Sat urdoy, August 6, 1977? THE MtICHIGAN DAILY Page Seven Saturday, August 6, 1977 THE MICHIGAN DAiLY Page Seven Cc WI my card and auto If teri zines Bu SO duce the d A omic book progression By GREGG KRUPA ingful work that will appeal to adults as well as chil- IMIC BOOKS. dren." hen I was a kid I had to hide mine. I would tell In trying to appeal to a more difficult readership, mother I was going to the store to buy baseball Brennan has brought deep physical drama into many a, then I wouldsmuggle the comics into the house of his stories. An example of this is the dialogue of his hide them in a bottom drawer, under my sports main character in "A Gift Of Wonder," which appear- graph collection, on top of some girlie magazines. ed in Power Corfics number one, earlier this year. my comics were found, the consequences were ble nough, if mom ever found those girlie mgsr- s........ ..:......... . my God! "I turned myself into a comic book it of course that was part of the fun. Superhero# parody ewhole WERE THE NIGHTMARES. The nightmares in- spr r to dy the w con- d by those fantastic creatures that passed through cept, to show how ridiculous it really horror comic book pages.They would come alive - i e 'k mtot in thv iiddlr of the ni ht Pxe t fnr IS' ' r - are s ex me vu n te mit me ein , exc~p pu Vampirella, she stimulated an entirely different sort of dream-my first crush. For most of us comic books are a nostalgic memory, they appeal to adolescents. But some writers are try- ing to change that. One of them is a local writer, T.. Casey: Brennan, who contribute4 to the Vampirella series. "There's nothing in the comic book medium =that makes it inherently for children," explains Brennan. "They've progressed from the days when they were considered to be strictly funny books. A lot of comic book writers and artists are trying to do very mean- JWhile OP 5helher sidedo the e ~nj ~ve s~h10tat nrat'H 1!i! M ' +j BR m stlbw FiGURE MY$TEit., 1. C1 pl/ RE "YOU ARE USELESS, you Gods! You have taken from us our sense of wonder; In the beginning . . . in us was that terrible, wonderful, beautiful knowledge that we did not know what lay beyond . . . NTow there are cities through which we run, still searching for those magic things, but forgetting just what they were. Our hope is gone, wrenched from our souls, our sense of wonder has died." Another facet of $rennan's appeal to adults is paro- dy. Brennan accomplishes a marvelous parody of the comic book superhero in'I"T. -Casey'Brennan, Figure of Mystery, which appeared in Power Comics number two. "t turned myself into a comic book superhero to parody the whole concept, to show how ridiculous it really is," explains Brennan. BRENNAN, 28, has been writing and selling comics since 1968. He has written for Creepy, Eerie, Vampir- ella, Nightmare, Sorcery, Ghostly Haunts, Orb, and Power Comics. In his spare time Brennan has worked for the Mus- cular Dystrophy Association in Ann Arbor. Brennan's work has been highly acclaimed. In 1971 he won the Ray Bradbury Cup for his story, "On the Wings of a Bird." This prestigious award is given to the writer of the best comic story of the year printed by the Warren Publishing Company. He was also nominated for the 1971 Shazapn Award given by the Academy of Comic Book Arts and the 1971 Goethe Award given by comic book fans. "I CONSIDER THE COMIC BOOK to be potentially T. Casey Brennan a work of art, that's why I am so pleased that Power Comics has given me a lot of room, in allowing me to do what I want to do with my scripts," said Bren- nan. Power comics is one of a very few comic books pro- duced in Michigan. Brennan's works have appeared in the first three editions and all of them can be pur- chased at the Eye of Agamatto on State Street in Ann Arbor. His newest comic, "T. Casey's Mystic Tales" will appear in November. Brennan is also making other progressions in his literary career. "I don't intend to stop with just comics," said Bren- nan. "I have a science fiction novel now in progress." Gregg Krapa is a Daily staff eporter. Feminist retrospective (Continued from Pge 6) from other feminists that the fifty-year treadmill to- ward ulcers and a gold watch should be dismantled rather than ridden. The subtitle of the second section, "Actions," disturbs me. Although I acknowl- edge that speaking is an action, I am not so sure that to call "actions" the texts of speeches delivered to conferences of elite wo- men co-opts t h e activist sense of "action." (Like it or not-and Friedan doesn't -they were elite women, as were the women in the most carefully distilled radical groups.) This is where ,Frie- dan starts slanging any- body who doesn't want into Mainstream America "in truly e q u a l partnership with men." IN MANY WAYS, the third section, "Betty Frie- dan's Notebook" from Mc- Call's, is the sturdiest part of the book, for both its thought and its style. Per- haps these articles survive better and are more appeal- ing because they are less occasion-oriented than the speeches and manifestos. The section is sub-subti- tled "Struggling for Per- sonal Truth;" 'this is Frie- dan's way of w o r k i n g through the "personal is political" equation, and her way is perhaps livelier than th e standard mad-house- wife and/or frustrated-ca- reerist confession because she recognized e a r 1y the poverty of both those liter- ary modes. "A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir" and "Scary Doings in Mexico .City" (from the fourth seetiors, "Transcending Polarities') are great big windows on an important personality and an important event which are inaccessible to most of us and, worse, have been the subject of so much print and electronic blather as to become more inacces- sible. These two a r t i c 1 e s more than make up for sec- tion five, "An Open Letter to the Women's Movement," which is opaque, pedantic, and sectarian. MORGAN sorts the mate- rial in Going Too Far ac- dence of Morgan's growing cording to her own not- freedom and competence as c om p 1 e t e 1 y - intelli- an artist: this prose is more gible scheme of feminist prosaic than the things she consciousness. In "Letters wrote when she-couldn't do from a Marriage," she at- poetry.. These pieces seem tempts to document her flat and unfinished, wi th g r o w i n g awareness that the exception of "Metaphy- something is rotten in the sical Feminism," which of- state of matrimony and fers breathtaking insights that sex roles are as boring into the ways that new- to play as any other two- born feminist ethics and dimensional part. Her com- feminist aesthetics might mentary between letters is work. The reading list at more enlightening than the the end of the book is a letters are, treat. The articles which make up "The Emergence of Wo- I feel privileged to have wen's Liberation" are, on these books, although I one hand, mortifying for wish that there were more their intellectual and styl- new material here, and es- istic j a r g o n (as Morgan specially more m a t e r i a l notes), and, on the other which did not simply alibi hand, pleasantly nostalgiac. and apologize for the old, Myth America, the WITCH In conclusion, a caveat for series, "The Wretched of the authors (for a change): the . Hearth," "Barbarous - I will hold still for no more Rituals" are as bright, hu- u n m a r k e d post - scripts morous, and stimulating as which appear to be simple I remember them to be, de- pointless s n i p i n g s over spite their juvenile char- w h i c h feminist speaker / acter. a r t i s t / theorist / bottle- washer is a covert agent for "FEMINIST LEANINGS" whatever conspiracy or, al- includes M o r g a n 's k e y ternately, a numbskulled pieces for the Rat. Much of sellout. E i t h e r name the it seems as dated now a names and present the evi- Kim A g n e w jokes, but "Goodbye to All That" is dence, or drop it and go on as moving and mind-ex- to something else. We have panding as it ever was, and too much w o r k and too as prophetic today as it was little time to f r i s k about seven years ago. And "A slinging spite. Brief Elegy for Four Wo- men" still calls forth tears of rage and grief. Marnie Heyn is a graduate "B e y o n d the Seventh sctdent in Esglish and a formtr Veil" is backhanded evi- Da ly Editorial Director.