Book Review: Superheroes Smash the Box Office: A Cinema History from the Serials to 21st Century Blockbusters by Shawn Conner

 reviewed by Edward Whatley, Georgia College & State University

Shawn Conner. Superheroes Smash the Box Office: A Cinema History from the Serials to 21^st Century Blockbusters. McFarland & Company, 2023. 238 pages, $39.95 (Paperback), ISBN 9781476676661. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/superheroes-smash-the-box-office/

In contemporary cinema, superhero films have become a monolithic genre, capturing audiences and box office revenues with unprecedented fervor; however, when superheroes first made the leap from their native comic books onto the big screen, their early appearances were not in feature films but in Saturday serials.  In hindsight, the transition seems logical given the similarities between comic books and serials.  Both formats were aimed at younger audiences.  Both featured episodic storytelling and cliffhanger endings.  In Superheroes Smash the Box Office, author Shawn Conner provides a rather breezy 238-page journey along the long and winding path from cheaply produced 1940s Saturday afternoon superhero serials to the 21^st century blockbuster superhero feature films.

Covering almost nine decades of cinema history is an ambitious undertaking, and Conner explains in his introduction that he found it necessary to restrict the book’s scope to “live-action American movies.” (2)  Chapter one begins in 1941 with the first superhero to appear in a live-action production: Captain Marvel (Shazam to later readers), soon followed by Batman and Captain America. This chapter is easily one of the most interesting in the entire book, as it covers territory that will be unfamiliar to many readers.

Moving on from the serials, Conner expands the scope of the book by spending the next two chapters discussing superhero television shows, namely: Superman starring George Reeves, Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward, and Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter. He also covers the 1970s Marvel television shows and movies featuring the Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, and Doctor Strange.

With chapter 4, Conner returns his focus to the big screen to discuss the 1978 film Superman starring Christopher Reeve.   From this point on, the book sticks with feature films through its concluding discussion of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Conner explores how each adaptation—be it a serial, television show, or feature film—contributed to the evolution of superhero cinema. The discussion includes the influence of specific characters and storylines on the genre's development, as well as the impact of technological advancements on special effects and storytelling techniques. Fans of the original comics will also enjoy his discussions of how the screen adaptations adhered to or diverged from the comics source material. 

How successful Conner is in his telling will depend largely on the expectations of the reader.  His writing style is engaging and entertaining.  His deadpan plot synopses are often laugh-out-loud funny. But readers should not expect a very deep dive into any specific films. As I stated earlier, this is a rather breezy reading experience despite the enormity of the topic.  While early chapters offer more (relatively) extensive discussions of their subjects, the pace seems to quicken and the amount of space devoted to specific films seems to dwindle as the number of films grows in more recent years. As the narrative progresses, it feels like Conner is increasingly rushing toward the finish line.

And the finish line approaches rather abruptly. In his two-page epilogue (written in the summer of 2023), Conner mentions eleven recent films that had been released by that time but are not discussed elsewhere in the book.  He cites most of the films’ mixed reviews and lower than expected box office performance as evidence that the superhero film is “at a crossroads, or perhaps at a portal.” (189) Making such a claim but offering so little elaboration on what possibly lies beyond the crossroads/portal makes for a frankly less than satisfying conclusion.

Conner cobbled his narrative together “through books, articles, editorials, audio commentaries, podcasts, reviews and the movies and comics themselves.” (2)  And his bibliography is indeed impressive, although some original interviews might have added to the book’s value. While the book may lack depth, it succeeds in condensing almost a century of film and television history into an engaging and humorous narrative that should appeal to both longtime fans of the genre and general audiences.

Book Review: Data and Doctor Doom: An Empirical Approach to Transmedia Characters by Mark Hibbett

 reviewed by Chris York

Mark Hibbett. Data and Doctor Doom: An Empirical Approach to Transmedia Characters. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. $110 (Hardcover). https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-45173-7

Mark Hibbett’s book is the most recent installment of the Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels series edited by Roger Sabin. The series has a broad, international focus, with a mission to explore “all aspects of the comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel, […] through clear and informative texts offering expansive coverage and theoretical sophistication,” (ii) and Hibbett’s empirical study delivers on that mission.

