There are no new conversations. There are only new ways of escaping them.

If you don't want a cluster of undergrads to swarm you, all big-eyed in their "we've been on campus since August and we all miss our pets" wonderment, don't sit outside on a nice fall day, playing a truly lazy game of fetch with a devistatingly handsome Labrador. 

If you don't want to field constant questions akin to "What's it mean?"  "No, really, what does it say?"  "Come on.  You can tell me - what's it say?" - don't get a decent-sized tattoo of a foreign word placed on a really, really obvious part of your body. 

And, finally, if you don't want to field the same three questions over and over again, don't mention to anyone - least of all academics - that you're writing your dissertation.  It's just a bad idea. 

It's been said before that I'm a bit of a slow learner. 

It's when I forget the importance of this last one that I realize that I'm having the same conversation on loop.  You'd think I'd find a way to change things up but - again - slow learner.  Here's how it always shakes out:

"You're getting a PhD?  What's your dissertation on?" 

And then I think, lost in the Choose Your Own Social Anxiety Adventure.  Do I answer honestly?  Blatantly lie?  Lie with a purpose?  Squeak and run away?  I've tried them all.  For some reason, though, I end up having the exact same conversation:

"Graphic novels?  You mean like comic books?" 

Well, no.  I don't mean "like comic books."  While, yes, I am working with a few comic books - one multi-issue run, one stand-alone issue so far, though I'm looking for a third example to balance things out - they don't really come in until the end, the last (hypothetical) chapter - and then I'm using them mostly as a counter-example.  While I think there is academic value in many ongoing comic titles, what I'm working with is a bit more specialized.  So, mainly, I'm looking at stand-alone graphic novels and collage journals/artist books like Dan Eldon's The Journey is ---

"I used to love Superman.  Have you read that Superman comic, the one where he flies around and stuff?" 

To be honest?  No.  No, I have not read that Superman comic.  Or the Green Lantern comic.  Or the Wolverine comic.  Or any other hero - mutant, alien, regular guy clad in leather or Lycra or truly embarrassing bodysuit or anything else thrown together to look "cool."  I've read none of those.  I used to geek out on early to mid 90s X-Men comics, and I have a particularly terrifying collection of Shadowcat and Gambit comics - at one point, I had every appearance of Gambit for an eight or nine year period, which, I guess is kind of sad when you ---

"What do you think about that new Avengers movie, huh?  It's going to be awesome, don't you think?"

Well, I mean, I trust Joss Whedon to deliver the awesome, but again, I don't really read Marvel titles anymore and I never read straight Avengers books, so I really have no idea if it's --

"So, they actually let you get a PhD in comics?  What's that about?  How is that at all a legitimate subject?  Did you do your undergrad in Peanuts strips?" 

Yes.  And I minored in Coloring Within The Lines. 

At this point, I generally find a way to slink away.  If I have the mis/fortune of running into the same person again later, I will undoubtedly field questions about my comics - "How are your comics coming along?"  "Changed the world with your comics yet?"  Why they have suddenly become mine, I do not know.  

(sigh)

So, you'd think I would learn and come up with some suitably slackademic non-answer.  "What's my dissertation on, you say?  Oh, contemporary visual rhetoric.  Multi-dynamic narratives.  The use of parallel narration to renegotiate the tension between symbol and icon and to resist the pressure of compassion fatigue in an image-saturated environment." 

But, you see, I'm a slow learner.  For some uncharacteristically bright-eyed reason, I stick with the truth and listen to people deride "comics" on the single hope that maybe, eventually, the conversation will change.    

Realistic To-Do list.

Things I should have done yesterday:

1. Finished grading papers.
2. Worked on dissertation.
3. Prepped lesson for today's class.
4. Finished painting bathroom.

Things I did yesterday:

Sure, "Dust and straighten graphic novel cube #6" wasn't technically on my list - but I've added it on there now.  And now I've gone ahead and scratched that one off.  Accomplishment!

I can justify anything. 

It's the wink that kills it.

Part of my dissertation involves reading comics and graphic novels and thinking about how they create an intentional reading experience that's aware of, but parallel to, journalism and public awareness.  We like to call this "The part of my dissertation that I actually work on - the reading of comics part" - it should not be confused with the other, more nefarious part, "Sitting down and transferring scattered notes on loose leaf to typed, well-planned document." 

Since I have the attention span of a coked-up toddler at a carnival, I tend to jump around between topics - some days, there's really no coherent thought to be constructed about The Photographer, so I have to jump back to I Live Here or over to Waltz with Bashir or the ever-fertile soil of Maus (ah, Maus. What can't you do?).  I stare at frames, I scan pages, I make exhaustive notes in my tiny, serial-killer-esque handwriting in a well-packed spiral notebook that I carry around like a giant creeper.  Usually, I can make something happen in that way - I can write something down that at least sounds legitimate (though, I've come to learn that everything sounds legitimate - and downright brilliant - at 3am.  Corollary: rereading late-night notes can cure the 11am doldrums in a right hurry.  Just, you know, FYI.)

But, some days, nothing works.  No amount of pacing.  No amount of obsessing.  No amount of starting at photographs and willing them to do something for me.  Nothing.  So, I turn back to this page:

From 9-11: Artists Respond v 2.

