Every family has at least one story to tell. Whether it’s the immigrant story or a historical legend or the adventures of that one weird uncle, there’s always some labyrinthine mixture of truth and fantasy that entrenches a family’s history. Stories We Tell is a documentary about one humble tale. Directed by critically-acclaimed filmmaker Sarah Polley, the film delves into her parents’life and her upbringing, spiraling into rumours of infidelity and her heritage. It’s a marvellously self-indulgent film, but one that is a delight to watch.

Stories We Tell starts with candid moments with each member of Sarah’s family. They all question her approach, why the movie is being made and give some pretext to the dialogue between the documentary’s creator and her subjects. Sarah then delves into her parents’ relationship, focusing on her mother’s side. Her mother is long dead and as a result, much of the movie is about her absence. The movie is constructed so that it appears as if we have almost every piece of the truth, we’re just missing her own perspective. That absence leads to the greatest mystery of the film, her mother’s trip to Montreal to act in the play, Toronto in the late 1970s.

The film goes over that trip several times, each time adding in the new facts Sarah’s uncovered. First it appears that Montreal is where her mother and father, Michael Polley, rekindled their waning relationship. Then it becomes the centre for a likely infidelity, as family members joke that Sarah looks nothing like her father. And finally, it transforms into the place where her mother found love once again. It just so happened to be in the arms of another man.

From the start a savvy viewer will be able to anticipate each new development. Real life has a way of playing into established storylines, and as such Sarah’s living family is at the crux of the film. The reveal that she is not Michael’s biological daughter is not as impressive as her sister’s tearful reaction to learning that their mother recaptured love. Nor is it as draining as her brother’s disappointment in their mother’s irresponsibility. These very human reactions transcend the documentary’s occasional banality. The intrigue comes from each family member’s reaction, not least of which is her father’s.

Michael is perhaps the most endearing subject in the film. He narrates the film with his self-depreciating memoirs. They’re well-written and his voice comes off as both mournful and yet complacent. He has a pleasant demeanour and ever present voice.  As a result, Sarah’s attempts to discuss her heritage are all the more stressful for the viewer.

The only portion of the film that is disconcertingly philosophical is the discussion about who owns the drama. Sarah’s biological father debates with her about who should be telling the story and attempts to directly address the subjective nature of truth. But the truth is that these scenes drags on. These questions are best used as themes permeating the documentary, not spoken aloud. Plus, the director has clearly embraced that reality is subjective since most of the flashbacks are recreations made to appear like Super 8 home movies. It is an indulgence too far in an already decadent film.

Stories We Tell is a well-built documentary about family legends. The film’s construction flows in and out of moments in time, like memories connected by a thematic thread.  The movie is never quite chronological, and is better for it, pulling together stories that feel emotionally relevant. Sarah Polley may not have the most unique family in the world, but the execution makes the story feel heartfelt.  It exemplifies how out of control family stories can get, even the recent ones, to the point that the film’s final punch line is a perplexing, but entirely satisfying end.

–

Mawaru Penguindrum, a 26 episode series, created by Kunihito Ikuhara is anime trying to make a modern myth about fate. There’s avoiding fate, finding fate, creating fate, losing to fate, and most of all, changing fate. A by-product of this fate fixation is that Penguindrum comments on the most common type of social determinism, gender roles.  Ikuhara, however, does so in a very Japanese way, reflecting the ways men and women are expected to act in his society and the overriding aesthetic. While the series is not mainly concerned with gender roles, Ikuhara remains a man who is definitely concerned about it. As a result, a lot the metaphors and a analogies for fate, work similarly for convention. Mawaru Penguindrum really argues for a more family centric society, where the roles are determined by necessity, not birth. So we see a flexible family structure, opposed by obsession and, as is often the case in anime, the bad guy is overcome by love.

For those who have yet to watch the show, Mawaru Penguindrum stars an idealised orphan family of the two brothers and their younger sister. In the midst of their happiness (which is so cute and sugary that witnessing it could incite diabetes), Himari gets some horrific disease which cannot be cured. Her brothers, Kanba and Shoma, attempt to live out her last days as best as they can manage. After a penguin-themed adventure, she dies, then comes back to life, possessed by a spirit demanding that the brothers acquire the penguindrum to save her.

This summary is nonsensical in the way that someone not familiar with anime would still say, “that sounds like Japan,” and that is very much the point. Cuteness and absurdity are a key part of Japanese pop culture, and Ikuhara uses that to inform the viewer of his perception of Japan. Kawaisa masks the severity of rape, cults, and mass murder, all of which are discussed in Penguindrum. Ikuhara doesn’t mean to say that cuteness is bad. He’s regularly embraced it in past work. Not to mention that the series is better for its high fructose-based reality distortion, as the story feels more like a fable, where the moral stakes are higher than physical ones. In Penguindrum, kawaisa is simply the lens through which fate and –for better or for worse– women are seen.

Furthermore it is kawaisa and moe that makes it so easy to accept the weird family situations, in which the characters find themselves. Penguindrum offers a non-standard option to who does what in a family, and places most of the importance on support rather than exact responsibility. The most glaring example comes from the main trio, Kanba, Shoma and Himari. Kanba and Shoma act like surrogate parents, with Kanba becoming the father, and Shoma the mother. Shoma appears more typically feminine, considering his long eyelashes and drooping hair, especially in contrast with his tougher looking brother.

Ain’t you a doll? I mean are you? I can’t tell.

In episode 4 he wears a girl’s clothes, and they are never called ill-fitting. He is explicitly called the “bickering mother to us,” by Himari in the final episode. He also fits the show’s pattern of devoted mothers being unable to accomplish anything, regardless of their intentions (we’ll get back to this later).

As men can take the roll of mother, it seems apt that Masako takes the role of father.  Masako and her brother, Mario, are similarly orphans, and Mario is similarly possessed and afflicted with the need for a penguindrum to save him from an illness. In her case, she takes the role of father, repeating her grandfather’s catchphrase, “Gosh, I must crush him soon” and in episode 10 saying ““I am not a pathetic hunter who lets her prey escape,” in regards to her attack on Kanba.

“This [scene] is a direct reference to 1991′s acclaimed thriller Silence of the Lambs, which has actress Jodie Foster frantically stumbling around in the dark as Buffalo Bill stays just outside or her perception, lusting and longing and desirous of her.”

-          Vucubcaquix (Colloquium: Mawaru Penguindrum Episode 10)

Boy this image becomes creepier when I think of Hannibal Lector

On a more basic level, her appearance is distinctly more masculine. Her eyes are like Kanba’s (which Mario does not share) and she wears a tie with a collared shirt beneath her uniform. Masako’s transformation into a more masculine figure comes after the disappearance of her brother, her father and the death of her grandfather. It can then be implied that she, out of necessity, takes the role of father because it is demanded of her. Mario needs a father figure. The company needs a president. Her inheritance requires authority. Fate brings her these things, but her character, which develops into a fierce and destructive personality, is what allows her to take the role.

