I’m the Odd Man Out as GNG Takes on Roaming
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains details from the graphic novel Roaming, so if you value surprise stop reading right now! Here’s the rundown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which was held Saturday, July 12. The book: Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming, which follows three Canadian first-year university students on a five-day trip to New York City. The discussion: In short, I was in the minority as the only GNG member who really enjoyed the book. Odd man out, as usual! GNG has a custom of choosing a Canadian comic for our July meeting, so we honoured that tradition with this selection. (By sheer coincidence, it comes on the heels of two other books by Canadian creators in May and June.) I, along with one other member of the group, pitched Roaming back in January. While I love everything by the Tamakis, other members of the group strongly disliked Roaming, including someone who couldn’t even finish the thing. The thick volume centres on Dani, Fiona, and Zoe, three university students who take a trip to New York for a brief holiday from their studies. It’s very much a story about the problems of young people, which I think is where most of the antipathy comes from. No one at the table said it wasn’t a realistic portrayal of characters in their late teens/early twenties – in fact, the problem seemed to be it was too accurate. Carol Vandenberg, co-owner of L.A. Mood, said Roaming didn’t work for her because it isn’t leavened with humour. The trio of characters see Big Apple sights, go to bars, get coffee, eat pizza, and of course there’s a drama because Fiona is an interloper who threatens Dani and Zoe’s friendship. Spats ensue. Carol made the point that if you’re going to tell a story about young people, a better approach would have been the one John Hughes adopted with the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Play the foibles of youth for laughs. Gord Mood, L.A. Mood’s other owner, echoed that sentiment, adding the example of another funny coming-of-age comedy, Dazed and Confused. Several elements prevented GNG members from enjoying the travel tale including the ending, which doesn’t wrap anything up. Other members said the art was prosaic, and that a flashback scene – in which we observe Dani and Zoe at a high-school party – wasn’t introduced in a way the reader could understand. Why do I feel differently? Part of my reason for pitching the book was how the character of Fiona is a huge drama queen. Very early in the book, there are signals to readers to treat anything she says with skepticism. The question in my own mind was, “Can we appreciate this book even if one of the leads is an awful person?” After all, if an artist and writer can create a comic with a character who turns you off, isn’t the fact you reacted to a fictional character like you would to a real person a sign the creative team has done a good job? (Would be interested in any opinions on this question in the comment box below.) I also believe there’s something darkly funny about a group of friends whose relationship revolves around avoiding roaming charges on their cellphones. As it turned out, Fiona was just one of the reasons GNG members didn’t enjoy the book, although someone suggested a comic depicting the same characters once they are out of school and taking on careers might make for a better read. Further reading: If you aren’t daunted by now, two other graphic novels by the Tamakis come to mind – Skim (it follows high-school friends) and This One Summer (which features a tween lead). L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of each month. Next month’s selection is I Am Stan, Tom Scioli’s graphic biography of the one-time Marvel Comics editor-in-chief. You might have heard of Lee before! We will reconvene August 9 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. You are invited to come join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
AI Doesn’t Even Have the Brainpower of a Lazy Journalist
By Dan Brown Journalists work hard. I know. I’ve had a long career as one. But in one recent instance, a newspaper reporter substituted artificial intelligence for basic journalism legwork, and did more damage than just disgracing himself. His error was so monumental, it affects all of us in the Fourth Estate. You may have heard about it. In May, the Chicago Sun-Times published a mea culpa after it published a list of 15 books to read this summer. This was part of its summer preview supplement. The problem: 10 of the books don’t exist. The writer who had been assigned the story, Marco Buscaglia, used a shortcut to generate the article. “Rather than a reported recommendation list, this one had been generated by an AI agent,” explained Melissa Bell, the head of the non-profit that owns the daily, in the apology to readers that followed. For some reason, neither Buscaglia nor the copy editors at the paper bothered to check the accuracy of the titles he was recommending. “The section was licensed from the third-party content provider King Features, a division of Hearst. The content wasn’t produced by Sun-Times journalists, nor was it reviewed by the newsroom prior to placement in the paper,” Bell added. Trust me when I say not one Chicago Sun-Times reader in 100 cares that the article wasn’t produced in-house. In my experience, the audience doesn't make a distinction between stories written by a newspaper’s own employees versus wire copy. So it is the Chicago Sun-Times that will take the full hit to its credibility. But it doesn’t stop there. This incident will tarnish all journalists. It gives more fodder to the media haters who want to discredit the work reporters, photographers, and editors do. Why is it in their interest