime that he had access to. He was there hoping to meet other fans with similarly huge collections so that he could trade with them, but his collection had grown so large, there was no one who had anything that he didn’t. He admitted that the vast majority of the anime he had were shows he had not even watched yet, so in practice, they were basically a currency to him, valuable only within the confines of the hotel grounds for this one weekend, at least until next year.

If it weren’t for my focus on getting the story on webcomics, I doubt I would have had the courage to even approach most of the people I met that night. As a more casual anime fan, it is always complicated mixture of admiration and revulsion that I experience when I go to a convention. Sure, I’d love to talk about anime, but I can barely keep up with the more hardcore fans, and sometimes, their love of anime can be so zealous and uncritical that any reference to a show or movie as being sub-par can result in alienation. I see the people who come in costume, and part of me is in sheer awe of the amount of work and dedication put into creating them. I understand their willingness to take the stares they inevitably received on the way here. So rarely in my life could I say I had their bravery. But to what end? To put your love of character on display?

I’ve never dressed up as a character before, and I occasionally wonder if I am in denial about some inner desire to do so. I’ve searched myself, but I haven’t found such a need. Perhaps my appreciation of this form of pop culture is just one that requires no external layer in order for me to fully express it.

Obama’s South Carolina win and acceptance speech convincingly rebuked the “black candidate” perception that he has. But when listening to the speech, we must keep in mind how ridiculous the debate has become. The false dichotomy of “the black candidate versus the candidate who happens to be black” is merely a euphemism for the ignorant ideas they connote, that is, “candidate influenced by and committed to the ‘negative’ aspects of black culture versus the candidate who is black but is more influenced by white culture.” Depending on your point of view, what exactly those elements of black culture that are negative differ.

One reason why Obama may be courting so many conservatives is that he does not call to mind the image of someone such as a Jesse Jackson, who speaks with a more African-American Vernacular English-influenced accent, which can affect others’ perceptions even when the speaker’s voice is informed by proper American English. Obama does not seem like an ‘affirmative action’ candidate. The fact that critics say he is not “black” enough may even be helping his campaign with supporters across the aisle. The Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton effect may very well be the black liberal version of the Klan Effect.

The absurd notion that one even needs to make a distinction between a black candidate and a candidate who happens to be black is unfortunately very prevalent right now. I applaud Obama’s speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Day, in which he called for black leaders to address homophobia, anti-intellectualism, and other such hindrances which, while certainly not exclusive to the black community, certainly does find warm pockets to settle in. Such a speech, which was discussed in the media, could have been lambasted as a form of “airing our dirty laundry,” a criticism that comes from blacks who want Obama to be a black candidate. Any black who defends his speech runs the risk of being added to the (excuse the pun) Uncle Tom blacklist. It is as if anytime a black person discusses blackness within earshot of a white person, he becomes a traitor. On the other hand, if criticism of Obama’s speech at Ebenezer has not been as vocal as criticism of his other stances, then it seems like all you have to do to avoid the charge of “airing dirty laundry” is make sure you make your speech before a predominantly black audience. It’s no matter that there is a camera on him, and any internet user of any race can see it on YouTube: it’s okay, apparently, as long as most of the people in the shot behind him are black.

Here is a handy guide to the Iowa Caucus process. Notice how much more convoluted the process is for the Democratic Party is than it is for the Republicans. Defenders have likened it to instant run-off voting, but this is anything but instant. For it to be effective, there should be a simple, secret ballot system in which a voter may mark his or her candidates in numerical order in the event that their first choices do not get the required fifteen percent of the electorate to move on to the next step. This is why Kucinich decided to give a recommendation as a second-choice for voters caucusing for him–in his case, Obama. At least he’s making an effort to avoid the “Nader effect.”

But notice the lower-right hand corner. Although the Iowa Caucus tends to predict the party nominee, those nominees rarely win the general election. So it seems to me that if the Democrats want to choose the most “electable” candidate, they need to go with anyone but the winner of the Iowa Caucus. That’s kind of how they got their beloved Bill Clinton.

For a party that claims to be about change and progress, the Iowa Democrats sure pick some ridiculous traditions to uphold.

Um … okay …

At the advice of a friend, I’ve decided to take down my novella, Minstrel for security/monetary purposes. Those purposes being, there is the possibility that an internet interloper might copy the work and pass it off as his or her own. I’ve allowed an excerpt consisting of the first two chapters to stay up, and if you’d like to read the rest, contact me.

In other news, visit the site for my political cartoon, Lucky + Guy, which was updated today.

For a long time, I’ve felt it was not just the mark of the greatest literature, but a responsibility of literature, to expand the realm of what human beings consider part of the human condition. That is, to discover the concepts and ideas that make people human, especially if those concepts have not been a theme in prior canonical works. This article from Slate confirms several of my worries about the role of the members of the literary community that guard at the gates — that is, of course, the publishers.

In “The Invisible Lesbian,” Sarah Schulman, a well-reviewed novelist within the gay and lesbian literary community, discusses the difficulties she has had to face in getting her latest novel, The Child, published:

The Child is about a romantic, sexual relationship between 15-year-old Stew and 40-year-old David. Many editors’ letters explicitly pointed to this relationship as the reason for rejection. What troubled the editors was my point of view. I did not come out “against” the relationship. Instead, I was, as one blurber ultimately put it, “objective.”

