Go, Read: “The Kamen Rider Will Live Forever”

I thought fascinating this article about how absolutely jacked up certain parts of Japan still are following last year's tsunami and earthquake crisis. It's almost relentlessly sobering; even the photos don't stop at one photo of scrawled-out messages at the local, now-closed, cartoon museum but like a half-dozen.

That's the comics-related content, by the way, that museum. What I thought noteworthy about that wasn't so much the notion floated that comics characters are paragons of hope -- I would guess some are, while others aren't -- but the way that museum is portrayed as a part of the city's daily life: something for which the city was known, right down to the architecture that called attention to it. Comics live more and more in that nebulous world where they barely exist except as concepts to make money and provide distraction. We're quite capable at this point of having hours of conversation about comics we haven't seen, nor ever will. For example, there's the copy of Action Comics #1 owned by Nicolas Cage that as the fulcrum for an idea -- movie star has his comic book stolen -- is driving an inordinate number of entertainment stories this morning on the announcement of a movie treatment of that incident. That's a happy story, one that barely exists outside of words hanging in space; a big, empty building with people writing on plywood is a sadder, grander thing.
 
posted 4:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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