Hibbett’s purpose, as he states in his introduction, is “to define a straightforward methodology for empirically analyzing transmedia characters” (1). By identifying and collecting character data in a number of categories from a corpus of texts, researchers should be able to, among other things, analyze character development over time, recognize shifts across media, and empirically identify the core signifiers of a character.

As such, the largest section of the study is the methodology which addresses both the design and implementation of his model for transmedia characters. Though Doctor Doom features in the title of the book, he is simply the primary case study Hibbett uses to illustrate the usefulness of the tool; a thorough analysis of the character is secondary to the explication of the model.

Data-driven analysis is trending within Comics Studies and Hibbett’s intention is to contribute to “database-led methods of corpus analysis” is two ways. First, he is trying to develop a system of identifying and analyzing character-specific signifiers that is adaptable across Comics Studies, and not merely applicable to a single character or storyworld (i.e. a fictional universe in which a story exists, such as the Marvel Universe or Marvel Cinematic Universe). Second, and perhaps more challenging, he is trying to develop a system that is effective for collecting data that is not text specific and, therefore, can draw data effectively for characters and story worlds that exist across different media.

To these ends, the model for transmedia characters records thirteen different kinds of information related to a character, each of which falls into one of four categories: character, behavior, storyworld, and authorship. Character components include appearance, names and titles, physical actions, and dialogue. Behavioral components include perceived behavior, personality traits, and motivations. Storyworld components that were recorded consist of locations, other characters, objects, and previous events. Finally, he identifies references to both textual authors and market authors within the texts.

In creating these components and categories, the author draws from previous attempts to identify essential signifiers for characters and storyworlds. He cites as foundational to his own model the work of Matthew Freeman, Marie Laurie Ryan, Paolo Bertetti, and Roberta Pearson and William Uricchio. In combining elements from all of them, Hibbett believes he has a model that is both practical and comprehensive.

Hibbett is thoughtful in his assignations and provides explanations for how and why he selected the thirteen dimensions for his model. He describes at length, for example, his thought process in constructing his Behavior category. Simply documenting descriptions of a character’s behavior based on language within the text (whether that language comes from the narrator, the featured character, or other characters) is, in his estimation, both inadequate and misleading. Yet, he continues, even a simple description of character behavior by the researcher would risk being neither empirical nor reproducible. He settled, finally, on three components within the Behavior category. “Perceived behavior” and “motivation” rely on language drawn directly from the text. However, the data for “personality traits” is gathered using the 10 Item Short Version of the Big Five Personality Inventory (BFI). The three, in combination, provide a meaningful and objective measurement of character behavior.

The case study he uses to test his model is Marvel’s Doctor Doom from 1961-1987. Hibbett selects Doctor Doom for several reasons; since he is generally not the titular character and appeared in a variety of titles, he “would function as a way of sampling the different Marvel storyworlds over time” (54). Furthermore, since Doctor Doom rarely had his own series, Hibbett argues, there was no specific author or authors who ‘owned’ him, which could provide interesting information regarding what creators saw as the essential signifiers for the character.

Hibbett’s model is largely successful, and the case study of Doctor Doom makes it clear how useful of a tool it can be.  He notes that a primary value of this kind of empirical research is providing some quantitative evidence for some of the conclusions that comics scholars tend to intuit. For instance, scholars of the Marvel Universe would generally conclude that Doctor Doom’s character is, to a large degree, consistent over time; Hibbett’s model provides the data to support that assumption in a number of ways.

