Newsgroup: it.arti.fumetti
Titolo: [lungo] Master of the Obvious #19 by S.Grant

Ecco il periodico articolo scritto da S. Grant sul sito
www.comicbookresources.com
 
Un attimo della vostra attenzione.
Mi è stato fatto notare che forse, visto e considerato che le rubriche
all'interno dei siti web basano la loro esistenza sul numero di
contatti, dovrei smetterla di postare sia Master of the Obvious, di
Steven Grant che Come in Alone di Warren Ellis, al fine di non
togliere possibili contatti al sito.
Io posso avere una mia opinione in merito, ma visto che è un post
periodico che faccio ad uso e consumo di IAF, credo che dobbiate
essere voi a decidere.
Fatemi sapere.
-----------------------------------------
A few years ago I read, back to back, Gillian Gaar's SHE'S A REBEL:
The History Of Women In Rock & Roll (Seal Books, 1992) and Lucy
O'Brien's SHE BOP: The Definitive History Of Women In Pop, Rock & Soul
(Penguin Books, 1996). More complementary than redundant, they tell
the same story - a story worth reading - of how women have been a
backbone of pop music for decades, and how, for generations, they were
almost universally treated as novelties, used, molded against their
wills, misdirected, cheated, marginalized and dismissed, while others
made millions from their work. 
While this is nothing unusual in the music business -
African-Americans as a group have historically had it just as bad, and
the business has always been infested with rapacious moral vacuums -
in these stories, one thing stands out: each generation seems to have
been an island to itself. Maybe each artist was an island to herself.
Of the women Gaar and O'Brien interviewed, almost every one claimed
they had to struggle to get whatever success they had because the
women who came before them had managed to accomplish nothing, at least
in terms of the status of women within in the business. Yet almost
every one of them felt she had broken new ground, and took comfort
from knowing she had made things a little easier for those women who
would follow. These perceptions repeat over and over, again across
several generations, which means almost none of them were really aware
of the triumphs of those who preceded, almost none had any noticeable
effect. It's only very lately that things have changed in any way, as
women pushed their way beyond artistry, into management, and it's too
early to tell if those changes will amount to anything or if the new
bosses, to show they can do the job, will turn into the old bosses. 
This is the story of American pop culture in general. Pop culture
ultimately isn't about art, or dreams; it's about money. And Money. I
knew a guy in Los Angeles who claimed his grandfather had created one
of the more successful comic strips of this century, and that sounded
odd, since I'd never heard that name in connection with that comic
strip. When I dug up the creator names and braced him with them, he
admitted his grandfather paid them to create the comic strip - but
that was the true creative act. He didn't see any contradictions, and
most likely still doesn't, because from his perspective there are no
contradictions. It's the perspective of Money, and while I'd always
been vaguely aware of it, that was the first time I'd run into it as
its baldest and most unapologetic. 
“Pop culture ultimately isn't about art, or dreams; it's about money.
And Money.”  
That women musicians didn't know what happened with or to their
predecessors isn't strange. Money doesn't like change, unless it means
more money. The music industry is predicated on the absence of a past,
the tyranny of Now; at least since 1955 - and they played with it
before that, when mass media was still struggling its way out of the
womb - it transmuted the impatience of youth and the urge to identity
into systematized attention deficit disorder: marketable rebellion.
What came before is tainted by pre-existence (unless "rediscovered"),
and all that matters is Now. It set the pattern for all media, where
history is permissible only as nostalgia. "Now" means "new" less and
less; by keeping media in a perpetual timeless state, it promotes the
repackaging of the old as the new because no one remembers the old.
The truly new is often squeezed out. 
The comics industry has never quite sunk to the venal depths of the
music industry at its worst, but both share that tin pan alley
mentality. Babies of the 30s, me-centric use-'em'-&-lose-'em omnivores
desperate to escape their "disreputable" roots, dangling sentiment and
dreams like flytrap with no intention of paying off. You can dream if
you dream what we want you to drive, but don't imagine dreams are
free. There's always a price tag: you have to buy in. 
Comics eat their own dead, and discard the traces that way. The
history of comics is littered with talents who gave everything for the
business, worked on some of the most popular properties ever, and were
forgotten or ignored. Bill Finger. Mort Meskin. Gardner Dozier. Joe
Maneely. Frank Robbins. Wally Wood. Curt Swan. Hundreds of others.
Even Jim Steranko, in his day the most revolutionary force in comics,
is now barely remembered, the comics mainstream having sucked up his
innovations like The Blob and blindly regurgitating them. Most of
these worked far beyond any reasonable capacity because the money in
comics was so bad that churning out endless pages was the only way to
break even. When I broke in at Marvel in '78, the beginning page rate
for writers was $18/page and the high end was barely double that, with
no royalties, meaning earnings on a 17 page story (their length then)
were $306 in an era when New York rents - and if you weren't
established and wanted work, you had to live in New York - started at
$1000/mo. Add in pleasantries like food and forget about taxes, and
you needed to write five books per month just to break even. Many
writers before '78 would have killed for $18/pg, and those writers
were well-established. 
“The history of comics is littered with talents who gave everything
for the business, worked on some of the most popular properties ever,
