Rocket Bomber - snark

Not with the blog; the failings are in the wetware of the guy running the blog.

In lieu of substantive updates: here’s Kevin Smith on Twilight Fans (I think I first saw this on the Huffington Post)

Oh, and Kevin Smith = Not Safe for Work [“Multiple f-bombs incoming, Captain!”] but it’s a holiday for a majority of my readers — I pity those of you who have to work, the rest of you enjoy this.

“There is a plan, and it’s working.”

Here’s the thing: the Health Care Debate.

Here’s the analogy: Paved Roads.

Here’s the strawman argument of the opposition, as filtered through the analogy:

“President Obama wants to tear up the roads! The Democrats want to take away your car! You won’t have a choice! You’ll have to walk, just like the rest of the plebes, and no one will get any kind of ride anywhere! You’ll have to make do with rutted dirt roads that will turn into mud quagmires if there is even a little rain, and the whole system will grind to a halt!”

There are even some who say any sort of health care reform means people will have to die.

I don’t think anyone is advocating the mandatory closing of any hospital, doctor’s office, health insurer, HMO (no matter how bad) or current state or federal program.

To belabour the analogy: No one is getting rid of roads, or forcing you to sell your car, or saying you have to make do with a clunker if you can afford a nice car, or telling your employer to take away your company car, or co-opting your limo and driver (should you have such) to drive the poor around town.

The whole transportation system will remain in place. The whole health care system will remain in place.

What is being proposed is the equivalent of a bus line. There are folks who have no cars. Maybe they pay for taxis (expensive, one-time uses of the system) — or they walk, making do without any sort of motorized help. Unless there is a public transit system.

And public transit isn’t free — you have to buy a token, or a bus pass, or something, but you chip in a bit and the gov’t chips in a bit and it’s not the best solution, it’s not a cushy ride, and you have to share — but it’ll get you there.

The public option for health care, as presented, and so far as I understand it, is like a public transit system for health care:

It’ll use the existing infrastructure. It won’t displace private, personal modes of navigating this infrastructure unless you choose to forgo those means. But if your employment changes (a job loss or a case of under-employment) or if you currently have nothing and can afford a token fee, there might soon be a way for you to use the same system the rest of us enjoy.

This is the argument and analogy that I think proponents of the proposed system should be making: The Public Health Care Option is like the Bus — and no one is going to force you to give up your “Car”, if you have one — but there needs to be a ‘bus service’ health care option for the folks who don’t have or can’t afford anything else.

Re: the commentary to date on the posting ‘The Seven Types of Bookstore Customer’, see also the first follow-up, the second follow-up, the third (and I had hoped) last time I revisited the topic, and also the recent posting (incl. reader comments) The Eight Types of Bookseller.

Reader Spiff was asking (and I’m paraphrasing) “If you didn’t want to reap the whirlwind, why did you sow the wind?”

and so:

if any of it really bothered me, I could delete the negative comments, or even go so far as to delete the original post.

I’m pretty thick-skinned, actually, and I’ve a fair sense of humor, and am mostly agnostic about it all.

Obviously, I invite comments (since there is a comment function) but the beautiful thing about the web is that one can also comment to one’s own space, with a link to material. — in fact, the vast majority of readers first discovered this blog by reading about it [with commentary, both good and bad] on someone else’s site.

What surprises me is the number of people who feel compelled to comment here, like I posted this to a public forum or on their website. The original post, and this one, constitute My Opinion on these topics and if I’m so inflammatory or offensive or outright wrong — then why did you read it?

There must be something true in it, or no one would have linked. None would have commented. No one would have bothered to read the post all the way to the end. (and certainly, if the overwhelming response was all negative, that’d be one thing, too, but what of those who posted in agreement or support?)

I’m guilty of bias; I suppose I’m guilty of posting flame-bait, too. Fine.

But the internet is all about bias and flame bait — which internet have you been reading?

My objection to negative comments is like a host objecting to guests pissing on the carpet: sure, there’s nothing wrong with the behavior per se, it’s fine in context — but there is a forum for that sort of thing and most people do it behind closed doors, & at home.

One could slander my character and rebuff all my points and arguments or tear apart my ‘arguments’ as plainly false on their face and question my suitability for my job (or any job) or even wonder aloud how long it will be before my neighbors band together to remove me as a blight to the community —

I’d just ask that you not do it on my blog, and to me that’s just as sensible as a host asking people to stop pissing on his living room rug.

