The Guardian's Blog, page 177

Who is the greatest comic book character?

Spider-man, Dennis the Menace or Wonder woman? Who do you think is the greatest comic book character? Tell us in the thread below

Most people know Spider-man. Superman, too. Definitely Batman, although maybe only the Batman embodied by Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan's cinematic trilogy.

Ask someone to name the greatest comic book character and you can expect to hear any one of these, or maybe Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Thor - all the stars of recent box office hits. (It is impossible to ignore the fact that they are all male, too.)

Then there are the old-school comic book heroes, those you grow up with, like Tintin, Asterix and Dennis the Menace, who generally a lot more ordinary than the souped-up super-powered heroes we see today.

There is however, a whole other realm of comic book characters out there who have not (yet) been depicted in multi-million pound blockbusters, but are beloved by comic book buffs the world over.

One such buff is Paul Gravett, who edited 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, and who appears at the Edinburgh international book festival on Friday. We're not quite aiming for 1001, but we would like to know which comic characters you think are the best. Grant Morrison may be resurrecting Wonder Woman, but which comic book characters do you think deserve more attention?

Comics and graphic novelsEdinburgh International Book FestivalSuperman
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Why are publishers the new villain in the digital age?

As Amazon tears down the gates around literary culture, even independents are caught in the crossfire

Perched on the end of a panel filled with writers who are throwing off the shackles of conventional publishing, surrounded by Kindle enthusiasts of every stripe, Mark Buckland found himself very much the odd one out at the Edinburgh international book festival. The head of the e-savvy independent publisher Cargo began by asking how many in the audience were self-published authors and wryly suggested he was "going to get lynched".

It's no surprise that an audience which had paid £10 a ticket to hear about writing in a digital age was mostly made up of authors, with a sizeable minority already publishing themselves, but the hostility Buckland faced as a representative of the publishing industry was something of an eye-opener.

Catherine Czerkawska, who described herself as a "classic midlist author", had already revealed how as publishers became bigger she found herself suffering from the "rave rejection", her agent telling her she was "too accessible … to be truly literary, but too literary to be popular", how she had uploaded her backlist to the Kindle store and "never looked back". Maggie Craig had just confessed how, for the first time since she had begun writing, Amazon had given her "a good monthly income", joking that if big publishers find a writer is making money "they call a meeting to find out what's going wrong".

But there was an audible intake of breath when Buckland suggested self-publishing has "given a voice to everybody, and that's not necessarily a good thing". With Amazon now controlling 90% of the UK market all that's happened is that one set of gatekeepers have been replaced with another, he continued. And Amazon "doesn't care about books".

Those who spoke from the floor mostly agreed with Craig when she argued that the discounting which has seen the price of ebooks plummet began with big publishers, citing a promotion of one of her novels in Asda which saw it selling at "a penny a book". But when Buckland raised the spectre of the demonetised cliff – an industry in which a handful of blockbusters lords it over a host of writers unable to make a living – the crowd asked how he planned to "put the genie back in the bottle", with a muffled cheer greeting the combative question "Who are you to define what culture is?"

Perhaps, like Neil Gaiman, you take the long view – it's only comparatively recently that writers have been able to make a living out of storytelling after all. Maybe you don't care if Jeff Bezos knows what page you're on as long as you can save a little money, but it's something of a shock for an independent publisher to find the room stacked against him at a book festival.

Readers and writers may sometimes feel they have been ill-served by traditional publishers, but I'm puzzled that their current troubles can be met with so much glee. As Buckland says, "I've had some bad sushi, but I'm not calling for the Japanese trawler fleet to be torched."

Digital mediaNeil GaimanSelf-publishingPublishingAmazon.comKindleBooksellersRichard Lea
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Amazon Kindle: why I finally went over to the dark side

I have turned into my worst nightmare – an independent bookstore-loving bibliophile who shops mostly at Amazon.

Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading, today?