My perspective on literature is largely couched in a rejection of many of the tenets of the requirement of “universality.” I do not deny the existence of the universal idea, for there are many familiar concepts in literature that are timelessly moving and engaging. What I reject are simplistic notions of the universal, notions that perpetuated, for example, hetero-normative and falsely colorblind critical standards, among other offenses. The universal sometimes purports the fallacious cycle of affirmation and reaffirmation between author, character, and reader — all three are expected to agree with one another emotionally and ideologically in order for the work to be praised for its literary merit. These three players place too much emphasis on the validation they give to one another; just as an author hopes his characters will “ring true” to his or her readers, so, too, do we expect the writer to regurgitate our own beliefs. In schools, children are taught canonical works of literature not just because knowledge of literature itself is an important part of our education, but also because these often canonical works are supposed to espouse or at least embody the ideas themselves that are required for our development. What needs to be imparted is the understanding that the author, character, and reader are all separate consciouses, and an understanding of the necessity of individuality and fallibility of humankind.

Of course, that is not to say that writers should not put “messages” into their works, especially since I consider the task of increasing the realm of humanity to be a message — or, in essence, one such that the message conveyed is: “Empathize with this character, even if you would resist empathizing with him or her had the two of you met in real life.” If there is any defensible universal aspect of literature, I believe this is it.

Furthermore, the methods and reasons that novelists put messages into their works are themselves worthy of study for their artistry. Be it symbolism or extended metaphor, experimental prose, or deep psychological character development, all are elements that pique the curiosity of readers and are entertaining when those intellectual thirsts are satiated.

But it is especially the philosophical and psychological queries that are often addressed in literature that make them great. Put simply, the most demanding readers are curious and broad-minded, and deserve books that reward their intellectual efforts. The reward does not come in validation of the status quo or the successful persuasion to a new line of thinking, but the reader’s recognition that he or she can understand a character despite their differences and perceived flaws. All too often, the word “understand” is confused with “condone” in a variety of discourses. If these words truly are (still) listed as synonyms in the most recent editions of Roget’s, they need to be pried apart for 2008.

Every age makes the mistake of calling itself “modern,” which is as hackneyed (or perhaps timeless?) and false as saying that the world of tomorrow has come today. In fact, they may even be synonymous. It is accompanied by the misapprehension that progress has plateaued, that the slope of the path of humanity has reached zero. Even broad-mindedness is fallible; we must moderate our moderation. But that does not mean ignoring or silencing unfamiliar ideas, but treating them with the same skepticism that we do to the traditional. If even the literary community fails in this regard, then humanity will naturally flat-line.

Recently, I’ve been concerned about the possibility of questionable methods of maintaining power in Pakistan and Russia being repeated by the Bush administration. After all, if Cheney can exist in a phantom 2.5th branch of government between the executive and legislative, he might manage to find a rift in the space-time fabric large enough for him to remain in power past the end of the universe itself. Of course, if Bush wants to stay in power, he’ll use a much blunter method, like creating an office of Burger King or something like that.

Pakistan’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, the Chief of Army Staff who took power in a coup, promised he would return the nation to civilian rule if re-elected for president, by turning over the army chief post to a crony. Musharraf has been fighting judges for months, trying to prevent elections from being held, but in the end, he managed to win with 98% of the vote. Similarly, Vladimir Putin has just appointed Viktor Zubkov, who has “no visible political ambitions” to the post of the Prime Minister of Russia, and the two will likely switch places at the end of Putin’s presidential term. But here in the U.S., if a Republican candidate were to somehow win in November 2008, it wouldn’t be very smart of them to put anyone from the Bush administration in their Cabinet. Also, Bush doesn’t have the audacity to suddenly raise the terror alert level in January 2009 so that he can institute martial law and remain in power that way. Although, if he did, I can’t see Pelosi and Reid putting up a serious resistance to it.

In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian M. Fenty, and District Attorney General Linda Singer, summarizing their arguments for why the city should be able to ban handguns in Washington, D.C. Such a ban has been in place since 1976, until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned it earlier this year on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. This was a mistake. Although Republicans allowed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban to expire in 2004, there are a multitude of similar laws at the state level around the country. Clearly, the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” does not have any stipulations about what kinds of arms the people can keep. The second amendment itself places no upper or lower limit on what kinds of arms the people have a right to wield, nor does it prohibit the states from imposing such limits. In this light, the city of Washington has every right to maintain its ban of handguns, which are uniquely dangerous because of their ability to be concealed easily, and the massive body count they have allowed criminals to almost effortlessly amass.

Naturally, the last line of defense for the pro-gun crowd on this case will be whether or not D.C. has the full rights of a state. Unfortunately, home rule in the District of Columbia has its boundaries. Congress still has the right to impose or repeal any law it so chooses regarding the District of Columbia. However, in this case, it has, for the most part, remained silent, to the citizens’ benefit.

For all of the bad press the city of Washington gets — whether its crime or our school system — we can at least say that we’ve evolved enough to the point where we can protest “taxation without representation” just as our forefathers did without giving both ourselves and criminals the deadly means to reenact the revolutionary script.

Here’s a screen capture of a recent Reddit thread. You can read the original here: