“Look at What Sells”

One of the interesting results of Hope Larson’s informal survey of young female comics fans is that respondents’ experiences of getting into comics don’t seem much different from those of male comics fans. For example:

• “Most respondents (about a third) were introduced to comics by a parent, usually Dad, . . . The third most popular gateway was through a male relative or male friend.”
• “The most common age to become a fan of comics was 12,” which is such a familiar experience in fandom that it’s become an aphorism.
• The superhero genre was the most popular for Larson’s respondents, with manga a close second—at least according to this self-selected group.

Another issue brought up by the survey that might turn out to be common ground:

2) A welcoming atmosphere in local comic stores is key. Many respondents reported feeling uncomfortable in comic stores. They were stared at, talked down to, and generally treated without respect.

Larson’s partner Bryan Lee O’Malley (in a response now lost in the æther) and some male commenters noted that some comics retailers treat new male customers the same way—though I suppose “stared at” might be replaced by “total lack of eye contact.”

I’m fortunate enough to live in an area with multiple comics outlets, so store owners have more incentive to treat customers decently. The shops offer friendly welcomes, but I’ve been struck by how each has its own style. I haven’t had such warm experiences in other towns, however. Furthermore, the sheer overwhelming nature of the product can intimidate newcomers.

A longer thoughtful response to Larson’s survey came from artist and art educator Stephanie Villareal. In particular, I found this point provocative:

Tween/teens as a whole - or mostly - in general, have no taste. I know this comes off as crass, but really, think about it. Look at what sells, look at what the top movies are at the box office, look at the bands they go see, the TV shows they watch and the things they wear. Most will follow the trends of the time.

Now looking specifically at tween/teen girls, look at the books they are reading. Number one is easy: Twilight. When I was placed in the high school classroom [as a student teacher] nearly every girl has a copy. . . . Teenage girls are being bombarded with sexual imagery from every angle and at any age. What’s even sadder is that they buy into it. It’s not surprising that books like Twilight are so popular (with the graphic novel itself breaking records with 66,000 copies sold the first week). Many of us scoff and think that Stephenie Meyer is the worst writer ever, the books are trash, but it’s what teens love, and if we’re going to make graphic novels that appeal to them, we need to adapt to their tastes (or lack thereof). . . .

When we knock out the pink and glittery category, we are forgetting one very big staple in the girl super hero genre: Sailor Moon. Teenage girls loved Sailor Moon.

So there’s a place for sparkles, boyfriends, and pink ponies, Villareal says, if the industry wants to grow.

My first question in response is whether tween/teen taste is really that bad compared to adults’. Or whether the trends are simply more pronounced.

“Whoever lettered this thing…”

Back in January, I wrote about “The Twilight Lettering Disaster,” based on a magazine preview of the first volume of the Twilight comics adaptation.

Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog offers more details and examples of what he calls “the worst lettering I have ever seen” at Comics Alliance:

To start with, the balloons themselves, which are clearly the product of the Ellipse tool in Photoshop, and which manage to be both gigantic and poorly placed. So gigantic and poorly placed, in fact, that they not only complicate simple art problems of speaking order…, they’re also occasionally reduced to transparencies to avoid obscuring the art any more than they already do. . . .

Whoever lettered this thing put a stupidly gigantic word balloon on top of a character’s face, despite the fact that there’s a huge open spot just slightly to the left of where it sits now. . . . the problem was solved with a transparency, which…makes it look like we're reading his dialogue through a glass of water.

Sims also notes that the book contains no credit for the letterer.

And thus “Adventures in Lettering” Week begins…

OMG, Are They Serious? The Twilight Lettering Disaster

Entertainment Weekly ran a preview of Twilight: The Graphic Novel, and it was ghastly to read. Not the words in the dialogue or captions; those were mildly amusing for someone who hasn’t read the book or seen the movie. But the typography was painful.

The letterer appears to have chosen fonts from among all the options offered by Windows 97. Hey, I’m cheap about fonts myself, but I don’t have a Twilight budget. Nate Peikos’s Blambot site and Comic Book Fonts from Comicraft offer lots of character-filled fonts for reasonable prices. Last year Colorburned offered a look at “20 Insanely Cool Manga Fonts.” If the budget is really tight, most of Dafont’s stuff is free.

And then there are the balloons themselves. Former Marvel editor John Barber tweeted:

The lettering in the Twilight comic is the worst lettering I've ever seen in a professional comic.

The balloons are giant awkward shapes that seem to emulate the awkwardness of translated manga, but not the actual style.