And, hooboy, we are OFF.  There's just something so, so wrong about this to me.  So very, very wrong.  I don't know if it's the sentiment or the colors or the... wait, no.  I know exactly what it is.  It's the wink.  The freaking wink, sound effect and all.  The wink drives me insane.  Is it an audible wink for the benefit of the in-text characters?  Do these Search and Rescue dogs need to hear Krypto freaking wink to know that he's there for them?  Does it make a little chime sound, like you'd expect the "Ping!" of someone's too-white teeth to make in a bad parody film?  Maybe the S&R dogs need to hear him wink because they can't see it, what with all of the grit and ash and important work that they're doing - so they need the aural reminder that Krypto is here for them (and is kind of a jerk, honestly). 

Or is the wink there for reader benefit, making it clear what Krypto is doing and with what intent.  It's fairly obvious that he's doing something - he has one eye closed and a smug little look on his face - but maybe there's some room for reader distraction in there.  Without it, a reader might assume that poor Krypto has gotten something in his eye, or is cringing at the scene or... hell, I have no idea.  Something.  So, sure, perhaps we need the baby blue clue, complete with embellishment, to really get what he's going for here... except... no.  I haven't a bastard clue why he needs to wink right now.  But go with it.

At this point in my thought process, I start to feel like a bit of a jerk - which isn't unusual, given that I am a bit of a jerk.  I'm getting used to feeling like one.  I've given myself the distance - distance of time, distance of reader intent, distance of jerkitude - to critique what was probably never intended for this.  But it's this kind of critique that runs at the base of my dissertation - hell, that runs at the base of my interest in graphic novels and visual rhetoric in general.  To look at pages like this one and problematize them - try to destabalize a passive reading, try to figure out what this was produced for, who it was produced for and how it delivered (or failed to deliver) on those expectations - is interesting.  It's what I do.  See?  Professional jerk.  It's a thing. 

So I find myself staring at this page and flipping back and forth.  On one hand, it drives me insane (oh GOD, the WINK).  On the other hand, though... One of the main things that I'm looking for in post-9/11 graphic narratives is the near-immediate development of agreed upon symbols to act as a visual shorthand, a temporal marker and an emotional stand-in.  This comic?  Still uses those.  But in a wonky, wonky way.  The gridwork used in the background tells the reader exactly where and when this comic takes place - there isn't the pressure of exposition when you have these visual markers (indeed, there isn't exposition - there aren't even people in this comic.  Well, okay, that's not true - there are hands shown, hands holding ridiculously heavy chains that once restrained the S&R dogs... which is a whole 'nother thing).

It's here that I begin to spin out of control, waffling between finding this comic fascinating and finding it really, really annoying (and, uh, reaching my happy medium via watching Buffy clips on YouTube).  And it makes me start to wonder about the role of comics in social/political awareness - how you can force different genres, different worlds together and make them play along.. but not always to a good result.  If we as the readers are living in a world where Krypto can fly in and drop of a giant freaking water dish (and I'll resist the temptation to point out that he's just plunked several hundred pounds of dish and water on top of the rubble that they're sorting through... oh wait... no I won't), why don't we live in a world where Krypto stays and helps the very non-super-powered German Shepherds who are doing the actual work?  What's that clash asking the reader to do, narrative wise?  We have a real-world location, an event very real to every reader - and we have it interrupted with smarmy sentiment.  But, maybe there's something larger at work here - maybe this page is a comment on the use of comics in general.  Sure, the comic hero can't come in and do the real-world work - but that hero can add a bit of reprieve, a refresher (in the shape of a comically oversized water dish), a bit of a mental breather before real work resumes.  Escapism - the permission for escapism without the pressure of wanting more, needing more from these make-believe heroes.   

This?  An extreme example.  Not one that I'll be including in my dissertation (should I ever get around to writing it).  But there are some that blur the line a bit more, that ask readers to balance a lot of levels of narration in an already destabilized landscape.  And those?  I delight in mocking critiquing scholarly, because I am a scholar.  A scholarly scholar. 

Know what else I do when I can't form a coherent thought worth the ink to write it down?  Write blog posts making fun of Krypto the Superdog and his freaking WINKING.

Sometimes, I obsess

It's true.  I tend to obsess over things.  I mean, it should come as a shock to no one - I quite freely admit to belong to several groups not normally known for their collective mental stability and ability to maintain perspective.  I own horses.  I read comic books.  I'm a grad student in the never-ending process of writing my dissertation.  No one has ever sat down and thought, "Wow.  Horse owners.  Now THAT is a group known for a rational, reasonable thought process."  Or, "You know, that PhD in contemporary graphic narratives/atrocity photography that you're working on - that's really got a ton of real-world generalization available to it right there."  "Collecting a 16-issue run with 48 total covers, including variants and reprints?  Why, yes - that IS a good life decision you're making there.  Well played, you!"  

So, really, it's part of my genetic makeup or something. 

Generally, I obsess over totally legitimate things.  I mean, I have a comic book collection numbering to the thousands - it just makes sense to have a comprehensive spreadsheet recording issues, covers, condition, artists and storage locations.  Good, rational sense (maybe some day, I'll tackle the difficult realization that I can justify just about anything).  And those (freakishly well-organized) comic books have led to the dissertation that will never die, so it all works out in the end, right?  I have a certain group of skills - obsessing, memorizing obscure facts about cult TVs from the mid- to late-90s, organizing, stacking things at right angles - and I put those skills to use. 

Sure, there have been some hiccups along the way (I still maintain that the NSync fiasco was ironic. It was meta. It was performance art. It was, importantly, during undergrad) but generally, I have pretty focused taste.

In short, I'm a nerd.  A bored, obsessive nerd.