How does play enhance our world through humanitarian focused games?

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jane McGonigal wants to change the world by getting us all to play games more. She has already established a reputation for generating play around basic ideas and putting them to work with the support of many multi-national corporations and non-profit organizations. I think she has very admirable goals and she certainly has the enthusiasm to promote them, but will this book really solve the most pressing problems in the world?

"Reality is Broken" is a manifesto. McGonigal is convinced that by playing games mankind can attack the most troubling of social issues, from poverty to hunger, and solve them through play. She lists the ways that we can do this and often sounds like a self-help guru; "do more satisfying work", "participate wholeheartedly wherever, whenever we can", and "have more fun with strangers".

I like her ideas and she been actively putting them to work in her career as a game designer and social engineer. Designing games that can encourage and teach people is a noble idea and McGonigal has worked on many projects that seem to have accomplished this. But where are the results? Unfortunately, McGonigal has only saw fit to list Internet sites where she's implemented these games. Where is the statistical data that shows the real effects of these games? Where are the first person stories of how playing these games really changed people's lives? Only online apparently because they are not in this book.

Modern humans are already playing games more and yet global problems still persist. I think the failing of this manifesto is that the gaming community is not unified in the same humanitarian values McGonigal clearly espouses. Also, while McGonigal acknowledges criticism that games can be used to escape reality, her rebuttal focuses only on the positive aspects of games and sidesteps any negatives of gaming addiction. It would make sense to design games to minimize these potentials, but that is outside the scope of this book.

I do want to watch her career for the next decade and see if she manages to attach herself to any project that applies itself to real world problems and manages to solve some of these dilemmas. It would indeed be a coup for the modern commercial world for a game designer to win a Nobel prize as she asserts is a personal goal. Unfortunately, this book has not changed my gaming habits and fails to convince me that we are really entering a new era of gaming. I'd like to be proven wrong.

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Review: Joys and Fears of Childhood

Rainy Day Recess: The Complete Steven’s Comics by David Kelly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Long time acquaintance and cartoonist David Kelly collects his self-published works in a new publication by Northwest Press. Steven's Comics, serialized in several gay newspapers during the nineties was written for all-ages in mind. Kelly explores the trials of growing up gay in a single-parent divorced family. Seeking strong role models within Wonder Woman comics and discovering the joys and fears of a childhood crush, David mines similar childhood emotional territory explored by his friend and fellow comics creator Lynda Barry, while remaining true to the unique story he has to tell. I am pleased to see this collection. But that is not all as he will include new material, and if that is not enough Dan Savage provides a forward. If you don't buy it for yourself, then give it as a gift to your favorite baby-gay. They will thank you for years to come.



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Review: Comic Artists on the Web

I mentioned Matt Feazell in my last post, but encounter artists all the time on the internet.  Some have posted a huge body of work, while others, like me, seem to be just starting out.  Here is a short list of some artists I've encountered recently and enjoyed.
 

Introspective Comics by Ryan Dow 

  

Hark! A Vagrant. Comics by Kate Beaton 

  

Stop Paying Attention by Lucy Knisley 

  

So Super Duper by Brian Andersen 

  

Bang a Left by J. Tana Ford

Urban Buzz by Ned Hugar

Perhaps the most amazing thing about these artists is that they share their stories as they make them with little  expectation that you might benefit.  I wish I could support them all, only I am in a similar boat, creating without any guarantee of financial support outside of the products that I offer on my website. Go read and then if you can, help out by buying their stuff.  It is worth it just to help us all keep the faith.

Review: Breaking the Glass-Ceiling of Syndication

Curbside Boys: The New York Years by Robert Kirby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



With Gary Trudeau publishing his forty year retrospective this year it is hard not to be impressed by syndicated cartooning. Charles Schultz is the only other syndicated cartoonist that comes to mind who has a more impressive collection of work, but there are many who have benefited from syndication, becoming national bestselling cartoonists, despite breaking conventions in the system. All the same, writing for mainstream newspaper media seems a breeze compared to the challenges faced by Gay and Lesbian cartoonists who also want to tell their stories.