and were forgotten or ignored.”  
Now and then I hear fans wishing for a return to the thrilling days of
yesteryear, when artists turned out two books per month instead of one
every other month or less. That Jack Kirby drew so much proves it can
be done. Of course it can be done but who wants to do it? Jack drew
that much because it was the only way he could earn a living. I've
talked to Gil Kane about this, and Gil, along with Jack and Joe
Kubert, used to have a rep for tying as fastest artist in comics. He
drew that quickly because it was the only way he could earn a living,
but he hated working at that speed. Everyone does, particularly if
they have any pretenses toward creativity. At that speed, there's no
time to be creative, only time to get the work done, and whatever's
creative about it is more accident than design. It's not impossible to
work at high speed today - I know several artists who stew themselves
into a white heat and then blaze through pages, solving as many
problems as possible before they start - but there's a vast difference
between choosing to work at breakneck speed and having to. When fans
wish a return to the past, they're also wishing for a return to the
conditions of the past, and if they understood those conditions they
wouldn't wish it. 
Or maybe they would. Stars are a relatively recent phenomenon in
comics; even the "stars" here have never been sure how to handle it.
It's almost a joke now how some talent ascends to "stardom," feels his
audience is secured, takes two or three years off to bask in the
glory, and comes back to find no one remembers him. Most fans are,
understandably, only there if you produce, usually on a familiar
character. This makes a lot of sense. What mass media appeals to is
loneliness, it offers something big to latch onto. Music has always
been a secondary concern to the music industry; what the music
industry really sells is the idea that you'll never sleep with a rock
star, so the music is as close to them as you're ever going to get.
It's hard to imagine sleeping with comics talent would ever be that
much of a challenge. It's the characters you'd never get to first base
with. The sex lives of movie stars pass for hours and hours of
entertainment in the media, but nobody cares about the bit players. In
comics, all talent are bit players. 
 But bit players are what history is made of. Where are the histories
of comics, the memoirs, the exegeses? Every other field of media
crawls with them these days, but comics histories remain few. The few
that exist are either character encyclopedias, ax-grinding
masquerading as historical record, assemblages of myth masquerading as
historical record, or too general to be more than a basic introduction
to the field. Only a handful, like Trina Robbins' FROM GIRLS TO
GRRRLZ: A History Of Female Comics From Teens To Zines (Chronicle
Books, 1999), cover less familiar material and give a new perspective
to the past. Real understanding of even the most renowned talents in
comics is often truncated by their own legends. (It's rarely
mentioned, for instance, that Will Eisner, truly one of the greatest,
most progressive talents ever in comics, also gave us the comics
sweatshop - possibly his most lasting "contribution" to the field -
and paeans to his work rarely mention the hordes who played a huge
part in his success, like Bob Powell or Jerry Grandinetti. None of
this suggests Eisner is an evil or amoral man - he's not - only that
his real story has yet to be properly told, and put in informative
perspective.) Meanwhile, hundreds of stories - not of the characters
but of the people behind them - die off, or are forgotten or
dismissed, and new talent entering the field make the same bad
decisions, the same mistakes, take the same wrong turns, tacitly
encouraged to sneer at "the old guys" while constantly pushed - often
pushing is unnecessary - to lift from the work of those same "old
guys." 
Of course, there's no percentage to Money to have those stories in
circulation. There's no particular benefit in people inside the
industry having a broad knowledge of their cultural past except in the
most aesthetic sense. There's a perceived benefit to more or less
interchangeable workforce eager and willing to produce to suit, and
that's all Money really cares about. 
This isn't likely to change anytime soon. The women of popular music
give us a cue: change will only come when we infiltrate the group
running to show to the correct extent - another reason for talent to
become their own management. We need to know our history not to
regurgitate the past but to avoid duplicating it, both in the material
and in our lives. We need to build on the past, on the successes and
the failures, instead of playing the same tune again and again and
again. This is called progress. If the medium is going to advance, we
need, ultimately, to wrest it from Money, at least for blocks of time,
or convince Money that it's in their best interests to leave us alone.
“If the medium is going to advance, we need, ultimately, to wrest it
from Money,”  
The newly-announced Gorilla line seems a step in the right direction.
The talent involved have carved out a novel financial arrangement, and
threaten to strike out from their standard work. If successful, it
could be a working model for other such alliances. We need all the
alternatives we can get. 
In a cramped theater in Milwaukee in 1978, I saw Patti Smith climb
dance atop huge, wobbly stage speakers and pound out her version of
Van Morrison's "Gloria" on an electric guitar. She ended by
screeching, "We created it, now let's take it over!" 
Let's. 
Whatever questions you might have about me can probably be answered
with a quick trip to Steven Grant's Alleged Fictions. You can also
express your own views at the Master Of The Obvious Message Board, or
send me mail. Bear in mind that while I read all my mail, time
constrains me from replying in most cases. Thanks. 
---
Hellboy
Dove c'è molta luce, l'ombra è più nera.
                                         W. Goethe
 

