“If Balding, Paunchy Women Drove Ratings…”

On 2 January, the Boston Globe TV columnist Joanna Weiss wrote a column that began: “To gauge how Hollywood wants us to think about men and women and aging,…”

That prompted a useful response from Eric Korsh among today’s letters:

As a producer, I know that Hollywood spends virtually no time or money attempting to get us to think anything. Its efforts are focused on getting us to consume content in theaters and on television. To that end, it attempts to find out what we already think, and to deliver satisfactory characters. Hollywood gives people what they want in order to be profitable. . . .

make no mistake - if balding, paunchy women drove ratings, not only would Hollywood “allow” it, you’d hardly be able to find a network without them.

Granted, the images of men and women on TV and in other mass entertainment can help to create a feedback cycle that reinforces the prejudices they respond to. But those prejudices originate in society, not in “Hollywood.”

The notion that entertainment media are out to do anything more than collect money always seems silly to me. But to see that idea glibly expressed by someone covering the field for a major newspaper—that’s dismaying.

Fantasy and the Bounds of Historical Fiction

The announcement that Matt Phelan’s The Storm in the Barn won the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction for young readers apparently prompted some questions about whether it was eligible even though it’s in comics form. Which were quickly and rightly batted down.

But award judge Roger Sutton’s response also prompted new and more incisive questions. And by “incisive,” I mean, “from me, among other people.” Roger wrote:

As far as I’m concerned, historical fiction is an invented tale which not only takes place in the past but proposes to shed some kind of light on an actual event or situation of historical import.

His colleague Claire Gross replied, “I would think that the main reason Storm in the Barn might be ineligible for a historical fiction prize is not that it is a graphic novel but that it contains a significant element of fantasy. I suppose the fantasy element does not detract from its historical evocation...”

I think the fantasy element may not detract from Phelan’s evocation of Dust Bowl America, but it certainly gets in the way of shedding light on that ”situation of historical import.”

The Dust Bowl was an ecological crisis that led to an economic crisis. The Storm in the Barn portrays the latter development, with families moving, the hero’s sister suffering from a lung disease, and farmers’ desperate attempts to bring on rain. However, the book portrays the ecology through a personification of the storm that’s decided to keep its rainfall in a carpet bag. And the resolution of both crises appears to involve a small boy fighting the storm for the bag atop a windmill (with, so far as I could tell, no allegorical resonance).

Of course, that resolution is easier to depict (especially in graphic form) than long-term meteorological shifts or changes in U.S. farm policy, and it gives more agency to the young hero than if his father had moved his family to Long Beach and found work in a factory. But those other possibilities are part of the history of the Dust Bowl, as opposed to a fantasy of it.

Let’s imagine a book about a current ecological and economic crisis, such as tropical deforestation, climate change, or influenza pandemics. Let’s imagine the book evokes that crisis, and then shows a child fixing it by wrestling a supernatural being. Would such a novel really “shed light” on our situation today, or would it come across as a trivializing escape?

I see The Storm in the Barn as a fable that’s set in the Dust Bowl, just as Edward Eager’s Half Magic is a fantasy set in the 1920s. Both books are informed by their historical settings, but that doesn’t work the other way around: they don’t offer a reliable view into history.

At least not the same way as some other fiction for young people published last year:

• Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (“Kelly, without anachronism, has created a memorable, warm, spirited young woman who’s refreshingly ahead of her time.” —The Horn Book).
• Alan Gratz’s The Brooklyn Nine (“an impressively cohesive mix of sports, historical fiction, and family history” —The Horn Book).
• Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl (“good, rousing period fiction” —The Horn Book).

More on Urban Fantasy

Yesterday I tried tracing the evolution of the term “urban fantasy.” Here are three recent attempts to pin down that butterfly from an author, an agent, and an editor.

Novelist Patricia Rice suggested:

So here’s my very limited take on the genre: it combines mystery, horror, and fantasy, often with a touch of romance, but not necessarily any satisfactory resolution to the relationship. Paranormal romance is all about the relationship. Urban Fantasy is all about the world building and the escalating threats to the protagonist and to her world.

