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On "Q":

This story is supposed
to be about a question.

But I can't find it anywhere.

Do you know where it is?

"Q" was one of the trickiest ones, because there's not a lot of things you can do with stories with words beginning with "Q," which is why I ended up going for a bit of a conundrum with that one. It's really a question rather than a story. ... The interesting thing is that kids get that immediately, but most adults I show it to, they're like, "I don't get it." They don't understand that the very last question is the question that they were looking for.

On the process of illustrating the book

This book has been about two years in the making and I started illustrating it from "A" to "Z" once the stories and the rough drawings were all in place. And I got all the way up to "T" in full color oil painting, collage and a whole range of media. And that whole thing was totally in full color when I realized that it was just too much — it was too heavy and the simplicity of the book had been lost. So I went back to the drawing board and ended up redoing everything. And this is just ink and ink washes then with the occasional splash of color — of watercolor. ...

Sometimes you get into a project and you can't really see it anymore. But it was one of those good instincts that was confirmed by two artist friends when they came around. And I just happened to have left some of the ink sketches sitting out on my desk. I showed them the oils, saying, "What do you think?" And they [said], "These are lovely. These are really great, but what are these ones over here?" Looking at the whole thing, as a whole, I had a gut feeling that it was too heavy. The whole thing felt too cumbersome and arguably a little intimidating to pick up just because there was so much going on. And the stories were sacrificed because of the emphasis on the art. And I thought, "This is not what this book is about." It's supposed to be lighter and easier to access. So I ended up recreating all of the art.

Book Your Trip

The Fly List: Books About Takeoffs, Landings And Bumpy Rides

On how he feels about being labeled a writer and illustrator of kids' books

I take it as an honor that kids love the book, but I always refer to the books that I make as picture books because I think by saying they're kids' books, you alienate non-kids.

Movies

Casting Call: Hollywood Needs More Women

Bilal Qureshi has covered the Toronto International Film Festival for several years and, back in Washington, works for All Things Considered.

One of the pop culture conversations of the year has been the absence of women in cinema, both in front of and behind the camera. Stacy Smith of the USC Annenberg School has been documenting the tiny percentage of working women directors, screenwriters and producers. The MacArthur-Prize-winning cartoonist Alison Bechdel's 1985 "test" that points out the rarity of rich portrayals of women on screen still resonates. And when she accepted her Oscar for Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett chided an industry she said still believes that women's stories can't sell: "Those in the industry," she said, "who are foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women in the center are niche experiences. They are not."

At this fall's film festivals — including Toronto, New York, and London, which is underway now — films made by and about women were not treated as niche experiences but as gala premieres. Cameron Bailey, the artistic director of the Toronto Film Festival, says this year, his team of programmers "talked about gender because I was reading a lot that was happening in terms of debates around women's cinema, debates reflecting the frustrations that things hadn't progressed more." So he says he encouraged his programmers to try harder. "I didn't say to them, 'Go out and find more films by women.' I said, 'Find the best films you can, and where there are films by women, we're going to do our best to give them the best profile that we can and make sure that people pay attention.'"

From the big-screen adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild to Gina Prince-Bythewood's critique of pop music's hypersexualization of young women in Beyond the Lights, the films premiering at this year's festivals reflect a new energy around telling women's stories with nuance and cinematic sophistication — and, ideally, with commercial viability.

I talked with directors Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (who, before Beyond the Lights, made the romance Love & Basketball), screenwriter Julia Hart (The Keeping Room), Pakistani filmmaker Afia Nathaniel (Dukhtar), producer Bruna Papandrea (Gone Girl, Wild) and film critic Ruby Rich to talk about the role that film festivals play in closing cinema's gender gap. They had a lot to say for this story, which airs on Monday's All Things Considered.

This year's Columbus Day holiday will have a slightly different, more Native flavor in the city of Seattle. Thanks to a unanimous vote this summer by the city council, the federal holiday will now be known by a different name: Indigenous Peoples' Day.