Fatemi sapere.
Secondo me devi continuare a postare le due rubriche...
se tu non lo facessi non credo che andrei  tutte le settimane a
leggerle sul sito.
Inoltre cosi' facendo fai loro anche pubblicita' e piu' gente puo'
essere invogliata a visitare tutto il sito di comic book resources.
Ciao
--
Zogo
--------------------------------------------
"Mi fanno male gli occhi"
"Perche' non li hai mai aperti"
                  (The Matrix)

Fatemi sapere.
potresti postarli con un certo ritardo: quando esce l'ultimo tu posti
il penultimo o il terzultimo, e metti un avviso che l'ultimo e' online
su CBR, magari aggiungendo una riga di "teaser" (-In questo numero
Grant rivela tutta la *piccante* verita' sui rapporti tra Mark Waid e
Devin Grayson!!!- :)) in modo da invogliare la gente ad andarci
cosi' chi lo vuole leggere subito per sapere come ha fatto Devin a
diventare sceneggiatrice professionista (ha fatto esattamente come
Luise Simonson ;)), ci va e fa scattare il contatore
--
Marco Pesce - la vera e-mail e' 
mpe...@libero.it

Luise Simonson ;)), ci va e fa scattare il contatore
amico mio!!!
la settimana prossima posto la intervista di moore e quella alla
Grayson.......per la serie l'Odio!.
Perdonate il ritardo (ammesso che ve ne freghi) ma..mi sono preso una
verruca e l'influenza contemporaneamente.....
la mia ragazza mi ha lasciato!
le cavallette!
non è stata colpa miaaaaaa
directed by Amano76
leader indiscusso di Mondo Cane
dio della merda e della piscia
fautore della rosetta
schiavo di sè stesso