Yesterday, I drove back out to EMU and spoke to Richard Rubenfeld’s grad students. It’s something I’ve done in years past, and every year, I’ve had a really great time. On this trip, though, I was joined by Scott McCloud and Jim Ottaviani, and what fun it was! It’s always a joy to work with Jim; he’s so darn smart and eloquent, I usually feel like a gibbering idiot by comparison, but he’s quite gracious and for some reason keeps agreeing to appear in public with me. Scott’s in a whole class by himself, and to say that he’s one of my real heroes is putting it rather mildly. Getting to talk with him for three hours, to a room full of artists, was an incredible experience. I had my MD player running, and so I should have most of it available as downloadable MP3s in the next day or two. I brought three discs on which to record, and the third one punked out on me, so I got about 3/4s of the talk.
We covered quite a bit of ground, and since most of the grad students had already read Scott’s book Understanding Comics, they had a pretty decent grasp of what comics were, even if only a handful of them had read comics in earnest before taking Richard’s class. This left us free to discuss comics at a more esoteric level than I usually get — since I’m frequently talking about the absolute basics of comics — this was also a treat. We compared comics to a lot of different forms of art, talked about the difference between porn and erotica, discussed the possibilites of the infinite canvas, and generally convinced a dozen people to go read more comics. It was really awesome. One guy even told me that my comic was the first one that he’d read as an adult, and one of the attendees, who was pretty skeptical of comics as an art form at the beginning of the class, came out a convert by the end, and one of the turning points for her was getting to see my book — and how different it was from the rest. That was a real thrill.
Scott, it goes without saying, was an incredibly gracious and intellectual speaker. I could literally sit at his knee and listen to him talk for hours. In many respects, he really is an Engineer, in that he is capable of taking this really really complex idea, “How Comics Work” — and distilling it down into easily comprehensible concepts. He’s made it possible to talk in concrete terms about this big, amorphous, diverse, complex (not to mention sometimes competely crazy) art form that so many of us know and love. It doesn’t really matter if you agree with all of his conclusions or personal philosophies, because the most important thing he’s done by far is start the discussion, and give us the basic terminology and tools we need to be able to discuss the subject intelligently.
At one point during dinner, Scott mentioned how geeked he was to meet his hero, James Burke (“He kissed my daughter!”), the host of the TV show “Connections,” and of course that made so much sense. James Burke was able to take these huge ideas about geography and geology and biology and a zillion other sciences and show a huge audience how they all interlocked and made the world we live in. Scott’s doing that with comics, and it’s really amazing to hear him speak.
After the lecture, Jim and Scott and I went out to dinner, and after going passed a few favorite Ypsi restaurants that were sadly closed (no DalaT or La Fiesta for us, boo!) we wound up over at the new La Shish that’s in the old Bill Knapp’s on Carpenter. Man, what a job they’ve done on that old place! It’s a really great restaurant now, completely unrecognizable from the previous chain restaurant, and you should all totally go eat there. </plug>
It was a really great time, and I got to hear about Jim’s new project idea, which is a pretty radical departure from what he’s done previously, but sounds like a phenomenal story and one that will translate incredibly well into a comic, especially in the format he’s considering. With his knack for getting talented artists to illustrate his stories, I’m certain it’ll be gorgeous. Scott filled me in on the guys behind the Flight Anthologies and Pants Press, each of which have recently cracked my head open like an egg. Amazing stuff, and you should all totally go read about them. I’ll wait. Back? OK, good. The sheer amount of talent coalescing in Portland these days is unbelievable — we’re all pretty sure there’s something in the water — and Scott had the skinny on most of them.
We then got to go have dessert at Jim’s house, delicious scones and tea and icecream served by the lovely and talented Kat, and more conversation and sound effects and other geekly delights. Such an evening. I am well and truly blessed.