Whispering Meadows, Den of Thieves

Crime and misbehavior in Encyclopedia Brown’s home town of Idaville tends to come from three sources:

• Criminals passing through town, or recently out of jail.
• New kids trying too hard to show off.
• Bugs Meany and his Tigers.

The bulk of the local young population—the kids obsessed with teeth or animals or lacrosse or whatever—come across as well-meaning and good-hearted. Trouble comes from outsiders, and the community’s recognized bullies.

I found Whispering Meadows, the home town of young sleuths Max Finder and Alison Santos, to be a more treacherous place. The first volume of this series, by Liam O’Donnell and Michael Cho, contains ten short, comics-style mysteries originally published in OWL Magazine.

In three stories, the culprits turn out to be trusted employees of the damaged businesses. In a couple more, one friend victimizes another. Several stories contain red herrings as the guilty person tries to frame an innocent bystander. And whenever there’s a contest, the kids compete in cut-throat fashion.

Punishment for the transgressions tends to be mild. Of the ten cases, only one involves action by legal authorities; in another, a summer camp sends some kids home early. But a more typical dénouement in the back of the book is along the lines of: “Jeremy apologized for breaking Sally’s stereo, and for making the scene look like Hector did it, and after a while they all became friends again.”

Which might make sense, since a lot of the kids in Whispering Meadows have a common interest in bad behavior. In the next story, Hector might well be vandalizing someone’s bike while Sally blames Angela for beating her in the spelling bee.

Whispering Meadows sounds like a horrible place to grow up.

Damian Wayne: “Being Robin Is…”

When Grant Morrison introduced the character of Damian Wayne in Batman and Son, the kid was clearly trouble. He was said to be Bruce Wayne’s biological son by Talia al-Ghul, though the genetic truth wasn’t confirmed for some months and the mechanics are still murky.

More to the point, Damian was violent, defiant, angry, and contemptuous. His grandfather’s League of Assassins had raised him to be a deadly fighter. He killed and beheaded a minor Batman villain called the Spook. He attacked Tim Drake, the latest Robin. In a word, Damian was evil. Morrison even said so in interviews.

Bruce’s response to meeting a dark-haired athletic boy lacking a father figure was, naturally, to suggest that he become some sort of Robin. Damian certainly had qualities that role required. Younger than Tim when he started and probably younger than Dick (there are competing legends), he was pound for pound the best fighter. He had the intellect, if not the interest, for detective work.

The nagging question was moral. Would Damian accede to the Batman’s no-killing ethos? Would he work well with his mentor and others? Could an evil child ever be Robin?

That question hung over Damian’s first year as Dick Grayson’s crime-fighting sidekick, told mostly in Batman and Robin but also in other DC comic books. As guided by the original Robin, could Damian fit into the role of Boy Wonder? The overarching storyline was a contest between Damian’s upbringing and personality on the one hand, and the tradition that Robin isn’t evil.

In the first three issues, Damian gets sick of taking orders from Dick, quits, and storms off; to his surprise, Dick rescues him because they’re still a team. The next two arcs bring on alternative versions of the Dynamic Duo: Jason Todd, former Robin, as the Red Hood and his created-for-the-moment sidekick Scarlett; and Britain’s Knight and Squire. Since the current Knight was formerly Squire, that means we see two former Robins, one former wannabe Robin, two wannabe Batmen, and two young redheaded female sidekicks. Plus, the new Batwoman (who also has red hair). Meanwhile, Damian has his injured spine repaired by his mother Talia’s surgeons.

The final three issues of the year brought the original conflict back home. Talia uses Damian’s new spinal implant to control his movements, turning him over to Dick’s arch-enemy, Deathstroke the Terminator. There’s a fight, of course, but the real confrontation occurs when Damian faces his mother. Evil never had a chance.

If Damian hadn’t proven commercially successful, DC Comics could still have killed him off, as Morrison originally planned when he first conceived of the character. He could have died heroically, like the kid in “Punish Not My Evil Son”; or “tragically,” doomed by the advanced medical process that created and aged him, as Peter Tomasi set up in his glimpse of Talia’s baby-making technology in Nightwing: Freefall. But either way, I’m convinced that Damian wouldn’t have died evil.