These flexible family dynamics exist somewhat in contrast to the rest of the world that is so plain and generic, they are represented by copies of generic infographic people. You know, the guys on the washroom signs.  These people, however, don’t ever engage with the main characters. Instead, convention and determined social fate is represented by those obsessed with fate. The exemplary Ringo believes it is her fate to fall in love with a handsome prince, who will get her pregnant, and the resultant child will fix her family. The fateful lovers trope is a commonly used as the resolution or motivation for female characters in animated films, especially Disney princesses (excluding Mulan). With that in mind, it seems almost rational that Ringo would believe that replicating her dead sister’s life and love would fix her parents relationship and her own feelings of loneliness. It’s only when she takes that belief as destiny and pushes it way, way, way too far that it starts to look like madness.

Let’s look at one particular sequence in Penguindrum for a remarkable example where one’s obsession with fate and convention leads to a disaster for all involved. Click for annotations to get subtitles.

The shojo style and the bizarre use of French comes from a Japanese stereotype that France is centre of culture and love. See the Rose of Versailles and most early girls’ comics, which act mostly as escapist romance. Course, Ringo takes it beyond any of those manga would, as their love for each other is shown to be interplanetary. We even get a glimpse of the Disney castle about three-quarters way through the fantasy. Once we return to reality, Keiju says “If failure and despair are the will of fate then I’m sure there’s meaning to everything. Not a single tear is wasted.” In plain terms he reassures Ringo that no matter her actions or her suffering, because she trusted fate, it will guide her to a happy ending. But we start to see the cracks in her belief when she is placed on the bed and tears gather up in her eyes in regret. She doesn’t know why she’s crying, and indeed, those tears are wasted. The scene is broken up by Himari and Shouma, whose discussion of love ends with a shot of the penguin hat, one of the symbols against determinism.

Penguindrum then changes genres as it gains elements of German expressionism. The colouring becomes more garish; the lines become harsher and look closer to woodcuts. This style is essentially the horror equivalent to Penguindrum’s usual cute fable aesthetic. It signals that we are now watching a monster movie. A hand bursts through the door, as the frog-man cries out her name. In one sense, this can be seen as a twisted version of the frog prince. The girl turns the man to a frog so he will love her, but when she realizes she doesn’t, he decides to rape her. Given the way this scene ends, the style keeps the show funny, acting as a contrast between the nonsense French space romance she imagined earlier. In spite the looming threat of rape in the background, Yuri casually walks inside and ignores the trauma. By the time Ringo repeats her claims that they are fated lovers, there’s some nervous laughter coming from the crowd.

Like a fable, the sequence ends with a lesson. You can’t force fate, and forcing fate only brings others into your madness. The danger is moral more than it is physical. The sequence is an elaborate caricature of the Disney princess mentality. We get a glimpse that the potion that was supposed to make Keiju fall in love with Ringo forever only lasts a day. Ringo, at best, would have a one night stand. She fundamentally misunderstands being in a relationship. Her actions separate Keiju from Yuri, and are in direct opposition to Kanba, Himari and Shouma’s goals and way of life. They wish to live quietly and together. Her demand to know why fate allowed her to fall in love reminds the family of their own secret and starts to tear them apart.

Nope, no child abuse going on here.

Once the obsession with keeping fate is out of the way, the characters then attempt to avoid fate entirely. Kanba and Shouma try to avoid Himari’s death  as long as possible, despite it becoming increasingly clear that they can’t. Yet, the first instance of a fate transfer shown on screen is during Yuri’s childhood. In the alternate universe, her father declares her too ugly to be loved and warns her that “Your mother became uglier by the minute after she gave birth to you. That’s why she could no longer live in this house and ended up like that.” The father’s offer then to “fix” her renders a physical ramification of the abuse he lays upon her soul. Momoka then changes this fate by rejecting the abuse, and physically injuring herself. Why?

“Momoka is an allusion to Jesus Christ.

[…]She loved Yuri with no reservations, despite Yuri’s insistence that she was without beauty, thus outside of Creation and unable to be loved. Momoka refutes this, and explains that she is able to change fates with her diary and a small bodily sacrifice.”

-          Vucubcaquix (Colloquium: Mawaru Penguindrum Episode 15)

The bodily sacrifice is supposed to represent the punishment we each take by sharing our love with each other. Because Momoka takes all the responsibility, she takes all the punishment, acting more or less as Japanese lady Jesus Christ.

The total absence or rejection of mothers is a dissonant feature of the Penguindrum world that without the right context seems a little counter-productive. I’ve mentioned this before that generally all mother figures in this series, though they may love and care for their children, rarely accomplish anything. In the example above, Yuri’s mother was chased out of her home because once she had given birth she was no longer beautiful. Simply, she fulfilled her child-bearing destiny as a lady and because she no longer has beauty or purpose, is tossed aside. This fits into the pattern but is difficult to use because that scene takes place in a male dominated alternate universe.

However, this pops up again. Shouma, perhaps the most apt example, tries to save Ringo in the same episode but instead trips on a bottle and passes out, continuing his tradition of doing jack shit. Compare that to his appearances during the crazy-fun-time transformation sequence, which amounts to balking at possessed!Himari’s claims, and then falling into a pit. Worse, Keiju’s mother makes his life full of misery (not that, as with Yuri’s backstory, fathers are much better) by rejecting him for his lack of talent and he eventually rejects her in return. And so if we look back at Yuri’s mother in this context it might be better that she didn’t stick around.

Except, that’s excluding Chiemi, who manages to do what the brothers cannot, delay Himari’s death. Chiemi does one thing of immediate value in Penguindrum, stop a mirror from smashing over Himari’s head. This tiny instance of instinct and love transfers Himari’s fate, and in doing so, Chiemi has a similar role to Momoka. Like Momoka, she takes all the punishment for Himari’s petulance, scarring herself in the process. Foremost is the aspect of survivor’s guilt, as Sanetoshi speculates that Himari told her friends the truth because “she wanted to punish herself.”  All further references to “punishment” involving the family are linked back to the broken mirror, audibly and visually.

Chiemi’s fate transfer isn’t as cataclysmic as Momoka’s, and so we don’t have to worry about two Jesus metaphors running around. Instead, we see that fate transfer, and the ability to change fate, can come from the tiniest and instinctual of decisions. So while Chiemi doesn’t necessarily change the world, her small gift of life is as significant as a shift in reality. The example doesn’t vindicate all mothers, but Shouma’s efforts start to look like a prolonged emulation of his mother’s sacrifice, especially towards the end of the series as the final punishment is given. Love and sacrifice are the only necessities in changing fate.

And that’s my roundabout way of getting to a discussion on freedom from convention. Penguindrum goes quite a long way to build up its narrative on how to change fate, but it all starts with birth as Himari is reborn in the first episode. From what I’ve encountered, the transformation sequence equals birth metaphor is required knowledge to understand the series as a whole, especially as it lays the spine to its message.

