"Drinking the Sand"

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Wednesday June 19, 2013 · 1:31 PM PDT

2013/06/19 · 13:31

In May of 2013 I was invited to speak at the Rocky Mountain Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, which is an academic conference attached to the Denver Comicon. This is where the Aurora "Dark Knight Rises" theater shooting took place and, a decade earlier, Columbine. Our topic for the conference was depictions of violence and healing in comics.

This is the presentation I gave. It's name comes from a memorable line in the American President. My topic is gun violence, superhero comics, and our universal hunger for narrative. It's a little bit less than 20 minutes.

Americana: A Liberal Super Hero

Tondropolis

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Saturday May 14, 2011 · 10:40 AM PDT

2011/05/14 · 10:40

A few years back, during Obama's candidacy, I floated the idea of creating a self-consciously liberal super hero. I teach superhero comics for a living, and my dissertation and subsequent work drew me away from the project, but with DKos's new interest in getting comics onto the front page, I am prompted to dust the concept off and show it around to see if there is interest.

I'm a writer, not an artist, and that means this comic needs to be collaborative. If you're interested in comics and in the way comics intersect with liberal politics, and especially if you are an artist who is interested in superhero comics, this project might interest you.

Tondropolis

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Wednesday November 05, 2008 · 3:32 PM PST

2008/11/05 · 15:32

I'm from California's 44th district, the home of Ken Calvert. For those of you who may not remember, Calvert was one of the top 20 most corrupt members of Congress for three years in a row. He's been in office for 15 years, ever since 1993, when he was also arrested for trying to solicit a prostitute.

For years we have had only a token candidate to oppose Calvert, but this year the folks at Democracy for America teamed up with Bill Hedrick to run a grass roots campaign that was a longshot by any measure.

And this morning I got up to discover that he's winning.

According to the consolidated election results for the Press-Enterprise, our local paper, Hedrick is ahead by 5 points with almost 90% of the ballots counted. I can't find any more information on this race nor do I see any comments from either candidate on their home pages.

If anyone knows anything about this race, I'd love to hear what you have to say. I was not involved in Hedrick's campaign, but nothing would please me more than seeing that tool Calvert kicked to the curb.

Americana: The Pitch

Tondropolis

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Sunday August 12, 2007 · 10:48 AM PDT

2007/08/12 · 10:48

The Americana project is an attempt to create a consciously liberal, progressive superhero, in an effort to demonstrate liberal values in a popular culture arena and, at the same time, tell some fun stories. There have been three diaries on the project so far.

A couple of days ago I sat down and drafted a one-page "Pitch" which tries to encapsulate what the series is about. This is very much a draft text; I am not sure I can get across the fact that I am writing this character "straight" (that is, seriously, and not for laughs or camp) without including a sample script. But it was time to boil it all down to one page, so here goes.

Tondropolis

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Wednesday August 08, 2007 · 9:58 PM PDT

2007/08/08 · 21:58

In the first segment of Americana, I resolved to make a superhero who embodies liberal, progressive values. In the second, we learned more about this character: she is a woman from a dystopian Conservative future who has come back to our present day to prevent her own future from ever existing. We determined that she will wear a uniform based on the American flag, and we explored the themes that the name "Americana" suggests: the cowboy, the Gothic, and other elements of uniquely American culture, like jazz music.

Today we'll look at what extraordinary abilites Americana has, and start looking for inspiration as to her "look."

Tondropolis

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Tuesday August 07, 2007 · 9:49 PM PDT

2007/08/07 · 21:49

In my diary yesterday I kicked off the Americana project, a superhero comic with liberal and progressive values. I started with the essay that first inspired me to begin the project: a few paragraphs from Matthew Putsz's Michael Moore in Tights: An Examination of the Possibilities of Progressive Superheroes.

Today we will begin to explore the title character. Who is she, where is she from?

Tondropolis

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Monday August 06, 2007 · 10:51 PM PDT

2007/08/06 · 22:51

I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of California and one of the things I study is comic book superheroes. At the meeting of the Popular Culture Association earlier this year in Boston scholar Matt Putsz presented a paper called Michael Moore in Tights: An Examination of the Possiblity of Progressive Superheroes. Matt begins by discussing the assumption among comic scholars and readers that superheroes are by their nature conservative -- that they support the status quo and conservative values. He cites Pete Coogan (author of Superhero: the Secret History of a Genre), Richard Reynolds (author of Superheroes: A Modern Mythology), and "Internet critic" Michael Hutchison as examples of this point of view.

Tondropolis

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Thursday August 02, 2007 · 9:34 AM PDT

2007/08/02 · 09:34

In its increasing effort to reach out to young people, the ACLU has teamed with some excellent talent and some very high-profile individuals to create a comic book about the need to preserve our civil rights. The comic does not appear to be a superhero book, though Palmiotti and Mark Badger at least are old time superhero creators and the book has a very evocative title: Defenders of Freedom.

Tondropolis

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Thursday May 11, 2006 · 11:44 AM PDT

2006/05/11 · 11:44

I've heard a lot about Francine Busby's run in California's 50th district but that's not where I live. I attend UC Riverside and that puts me in the 44th, home to Ken Calvert, Republican incumbent.

There's an election coming up and I don't want to vote for Ken. Read More

No one would have believed...

Tondropolis

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Tuesday July 05, 2005 · 9:31 AM PDT

2005/07/05 · 09:31

I've long thought that the opening paragraph of War of the Worlds is one of the best in any novel in the English language. So it was with no small amount of pleasure that I heard Morgan Freeman supplying it by voice over at the beginning of this summer's second exceptional extravaganza (and if thou hast not yet seen thy Batman Begins, then get thee to the cinema, and forgetteth not thy copy of Batman: Year One, which didst serve as the holy writ and bible for Chris Nolan, Esquire).

Not everyone has liked WotW. Spielberg lost Roger Ebert the moment the tripods appeared, and like many readers of the novel, Ebert wonders, "How could the Martians be smart enough to invade our planet but dumb enough to die like that?" And like most people who ask that question, Ebert is Missing The Point.

War of the Worlds and the War in Iraq, below the fold. Read More

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"Drinking the Sand"

Americana: A Liberal Super Hero

Upset in CA-44?

Americana: The Pitch

Americana III: Super Powers

Americana II: The Secret Origin

Americana: Part I

ACLU: the Comic Book

CA-44

No one would have believed...