The name change comes after activists pushed for a day to honor indigenous people instead of Christopher Columbus, the most recognizable figure linked to European contact with the Americas.

"This is about taking a stand against racism and discrimination," Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told the Seattle Times. "Learning about the history of Columbus and transforming this day into a celebration of indigenous people and a celebration of social justice... allows us to make a connection between this painful history and the ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous communities face to this day."

On Monday, the streets of Seattle will likely be filled with drums, singing, and the faces of citizens from the cities surrounding Native Nations: The Lummi, Nooksack, Tulalip, Sauk-Suiattle, Swinomish, Puyallup, Colville and 22 other Washington tribes, as well as citizens from other Indian Nations that call Seattle home.

Seattle isn't the first place to give the holiday a makeover. Earlier this year, the Minneapolis City Council also renamed Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples' Day. South Dakota celebrates Native American Day in "remembrance of the great Native American leaders who contributed so much to the history of our state." Hawaii observes Discoverers' Day in which Polynesian explorers are honored.

Of course, not everybody is happy about these changes. The AP reports that some Italian-Americans in Seattle have been upset by the change because it comes "at the expense of what essentially is Italian Heritage Day." But for those who have a negative view of Columbus' impact, the new name honors a legacy of struggle and resistance.

In the past, anti-Columbus Day protestors have clashed with the holiday's supporters, most notably in Denver where members of the American Indian Movement have taken to the streets almost yearly since the late 1980's. Those protests have quieted down in recent years, although those annual demonstrations frequently ended in arrests.

But anti-Columbus sentiment is hardly limited to the U.S. In Chile, Mapuche activists launched anti-Columbus demonstrations that turned violent last year. In 2002, indigenous people in Guatemala protested the day by shutting down highways across the country. Today, many countries in Latin America —including Mexico, El Salvador and Argentina— recognize Dia de la Raza, while in Venezuela, the holiday has been renamed the Day of Indigenous Resistance.

In the U.S., the bigger issue now is whether the holiday can survive as a growing number of cities and states decide to do away with it. According to the Pew Research Center, it's already "one of the most inconsistently celebrated U.S. holidays." Apart from federal employees, workers in only 23 states are given a paid day off to observe the holiday.

Seattle

Native Americans

columbus day

The fourth and final issue of the weekly four-issue Marvel Comics mini-series Death of Wolverine, written by Charles Soule and drawn by Steve McNiven, will be published next Wednesday.

Here follows an excerpt from a text exchange about the series between nerd-about-town Glen Weldon (Ghweldon) and a non-comics-reading "normal" of his acquaintance (Golfrguy).

Golfrguy: dude they're killing off wolverine???????

Ghweldon: Yep. Well I mean "killing" off. You know, for now.

Golfrguy: whuuuut but he can't be killed that's his whole thing

Ghweldon: No, sure. You'd think. But they've been setting this up for a while, actually. A little over year ago, Paul Cornell, who writes the solo comic, Wolverine, took away the guy's healing factor.

Golfrguy: how

Ghweldon: "How?" Never mind how. Not important.

Golfrguy: seriously tell me

Ghweldon: It's ... It's pretty nerdy.

Golfrguy: yeah I figured tell me

Ghweldon: ... I really don't think you're ready for this nerdy jelly, pal.

Golfrguy: DUDE.

“ In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, 'that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns.' No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

- Glen Weldon

Ghweldon: He got possessed by an evil mind-controlling world-conquering sentient virus from the Microverse.

Golfrguy: ...

Ghweldon: Yep. It blew out his healing factor like the guy was a Radio Shack sub-woofer.

Golfrguy: wait whats the microverse

Ghweldon: You know, we should really take a step back here. This is the death of a superhero in a comic book, after all. And I've told you before: In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, "that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns."

No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

So don't worry about Wolverine. He'll be back. They all come back.