The text is in, I think, Times New Roman--bad enough--but most of the balloons are semi-transparent and the text is given a white stroke.

Other times the balloons are opaque white. This is done based on where the balloons are placed, not based on any aural context.

And the placement is terrible--they're awkwardly over the figures, overlapping panels randomly.

Most of the balloons are so perfectly elliptical and symmetric that they have no character. On the other hand, this sample page shows one with the text squeezed in off center, as if someone’s mouse had slipped. And those balloon tails? They look like they’ve been added with a felt-tip marker at the last minute. In panels like those at the top, the tails get swallowed up in the artwork so you can’t tell who’s speaking.

Barber added:

I could go on, there's more, but the reason this bothers me is a LOT of people will be buying Twilight as their first comic--

--a lot of them are going to come away thinking they don't have the facility to read comics because they found this one difficult to parse.

They won't know it's Twilight being poorly lettered that was interfering with their ability to read words and images together.

Of course, Twilight fans have shown themselves to be willing to put up with a lot.

Popular! I’ll Help You Be Popular!

Josie Leavitt at Shelftalker recently wrote about young customers asking for books that they know are popular, but--she suspects--won't hold any other interest for them:

School let out on Friday and since then I've had four nine-year-old girls ask for one or more books in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Now, don't get me wrong, I think Twilight is a fine series. I enjoyed it immensely when I read it. I am forty-four, not nine. I'm not sure what to do with this current phenomenon. I don't like to judge purchases by anyone in my store, but this troubles me.

These bouncy, pigtailed nine-year-olds seem to have no reason to read these books other than "my friends are reading it." They don't even like boys. I find asking them "Do you like boys?" is a great weeding-out question for some of the younger set. A giggle, and a sheepish "no" can usually sway them away from any book, except Twilight.

Because Twilight is so popular, and perhaps even a marker of maturity.

This reminds me of a story I read on the Child_Lit email list a coupla years ago. A school librarian had noticed that a bunch of young boys were taking out different Harry Potter books each week. She knew their reading skills weren't up to finishing those books, certainly not at the speed they circulated. The boys just wanted to have the popular books in their hands.

She heard those boys sitting around a table, discussing the books. Not what they had read, of course. No, they were comparing size: "I've got the biggest one." Girls might compete to be the most mature, but boys compete to be the biggest.

Of course, we book-lovers outgrow the need to be seen reading the popular titles, right? Mature book bloggers would never be racing to announce that they've already read Catching Fire, would they?

Historicizing and Problematizing Twilight

Nancy Reagin, professor of History and Women’s & Gender Studies at Pace University, has issued a call for proposals for a collection on “History and the Twilight Series.” Her CFP:

We are currently accepting proposals for essays to be included in an edited collection with the working title of “Twilight and History,” to be published by Blackwell Publishing in June, 2010. We’re looking for essays that historicize Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, examining individual characters or aspects of the series against a historical backdrop, or analyzing how popular historical understandings inform the series.

The collection is aimed at a broader audience than is the case for many scholarly collections, and seeks to make visible or problematize the use of historical contexts or events within the series. We welcome work from historians or those in cognate disciplines, including gender studies, Native American studies, religious studies, or cultural studies.

I hope the finished book will explain the value of its contributors' attempts to "problematize" in "cognate disciplines." Otherwise, it's not going to reach that "broader audience." (Remember when we enjoyed that sort of jargon in It's Always Fair Weather? Me neither.)

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• masculine honor and gender roles in Edward’s world and Bella’s
• more than a generation gap: marriage and courtship in Edward’s youth
• Twilight werewolves and werewolves in historical legend
• essays that examine Jacob, Emily, Leah, Sam and their people against the history of the Quileutes and Northwest Pacific native cultures
• Carlisle and witchcraft persecutions in Early Modern England
• Alice Cullen and the (mis)treatment of the insane in 19th century America
• The Amazon coven and South American native cultures
• The Cullens and European vampire folklore
• the Volturi, art patronage, and politics in Italian history

This collection will be published by Blackwell Publishers, which will pay contributors an honorarium of $350.

Please email a 500-word proposal, a one-page c.v., and contact information to Nancy Reagin by July 10, 2009. Notification of accepted proposals will be made by July 15, 2009. Chapter drafts of approximately 5,000 words will be due by Sept. 15, 2009.

Proposals should be in .doc or .rtf form, and should include the author's name and contact information.

Twilight Goes Academic

Melissa Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Lissa Behm-Morawitz are soliciting proposals for chapters of 6000 to 8000 words to go into a book tentatively titled Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Twilight Saga.