Of course, he’s still a little snot.

Will Anything Good Come of This?

Since this week’s theme is already Not Safe for All Classrooms, I figure I might as well relate a story about our family reading last year.

MY MOTHER: “At the library, I picked up that book by that man with the father. The man who writes on the internet about his father.”

ME: “Um. You mean Shit My Dad Says?”

MOM: “…Yes.”

Okay. My mom reads a bogglingly large number of books, in many areas. I subscribe to the @shitmydadsays Twitter feed, and had enjoyed reading off some of its remarks. But I didn’t recall mentioning the book. I think Mom must have read a recommendation in a magazine. In any event, a few days later…

MOM: “I finished the Halpern book.”

ME: “The ‘Halpern book’?”

MOM: “The man on Twitter.”

ME: “So you mean Shit My Dad Says?”

MOM: “…Yes. I’m having some trouble saying the title.”

ME: “Really?”

MOM: “But in the last chapter, the dad tells the author something he thinks is important. I think you’d like the book. And you should read through to the last chapter.”

And Mom was right.

A Modest Technological Solution for Offensive Language

Several years ago, a fellow member of the CW email list wrote about her idea for a book inspired by (as I recall) a Little League teammate of her son who did a lot of swearing. So much as to embarrass other young teen boys—which must really have been a lot.

This aspiring author foresaw a big challenge for a book about that situation, however. How could she convey a character’s foul language powerfully without using foul words? If she used those words, wouldn’t that undercut her message about the costs of using coarse language, and the ability to express oneself without it? On the other hand, if she used euphemisms, wouldn’t the book come across as namby-pamby and lose readers’ respect?

Polite people and craven mass media have long used:

• watered-down terms that sound quaint: “Darn!” “Gosh!” “Jiminy Cricket!”
• oaths that no real person says: “Golly gee!” “Holy chicken feathers, Batman!”
• transparent substitutes that don’t fool anyone: “friggin’,” “bleeping”

But those don’t have the power of real profanity.

It’s easier in fantasy, where writers can come up with horrible curses for one society that carry no connotations for ours: “Hippakaloric!” “Grife!” “Belgium!” And of course comics have developed a symbolic language. But those solutions wouldn’t work for this writer.

Her remarks made me imagine and describe an electronic book that includes two texts: expurgated and unexpurgated. Readers might not see the fully profane language, either because of their choice or because of a parent or teacher’s choice. But they would know that that language exists, floating in some aether just below the words they see, only one access code away. Such a book would, I posited, be more powerful than a watered-down text alone.

The same technology could address Huckleberry Finn’s “nigger” problem. Mark Twain’s original text could exist alongside a version that doesn’t put that insulting word in readers’ eyes 200 times. Readers could choose which text to read, teachers which to read aloud or analyze in class—but the original text would still be part of the package.

How difficult would it be to create a two-level electronic book compatible with existing standards? I don’t know. But I see that the Nerdy Teacher reports there’s already an iPad edition of Huckleberry Finn with the original illustrations, for full historical context.

(Incidentally, now that I think of it, one of those illustrations had to be altered during printing because an engraver had rendered it obscene. That could be something else to put behind the access code.)

Standing Up for the Public Domain

As we consider the current kerfuffle over an edition of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Americans are united on several points:

Opposing censorship is a Good Thing. Preserving our history (even of Bad Things) is a Good Thing. Preserving our culture (especially the Great American Novels) is a Good Thing.

But standing up for the public domain is also a Good Thing.

All the books that Mark Twain published in his lifetime are in the public domain. (Canny author-publisher that he was, he managed to figure out how to generate new copyrights and new publicity.) That makes changing Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn different from demanding changes to, or restricting access to, a book still under copyright with limited availability.