The space to talk about the books you are reading, and find out which ones we are reviewing

Hannah FreemanGuardian readers

Poem of the week: The Faerie Queene, Canto XI, Book One, by Edmund Spenser

A fearsome closeup of the dragon facing down the Redcrosse knight makes full use of Spenser's nine-line stanza form

This week we're looking at stanzas X-XV from Canto XI, Book One, of Edmund Spenser's vast allegorical poem The Faerie Queene. In fact, Spenser published a little over half of his projected epic. Some of the new material may have been lost when Irish rebels set fire to the Spensers' estate, Kilcolman Castle, the year before his death. Inspired by a range of sources, particularly Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful History of the Kings of Britain, and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the six published allegories celebrate the private virtues: holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy. The public virtues were to have been examined through the adventures of Prince Arthur in the next six books. Each 12-canto book describes the challenges faced by one of the knights dispatched by the Faerie Queene (Elizabeth I) during her 12-day festival, and Book One is the story of the Redcrosse knight, representing holiness and England (he will in fact turn out to be St George). The parents of his beloved Una, who embodies the true church (Anglican, of course), are enclosed in a "brasen towre", terrorised by the dragon that has usurped their kingdom. The extract begins shortly after the dragon, glimpsing the "glistering armes" of the approaching knight, has roused himself from a spell of sunbathing to launch his attack, "halfe flying and half footing in his haste …"

The Faerie Queene isn't consistently flawless poetry. Spenser's customised stanza sometimes seems to hinder rather than help the narrative. It's often in the set-pieces, where action accommodates illustration, that the nine-lined form seems to fulfil its complex design: it allows the poet to develop and "fix" a vivid but not overly fussy closeup. Spenser's widescreen, stanza-crossing portrayal of the dragon is magnificent.

Stanza X focuses on the monster's "flaggy winges" – "flaggy" meaning "loose" but also suggesting proud self-advertisement ("flagging up" in modern English). They resemble the "sayles" of a huge ship, enabling the dragon to travel speedily in a fair wind. The eighth line and the final alexandrine withdraw from the closeup to register nature's response to the unnatural beast, with a nice antithesis of terrified clouds in flight and planets stalled by amazement. But Spenser hasn't finished with his dragon. The resplendent tail occupies stanza XI: extended, it's almost three furlongs in length, and "bespotted as with shieldes of red and black". Notice Spenser's rhyming of the noun "foldes" and the verb "unfoldes", ingeniously making a single entity of the body and its movements. In the next stanza (XII) the reference to stings and steel recurs. This immediate recapitulation sustains descriptive tension and emphasises the viciousness of the dragon's weaponry by adding superlative to superlative. The two stings exceed the sharpness of the sharpest steel, and the "cruel rending clawes" are sharper even than the stings. "Dead" and "deathly" repeat "deadly" from the previous stanza, so that we're caught in a ring of steel, compounded further by the "three ranckes of yron teeth" in stanza XIII.

The depiction of the eyes as "two brightly shining shieldes" recalls the shield-like patterns of the tail. That satanic colour combo, red and black, recurs when the eyes become glaring lamps set far back in deep dark sockets. The comparison with "two broad beacons, sett in open fieldes" is a master-stroke of realism amidst the fantasy, and a reminder that Spenser's age had no lack of conspirators wielding "fire and sword" around the shires.

Never so idealised that he's immune to human weakness or emotion, the Redcrosse knight proceeds bravely but fearfully, and a protracted battle ensues. But there we must leave them, with an assurance that Spenser's epic still has much to offer the reader. Of course, The Faerie Queene is not mere Arthurian fantasy: it's political and moral allegory, and an epic of national identity-building. Acres of commentary have been devoted to the work's symbols and sources, and are often very helpful. But there's a lot of fun to be had from reading it primarily as a colourful, monster-packed romantic adventure – with some moments of splendid poetry. Welcome to Faerieland.

From Book One, Canto XI of The Faerie Queen

X
His flaggy winges, when forth he did display,
Were like two sayles, in which the hollow wynd
Is gathered full, and worketh speedy way:
And eke the pennes, that did his pineons bynd,
Were like mayne-yardes, with flying canvas lynd,
With which whenas him list the ayre to beat,
And there by force unwonted passage fynd,
The cloudes before him fled for terrour great,
And all the heavens stood still amazed with his threat.

XI
His huge long tayle, wound up in hundred foldes,
Does overspred his long bras-scaly backe,
Whose wreathed boughtes when ever he unfoldes,
And thicke entangled knots adown does slack,
Bespotted as with shieldes of red and blacke,
It sweepeth all the land behind him farre,
And of three furlongs does but litle lacke;
And at the point two stings in-fixed arre,
Both deadly sharpe, that sharpest steele exceeden farre.