The proper html is <a href=“http://www.rocketbomber.com”>THIS GUY SUCKS ASS!</a> (or your own pithy commentary) and you can post it to a web forum, or a social networking site, or to a blog of your own devising, where you pay the registration fees and hosting out of your pocket.

Just stop asking me to pay for and support your negativity. Just because it’s the internet doesn’t make it free, and I get the bill for this site.

…charts to follow soon.

15 May 2009, ~11am: edited; see comments

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

So far as I know, this is the first and only use of the word ‘gyre’ in this bastard mongrel tongue we all share and all share in mangling. Granted, English is fluid, and adaptable, and so flexible it makes ex-gymnasts on Romanian porn sites look stiff and staight-laced. We can verb nouns and take gerunds way past their indicated uses and expiration dates, and coin neologisms about as fast as we can type. In the internet age, even misspellings and typos have become words: we’re pwning teh language faster than a million chimpanzee OED scholars on a million netbooks can keep pace.

(Or perhaps they’re capuchin monkeys. The capuchins are certainly better suited to the smaller keyboards; I don’t know, I’m not up on current OED practices.)

For my latest trick, I’m going to introduce an intentional mispronunciation of a foreign language term as the New Proper English word Ja-pon-is-me. 4 syllables, and not the actual French word (which in use ignores the final e: Ja-pon-ism.)

Because Japonisme is prettier. And now it’s my word, and not Burty’s. And now it’s an adjective, because that’s the way I want to use it.

##

All that is incidental and beside the point. Word on the street is The One True Smith is writing Batman (again), and let me differentiate myself from other fanboys to look past ‘Smith!’ ‘Batman!’ to ask the question that should be obvious:

Kev. Dude. What’s up with that title?

Since it’s a Jabberwocky, and hence Carroll reference I’m guessing we’re looking at a Mad Hatter comic (and my good lord Odin knows we need a good Mad Hatter comic as the best take on the character is still Timm/Dini’s BtAS Jervis Tetch, and at that it was merely a gloss on the 60’s TV Bats theme-villain-of-the-week.)

…but with the Jabberwocky reference we may be looking at something new brought to the bativerse and with Kev Smith’s usual take on comics (reverential to the point of, well, fandom but with the humor and cinematic sensibilities that we know he is capable of from such excellent films as [snicker] Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back — yes, I kid, but the dude can write)

The Widening Gyre. A 12-issue Batman miniseries by Kevin Smith.

from wikipedia (the Jabberwocky article linked above):
Gyre – To go round and round like a gyroscope. (However, Carroll also wrote in Mischmasch that it meant to scratch like a dog.) The g is pronounced like the /g/ in gold, not like gem.

No word yet on how the slithy [combination of slimy and lithe] toves [a combination of a badger, a lizard, and a corkscrew] will factor in the new comic, or of the relative importance of sundials.

as noted in the comments, the Widening Gyre is a pull from Yeats, not Carroll

In the comments, Katherine Farmar asks:

What, you don’t like “mangaïsme”? I mentioned it in the roundtable you link there — Paul Gravett coined it by analogy to “Japonisme”. I think it’s better, partly because it’s specifically manga that “global manga” artists are responding to, not Japanese visual culture as a whole. On the other hand, it’s harder to spell, what with the umlaut and everything. Hey, we can just call it “mangaisme” unless there are French people reading…

##

The French already have a term for it, Nouvelle Manga — and the -isme chunk isn’t French, but rather the same -ism that French and English both borrowed from Ancient Greek. Might just as well call it mangaism (for the style; mangaist comics, to be a shade more precise, for the works themselves) without the extra ‘e’

—but of course that extra e is all-important because it ties the new word back to the established art term. My thought (and no offense to Gravett, who certainly knows more on the subject than I do) is why bother to coin a new art term when Japonisme seems to fit the bill just fine, thanks.

As to the second point, in my opinion manga cannot be removed from Japanese visual culture as a whole.

If we want to talk about 40 and 30 and 20 year old comics and how manga has developed over time as an art and as an expression, as a narrative form, or even as an ongoing public conversation between and among the various creators and their readers — OK, sure, we can talk about manga as a self contained unit. And even though it is possible to isolate the form from the content it’s like talking about decades of American comics without mentioning Superheroes or how the movie and TV adaptations are key for minting new fans of the properties in each generation.

