CANR
WORK TITLE: On the Ropes
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE: 4/2/1953-6/5/2017
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NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CA 246
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/05/entertainment/la-et-jc-on-the-ropes-james-vance-dan-burr-20130305 * http://www.tulsaworld.com/obituaries/localobituaries/rites-held-for-james-vance-former-tulsa-world-writer-acclaimed/article_02079a60-090f-5769-a190-431c88145b54.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 2, 1953, in Muskogee, OK; died June 5, 2017, in Tulsa, OK; son of James and Margaret Vance; married Kate Worley (died, 2004); married; wife’s name Jodi; children Jacob, Sarah, Kaitlyn, Brigid.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, playwright, comic book writer, graphic novelist, editor, journalist, and reviewer. Tulsa World, Tulsa, OK, entertainment writer and theater reviewer. Writer and editor of comic book scripts for Dark Horse Comics.
AWARDS:Shared Harvey Award for Best New Series and Eisner Award (with artist Dan Burr) for Best New Series, both 1989, both for Kings in Disguise; Eisner Award for best single issue/story, 1989, for Kings in Disguise number one; inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame, 2010; Governor’s Arts Award, Oklahoma Arts Council; David Library Award.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Bob Powell’s Complete Jet Powers, illustrated by Bob Powell, introduction by Steve Rude, Kitchen Sink Books (Milwauke, OR), 2015.
Writer of comics, including Neil Gaiman’s Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man, Tekno Comix, mid-1990s; with artists Dougie Braithwaite and Sean Hardy, of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight: Idols, issues 80-82, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1996; Aliens: Survival, Dark Horse (Milwaukie, OR), 1998; and Predator: Homeworld, Dark Horse (Mulwaukie, OR), 1999. Coeditor of original Lost Girls serialization, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, Kitchen Sink Press; writer, with Reed Waller, of the last chapters of Omaha the Cat Dancer, serialized in Sizzle magazine, NBM Publishing, 2005-12.
Author of one-act play Kings in Disguise, and a comic-book series adaptation of that same title; author of plays, including Halls of Ivory, Stations and Robin Hood. Author of documentary scripts, including Hope is the Last Thing to Die.
SIDELIGHTS
James Vance first wrote Kings in Disguise as a play, then with illustrator Dan Burr as a comic-book miniseries. The six issues were then collected in one volume with an additional ten-page story. Kings in Disguise is set in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. In Marian, California, the Bloch family is falling apart. The father, a widower, is unable to find employment and becomes caught up in alcohol abuse. Albert, the teenage son, also unable to find work, is hurt while trying to steal in order to buy food. Younger son Freddie finds himself alone when his father abandons him, and eventually, with his father’s last known Detroit address in hand, he heads east to find him.
As he travels, Freddie meets Sammy, an older and sickly vagabond, who calls himself the King of Spain and who teaches Freddie how to survive. Together they find food and travel the country in boxcars as they develop a close friendship. Freddie learns how to read the hobo signs that indicate which home is friendly and which is not, where a handout is probable, and also where a vicious dog may threaten them. A reviewer for American Heritage wrote that Vance “has been scrupulous about thirties hobo slang…. This is an entertaining primer of hard times.”
Vance’s story depicts events of the period, including the violent and divisive labor riots. In a School Library Journal review, Phillip Clark wrote that the book “gives a frightening picture of what happens to ordinary people in a nation gone mad.” Freddie observes people who have lost hope, and although he and Sammy fend off attacks by others, including the police, they also meet people who show them kindness when the two young men reach out during this period when so many are struggling to survive. Among them are a couple whose son is killed by the police, a female union leader, and another hobo who claims to be Jesse James. Ultimately, Freddie has a better understanding of life and how it can be changed by circumstances.
Matthew Surridge reviewed Kings in Disguise for Comic Book Life online, saying that Vance “uses his playwriting experience to good effect, especially in differentiating between the voice of the young Freddie we see and the older Fred who tells us his story…. Kings in Disguise skillfully navigates through a minefield of politics and emotion. There’s warmth, but there’s also an unblinking view of reality that is, at times, almost brutal.” Surridge called the story “realism at its best.”
Publishers Weekly contributor Penny Kaganoff wrote that Vance’s award-winning story “of a young man forced to become an adult is touching,” and called Kings in Disguise “an outstanding example of mature comic book storytelling.”