 I wish I could display it, but because the sequence is 90% a music video for an ARB cover band, King Records takes down any copy it can find. For those who aren’t intimately familiar, I shall defer to my betters, as the colourful poetry blog does a pretty good job of laying it out.

With that metaphor in mind, Ikuhara takes birth (which any lady or fine purveyor of the Miracle of Life documentary can assert, is messy and painful) and changes it into a hilarious cornucopia of flashing lights and a pop-remix of a 70s rock anthem. He transforms the ugly into moe, and in effect we see what it means to be born in Japan.

Above it all, transformation is fairly literal as a process of change.

“This strange space in which Himari’s transformed self attempts to change fate, namely her sickness, suggests the opposite of the deterministic type of fate that is so pronounced throughout the series. It is in these transformation scenes that we learn first about the diary and the fact that Kanba has tried so hard to keep Himari alive. Fate, as represented through transformation, is not predestined, but rather controlled by the decisions an individual makes.”

-Kylaran (Interpreting the Concept of Fate through Mawaru Penguindrum’s Visual Landscape, Behind the Nihon Review)

That conflict between social determinism and freedom is highlighted in this transformation too, as it is this sequence that the viewer first realizes the bizarre realities of the main characters. Deterministically, it demonstrates some of the bad habits of anime, fetishizing a young girl, or trying to display incest as wacky fun. Yet, it highlights their freedom as their family structure is tested on screen. Shouma is dropped into the rift and rejected, Kanba has his heart torn out, and Himari becomes the dominant figure. It’s the first, and definitely not the last time, we laugh at pregnancy and creation. Of course, we laugh because it is so shocking, especially compared to the bland infographic people in the world around them. Essentially, it shines a light on their choices that don’t agree with society’s or fate’s path, and once it ends, the characters must face the full brunt of fate.

Mothers, maternity, and monsters, Mawaru Penguindrum takes all of these and transforms them into a modern Japanese fable. Fate in all its forms puts pressure on these characters, and challenges them morally and socially. Unfortunately a full analysis requires us to look at both sides, male and female. It’s not so much women that he brings into question, as it is the state of family life in Japan. He doesn’t reject past traditions, styles or actions. In Ikuhara’s words, “I want to show […] the feeling of: “We still love our mother and father who did those things, even if they may have been wrong to do them.” So cuteness can stay, and we can still laugh at it, even if the stuff around the rim isn’t great. Key is that all people should be able to try to determine their fate based on truth. No lying to yourself that pregnancy will bring happiness. No keeping your sister around, long after she’s dead.

Afterword:

I rewrote this article several times before I got to a point where I gave in. Better to have this done than work on it for a month… For future articles I’m just going to pick specific sequences and talk about those. That’ll keep me on target.  And hank you Kylaran for existing, and thank you to the altairandvega, draggle, 8thsin for their long in-depth analysis, without which I would be more lost than I am.

Next up, the female form and Lupin the III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!

The portrayal of women in media sucks. Let’s be straight, the vast majority of all protagonists are male, the women who make it into stories are often ineffectual or demeaned and sex still sells above all else. Now, anime is no different, and in some ways it’s worse than the 3D butts in Transformers: Dark of the Moon and the protective love men are supposed to have for Lara Croft. Yet, somehow, anime and manga have also turned out some fantastic gems that deal with gender roles in society that outclasses most American media.

My goal is to analyze four different anime, each of them showcasing a different perception of women in Japanese society. They are as follows: Mawaru Penguindrum (Spinning Penguindrum); Lupin III: The Woman Called Mine Fujiko; Ooku: The Inner Chambers; and High School of the Dead.

Now before anyone cries that I’m cherry picking certain series and skipping some others, I totally am. To be honest, I have a rather limited range when it comes to older anime. I do, however, know these series very well. For your consideration, I am skipping Miyazaki, who has fantastic female protagonists, but his movies don’t quite comment on women so much as he does a very good job at writing them.

Furthermore, I am well aware that High School of the Dead is a fetishistic mess of tits and guns. Its failure to portray women as anything except sex objects works as a great contrast to the others. In fact, I find portrayal of uncompromising masculine dominance to be as important to the discussion of women in media as the well-developed female characters featured in the other series.

Alright, we cool now? Good.

In each of these posts, I will take short succinct pieces from these series and demonstrate how the show succeeds (or fails) at modern gender dynamics and the overall message the show is trying to send regarding those dynamics. I’ll try to keep them short, though concision has never been a strength of mine.

Before I start the first passage, I think there needs to be some context for those who aren’t as familiar with anime or Japanese culture. I also want readers to know I am not trying to glorify anime as a medium. As I said, anime overall is no better than any other media. It has simply, by a combination of luck and cultural taste, managed to produce great commentaries on women in Japanese society. I’m going to be pretty reductive with this, and assume the reader knows close to nothing. If you already know a lot about Japanese society or anime, then I recommend you stop here or risk witnessing me fumble through a description of it.

American and Japanese societies differ from the balance between violence and sexuality. In America, over the top gun-toting violence is seen as typical of the American hero, and yet sexuality is either seen as juvenile or perverse. However, while there certainly is some overlap, the Japanese historically are far more obsessed with the body than the gun, and thus violence is seen as a personal affair between men, not an all out war or rebellion. If you’ve watched Dragon Ball Z or seen a samurai film, you’ll notice the fights are usually one on one, and the winner is victorious because of his inner moral victory, not just his physical strength or weapon. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but generally, empowered by weapons to fight armies are a western ideal, empowered by the self to fight man to man is an eastern ideal.

For more on this, watch the following video. It’s not critical, but does a pretty good job at showing the history:

The Myth of the Gun

In any case, this bodily fixation leads to a beauty and ultimately sex fixation (the act thereof and of gender). Sex is also represented differently. Japan has a much larger focus on “cute” over “sexy.” The reasons behind this I don’t want to speculate on, but it’s a clear separation between cultures that permeates down to its fundamentals. In Japan, it’s called Kawaisa, and it has a long long long long history that goes back to the Tale of Genji written in the 11^th century.

Again I’m trying to keep this short, so instead of trying to explain this all myself, I’ll show examples and quote someone who knows what they’re talking about:

Here are some construction signs in Japan that are cartoon animals:

And here’s a police station in the shape of an owl.

“Cuteness is not a concept limited to children in Japan, though it means childlike and sweet, happy and upbeat – and vulnerable, something to be taken care of and cuddled. Japanese adults are said to happily revert to such a state, and even macho truck drivers have cute mascots hanging from their mirrors.”

-         Merry White (The Material Child: Coming of Age in America and Japan)

In anime, kawaii characters, especially female characters, are called “moé.” If you’ve watched any amount of anime, you’ve encountered it and either love it, ignore it or hate it. For such a divisive yet all encompassing trope, moé is magnificently difficult to define. It can be a state of being for the viewer (lying on a pillow with a cute character on it is an example of moé). Or it can be a descriptor regarding a totality of a character’s actions (a cute girl tripping and falling is another example of moé). Moé is also a hobby as otaku (hardcore anime fans) will collect all the cute things surrounding a cute character.

