Crossing Over

I'm fairly into both American and Japanese comics, and there's something that's struck me about them, vis a vis one another. (Nothing against European comics; I just haven't had much exposure.)

Comics from both support a very wide range of storytelling genres and subgenres. Looking just at the geeky/speculative fiction end of things:

Japan: Giant robots, magical girls, super martial artists, transforming heroes, hero teams (sentai), etc.

America: Superheroes, space opera, gothic fantasy, cyberpunk, espionage, etc.

Of course, especially in this day and age, you can see any of those subgenres in either country, but certain genres still predominate in different nations. But I've made an odd observation: English-language comics are way more quick to cross genres.

For instance, looking at Japanese comics, there's practically no chance you'd see a comic that mixes robots, magical girls, and martial arts. Can you imagine a cross between Gundam, Sailor Moon, and/or Dragonball that isn't a parody?

Conversely, in the DC Universe for instance, you have an almost ridiculously huge array of different genres all coexisting: Superman, Princess Amethyst, Angel and the Ape, Sergeant Rock, Swamp Thing, the Phantom Stranger, Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, etc., etc., etc. - just by reading their names you can tell that if there were no shared DC Universe, there's no chance any of them would ever cross over, yet they all still make regular appearances in crossover events.

Why is this? I'd say it's a weird trick of publishing history. DC and Marvel both started out publishing comics that had nothing to do with each other, but with the emergence of the superhero genre we started getting crossovers, crossovers became superhero teams, teams begat shared universes, and by the '70s or '80s almost everything each company had ever published was deemed to have a corner in those universes to themselves in case a modern writer had an idea for them. Nothing like that ever happened in Japan, where almost all comics are self-contained, or maybe part of a single author or franchise's greater universe.

None of this is to say that one is an inherently better set-up than the other... but I have to say, a universe where John Constantine, Claw the Unconquered, and Captain Carrot's Amazing Zoo Crew can rub shoulders is a lot of fun.

Reading Regrets

From my excellent friends Ami Angelwings and David Wynne:

On the assumption that in ten years, a lot of twenty-somethings will be re-reading Twilight and wincing in embarrassment:

Name three series or writers that you devoured as a teen but are now somewhat sheepish about having liked as much as you did. For each series, list off what you dug about them, what you're wincing at in retrospect, and whether you'd read 'em again.

This was kinda tough, because there's not a whole lot I'm embarrassed about having enjoyed. (What can I say? I am a gentleman of exquisite taste.) Heck, I'm not even ashamed that I liked The Sword of Shannara! I had to really wrack my brain to come up with answers to this.

1: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
What I dug about them: They're epic fantasy. That alone was enough to get me hooked at first. C. S. Lewis was an imaginative writer who was equally good at writing action and humor, so it was easy to get into his books.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: There's no easy way to put this: The entire series was a recruitment tool for conservative Christianity. I loved the books without question until the very last page of the last book, where Lewis wrote something to the effect of "...and Aslan no longer looked as a lion to them." Yes, Aslan didn't just represent Jesus, he was Jesus. The realization that the books served no purpose but to preach at me made me angry. I've hated allegory ever since. This is why I feel The Lord of the Rings was a far superior fantasy: there are Christian themes in the book and things Christians can find applicable to their beliefs, but nothing that actually represents anything from Christianity. And that's not even touching Lewis's implicit bigotry toward women (who screw everything up if they're not perfect little Christians) and racism (because good Calormenes actually worship Aslan, they just don't know it yet).
Would I read them again?: Probably not. Not least because I rarely re-read prose novels that I've already read (making an exception for Tolkien), but also because I just can't reconcile Lewis's worldview with my own. I'd be too busy gnashing my teeth in frustration to enjoy them.

2. Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu
What I dug about it: Akamatsu's art, while standard-issue "cute manga" style, was still very expressive and dynamic, and the man has an incredible gift for sight gags. If nothing else, the comic was consistently fast-paced and funny.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: It's just a typical sexist harem manga. Actually, no, scratch that. It's the archetypal sexist harem manga. You've got one nerdy loser of a male surrounded by a bunch of gorgeous young women with improbable figures who by the end of the series are all head-over-heels in love with him. Plus some of the running gags, like Naru's hair-trigger acts of violence against Keitaro whenever she (inevitably wrongly) assumes he's perving on her or the other girls got incredibly tiresome after the first volume. And as for Ken Akamatsu himself, once I learned that he drew pornographic comics about pre-pubescent girls and wrote an essay that defended rape, well, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Would I read them again?: I might, if only to look at the art again.

