By Ayo

Saga, chapter twelve
Brian Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Image Comics, April 2013

We open as chapters of Saga so often do, in a flashback or dream. This time, it’s both. The war flashback of Prince Robot IV gives this chapter the shouting action that the genre demands so that the present-day, waking-world events can proceed at a suitable pace. Slower.

After several chapters involving the freelancer (a sort of assassin) named “The Will,” the decision to close Book Two of Saga on the other major enemy, Prince Robot IV is a fairly significant jump in idea and tone. Where The Will is all action, all chase, all square-jawed-adventure, Prince Robot IV is like a detective. He’s done his life’s share of fighting. His Highness was an active duty soldier in the war but his official tour of duty has already ended. IV’s current assignment reveals that his true nature is cerebral. While The Will crushes people’s heads or swings by rope, Prince Robot IV talks. Leisurely. His investigations are usually polite or at least cordial but he is prone to sudden outbursts of violence when he finds the people who he interrogates to be uncooperative.

Prince Robot IV is the prince of The Robot Kingdom. His wife is pregnant for the first time and he does not want to play hunter. His mission to kill the heroes of the story isn’t personal to him. His temper flares because he wants to be at home. On the other hand, his capacity for patience seems to increase as he suspects that his prey will soon fall into his lap. In the end, inaction is action for Prince Robot IV.

By Darryl Ayo Brathwaite

My mom was driving my car when we got hit by a Mack truck on the expressway but since my mom was driving it was no big deal. However it made a bit of an impression when we drove up to the Puck building with the front bumper hanging off. This was how I arrived at MoCCA in 2003, my first time professionally exhibiting at a comics show.

The MoCCA Art Festival has had its own brushes with death. For one, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art no longer exists. For another, the MoCCA Art Festival has seen its prestige as the pride of New York City’s comics community decline as the organization became increasingly chaotic. But through the Society of Illustrators, the Art Festival lives on. The Society of Illustrators has adopted an aggressive and responsive attitude toward addressing the years of comics community complaint about the MoCCA Art Festival. The result of this community outreach has been an immediate upswing in community attitude. For the first time since the Art Festival’s 2009 move to The Armory, people seemed positive. Even happy. Maybe it’s me.

It’s 2013 and the tenth year of my working comics convention tables. For the first time since 2008, I did well at MoCCA. I may have done *too* well, I’m starting to feel important.

Here are the objective facts:

The Society of Illustrators administration cut down the visual noise and sensory overload by dividing the aisles with curtains. These curtains also provided exhibitors a place to hang up their own decorations, or display art prints.

The Society created overhead aisle markers which helped both exhibitors and attendees to understand where they were at all times.

There was an on-site cafeteria and there were multiple seating areas so that people could relax and refresh during the festival.

The volunteer staff is always excellent at MoCCA but this year, the volunteers were trained to assist and also trained to suggest ways in which they might assist. That’s a significant jump.

As a touch of irony, the Society’s most drastic adjustment was creating a space inside the festival, on the actual showroom floor, for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s display collection. That’s right, for the first time ever, representative artwork from the now-defunct museum was available for public viewing at the art festival.

Comics is a hard business and even harder when the infrastructure is not supportive of the practical needs of the people in this business. 2013′s MoCCA Art Festival felt like a success because it sought to improve the morale of the community that uses the festival. I hope that the Society of Illustrators continues to move the MoCCA Art Festival in the direction that they’ve steered it.

And happy ten years of comic shows for me, specifically

Indelible NATO forces, hidden agenda, puppet governments.”

By Ayo

So I was—

“Walking down the street/to the hardcore beat—”

—and it occurred to me that one of the things that binds the cultural narrative of this society together is homogeny. We can talk about how the idea of a “melting pot” subtly implies the loss of individualism as the ingredients of the mixture melt and meld into one continuous mixture. But again, that’s implied in the name itself. What isn’t explained so often is the way in which the loss of discrete identity is harmful. Because the culturally dominant force doesn’t lose anything, the minority loses its identity; the minority dissipates into the melting pot just as a sliver of onion dissipates into a literal cooking pot.

As storytellers how do we push against that? Today’s lesson challenges the assumptions that we commonly hold about vantage point characters. Protagonists. The common mode is for a protagonist to be hollow. A default setting. The protagonist is generally the character who (in the context of that particular narrative) is closest to our cultural norms. The Everyman. Within the constraints of the story, the protagonist is The Most Normal within the cast. On a large scale, a cultural median is established and people are reminded of what their culture wishes for them to conform to. As the narrative advances, the protagonist’s normalcy (or relative normalcy) plays against the foils, and antagonists. There is a villainous force which seeks to disturb the social order represented by the protagonist. There are foils, characters who are generally share the protagonist’s goals but disagree on the details. There are the disinterested, characters who lay outside of the range of the narrative’s objectives and also are cast into relief against the protagonist’s goals. All the while, the protagonist is the median perspective.

No matter the story’s outcome, we are given little choice in how to perceive the world through that narrative’s lens: a protagonist designed to be inoffensive and median will always represent social norms and thus, remain passively hostile to cultural diversity. That is to say the fiction of the story will be hostile to real-world cultural diversity.

Every piece of media enforces an idea in a public’s mind. Whether they admit to it or not. This is why women and minorities instinctively know that they must seek greater representation in the arts and the media. Because being represented means having their perspective dealt with. This comes before being tolerated, accepted or embraced. This is just awareness.

Having different perspectives play out through characters is positive for a story and for the society from which the story is a part. But having those different perspectives come from the central actor in a narrative, the protagonist, does all of that while also rejecting the idea of self-normalcy. The hollow, easily accessible everyman protagonist is “me” in the narrative. But given specific traits and strengths and weaknesses, the “me,” becomes “that person.” But lest you worry that putting distance between the Generalized Protagonist and the audience makes for a colder experience, the simple fact of being a protagonist gives an audience an intimacy of character that we all seek in fiction. It’s more challenging to the reader but also more rewarding.

One of the primary effects of fiction is building and encouraging empathy. In order to do this effectively, storytellers must give the audience somewhere outside of themselves to “go.” Be aware of the generalized social standards and moral ideas of a society. And trust an audience enough to give them a character who isn’t perfect (or near-perfect). The audience wants to be challenged. They want to explore. Take them on a journey. Little by little, story by story, storytellers can nudge the world toward a different place: where diversity isn’t melted and absorbed into a larger whole but rather a place that is inclusive yet appreciates life’s textures.