[Austin-ghetto-list] jaxon's rant, part 6

[jaxon41]

WHAT THE GANG IS PROBABLY SAYING

Yeah, I realize you guys & gals must be thinking to yourselves: "JEEZUS, how
much longer is jaxon gonna keep harping on this subject?  Get over it!"

Not to worry--I've only got 3 or 4 more parts, the next-to-last of which
will be my "vindication" by The Comics Journal.  At least they let me talk
about the
wringer the Chron put me through, whereas Louis Black's rag wouldn't.  Then
I'll cap it off with a little essay on how Austin's oddball publications
have always had cartoons & comix (from the 19th century through the Sun) &
how the Chron's management team has disdained to continue this venerable,
worthy tradition on our/"their" home ground. Tsk, tsk..

Here I'll post part of the furor that resulted when Ventura's review was
placed on the Chron's website (it's still there & will remain forever with
all their other stuff since they went online) and how this process was
furthered by a local cartoonist friend who brought the controversy to the
attention of a comix chat group on the internet.  I'll call him Bison Bill
(BB), so Louis Black won't be tempted to "make him pay" somehow.

Before this happened, Bruce Marshall rose to my defense in a letter which
the Chron printed on 9 Oct, a week after Louis said "no rebuttal."  Bruce is
probably the best watercolor artist working on Texas history subjects and
has been for years.  It's an extremely difficult medium for people who
specialize in guns, belt buckles, buttons, and the like; one mistake and
you've got to toss it and start over.  Bruce is a master craftsman, and his
art is collected by the rich and famous.  As I write this, Ronald Reagan is
probably staring with vacant eyes at the BM original that hangs above the
mantlepiece at his "ranch."  Unlike me, Bruce enjoys hawking his work and
giving talks to Lion's Clubs, Rotaries, You-Name-Its.  He's a popular
speaker, and limited-edition prints of his paintings go like hotcakes.

Many of you have probably read BM's rants to the American-Statesman on a
number of issues.  One of his pet peeves is when black spokesmen want to do
away with some Confederate statue, memorial, or marker.  He's what you might
call a Confederate "nut," but he knows just about everything there is to
know (visually) on Civil War props.  Like most artists, he's a strange
character--to say the least--and he's not politically correct in the
slightest and is proud of it.  Does that make him a racist?  I'm not sure,
but to Michael Ventura it certainly would.  Bruce gave up on Austin's
laid-back lifestyle when his favorite horse got across the fence and was
killed by zooming traffic on the then-new Loop 360, near Bee Caves Rd.
junction.  Until then Bruce had his studio on this ancestral property
upstairs in a little, rustic, stone 2-story "garage apartment" type building
that had been a stage stop in the 19th century.  There's probably a
Blockbuster video store in the midst of a shopping mall there now; haven't
checked lately.  Here's his letter:

Dear Sir,

The eye-gouging, groin-kicking, hate-crazed assault on Jack Jacksson and his
book Lost Cause by Michael Ventura was not a legitimate review.  It was an
attempt at assassination.  I say "attempt" because Ventura shot himself in
the foot with his own blunders, such as his absurd assertion that there were
no repeating rifles in 1857.  What about the Henry, manufactured from 1850
to 1866 (obviously the rifle depicted by Jackson, which Ventura singled out
as a "goof" by the author)?

The real cause for Mr. Ventura's vicious libels against Jack Jackson shows
clearly through his malicious diatribe.  He denounces the author as a
"racist," in today's multicultural, diversity-demanding totalitarian
mindset, the unforgivable sin of sins.  Has he read the previous works by
Jack Jackson?  Comanche Moon is from the Indian point of view (thus,
presumably could be considered anti-white racism) while Recuerden El Alamo
glorifies the controversial Juan Seguin (this is suspect as anti-Anglo
racism).  Lost Cause tells of the injustices suffered by whites in Texas
following the un-Civil War--and thus Mr. Ventura interprets those truthful
revelations as unacceptable "racism" (he obviously belongs to the mindset
that pretends racism begins and ends with the White race, which is about
like believing the world is flat).

