Chronic Review: Glamourpuss # 14!

Glamourpuss # 14
Aardvark-Vanaheim
Script: Dave Sim
Pencils: Dave Sim
23 pages for $3.00


I think it's healthy to check in on the things you loathe once in awhile. It keeps you fresh, focused and it prevents the mind from spitting out dogmatic nonsense. I'm not suggesting that you should hold a subscription to everything you hate. That would seem counter-productive to a life of happiness. I'm suggesting that after two years of taking pot shots at it, that it was time for Ryan Lee to re-investigate Glamourpuss and experience what I've spent so much energy bitching about.

Just to quickly recap - for the uninitiated, Glamourpuss is a very bizarre hybrid. It combines a history of photo-realistic illustration (focusing mostly on Alex Raymond) with anti-feminist social commentary. By hybrid, I don't mean that this is one narrative that intermingles these things. One half of the book is photo-realism, and the other half is fashionista hijinx.

I think I could probably write a book on this book, but of course we don't have the time or space for that here. A few thoughts on my revisit to the House of Sim:

1) Dave Sim is an extraordinary penciller

I know that should be obvious by now, but I'm telling you the truth - I did not really absorb this fact until I read Glamourpuss # 14. I mean, this guy can really draw. I like his faces, I'm especially impressed with the way he renders hair. I like his lines that convey motion. There are several points during the Alex Raymond bits where he is layering "ghost" lines into a figure or scene, and they look goddamn fantastic.

In the first panel, Raymond is shutting the door of his vehicle, and it casts a shadow on the vehicle that just looks....spookily true. Everything looks accurate. The people, the cars, the backgrounds, it all rings true, and this is not a guy with a stack of photos and a lightbox. This is a penciller with a mature style at what I would assume is the top of the game. If he gets better than this, that would be pretty scary.

2) The Concept Is Still Completely Untenable

I know that Dave Sim is an adult funding this with his own hard earned money, and he can do what he wants. Fine.

This thing is too weird for life. There are certain things that just don't go together well, even if both elements are positive. I know people who like shrimp and people who like ice cream. Shrimp ice cream is a BAD fucking idea.

The photo-realism bit and the social commentary bit just don't work together. Listen, norms are powerful things. Norms are more powerful than laws, and yet they are almost never written. They don't need to be written, they are simply understood. To not understand them is to demonstrate "otherness", and perhaps even madness. It's off-putting.

If you have a friend who walks backward in a circle at the top of every hour and sings "Every Breath You Take", you will not be that person's friend for long. There's nothing illegal about walking backward. And "Every Breath You Take", while overplayed initially, is actually a pretty darned good song.

But you just don't do that. It's weird. It demonstrates that you fail to understand the basic fabric of 21st Century American culture if you do that. That person may have a host of other great qualities, and they are all probably made moot by that personal tic.

I'm betting that you know people in your life who engage in this type of behavior, although probably on a less "in your face" scale. They are crusaders, martyrs to their own cause, and usually quite tragic.

They thrust their fist to the sky and say "But I'm RIGHT! It's silly and arbitrary to dismiss me just because once per hour I walk backwards, plus the Police ROCK! They're the ones who are being stupid, why should I have to change???"

And I suppose the answer is that they don't have to change. Feel free to be shoved under the rug and ostracized if you like, and sometimes the world needs a good revolution, and then you really need a committed fist-thruster.

But my reply to these tragic cases now goes like this: yes, it is silly and arbitrary to dismiss a comic because it combines two completely ill-fitting pieces into one absurd whole. And yet, that's the way it is. It's equally silly and equally arbitrary to ignore a rule you recognize just because it pleases you to do so.

Pick your battles, I say. Perhaps the point of Glamourpuss is for Sim to stick up a black-and-white middle finger every other month and say to the world "I'm doing it my way, and up your ass if you can't handle it!" And if that's the point, mission accomplished. Congratulations.

If the point is to be heard, absorbed, understood....this is just too weird for life. The presentation is getting in the way of the message. Pick your battles. What is it Kevin Spacey said in Swimming With Sharks?

"If you're not anti-establishment at age 20, you've got no balls. But if you're not a company man at age 30, you've got no brains!" I think the Alex Raymond stuff stands fairly well on its own regardless of where you find it. But the social commentary part? The part where we need to trust that the authorial voice isn't shit nuts as it skewers the culture? Glamourpuss shoots itself in the foot there.

3) Incidentally, some of Sim's shots at feminism in this issue are....dare I say clever?

The back half of the book is set up as a parody of the Facebook privacy issues. Glamourpuss industries develops a "microbeCHIP" that infects all connecting hard drives and ISPs and allows one to tear into a target's account that you want to be "more than friendly" with.