I learned about Robert Kirby's "Curbside" back in the mid-ninties, years after I'd begun collecting gay comicbooks. I was immediately impressed, because his formula of telling simple stories about relationships between gay men was something I'd attempted to do at the same time, but never found my voice or stride. Robert had something I didn't have, which is a real drive to be published in as many newspapers as he could manage.

The Gay press media landscape has changed over the years, but there has never been a syndicate, that I know of, that have helped the careers of gay cartoonists in the same way that Trudeau, Schultz and other mainstream cartoonist careers have. Kirby and others who want to see their work in print have to hit the pavement and talk to editors first hand, convincing them to make room in their papers to publish their comics. And I know first hand that newspaper editors will make room for paying advertising long before they will print cartoon strips.

Ultimately it depends on the artist and his own discipline to regularly produce quality work and send it out. So the real heros in the cartooning world are people like Kirby, who syndicate their own strips to unsympathetic editors, often for no immediate compensation. Nowadays, newspapers are finding it difficult to maintain their readership. Here in Seattle, we no longer have dedicated gay and lesbian owned bookstores where you know you can find the major gay newspapers. Instead you have to rely on adult bookstores and bars where these things are left on faith that they will get into the hands of the people who need them.

But because Robert Kirby did all this work in the early nineties, he eventually found publishers like Cleis Press who were willing and interested in collecting his strips into published books. "Curbside Boys:The New York Years" is the second such collection. The first collection is incidentally selling for about seventy dollars at Amazon.com, although I would like to point out Mister Kirby is not getting any money from these used copies.

This second collection is a complete story, where the protagonist and his roommate meet, fall in love and then move on. It stands on its own more than anything Trudeau or Schultz ever wrote. Having read the original "Curbside" many years ago it is difficult to compare, but this feels more mature and studied than his earlier strips.

I really enjoyed seeing young men struggling to connect with each other in these stories. Nathan and Drew, the main characters seem fickle twenty-somethings and yet like all young men, vulnerable to the opinions and reactions of others. Their relationship counterpoints the supporting characters lives, Kevin and Rain who break even more stereotypes about black men than I've seen before or since in a gay comic strip. All the same, the drama is difficult to sustain within the context of six to eight panel stories.

Kirby returns to the story-telling techniques that worked for him in earlier strips, bringing back his own "greek chorus" character modeled after himself. He keeps the same squared nose on this character from earlier strips, which helps clue the reader into the fact that this character can directly editorialize for the cartoonist. All the same, he returns to telling the story rather than spending a lot of time with back-story, allowing the characters to tell their own stories.

"Curbside Boys:The New York Years" is a must read in the lexicon of gay comic books. The themes are adult and there is a lot of male sex, but the images are clean and appealing. Anyone who happened to pick them up might keep reading because the emotions and situations are universal.

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Review: Romance, Heart and Soul

Teleny and Camille by Jon Macy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm not a fan of gay romance novels, but I've always loved gay romance comics.  From sitting on my friend's bed back in college reading the Gay Comix anthologies and the few other works available at the time, to recognizing my personal desires displayed on the movie screen when I watched Kiss of the Spiderwoman, even prior to coming out as a gay man; graphical stories of fighting against repression have always resonated with me.  Meeting my friend Jon Macy, back in the early Nineties when I managed a gay bookstore was the pinnacle of my gay life, but my joy has only seemed to rise from there.

Jon has put his heart and soul into Teleny and Camille (T&C) and I still love looking over the pages and finding all the little tidbits he put there.  The cherry blossoms, the gypsy on horseback, the gardens at Kew, the morgue and the page of absinthe are all favorites.  This enjoyment carries over to his new series Fearful Hunter (recipient of a PRISM comics grant) where coincidentally my own brush with madness mirrored his realization to honor his past with a personal story of love and redemption.  I really can't say anything against his wonderful stories, and why would I?  I envy his skill and dedication to his craft, but I also love that he shares it with the rest of us.  I think by doing so he asks us all to consider striving for better lives, despite opposition we may encounter.