Once again, let’s have a couple professionals explain.

“Moe has to do with something more [than images], relating back to the idea of rorikon (sic) manga: the images and characters these otaku obsess about are more than likely characters that many would criticize as perpetuating this rorikon ideal. These images leave nothing to the imagination, not merely hinting at the idea of a young, sexualized girl. They are young girls with large eyes, short skirts, and are just “chô-kawaii.! But supporters of otaku culture, especially producers and distributors who rely on the booming moe market, in an effort to possibly disconnect from the negative connotation of these sexualized rorikon manga, claim that moe is radically different from rorikon, and specifically ero-manga or pornographic manga. Rorikon would have the reader wanting to consume the female lead as a sexual partner: Lolita requires sex. Moe, they claim, is more of a need to protect their beloved character. If rorikon images emphasize the sexual nature of young girls, moe emphasizes instead their innocence and virginity.”

-          Joseph Dela Pena (Otaku: Images and Identity in Flux)

Another thing I don’t want to get into but very quickly, “rorikon”, now more commonly romanized as lolicon, is the depiction of children, or child-like people, engaging in pseudo-sexual behaviour often involving adults. Basically, if a character looks twelve but is trying to have sex, that’s lolicon. Yep.

If you have some extra spare time, I also recommend you watch Japanorama’s piece on moé here:

To be clear, this is an extreme end of kawaisa, and as Dela Pena mentioned, it’s mainly an otaku thing. But the penchant for otaku to buy literally everything related to a cute character because of moé makes them a fairly large market, which has pushed for over the years quite a bit of pandering towards that demographic. Overall, this has the added effect of making female characters, who were already docile (and thus cuter) more infantile.

It’s a problem any anime fan encounters, though whether they choose to go with the flow or get enraged is up to them. Ultimately, however, this pandering is so pervasive it’s hard to escape. Here’s a couple shots from some popular mainstream series.

I mean

come

the fuck

on

I know what you’re doing guys.

This is starting to get annoying.

None of these, except the needlessly explicit Nisemonogatari, are overtly sexual, but they are supposed to make you feel protective and even pick one of the female leads as the one you (as a viewer) personally protect. I could go on a rant about how making women look infantile is bad and demeaning, but really, that’s obvious. My problem with moé is, it’s boring. The characters are the same. The stories are the same. And it has a shitty effect on the male characters, who become a Twilight-esque vacuum, waiting for the essentially male audience to project themselves into the vacant space.

My point is, through this rambling attempt to describe Japanese culture, anime has its own problems. These series I’m about to talk about are not the average, but deviation from the norm. I still love anime. Out of the series I showed, the one that probably looks the worst is Nisemonogatari, and I actually enjoy that show a lot. It’s just that particular scene (amongst many others) that disgusts me.

And that’s the basics to the sexuality in anime, and its main issues. There are quite a few other unique features to Japan when it comes to sex and femininity, but I’ll leave those to the specific series I’m going to discuss.

I unfortunately can’t guarantee any concrete schedule, but I will have the first part of my analysis, Mawaru Penguindrum, finished by the end of the week.

A man who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound should be the most terrifying creature on Earth. He’d be unstoppable and unbeholden to our mortal morality. So, why then is Superman one of the most popular heroes on the planet? He does not kill and he never loses.

A superman does both in the new DC animated film, Superman vs. The Elite, an adaptation that both faithfully adapts its source material, while improving on its message and focus.

Based on the 1990s comic, What’s So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way? by Joe Kelly (who is also scriptwriter for this version), it challenges the re-surging trend of murderous heroes. Clark Kent, as the titular Superman, is the avatar for the traditional way of saving the day by punching the bad guy until he’s knocked out, and then sending him to jail. The new superhero team, the Elite, represents a “realistic” take on superheroes. They posit, if the Lex Luthors of the world are going to keep on escaping and killing more people, they deserve to die. In the long run, a hero may save more lives that way.

It’s that terrifying realization that makes Superman vs. The Elite so fun to watch.

Superman vs. The Elite does more than moralize, and it treats its heroes and villains better than the original comic did. The Elite originally had no personality beyond mercilessly killing bad guys. Now we get to sympathise with them as they attempt to work with Superman. At times it’s hard to disagree with them as they demonstrate, sometimes the ends do justify the means. During a brief team-up, the film does a showcases Superman’s greatest strength, making people better than they are, while the Elite tend bring out the venom in humankind.

Lois Lane shows up too, here as Clark’s wife and confidante, and manages to steal the movie in almost every scene she’s in. It’s fun to watch her banter with Clark, which adds a lot of humanity to the hero, while exhibiting her own investigative skills.  The world itself exists as a character, acting like the chorus in a Greek play. Together they cry for blood, but later recoil from Superman’s final decision.

Technically, the Superman vs. The Elite is nothing special. It straddles the line between comic pop art and being animesque, skewing closer to former. Of all things, the opening credits are most noticeable because it looks like the Beastie Boys made a Superfriends music video. George Newborn plays Superman about as well as he has for the last twenty years, and Pauley Perrette puts in a good effort as Lois.  The special features on the DVD will appeal more to superhero fans than anyone else, but a copy of the comic and a few commentaries make for a good entry point for anyone who wants to learn more.

Faithfulness to the source material is where the movie falls flat, as it reuses some questionable dialogue from the original. Superman yelling, “How does it feel to be deconstructed?” is about as subtle as one of his punches. Plus, the turn from uneasy allies to pure enemies comes almost as a cheat as the film attempts to jump straight from its embellishments into the comic’s latter half. Running at just over an hour, however, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and these problems don’t overshadow the drama.

As the two sides rumble to a close, Superman vs. The Elite reminds the viewer of the potential terror of supermen. Creatures with unimaginable power decide to take judgement on the planet and even Superman’s response isn’t pretty. For all its faults, this is the most thoughtful film in the DC animated line and a great watch, even if you don’t really know who Superman is beyond red and blue tights.

4/5

4/5

In the county of Huili, Mohammad Ali and Confucius appear to walk hand in hand. New trainees, straight from the China’s provincial farmland, get the opportunity to become like the boxing legends of yore. It’s a typical sports story, which would be entirely unremarkable, except for its cultural fusion and the exquisite cinematography.

China Heavyweight, a new documentary from Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang, showcases China’s return to boxing, viewed from the eyes of young hopefuls in the earthy Sichuan province. The return comes after a thirty year ban, which disappeared with much of the old communist doctrine. As the economy flourished, suddenly a violent, highly competitive sport just seemed to fit with the new ideology. Time to refine the population from raw material down to valued product. Only now does that shift trickle down to students Miao Yunfei, He Zhongli and their coach, Qi Moxiang.