In fact, it might be impossible to discuss the emergence of American comics without also discussing the parallel development of movie serials during the same time period (30s-50s) — many of the tropes and forms have their origin in the serial (or in dime novels and pulps, from which both comics and serials derive) and so comic books are as much a part of ‘American visual culture’ as manga is of its Japanese counterpart.

And OEL or mangaisme or whatever we want to call it is just the most recent expression of a larger, two-way conversation that started when Matthew Perry rolled up into Uraga Harbor looking for some sushi.

Taking the ‘long view’ on historical development of the form and an inclusive nature that embraces all forms of both art and culture, rather than adopting a strict Linnaean system where everything gets it’s own name and pocket and there is no blending between species, I’d just as soon call it *all* either comics or art, or use adjectives (i.e. Japonisme) to describe the comic rather than come up with a slew of new nouns for a bunch of ephemeral, arbitrary categories. Heck, we can call ‘em Manga Comics, which is either wrong or redundant or both, but even my Grandma would likely know what that meant.

And now,

From 11 Dec 2006

SO, what is manga?

“Manga” is just another world for comics, folks. Hate to burst your bubble, but that’s all it is. It’s a Japanese word, I’ll give you that, but there is no extra weight that can really be applied past the country of origin.There is a sentiment among some American fans of Japanese comics to invest “manga” with almost mythical status, that manga is somehow more pure of an art form, an expression that has deeper historic roots and a greater creative gravitas.

As to history, well, modern-style manga dates to 1945 and Dr. Osamu Tezuka. (Bats and Supe are from the 30s. I’m just sayin’.) And if you think of manga as being something noble and pure… well, maybe you aren’t reading the same books I am.

A lot of this elitism derives from the need for each new generation to stake out something of its own, something new. They put a label on it, like (to pull in a musical analogy) Rock, or Punk, or Metal, or Grunge, or Trip-hop, or whatever it is the emo kids are listening to nowadays. The point isn’t so often the music itself, but the label that differentiates ‘ours’ from ‘yours’.

Let me cite my favourite Duke Ellington quote: “If it sounds good and feels good, then it is good.” Music is music, Comics are comics, and if you like it then it doesn’t matter what we call it.

From 18 Dec 2006

As counterpoint, and more relevant to the current discussion, I’d like to pull in Batman – The Animated Series from Bruce Timm & Paul Dini. These episodes are not only better by far than at least two-thirds of the Batman films, they also managed to be better for a half-hour each week for over four years.

This is par for the course in Japan (I say in a gross generalization): anime adaptations of manga will be more like Timm/Dini-style Bats than just about anything else. I’m not saying it’s all golden. It’s just that they do things right a hell of a lot more often than Hollywood can manage.

And the joy in watching good cartoons often translates into a joy in reading the same in printed form. If nothing else, it’s nice that the two formats feed into each other. I don’t know if the film versions of Fantastic Four and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen happened to do anything for their respective print properties.

I watch anime. I read manga. It’s all part of the same obsession. From my perspective, it can occasionally be hard to separate the two. If, in future reviews, I happen to mention the anime version of a particular property, I hope you will forgive me. It’s not that I feel that print comics are somehow lacking, I’m just bringing up another important aspect of the same expression, another part of the overall visual culture.

From 5 February 2007

A lot of us talk about “manga” as being this singular thing, especially in the context of manga vs. comics. Well, make that Japanese manga vs. American superhero comics, because that’s what quite a few of us really mean when we talk about the supposed conflict.

That’s what I mean, anyway. Other commentators can clarify their own statements.
It’d be more precise to argue the point as books vs. magazines, because manga isn’t a single faceless mass of seething anti-comics out to destroy the industry. “Manga” isn’t even a genre, it’s just one type of graphic novel. (A type and format of graphic novel I happen to like, but no different in basic concept from most comics.)

Deeper storytelling and characterization are a function of length, typically, so a trade paperback is going to read more like other novels than a floppy will. There just isn’t time or space for more in only 20 pages. As Bob has pointed out in I ♥ Comics: Maintaining Control there are a number (dozens?) of publishers putting out graphic novels that feature the work of American artists –- and these are excellent; the best of these are perhaps the very top examples of both art & storytelling in the comic form. Anything good that I might say about manga — longer, deeper, more fully realized, the result of a single creative vision as opposed to heroics-by-committee — can be applied equally and equally well to most “indy” graphic novels, if not more so.

from 5 March 07

Part of the appeal of comics (and manga is just another word for comics) is that it is a new artform— though yes, comics do draw inspiration from the past, and in fact we’ve been scrawling things down on every available surface ever since some prehistoric Frenchman just had to brag to everyone about how badass a mammoth hunter he was, so there’s a lot of past to draw on.

