My column is due today, and my mind is just spinning out air trying to figure out what to write it on. I remembered that there had been some comics talk at the academic site The Valve, so I went there to check it out. Unfortunately, it just got me kind of annoyed because it seems their attempts at discussion have turned into what every comics discussion turns into: My ego totally has a bigger boner than your ego. And I use this coarse metaphor because it also bugs me that The Valve’s contributors are all men, and the one contributor who seems to take academic criticism of comics seriously only seems to write about superhero comics.
So there went that idea.
It got me thinking on two really disparate fronts, though — first on my academic experiences as someone who works in the comics industry, and then on how a reduction in physical but also mental presence in that industry has made me care a little less about it lately. Perhaps I’m being too honest, or too public with that honesty, about the latter, but, really, it has gotten me thinking. Woody Allen’s quip that “80% of success is just showing up” is more than just a quip when viewed from this perspective. Mere presence is enough to induce giving a damn a lot of the time, and when your presence is reduced, you might just start giving a darn instead. And if you don’t care a damn lot, you’re not going to succeed.
So you have to do what you do when you’re feeling down and fighting it — you have to not give in to the apathy and make yourself care, remind yourself of the benefits of giving a damn and, thus, succeeding. But then you say, “But I gave a damn before and look where it got me,” and then you just lie down and contemplate Matthew Arnold poetry and Morrissey songs, and let your mind wander back to revising your novel, which you do give a damn about right now. And come Monday, you’ll give a damn about comics again, too — it’s just that these Thursdays and Fridays are hard sometimes, and without something like deciding someone’s fate at the hands of the criminal justice system to occupy your mind and make you feel like you’re doing something, you get gloomy.
Oh, and about my academic experiences. They were funny. The creative writing department head had gotten it in his head that it was my life’s ambition to write comics, and, according to some people, would speak of me dismissively because of it. (Of course, it never has been my life’s ambition to write comics, though I do write them sometimes, but I was pre-judged because of my job.) In his Materials and Methods of Literary Production course, he encouraged me to do a conference-style paper on comics instead of Swinburne, so I gave my class a reading of I Feel Sick about the artist as central object in an artistic work, and got questions about why the word “fuck” was in the comic so much. That paper is not terribly academic, more creative essay than formal, but that’s why I went for an MFA and not an MA. In a workshop on travel writing, I did a presentation on the comics form being an ideal form for travel narrative, and I still think that. The Center for Literary Arts once asked for feedback about graphic novelists that might be invited for on-campus events; at the time, Blankets was big, so I suggested Craig Thompson. The head of the CLA wrote back and asked what I thought about Matt Groening. He’s funny, I said, but not exactly a graphic novelist. I did not hear back again.
And, there, I’ve put off writing my column for a few more minutes.
