Culture Fiend

Nerd Alert: The MLA Convention is Coming to Seattle

And we wouldn’t miss it.

Posted by: Allie Oosta on Jan 04, 2012 at 09:45AM 0 Comments

Warning: Participants of the MLA Convention may be geeky.

Typically, any mention of the MLA drums up bad memories of high school and college research papers, but this weekend’s Modern Language Association Convention features less work, more play (especially if you’re a nerd like me). Each year, hundreds thousands of participants flock to the chosen city to attend seminars on literature, music, poetry, and education trends; it’s the Comic-Con of academia. Let me set the scene for this weekend: Grad students, professors, scholars, and well-read citizens will surge through the doors of the Washington State Convention Center. They’ll whip through their program books, furiously highlighting, circling, starring, and grinning over panels that they just can’t wait to attend. These are three of our favorites:

How Seattle Changed Comics 8:30–9:45am

The Seattle Sound: A look at Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, Hendrix, and More 1:45–3pm

Pinter in Seattle: A Creative Conversation with Frank Corrado and Harry Burton 3:30–4:45pm

Unfortunately, you can’t just pop in. But if you’re as curious as I am about the 750-plus panels this year, buy a weekend pass (the only way tickets are available). If not, stay tuned for my summaries, reactions, and more, coming next week.

UPDATE 1/6/12. Just found out about a free event at Town Hall tied to the MLA Convention: 60 alternative writers (many who are in town for the conference) will read three-minute snippets of their work, this Saturday 7:30–9pm. Writers on the docket include: Johanna Drucker, Rachel DuPlessis, Junte Huang, Susan McCabe, Laura Moriarty, Aldon Nielsen, Evie Shockley, Vanessa Place, Rebecca Brown, and Joe Milutis. —Laura Dannen

Modern Language Association Convention
Washington State Convention Center, Jan 5–8, $205–$265, 646-576-5167, mla.org

Add a Comment »

Tags: Poetry, Comics, Convention Center, Nirvana

Are You Going to Comicon?

There are a few things to know before you reach for the tights.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Mar 04, 2011 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

A suit for all seasons Stormtroopers return to Seattle. Photo courtesy Kathy Ann Bugajsky / Emerald City Comicon.

1. Let’s talk Shatner. Captain Kirk will only be in attendance on Saturday, for a one-hour Q&A on everything: the new and old Star Trek, his CBS TV pilot Sh*t My Dad Says. You could probably even ask him about Priceline, since William seems as sassy as ever at 79.
Saturday, March 5, 3-4pm, Room 4A.

2. Seattle native Rainn Wilson and director James Gunn ( Slither ) will also be around on Saturday for a chat about their new dark comedy Super (out here April 15). Wilson stars as a sad-sack who assumes a superhero identity—Crimson Bolt—to rescue his wife (Liv Tyler), who’s been “willingly snatched” by a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon). Ellen Page plays the Bolt’s sidekick, Boltie, which doesn’t sound too far off from her tag-along role in Inception. Typecast!
Saturday, March 5, 7pm, Room 4C3-4.

3. It’s at Washington State Convention Center from March 4-6, which means you can do some quality people-watching from the Cheesecake Factory across the street at 700 Pike.

Are you even sure you’re geeky enough to go to Comicon? Take our questionnaire to find out.

Tickets for Emerald City Comicon available at the door—$45 for a three-day pass, $20-$25 single day.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Comics, Convention Center, Comicon

Iguana Girl vs. the Chick Lit Stereotypes

A Seattle publisher ventures into manga with tales of sci-fi romance, doomed princesses, and hideous heroines.

Posted by: Eric Scigliano on Sep 10, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Not your father’s comic books: Moto Hagio’s “Iguana Girl.”

This is too much of an event to ignore: Fantagraphics, Seattle’s eclectic and prolific comics publisher, which has revived everything from Popeye to Peanuts in archival editions, has just published its first volume of manga—the comics that may be Japan’s most popular and influential art form. Trouble is, just as Woody Allen can’t understand mime, I usually don’t get manga. The big Keane eyes and blandly androgynous, racially indeterminate features of the youthful characters (and nearly all the characters are youthful) creep me out before I even start reading.

Worse yet, this is shojo manga, comics for tween and teen girls, a demographic I fit like a walrus fits a fashion show. But these aren’t just any girl comics: A Drunken Dream and Other Stories ($24.99 from Fantagraphics Books) is a four-decade anthology of graphic short stories by Moto Hagio, the “founding mother” and premiere creator of shojo manga, who, the promo suggests, has raised an insipid pop genre to a serious art form.

Does Hagio’s work justify the hype? Her visual storytelling and graphic invention, by turns fluid, crisp, and stately, certainly do. The earlier stories in A Drunken Dream, from the 1970s and ‘80s, are the ones most bound in little-princess conventions; their sensitive, spontaneous young heroines are crushed by the cold, callous adult and teenaged worlds. The long title tale is a too-twee sci-fi romance. But the 1991 “Iguana Girl” is a heartbreaking fable of maternal rejection: a love-starved girl looks normal to everyone except herself and her mother, who see a hideous iguana. Another tale finds a trenchant ghoulish metaphor for sibling rivalry and symbiosis: conjoined twins, one an adored, beautiful simpleton literally sucking the life out of her withered, intelligent sister. These two and Moto’s other later stories do indeed raise manga to literature.
And their refreshingly hideous protagonists don’t even have Keane eyes.

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is the first volume in an anticipated manga series from Fantagraphics. After a start like this, I can’t wait to see more.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Books & Talks, Fantagraphics Books, Comics, Art Exhibits, Manga

Collateral Damage: The Comic

Cartoonist Carol Tyler probes her family’s inner war wounds in words and pictures, and shares the results at Fantagraphics.

Posted by: Eric Scigliano on Sep 06, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

From A Good and Decent Man, the first volume of Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know graphic memoir. A show of art from the new second volume opens with a book signing this Saturday at Fantagraphics Books.

“Greatest Generation” hoopla will never seem the same after You’ll Never Know: Collateral Damage, book two in Carol Tyler’s sprightly but relentlessly honest “graphic memoir” (new from Fantagraphics, with an author reception this Saturday and a show of art from the book through October 6).

This volume both revisits and picks up from the first one, in which Tyler recounted the wartime adventures and ordeals of her father, a G.I. in the long slog to victory over Hitler. Dad’s the classic taciturn, can-do, don’t-want-to-talk-about-it WWII vet, drowning combat horrors and every other emotion in an unending bustle of activity. Decades later he starts looking back, prompted by a forgotten wound he now wants compensation for. This Rosebud leads Tyler to re-examine her own messy life and relationships—youthful neediness, neglected husband, rebellious, self-destructive daughter—and slavish but resentful devotion to her bullying dad. All lead back to a war that ended before she was born; this is the story of not just a family but a generation, or two or three. And all are told with a saving dash of humor.

Tyler’s form, a mix of scrapbook, diary, and cartoon panels, is likewise messy and eccentric, but it pays off in layered textures and viewpoints. Two famous precedents, Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, seem almost one-dimensional by comparison. What’s most unusual is Collateral Damage’s raw, diary-like sense of immediacy: It feels as though Tyler is sharing each discovery and deepening insight as it unfolds. Which just might be the case.

Carol Tyler, You’ll Never Know
Book signing and opening reception Saturday, September 11, 6-9pm
Exhibition continues through October 6.
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale Street, Georgetown

Add a Comment »

Tags: Books & Talks, Fantagraphics Books, Comics, Art Exhibits