Rice thinks a “touch of romance” is enough, but in an interview on the Spectacle agent Mary Kole opined:

The “urban” in the name isn’t just a setting clue, it’s a state of mind. I think the name evokes the dark and gritty nature of the genre, as well as a modern or near-future time setting. The biggest factors in urban fantasy, for me, are a paranormal bent and a romance in the plotline.

So by this model “urban” is merely a buzzword for “dark and gritty,” and a romance is necessary.

Finally, I’ll go back to the remarks from Paula Garon, editor at Juno:

...“urban fantasy” has come to mean: Contemporary, urban setting with female or male protagonist usually (but not always) with a certain amount of “kickassitude” and supernatural powers or connection. Primarily a detective plot with (usually but not always) a romantic relationship subplot. Action-oriented; often has strong horrific elements balanced with humor. . . .

“Paranormal romance”, on the other hand, generally relies on a plot that pivots on the romance more than any other element and adheres in other ways to the “romance-according-to-romance-genre” expectations. (Some exceptions made for series books in which the HEA is only eventually accomplished.)

Finally, don’t miss Gwenda Bond’s comments on my post yesterday, noting that “urban fantasy” means something different in children’s and YA lit from what it signifies for adult readers, in particular the adult form’s tie to the police procedural, and probably the level of grittiness or sweatiness.

This parsing of terms leads me to argue that there are different types of genres; I’ll discuss this more in a workshop at SCBWI New England’s annual conference in May. Some of what we call genres, such as fantasy and science fiction, work in what I prefer to call “modes”: readers bring certain expectations about the fictional world, but not about the plot.

Other genres, most notably romances and mysteries, must also satisfy readers’ expectations about the plot, or at least offer very good explanations why the couple doesn’t get together happily ever after or why the murderer doesn’t get caught.

Authors of “urban fantasy” might tell stories with a lot of paranormal romance, but want more freedom in choosing how to end their romantic subplots than the “paranomal romance” genre allows. But if the influence of the mystery/procedural genre is high, they might nevertheless feel an obligation to end that plot as readers expect.

Urban Fantasy Redevelopment

One of today’s hot publishing genres is “urban fantasy,” but I’m not sure what that means. I looked into the question and discovered that…a lot of other people aren’t sure, either. Or at least they disagree among themselves.

In 1985, Russell Blackford and David King, two Australian authors, published an anthology of thirteen stories titled Urban Fantasies. Here’s a sketchy summary of that book’s content from Not Free SF. Although people identify urban fantasies written before then, that seems to be the earliest use of the term as a label for a set of stories.

We might gauge how authors understood the term then from Patricia A. McKillip’s essay in Locus in 1992:

In fantasy, the problems are always basically the same, and in science fiction they rarely are. In fantasy, the hero leaves home, goes on a quest, and comes back again. And the landscapes are generally the same. I know there are great exceptions, like urban fantasy. Maybe what I'm trying to do is find different ways of writing fantasy too, so I won't get tired of my own work.

Thus, “urban fantasy” was initially defined, like a lot of other genres, in opposition to other works. In this case, McKillip apparently saw urban fantasy as the exception to fantasy’s usual countryside settings.

In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, first published by John Clute and John Grant in 1997. Clute offered a more positive definition:

…the UF recounts an experience. A city may be seen from afar, and is generally seen clear; the UF is told from within, and, from the perspective of characters acting our their roles, it may be difficult to determine the extent and nature of the surrounding reality. UFs are normally texts where fantasy and the mundane world interact intersect and interweave throughout a tale which is significantly about a real city.

Fantasy set in cities and exploring how cities work and what they mean include Philip Reeve’s Hungry City Chronicles or China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun.

However, the “urban” part of “urban fantasy” appears to have fallen away in recent years. People are now apparently using the phrase as a label for stories of paranormal romance that aren’t “paranormal romance” in the genre form. Once again, the term is defined in large part by what it’s not.

