{"id":1235,"date":"2006-12-06T08:09:02","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T13:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cloudburst\/"},"modified":"2006-12-07T06:00:33","modified_gmt":"2006-12-07T11:00:33","slug":"cloudburst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cloudburst","title":{"rendered":"Cloudburst"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The things we crave are either near us or far, whereas time is about process. I have lived many years and I have learned not to trust process. Creation, destruction: these are not the real story. When we dwell on such things, we inevitably lapse into clich\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9. The true drama is in these relationships of space.”<\/p>\n

–Emil Kopen<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve bought a lot of comic books over the years, but I’m not what you’d call a collector. When a store clerk asks if I want a bag-and-board for a new purchase, I answer, “No, thanks. I just read ’em.” I used to have some “valuable” comics, but I sold most of them off during college. I don’t remember what I needed the money for. A few years ago, I gave away a ton of “worthless” ones to some friends of mine. They treasure them.<\/p>\n

You could say I own a couple of expensive comics, but that depends on your definition of “expensive”. Is $100 too much to spend on a hardcover collection of Little Nemo in Slumberland<\/a> comic strips, reprinted at their original size (21″ x 16″)? Is $95 too much to spend on a three-volume slipcased edition of the complete Calvin & Hobbes<\/a>, the best comic strip post-Peanuts? Is $125 too much to spend on the trade paperbacks of the final 100 issues of Cerebus<\/a>? (Okay, don’t answer that one.)<\/p>\n

And is $3,000 too much to spend on Hicksville<\/a>?<\/p>\n

There’s certainly nothing on its cover to indicate that Hicksville carries such an extravagant price. In fact, my edition reads, “$19.95 US \/ $24.95 CANADA”. It’s no rare, pulled-from-circulation issue, has no first appearance of Wolverine nor the death of a well-loved character (“Not a dream! Not a hoax!”).<\/p>\n

But Hicksville<\/em> brought me to the other side of the world, to small towns and jade factories, to wineries and bungee-platforms, to glaciers and Bunny Hell, to myself and beyond. It brought me to New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Hicksville<\/em> collects a story from the early-to-mid-1990s comics of Dylan Horrocks, about a comics journalist who travels to a small town to research the childhood of a famous cartoonist. The journalist discovers that everyone in this town is a comics aficionado. It’s a dream that I think all comics readers had at some point in their lives, that there’s a place in which we’re home.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t this vision that stayed with me over the years and led me to call my travel-industry friends<\/a> to set up a two-week tour of the North & South Islands. I wasn’t na\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00afve enough to think there was a comics Shangri-La waiting there. (That’s in Angouleme<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

What brought me to New Zealand was the sky. It’s no mean feat in a black-and-white comic book to convey such subtlety in clouds. In fact, Horrocks’ scratchy pen style would seem to dictate against it, mere outlines separating absence from absence. But there was something in his skies that stayed with me. I was captured by the romance of it, right down to the Maori name for the country: Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.<\/p>\n

In 2003, I decided to go there and see it for myself. My friend Liz set me up on an “adventure tour” group, which was an extensively mixed bag of people (one of whom has stayed a good friend ever since). For the first few days, all I saw were clouds. Oh, and rain. Lots of rain.<\/p>\n

But by the time our tour headed to the South Island via the Wellington-Picton ferry<\/a>, the sky cleared and I started to understand things that I can’t explain. By the end of the trip, at the peak of the Ben Lomond<\/a> trail, a mile or so above Queenstown, I knew where I was.<\/p>\n

A day later, I would spend 24 hours in planes and airports, replaying Emil Kopen’s remarks about space, not time, being the essence of storytelling, as I jetted from Queenstown to Auckland to LA to Newark. Today marks the third anniversary of my return from NZ. Time and space.<\/p>\n

I bought my copy of Hicksville<\/em> at a small press comics expo in Maryland in 1998. Dylan Horrocks was in attendance, signing copies (he’d been brought in to give a presentation on the history of comics in NZ). He made a sketch on the first page of my copy, along with the inscription, “Hey Gil! You’re always welcome in Hicksville!”<\/p>\n

And I am.<\/p>\n

(You really want to look through my photos from that trip<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The things we crave are either near us or far, whereas time is about process. I have lived many years and I have learned not to trust process. Creation, destruction: these are not the real story. When we dwell on such things, we inevitably lapse into clich\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9. The true drama is in these relationships of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cloudburst”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-new-zealand","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-jV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14854,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-461-matt-madden","url_meta":{"origin":1235,"position":0},"title":"Episode 461 – Matt Madden","author":"Gil","date":"November 23, 2021","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 461: Matt Madden \"One of the things I love and value about comics is the plasticity of it and the elasticity of visual representation.\" With his new book, Ex Libris (Uncivilized Books), cartoonist Matt Madden takes readers on a post-modern, formalist dive into comics. We talk about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/maddencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/maddencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/maddencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/maddencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/maddencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6603,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-comic-sans","url_meta":{"origin":1235,"position":1},"title":"Podcast: Comic Sans","author":"Gil","date":"October 3, 2012","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 2 episode 12 Tom Spurgeon - Comic Sans \"I was morphined up and looking out the back of an ambulance for about three hours. You get to see things as a beginning, middle and end. . . . My story might end in a couple of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Classic Comics Criticism"","block_context":{"text":"Classic Comics Criticism","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/classic-comics-criticism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/7996380319_8551fce71b_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/7996380319_8551fce71b_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/7996380319_8551fce71b_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/7996380319_8551fce71b_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/7996380319_8551fce71b_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11232,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-256-lauren-weinstein","url_meta":{"origin":1235,"position":2},"title":"Episode 256 – Lauren Weinstein","author":"Gil","date":"February 13, 2018","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 256: Lauren Weinstein \"Comics are a way to process events in your life. You put it down on the page, and it has its own life, and you're able to move away from it.\" Village Voice cartoonist Lauren Weinstein joins the show to talk about the balancing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0646.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0646.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0646.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0646.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0646.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10449,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/comic-con-2017-pre-game","url_meta":{"origin":1235,"position":3},"title":"Comic-Con 2017 pre-game","author":"Gil","date":"July 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I won't be at the big Comic-Con International in San Diego this weekend, but if you're going, here's a list of podcasts I've done with some of this year's guests & attendees: Maria Alexander\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Derf Backderf\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Joyce Farmer\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Mary Fleener \u2022 mp3 Jeff Gomez\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Karen Green\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Peter Kuper\u00a0\u2022\u00a0mp3 Mimi Pond\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Classic Comics Criticism"","block_context":{"text":"Classic Comics Criticism","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/classic-comics-criticism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/cci_teaser_logo_2_52.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12266,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-320-seth","url_meta":{"origin":1235,"position":4},"title":"Episode 320 – Seth","author":"Gil","date":"May 14, 2019","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 320: Seth \"The drawing of the comic is where everything is discovered.\" After more than 20 years, Seth has completed Clyde Fans, his grand meditation on family, business, and art (Drawn & Quarterly), so let's celebrate with a double-episode! 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Oh, wait. It's about graphic novels, not comics. My bad. It actually has some good points about the narrative form, and some neat comments from cartoonists. It doesn't really get into the finances of the business, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}