3. Lots and lots of Star Wars tie-in novels
What I dug about them: Um, well. They were novels about Star Wars. That's pretty much all I needed.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: I can't really get as in-depth about these as the others. The problem with them is simple: they're cash-grabbing crap written by talentless hacks. That's all.
Would I read them again?: If someone put a gun to my head and ordered me to, I might consider it.

13 Posts: The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Alrighty. You want creepy comics, I got 'em.



Unlike "Hansel and Gretel", which merely poked fun at a scary old story, "The Enigma of Amigara Fault" is downright nightmarish. Published as a backup story to Junji Itō's Gyo, "The Enigma" concerns an unnatural geologic formation that manifests a bizarre pull on the local populace. Itō, an award-winning author of horror comics best known for his series Uzumaki, is known for creating detailed drawings of the macabre, and "The Enigma" is no exception.

The comic can be read here; read the pages from right to left.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled program with this important PSA for our fellow Americans.



Get out there and vote!

How to Draw Like a Commercial Hack

Say, is it just me, or are 90% of the "How to Draw Comics/Manga/Whatever" books on the shelves written by artists who have never published successful comics?

Mind you, about 89% of "How to Draw Comics/Manga/Whatever" books are written by Christopher Hart...

Those who cannot do...

Japanese Heroes with Grant Morrison

Right. I've just finished looking at some pages from the Final Crisis Sketchbook by Grant Morrison and J. G. Jones that had been posted at scans_daily concerning a number of Japanese superheroes Morrison dreamed up for his upcoming crossover. I'm a sucker for intersections between Japanese and American pop culture due to my abiding interest in both, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the subject.

You'll want to look at the pages yourself right here before going on first for sake of reference. I've quoted the text of the pages below, interspersed with my own commentary.

Let's begin, shall we?

JAPANESE SUPERHEROES
Japan has embraced every aspect of the superhero culture, chewed it up, spliced it together and incorporated the result into its own hyper-accelerated pop media landscape.

A hero is a role to play, a franchise, a pop star whose cult status might last for a week on the streets of Shibuya before a drastic change of fashion. Anyone can fill the role of hero as long as they're cute enough. Real heroes go unnoticed in favor of gorgeous wannabes. Teams come and go in the blink of an eye, like in Image comics stores. Western motifs are chopped up, collided and spliced with manga fetish wear, Sailor Moon meets Batman, Mecha-Wonder-Woman, Lolita Undertaker Zatanna girls.

I have to say this is setting off warning bells. While that kind of superficiality is pervasive in modern Japanese culture, I have qualms about using it as Japan's defining trait in this story. Of course, it may play out differently, but I'm still concerned.

Before we meet some of these characters who will play a part in our story, let's see the milieu out of which they grew and take a look at the original Japanese superhero team...

BIG SCIENCE ACTION
These guys were Japan's JLA back in the day, with a ring or halo-shaped base hovering above Mount Fuji -- and let's be vague about when that day was -- and these heroes reflect many different Japanese "super-hero" types with an appropriately "retro" design. The aim with design is to make us feel that we've known these characters all our lives, somehow.

Ultimon
Ultraman type Giant Monster killer/young Japanese man indoctrinated into the Ultimon -- a secret society of Ultimate Monster Killers -- the last survivors of the Monster Wars which devastated old Japan. The Ultimon are super-samurai with technology and weapons we can barely imagine.

Okay, so Japan's greatest superhero is a pastiche of Ultraman. I can go for that.

Together in the ruins of Tokyo, young Dai Yokohama and his master fought the three COLONIZERS (all the monsters we see him fight look like "real" versions of POKEMON creatures, as if nature had actually created Pokemon horrors to run around causing real devastation):

SCARRBA the PROTECTOR leads the charge -- a multi-headed Hydra thing spitting a different death ray from each head. Eyes of one head fire lasers. Mouth of another shoots fire. Horns on the third launch electrical bolts, etc.

Right out the gate we have a King Ghidorah homage. I've gotta give him points for that.

KRY-TORR the BURROWER digs up the streets, and the rubble of fallen buildings flies from his hellish, centipedal multi-legs.