For one thing, such censorship won’t work. With Project Gutenberg, Google Books, more cheap “classic” paperback editions than you can swing a dead cat at, and millions of copies already printed, there’s no way the original texts of Twain’s best novels will disappear.

One edited edition of Huck Finn from one small press doesn’t erase all the other books on the market. It doesn’t stop bookstores, libraries, and schools from using unexpurgated versions if they decide those are more desirable. I can’t imagine a credible scenario in which this edition pushes out the original text.

Furthermore, because Huckleberry Finn is in the public domain, Prof. Alan Gribben has every right to do whatever he wants with the text. He chose to remove the word “nigger” and insert the chapter from Life on the Mississippi that Twain himself edited out, and in his introduction (PDF download) he explains why.

We all have the same right. For very little money I can put out an electronic edition with the word “nigger” replaced with “n!gger” and that extra chapter pulled out. White supremacists could issue an edition that replaces the word “nigger” with “naturally ignorant nigger.” Less stupid authors could rewrite the book to make Jim less childish, or substitute a better plot in the last third. People can write sequels, and fanfiction. The public domain makes all that possible. Then it’s up to the reading public to choose which uses have value.

Yesterday I noticed that several blog posts about this controversy are illustrated with the cover of the Troll Illustrated Classic edition, shown above. Perhaps that’s an ironic commentary on watering down the book to a childish level, but I suspect it’s because that edition has a big, iconic illustration of Huck and Jim on their appropriated raft.

That Troll edition clocks in at 48 pages. Obviously it’s been abridged for younger readers, another possibility made cheap and easy by the public domain. I’ll bet that a lot of Twain’s words were taken out of that book, and that “nigger” was one of the first to go. Nobody seems to have objected.

I can imagine a philosophical argument for barring people from making any changes to a reproducible work of art that its creator didn’t approve. But the cultural cost of such a restriction would far outweigh the benefits.

As long as no one misrepresents a changed edition of Twain as the original, then it’s up to readers which to choose. Gribben is quite explicit in his Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn edition about what he changed—probably more explicit than the folks at Troll Illustrated Classics.

TOMORROW: A modest technological solution.

Cutting Through the Huck Finn Weeds

The edition of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that I wrote about on Monday hit the national news today, with boringly predictable results: lots of complaints about “political correctness,” censorship, how other people are simple-mindedly misreading the book. I made up a few rules for myself for sorting through the noise.

1) If you say that it’s appropriate to use the “n word” in classrooms, but completely avoid using it in your own essay, then you lose a point. And for that reason, I’m going to use offensive terms with scare-quotes instead of euphemisms. Internet filtering programs, beware.

2) If you’re personally affected by the use of the terms “nigger” and “Injun,” then I’m more interested in your opinion than if you’re (like me) a white person for whom the issue is more abstract. Those words aren’t generically offensive—they’re particularly offensive because they derogate particular people.

Thus, I’ve sought out responses from African-American writers like Jamelle Bouie at The Atlantic and Elon James White at Salon, and from folks with African-American family members like Ann Freeman at Upside My Head. (But Freeman loses a point under rule #1. [REFEREES’ RULING: Freeman supports the use of the unedited Huckleberry Finn in the classroom, but opposes teachers’ or students’ use of the word in classroom discussions. So is that worth a point or not? It’s unexpected nuances like these that can make the issue so thought-provoking.])

3) If you’re a teacher who’s used Huckleberry Finn in the classroom recently, then I’m more interested. Some examples I’ve found include Sara Goodman as Sara*ndipity; David Ulin at the LA Times’s Jacket Copy; and Biblioklept before news of this edition broke. (But Goodman loses a point under rule #1.) Jinx as a former classroom teacher and a black woman gets double points.

Students and parents do sometimes object to Huckleberry Finn because of its language, as this news item from Seattle in 2003 explores. Teachers do sometimes choose not to use it, as described in this article from Multicultural Education in 2006. It’s more valuable to see how educators and students address the book’s challenges than to see an outsider loftily insist that they should.