The film starts with their discovery in a creaky middle school, which looks almost random. The long-time professional Qi asks students to punch wildly, and somehow decides that these select boys (and indeed girls too) have the right stuff. They go through rigorous training as the coach, trying to bring attention to these fighters, decides to fight the current Pacific champion from Japan.

As mentioned, in terms of plot and events, it’s not hard to guess what happens next. It’s about a tired coach and his students; we’ve all seen this film a thousand times if only in fiction. Yet, the documentary is specifically about boxing in China. This complex reality becomes jarringly clear during a good luck visit to a Buddhist temple. A monk there calls the sport brutal, and wonders why anyone would play it. The boxing program director corrects him.

Boxing teaches us about respect and proper behaviour, he says. It reinforces Confucian beliefs.

Little things like that distance China Heavyweight from its counterparts, making the familiar just different enough that the movie seems to be cultural as much as it is sport.

Though, sport is still an important part of the drama. The camera sticks close during their training, always in the early morning or late at night. The glare of dawn is a common sight as is abject darkness. Long shots are dedicated to Yunfei, Zhongli and others attacking the lens with their machine-gun fists. Shrouded by night, these fighters look stuck in their personal universe. Once they start battling in tournaments, there are no ‘action scenes’ as such. They’re continuations of the story as the camera is more interested in their mental state than it is the blow by blow match.

“I think for this film we were going for a, very claustrophobic, very close camera that was right next to the subject, almost in their mind,” says director Yung Chang. This claustrophobia leads to a direct relationship between the film and its subject that treads a precarious line.

Sometimes the closeness is endearing, as it shows coach Qi living underneath the stadium stairs and later on, visiting family, who all tease him for his zero-salary job and inability to marry.

Yet, when Yunfei tells his mother that he’s going to a big city training camp, Chang backs off. Yunfei’s mother leaves the room in a combination of sadness and anger. So instead he lingers with Yunfei and his father and uncle, who try to comfort the boy.

“As a documentary filmmaker, you’re negotiating a relationship that can be too intimate,” says Chang.

Luckily, all this manoeuvring pays off. The cinematography feels invested in its subjects from beginning to end, even if it is emotionally distant at times.

For all its curiosities, China Heavyweight is weakest when it comes to actual narrative. The storylines don’t quite mesh as it should, and there’s no real resolution. You see the end coming, but are left with so many questions. Zhongli and Yunfei are never definitively a success. They progress and part ways, which is the closed thing to an end they have. Furthermore, Coach Qi’s big match is built to be the climax, but we don’t see his personal development beyond running and punching.

It’s hard to lay these faults at the foot of the director. These are people and there are limits in what you can show. Qi is a quiet man. He’s not keeping anything from Chang that he doesn’t keep from the rest of the world. Plus, Chang has a limited budget. He’s not PBS, and can accidentally spend eight years on a single topic. Personally, I came close to an orientalist fascination with this film. I’ve never cared about boxing until I saw it in this cultural context, which is why it left me with a strong impression. China Heavyweight does well with what it has, even if what it has is lacking.

After the film, Coach Qi wandered to a Q&A, weary-eyed, and hiding in a big hoodie. Someone asks him about the girls on the boxing team (who evaporate halfway through the film).

“I can’t wait for the end of these 16 days (here),” he mumbled through a translator. “I’m in a rush to go back and train them.”

4/5

Whatever the textbooks tell students today, the White House will say twenty years from now.  Every member of the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) knows these stakes, since they determine the criteria for many textbooks across state lines. The Revisionaries is a documentary that shows how the far right are trying to question things like evolution and the division of church and state by writing their doubt in millions of students’ textbooks.

The Revisionaries follows the affable dentist and old Chairman of the TSBE, Don McLeory, as he asserts his creationist beliefs through education policy. His major ally is the prayer-happy professor of law Cynthia Dunbar, while his opposition comes in the form of science advocate, Kathy Miller and Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor.

Debate on the education board plays out like the “culture war” Fox News anticipated but failed to actually report on. The religious right starts every session with a prayer for victory and seems to end each one with their wish granted. Eliminate mentions of diverse peoples, add St. Thomas Aquinas to the section on Enlightenment thinkers (despite living at least 400 years too early), and make sure that the theory of evolution is criticised and debated in classrooms.

The film shows both sides of the debate without comment, acting like a fly on the wall. Whether the best side won these debates is up to the viewer. The director, Scott Thurman, claims that Cynthia Dunbar saw the film during the premier and liked it. Don’t take that as a negative. In the Toronto premiere, people were hooting and calling at the some of the nigh absurdist comments of the religious right.

McLeary is at the centre of this madness. He has a childlike enthusiasm for his beliefs that’s hard to dissuade. The same enthusiasm makes him entertaining for those on either side of the conflict. Even if you hate him, you want to watch him as the director conveys his own fondness for the contradictory man.

“I’ve never had further distance between someone I liked so much on a personal level, yet disagreed with so fundamentally on a political level,” Thurman said in the Q&A following the film’s Canadian premiere. “Every time I would show the dailies to fellow graduate students they would tell me, ‘You know, the issues can get a little dry at times, but every time Don came on the screen I just got on the edge of my chair. What is he going to say next?’”

That’s true, no matter whether you like his politics or not. When he declares openly that he is certain the world is 3000 years old, it is hard to suppress a chuckle. Sometimes, you smile when he displays some childlike idealism, even as he turns back the clock on an entire state’s education system.  Others find him equally peculiar. Wetherington stares in amazement at some of McLeary’s absent declarations during a visit to the anthropolgist’s home, before kicking him out. Of course, McLeary leaves the scene unfazed and optimistic, while the audience giggles.

The Revisionaries is an unfinished film, unfortunately. The story ends right as the moderates seem to get a fighting chance.  It’s hard to blame the filmmakers for it.  You can only dedicate so many years of your life to filming and editing together board meetings and elections and interviews. Regardless, you get the sense that we’ve only begun to see the “culture war” commence.

“You have to wait several years if not a generation of kids to see what the accountability is going to be like,” said Thurman, describing life in Texas after the time-frame of the film.

Those looking for a better end, best read the news. Some states have started to legislate that they will not buy any textbooks from Texas. At the same time, the Republican primaries have recharged the far right, giving them a second wind against the moderates.

Admittedly, Revisionaries is more of a fun farce than something that irks me at night. I can sit in the comfort of my Canadian suburban home, and laugh about the film in retrospect. The ending doesn’t bother me, but I can see others becoming nervous. The film has no emotional arc thanks to its observational nature and limited time span. McLeory is still around, and we have no idea what effect he’s had on the world. Nor does the film attempt to tell you. But if you are looking for more, the sequel is in our newspapers or on TV. The Revisionaries simply asks that you pay attention.