However, the model can also reveal inconsistencies and changes in character development. For example, Hibbett observes that Doctor Doom’s use of derogatory exclamations like “Dolt!” and “Clod!” were very common in early representations of the character and a feature that many of the people he surveyed identified as central to Doom’s character. However, Hibbett’s data shows that this kind of language diminished over the decades. He speculates; “[i]t could be that such words were used more often in the earlier period because writers then tended to use dialogue as a way to define character more than those in later periods, where other methods such as appearance and actions became more important. It could also indicate a change in writing style…“ (130). While this is an interesting line of inquiry and one worthy of being pursued, Hibbett does not elaborate further. His purpose is not to argue why certain elements of Doom’s character change or do not change. Rather, the goal of this project is to illustrate the effectiveness of his model by identifying these shifts in character.

There are some shortcomings to his case study, which he readily recognizes. One problem is related to the sample size. Because he was working independently and without funding for the project, he catalogued neither the entirety of Doctor Doom’s appearances during this era, nor did he manage a statistically significant sample size. Rather, he looked only at a “representative” sample of texts, chosen randomly from Doctor Doom’s appearances during the Silver and Bronze ages. These problems of time and cost are likely to persist for anyone wanting to use Hibbett’s model. Furthermore, Doctor Doom’s appearances in media other than comic books are very limited during this era, and so the efficacy of this tool across media is unclear.

In an attempt to illustrate the adaptability of the model, Hibbett includes a chapter in which he uses his character model to compare British and American versions of Denis the Menace. The inclusion of this chapter is my only real criticism of the book. The chapter itself is interesting but would have worked better as a separate document. Here, it seems extraneous, given the almost exclusive attention to Doctor Doom throughout the rest of the book. Hibbett, in fact, pays almost no attention to this chapter in either his discussion or conclusion.

That criticism aside, Hibbett has done some very good work. He also shares his data readily. Through appendices he provides both the corpus he used for Doctor Doom and the survey he used for generating his signifier set. Furthermore, he provides full digital access to the complete data for the Doctor Doom study. I very much recommend this book. The model is a useful analytical tool and Hibbett’s thorough explanation of his process will be invaluable for anyone considering data-driven analysis.

A Hulkologist’s Lament - Book Review of The Incredible Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon.

reviewed by José Alaniz, University of Washington, Seattle

 Johnson, Rich. The Incredible Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon. Universe, 2022. https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780789341242/

 A Hulkologist’s Lament

The cover of The Incredible Hulk number 1 (May, 1962) by Stan Lee/Jack Kirby famously puts forth the question: “Is he man or monster or … is he both?”

Rich Johnson’s slapdash ramshackle of a book The Incredible Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon (2022) prompts a different query: “Is it a cynical marketing ploy, a poorly-written/edited rush job … or is it both?”

Johnson is a former DC Comics VP, writer for The Beat and founder of the manga imprint Yen Press. Unfortunately, those industry insider credentials don’t translate into a very informative, incisive or fresh take on the Hulk. The heavy, 225-page tome (which retails at $50) is certainly handsome. It has good production values, quality paper, crisp images and vibrant colors for its copious reproductions of comics pages, panels and covers. The endpapers function as Hulk wallpaper in a color scheme suggestive of our hero’s pants. Cute. But again, good presentation only gets you so far.

The opening pages greet you with full page art by Frank Cho (Red Hulk), Tim Sale (Gray Hulk) and Bill Sienkiewicz (old-fashioned green Hulk). It turns out that these choices signal what to expect in the book as a whole: an almost complete neglect of ¾ of the Hulk’s actual history and especially of the artists most associated with the foundational phases of the character — Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, Todd McFarlane, Dale Keown — in favor of very recent (like, mostly 21^st-century) creators. With all due respect, that’s really skewed.

How skewed? Well, let’s see: Kirby gets six pages, mostly from the origin story. Ditko gets one. Meanwhile, Al Ewing’s horror-fied run on the character, The Immortal Hulk (mostly with artist Joe Bennett, from 2018 to 2021), clocks in at 31 pages.

So, yeah, skewed to the point of doing a disservice to both the earlier creators and the character. It’s particularly galling, since a full appreciation of Ewing’s nostalgia-heavy run demands a familiarity with the long sweep of Hulk history, i.e. the works of said Silver and Bronze-age creators (including writers Len Wein, Bill Mantlo and Peter David).

