THE COMICS JOURNAL ISSUE 261

THE COVER OF THE COMICS JOURNAL #261

RELATED:
TCJ Message Board discussion of interview
TCJ Message Board discussion of issue 261
David Alan Doane's review of the interview on Comic Book Galaxy
Sean Collins
Tim O'Neil

FOLLOWING: EXCERPTED FROM SEAN COLLINS' BLOG:

Tim O'Neil (and his wife) talk about Phoebe Gloeckner and her photo on the cover of the Comics Journal. (Tim, tell your wife that Phoebe's an autobiographical cartoonist, so any cover would have a picture of her, photo or no. It has little to do with her gender and lots to do with her work.)

Below: Gary Groth and Phoebe Gloeckner on the cover of The Comics Journal #261

First, his wife Anne explains her thoughts on Phoebe Gloeckner's photo-based cover for the Comics Journal (read all about it, or at least a debate about it, here.) I think a lot of this debate revolves around three misunderstandings: One, Anne's misunderstanding of how Phoebe has been working lately, i.e. doing autobio with photographs rather than cartooning. If we were to use Occam's Razor would explain the presence of a photo on a Journal cover she herself designed a lot more readily than the assertion that she's suddenly gone all wobbly and is no longer the astute examiner of gender and sexuality that we've long known her to be. Anne herself says she's only read probably ten pages worth of Phoebe's work, so that probably helps explain why she'd conclude that, in Tim's words, "Gloeckner is OK with defining her public persona and critical importance in direct proportion to her physical appearance in a notoriously male-dominated field." (It doesn't really explain why Tim, who has read a great deal of her work I think, would think that, but hey.) As Anne alternately puts it, "dude, if a guy did a picture on the cover and I called him vain, would you feel the need to defend him to everyone on the web?" Well, of course I would, if I felt that this analysis arose from a misapprehension about the guy's work which if corrected would explain the picture on the cover pretty handily.

Second, Tim's misunderstanding of what I was getting at with my first post on the subject--which of coures was not a post on the subject at all, but a link round-up that mentioned the subject in passing. All I meant by my two-sentence response to his wife's concerns about the cover is that, since Phoebe is an autobio cartoonist, we can expect to see her physical self on the cover of any publication in which her work is the lead story due to the nature of her work, not due to the publication's or her own exploitation of her gender or attractiveness. The confusion arose here because I didn't add the bit about how she's now using photography, so it sounded like my point was to patronizingly say "you do know she does autobiography, don't you, dear?", whereas what I was actually saying was "there's a perfectly harmless explanation for all of this, honest--don't lose faith in Phoebe!"

The third misunderstanding was Tim and Anne's shared belief that my posts were "an insult to [Anne]." Heck no! The more debate around here, the merrier; I really do think the whole thing sprung from my incomplete description of Phoebe's recent working methods in that little two-sentence link, anyway, so it's much ado about nothing. Nor did anything "touch a nerve" with me, nor does my being "a guy" have anything to do with it, nor do I think a familiarity with or ignorance of feminist thought enters into it at all either (my wife and I are feminists ourselves, and we have the subscriptions to Bitch and Bust, the dogeared copies of The Beauty Myth, Reviving Ophelia, and Against Our Will, and the years of dealing with body dysmorphia and eating disorders to prove it, but in the end I think Phoebe's credentials speak for themselves in terms of how we should interpret intentionally problematic or open-ended aspects of her work). Long story short, the reason I got all feisty was Tim's Br'er Rabbit impression: "Please, Br'er Sean, whatever you do, don't start a flame war with me!" There are better ways to avoid making things unnecessarily hostile and personal than calling a fellow out by name, invoking the flame war concept, and telling him what a patronizing ass he's being, all without linking to the original piece so that readers can view what's going on for themselves. (Particulary when there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for what the heck I meant with my two-sentence link in the offing, if one were to have replied civilly in the first place.)

Next up chez Tim is a review of Eightball #23. Tim is harder on the book than any critic I’ve yet come across; he feels that Clowes’s work has now become overly formal and joyless. Of course, the first thought that sprung to my mind was, “Given that this is a story about joyless people doing awful things, isn’t this a perfectly valid approach?” Fortunately, Chris Allen thought the same thing, and expresses it wonderfully in a letter to Tim reprinted on Tim’s blog, essentially questioning whether Tim doesn’t like the story because, well, it’s a story that Tim doesn’t like.* Tim’s response: Maybe so, but even weighing that, the cons simply outweigh the pros in telling this kind of story this way. For my money, Tim’s more cogent critique is that Clowes (and others) have told this sort of story before, and better—this echoes Steven Berg’s criticism of the book, among that of others.

