You’d think a graphic novel drawn by Ramona Fradon, Rick Veitch, Michael Netzer, and Benton Jew would have gotten some attention, and it has, but not in comics circles. That’s because it’s aimed at regular folks, as this clip from CNN shows:
The Adventures of Unemployed Man by Erich Origen and Gan Golan, authors of the best-selling Goodnight, Bush. As you might guess, the topic at hand is an explanation (from one point of view) of why jobs are scarcer than a mint copy of CHEW #1. As a preview at Huffington Post shows, the story is a didactic allegory using superhero tropes to illustrate income disparity and the decoupling of profit from employment and…also how people turn into the Hulk from being exposed to too many Fox News rays.
We can’t imagine this being controversial at all, what with the election and all…so let’s just concentrate on the pleasures of seeing some strong cartoonists working on some surprisingly imaginative stuff (although it would be nice if the artists were actually credited in more places on the promo materials…ahem).
Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.
I thought this was great satire, informative, and while this is a depressing subject and most people who read comics read them to escape such realities, The Adventures of Unemployed Man is also entertaining and does have great art and great production values.
This sounds wonderful.
Packaging and promotion conventions in the book world, especially with a publisher such as Little Brown, apply promotional and cover credits only to authors while cover artists, illustrators or photographers are credited within the book.
When promotions began, I explained to Erich and Gan that comics and Graphic Novel conventions place equal but secondary credits for artists prominently on covers and ALL promotional material. Once the authors realized this, they made a every effort convince the publisher to do so also.
As it turned out, for the most part, Little Brown could not deviate from their own publishing standards. And thus the lack of artist crediting in the way it’s done in comics.
The mainstream book industry is apparently still behind comics in this respect. Most reviews from the big world outside the comics press have highlighted the contribution of the art to the project, which has been a nice compensation for that lack of crediting.
Nice piece, Heidi.