I'm getting a Baragon-meets-Onix vibe here: Equal parts Pokemon and kaiju.

LORLOXX the LAYER squats and releases fuming glass eggs from rows of pipes in its sides, all filled with squirming monstrosities.

The most clearly Pokemon-themed monster from what I can tell, though it still has Morrison's name writ large all over.

Then his master died. The last of the Ultimon fell before teaching his young apprentice his final secrets. But at that moment all his master's power flowed into the boy. Yokohama killed Scarrba.

Then the others rose against him and, in an incredible baptism of fire, he defeated them too. Then, through the apocalyptic smoke and ruin, came an army of monsters -- seizing their moment, seeking revenge for their defeat in the Monster Wars.

As the new Ultimon prepared to die in performance of his duty, in defense of Tokyo, the sun rose... and out of the sun came Japan's defenders to his aid. Never before had they teamed together, but that day demanded a miracle.

Cosmo Racer, Hammersuit Zero-X, Goraiko, Sunfire and Rising Sun.

Together, they hurled the Monster Army back into the Outer Darkness, together they built a new Tokyo and set their incredible watch station in place, like a halo above the haze where Mount Fuji rises.

BIG SCIENCE ACTION was born, and the classic lineup soon emerged...

I have to say, of all the characters previewed here, Ultimon is my favorite, simply because he has the best-detailed backstory. He feels the most genuine. I think that he alone would be capable of sustaining his own solo series, and I would buy it.

The name "Big Science Action" is a little too weird for my tastes, though. It gets worse for the other team, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Cosmo Racer
This living robot kid from space is a cross between Silver Surfer and Pinocchio -- partly amnesiac, he is trying to get home to his beloved maker somewhere far in space but has wound up on Earth unable to find the crystals he needs to power up his roller boots for interstellar trave. He can still race along on his blades at speeds up to that of sound.

What only we know is that his "Maker" is a monstrous space tyrant who has sent his little herald out to identify and pacify target planets.

Cosmo Racer's a gritty little "grrrr" guy who never lets you down and ALWAYS finds a way...

Another interesting character, even though his backstory and appearance are explicitly Silver Surfer-meets-Astro Boy, with a touch of Megaman.

I wonder why he has the same insignia on his chest as Kimiyo Hoshi AKA Doctor Light from Crisis on Infinite Earths and Justice League International.

Boss Bosozuko
Boss Bosozuko is a young, hotheaded, nuclear Human Torch. He has a cool-as-hel nuclear-powered future motorcycle with radioactive galactic spiral wheels. He's passionate, angry, tender, emotional, always yelling and acting out, always emoting, like the boys in AKIRA.

Again, his origin is made explicit: Akira. He seems less "serious" than Tetsuo or Kaneda, though, and reminds me of Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and a host of other older shounen heroes.

Hammersuit Zero-X
Gundam meets Gigantor with huge steam-hammer hands -- spunky young girl scientist schoolgirl has created this giant robot suit to run around and right wrongs in.

The design looks closer to something from Neon Genesis Evangelion to me: Gundam machines look more like blocky military hardware. Again, I think it's a tad too Morrisonistic.

Junior Waveman
Junior Waveman is just that, the youngest member of the Wavemen -- a group of rough, tough men and women who live a self-sufficient life in international waters -- 4 guys, 4 women and the teenaged super-genuis daughter of the Wavemen's leader, Senior Waveman Otomo.

Spoiled young Riki Kimura was swept from the deck of his incredibly rich parents' yacht when a terrifying sea creature (one of the Monster Army repelled by Big Science Action on their maiden mission) descended upon them.

The Wavemen arrived to fight off the beast, but Riki's parents were dead. To make things worse, Senior Waveman Otomo also died in the battle against the monster but not before saving the boy's life. The Wavemen took the sickly, ungrateful boy into their care where he learned to grow strong an appreciate life.

Very strong sentai vibe here. I'm admittedly not that familiar with the genre beyond a couple episodes of Power Rangers, but Morrison seems to have hit most of its common tropes: Team of brave men and women, probably multinational (but with a Japanese leader, naturally), standardized costumes/powers, fighting monsters, etc.

He also reminds me superficially of Sosuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic!, but only a little.

And now for the other guys.

SUPER YOUNG TEAM
This group of flamboyant new teenaged heroes derives from Japan's willingness to co-opt and mash together Western music and fashions to create bizarre pop hybrids. Here they've used the same cultural mix-and-match approach to generate a team of colorful youngsters in day-glo outfits.