to erode the image of journalists? So the public doesn’t listen to the media when it sounds the alarm. And there is an even more aggravating aspect to this incident. Do you know how much effort it would have taken that journo to generate a list of 15 books to read this summer? Not much. Trust me. If you’re not a journalist, let me break it down for you. You can trust me – I have made many such lists of events to attend, movies to watch, graphic novels to read, for publication in national, regional, city and campus papers. I hope my fellow journos don’t hate me for revealing these tricks of the trade, but in the grand scope of journalism this is not a tough assignment. First of all, any really good journalist is an avid reader. Given a reasonable bit of time, they would be able to generate 15 suggestions based just on the books they have recently read. Or you could consult publishers, who put out real books that deserve promoting. Or talk to a librarian or two. How about local book clubs? Or check the bestseller lists. Are you getting the picture? This is why this is more about journalistic laziness than technology. One writer decided it wasn’t worth even the minimal effort it would have taken to carry out his assignment. And now the rest of us have to pay the price. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Supes Mag Sets Stage for Movie
By Dan Brown It’s all about Superman this week. The new James Gunn-directed Supes big-screen adaptation lands in theatres Friday and I have some thoughts. One of the things I’ve been reading in the run-up to July 11 is DC Comics Presents Superman, a magazine-size publication that presents “the official comic book stories that inspired the new movie.” Included in the larger format are All-Star Superman #1, Superman For All Seasons #1, and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel # 1. Each presents a different interpretation of the character from Krypton. All-Star Superman is a what-if scenario from 2005 in which Clark Kent reveals his secret identity to intrepid reporter Lois Lane as he faces his own mortality. “All-Star Superman is the thing that we borrow the most heavily from,” Gunn has said. In Superman For All Seasons (the “spring” instalment, which came out in 1998), a high-school-age Clark must confront the fact he’s not like other teens – the scissors break when Smallville’s barber tries to cut his hair; then, he is lifted off the ground by a tornado that hits the town, yet he doesn’t suffer any injuries. He knows something is up. Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, from 2005, explores the motivation of Superman’s nemesis. For a Superman story to really work, I think, Lex has to be relatable on some level, and tech billionaires aren’t exactly looked upon warmly these days. The promo magazine is a good introduction to the character’s many incarnations down through the decades. It also carries on a long tradition. When modern Superman movies started appearing in 1978, DC released all kinds of supplementary material to create buzz and give fans a look behind the scenes at the making of the motion picture that aimed to make moviegoers believe a man could fly. The internet serves the same purpose today. In recent months DC has also put out any number of versions of 1938’s Action Comics # 1, in which the Man of Tomorrow made his first appearance – he could only leap over tall buildings at that point, full-on flying wouldn’t come for a while. So there’s a large-format version of the debut issue, a version with a foil cover, et cetera. The one reboot of Superman’s origin that seems to get no love from Hollywood is the one I am most familiar with. In 1986, DC wooed sometime Canadian John Byrne away from Marvel, where he had established himself as the hottest comic creator in the industry with long runs on Uncanny X-Men and Fantastic Four. DC was in the process of restarting its continuity after the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries. So Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli did the trick with Batman: Year One, while Byrne got the assignment for Superman. This led to my favourite Supes story of all time, 1987’s Superman No. 2, in which Lex Luthor invents a computer so powerful that it successfully identifies Clark Kent as Superman. But Luthor ignores the answer. This strikes me as the perfect interpretation of the villain: If there was a Lex Luthor, he would be able to create a machine capable of unmasking Superman. And if there was a Lex Luthor, he would be so egotistical he would not accept the truth that a milquetoast newspaper reporter secretly has the power of Superman. As for the new movie, I’m not sure what to expect. They’ve been marketing the heck out of it, but the fact they have focused in trailers on Krypto, Superman’s dog, makes me wonder. Also, much of the online chatter has been about Gunn’s brave decision to give the Superman costume trunks. Those might not be promising signs. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Fantasy List Incomplete Without Morgaine