I realize it’s pointless to argue with this book’s selections of what to cover (most likely Johnson had to bend to the will of his bottom-line Marvel corporate overlords anyway), but it must be said: the Hulk has over 60 years of continuity, and while some of those thousands of stories resonate more than others, it’s hard to credit a history that leaves out or gives exceedingly short shrift to the Hulk as a founding member of the Avengers and as a founding member of the Defenders. We don’t even see a single panel from those stories.

But that’s just for starters. There’s no serious attention paid to the crucial matter of the Hulk’s psychological divide and how it originated (under Mantlo and David in the 1970s/80s) and how it relates to Banner’s abuse as a child by his father. There’s also virtually nothing on the character’s gray “Joe Fixit” persona, a fruitful era under David and (at first) Jeff Purves. But what the hey, at least we do get several pages devoted to Hulk & Thing: Hard Knocks (2004), a less distinguished and pretty much forgotten effort by writer Bruce Jones and artist Jae Lee.

Oh well, at least Johnson’s writing is penetrating, edifying and fresh. Just kidding, it’s a hack job! It’s all plot synopses, platitudes like “Being a superhero is never easy” and pat takes such as “Maybe the reason the Hulk has been so popular for so long is that he reminds us of the strength we all have inside us.” Actually, I think something like the opposite is true: the Hulk as conceived represented the monster inside all of us, threatening to burst out. Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were primary influences. Lee/Kirby’s genius lay in how (like Shelley) they humanized the monster, evoking sympathy, even compassion.

That feels like another big missed opportunity: if only Johnson had interviewed some of the creators and editors involved, or heck, even if he’d just quoted from Lee’s Origins of Marvel Comics, we might have had some genuine insights into the Jade Giant, what makes him tick.

Instead, we get the most cursory factoids from Hulk’s early stories, like he was originally gray and changed to green with the second issue, or that at first Bruce Banner would undergo his transformations only when night fell, sort of like a werewolf. “Can’t we all relate to the struggle for control?” Johnson muses.

More disappointment: the book treats things like the character’s catch-phrase “Hulk smash!” as givens, in place of illuminating the reader as to how the phrase emerged, when it was first uttered. Banner’s “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” also gets a shout-out — but why not then tell the reader that it came not from the comics but from the 1970s TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferigno? At times this book seems afraid to hit the reader with that sort of multi-media complexity. It doesn’t shy from talking about the movies, though. But again, in a weirdly selective way: no mention at all of Ang Lee’s flawed but interesting 2003 film, with Eric Bana. If all you had was this book to go on, you’d think the first cinematic Hulk was Ed Norton in 2008.

Yes, yes, I know, they didn’t make this for Hulkologists, but for a mainstream public unfamiliar with the history of the character. But then why leave out so much of that history and lean into those aspects of the Jade Giant with which mainstream readers (presumably those who’ve only watched the movies/TV shows) are already familiar? Why not challenge their view of the Hulk a bit? Johnson takes the opposite tack: devoting short chapters which synopsize the Hulk storylines which most resemble the movies, mostly from recent action-heavy comics which aesthetically resemble movies: World War Hulk, Totally Awesome Hulk, Future Imperfect, Red Hulk, Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, Indestructible Hulk, the aforementioned Immortal Hulk.

Jade Jaws is so much richer than that. Like, decades richer.

One other disconcerting facet of The Incredible Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon deserves mention. This book is pretty but sloppy. It arranges material out of chronological order for no good reason. We are introduced to John Byrne’s obnoxious fourth-wall-breaking Sensational She-Hulk long before the original version of that character by Lee and John Buscema. The only justification I can think of is that Byrne’s version is the more famous, and the one that became a Marvel TV show about the time of the book’s release.