Juno editor Paula Garon traced the development of the “urban fantasy” label this way:

In current standard romance publishing terminology, “paranormal romance” is a subgenre of romance. In this context, romance, to be romance, must have a plot about the love relationship between two people (usually one male and one female) and have a positive, satisfying ending in which the reader is assured the couple will remain together — if not “happily ever after” than at least happily for an extended period of time. (Romance fans shorthand this necessary “happily ever after” ending as “HEA”.)

By this definition, Gone With the Wind is not romance and neither is Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View are romance. . . .

Readers of this marketing category called romance have these expectations for the books they buy. They resented books not fitting their definition being termed “romance”. . . . Around 2005, the term “urban fantasy” started to be used to differentiate novels that were not “romance-according-to-romance-genre” (plot about a love relationship with a positive, satisfying–usually “happily ever after”–ending).

TOMORROW: Publishing pros try to define “urban fantasy” today.

Enough to Make One Drink in the Evening

The Economist just ran a story about complex languages. English is notorious for its irregular spellings and many exceptions to rules of all sort, the products of its large number of speakers, the lack of a central linguistic authority, and our magpie tendency to grab words from other languages. But grammatically English is on the simple side.

For instance, we have just three genders or “noun forms”: male, female, and neuter. And unlike many of the other languages we study in school, we can treat almost all non-human nouns as neuter.

Modern English has stripped down our pronouns to first person singular and plural, second person, third person singular in three genders, and third person plural in one gender. (Southern American English has found a way to regain the second person plural: “you all.”) So our brains aren’t in practice for what other languages require.

According to the article, speakers of Kwaio, most of whom live in the Solomon Islands, must distinguish several forms of the first person singular. A speaker uses different words if “us” includes or excludes the hearer, and if the “us” consists of two people, a few, or many.

And then there are the verb forms.

Berik, a language of New Guinea, also requires words to encode information that no English speaker considers. Verbs have endings, often obligatory, that tell what time of day something happened; telbener means “[he] drinks in the evening”. Where verbs take objects, an ending will tell their size: kitobana means “gives three large objects to a man in the sunlight.” Some verb-endings even say where the action of the verb takes place relative to the speaker: gwerantena means “to place a large object in a low place nearby”.

Chindali, a Bantu language, has a similar feature. One cannot say simply that something happened; the verb ending shows whether it happened just now, earlier today, yesterday or before yesterday. The future tense works in the same way.

And my eyes simply glazed over at the early sections of the article on sonic variety. I can’t even pronounce French well; I have no chance at Ubykh.

(Article found via Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish.)

Tim Drake Gives a Book Talk

Following on Dick Grayson Gives a Book Talk and The Bones Give a Book Talk, Oz and Ends presents a conversation about children’s books between Tim Drake, the Robin from 1989 through last year, and Dick Grayson, the Robin from 1940 to 1983.

They are, naturally, sitting on the roof of the Cloisters museum in Manhattan, looking at the George Washington Bridge and the lighthouse below it. Dick as Nightwing just had a fight with some winged zombie creatures that resulted in smashing the windows of that landmark. “Deathstroke” is one of the DC Universe’s leading killers for hire, and arguably Nightwing’s greatest nemesis within the mythology.
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, written by Hildegarde Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward, was published in 1942. Dick Grayson’s dad was first shown dying in Detective Comics, #38, in early 1940, which produces a bit of an anachronism. But DC has reset its characters’ ages as needed, keeping Dick in his mid-twenties for the last two decades or so.

As for the “coma” reference, Jack Drake was comatose in the early 1990s, when Tim was supposed to be in his early teens. Symbolically, that detail shows how Tim has long been as mature as the father figures in his life, and looked after them as much as they looked after him.

The images above may look like another example of copying art from one panel to the next, but I had to cut one wide panel in two. The conversation appears in Nightwing: Freefall.

There, I Fixed It: Blue Beetle, #1

This is a panel from the first issue of the latest Blue Beetle comic book, published from 2006 to 2009. It’s introducing Jaime, the teenager who becomes the third and more extraterrestrial Blue Beetle, and his friends Brenda and Paco. Friendship is a major theme in this magazine, making the interplay of these three characters especially important—as well as a major source of comic relief.

