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Class Notes for Tuesday, September 22

Page history last edited by eortiz@gmu.edu 15 years, 4 months ago

Overview

 

 

On Tuesday, our class met at the Center for the Arts to hear Adam Besenyodi talk about his book, Deus Ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan.  Here are some highlights from the discussion.

 

He first noted that his book is self-published, a topic that he returned to during the Q & A session.  While editing a friend’s book, he started to consider self-publishing himself, with questions such as “who is the target market” and “who would his endorsers be”. He shopped his book around, the very act of putting together a submission package helped him focus the project, encountering some initial resistance, but then he reached out to Tom DeFalco of Marvel comics, who he had met on linkedin.com, who encouraged him to continue his efforts and even agreed to write the forward for the book.  He then got the artist Dave Wachter (http://www.davedrawscomics.com/) to draw the cover, purchased an ISBN number, uploaded his book onto lulu.com, and he was off and running.  

 

Besenyodi also made mention of one of our assigned novels, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.  It was interesting that Besenyodi stated that he wasn't particularly fond of the book and had difficulty getting through it.  His reasons seemed somewhat vague and less insightful than many of his other critiques on graphic novels.  He seemed too quick to dismiss McCloud's work without any particular reason.  It could simply be the pressure of competing with an widely acclaimed book on comics within his same target audience and demographics.  

 

What really stood out was Mr. Besenyodi’s yearning to connect – almost simultaneously – with both the past and the future through his book.  He spoke of nostalgically looking back to his youth after almost twenty years away from his old comic collection, while acknowledging the “importance of connecting with just one other person” through his re-discovered passion.

 

The title of his book is a take on deus ex machina, meaning “god from the machine” (see key terms and concepts) and describes his efforts as the “Greek version of a lapsed Catholic returned to the faith”.

 

Mr. Besenyodi had figured comics had passed him by until his friend Ivan gave him a copy of the Ultimates. Being a former fan of the Avengers, the Ultimates helped him make the transition into the new comic world. Some of the first comics he started picking up was Thor by J. Michael Straczynski, Immortal Iron Fist by Matt Fraction, X-Men: First Class, and the New Fantastic Four, and that is how comics wormed back into his live. Growing up, he always thought the Fantastic Four and Thor to be too heady and dense and Captain America to be too hokey.

 

He also spoke of an interesting dichotomy within his writing experience – a sort of “unique universality”.  Despite the common, or shared, experience of drifting away from the comics of one’s youth, he realized that the particular details of that experience are uniquely his (or our’s).  It was this realization that led him to this book.

 

A topic of interest to us all was his discussion of “panel-to-panel” reading, or slowing down to let the panels “sink in”.  This only began for him after he re-discovered comics and he says that he is now “drawn to the art as much, if not more, than the story”.  During the Q & A, he followed-up on this topic by noting how story-driven he used to be and how he paid little attention to the art – the comics he read “all looked the same” to him.  Now he can recognize different artists and their particular styles and often admonishes his son – with little effect – to slow down. He spoke about covers influencing his decision whether to buy a comic or not. He mentioned he picked up The Death of Captain America because the cover and didn’t buy New X-Men because he was put off by the cover.

 

 

Interview Highlights

 

 

There were some great questions during his Q & A – here are some highlights:

 

Question:  Was DC Comics not your thing?

Answer: He responded that while he loved the Superfriends and recognized that DC had a big presence on TV (and his first comic was a DC), he just preferred the “dirty, gritty lives” led by Marvel characters - “Marvel…maybe it was more cliché, but it was true to me”.  He is expanding his outlook, though, and has lately become interested in DC’s Vertigo series, recognizing that as an adult, there is a “whole world he’s now discovering”.

 

Question: “It seems like your focus is on Super heroes”.

Answer: He confirmed that superheroes were his main focus, although he has added some crime/noir comics…“Current marvel is very gritty. Captain America is dealing with espionage…”.

 

Question: What is it you do to make money?

Answer: “I am a project manager for one of the top banking companies. That’s how I pay the bills”

 

Question: What about the art, how did it affect him?

Answer : “It wasn’t the art it was the story. Being a kid is about devouring the story”

 

Question: (from Spiderman fan) Do you find the message of comic books from then to now different? Can a child relate nowadays?

Answer: “I found a 1982 duplicate of a Thor issue…I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t give that to Jack (his child) I’m pretty sure—I know things went over my head. As a child you take different things from the comics. Certain things go over your head…”

 

Question: You said a few opinions that you wrote in your book have changed. What kinds of things?

Answer: “I don’t really read Mighty Avengers, or the Fantastic 4 anymore”.

 

Question: (Wade Fletcher) Perhaps explain to us about the  process of self-publishing?

Answer: “I always thought that I would self-publish […] The publishing submission packet was a very good exercise to help focus my ideas for the project.”  (See overview for full comment).  He used LuLu: http://www.lulu.com/ and the link to a LuLu demo: http://www.lulu.com/en/about/demo.php?cid=en_tab_demo

 

(The next question seemed somewhat personal, but he really took it as an opportunity to convey his passion for the genre)

 

Question: Why do you look at this return to comics as such an important thing to you/who you are?