XII
But stings and sharpest steele did far exceed
The sharpnesse of his cruel rending clawes;
Dead was it sure, as sure as death in deed,
What ever thing does touch his ravenous pawes,
Or what within his reach he ever drawes.
But his most hideous head my toungue to tell
Does tremble; for his deepe devouring jawes
Wyde gaped, like the griesly mouth of hell,
Through which into his darke abysse all ravin fell.

XIII
And that more wondrous was, in either jaw
Three ranckes of yron teeth enraunged were,
In which yett trickling bloud and gobbets raw
Of late devoured bodies did appeare,
That sight thereof bredd cold congealed feare;
Which to increase, and all at once to kill,
A cloud of smoothering smoke and sulphure seare
Out of his stinking gorge forth steemed still,
That all the ayre about with smoke and stench did fill.

XIV
His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shieldes,
Did burne with wrath, and sparkled living fyre;
As two broad beacons, sett in open fieldes,
Send forth their flames farre off to every shyre,
And warning give, that enemies conspyre,
With fire and sword the region to invade;
So flam'd his eyne with rage and rancorous yre:
But farre within, as in a hollow glade,
Those glaring lampes were sett, that made a dreadfull shade.

XV
So dreadfully he towardes him did pas,
Forelifting up aloft his speckled brest,
And often bounding on the brused gras,
As for great joyance of his newcome guest.
Eftsoones he gan advance his haughtie crest,
As chauffed bore his bristles doth upreare;
And shoke his scales to battell readie drest;
That made the Redcrosse knight nigh quake for feare,
As bidding bold defyaunce to his foeman neare.

Glossary
flaggy – loose; pennes – feathers; whenas him list – when it pleased him; boughtes – folds; eftsoones – soon after; ravin – plunder; chauffed – enraged; bidding – praying

PoetryCarol Rumens
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What I'm thinking about ... why big books are back

The ultra-long novel is making a comeback - what does this say about us as readers?

Big books are dominating this year's book festival. David Peace's 720-page Red or Dead made a big impression at his event here, and Eleanor Catton's even bigger The Luminaries (832 pages), and Richard House's The Kills (1002 pages) have both been longlisted for the Man Booker prize as well.

The novel has always liked length, of course. From Samuel Richardson's Pamela onwards, through the 18th and 19th centuries until the strike of modernism in the early 20th, when the telling of stories became a more tenuous, uncertain business, writers have tended towards the fat doorstopper rather than the slim volume. So big books are hitting the bookshelves again; what's new?

Well, the economics behind the trend might have something to with it. Recessionary times prefer spectacle to introspection – look at those Busby Berkeley musicals of the 30s Depression – and a big novel has the added status of literature above simple entertainment. It keeps us thinking that, despite the diversionary tactics of size and showmanship we're OK, still thinking.

And big books build confidence, too, a feeling a look-at-me can-do'ism - no surprise that it s a form favoured by American writers, who first coined the phrase "big American novel", after all. Big books are epic, dense, packed with plot and content and ideas, aren't they? They weigh more, cost more, take more time to read. And now that time spent reading has to compete with films and on-line everything and facebook and twitter … surely that means that big must be more important than ever, to justify all that time they take us away from our PCs? To justify spending twenty quid or more? A big book must be better value, right? Money well spent?

For sure, novel readers all too often equate time, money and page numbers - it's why novellas and short stories have such a hard time selling. Publishers and booksellers alike have an easier time if customers perceive they're getting value for money – and in the marketplace, value normally means volume.

The novel, for all its history of "novelty" as a genre, was created for a leisured bourgeois class with time and money on its hands to read. So in that way, it's always been conservative at heart - a product of the economy that engendered it, and struggling always, as poetry never does, to break into the realm of dangerous, unpredictable (so potentially un-sellable) art.

But judging by the ones being showcased at Edinburgh, big books now occupy the marketplace in a different way. There's a whiff of the avant garde around Catton's sly, traditional-sounding historical novel, and Peace's latest ably demonstrates the author once again occupying the slippery, shifty mid-zone between fact and fiction that he's made his own.

American Philipp Meyer' s The Son (a mere 560 pages) might be the most traditional of the lot, with House's The Kills defining itself as an audio-visual experience, and Sergio de la Pava's A Naked Singularity (876 pages) starting life as a self-published project. So these books aren't just big, they're strange. A good investment on both counts then?