At the Savage Critics, Abhay Khosla just completed a long, discursive, occasionally scatological essay about why the long story arc of Blue Beetle, #1-25, didn’t work at all, except at the end when he had to admit that it worked just fine.

I think Khozia’s overall judgment is wrong: those issues, collected in four slim paperback volumes, are the most entertaining and satisfying superhero coming-of-age story that DC Comics published in the last five years. (Robin and Teen Titans have struggled and languished.) One of the issues Khosla singles out for criticism contains the most surprising and incisive scene in the series. And even when it’s positive, the critique misses the point of the last volume’s “magic words.”

But on many details Khosla is correct. The creators struggle to cross superheroics with working-class life along the US-Mexico border and not fall into clichés and stereotypes. (Yet the company deserves credit for trying to expand its cast of Latino American heroes beyond El Dragón from The Super Dictionary.)

The Blue Beetle series undoubtedly shows all the drawbacks of deadline-driven, mass-market comics storytelling. For example, the panels that follow the one above look like this:
They provoked this entertaining rant from Abhay:

Everything about these three panels is wrong.

First, it turns a comedy scene into an afterschool special.

Second, we’ve known the main character for all of two pages at this point, and the first thing they’re telling us about him is that he doesn’t care if his friend is getting physically abused by her father. “Oh, your dad savagely beats you? Does he molest you too? That's nice. Well, I’m going to just stand over here and pop my collar and quote The Game lyrics to the sidewalk.” Let’s read about that guy every month. Look at him—“my father beats me”—and he’s rolling his eyes!

Yes, that’s what the second panel looks like, but everything else in the issue and everything shown about Jaime in his earlier appearance in the more widely read Infinite Crisis indicates that he’s a Good Guy. Maybe he’s not a Save the Planet Guy—but that’s the question behind this series.

In that context, it’s obvious that Cully Hammer drew Jaime’s eye-rolling as a response to his friends’ bickering, not to Brenda’s remark. And it would have taken only a little tweaking by the editor (usually the person in charge of placing word balloons) to make the conversation and the characters’ reactions flow right. So now we’ve got that out of the way. Go read the first four volumes of Blue Beetle, okay?

The Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book Short List

Mermaid Queen: The Spectacular True Story Of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way To Fame, Fortune & Swimsuit History!
by Shana Corey
Scholastic
Nominated by: Kelly Fineman

Annette Kellerman is a woman who made many waves in her life. The story encompasses her early physical disability, her swimming accomplishments, her introduction of the woman’s swimming suit to the public, and her ability to travel through Europe doing water ballet. Annette Kellerman was a strong and determined woman, which makes her a fascinating study for Corey. This book is delightful also thanks to the illustrator who has created such fun colors on each page. In addition, Fotheringham cleverly includes a wave design somewhere on every page throughout the book, tying in the idea that Annette Kellerman did indeed "make waves" throughout her life. The Author’s Note included at the back of the book is a plus; it gives a far more detailed accounting of Annette Kellerman’s life and accomplishments.

The Day-Glo Brothers
by Chris Barton
Charlesbridge
Nominated by: Cynthia Leitich Smith

This fascinating book tells the story of Bob and Joe Switzer and their invention of the first fluorescent colors. The brothers each had different skills and passions but together they created colors that made a huge impact on the world. The illustrations in this book, which use the colors created by the Switzer brothers, add to the captivating feel of the book. Barton and Persiani have brought an important story to the world of children’s literature.

Life-Size Zoo: From Tiny Rodents to Gigantic Elephants, An Actual Size Animal Encyclopedia
Created by Teruyuki Komiya with photographs by Toyofumi Fukuda
Seven Footer Press
Nominated by: Anastasia Suen

There are those who claim that bigger is better. If that’s so, then we can stop here: Life-Size Zoo is definitely bigger. Life-Size Zoo is so big that the tiptop will always peek out of your backpack.