Answer: “This was a return to youth, or to a part of my youth that still translates into my adulthood and parenthood.  This is it for me. There is an amazing depth of focus on the internet”.

 

Question: (Mark Sample) Talk about the covers, they are so evocative”

Answer:  “The cover is your marketing too, but is it more than that! When we (referred to Dr. Sample) were kids it very much related to the story going on inside the comic book pages -- not so much nowadays”.

 

He was asked about the marketing process:  “Covers pop off the shelf but the book doesn’t have a shelf to pop off of. You have to be creative.”  For instance, several comic book shops purchased copies; he went to local show organizers to “get our in front of target audiences”; and he leveraged forums and podcasts.  Additionally, arranging in-store signings at local comic book shops is a great way to zero in on his target audience.  Besenyodi even presented a copy of his book to Stan Lee at Comicon in Pittsburgh. 

 

Professor Sample asked him about presenting the book to Stan Lee:

“My wife told me to just pay the $40.00 to get the autograph. He was very gracious about the whole thing”.  Though he downplayed the meeting, he was very excited to meet Stan Lee, the only original series writer whose been given his book.

 

Key Terms

 

Deus ex machina – “A power, event, person, or thing that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; providential interposition, esp. in a novel or play” (OED Online).  

“In some ancient Greek drama, an apparently insoluble crisis was solved by the intervention of a god, often brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. This "god from the machine" was literally a deus ex machina.  Few modern works feature deities suspended by wires from the ceiling, but the term deus ex machina is still used for cases where an author uses some improbable (and often clumsy) plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation. When the cavalry comes charging over the hill or when the impoverished hero is relieved by an unexpected inheritance, it's often called a deus ex machina”  (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Terms/deusexmachina.html)

 

Floppy: Besenyodi's term for a monthly comic book issue. Usually around 24 pages in content length.

 

Trade Waiting: A term used to describe the act of skipping the monthly issues as they are sold individually, and purchasing the trade collection that usually follows a few months later. This practice is usually more economical, and trade editions are easier to maintain. The drawback is the delay.

 

*************

 

Here is a short summary of an interview with Adam Besenyodi, the writer of Deus Ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan, taken from Wired.com (see below for links to the full interview and a review of the book).

 

 

Adam Besenyodi is an editor and writer with PopMatters (http://www.popmatters.com), an international magazine about pop culture.  He is also a blogger (see http://randomthoughtsescaping.blogspot.com/) and contributor to the Marvel Noise weekly podcast. His first book, Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan, was released in 2009.

 

In the interview, Besenyodi talks of rediscovering his love of comics when his parents dumped his old collection on his doorstep. It wasn’t long before he was immersed in the pages of his youth and he decided to write Deus ex Comica to “capture the feeling and depth of his comic collection and experiences growing up with comics”.  While he loved the Superfriends and the Batman movies, he had never been a fan of DC Comics, saying that the “DC Universe never took hold of [him]”, preferring instead the “grittier, more grounded” world of Marvel. Lately, however, he has made brief forays into DC Comics, particularly its Vertigo line. Although, obviously, Marvel still hold the most sway over him; the death of Captain America was what first led him back into purchasing comics monthly.

 

He talks briefly about his “panel-to-panel” reading of comics, which is something that we’ve certainly embraced in this class.  As a child, he says, he often focused too heavily on the writing itself, ignoring the artistic side of comics.  As an adult, he now “linger[s] on each page” and calls comics “accessible, hold-in-your-hand works of art”.  He admits, however, that art appreciation is a subjective matter and he has turned away from certain comics – the new X-Men, for instance – based solely on the artwork. Included in this sentiment, he also says that he has had a hard time picking up technical books about the medium; including our class textbook Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud.

 

He was inspired to write Deus ex Comica because he felt that his “rediscovery of the medium and culture of comics was totally unique and completely universal”.  He wants to share this sense of rediscovery with others who share his love for comic books and who may have their own journey to self-discovery still ahead.

 

Oh, and Captain America is a better wingman than U.S. Agent.

 

Wired.com interview:  http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/10-questions-for-adam-besenyodi-author-of-deus-ex-comica/

 

 

Also, here is a review of Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan from the Geekdad.com review:http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/geekdad-book-review-dues-ex-comica/

 

The reviewer, Curtis Silver, writes that the book is about collecting and re-connecting with comics, it’s a great study in emotional psychology and the things in life that really get our brains ticking and our hearts pumping”. 

 

 

 

Comments (3)

Jeanine Wavelet said

at 9:56 am on Sep 22, 2009

Hi all...I took the liberty of posting this interview and book review to get us started. Feel free to add to this, of course! I'll contribute more to the overview after attending the event today.

Alex Flores said

at 8:24 pm on Sep 23, 2009

I took special care to write down the chapters he read from; "Panel-toPanel" and "Ret-con", but can't find any way to do that without stepping on the toes of whoever originally posted the second paragraph. If someone else has either a better way to work that in that doesn't change things, or wants to alter their original work... but currently, I am stumped.

Jeanine Wavelet said

at 9:15 am on Sep 24, 2009

Realized this was due this morning, so posted what we have. I hope I included all comments - please let me know if I missed anybody. Also, do not hesitate to add/amend any portion - this is a collaborative effort, so there will be (should be) no hurt feelings!

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