But the comic book and it’s Japanese cousin are recent innovations (the dates I’m picking are 1933 and 1947, respectively, you can go to wikipedia or the reference of your choice and decide on your own) and while they’ve drawn from many artistic and literary sources, I’d say they’re related most closely to the other new visual media of the 20th century, the twin visual arts of cinema and television.

One twist to the debate that should also be considered is that comics are a consumer product, mass produced and marketed just like pea soup and laundry detergent. If you don’t think this has had a large influence on comics as art, then you need to go find a few internet forums where folks are (even as you read this) vehemently arguing the relative merits of fan service.

and from 6 April 2008 (just as shade before I launched RocketBomber, and though I have the old comicsnob post I’ve not ported it over yet; even without the link here’s the quote):

Like art, I know “manga” when I see it. (Or I’m willing to concede something is manga-ish enough to warrant a place on the chart.) Manga can be hard to describe though. Do you include Manhwa? Or Manhua? Or Komiks? (if you can find them). How about OEL or ‘Global’ manga? Books about manga? Books on how to draw manga? Where does Scott Pilgrim fall on your continuum, or Babymouse, or Cine-manga, or Japanese in Mangaland, or Light Novels, or heavy novels for that matter if they happen to be aimed at a teen market and translated from the Japanese?

Oooo… that last one is a good topic: why the prose output of Tokyopop & Seven Seas (& Viz, they’ve done a few) but not the works of Haruki Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, or Eiji Yoshikawa? Or even the Tale of Genji? ‘Aimed at teens’ is the keyword there, and I should come back to this issue, but not this week.

While I have my post de-railed, another aside:
OEL is fine and all, but why not ELM, then? “English Language Manga.” Too simple, perhaps.

• English Manga would be even better, but that might be construed as exclusively the manga output of that specific UK constituent country so we have to have the word ‘language’ in there.
• Amerimanga just sucks. Don’t go there.
• Most descriptive: ELCiMS. English Language Comics in Manga Style. (Pronounced ‘el-SEEMS’ in a vaguely foreign accent. Obviously. …what? no?)
• I’ve been leaning toward GOLEM. Not that the acronym is better–Global (original language: english) Manga–it’s just cooler. Golems.
• One could also take exception to the ‘O’ in OEL; how about GNOMiE: Global, nominally original, Manga in English. After all, what’s really original about 98% of all manga — foreign or domestic?
• “Eigo Manga” might be an apt term, except of course someone else thought of that, registered the domain name and started a limited liability company (what do you need for that, a pulse, some paperwork and a paralegal?) (for the domain name all you need is a credit card)
• Hell, how about コミック — if we’re going to use the English transliteration of 漫画(まんが) to describe manga sold in the US, why not use the katakana for “comics” (pronounced komikku, I think) to describe American comics trying to be manga? Or is this too freakin’ geeky?

I like geeky. I can cut and paste コミック all day, too, I don’t even need to remember the kana for it. Of course, if your browser isn’t set up for Japanese characters then all you’re seeing is □□□□ or a string of question marks and other angry characters, but hey- if you can’t set up Firefox for the proper unicode stuff then I feel no pity. (and even less if you’re still using IE) I guess it comes down to GOLEMs vs GNOMiEs vs ELCiMS. Or, manga. Even better is just comics. For the whole world-wide lot of it: Russian original script in the Filipino Komik style done by a work-for-hire Indonesian freelance company for a Franco-Belgian bande dessinée publisher (printed in Quebec) intended for the….

What kind of market would buy that? Well, I might, if only for novelty’s sake. Translate it into Latin or Attic Greek just for kicks and get that Comic out to me, thanks.

…and we’ll revisit this issue again in about 10 months. Thanks, internets, this tied up 5 hours this afternoon and, once again, you don’t get the charts. I’ll see what I can do before tomorrow morning.

You want a new term for English-language “manga”?

How about an established, 130-year-old art term that has been used for decades to describe, specifically, art by western artists directly inspired by Japanese works.

Japonisme Comics. (should I go register that as a trademark or company name, like, right now or what.)

That work for ya? Or is the fact that it was originally a French term poison it for you?