4/5

Look closely at Marvel’s release schedule, as it switches out artists on their comics, and you’ll see that Marvel is feeding piracy. Okay, so maybe that needs a little explaining. Marvel has developed a habit of replacing their artists intermittently as a way for compensating for double-shipping their issues. As David Brothers is keen to tell you, this process devalues the artists and makes them seem less pivotal to their respective series. It’s a simple trick. If an artist can be switched out at will, then that sends a signal to readers that they aren’t all that integral to the comic they are currently enjoying. And this disregard is ultimately going to make Marvel poorer in the long run.

Pirates like to attack easy targets. Pirates like targets who look invulnerable, tough, ‘the man’ in all its wealth and public faculties. Every time some schlub goes to the flea market and picks up a burned copy of some movie he couldn’t be bothered to copy himself, he justifies it by saying, “This isn’t hurting anyone.” He’ll remind you that given the opportunity to help a small artist in need, he’ll pay up, gladly. See, he’s not hurting people, he’s hurting some rich landlord or a corporation, who makes millions every year anyway. And even then, this is special.  He wouldn’t watch it if it wasn’t cheap or free.  He’s only pirating because he’s bored.

That is the excuse of the everyman pirate on Bittorrent or in a flea market, for every game, movie and comic stolen. It’s not hurting anyone who counts.

By changing up its artists, Marvel kind of looks like the big corporation right now. Here’s why. Marvel clearly wants to make fans loyal not to the comic creators, but the comic series. The goal is not to have fans following Mark Waid and Paulo Rivera, they should be following Daredevil. Waid is, or at the very least Marvel would hope you believe, a Marvel man or “Architect”, much like Fraction, Bendis and Hickman. That makes him less of a writer and more of an extension of company ideal. To Marvel, Waid is a medium who can channel intellectual property into cash flow. That view is also why they don’t switch around writers as they do artists. The writers are positioned as extensions of the company. Yet, when Waid eventually leaves to focus on his own comics, or when he goes back to DC, or when he simply gets tired of Daredevil, Marvel does not want Daredevil’s fans to follow Waid away from the series.

Heck, Marvel doesn’t even want people to follow its key architects. I doubt they’ll make a big deal when Hickman takes over for Bendis on the Avengers. Perhaps a comment here, or an interview there on Bendis’ last issue. But they’ll be quick to remind people, “New Avengers out on Wednesday!” Same when Fraction eventually leaves Iron Man, because he’ll run out of stories one day and is replaced with Kieron Gillen (it will happen people).

You can’t really blame Marvel for hoping that people will look for series and not people. First of all, it’s worked fairly well for them in the past, considering how long people stuck around after Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil or Mark Millar’s run on Ultimate X-Men. There’s also the simple math element to it. Writers and artists don’t last as long as comic series do. Marvel wants to keep readers for another fifty years or so, and their characters need to survive beyond their writer’s ability to spin new stories for them. However, by building loyalties to brands and not people, Marvel is going to make it a lot easier to ‘justify’ pirating content from them.

This is entirely wrong as the human element is an easy way to make it harder for that false justification. Let me give you a personal example. I went to TCAF over the weekend for some fun and panels, and maybe a talk to a few creators. While I was meandering around, I see issue 6 of Comic Book Comics readily available. I was a pretty big fan of Ryan Dunlavey’s and Fred Van Lente’s earlier work, Action Philosophers, and was psyched to see the final issue of their new series on the desk. I picked it up and began to casually look through it.

“I can’t wait to see this in a trade,” I mumbled to myself, as I usually do when wandering around booths, trying to grow enough backbone to talk to a writer or an artist.

“Oh really?” A voice said from behind the desk. I turn up, and see, Ryan Dunlavey sitting with a child on his lap. It’s not like I expected to see someone else, but I was a little surprised that he talked to me first. Although I suppose he could have assumed I was talking to him when I blurted out my impatience to see six issues become a book.  Anyway.

“Oh, yeah, I really loved Action Philosophers. I’ve read through every issue. I’ve seen a few samples of this new one floating around the internet and I guess I’ve been waiting for it to be collected.” Of course, I should have added, “Oh by the way, I read all of Action Philosophers on my computer because a friend of mine sent me pirated copies to me over Skype.”

“Good to hear. You can take that issue you’re holding.”

I kind of glared at him in disbelief. “But, I-Are you sure?” I said and without realizing it, reached into my back pocket for my wallet.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I believe you when you say you’re a fan,” he said calmly, before turning his attention back to this kid who was now bouncing on his knee. I mumbled a thank you and then ran to the other side of the room.

I feel  guilty for stealing from Dunlavey and Van Lente, just because it took me an embarrassing conversation for me to realize that I was taking from two (or at least one) extremely decent human beings. I don’t deserve that issue. I just feel too guilty. Though, I am very glad to have it for reasons I will get to in a moment.

You can see my point, creating empathy between the creators and the public is how you make them want to purchase a comic, or feel bad about stealing. No one is going to care or feel guilt about pirating a comic if they think they’re stealing from the brand of a faceless corporation. I don’t care about Marvel. Marvel isn’t my friend. Marvel is a creature that for over fifty years has treated its creators as disposable parts of the comic creating process. If anything, I’m prone to make Marvel the guy I avoid at the annual corporo-humanoid dance party.

Let me eliminate some misconceptions for a second. I’m not trying to validate pirating in any form against Marvel, DC or any corporation. Just that it will be far more likely if the perpetrators think they are stealing from of a million dollar corporate hierarchy instead of individuals. Nor am I saying that building a connection, like the one I accidentally formed with Dunlavey, is the catch-all solution to solving piracy. Louis CK released his comedy album for only five dollars online with a personal pledge that he hoped people would be honest and not pirate his work. They still did. But the connection between a creator and consumer still earned him a million bucks. Course, there’s a further caveat to that. Louis CK was a well-established comedian with his own TV show. People knew who he was before he released his album. As for someone unknown using the same technique, there probably wouldn’t be nearly as many sales and more people would pirate it. So the system ain’t all hunky-dory as I’d like to propose.

Yet, Marvel does make enough that instead of trying to hide its artists and trying to absorb its writers, it could bring them to the forefront. Don’t show them as ‘Marvel Architects.’ Marvel should try to showcase their unique abilities, personalities and interests. Treat them like you would treat any author, not some medium through which the corporate IP flows.  Connecting the audience to actual people will bring greater respect for creators, and bring a greater respect to comics as a whole. It is only through mature dealings with the creators, will the rest of society then see that comics, as a medium, have matured.

Fred Van Lente says it best at the end of Comic Book Comics issue 6, as he explains how he believes the comics industry in the US has to move forward in the coming years:

“Discarding the “Pennies Business” demands more respect of the medium and creators. It robs pirates of one of their most potent weapons—The self-serving delusion they’re “Sticking it to the man” and hurting only evil faceless corporations and not middle-class folks just like them. There will always be a market for free stuff with no consequences. But as corny as it sounds, putting a human face on those who produce what the Torrent Generation consumers will be a more effective curb than trying to sue them into submission.”