*(Incidentally, this kind of “I don’t like it because it’s not what I wanted” type thing is not unlike what I think is going on with Anne and her view of Gloeckner’s Journal piece:

"I would’ve thought she’d take the opportunity to make something (or choose something from her body of work if she’s really busy) that makes a statement about her feelings (and extensive exploration of those feelings) of gender issues, discrimination, sexual identity – etc. But instead she puts on a cover that makes her look slightly crazed and cements the impression with a back cover that seems to imply she’s a little (or a lot) nutty with a chip on her shoulder. Does she think that she’s perceived that way by the community as a whole and she’s basically flipping you off? Or is she playing into a stereotypical view hoping you’ll stop and examine why you felt that way?"

Perhaps she’s doing neither, and simply telling a story that explores areas Anne’s not interested in, or in ways Anne doesn’t find appealing. Either way, it seemed spurious to me all along to have what is essentially a “that’s not what I would have done” reaction and use this as an excuse to ascribe insufficient feminism or forethought, or worse, artistic “tone-deaf”ness, to Phoebe or to the Journal. And I say this as someone who has busted the Journal’s chops on feminist grounds, as when they ran bikini shots of artist Jill Thompson during their interview with her. The difference then was that the picture wasn’t part of a Thompson comic, so I had no way of judging the intent behind or result of the picture’s inclusion other than comparing the Thompson piece to similar pieces on other (male) cartoonists; whereas with Phoebe, we have a whole body of work with which we can draw conclusions as to the true nature of the cover-photoromance. We may not like it, but I think we have enough to go on given its place in her body of work that we can not like it without ascribing some fundamental flaw cum moral failing to its very existence.)

FROM TIM O'NEIL'S BLOG:

I was flipping through the new issue of the Journal in the car and showed the cover - the Phoebe Gloeckner photo cover - to my wife. She looked at it and had a - shall we say - extremely negative reaction. I shall attempt to boil down the main thrusts of her argument:

Why is it that no male cartoonists have photo covers? Why is it that regardless of whether or not a female cartoonist's work is acclaimed or respected, there's still a premium on her being attractive that wouldn't be there for a male cartoonist?

I explained to her that Gloeckner, as with every cover-featured Journal interviewee, designed and crafted her own cover. In other words, she chose to have the photo cover, she took the photo herself, and she even chose the silly captions on said photo cover. I also explained that, even though I'm not as well-versed in Gloeckner's work as I could be, I knew that her comics specialized in multi-media experimentation and cross-contextual narrative - in addition to a hearty dose of veiled autobiography. So, in other words, a photo cover was definitely appropriate (or at least more appropriate than it would have been for, say, Kurt Busiek or Peter Kuper).

But still - she maintained - why did she do it? I don't think being a "feminist" means that you have to deny your femininity, but there are so many mixed messages sent by our culture on so many different levels. The question remains: if she were a handsome man, would she have had any desire to expose her face on a photo cover? The Journal always prints a nice photo with their interviews, its not as if people wouldn't get to see her. Furthermore, it seems an odd choice whenever a comics magazine does a photo cover.

I explained the Journal's torrid history with photo covers - the horrible Marv Wolfman cover and the just not very good (albeit not horrible, just not spectacular) Victor Moscoso photo cover. These were the only two I could remember off the top of my head, but there are probably a few I'm forgetting.

I hate sounding like Dave Sim on this point - (Dave Sim is something of a generic bugbear in our household - "be good or Dave will come and tell you about how YHWH controls the feminist/homsexualist axis from the center of the Earth!") - but I don't see how you can be a "feminist" - wanting to be treated totally equal to a man in terms of the way you're worth is preceived by the world - if such a big part of your artistic presentation revolves around your picture on the cover of a magazine. If you're a guy, no-one cares what you look like. But if you're a woman, it is naturally accepted that the way you look will be an integral part of your "persona". Furthemore, that comic strip on the back cover seemed silly - like she was trying to "excuse" her vanity by being self-consciously weird and "artistic".

When she saw that I was writing up this conversation for my blog, she wanted to assure my gentle readers that she's not a man-hating diesel dyke or anything like that.

I also think - she adds - that it sucks that feminism has to focus so much on appearances, either in the positive or the negative. Why does is matter what she looks like, either way? Why should I care? Does the fact that I'm even wrestling with this problem mean that Dave Sim has won?

I think her point has some validity, although because of the fact that I am not a Gloeckner expert - I haven't even read the interview yet - I don't have enough context to judge the cover in the framework of her career as a whole.