But bigger isn’t the only thing Life-Size Zoo has going for it. A table of contents that any teacher would die to teach with in her classroom and that any kid would happily, almost unknowingly, utilize, a table of contents shaped like a zoo map, no less (and oh-so-clever). An information sheet about the animals on the front end papers. Brilliant photographs of zoo animals, amazing close-ups. Lists of details to look for on the photographs. Fun fold-out pages. Oodles and oodles of cool facts about the animals.

And what great choices of animals: a panda, zebra, tiger (those scary teeth), gorilla, rhino (with a horn made of hair?), anteater (what a nose!), koala (much smaller than I would have expected). And more. Much, much more. Kids line up to check out this book. And they don’t just check it out. You can see them everywhere, reading it with their friends. Life-Size Zoo is bigger, yes, and better, too.

14 Cows for America
by Carmen Agra Deedy
Peachtree
Nominated by: Natasha Maw

14 Cows for America is the story of Masai warrior Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah. An exchange student in New York City, Naiyomah witnessed the tragedy of 9/11 and returned home to Kenya to share his grief with his family and tribe. In the Masai tradition, the greatest gift a man can give is a cow. To help comfort the people of America as we dealt with the destruction, Naiyomah asked the tribal elders to bless his cow to be given to America, as a symbolic gesture of his compassion. Thirteen 13 others did the same. A gentle tale that shows the events of September 11 had world impact. This simple yet moving story is beautifully illustrated with scenes from Africa. The colorful artwork captures the splendor of the continent and the beauty of its people.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
by Brian Floca
Atheneum

"Reading MOONSHOT: THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 11 gave me the feeling I was back up in space," said Michael Collins, the Command Module Pilot of Apollo 11. This new non-fiction picture book invites young readers to accompany astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong as they "lock their heads into large, round helmets, squeeze into the Columbia's sideways seats, and blast off into the summer sky." The experience begins with extensive diagrams of the stages of the Apollo 11’s journey on the front end pages and finishes with extensive author’s notes on the back cover. The information is scientific, specific, and technical, yet it reads like poetry. Listen, for example to Floca’s description of the Saturn rocket:

a monster of a machine
it stands thirty stories
it weights six million pounds
a tower full of fuel and fire

Floca’s watercolor illustrations beautifully contrast of light and dark, movement and perspective. A terrific addition to any space collection.

Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
by Steve Jenkins
Houghton Mifflin
Nominated by: Sarah Neal

This book begins with the astounding fact that more humans have walked on the moon than been to the deepest spots of the ocean. Writer and illustrator Steve Jenkins leads the reader from the familiar territory of the waters’ surface, down 35,838 feet (almost seven miles!) to the deepest spot in the sea, where humans have visited a mere one time in their total existence. As readers pass from zone to zone, they meet an astounding variety of life forms, from jellies to rays to shrimp to whales; to creatures who glow in the dark, have fearsome teeth, or look more like plants than fish, as they adapt to life in the increasingly alien depths of the sea.

Jenkins’ texture-rich collage is as dynamic and compelling as ever, bringing the creatures to startling life with realism that defies the one-dimensional limitations of the printed page. The overwhelming impression that there is so much we don’t know about the sea further increases the appeal of a book that is not just informative but captivating.

Faith (Global Fund for Children Books)
by Maya Ajmera, Magde Nakassis, and Cynthia Pon for the Global Fund for Children
Charlesbridge
Nominated by: shelf-employed

"In our world, there are many faiths," sums up the context of Faith by the Global Fund for Children. A stunning photo-essay book, it depicts the elements of faith: prayer, meditation, sacred places, sacred books, singing and the observance of religious holidays. The simplicity of the text serves as a springboard for discussion. The rich tapestry of close-up photos, mainly of children engaged in specific religious rituals is the strength of this book.

The book is well-organized. There is an appendix with additional notes for further study, a map locating where the different faiths can be found, and a glossary. Faith helps readers to see the rich diversity throughout the globe and to understand we are more alike than different.