Summarized into fewer than ninety words, that is exactly what I am trying to say. Marvel and DC by hiding creators, or trying to mask them under a corporate brand, is only encouraging piracy. I only really talked about Marvel’s actions, but DC’s Before Watchmen is just as disingenuous if not more so. They both need to get their acts together and start celebrating their real employees as much as their fictional characters. It’s the only way they’re going to get fans to feel actual guilt for stealing.

Finally, thank you Ryan Dunlavey, and I’m sorry. Just give me a second to pre-order Comic Book Comics from Amazon. I’ll pay this time, I promise.

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I made a New Years resolution last year, and boy oh boy did I fail to follow it. So here’s the deal, I’m not going to make a New Year’s resolution. I’m making an end of the world decision. This is 2012. The last year on the Mayan Calender. Not that I actually believe in that tripe, but the end of the world is a good motivation. Some might say that an incoming meteor or earthquake or invading aliens provides incentive.

I am going to devote a minimum of two hours every weekday to creative flow. Everyday I am going to try to develop and execute  new ideas. For some people that means programming,  or playing music, or drawing. For me that means being a aware of my surroundings and writing whenever I get a spare chance. The results will inevitably revealed through five avenues of output:

1. This blog. This is where I will keep my longer commentary pieces on news and analysis. I don’t expect I’ll end up using this as much as I will like; however, should I need a 1000 words, this shall be its destination
2. My tumblog: This is for shorter articles on news. I expect to regularly update this blog with links to news pieces I think are confounding and wild.
3. A Movie/Game Review Site: I’ve been meaning to do this for years and nearly got started over the break. I watch a stupid amount of movies and my friends play a stupid amount of games. Together I think we can spawn enough content to create something great. Right now I’m just securing art assets to make the site unique enough that it won’t get lost in the infinite screaming match. When I have it ready, I’ll first post about it here.
4. A second feature for the Toronto Standard. My first feature was well received by the online newspaper, but if I want any real credibility I need to have a second article published. They’ve already asked me for another proposal.  I’m thinking about street art in Toronto, with a focus on a certain Posterchild. Other ideas include the lack of appreciation of Canadian movies and a larger piece on the potential resurgence of Canadian comedy.
5. CTMedia. This site stinks. They’ve been slow to change and slow to update, two of the great Internet sins. We have a 24-hour news cycle. How can they not have an article released within a day of receiving it? Yet, they also need a tech reporter and pay almost minimum wage. That’s incentive enough.

While this is all running, I shall begin work on Pass the Word, a political commentary site that’s been fermenting in my mind for far too long without any action. This is going to require a quite a bit of work, so I’m going to break it down to bite size pieces and see if I can get an infrastructure working by exam season.

And let’s not forget my fictional endeavors. By the end of this week I will finish the first chapter in what will be a groundbreaking Nightwing novel. It will be good or I will burn it to ash. Below that on my priority list is my the start of my original time travel series and work on a couple short story ideas. Not to mention the long overdue conclusion to my Bleach fanfiction. I already have a 100 pages on that sucker. I might as well finish it. I just have to be careful and not start writing a Mistborn fanfic as well.

So, why am I telling you all this?

A friend of mine taught me that one of the biggest motivators, beyond fear and stress and even the end of the world, is social obligation. I write to you with the hope that the Internet and the friends who read this blog will keep me honest. I also hope to inspire some end of the world decisions in you as well.

Mark make that blog and start writing. It’s about time you started yelling into the hate void. ( By the way, I suggest the name Unsettled Tides) Holly start work on your refrigerator app. It sounds like a cool idea and it would be a great shame if someone implements it before you do. And Matthew, you said you would make a chess game months ago.

2012, as much as any other year, may be our last year on earth. Better get these things out of the way before the earthquake/meteor/return of the dinosaurs.

On Monday October 16, I was walking towards Ryerson when I encountered a bunch of protestors sitting at Yonge and Dundas. Actually, I first noticed the buzz of a police helicopter flying above me, followed by the whistles from the policemen. What I found were Occupy Toronto members protesting the cancellation of wheel transit (buses carrying people in wheelchairs or other mobile disabilities) to 120 King Street, a church which also happens to be their headquarters. And along the way back to the church they protested anything else they could along the way.

My intention at the start was to write an article on them. But, it turned out I simply have too much sound and not enough time to write it. So instead, I’m going to give you more or less the raw footage. This work has been edited to get rid of dead air, and set it up in a chapter by chapter basis. I’ve removed parts of interviews that are too meandering to use or where I make an intrusion that doesn’t help the interview. It takes an hour and thirty minutes to listen to all of this. All of this being, protest movements, personal ramblings, interviews, and exploration. You even get to hear my horrible biases, such as when I mumble that there are less homeless people here than I expect, or my surprise that the place didn’t smell like pot.

I should note, I have no affiliation with Occupy Toronto. I do think it’s impressive, but I am doing this because I found it fascinating to witness. Furthermore, if I say anything during an interview, that is likely just to get the interviewee to talk more.

Speaking of interviews, the second one that shows up is not mine. Not mine in the sense that I didn’t conduct it. A freelance journalist (for the Star, I think) ran up to someone in charge and started talking to them. I was nearby and had a recorder. This is why you’ll here the man talking, but no one asking the questions.

As for everyone else I talk to, their names are, in order of appearance:
M. Rossi, Policeman (I read this from his jacket)
Antonin GovernmentName, Occupier and Free food organizer
Wally Williams, Homeless Worker
Celeste Bouviour (If this name sounds outrageous that’s because it’s super fake.), climate analyst
Mark Harwood-Jones, volunteer
Micheal Pinto, volunteer

If you want more information about each clip, it’ll be in the description and comments on the audio.

Thousands of fans and collectors rushed into a comic book store to witness the death of an icon. They had seen it on the news, heard it on the radio, been told by their friends. Superman was dead. The cover of Superman 75 showed Superman’s torn cape blowing in the wind like a flag, while his family and friends wept in the background.

On this day in 1992, a single store in Detriot sold nearly 200 000 copies of a comic, as consumers raced to pick up that issue. The store began to see that they were running out of issues, so they marked the prices up higher and higher. By the end of the day, the issue that had started off at a $1.50 was going for twenty times its original price. This was a common sight in comic book stores across North America.

DC Comics, publisher of Superman, and comic book retailers made around $30 million in one day. This was the third time an American comic book publisher had hit the jackpot. It was also the last.

It was clear by the end of that same year that the comic market was shrinking. Sales dropped, the collectors cashed out and sent the whole system into what Grant Morrison, a writer at DC Comics, called “a death spiral.”

However, comic book creators see a way out of this tail spin through a new distribution system: the internet.

“I love digital comics. I will always have a heart for paper and a book I can hold, but I have an iPad that is stocked with comics,” says Kelly Sue Deconnick, a new writer for Marvel Comics. “Digital comics” are mainstream print comics that have been scanned and edited to be read on a computer, smartphone or tablet. Deconnick carries at least fifty comics with her at any given time, since those issues weigh no more than her tablet does.