Their call for papers says:

The editors seek essays that explore Stephenie Meyer's wildly popular Twilight series. We are particularly interested in essays that explore the cultural significance of the Twilight phenomenon and its impact on youth culture.

The collection will feature scholarly work from a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including: analyses of the series' messages, production and marketing processes, and audiences. We welcome work from a wide variety of disciplines, including: communication, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, religious studies, and gender studies.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Representations of gender, race, class and sexuality
• Religion, morality, and values
• Feminist and anti-feminist themes in Twilight
• Intended and unintended audiences
• Fans and anti-fans
• Genre and vampire/werewolf folklore
• Relationship models (romantic, friendship, and familial)
• Space and place in Twilight
• Celebrity culture and Stephenie Meyer, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart
• Translation of the series for the screen
• The Twilight franchise

This collection will be proposed to Peter Lang's "Mediated Youth" series.

People interested in contributing should email a 250-word proposal, short bibliography, brief author's bio, and contact information to Melissa Click by 10 Apr 2009. The editors plan to notify contributors of acceptances by 15 May, and first drafts of chapters will be due in early fall 2009.

(I note that all the titles in the series published by Peter Lang are about girls, despite the more inclusive series title and description. Would this book change that pattern? Probably not.)

Dawn Returns?

Publishers Weekly's reported on unusually heavy reader disappointment in Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer's latest installment in her Twilight series last week. Other popular series have reached crucial turning-points without such a reaction.

Gail Gauthier has interesting comments on what readers should and shouldn't have expected from the Twilight books. Her description of the heroine's domesticization makes me think of Natasha at the end of War and Peace, or Jo March becoming a mother and surrogate mother in the sequels to Little Women. However, Meyer's description of the actual process of becoming a mother in Breaking Dawn seems, by all accounts, to be horribly off-putting.

Like Roger Sutton, I was struck by the fan movement to return read books for refunds, or at least store credit. That brought up some interesting issues on the nexus of literary tastes and ethics, as PW reported:

In one heavily trafficked thread entitled “Unhappy with Breaking Dawn? Don’t burn it--RETURN it!,” commenters debated whether returning the book was a valid way to express unhappiness with the book.

“Technically, reading a book and returning it is theft of knowledge,” read one post, while the original commenter, a former bookstore employee, wrote, “I don’t advocate making a habit of buying new books, reading them, and returning them. But once in a while... I do think mass returns are a useful form of consumer protest.”

Another poster recounted, anecdotally, returning the book at Borders: “They took back my book with no problem. Got into a discussion with the cashier about how I was the 15th (!!!) person to bring my book back today.”

Oren Teicher, COO of the American Booksellers Association, said that there is no official ABA policy governing book returns by customers. “I can tell you that it’s certainly my experience that most stores will absolutely accept returns provided the books are in good condition,” he said, adding that independent booksellers are more interested in preserving longterm relationships with their customers than quibbling over a return.

Regarding books returned because a customer was displeased with it, Teicher said he thought some independent booksellers would be receptive to accepting such a return if they had recommended the book to the customer, though he noted, “I believe there was not a lot of handselling going on Friday night.”

In other words, readers knew what sort of writing they were getting when they paid for it.

I ponder how this sort of reader response might play out in the future. What will happen to protest returns as books migrate toward a digital format, with more people downloading titles instead of buying hard copies? In that case, all we'll be buying, really, is the intellectual content. There would be no physical way to give that back, or ensure we don't secretly continue to enjoy it. Would publishers and booksellers still offer full refunds to keep their potential customers happy enough to buy someone else's book instead? Or should authors in a download age get the benefit of non-returnable sales?

What American Fantasies Say about American Indians

Yesterday I described how three American fantasy novels published over the last fifteen years have, in somewhat different ways, linked Native Americans and magical races. Those books are:

• City of Light, City of Dark, by Avi and Brian Floca
  
• Summerland, by Michael Chabon
• Twilight and its sequels, by Stephenie Meyer

The latter two books include young Americans of indigenous descent among their secondary protagonists. (The first includes a young Latino character as a primary protagonist, and we can discuss how much indigenous ancestry is part of the Latin American heritage.)

Naturally, since those books are fantasies, the Native American characters are caught up in magical experiences along with those of European or other ancestries. However, it strikes me as notable that these books don't just link individuals to secret knowledge, powers, or experience. They link entire groups.