In discussing the love of Hulk’s life, Jarella (Betty Ross is Banner’s), we see covers and panels from issues that present the high points: Hulk’s journey to her microscopic home world, K’ai, the profound grief our hero experiences after she’s killed, his eventual return of her body to her people. But the text (more plot synopsis) doesn’t line up with the illustrations. The text in fact doesn’t make it past the first part of the storyline; it discusses neither the death of Jarella in #205 (November, 1976), nor the return of her body in #248 (June, 1980) — as if Johnson simply ran out of room, or some editor butchered his chapter to free up space for more pictures.

When I say sloppy, I mean sloppy.

They twice (on 29 and 105) rerun the same page of our heroine and the Toad Men from Sensational She-Hulk #2 (June, 1989), itself a parody of Hulk #2 (July, 1962). Not that they tell you that.

Johnson’s text ends suddenly on 219 in the middle of a discussion/plot synopsis of the 2007 World War Hulk storyline by Greg Pak and John Romita, Jr. It stops cold. The book’s last words are “… will he be able to have the control to stand down and end the war?” No clumsy conclusion, no silly outro or quippy “Go out and smash, folks!” Nothing. Again, you get the feeling that they met their quota and just said, “Okay, cut it here.”

Reader, they couldn’t even get the name of the book straight. The cover, with a portrait of Jade Jaws by Adi Granov, gives Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon, but the title page throws in the article and adjective.

Things like that show you the book was poorly edited and hastily put together by a right hand that didn’t know what the left hand was doing — in short by folks who don’t seem to know or care much about the subject.

Do I have anything nice to say besides the production values? Well, after mostly ignoring the creators of all these stories, the book does provide credits for them at the very end. And here and there, you get some worthwhile discussion of how the comics inspired/influenced the TVs/movies. It’s thin gruel, however.

In sum: I was expecting little, and that’s just what I got.

 

8/11/2024: updated with copy edits at the request of the author.

IJOCA 25-2 has shipped

I got mine yesterday. It's a full color silver anniversary issue that comes in at 882 pages including an index to the whole run. 

Table of contents and e-book to come.

Book Review: Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons

 reviewed by Sam Cowling, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Denison University

Phil Witte and Rex Hesner. Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons. Globe Pequot, 2024. US$29. https://www.prometheusbooks.com/9781633889804/funny-stuff/

     In the event of aliens arriving on this planet, they could do scarcely better than consulting Funny Stuff in their perhaps-less-than-urgent quest to understand the cultural institution of the single-panel gag cartoon. (“Aliens encounter Earthlings” is cliché #1 in the authors’ appendix of cartoon cliches.)

Over the course of a breezy ten chapters, Phil Witte and Rex Hesner draw upon a broad and deep familiarity with the form. For years, the two have been writing an online column, “Anatomy of a Cartoon,” to “look behind the gags to debate what makes a cartoon tick,” which is currently hosted by CartoonStock at https://www.cartoonstock.com/blog/category/anatomy-of-a-cartoon/ . The ambition of the book is similar: to “talk about what makes single-panel gag cartoons work, offer insights into the underlying humor, and provide a backstage look at the profession itself.”(ix) On this front, Witte and Hesner are quick to note a key constraint on their pursuit of this ambition—namely, to avoid “crush[ing] the humor out of the cartoons under the weight of excess analysis.”(ix) As they put it later, “[o]ur approach is refreshingly not academic.”(12) There is every reason to think that Witte and Hesner have succeeded in their aims. Their commentary is credible, lively, and appreciative. The menu of single-panel gag cartoons (“cartoons” from here on out) on display is wide-ranging and capably chosen. The efforts to detail the production-side of the practice of cartooning are interesting and illuminating. There are other books that seek to demystify the practice of cartooning—often through more intensive autobiography and individual reflection—but Funny Stuff engages enough cartoonists to throw cold water on the notion that there is a single method common among cartoonists.