What the New World of Publishing Still Needs

From Locus in March, author Cory Doctorow considers the one part of publishing that is hardest for big firms to outsource, and hardest for authors to replicate for themselves through digital services: the sales force.

There are plenty of “little” publishers out there, dotted around the country, figuring out how to fill in the gaps that the big guys won’t stoop to conquer: short story collections, quirky titles, books of essays, art books, experimental titles, and anthologies. These are often fabulous books with somewhat respectable numbers, but they lag the majors in one key area: physical distribution.

For though it’s easy to find an outsource firm that’ll get your books from Warehouse (A) to Store (B), it’s a lot harder to find the cost-effective firm that will convince Store (B) to order the book from You (C).

That’s shoe-leather business, the slow, messy human-factor business of getting to know thousands of key people around the country, people who will introduce your book to readers who haven’t heard of you and don’t know why they should be reading you (good bookselling is fractal: the sales rep knows what the clerk will like, and the clerk knows what the reader will like).

Because the whole point of publishing is selling books to the public—i.e., people who don’t already know you. While, of course, keeping some time to write.

Rocketeer Relaunched with “Rendering”

The publication of The Rocketeer: The Complete Collection, by Dave Stevens, has provided a new example for the debate over recoloring old comics with new digital techniques (as I discussed back here).

After Chris Sims praised the new coloring by Laura Martin on his Invincible Super-Blog, some commenters politely disagreed. For instance, Adam Russo wrote:

The older, limited-palette, ‘pop art’ kind of look appeals to me and I think it meshes better with the art. Whereas the newer colors are well picked and the scene in particularly is well laid out (the way all the dark blues surround the warm colored centerpiece is a nice and effective way of drawing the eye in), it doesn’t seem the same for some reason.

Like I said, I think it’s a style thing. The older colors are easily recognizable as an old pulp style story. The newer ones, though wonderful to look at, give it a different feel all together. Way more modern in both good and bad ways.

Greg Burgas then wrote of the new pages, while showing some examples:

Martin adds depth to the scenes, a very nice 1930s pulp sheen to the book (which, from what I’ve seen of the original, is lacking) and really gives the book a sense of place - New York is very different from Los Angeles, for instance.

From what I’ve seen of the original (this is the first time I’ve ever read the comic), it had much more of a bright, cartoony feel to it, and although that works for comics, Stevens obviously had a more pulp vibe going on, and Martin helps create this. The characters look real, too - in the original, they looked more like comic book characters and Cliff’s outfit looked a bit more like spandex, while Martin makes the people - even Betty - more real, and Cliff is obviously wearing actual clothing.

Back when IDW announced this reissue, the publisher made much of the fact that before his death Stevens had chosen Laura Martin to do the new coloring job using today’s technology. She described her approach for Comic Book Resources:

“The art style and the story’s tone are two major leads in the search for a coloring solution. Every colorist should consider these two concepts first when choosing a rendering technique and a palette,” Martin said of her approach to “The Rocketeer.”

“My first consideration will be Dave’s own painted pieces. One can only assume that he likes his own coloring the best, so I’m starting there. Is his work brushy or blocky? How does he handle different surface textures? Does he limit his palette, or open it up? What's his favorite tool — airbrush, brush, marker, etc.?

“Once I get a feel for that, I’ll look at the pulp and strip art from the 1940’s, to see what influenced Dave while he drew these pages. Of course, the fact that ’The Rocketeer’ was previously colored is a major advantage. I can visualize the page in color, and I can use it as a starting point for my own interpretation.”

She said there were challenges particular to this project, as well. “The first challenge is to interpret Dave’s intent through the filter of the the colorists’ final work, while overlaying my own aesthetic. The second is to introduce digital techniques that weren’t available in the 1980s, without it looking too ‘digital.’”

I think one key to this discussion is Burgas’s remark that “this is the first time I’ve ever read the comic.” He’s therefore free of the question of whether rereading this comic feels just like the first time. Of course, rereading rarely feels just like the first time—all the more so because for many people comics are escapist reading during youth, and therefore beyond full recovery.

Me, I never read The Rocketeer, either. But I liked the movie.