The Quileute in Twilight have made a pact with neighboring vampires, and many of them turn out to be werewolves. The mythical Kurbs in City of Light, City of Dark have, as a whole, sold Manhattan to European settlers. Summerland includes an individual young protagonist of Salish descent, but in this respect I'm thinking of the Indian-like ferrishers, an entire race of magical little people.

Furthermore, while all fantasies have to be governed by rules, these books seem to go further than most in presenting their conflicts as based on age-old agreements or treaties. The Kurbs require a yearly tribute. Summerland involves contracts around baseball games. In Twilight, as I wrote above, there's a "treaty" between the Quileute and the vampires. Evidently, the thought on Native Americans brings up the thought of such age-old contracts.

Incorporating Indian characters or traditions helps to establish a fantasy as American rather than stuck within those dominant British and other European traditions; Chabon has spoken explicitly about that goal in writing Summerland, which also includes the heroes of traditional American folklore (and fakelore), as well as a whole lot more.

In that regard, I think Native American supernatural traditions are as ripe for picking as those from other cultures. However, authors have to be aware that their readers, unfamiliar with the nuances of other cultures, might not be able to distinguish fictional traditions from real ones, or entertaining stories from sacred ones.

Most problematic to me is how these depictions of Native Americans as, in different ways, linked to the supernatural might color readers' impressions of today's Native Americans. Do American Indians really have ancient connections to magic (like Meyer's Quileute)? Are they, despite historical disfranchisement and poverty, secretly powerful and demanding (like Avi's Kurbs)? In such stories, do Native Americans end up seeming as real as the other human characters, or do they come across as a set of fairy-tale creatures (like Chabon's ferrishers)?

Native Americans in Some Recent American Fantasies

City of Light, City of Dark is a hybrid of middle-grade novel and middle-grade comic with words by Avi and art by Brian Floca. Published by Richard Jackson/Orchard in 1993, it was probably a few years ahead of the market. (Compare how the current cover art at left is divided into panels while the first edition's cover offered no hint of the comics form to be found inside.)

Summerland by Michael Chabon, published in 2002, is a doorstop children's fantasy that combines baseball, dirigibles, interdimensional travel, changelings, and a mephistophelean trickster legend into a big stew (which could have been simmered down a bit more).

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is the novel that started the current boiling-hot series for teens, about vampires and the girls who love them too much. I haven't read it, so I'm going by what Debbie Reese has had to say.

What do these three disparate fantasies for young readers have in common? They all in different ways portray Native American nations as connected to ancient, magical races, knowledge, and/or power.

City of Light, City of Dark's prologue describes creatures named "Kurbs," who

owned an Island as well as the sky above it. . . . Years ago, when People first came to the Kurbs' Island, they wanted to build themselves a City there. First, however, they had to ask permission of the Kurbs.

Since the island is obviously Manhattan, that puts the the Kurbs in the place of the Manahatta group of Lenape who made the famous deal with Peter Minuit in 1626. Except that the Kurbs have their own dimension and remain powerful enough to demand a yearly tribute.

Summerland alludes or makes use of Native American traditions in at least four different ways. The main villain is the trickster Coyote in Southwestern Native American (and Norse) myths, and other supernatural characters come from Native American legends.

Secondary protagonist Jennifer T. Rideout and her family are Salish Indians. Yet Jennifer seems to derive much of her non-baseball-related knowledge from an ersatz Indian source, as Michael Chabon told Salon:

There's this bit about this defunct quasi-Boy Scout organization called the Braves of the Wa-He-Ta. There's this official tribe handbook that Jennifer T. is given, and it comes in handy. . . . Even though it was written by a guy named Irving Posner in Pittsburgh in 1926 or whatever.

Obviously, Chabon is here playing with how mainstream American culture has occasionally claimed the value or "authenticity" of indigenous traditions without necessarily reflecting those traditions.

Summerland also introduces a race called ferishers, which is an old European term for fairies. They're small, magical, ancient, and demanding--like those fairies. But the text also links them to the original inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. They're described on Wikipedia as "small Indian looking people," and at Baseball Almanac as the "small American Indian-like ferishers." Reviewer Stephen E. Abbott says the ferishers live in "an alternate dimension governed by Native American mythology and the rules and regs of baseball," though that understates the elements of other mythologies in this smorgasbord.

Finally, Twilight includes characters from the Quileute people of Washington. In this fictional world, many of the Quileute, including secondary protagonist Jacob, are werewolves, and they've made an uneasy truce with nearby vampires.

I suspect folks might be able to offer other examples of recent American fantasy stories linking Native American groups and the magical world.

TOMORROW: Thoughts on the meanings of this pattern.