Like any book peppered with Thurber, Booth, Chast, and Steinberg, the cartoon enthusiast will find half-remembered gems brought back onto the stage. The reader who happens upon this book with only a limited sense of the form will be treated to a survey of pieces in the orbit of The New Yorker parceled out in a topical ordering. Some chapters discuss formal features, touching upon the role of captions or upon the drawing style of cartoonists. Others map out (to whatever extent possible) the creative process of cartoon-making and idea-summoning. Several chapters focus on the general pursuit of humor and then give pride of place to the notion that humor stems from incongruity, which is then discussed via a happy hodge-podge of examples. Two concluding chapters examine the extent to which a sense of a cartoonist’s “psyche” might be on display in their oeuvre and then take up the question of how the practice of cartooning and pantheon of cartoonists is informed by questions around diversity and identity. Throughout, Witte and Hesner are keen to let the voices of cartoonists shine through in the form of judiciously chosen quotes or via concrete examples from specific creative processes. Readers will find their general sense of the cartoon form, as well as their critical repertoire much expanded, and, of course, they will also have a handful of new cartoonists whose work they are eager to track down.

The most delicate audience for the book is the diehard, the aficionado, or the connoisseur. Such a reader, if unable to summon suitable patience, will find themselves vexed that a favorite cartoon is omitted or that a preferred cartoonist receives insufficient (or, heaven forbid, no) attention. As an intermittently patient reader, I was regularly reassured by Witte and Hesner’s sense of things and, in most cases, the usual and helpfully unusual suspects are touched upon in due course. (Even so, I am unable to resist the urge to commend Mary Petty to those interested in what the authors describe as “lavish” styles, and Sam Cobean as a maestro of captionless, yet thought balloon-bearing, cartoons.)

There is a broader and perhaps thornier sort of complaint well-versed readers might make: where are the kindred, British cartooning voices like Pont and Fougasse? Witte and Hesner plausibly cite The New Yorker as the center of gravity for this art form since mid-century, but, despite this, there are ways to usefully gesture towards the broader history of the cartoon, especially at Punch, without collapsing into the drearily academic. Given the quality of their commentary in this edition of the book, one expects Witte and Hesner would have valuable observations about the differences between a quintessentially American cartoonist like Thurber and his British counterpoint, Pont.

Early on, Witte and Hesner describe Funny Stuff as “a tribute to a unique art form.”(ix) This is a laudable aim, especially in what seems to be an era of declining regard for the form. Even so, there is a tension that emerges from the conflict between, on the one hand, the hope of extolling the virtues and power of cartoons and, on the other hand, the project of deepening our understanding of the form. Even while Witte and Hesner disclaim their discussion as “non-academic,” their efforts are regularly taxonomic, intellectual, and inquisitive—e.g., partitioning out different kinds of humor, sorting cartoonists into rough categories, and cataloguing the kinds of interactions between drawing and caption. Due to the former aim, there is an understandable urgency in this book to showcase as many lovely cartoons as possible. Left unchecked, that would simply deliver another cartoon collection. But, in keeping with the latter aim, there is a clear commitment on the part of the authors to get to the bottom of things (as much as one might). I suspect, however, that this can’t be done solely through attending to the good and the excellent. This reader was unable to find a cartoon in Funny Stuff about which the authors didn’t have a kind word. So, as awkward as it might be in practice and as strange as it might sound in theory, I suspect this book would have been well-served to include a handful of clunkers, coupled with Witte and Hesner’s commentary upon them. As the authors’ discussion of the practice of cartooning makes evident, failure—typically, in the form of cartoons rejected as leaden or inscrutable—is an invisible yet inevitable part of the cartooning world. Partly for this reason, in our pursuit of understanding how cartoons work, it seems that the misfires, the duds, and the clunkers may prove no less instructive than successes.

Then again, who wants to waste time on bad cartoons when there are so very many good ones?