Having watched this project begin with baby-steps back in the mid-nineties to Macy's full realization now, I cannot be happier to recommend T&C to all curious readers. (Check out previews at northwestpress.com, jonmacy.com and oscholars.com) This is the real thing: explicit tales of sex, sumptuous graphics, torrid romance, Victorian virtues upheld, and then overturned. Bringing this material to the modern reader through personal storytelling and displaying the challenges he encountered, Macy "pulls-no-punches" resurrecting an underground world Oscar Wilde likely encountered sheltering a hidden nineteenth-century sexuality.

Praise must also be raised for his publisher, Northwest Press, not only taking on a controversial work, but placing it in such a handsome package. The design is understated and enhances what is inside. Everyone will be proud to display this modern novel of gay romance on their bookshelves. The interiors may shock and reveal the lurid nature of repression, but this is with good cause. Without questioning the social structures that allow prejudice to persist, how can we create a more peaceful world for all humanity? I think this is the purpose of retelling our personal stories, no matter how horrific.

This publication sets the standard for erotic storytelling very high. I want to see more stories like this in the future, be they from the pen of Macy (did I mention he is publishing a new fantasy series?) or others working in the same market. Northwest Press already handles several quality titles and is set to become a leader in presenting new works of gay literature today. I am looking forward to more excellent work from Charles "Zan" Christensen at Northwest Press.


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Review: Filtering Childhood Memories

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am amazed that after all these years, I still identify so strongly with Alison Bechdel. I always enjoyed her characters from "Dykes to Watch Out For" and found them quite appealing. Of course, I am a gay man and "Dykes" was written from a lesbian point-of-view, but I could still relate to the human drama of people struggling to live their lives with integrity. And besides, I have always aspired to create art and work in bookstores. I managed to even do that in my twenties, which has been very satisfying.

So I was very happy to hear about Bechdel publishing a personal and true story about her coming out as a sexual adult in "Fun Home" (FH) several years ago. It has taken me quite a long time to get to reading this book, but allow me to feign excuses based on my gender and sexual identity. What I did not expect was to find an even closer relationship with a fellow artist and storyteller.

In FH, Bechdel focuses almost exclusively on her relationship with her father, almost to the detriment of telling her own story. But I've always found her to be a fairly truthful and modest public personality. She does include herself in her stories but often presents her stand-in as self-effacing. Her "Dykes" author-character, exhibits the most neurotic and personal emotions that any artist might express in a confessional comicbook, even while fictionalizing her own life stories. Reminds me of Woody Allen, a bit. But Bechdel also understands enough about narrative to step away and allow the stories to develop without editorializing.

FH is a sober book, though, so you expect to find wistful reminisces about the high points of a personal life. You do get those reminisces but filtered through a very adult sexual sensibility that only comes from sifting very finely through old photographs, diaries and memories. I love that her main objective is to present herself and her family as baldly human as possible. Still, we see her adult self wrestle with the adolescent exhibition of an effected mental illness.

While a little madness throughout life effects us all, the truth Bechdel uncovers is not only disturbing but lies just under the surface of the facts. She neither recoils from them or waves them about like some emblem of sanity. At one point she even coolly describes her Fruedian childhood fear at encountering a snake in a pool of water. All the same, what she reveals is a very normal if still unique family portrait, which is all too common and from my own perspective, strangely familiar. I cannot help but identify with and ponder the various items on display.

My father was a closeted gay man, too and in FH, Bechdel shows her father as a divinely flawed human being, limited by his inability to grasp his desires and yet totally successful at sublimating them. I also remember the same emotional distance from my own father growing up that Bechdel states as such a particular element of her relationship with her own father. When it becomes clear towards the end of the book that he eventually drops his pretense, we can see how sometimes there are details even his own daughter can't scrape up from the clues he left behind.

Still, my father didn't exhibit the quintessential fussiness that Bechdel's father used to manipulate his children to his stereotypical will, and yet my father did manipulate us in his own way. We didn't need clues to know he was closeted; there always seemed to be plenty of information, but my mother and the other adults in our lives generally ignored it. Acknowledging a truth like this is always painful enough that you avoid using it, like a wounded limb.

And in the end, a short time after Bechdel comes out to her parents as a lesbian, her father is killed by a truck while crossing a road. Rather than make the whole book about this one incident, she mentions it again and again, almost in-passing, piling up the details, like a "macguffin" which allows her to reveal her personal memories of growing up. The difference for me is that my father is still alive and came out as a gay man soon after I came out to my parents in college.