The last 11 pages are Facebook profile pictures of women complete with profile information and the results their use of the MicrobeCHIP.

"Belinda S graduated at the top her class and was immediately appointed CEO of her father's worldwide multinational corporation based solely on merit. After doing that for two weeks she ran for and won a seat in the House of Representatives, ran for President and then switched parties. It was a busy year!"

That's funny to me. The obvious fallacy of "solely on merit", even as it's laid out straight faced is funny. The "two weeks" bit is a nice jab. Of course the obvious retort is to deny the stereotype of the "fickle woman", and yet...there's something there. Isn't there? And it's fairly tolerable to digest when it's done in good fun, and that's the vibe I got from these pages.

Honestly, comics could use a good satire book or seven. I'm not convinced I'm in on all of the jokes, (not exactly sure what all of the Teletubby stuff was in the Bunny Frou Frou bit) but a lot of the Facebook stuff was enjoyable.

Nothing in here seemed as toxic or deadly serious as the "Voids" and "Lights" business back in the day. Is this Dave Sim's letter to the ether declaring that he still feels that world's become a bit too pussified (I'll agree with that) but that he sees the lighter side of it all now? I don't know.

It's tough to know how to process the philosophy of an author who doesn't know that the Alex Raymond bits don't go with the fashion plate bits. How do you know when the guy who walks backwards and sings Sting tunes once an hour is kidding?

- Ryan

Gail Simone Is Writing The Best Book In Comics...And You're Missing It

Secret Six is the best comic book currently being published. By anybody. I make no apologies for that statement, and I put no qualifiers on it. I understand that quality is subjective, and that the criterion for what is "best" is well....slippery at best.

I don't care. And I don't want to hear any nonsense about Chris Ware or Joe Sacco or Peter Bagge, either. Yes, I've sampled all of them. I'm not some rube with a three title pull list. Gail Simone's Secret Six is the best comic currently being published. Deal with it.

You'd never know it to look at the sales charts or listen to the pundits, mind you. The Six didn't crack CBRs "Top 100" for 2009, which only means that everyone associated with it should be fired and banned from making such lists in the future. And the latest results from Diamond show Secret Six checking in at # 94 for the month at an estimated 22, 638 copies. Gotham City Sirens finished higher, and that book amounts to a pale imitation of Simone's Birds of Prey. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I blame DC for not recognizing what a gem it has and failing to push the title, and I blame the readership as well, which means I blame myself. We don't talk enough about the work that Nicola Scott does on this book that is absolutely to die for. We don't rave about the fact that our book is better than yours, and oh, by the way, ours comes out on time as well.

We don't talk about how Secret Six defeats all expectations in the most delightful ways, page after page, issue after issue. Or at least, we didn't. I'm going to start.

And the best way to demonstrate is just to show you a tiny example. Here's a quick post-battle scene after new "recruit" Black Alice asks Bane if he's all right:



This is where tough guys are supposed to spout lines like "It'll take more than that put a dent in me, little lady." You won't get that from Gail Simone. And make no mistake, there are tough guy lines available,(usually from Deadshot) but you won't be expecting those, either. There is nothing cliched inside Secret Six.

It also bears mentioning that the panel above features something almost unheard of these days, called "developed characterization." Bane speaks in sparse sentences like that. Matter of fact, you can peel any line from the Six blind and I can tell you who spoke it, because they are all unique entities.

And this is how Bane operates now; as the absurd father figure of the group. Things are a bit strained between Bane and his previous "child" Scandal, and now he appears to have shuffled that need onto Black Alice. For those of you who know Bane only as the chemically enhanced baddie who broke The Bat - would you have guessed that he now plays daddy for a group of psychotics? Unexpected. Always, delightfully unexpected.

So that's that. I promised in Chronic Insomnia Episode # 124 that I would post something about the great Dave Sim Vs. Gail Simone battle that occurred during Sim's promotion of Glamourpuss # 1. So here it is. She wiped the floor with him, by the way. Go figure.

Here's a little snippet that I particularly enjoy:

"I'm not afraid nor overly concerned with Dave's views on my gender. They don't bear much resemblence to myself or the women of achievement that I know. Also having worked at a crisis center for many years, I've seen many a female void get the shit kicked out of her by a male light, so the "by sheer coincidence, the sub-group of humanity that I belong to is clearly the best" thinking falls a little flat for me.

However, I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist. Dave's free to say whatever he wants and I defend that right even if I find some of it completely devoid of merit.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and in my own reading of Dave's op pieces, I came up with many questions I haven't seen people asking directly. So I appreciate this opportunity, as brief as it might be for me on a day where I have deadlines."

Do yourself a favor and read the rest of that scrum, it's delicious. And if you're not already, start reading Secret Six already, would you???

- Ryan