By Dan Brown So TIME magazine has come out with a 100 Must-Read Fantasy Books special edition and I’m unimpressed. I know the list isn’t meant to be the final world on the topic. However, there’s one omission I just can’t forgive: C.J. Cherryh’s greatest heroine, Morgaine. There are the usual suspects – books by Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis made the cut – as well as a number of contemporary works chosen with an eye to diversity. But to not include Morgaine – featured in four of Cherryh’s many novels – feels like a slight to fantasy fans. It left me wondering how young the big brains are who drew up the magazine’s list, because judging from their choices, they seem to think there weren’t any powerful women in fantasy fiction before about the year 2000. I first encountered Morgaine a few years after 1976’s Gate of Ivrel was published. I read her adventures on the front porch of the Baptist parsonage in Poplar Hill during grade-school summers, and she made an immediate, deep impression on my developing imagination. Not because she stood out. The truth is, I was already familiar with many kick-butt female characters. I got my notions of how women leaders should be portrayed from Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia in Star Wars and the likes of Thundra in Marvel’s Fantastic Four comics – Thundra could go toe-to-toe with the Thing! Morgaine was just so . . . cool. Eerie. Mysterious. Dangerous. If you haven’t read the tetralogy in which she stars, treat yourself. She’s the last surviving member of a team charged with sealing a series of gates connecting a crumbling interplanetary empire. She’s like Batman in the sense that her mission is to create a universe in which she is obsolete. The gates transport people not only between places, but also eras. So things like this can happen: A foe can use a gate minutes before Morgaine rides through on her war horse. When she exits, she is on a different world hundred of years later, where the descendants of her enemy regard her as a long-lost legend. Morgaine is utterly committed to her quest, and wields a sword called Changeling, which has a gate at its tip. She uses the high-powered blade to send entire armies into the void of space, her conscience seemingly untroubled by the mass killing. Her frost-white hair marks her as possibly a member of the evil race that originally invented the gates. The foil Cherryh uses as the reader’s point of entry into the story is Morgaine’s servant/bestie/possible love interest, Vanye, who is always urging her to be compassionate, which doesn’t come easily for Morgaine. Like I said, Morgaine wasn’t an exception in my mind. She was a big part of the template for me, showing how women characters could be multi-faceted and exciting. Which is why I soon read other Cherryh novels, such as the Pride of Chanur series. It was only later in life I looked back and said, “Oh, hey, all of those stories feature women as the central character. Cool.” If the purpose of TIME’s fantasy special edition was to spur debate, then it will fulfill its mandate. But contrary to what TIME’s editors might have readers believe, pop-culture fans have been grooving on strong female characters for some decades now. By the way, next year marks 50 years since Morgaine’s first appearance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if a streaming platform (say, Netflix) honoured the anniversary by adapting Cherryh’s work into a TV series? It would be a whole lot cooler if they did. (If you have any must-read fantasy novels you’d like to recommend, I’d love to hear about them in the comment box below!) Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Take A Graphic Trip Across Canada
By Dan Brown In honour of our national holiday, and as a way to protest the tariffs from our southern neighbours, many Canadians are travelling in their own backyard this summer. But what if you aren’t in a position to make the trek? Then take a trip across Canada – in graphic-novel form. That’s right, you can go from coast to coast to coast by reading the work produced by our dominion’s many talented comic creators. So here are suggestions for how to acquaint yourself with the regions of this great nation by looking through the comics set in those places. The East Coast: No trip to the Maritimes would be complete without a shipwreck, so let’s start our journey with Call Me Bill by London graphic novelist Lynette Richards. It’s a mystery, it’s an adventure story, it’s a reclaiming of an LGBTQ figure from the past – and it all begins with a maritime disaster off Nova Scotia, where Beal Art grad Richards lives in Terence Bay. I also recommend D.Boyd’s Denniveniquity and Chicken Rising, which cover Boyd’s formative years in Saint John, which is the city in New Brunswick – the one in Newfoundland and Labrador is St. John’s. Got it? La Belle Province: My first suggestion is Michel Rabagliati’s Paul Up North, part of which takes place during a snowstorm in Laurentian cottage country. And of course, the title character didn’t wear his winter jacket: There is no more Canadian predicament than that! As for the Montreal portion of our cross-Canada tour, I’m proposing Are You Willing to Die For the Cause?, which recounts the early years of the FLQ’s reign of error (the would-be liberators targeted Canada Post mailboxes with their homemade bombs). It was drawn and written by publishing house Drawn & Quarterly founder Chris Oliveros. Ontario outside Toronto: First stop, Jeff Lemire’s Essex County, which lovingly recreates the evocative landscape and taciturn people of Southwestern Ontario. Also recommended is Walter Scott’s Wendy, Master of Art, which is set in Hell, a small Ontario city that has an awful lot in common with Guelph. Toronto: Yes, I agree with you, there are way too many graphic novels set in Canada’s largest city. So instead of inundating you with a long list of options, I urge you to hunt down Matthew Blackett’s Wide Collar Crimes, a collection of comic strips that were published in Eye Weekly in the early 2000s. No other comic evokes the absurdities of life in Toronto like Blackett’s work does. The Prairies: So there’s Shelterbelts, set in a rural Mennonite community in Manitoba, as well as Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, which likewise attempts to capture the vastness of the landscape. I know this might be a stretch, but for Saskatchewan I recommend any Superboy adventure pencilled by artist Tom Grummet in the 1990s – in an interview at that time, he told me the wheat