Warning bells again.

For those of you without the frankly rather pathetic ability to remember such tiny details (*hangs head in shame*), the Super Young Team were first mentioned off-hand two years ago in 52 #6, where a couple members of the Great Ten (that Chinese superteam that Morrison also created) refer to them as "flamboyant fools" or some such, though no details were given.

Most Excellent Superbat
Self-styled leader of the team -- a vivid and garish combination of Superman and Batman motifs. He's the superhero as dandy, as fashion cult, as psychedelic Couture icon. Everything about superhero costuming refined into pure style as worn for the catwalk. Polished, sleek and shiny, super-colorful. Cheekbones like Johnny Depp.

He has his own TV show and legions of fans who swoon over his every inane utterance.

I hate this guy already.

From what I understand, according to an interview at Newsarama, Most Excellent Superbat was created when the writing team from 52 got drunk and started calling out random ideas or something. I don't remember if it was Morrison or Geoff Johns who blurted out the fateful name "Most Excellent Superbat" (probably Morrison), but the fact that he's the result of a drunken stupor shows.

I'm immediately reminded of that scene from the Bill Murray film Lost in Translation where Murray's character winds up on a show with a totally inane guy (who really exists) who pretty much summed up every stereotype about how disgustingly superficial Japanese television is, and the Superbat seems to be that man in a superhero costume.

The thing that bothers me most about him is that he's just a wacky Japanese Superman/Batman wannabe without the others' pedigree in an existing genre.

And if you think his name is bad, just you wait...

Big Atomic Lantern Boy
A big guy wearing a steel vest with a round porthole in the chest -- behind the porthole we see an eerie X-ray image of his ribs and lungs. He fires destructive blue beams from the plate window in his chest. The whole contraption is bright green.

He's a big, shrug and "so what?" kind of guy. Fatalistic. He's the guy who drops deadpan, acid one-liners at perfectly inappropriate moments. He's Superbat's faithful right-hand man.

Another character that screams "Grant Morrison made this!" just a little too loudly. At least he has a personality, though.

Bad names? The worst is yet to come...

Shy Crazy Lolita Canary
A tiny winged girl in a manga schoolgirl outfit. She's the size of a canary and has a shatteringly loud voice, which sounds like many, many voices all mashed together. It's the sound of the shopgirls in every Tokyo store screaming SUMMMIMMMMMASSENNNNN!!! as loud as they can, at the highest pitch possible and en masse. A totally air-headed teenaged girl with a good heart.

What. The. Fuck?

Okay, first of all, she seems to be the token magical girl, though she comes across as more of a shounen/seinen fetish character like Lum or Belldandy than a shoujo audience surrogate like Sailor Moon.

Secondly, the "sumimasen" ("sorry!" or "excuse me!") seems to be a dig at the dojikko/clumsy girl moe archetype that a lot of anime fans seem to dig, but which does not appeal to me whatsoever.

The loose socks are a nice touch, though.

Shiny Happy Aquazon
Giggly, shy, annnoyingly cute but fiercely brave denizen of the deep. She's the amphibious, defiant offspring of Junior Waveman Kimura and uses special underwater machines to fight alongside her teammates. She's not very good at what she does, but everyone likes her and nobody wants to say anything.

She seems to be the embodiment of the sexy and physically powerful but emotionally juvenile character type -- I'm reminded of a more infantile version of Youko Ritona from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann or Shana from Shakugan no Shana. I think that this was another subtle dig on Morrison's part but she doesn't come off as an appealing character.

Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash
Basically, Sonic the Hedgehog meets Impulse. A precocious speedster kid with a huge round helmet and giant running shoes who can reach speeds up to 500 mph. He knows he'll wind up a salaryman in a few years, so he intends to have the time of his life while he still can.