But there's one thing of which I am sure:

DAVE SIM ALWAYS WINS!!!

Adendum: I was just flipping through the Journal on the john: um, how come no one ever mentioned the fact that Sleeper is a Gen-13 spinoff? I mean, come on, people. The most critically acclaimed mainstream comic of the last year is a Gen-13 spinoff? Oh, I'm laughing. I'm soooo glad I never picked it up.
_ _ _

MORE from TIM O'NEIL'S BLOG:

I’m not going to speak on the subject of Phoebe Gloeckner anymore. I always hate these situations where I get stuck in the middle of conversations. Happens all the time on the phone, I’ll be talking to someone and someone will tell me something to relay through the middle. It’s annoying, and it always seems to happen to me.

Anyway, in the interest of not exacerbating the issue any further, the Wife has chosen to answer this controversy herself:

LEFT: Author of this commentary,
referred to by Mr. O'Neil as "The Wife."
LINK to The Wife's website

Wow. I knew I’d touch a nerve with what I wrote, but who knew it would be a guy who had such a visceral reaction to it.

Odd – when I first had my reaction and talked to Tim about it the other day, we had a long discussion that involved a lot of introspection on my part. As someone who has always chosen male-dominated fields (not purposely, it always seemed to just work out that way), I’ve always been in the minority at work. Maybe the only time I wasn’t in the minority was when I went back to school and studied Psychology. Psychology, sociology, there are a lot of females in those areas of study. I remember taking the first class where I extensively encountered feminist writings – a class on the Sociology of Gender – and thinking "damn, there are some pissed off women (womyn?) out there." I mean, not everything was Bell Hooks (you want a pissed-off chick? Try one who’s a black lesbian feminist and you’ve got one very unhappy individual) but there was a lot of stuff that made me do a double take.

Then there were the years working in computers, having to prove myself competent (and more) over and over and over again before people would assign me something without thinking twice. It got me a lot more sensitive to the issues of being a female in a male-dominated field, how you’re perceived, and how appearance can be used as a tool or a bludgeon. If you looked "too" good, people might start thinking you were trying to get ahead "based on your looks" – and if you didn’t live up to a certain standard, you were a geek and probably a dyke, because you were in a male-dominated field.

So maybe I’m internalizing the same stereotypes that were used against me. That’s why I had the talk with Tim, asking him how often people had photo covers on the Journal and what kind of work the artist had done. After all, it’s the COMICS journal, not the photo journal, without getting into the whole semiotics or whatever thing.

Not being a comics geek like my husband (I often joke that he married outside his religion), I don’t have the in-depth knowledge (hell, I’ve seen maybe ten pages of her work) of the artist that Sean seems to have. I guess I would have to ask him, "dude, if a guy did a picture on the cover and I called him vain, would you feel the need to defend him to everyone on the web?"

Nice choice of the cover that James Sturm did – that was exactly what I had in mind when I said to Tim "she has the whole comics world (or what passes for it) giving her attention with this cover, what kind of statement is she trying to make?" I would’ve thought she’d take the opportunity to make something (or choose something from her body of work if she’s really busy) that makes a statement about her feelings (and extensive exploration of those feelings) of gender issues, discrimination, sexual identity – etc. But instead she puts on a cover that makes her look slightly crazed and cements the impression with a back cover that seems to imply she’s a little (or a lot) nutty with a chip on her shoulder. Does she think that she’s perceived that way by the community as a whole and she’s basically flipping you off? Or is she playing into a stereotypical view hoping you’ll stop and examine why you felt that way?

Hell, I’m always reading too much into things. I just wanted to write this and say "dude, lighten the fuck up." I hate it when my husband gets all caveman on me when he perceives (probably rightly so in this case) an insult to his wife. In some ways, he’s remarkably old fashioned – which I’ve always found hilarious given that he was raised by such a feminist (and awesome) mother. My question was really just that – a question, and it raised a lot of interesting issues for me, especially considering all I’d heard on the issue of gender identity and feminism in what my husband had been reading came from Dave Sim. Hurray for the Journal giving long-overdue credit to one of the few females doing significant work in a male-dominated field. Whatever she decided to do with the cover, that was her artistic choice, and bully for her. I simply had a question, okay?

Now, can you all go back to some argument about heroes in tights or something so Tim can relax? I’d really appreciate it.

The Wife, aka Mrs. Hurting (ps, I do have a name, and Mrs. O’Neil doesn’t piss me off as a salutation although I prefer just "Anne" since that’s my name, too)