fields he drew near Smallville were patterned after the farms outside the window of his Saskatchewan home. Alberta: Since the tar sands are so important to Canada’s economy, you will want to check out Ducks, Kate Beaton’s account of her two years working in Northern Alberta’s oil patch. This story is not for the faint of heart, so definitely not suitable for young readers. British Columbia: Worth hunting down is the New Yorker’s cartoon edition from Dec. 28, 2020. That issue features the short graphic story Junban from Jillian Tamaki, and is adapted from her grandfather’s notes. The six-page reminiscence covers the same themes as George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy, and achingly calls to mind the Fraser River of the past. The North: Finally, we come to the land of the ice and snow! You may have an easier time getting a hold of Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage – set in Rupert’s Land – than the anthology of Nelvana of the Northern Lights stories put out by Hope Richardson and Rachel Richey in 2014, but it’s worth it. Taken together, these two selections offer bookends of Canadian comic-book culture, starting in the Second World War with the Canadian whites and moving up to the current day with talents such as Chantler. Yes, this list is incomplete! That’s by necessity. That’s also why I’m looking for suggestions from readers like you in the comment box below. What books would you add to the list? Let’s hear them, as well as a brief description of the parts of this country they represent. And happy Canada Day! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Memories of Call the Office
By Dan Brown It’s every Londoner’s birthright to rock out at Call the Office. And now it looks like a new generation of Forest City youth will get to exercise their birthright. According to a report in the London Free Press, the seedy watering hole — where I spent many a night in my teens and early 20s -- is to be reopened after the bigwigs at City Hall sign off on renovation plans. I call that a good-news story. As you may have guessed, I’m a Call the Office fan from way back. It looms large in my memory. I may have seen Iggy Pop at Kipling’s, Meatloaf at Dr. Rockit’s, KoKo Taylor at the Other Side of Five, and Cowboy Junkies at Centennial Hall, but it was Call the Office where I witnessed more live music than at any other joint downtown. The Legend Killers always put on a memorable show. Hopping Penguins raised the roof many a sweaty evening. And the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir was a guaranteed good time. There’s something about dive bars that naturally attracts young men (you will be unsurprised to learn I was reading a lot of Charles Bukowski in those days). Oh, and for the record, the proper nickname is “Call the O,” not “the Office,” even if the latter led to many unintentionally funny exchanges along these lines: Female acquaintance: “Where’s Dan tonight?”Male friend: “He’s at the Office.”Female acquaintance: “Wow, I didn’t even know he had an office job. He’s always working.” If you read the same Norm De Bono article, you’ll have heard the dormant bar’s owner has plans to put in a rehearsal space upstairs, an elevator, maybe even a washroom fit for human use. It won’t be the same. And that’s OK. I’m sure there is enough residual magic still sprinkled around the former York Hotel, which has been shuttered since pandemic times, to light up the stage. What do I see in my memories? There was that one bouncer who looked like John Belushi. He was awesome. And then the other bouncer who had the same haircut as Don Henley on the cover of End of the Innocence. There were street creatures we saw only at Call the Office. One, my drinking buddies and I nicknamed That Drunk Guy because, well, he was perpetually hammered. There was also Tall Alternative Guy and a whole crew of players in a drama playing only in our shared imagination. We saw them nowhere else. And yes, we sweated it out at shows featuring every future Canadian headliner: Crash Test Dummies, the Tragically Hip, Rhetostatics, you name it. I guess that’s what people are referring to as the Cassette Era now. Little did I know, but future friends like Gord Mood were at some of those same concerts. Nor do I know where we got the cash for all those Labatt 50s, which among our group of friends was called “Stinky.” You would put a loonie down on the pool table and if you and your partner had the magic touch, you could ride it all night. We also saw the Phantoms, which was rumoured to be a former Doors cover band. During my reggae phase, we saw Lazo and Satallites multiple times. And when the Gruesomes came through London on their farewell tour, I saw them at the Friday-night show, then came back for the Saturday-night show as well. Their bop I Need You still rings in my ears. One time one of the Ramones was scheduled to play, but the show was cancelled when he couldn’t get over the border. We stewed on the patio, drinking our cold bottles of Stinky. My Strathroy District Collegiate Institute classmate Tom Nesbitt was the lead singer for the Others, and their version of Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown inhabits a special place in one corner of my mind. White Punks on Funk seemed to be the house band, along with mainstays Julia Propeller. Those evenings generally went like this: Me and my buddies would go to GTs for what we called First Call, then stopped at the Wick for cheap draft before heading across York Street to our destination. The fun began in earnest when the band hit the stage. Now a new day is dawning for Call the Office and a younger generation will make memories of their own in the same spot where I came of age. I hope you have fun, kids! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