Just as long as they repay us. Reading through 800 pages or so raises expectations in a way other reading doesn't come close to. All that time given to a book - it had better be more than a gimmick, a trick, a post-modern conceit. It had better be a story we haven't heard before, or already read in another version. It had better change us, make us different to how we were when we started - make us bigger, somehow, ourselves.

David PeaceFictionEdinburgh International Book FestivalKirsty Gunn
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Edinburgh international book festival 2013: week one live blog

Join us here for all the news, events, reviews and discussions from the 30th anniversary Edinburgh international book festival

Hannah FreemanClaire Armitstead

Edinburgh international book festival 2013: week two live blog

It's week two of the 2013 Edinburgh international book festival. Join us here for all the news, events, reviews and discussions from the site

Claire Armitstead

Why is self-publishing still scorned by literary awards?

As an increasing number of DIY authors climb the digital bestseller lists, book prizes will have to rethink their entry criteria

A self-published book reaching the top of the charts is losing its power to surprise. Certainly it's less shocking than it might have been a few years ago to learn that Violet Duke's self-published romance novels, Falling for the Good Guy and Choosing the Right Man nabbed two spots on this week's iBookstore bestseller chart, alongside the likes of JK Rowling and Dan Brown.

It's safer for an editor at a mainstream publishing house to buy a book that reads a lot like last year's bestseller, than to stick out their neck in support of an unproven concept that might not deliver. But readers have no such reason to be cautious, so buyer power is increasingly setting the agenda in mass-market publishing.

New digital bestseller lists, such as the Kindle and iBookstore charts, are helping self-published authors be seen. And then there's EL James, whose stuff-of-dreams rise from self-published writer of fan fiction to multimillionaire bestselling author earned her pole position on Forbes's list of the year's highest-earning authors.

But the barriers to success for literary authors are still formidable. Sergio de la Pava first published A Naked Singularity on Xlibris, but he only won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W Bingham award after it was picked up by "proper" publisher Chicago University Press.

Most literary awards are closed to self-published books. Entry criteria for the Booker prize state that "self-published books are not eligible where the author is the publisher or where a company has been specifically set up to publish that book", while the Bailey's women's prize for fiction stipulates that books must come from a "bone fide imprint".

As more authors choose to go it alone, literary prize administrators will soon be playing catch-up.

Self-publishingFictionPublishingKindleE-readersAwards and prizesLiz Bury
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Edinburgh international book festival 2013 takes a stroll down memory lane

From Jane Gardam's forgetful Old Filth to a misremembered Man Booker, this year's festival is all about the power of the mind

Memory has been much on the minds of Edinburgh festival-goers this week, with neuroscientist Susan Greenfield exploring its relationship with the imagination, and Chris Ware and Joe Sacco explaining its role in the creation of comics. Both graphic fiction (such as Ware's Building Stories) and non-fiction (such as Sacco's accounts of Gaza and Bosnia) are structured around memory, they agreed – whether that involved assembling reportage into visual sequences or building commonplace scenes into graphic narratives. The difference between photojournalism and graphic non-fiction, said Sacco, was that photojournalism was about finding a single expressive picture, whereas graphic journalism was about repeated images: the power of comics lay in their capacity to replicate the experience of walking around Gaza, for instance, through recurrent images of local graffiti.

Along with the power of memory came some intriguing examples of its lapses. Octogenarian novelist Jane Gardam has built the vagaries of the ageing mind into the structure of her latest novel, Last Friends. In this third book in her Old Filth trilogy, "the titans were gone", leaving two bit-part players to hold the stage. Widowed Dulcie is not always sure what day it is, said Gardam, who confessed to having had some continuity issues of her own. At one point, she gave Old Filth's wife Betty two lunches, she revealed. But the big mystery was the whereabouts of a small boy called Frank, who appears somewhere in the trilogy, though its author has no idea where.

Elsewhere, rare book dealer Rick Gekoski advised Man Booker judge Stuart Kelly on how to handle the shortlisting of a literary prize, claiming that the power of his advocacy in 2005 swung the vote for that year's Booker winner round from a 3-2 split favouring Zadie Smith's On Beauty over John Banville's The Sea. Chairman John Sutherland has a rather different recollection: "As was widely reported, the final contest was between Ishiguro and Banville," he said.

Edinburgh International Book FestivalEdinburgh festival 2013Edinburgh festivalJane GardamChris WareJoe SaccoMan Booker International prizeAwards and prizesFestivalsSusan GreenfieldClaire Armitstead
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