Book Review: Small Altars by Justin Gardiner

reviewed by Liz Brown, Outreach & Instruction Librarian, Kraemer Family Library, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Justin Gardiner. Small Altars. North Adams: Tupelo Press, 2024. US$22. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo221357365.html

Small Altars is an extended eulogy to Gardiner’s brother Aaron, who died of synovial sarcoma in 2019. The literary press publisher marketed it as linked to the world of comic books, blurbing it with “In Small Altars, Justin Gardiner delves into the world of comic books and superheroes as a means for coming to terms with the many struggles of his brother’s life, as well as his untimely death, offering a lyric and honest portrayal of the tolls of mental illness, the redemptive powers of art and familial love, and the complex workings of grief.” Aaron “was born with a borderline learning disability” and schizoaffective disorder. The book describes the time Gardiner spent with Aaron during their childhood, growing apart as they aged, then returning to his brother’s side as an occasional caregiver. Threaded throughout are reflections on the activities and fandoms Aaron enjoyed - sci fi novels, Star Wars movies, piano music, Marvel comics and the Cinematic Universe, board and tabletop role-playing games.

However, Gardiner remains aloof and dismissive of the hobbies that his brother enjoyed, viewing poetry as a more “evolved” literary form, more worthy of adult and scholarly attention. Comics and their related franchises are “predictable” and “claustrophobic.” The Gardiner brothers may have watched the Marvel Cinematic Universe unfold side by side, but it is clear that Justin did not probe deeply into what held Aaron’s attention within their stories. Instead, he is perpetually pathologizing his brother, and even random strangers around him, putting forth many suppositions but demonstrating only surface level research into his wayward diagnoses. A love of comics is an escapist route back to childhood, according to Justin- the only time his brother’s behaviors met society's expectations and the only time Justin was not bored, tired, embarrassed, embittered by being associated with his brother. Gardiner veers away from any attempts to more deeply and empathetically understand his brother’s enjoyment of the mediums in favor of describing his own feelings and how uncomfortable he was interacting with his brother. Panel gutters are a looming space where Gardiner is unwilling to venture forth and examine with any kind of serious contemplation.

His brother’s lifelong efforts at playing the piano is similarly deemed a waste of time because Aaron “never composed his own songs or made any money off of it.” Gardiner briefly describes what Aaron did make money off of- working as a janitor for the Pearl Buck Center, a preschool for students with cognitive disabilities and where many of Aaron’s coworkers also had mental health or cognitive disabilities. "I knew full well how important Pearl Buck was to my brother, yet I avoided any direct contact with it..." While those feelings are valid and probably relatable to many people who don't have disabilities, this work does nothing to change people's expectations or behaviors in a way that uplifts the people who share Aaron’s experiences.

Ultimately, this title illuminates a gap in literature for thoughtful investigations into the role fandoms play for adults with cognitive impairments and mental disabilities. The topic is well worth investigating but readers would be better off directing their attention towards more empathetic and well-researched titles, such as The THUD (Mikael Ross and Nika Knight (trans.).  Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001)

Book Review: Let’s Make Bread! A Comic Book Cookbook

 Reviewed by Christina Pasqua, University of Toronto

Ken Forkish and Sarah Becan. Let’s Make Bread! A Comic Book Cookbook. PenguinRandomHouse, 2024. US$22. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697048/lets-make-bread-by-ken-forkish-and-sarah-becan/

When my husband and I started grad school, we got tired of having to regularly buy bread. We were already baking cakes and other sweet treats, so why not try the most essential item on our weekly grocery list? We started with Julia Child’s white sandwich bread and a friend’s recipe for peasant loaf, then dinner rolls, baguettes, challah, and brioche buns. Pizza dough and focaccia were already in our back pocket, thanks to my Italian grandmother, so by the time the pandemic hit, we were baking bread regularly enough that the shift to sourdough made sense. After a few years of trial and error—and with the help of Ken Forkish’s earlier book, Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast (2012)—our sourdough starter and boule baking skills are still going strong. Reading Let’s Make Bread!, co-authored by Forkish and Sarah Becan (illustrator of Let’s Make Dumplings and Let’s Make Ramen), I am reminded that our relationship with sourdough is not an uncommon one. Making bread is a long-term project that requires regular attention and care, is rarely perfect on the first attempt, but always worth the effort, and this comic book cookbook helps explain why.