The parallels between our two different lives are uncanny and yet speak to a larger truth about the combined narrowness and width of our generation, sometimes called the "lost" generation. There are several years between us, but at the same time our lives are both uniquely American and of a time between the Sixties and Seventies. I think this book is going to haunt me for a very long time. And if I ever meet Alison in person, I'm not sure I will know what to say. I might just give her a big hug and say simply, "thank you."


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THREE, edited by Robert Kirby

THREE #1 by Robert Kirby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Existentialist realism, that is, the examination of the self in relationship to the environment we create for ourselves is entirely the realm of the self-confessional comic story.  I think since the nineteen nineties when the self-confessional comic book boom really hit its stride, the genre has matured.  I love this type of comic book because it often breaks traditions and challenges readers expectations.  We have come a long way from the talking-head confessionals of the nineties and yet in any story that deals with human emotions, especially isolation, the talking head, where the author and artist both address the reader directly, persists as a dynamic feature of the genre.  So it is always wonderful when a comic book creator works especially hard to avoid the simplicity of talking heads.


Robert Kirby has brought together in THREE, the first issue of his new anthology series, two other storytellers with very differing skills from his own.  Eric Orner is only less familiar than his comic strip character "Ethan Green".  In "Weekends Abroad" he speaks with a personal voice rather than that of his popular "nebbisher" character.  We encounter personal stories that you might hear if you met him casually at a cocktail party. But they are not simply stories to fill the uncomfortable silences between sips of your drink.  Instead he decorates them with scenes and environments that really bring them alive and outside the flat page.  I am pleased to see his art has moved beyond the static and ironic talking heads of his early strips.  In every location his story goes, from the Hebrew school of his childhood to the outskirts of Tel Aviv, you get the very clear sense that he's been there and he's bringing you along with him.


Joey Alison Sayers's, "Number One" takes a different tact and focuses less on place and time, instead opting for relationships.  I have to admit I am less familiar with her previous work, but I did find it quickly online and am pleased I took the trouble to find it.  She has a wonderful sense of humor and she uses that quirkily in her portion of THREE.  The effect is unsettling within seemingly static panels filled more with space and emptiness than detail. This unsettled feeling counterpoints the easy reading of her brightly colored and breezy storytelling.  My feeling after reading is that I just overheard a series of conversations over the fence between a next door neighbor and her hired workers.  Sometimes the most compelling stories are things you'd rather not know about first hand.


Perhaps the most confrontational story in this anthology is editor Kirby's own offering, "Freedom Flight".  His approach to storytelling for me has always been a little self-conscious and here he is elaborating a story he has hinted at before in other strips.  But he does what he can to help you follow the twisty thoughts of his main character with little formal motif-like arrows that repeat like punctuation throughout the telling.  These curvy and staccato, swirling lines echo the same lines that make up the legs, arms and clothing of all the characters. These are pointers to the dissolving nature of the character's relationships.  That dissolution is both isolating and freeing, so much so that some conscious direction is seemingly needed to connect them on the page.


I like his artwork because even in the tiny panels he gives himself to carve out a story, there is a cohesive design that pulls it together on the page.  He also has a keen eye for arresting images.  Molecular patterns that swirl around his main character and then dissolve into shadows and shading on the remaining page, a street map that illustrates an urban neighborhood and then becomes the pavement where his character walks onto the next page, and a handicapped dog missing a front leg that seems to fade away into silhouette and then disjointed pieces, even as his owner enters the panel with even more curvy lines to retrieve him.  I would like to see more visual real estate given to these small visual moments, because they help to frame and arrange the themes of Kirby's stories.


It is challenging to create a satisfying and whole reading experience in only thirty-one pages of a comic book, which is why most superhero comics serialize a much larger story.  It keeps the readers coming back.  When you share that space with other artists it can be distracting and I have to admit the variations between the artists and stories kept me from jumping into reading this volume several times.  But once I did, I discovered this anthology offers far more heart and soul for your money than any superhero comic can.  Ultimately, I think it is well worth the investment and I will be looking out for the next issue with great anticipation.


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