InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Venta"

jlroberson (jlroberson) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-24 04:46:00

Current location:	Seattle
Current mood:	discontent
Current music:	Do Make Say Think
Entry tags:	char: lulu, creator: frank wedekind, creator: john linton roberson, genre: adaptation, in-joke: shameless plug

Lulu: 10 Pages of a Work in Progress

As some of you know, I'm an indie cartoonist, and some time back I posted an autobio story, "Martha," which was my final story in my 4-year exploration of the smut genre. Having gotten tired of that, I have been working this year on a long-planned adaptation of Frank Wedekind's LULU plays(the other plan was WOYZECK, but, uh, a bit too heavy for me at this time), "Erdgeist" and "Pandora's Box." The latter of which is best known as a silent Louise Brooks vehicle. I love Brooks, but that's been done, and besides, it was hardly a definitive adaptation. Mine isn't either but I'm trying to be at least faithful to its spirit. But mine is set in the modern era, and I am being a bit loose with the rather archaic PD translation I'm working with.
In any event, I though this might be a good venue to show some of it so far, as you folks have taste, and I'm certainly not putting it on my site before shopping it around. So, here's ten pages of it. Most of these lack the greys I'm going to add later(more or less as you see in the first two), so please keep that in mind. Without further comment, here you go.

Mods: this is my own work under my own copyright, so hopefully I can post as much as I like.
(c)2009 John Roberson. All rights reserved.

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	psychop_rex 2009-08-25 08:09 am UTC (link)
	Niiiice, man! Good stuff. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	jlroberson 2009-09-05 09:52 am UTC (link)
	You want to know what's funny? You all liked it, mostly. And you're mainstream comics fans, and you liked an alty-drawn adaptation of a German play. You know what alt people, like at the Comics Journal Message board thought? They spat venom upon it. I think that's interesting. And counterintuitive of what people would assume about comics fans. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

psychop_rex
2009-09-05 10:37 am UTC (link)

In my experience, the artier side of comics (and, uh, no offense meant here, because I know you lean more that way than I do) has a tendency to be rather humorless about its own personal standards. It's much like arthouse cinema - the diehard devotees go into paroxysms of ecstasy over what they view as 'art', and rage and howl at what they don't - and their standards are often fiendishly high.
Mainstream comics fans, on the other hand, have been handed some pretty poor stuff these days, what with mishandled characters, generic artwork, sadly predictable plotlines, etc. Therefore, they tend to be a little less scathingly particular when it comes to quality stuff - following the cinematic metaphor, it's like when 'Dark Knight' and 'Iron Man' came out in theaters within a few months of each other and everyone went 'whoa, nelly!', because they'd gotten so used to superhero films that were half-hearted affairs that having two terrific examples of the genre one after the other was like a breath of fresh air. They turned out for the so-so ones anyway, but they TEEMED towards DK and IM. The artsy types still largely turned up their noses at them - or liked them, and felt REALLY guilty for it, and wrote five-page articles trying to explain away just WHY they liked them - but we nerds were happy, because we knew what we liked, and we'd seen it. We're more the pragmatic types. We may not know art, but we know what we like - and we like your stuff. It's good.

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jlroberson
2009-09-05 11:32 am UTC (link)

My feeling is that "art" is something that expresses something, and to me that has a component of fun or at least the excitement of seeing a way of doing things you might not have thought of. And I can enjoy both BLACKEST NIGHT and MAUS and see no contradiction there. The alt people have a tendency to define themselves more by what they exclude than what they include, and I think there's good stuff in all genres or non-genres, even if some genres are capable of more than others are.

So among the alt hipsters, I'm neither fish nor fowl. It's a puzzle. But again, it tells me something about comics fans that's heartening, and thanks again.

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	psychop_rex 2009-09-05 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	Any time, man. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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