 

Let’s Make Bread is approximately 150-pages and is divided into five main sections: The First Rise; Basics & Methods; Levain; Recipes; and The Final Proof. “The First Rise” is a short overview of who the co-authors are, what the book will cover, and what you’ll learn by the end of it. The “Basics & Methods” chapter, however, provides more extensive instructions on the equipment, ingredients, and techniques you will need to get started on your sourdough baking journey. For example, it explains how to weigh and mix ingredients, how to work the dough and shape it for either a loaf pan or a dutch oven, how to proof and bake your bread, and what to look out for when determining whether your loaf is done. I particularly enjoyed seeing the anatomy of a wheat berry and learning about the science behind how the dough’s moisture levels and environmental factors, such as time of year and temperatures in your baking area, can affect the outcome of your bread making process.

 

The “Levain” chapter is perhaps the most practical and reflective of Forkish’s bread making philosophy, beginning with a definition of the term: “Levain is the French word for sourdough. Because I don’t want my breads to taste sour,” the cartoon Forkish explains, “I usually use the word ‘levain.’ Both words mean the same thing: a wild-yeast culture made up from many feedings of just flour and water” (44).

 

 

In addition to this lesson on yeast cultures, the chapter includes step-by-step instructions for getting your levain started, how to store, maintain (i.e., feed), share, and reactivate it (especially if you’ve left it in the fridge for a while), all while explaining the fermentation process at the cellular level. The next chapter gets right to the good stuff—Forkish’s tried and true recipes from the simple “Saturday Bread” you can make and enjoy in a single day to more labor-intensive (i.e., multi-day) recipes like the “Country Bread” or “fruity” pizza dough. Tips and tricks for shaping your pizza dough, making the perfect sauce, and choosing toppings are also thoughtfully included, amping up your culinary skills. Many helpful charts are also listed throughout the chapter highlighting everything from essential ingredients to a schedule of day-to-day tasks to ensure success for each recipe. One of my favorite pages from this chapter follows the “Bacon Bread” recipe. I love it not only for its vibrant use of color but also because it extends the reader’s bread making skills to the inevitable (and most important) step in baking: eating.

 

 

This page wonderfully showcases the flavor profile and versatility of Forkish’s bacon bread recipe, teaching the reader how best to serve it through simple kitchen hacks. Who doesn’t love a homemade crouton!? Finally, the book wraps up on a light summative note in “The Final Proof,” reiterating some of the main takeaways: that baking bread is delicious, rewarding, and fun!

 If this is sounding like an instruction manual, it’s because in many ways it is. As an avid reader of narrative comics, I found I was craving a bit more “story” out of this comic book cookbook. There are some elements of this scattered throughout, but it’s not as detailed as some of the food histories that you get in Becan’s other illustrated cookbooks. For this reason, I would say Let’s Make Bread is a companion piece to Forkish’s Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, which goes into much more detail about the author’s career and relationship to bread making, as well as the history of sourdough and its key ingredients. Nonetheless, this comic stays true to the basics of Forkish’s philosophy. Visually, the color palette is simple, but the blue and green accents play nicely off the golden yellows and browns of the breads and the white background used in much of the panel design. The artist’s attention to detail is scrupulous. Every texture, stretch, fold, and crackle of the dough is accounted for, making this a very useful guide for the various sensory elements of sourdough baking.

 

I do less of the bread making and more of the bread eating in my household, so I appreciate how this book helped me understand the basic elements of baking without the pressure to do it for myself or, if I were to attempt these recipes, to be good at it. Instead, Let’s Make Bread! revels in the experimentation process. This comic book cookbook would make a perfect gift for an aspiring bread baker, old or young, especially visually oriented folks who prefer illustrated instructions when learning something new. It’s full of humor, great recipes, and yummy illustrations that will have you baking (and eating) bread in no time.