Equally repulsive is the sidebar article "The Wrong Cause" by Jesse Sublett.
Particularly offensive are its vulgarisms which demean Sublett and the
Chronicle, such as the subtitle "Hardin: The Behind Behind the Legend," and
the beginning and ending, "John Wesley Hardin was an asshole" and "John
Wesley Hardin died like an asshole."  Such foul-mouthery doesn't belong in a
legitimate publication.  For every smutty word or phrase there is an
equivalent, usually better, in decent language.  When a writer, or someone
who claims the title, degenerates to filthy talk, he demonstrates his
bankruptcy in use of the English language.

Sincerely, Bruce Marshall

I told you BM was a strange character, didn't I?  Yet, many other letters in
a similar vein started pouring in to the Chron, making basically his same
observations.  Too bad Louis Black doesn't know Bruce Marshall or didn't ask
him to review Lost Cause.  He's certainly more informed than Ventura on
Reconstruction times and things like graphic novels.  But, on the other
hand, Bruce's likely-favorable review would no doubt have shocked readers
(myself included) as much as V's did.  Bruce is also agenda-driven, though
in the opposite direction, and is a man of strong opinions who ain't in step
with modern times.  But he's a master of his profession moreso than Ventura
will ever be.  Pick up a copy his glossy, full-color plate book on
Uniforms of the Texas Republic and you'll see what I mean.

When fellow artist Bison Bill read V's review he was so outraged that he
sent the following email to comix@indra.com, an international chat group of
hardcore comix fans:

A COMIX CONTROVERSY HAS ERUPTED IN AUSTIN

The Austin Chronicle, Austin's so-called "alternative weekly newspaper, has
attacked Jack Jackson's graphic novel Lost Cause: The True Story of Famed
Gunslinger John Wesley Hardin as poorly written, historically inaccurate,
and racist.  Jackson requested equal space in the Chronicle to refute these
accusations, but was denied this courtesy by editor Louis Black.

In the opening paragraph of the offending review, Michael Ventura writes:
"Jack Jackson's Lost Cause...is what they call a 'graphic novel.'  Well,
it's graphic enough--without pictures, the 148-page story would shrink to
maybe 25 pages, if that.  But is it a novel?  Or has Jackson abducted the
word just because he has a story to tell and he can draw better than he can
write?"

The above reveals Ventura's ignorance of, if not contempt for, the graphic
novel form.  He does not seem aware that pictures can be used to tell a
story; if the work does not contain X number of words, then to him it is
without literary merit.

Ventura also accuses Jackson of having a "primitive sense of dialogue,"
comparing it to the dialogue found in a Grade B western: "In the tales of
storytellers who knew the West firsthand (Mark Twain, Bret Hart [sic],
Stephen Crane, Jack London, Willa Cather, Zane Grey) you don't find much
that sounds like Gabby Hayes and Hopalong Cassidy--and these writers are the
standards you invoke when you use the word 'novel.'  Lost Cause can't ride
in that company, so let's discard the term 'graphic novel' for the
pretension it is.  It takes more than a label to create a novel."

Having (he thinks) discarded the term "graphic novel," Ventura then attacks
Jackson's historical research, citing as an example the rifles used in an
1857 scene.  To him, they are Winchesters, which did not come into wide use
until the 1870s.  However, Jackson told me they are no such thing; rather,
they are another kind of rifle (the Henry) which were in use during the
1850s.

Ventura then writes, "So we're better off judging Lost Cause not as a
serious work of history, and certainly not as a novel....[It] is best judged
on its own terms as a personal expression."  Thus liscensed, Ventura next
attacks Jackson as a racist.