Another character whose origins are clear: He's a video game character come to life, with a bit of the young shounen protagonist thrown in for measure. He's probably the Super Young Team member who least offends my sensibilities, though his name is the pits.

~~~

And that's it. I have to say that I seriously hate the Super Young team, mainly because they're blatant knockoffs of the Justice League. I get that that's the reaction Morrison is trying to evoke, but I think he could have done so with more original characters.

And what are up with their names? The Superbat and Lantern Boy are bad enough, but "Shy Crazy Lolita Canary?" "Shiny Happy Aquazon?" "Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash?" I'm reminded of that other Asian team Morrison created, with names like "Accomplished Perfect Physician" and "Socialist Red Guardsman." Grant Morrison seems to think that the best way to make a character seem "Asian" is to give them a stupid idiosyncratic name.

On the other hand, I rather like Big Science Action, name notwithstanding. These guys come off as actual heroes, not media diva poseurs. They appropriate Japanese culture in weird and stereotypical ways, yet they still manage to feel strangely genuine. I'd like to see more of them.

All told, I think the thing that bothers me most is the casual racism involved in, as I mentioned, defining the whole culture by one trait: Superficiality. I'm one of the people who's still offended by Mother of Champions, and while these guys aren't half as offensive as some of the Great Ten or Egg Fu, I still feel like Morrison hasn't learned his lesson. He's from an overwhelmingly Caucasian country, I realize, so he probably has a rather one-sided view of race and ethnicity (see also anything Mark Millar has written at Marvel), but you'd hope somewhere along the line an editor would look at it and say "Chotto matte, kudasai..." I appreciate that Morrison is willing to go to great lengths for "The Concept," but when he sacrifices taste to do so, I have to shake my head and groan...

Of course, this all comes with an important proviso: Wait and see. There's a big possibility that these characters will only appear in a handful of shots and/or get killed shortly after they appear (a sad reality of modern comics), so all this hand-wringing on my part may be unnecessary.

And that's all I have to say for now. Ja, mata ne!

Answerman Saves the Day

I don't regularly read Anime News Network (I'm mainly a comics fan; anime is just a secondary obsession for me :P), but I was just looking up cast information on a series I'm currently following and happened to read this column while I was there.

While I understand the importance of being precise with your speech, honestly, "anime" just means "Japanese cartoons". People these days know what you mean when you say anime, but getting angry about people saying "Japanese cartoons" smacks of mindless elitism to me. The word "anime" does not imbue these things with some kind of foreign coolness, it's just an easy catch-all. It's the same with manga - there's really nothing wrong with calling them comics, or "Japanese comics" or whatever. Yeah, I guess it's "more correct" to say anime and manga but I often get the feeling when people "correct" you on this sort of thing, it's less about being precise or actually believing that the person saying "Japanese comics" doesn't know that they're "supposed" to say manga, it's more about being a bit pedantic and elitist.

Thank you, Answerman. Thank you. I loves me some anime and manga, but anyone who thinks that Sailor Moon is superior to Watchmen just by basis of its national origin is fooling themselves.

Also, Ron Paul is apparently the pro-anime candidate.

HAHAHAHAHA

Afganis-tan

Um...

Am I the only one who finds this just a mite distasteful?

Especially this part here?

I mean, I think it's great and all that someone's trying to educate people about Central Asia's tumultuous history, but there's got to be a better way...

Moral Panic and Popular Culture

This is actually a research paper I wrote earlier this year; now that it's behind me, I felt like sharing it. It could use a lot of work, I'm sure, but as the closest thing I'll probably ever get to a scholarly dissertation, I don't think it came out too badly. I've removed the citations for ease of reading.

Moral Panic and Popular Culture

On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and gunned down their classmates, murdering twelve students and one teacher and leaving twenty-four wounded. When it was learned that they had planned their attack ahead of time using a popular violent video game as a simulator, the American mass media launched into a feeding frenzy, blaming this game and others like it for the boys' murderous rampage.

Between 1988 and 1989, an introverted print-shop employee, Tsutomu Miyazaki, kidnapped, killed, and performed acts of necrophilia on four girls of preschool age before being apprehended by Tokyo police. When the authorities searched his apartment, they found it filled with nearly six thousand videos, including gory "slasher" films and animated child pornography, as well as many comics of a similar nature. The Japanese media leapt upon the incident, and many soon believed that all otaku – fans of comics and animation – were just as deranged as Miyazaki.

In 1950, a fourteen-year-old boy named Willie was tried and sentenced for the murder of a man whom he supposedly shot from the roof of his building. An avid fan of violent comics about gangsters, Willie had seen many ads in his comics for hunting rifles, and eventually obtained one for himself. Though the case received little nationwide attention, to a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who had known Willie since infancy, it was symptomatic of a mass breakdown of societal morality caused by trashy comic books.