I’d especially like to see some professionals address not just how to draw useful lessons from Twain’s use of “Injun” and “nigger,” but also how to do so in an environment increasingly concerned with preparing kids for standardized tests. Is there enough time in the school day? Does the book work better in certain schools, or certain grades?

4) If you use this incident to complain about “political correctness” on the left, I simply laugh at you. Not just because of the tired cliché, but because you’ve made a foolish assumption. The editor, Prof. Alan Gribben of Auburn, presented himself as a victim of the radical left in a political-academic controversy at the University of Texas back in the 1990s. For details, see Julius G. Getman’s In the Company of Scholars: The Struggle for the Soul of Higher Education, John K. Wilson’s The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education, and Gribben’s own version of events.

Gribben is quite clear in his introduction to the new edition about why he feels it has value. I quoted that introduction on Monday (PDF download). Opponents should take his arguments into account before making any assumptions about the thinking behind this book.

5) If you make up ridiculous scenarios of what this editing might lead to, then I’m not interested in your opinion. This is about changing one word (or 236, depending on how we count) in Huckleberry Finn and two in Tom Sawyer. It doesn’t change the book’s plot, characters, or themes. It doesn’t affect any other editions or copies already on shelves.

And it’s not about just any offensive language. Novelist Walter Kirn joked, “Let's add offensive words to American novels that don't have enough of them. Little Women could use a few more 'shits.'” But “shit” doesn’t demean a particular class of people. If we want an equivalent, the joke would suggest renaming Little Women to “Little Cunts.” But who would say that (outside of the porn industry)?

TOMORROW: What the public domain means.

Comics Memoirs about Comics History

Late last year I read both Eddie Campbell’s How to Be an Artist and Will Eisner’s The Dreamer. Both are lightly fictionalized memoirs about being part of a momentous scene in the history of comics.

Both were originally published on their own, but have been collected in thick volumes: Eisner’s Life, in Pictures and Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants.

In Eisner’s case, the scene is about 1937-42, what was later called “the Golden Age of Comic Books.” It involved cramped offices, unreliable publishers, and both Depression and World War. Though the stories that Eisner and his colleagues produced were mostly about heroism, his own story is mostly about money, or lack of it.

Campbell’s topic is the British graphic novels movement of the late 1980s. It’s a picture of what Brian Eno has dubbed “scenius,” when people and circumstances come together to produce a flowering of innovation. I was pleased to read in this Comics Worth Reading review that Campbell’s never-named but vital “Man at the Crossroads” is Paul Gravett, recognized for his Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know. (I read that last year, too.)

Both Eisner and Campbell depict themselves as well-meaning, befuddled strivers, just trying to make enough money to live off this art thing they like doing. Their colleagues are more colorful; their women mysterious; their successes serendipitous, surprising, and often short-lived.

While Campbell and his crowd have no more money than Eisner’s, they’re focused on art. The stories they tell tend not to be heroic, unless they’re working just for the (American) money. Instead, the heroism in How to Be an Artist comes in pushing against the conventions of the comics business as it had been set up back in the “Golden Age.”

Here’s Campbell’s own review of Life, in Pictures, which focuses on Eisner’s late artistic development rather than his early experiences.

The Slave Jim and Indian Joe

The John F. Blair company is about to publish an edition of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that:

• refers to Huck’s companion as “the slave Jim,” leaving out the “n word,” since that has such a powerful negative effect on today’s readers.
• refers to Tom’s bête noire as “Indian Joe,” for a parallel reason.
• substitutes “half-blood” for “half-breed” when discussing Joe. The editor says the replacement term is “less disrespectful and has even taken on some panache since J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005).”

Alan Gribben’s introduction (PDF download) explains:

This NewSouth Edition of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is emphatically not designed for academic scholars studying Twain’s precise texts. I simply came to believe that a significant number of school teachers, college instructors, and general readers might welcome the option of an edition of Twain’s paired novels that spares the reader all contact with a word that never seems to lose its vitriol, despite the occasional efforts of rap and hip hop musicians to re-appropriate it and the well-meaning but usually futile (from my own personal experience) endeavors by classroom teachers to inoculate their students against the “n” word by using Huckleberry Finn as a springboard to discuss its etymology and cultural history.