(the last time this came up I recycled a couple of acronyms from a comicsnob post for a response to Gia @ Anime Vice — GnoMiE, anyone?)

…why the charts are posting late [this week]:

1. Shugo Chara on Crunchyroll. 81 Episodes and counting. (also on Cruchyroll: Ristorante Paradiso and Shangri-La, though those haven’t become major timesucks. yet.)

2. Aria. The Anime Where Nothing Happens ™. And Yet…

it’s not even like the main characters (all female, btw) are wearing miniskirts all the time (or ever… more’s the pity) or that there are love polygons (none — I mean, none) or that aliens are invading so our brave heroines have to pilot giant robots to repel repeated daily assaults.

Nothing. Happens. And gods help me I love it. I now own 39 (of 52) episodes on DVD (and refuse to admit to downloading fansubs of every episode 9 months ago) and whenever work—or the blog—gets to be too much, I just load up some Akari, Aika, Alice, and Ai — and whatever it was I was stressing over doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Love the soundtracks, too. Someone needs to import these so I can, um, actually pay for the MP3s I’ve been listening to for a year or so.

3. Work. [40+hours a week, still]
You folks want to pay me for the charts? Hm? Well, until then I have to make rent & beer outa somewhere.

4. Data Entry Sucks. Hate it. Beer makes it barely tolerable, but only just. (and the heavy consumption of beer isn’t exactly helping the process…) I’d get someone in India to do it for me but that would cost me like, twice what I pay for rent each month.

Data entry is the hidden engine behind the charts: the cost of admission, the core, the real work involved (can’t just browse to some site with the data — there is no other source, I’m the source) — yeah, yeah: I apply some fancy maths to it, too, before I serve it up to the general public, but the math is just frosting on the cake; the ‘cake’ is mind-numbing, boring [gods is it boring] data entry.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t always finish the data entry on time.

5. Lack of feedback.

Oh, I know someone out there is reading it. And I do get a modest smattering of linkbacks. And precious few comments (up to five a year — woah, let me sit down… it’s like I’m drowning in riches…) but week in, week out there is only me, the sites, the data, and the grind.

No outside feedback. No attaboys, no compliments, no complaints, no objections, no corrections, no death threats… I don’t even get spammed. Just three links a week & the dozen regulars, and…

Well. If it weren’t for Free Porn from Simon I might have no reason to keep up the blog at all. (I figure I ‘owe’ Simon at least $200 bucks at this point — not that that’s the only reason, but anything that keeps me going can only be a good thing for him, me, and the rest of us)

Honestly, if I were the regular sort of attention whore (and I don’t deny I’m an attention whore — I have a blog, after all) this echoing silence might be enough to put me off my game for good.

So.

Well.

OK, so I have to know. I have a burning curiosity deep in my soul and the release schedules and the sad, pitiable information on sales from quote-regular-sites-unquote just doesn’t do it for me. That’s why I compile the charts.

…But I don’t have to know right now. So long as the data is saved and I can get around to it soon… or, eventually… there is no compelling reason to waste the rest of my day off doing data entry for a nameless, faceless internet that doesn’t even bother to acknowledge my efforts.

[insert The Bird here]

It’s 2 am, I have a few beers left and precious few hours before I have to go back to work (the work that pays the bills) and I don’t really feel like typing title-volume-rank into the spreadsheet anymore tonight.

Charts soon. just not now. Maybe Tuesday.
[and if you’d like to change any of these circumstances in an effort to induce me to post on a regular schedule, I can only say: Tempt Me.]

One for the wishlist: Geoff Johns and J. G. Jones for a relaunch of J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. yeah, yeah, part of that is the smirking, poetic imp in my soul that just wants to the see the J’onzz – Johns – Jones byline, and who loves the alliteration of it. Still and all, and gimmicks aside: this would rock.

[especially if it looks like this:]

Following the depiction of the character in the animated JLU on Cartoon Network (particularly the pilot), I’d say the time is right for a new look at My Favorite Martian.

Well… maybe we’re 7 or 8 years too late. But it’s not like the fanbase is getting older and dying off or anything, no need to rush.

OK, OK, so it’s all about the byline: Tell me you wouldn’t buy J’onn J’onzz by Johns and Jones. I’d love to see the advertising for it.

[image credit: custom action figure by Sillof, part of the Gaslight Justice League — and breaking news! as noted on his homepage, some of Sillof’s stuff will finally be coming up for sale. Sweet!]