These are but a few examples of moral panic, that tendency of people to believe en masse that something poses a greater threat to society at large than it actually does. The term was popularized in 1971 by sociologist Jock Young in his studies on drug culture. For the purposes of this paper, we shall focus on the phenomenon in relation to popular commercial culture. We shall see in the end that moral panic directed against popular culture is not justified at all.

At least as far back as the 1790s in Great Britain, growing industrialization and urbanization, mass publication, and the creation of mass transit led to the birth of a nationwide commercial culture, in contrast to the communal pastimes that had previously provided entertainment. Even then there were those who railed against "the poison continually flowing thro' [sic] the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.” By the 1830s, British legislators were speaking out against penny gaffs, inexpensive plays with bawdy or sensationalist content, which were supposedly corrupting "the children of the lower classes" and leading them to crime. Thus, we see that moral panic is nothing new.

A classic example of moral panic was the crusade of Doctor Frederic R. Wertham against American comic books in the 1950s. Comic books were wildly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, having enjoyed widespread popularity among United States soldiers during the Second World War thanks to their colorful heroes fighting against the Axis powers. After the war, comics about masked mystery men fell out of popularity, to be replaced by comics about gangsters and supernatural horror – Tales from the Crypt, still popular today, got its start in this era, then published by EC Comics. A 1950 survey showed that 41 percent of American adult males and 28 percent of adult women regularly read comics; another survey in the same year revealed that 54 percent of comics readers were twenty years of age or older. Comics were even more popular among young people, however: 95 percent of boys and 91 percent of girls between the ages of six and eleven read comics, as did 80 percent of all teenagers.

During the war, the likes of Superman and Captain America had drawn criticism from parents for their might-makes-right message. Intellectuals viewed comics as a drug for children and the mentally deficient, keeping them occupied with colorful characters and black-and-white conflicts settled through brute force. This concern turned to outright panic with the ascendancy of horror and crime comics, which regularly portrayed cold-blooded murder, wanton sex, and supernatural elements such as occultism, vampirism, and walking corpses. Despite being sold to children, however, these stories were written with adults in mind. "We were writing for ourselves at our age level," recalled EC Comics editor and artist Al Feldstein in 1972.

Doctor Fredric Wertham abhorred all this. A German-born New York psychiatrist, Doctor Wertham believed that there was a direct link between comics and juvenile crime. A resident psychiatrist at the free Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, Wertham cared greatly for the mental health of children and was an ardent supporter of civil rights for people of color. Wertham drew many disturbing conclusions from his studies on comics and published them in his 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was convinced that violent imagery led children to perform violent acts. For instance, one ten-year-old child he interviewed said:

"Once I saw in a science comic where this beast comes from Mars. It showed a man’s hand over his eyes and streams of blood coming down. I play a little rough with the kids sometimes. I don’t mean to hurt them. In a game I said I would gouge a child’s eyes out. I was playing that I was walking around and I jumped out at him. I scratched his face. Then I caught him and sucked the blood out of his throat. In another game I said, 'I’ll scratch your eyes out!'"

The boy later said, “I played such games because I got them from comic books.”

Wertham picked and chose his examples, however, often citing fringe comics with low readership and exceptionally gory content as the norm; none of them were from major, mainstream publishers like DC or Fawcett. He spoke at length about comics leading children to homosexuality, displaying the prejudices of his day. He condemned Batman and Robin for promoting a gay lifestyle and Wonder Woman for partaking in un-feminine activities. He went out of his way to attack the use of onomatopoeic words as "thunk" and "blam," apparently believing that they degraded children's reading skills.

Wertham also never addressed whether his case studies were true of delinquents across the board and tended to jump to conclusions without considering all evidence. His case studies were just a random assortment of juvenile delinquents who all just happened to read comic books.

Doctor Wertham’s accusations toward the comics industry weren’t all hyperbole. For instance, he was immensely troubled by the comics’ depiction of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities as sub-humans and savages. He was concerned with the hypersexualization of women in comic book stories and ads and the effect they had on girls’ self-image. Despite this, however, most of his declarations amounted to alarmist hype.