Gribben points out that Twain himself was a commercial writer, keenly sensitive to his audience’s reactions (even if he didn’t always try to comfort them). And that there are plenty of other editions with the original language, should a reader or teacher wish that.

Indeed, I think the fate of this approach will be determined in the commercial marketplace. If people wish a slightly bowdlerized edition of these two novels, they can buy this book, and it will remain in print. If not enough people do, this text will fade away.

Gribben is to be commended for declaring and discussing his choice up front and giving us the choice. I’m happy with the editions I have—but the words being changed have never been applied to me.

(Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom and Book Haven.)

Robin’s Hood, and How It Changes the Universe

I’ve written before about thinking that Grant Morrison’s most immediate inspiration for his long Batman and Robin arc that’s produced a (by my count) sixth Robin was Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All Star Batman and Robin.

Of course, Morrison had many other inspirations as well, going back to the collection that he (and I) read as a wee lad, Batman: From the 30s to the 70s. But Miller’s vision of a “goddamn Batman” strikes me as the most likely jumping-off point for Morrison to think up Damian Wayne, the goddamn Robin.

In All Star Batman, Dick Grayson (age twelve) creates a crime-fighting costume for himself based on Robin Hood. (That legend was in fact Jerry Robinson’s principal inspiration in designing the character, which is why the original costume has a little medieval styling.) The goddamn Batman doesn’t like the long name “Robin Hood.” And he doesn’t like the hood. So far as I know, there’s no precedent for that moment in previous DC Comics, no previous portrayal of Dick wanting to wear a hood. It supposedly happens only on “Earth 31,” reserved for Miller’s vision of the goddamn Batman.

But in Batman and Robin Morrison scripted a moment (for Philip Tan to illustrate) that’s a direct response to Miller’s. Dick Grayson, now Batman, tries to pass on some of his mentor’s wisdom to Damian—wisdom we’ve never “officially” seen Bruce give. And this hood-wearing goddamn Robin responds in his own special way. (I only wish the word balloons were placed more gracefully.)

The End of the Infinite Canvas?

Yesterday I reviewed Scott McCloud’s six types of transitions from one comics panel to the next, and posited that the page turn was still an important, higher-level transition.

Theorizing presciently in Reinventing Comics, McCloud imagined comics without any page turns, or at least any necessary ones. He presented this idea in 1995 as the “Infinite Canvas”:

The basic premise is that there’s no reason that long-form comics have to be split into pages when moving online. Pages are an option—and they can work well when screen shapes are taken into account—but the advantages of putting all panels together on a single “canvas” are significant and worth exploiting.

Freed of page trims, comics could spread in whatever direction and at whatever length their stories suggested. That would necessarily make panel-to-panel transitions the norm. McCloud tried it out with his Zot! characters.

Fifteen years later, the critical consensus is that the Infinite Canvas just hasn’t worked as a storytelling device. So says TV Tropes. And El Santo at Webcomic Overlook declared in October:

The Infinite Canvas will die. It’s fun as an experiment. However, it’s not working. And with iPad limiting the screen even more than the computer does, the canvas is shrinking and shrinking.

However, on the same day I read that, I also read Emily Carroll’s “His Face All Red,” which offers a wonderful use of scrolling in a comic designed to be read on screen (see especially page 7). Another example is her “The Death of José Arcadio.”

Of course, Carroll’s comics also include “page turns” as transitions—moments when readers must consciously shift from one set of panels to another, not seeing what will come next. Sometimes the next page/canvas consists of a single panel on the screen, sometimes many spilling off the screen.

Perhaps the problem with the Infinite Canvas is the daunting name. A “Flexible Canvas,” with “pages” changing size and aspect as necessary, and the possibility of at least two levels of transitions (panel-to-panel and page turns), provides comics creators with the freedom to use many storytelling tools, but not the burden of infinitude.