“I have a favourite reader, and I love the ease of downloading. I read most of my comics this way.”

Readers like ComiXology, Graphic.ly, and iVerse are popular on Apple Inc.’s iOS market and Google’s Andriod market, which sell apps for smartphones and tablet computers. According to analysts from PCWorld, the iPad has become the de facto device for reading comics outside of print thanks to its ability to show vibrant colours and a simple lack of competition.

While other publishers like Viz and Dark Horse have a regular release schedule for digital comics, DC and Marvel have been reluctant to approach the new system. For many years, they refused to offer their comics digitally for weeks if not months after they had been released in print. That is until DC Comics decided to take the initiative. Beginning in September all of their comics are available the same day in print and online.

Yet, for some people this isn’t enough. There are complaints of the price of digital comics being too high and that the way comics are edited to fit on a phone or tablet fundamentally change the way comics are read.

“If [comics publishers] want to reach a wide audience, their price has to be two digits, 99 cents. That’s the magic number where it doesn’t feel you’re spending money,” says Cameron Stewart. Stewart is an artist whose work includes a run on Batman and Robin, and his own award-winning webcomic, Sin Titulo. Comics are currently priced at $2.99 and $3.99, depending on size, in print and digital. Stewart believes that the closer you get to five dollars, the more the consumer has to think about what they’re purchasing.

“There is so much on the app store that I bought without any idea if it was good. I bought games, movies, apps, completely on impulse, because it was a dollar or less.”

Ty Templeton, a comic book creator who’s worked for the Marvel and DC Comics for popular series like Justice League International and The Batman Adventures, doesn’t mind either format. He likes web comics and has all of his comics for sale online. Templeton, however, sees a bigger issue with the digital format than the price. He believes that it fundamentally changes the way comics are read.

“A lot of apps show the comic panel by panel, and for a comic that’s like watching a movie in the 80s. You would lose a bit of the left and the right and soon, the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers becomes five brides for four brothers. It doesn’t work,” Templeton says.

Apps like ComiXology tend to show comics through individual panels, due to smartphones’ smaller screens. Without this feature, the dialogue and narration become difficult to read.

“I object to the idea that you have to change the shape of the screen to enjoy the content.”

Deconnick, though more positive, says that “digital doesn’t work with the double page spread.” A double page spread is when an image is spread over two pages. It’s often used for dramatic impact and surprise.

“Because you have to pull out and shrink down to see the full image, and then zoom in to see the detail, it doesn’t have the same power as it does [in print].”

While discussion behind digital comics isn’t exactly unanimous, almost everyone agrees that it’s the way of the future, whether the publishers take initiative or not. Ask any creator if their work is available online and the answer is a resounding yes. Though, they’ll add that they didn’t have choice in the matter.

In recent years, comics have become victim to rampant piracy. Within an hour of a comic hitting store shelves, it will be on every major peer-to-peer downloading network for free.  It’s worse with the international market, as comics from Japan and Europe end up online before they’re even released in North America.

And it works both ways. Dan DiDio, co-publisher for DC Comics, has blamed piracy for weak international sales, since the time difference between countries allows comics to be scanned in the US before the stores open in the rest of the world.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to find that the books that don’t sell as much are going to suffer even more. All the variety of content is going to disappear,” says Francis Manapul. Manapul is a critically lauded Canadian artist. His new Flash comic will be one of DC Comics’ first to be immediately converted into digital. “Superman and Batman will always sell, but lesser known characters like Martian Manhunter or Aquaman are going to suffer.”

“Pay for the damn thing,” he quickly adds. “If you can buy a five dollar coffee, you can pay for a two-ninety-nine comic.”

Stewart, however, doesn’t think that piracy is a big deal. He knows that most of his work can be pirated easily, but feels that all media are subject to this, not just comics.

“We’re adopting a new paradigm in which everything is free first and then anyone who wants to support will buy it afterwards,” He takes this belief to heart. Stewart offers his own web comic, Sin Titulo, for free on his website, and then sells a graphic novel version once he finishes enough pages.

“Besides, the only people who are pirating comics are into comics to begin with, they’re more likely to buy a copy than anyone else.”

Despite many of the challenges ahead for comics distribution and sales, there is an overwhelming belief that digital comics and web comics are expanding the medium and the readership.

“I love that young creators who don’t have connections to Joe Quesada [Marvel Comics’ chief creative officer], or don’t have the money to self-publish can still publish online,” says Templeton.

“These days you don’t have to go through the system and talk to a publisher, by gum, an artist could just put it online every week and see if they can build an audience.”

Web comics are a popular phenomenon that has been around for almost as long as the internet itself. Well-known comics like Penny Arcade, XKCD, Questionable Content and Achewood all came from independent artists and writers.

Graham Moogk-Soulis began his comic, PostScript, in his freshman year of university. It ran the student newspaper Imprint and by his second year, he had a website and was posting them online.

“My ultimate goal was always to be in newspaper comics … I would look at my website and say, ‘there’s no career in that,” Moogk-Soulis says with a sheepish grin. “But as I started researching newspaper syndication I realized I was born ten years too late.”

The funnies and other newspaper syndicated comics have had a worse time in the last decade than the rest of the comic book industry.  The Village Voice reported in April that most cartoonists need multiple jobs to sustain themselves, as many of them are forced to work for free. As newspapers continue to decline in sales, demand for syndicated comics has as well.

“[Web comics] are still incredibly difficult, you still need a day job or if you’re like me, be a student, to support you,” says Moogk-Soulis. He’s optimistic that someday he’ll be able to make a living out of his comic, and sells prints on his website and at conventions to generate revenue.

Stewart is confident that web comics are the next stage in comic production. He’s willing to bet that Marvel and DC would generate a lot more interest if they had exclusively online series. Not to mention that he thinks focusing on the web will fix many of the glitches found in digital comics.

“Print comics are limited by the amount of ink you can fit on paper, but online you can do whatever you want. If you think about the aesthetic of digital, one panel at a time, you’ll be able to take advantage of it,” he says. There’s a concept in comic design called the “infinite canvas” which implies that on the web, you have literally infinite space to make a story. No need for turning a page at all.

“No matter where this industry goes, I’m sticking with the web. I’m at a stage in my life where I don’t like accumulating stuff.”

Many love saying good bye to dusty basements and garages filled with thirty-year-old periodicals. The iPad can store just as many issues of X-Men and Wonder Woman without all the clutter. Yet, Templeton is quick to remind people that there will always be a place for print comics.

“If you want a first edition copy of the Old Man in the Sea by Ernest Hemingway you’re going to pay a thousand dollars for it while the paperback is out this week for eight-ninety-five and there’s a reason for that,” he says. “Print is a moment in history that you can hold in your hand. ”

Thanks to Comic Vine and XKCD for the images.