Golfrguy: wait back up the microverse is that where the micronauts were from? Same place?

Code Switch

Superhero Super-Fans Talk Race And Identity In Comics

Ghweldon: Now, I know what you're gonna say....

Golfrguy: hows a virus control a dudes mind huh

Ghweldon: You're gonna say but Glen, when Mike Marts, the Marvel editor in charge of this whole thing, spoke to Entertainment Weekly back in April, he claimed that THIS death would be different.

"The concept of 'death' in comic books can seem a bit tenuous," EW wrote, understating like crazy, "... but Marts says that Marvel approached this event 'from a standpoint of finality, of closure.'"

That sound you hear? Is the noise made when millions of nerdy eyes roll and roll and roll.

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Rise Of The Superheroes: Winners And Losers

Here's the thing: Wolverine is a corporate-owned, heavily licensed nugget of intellectual property. He's one of the company's flagship characters, and he fuels a vast merchandising machine that includes movie franchises, videogames, toys and clothing. If anything about him changes — if, Crom forbid, he dies — the bottom drops out of the Wolverine footy pajamas market.

Here's another thing: Comics are essentially soap operas: ongoing, open-ended narratives that deny their characters the very thing that makes a story a story: the ending. Endings give shape and weight to a narrative by providing exactly what Marts so disingenuously promises: Finality. Closure.

“ Superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over ... they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

- Glen Weldon

In lieu of an ending, then, superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over. They can change, albeit in carefully proscribed ways (I'm evil now! I'm good again! I'm dead! I'm back!) but they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

Writers of corporate-owned superhero comics make their peace with this: they know their tenure with these characters is finite, that they are essentially taking Daddy's precious vintage toys off the shelf and playing with them for a period of months or years. They know, too, that when they finally, gingerly, return those toys to the shelf, they must ensure that they remain unscathed, unchanged, pristine.

More From Glen Weldon

Monkey See

At 75, Batman Still Seeks Justice, Not Revenge

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Beyond Visible: LGBT Characters In Graphic Novels

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Dear Zack Snyder, Regarding Wonder Woman

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Death Of A Puppy: An Exclusive Imaginary Excerpt From The 'Man Of Steel' Sequel

Monkey See

Alice Munro, The Punchbowl And Everyday Villainy

Which is not to say that great, nuanced, character-based work can't be done in the genre. Matt Fraction is writing a hugely entertaining take on the Marvel superhero Hawkeye, turning him into a world-weary, long-suffering schlub who just wants to do right, and who finds himself perpetually overmatched by life. Writers like Kieron Gillen, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Gail Simone, Brian Michael Bendis, and Wolverine's own Paul Cornell take their characters and invest them with human frailties and specific personalities.

But when they leave the book, everything they've brought goes with them, and the character returns to starting position. It's the nature of the medium.

So now, yes: Wolverine is dying, as so many have died before him. One of the many infographics found in Tim Leong's searingly clever book, Super Graphic, compares the relative lengths of comic book dirt-naps, ranging from a few scant months (Superman, The Human Torch) to multiple decades (Robin II, Bucky).

Well you may wonder: Don't you Nerds get sick of it? Don't you tire of these endless cynical ploys to goose sales, when you know that Marvel will eventually dig up and reanimate whatever corpse they're making such a show of burying?

By way of answer, I direct you to the fact that Death of Wolverine is currently the #1 comic on the market: sales of the first issue topped 260,000 copies.

We nerds have come to accept the cycle of eternal return as permanent feature in the landscape of superheroic narrative. It's become just another genre trapping, like the secret origin, the evil doppelganger, the dance tights.

You might as well ask if romance readers get sick of all that kissing, or if football fans get bored with all that endless running to and fro.

Golfrguy: ... ok but a sentient VIRUS?????

Ghweldon: Got to go.

wolverine

Marvel

death

comics

Marvel Comics