Regardless, people listened. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, already at odds with EC publisher Lev Gleason due to his leftist political leanings, turned an ear to Wertham. Despite one 1950 congressional hearing that found that crime was actually decreasing when crime comics were at their most popular, Wertham pushed on. A 1953 Senate hearing in which Wertham testified – described by a British comics authority as a show trial much like the anti-communist witch hunts of the era – ultimately fell in Wertham’s favor. In 1954, in response to veiled congressional threats of censorship, a group of major comics publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, a draconian self-censoring committee. Over 100 comics series were put out of publication due to failure to comply with CCA standards. The CCA essentially neutered the industry, reducing comics to harmless fluff for children. Comics sales would not begin to pick up until the introduction of Stan Lee’s popular characters at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s (the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.), and comics written for adults would not appear again until the “underground” comics late in the same decade, and in either case the damage was done: Comics sales never rose above a fraction of what they were after the war, even to this day.

Japan in the 1980s and 1990s provides an interesting parallel to Wertham's America. Unlike America, comics in Japan (manga) never experienced significant censorship, and by the 1980s they were regarded as a mainstream medium for readers of all ages, much like television or video is in America. Toward the end of the 1980s, pornographic manga was as easily available as adult videos are in America, some of it containing elements of rorikon (from "Lolita complex") – child pornography. It was in this time and place that Tsutomu Miyazaki went on his killing spree.

The Miyazaki slayings would not be the only time the Japanese media turned the spotlight on manga. Media outcry against manga and anime (Japanese animation) repeated in 1995, due to their use as promotional tools by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyō. Aum's leader, Shōkō Asahara, directly lifted some of his ideology from popular science-fiction anime of the 1970s, such as Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and many of his converts were culled from the otaku subculture. Aum was responsible for the deaths of twelve people when they unleashed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea that a fevered mind could draw such grisly plans from cartoons shocked parents.

Some claim that violent and sexual imagery in the media is leading to societal breakdown. For instance, one commentator claimed that adults and youth alike receive "inspiration" from television featuring "casual sex and filthy language," leading them to commit acts of molestation and adultery. The same source notes that in 1996, cases of STD infection, divorce rates, and television viewing were at an all-time high in America. Yet in Wertham's America, the rate of murders per year was at an all-time low when comics, then filling the niche that television fills today, were experiencing the highest sales they would ever attain. In Japan, comic books regularly portray acts of sex and violence that make anything American television has to offer seem tame in comparison; yet two 1994-5 studies on crime revealed that Japan experiences about one-tenth as many murders and one-fortieth as many rapes as the United States. Despite the constant barrage of sexuality in popular culture, dating back as far as the erotic ukiyo-e art of the 1600s, people in Japan continue to present an air of staidness and repression. As the commentator above himself admits, "No cause-and-effect relationship can be absolutely proven."

All too often, self-appointed moral guardians use popular culture as a scapegoat, an excuse not to deal with legitimate social problems such as poor education or poverty. Sensationalism is easy: A headline that reads “Gory video game turns boy into killer” sells more papers than “Lonely boy turns against classmates.” Hip-hop music, wildly popular among French youth (the country being the second largest market for the music after the United States) was blamed by some in the media for the devastating Paris riots of 2005, ignoring France’s long history of neglect towards its ethnic minorities. The rioters’ outrage may have been reflected in hip-hop, but it was fuelled by poverty and racism.

Throughout the ages and especially in the past few centuries, popular culture has been blamed for everything from individual acts of violence to the breakdown of society at large. Looking beyond this alarmist hype, however, we see that other forces are at play: Individuals’ personal experiences, cultural influences, and society’s own failure to look after its members. Moral panic, we see, is simply not warranted at all.

References:

Chagall, David. “Television – The Phantom Reality.” The Media & Morality. Ed. Robert M. Baird, William E. Loges, Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999. 259-76.

Dudley, William, ed. Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.

McBride, James. “Hip-Hop Planet.” National Geographic. Apr. 2007: 100-19.

Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, Ltd. 1967.

Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkley: Stone Bridge Press. 1996.

Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998.

Thompson, Jack. “Violent Video Games Promote Violence.” Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.

Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company. 1953.

Moral Outcry and a Short History Lesson

A tip-o'-the-hat to Thom Wade.

This is pretty damn creepy.

You know why you see this garbage in manga? It's because Japan's post-war constitution, which was drafted by the occupying American forces, was poorly worded in that it prohibited the depiction of pubic hair in any publication -- but said nothing about underage children. It wasn't long before some jackasses realized they could get around the anti-porn laws by depicting prepubescent girls. By the time the laws were revised, it was too late: Lolicon had entered the public consciousness and had staying power in self-published underground comics, which makes up the bulk of manga sales among otaku.

So there you go: Lolicon is Douglas MacArthur's fault.

Pet Peeves

Originally this was meant to be a Thursday Thirteen post, of which I'd learned from Ragnell's Written Word, but after I finished I realized that A) the point was to come up with your own list of thirteen items, not copy the same theme from someone else (I have a history of leaping before I look), and B) it wasn't Thursday anymore. So I'm just posting this as is without the Thu13 code/formatting.

I may get in on the Thursday Thirteen meme when Thursday next rolls around, though. Might be good for me, giving me something to write about every week. Now that I'm back in English class after a year's absence, I need all the practice I can get.

Anyway. In no particular order, just as they popped into my head...

Thirteen Things that Bug the Crap Out of Me

1. Moe. Fucking moe. Er, the Japanese artistic aesthetic, that is. Not Moe Howard. For those not familiar, moe is an aesthetic that has been gaining ground in anime and manga over the last five or six years. The exact definition is debated, but for the most part moe seems to be about catering to (usually male) viewers' preferences or fetishes using (usually female) characters; often, the moe character is young, cute, innocent, nonthreatening, and designed to make the audience want to nurture her or cheer her on. Add on various fetishistic personality or physical traits, such as clumsiness, stubbornness, glasses, schoolgirl or maid uniform, and so on. Typically, a manga or anime series that relies on the moe aesthetic includes many different such characters with different traits, so as to attract as wide an audience as possible. Moe is ostensibly non-sexual on the creators' part by definition, though creepy otaku pedophiles always find a way to sexualize it.

In summary: Underage females who exist for no reason but to attract a male audience. I don't need to explain why that's so wrong.

2. Ken Akamatsu. Filthy pedophile. In fact, I might as well file all lolicon and shotacon under this heading. Akamatsu just stands out because he's so high-profile.

3. Whiny comic book fans. Look, people, I'm just as sad as you are that Blue Beetle is dead, but it's been three fucking years so shut your yaps and find something else to bitch about.

4. While I'm bashing Scans Daily -- rabid slashers. OMG BATMAN IS STANDING THREE FEET FROM TAHT GUY THEY ARE TEH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!1111one!!!SQUEEEEEE Shut the hell up. Nothing against slash -- hell, I think Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle make a damn cute couple -- but come. on.

5. Any and all outdoors work, but especially raking leaves and shovelling snow.

6. John Byrne. 'Nuff said.

7. Otaku who think that Neon Genesis Evangelion is the greatest anime series of all time. Yes it was very well-written (at times) and yes Hideaki Anno is a very good director (at times), but the quality of the animation was sub-par, the characters all grate, and at times it was utterly obtuse. Evangelion is not the end-all be-all of world animation.

Patlabor is.

8. Hell, can I just list otaku in general? Anybody who willingly takes that label upon him- or herself has to have something wrong with them.

9. Ranma 1/2. I still can't believe I sat through nine seasons of that garbage.

10. Die-hard video gamers. I hate them. The ones who call you a "n00b" if your high score is just 3 less than theirs. The ones who think Penny Arcade is the funniest thing of all time. The ones who won't stop quoting that lame-ass "All your base are belong to us" shit. I hate them. They need to die. I want to kill them with fire.

11. Gratuitous Japanese used by American otaku (Baka kawaii snorlax!!!), and gratuitous English used in Japanese media. The superficial overuse of two beautiful languages by people who don't fully understand them irks me. I'm willing to give the Japanese a tad more leeway though, given how their culture was totally overshadowed by America's for decades. But it's still annoying.

12. Political pundits. Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore... I don't care if they swing left, right, up, down, or all around -- these are the kind of obnoxious self-aggrandizing assholes whom we avoid like the plague at cocktail parties, so why should we have to tolerate them on our mass media?

Except for Stephen Colbert. He plays D&D. That makes him cool. "What's a 23rd-level magic-user? Just somebody you don't wanna mess with."

13. They Might Be Giants. I don't care how clever or meaningful their lyrics are, I don't care how quirky they are, I don't care that they teamed up with Homestar Runner once, and no offense to those who do like them -- I'm just not into them. You can take away my geek card now.

~~~

So there ya go.

(Still hoping to do that 52-meets-Evangelion post... if I can muster up the energy...)