Lost Cause is set in Reconstruction-era Texas, a time when Jackson's
forbearers (and mine) were subjected to terrible abuses by the occupying
U.S. government.  Jackson tells the story from the viewpoint of the
oppressed; he does not glamorize slavery, yet neither does he moralize,
preferring to let the story speak for itself.  He does not paint 19th
century white Texans as evil people, but presents them as human beings.
This apparently is what irritates the politically correct Ventura, who would
prefer Jackson had judged these people by 20th century standards.

Ventura finds a whole list of reasons to slander Jackson as a racist.  For
instance, he claims Jackson draws all the black characters with the same
face.  This is either an outright lie, or else Ventura is in serious need of
eyeglasses.  As anyone can see by simply looking at the book, the black
faces are every bit as diverse as the white.

Ventura also objects whenever Jackson depicts a black character in an
unflattering light.  Never mind the historical fact that black Union
soldiers did commit outrages against white Texans; never mind that Jackson
also depicts outrages committed against blacks; never mind that he depicts
innocent black characters as well.  In Ventura's two-dimensional,
politically correct world view, all blacks should be depicted as good all
the time.

Ventura also has a problem with the word "Negro": "...the text of a panel
reads: 'Negro suffrage--long considered a remote possibility by all white
Texans--is at last a reality.'  When Jackson's white characters use the word
'Negro,' 'nigrah,' and 'nigger,' that's legitimate storytelling, because
that's the way these people spoke.  But when, as narrator, Jackson uses
'negro,' a word he must know that African-Americans have rejected as
demeaning and would take as demeaning, that's Jackson talking, not his
characters."

Here is what I say to that:

If there is anything more hateful than a philistine, it is a politically
correct philistine--one who uses moralistic criteria to determine what is
"legitimate storytelling."  African-Americans may be perfectly justified in
objecting to the word in question, but it does not follow that an artist or
writer is under some obligation to protect their feelings.  Furthermore, as
a historical writer, Jackson's usage of the word does not reflect his own
attitudes.  "Negro suffrage" is what it was called in the 1870s, and if
Jackson is to present his story from the characters' viewpoint, this is the
term he must use.  Ventura, however, would have preferred Jackson make up a
term--that is, change history.

Ventura's shabby "review" was followed by an equally shabby defense of the
review by editor Louis Black, who said he found Jackson's book "troubling."
He also defended Ventura's credentials to review this historical work by
noting Ventura's co-authorship of an unproduced screenplay on John Wesley
Hardin--as if that means anything, particularly when stacked against
Jackson's impressive credentials as a historian.  Even more laughably, Black
writes that Ventura "made his points clearly and well."

I have had several conversations with Jackson about this matter.  He feels
he has been held up to public ridicule and his personal and professional
reputation damaged.  I agree that Ventura's review was not a review, but a
personal attack (one which he justified, in part, by denigrating the graphic
novel form).  However in the long run, Jackson's reputation as an artist and
historian will survive and flourish.  Lost Cause will stand the test of time
and be recognized as a classic work long after the Chronicle's shabby review
is forgotten.   [Bison Bill]

Maybe so, BB, but it's hard to "forget" something and consider it Water
Under the Bridge when that SOMETHING--V's review--is still online and
hitting people (like me) in the face, day-after-day until Infinity.  In our
Information Age it will be harder for people to forget & forgive than it
ever was before cyberspace touched our lives.  Do we really need this kind
of "progress"?  Maybe not; people have always had a problem forgetting the
grievances that led to Feuds, and cyberspace won't make it any easier.

After this alert went out, comix afficinados across the world started
responding--even though they hadn't seen or read my book.  Ventura's stupid
review was enough to get them riled, and a lot of these people, here and
abroad, were familiar with my work.  Both Comance Moon and Los Tejanos have
been published in French & German editions, so European chatters were not
ignorant of my illustrated histories (nor my earlier UG comix).  I wasn't
wired at the time, so BB sent me batches of these emails in hard copy.  I
can't print them all--without being politely asked to disengage myself from
the List--so I've selected a few representative ones for my next
installment: HEY! THIS CYBERSPACE THING AIN'T SUCH A BAD IDEA AFTER ALL