Becky Cloonan: Spinkicks for everyone!

You might know her better as the award-winning artist of books like Demo and American Virgin, but over on her blog, Becky Cloonan has something to write about as well -- such as how we "label" comics:

I've been thinking about labels a lot lately. How did we get stuck with ones like "indie" and "superhero" and "manga," especially in such a small industry when it's so easy as creators to see what other people are doing? These labels don't actually describe anything anyway. Why are we making up genres for things that don't even mean anything? X-Men, that's an Action movie. When you rent it you'll find it under action!!! Not Superhero! Who made up these categories? I don't even know what the word Indie means! Is it Japanese for inking with a brush? Har har. Seriously can you possibly make a word any more vague. I blame indie rock for this whole mess!

Oh my god. Drama! Comedy! Historical Fiction! Horror! These are what people should call comics by. Everybody reads Books. Comic Books has the word book in it, so there's no reason people who read a book wouldn't read a comic. It makes no sense! I have a million things in my head right now about what the world is coming to (by world I mean comics-- ha ha) but I'll stop here, since I obviously have no idea what I'm typing about anymore. You can take that as a disclaimer ha ha!

And the Manga approach to marketing comics versus the American way, as she asks when Manga and comics became two different things:

I had a gallery show at the Neucleus in CA with the fabulous Amy Ganter (Sorcerers and Secretaries) and Felipe Smith (MBQ) a month or so back, we had tacked our comic pages and illustrations up all over the walls. Two little girls, not a day over 13, had walked in and were checking out the pages. I thought it was pretty rad since they had come there on their own, but oh man... they started shouting about how we were obviously not Japanese, and how our lines were "not round enough" and how everybody in the world is just copying Japan. "Real Manga comes from Japan!"

Oooh boy, Felipe handled this really well, while of course I'm fuming. Who are these kid?? I mean obviously we're not Japanese, you can tell that at a glance I think. This is just showing how the marketing of Manga has tricked kids into thinking it's something different from comics. And as somebody who makes comics, it's frustrating!! Infuriating!!

If you think she's just talk, you may want to watch out, as a recent AiT press release on Demo going back to press indicates:

So when I heard the DEMO trade was getting another printing, I did like five spinkicks. No joke.

Those 13-year-olds who said she was just copying Japan were lucky they made it out of Neucleus intact.