Kings in Disguise not only attracted much attention from readers, it also was admired by critics and awards organizations. The graphic novel won both the Eisner Award and the Harvey Award, the two most prestigious awards in the comic book and graphic novel industry.
After the success of Kings in Disguise, Vance continued as a writer of comics and graphic novels. He collaborated with his wife, Kate Worley, on her best-known illustrated series Omaha the Cat Dancer, a dramatic adult series featuring anthropomorphic animals, with art by Reed Waller. After Worley died in 2004, Vance collaborated with Waller, editing and finishing the final Omaha strips, which were serialized in Sizzle magazine.
In 2013, Vance and Burr collaborated again, returning to the setting that first brought them acclaim. On the Ropes continues the story of Fred Bloch and his hardscrabble adventures in the Great Depression. The graphic novel’s setting is five years after the events in Kings in Disguise, and Fred is now a teenager, hardened by life on the road and the privations of Depression-era life. He’s working for a traveling circus sponsored by the Works Projects Administration, or WPA, a real-life New Deal government agency that employed millions of people during the Depression. Fred works with Gordon Corey, an escape artist who performs an illusion that makes it look like he’s been hanged. Corey is rough and an alcoholic, but Fred finds himself reliant on the older man. In another part of the story, Fred describes the struggles of American workers to unionize, and the violence and intimidation that follows in an attempt to stop them.
“There’s nothing romantic about Fred’s journey through the hobo camps and carny shows, and his political engagement is less the result of idealism than of a kind of steely realism, a sense that it takes sacrifices to foment change,” observed Los Angeles Times writer David L. Ulin. In assessing the novel’s main character, Rumpus website reviewer Greg Hunter commented: “Vance and Burr’s Fred Bloch is, if not wholly a victim, than not a hero, either. But he’s likewise recognizable as a person straining to live according to his heart and his principles in a time when much lies beyond his control.”
A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked that Vance and Burr apparently set out to create a “Depression-era story as layered and encompassing as the classics of Steinbeck or James M. Cain—and they are successful.”
Vance died of cancer on June 5, 2017.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Heritage, April, 1994, review of Kings in Disguise, p. 115.
Booklist, March 1, 2013, Gordon Flagg, review of On the Ropes, p. 40.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2012, review of On the Ropes.
Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2013, David L. Ulin, “James Vance and Dan E. Burr’s New Graphic Novel Goes to the Circus,” review of On the Ropes.
Publishers Weekly, Penny Kaganoff, review of Kings in Disguise, p. 227; August 27, 2012, review of On the Ropes, p. 60..
School Library Journal, March, 1991, Phillip Clark, review of Kings in Disguise, p. 228; May, 2005, Erin Dennington, review of The Crow: Flesh and Blood, p. 167..
Tulsa World, June 15, 2017, Tim Stanley, “Rites Held for James Vance, Former Tulsa World Writer, Acclaimed Graphic Novelist,” obituary of James Vance.
ONLINE
Comic Book Bin, http://www.comicbookbin.com/ (March 26, 2013), Leroy Douresseaux, review of On the Ropes.
Comic Book Life Website, http://www.comicbooklife.com/ (November 24, 1999), Matthew Surridge, review of Kings in Disguise.
James Vance Website, http://www.james-vance.com (August 12, 2017).
Newsarama, http://www.newsarama.com/ (June 15, 2017), Chris Arrant, “James Vance Passes Away at 64,” obituary of James Vance.
Rumpus, http://www.therumpus.net/ (August 6, 2013), Greg Hunter, “The Rumpus Interview with James Vance.”*
James Vance
Born April 2, 1953
Muskogee, Oklahoma
Died June 5, 2017 (aged 64)
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Nationality American
Area(s) Writer
Notable works
Kings in Disguise
On the Ropes
Collaborators Dan Burr
Awards Harvey Award, 1989
Eisner Award, 1989
James Vance (April 2, 1953 – June 5, 2017) was an American comic book writer, author and playwright, best known for his work from Kitchen Sink Press and in particular the lauded Kings in Disguise.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Bibliography
3 Awards and nominations
4 Notes
5 References
Biography[edit]
Vance's introduction into comics writing came in 1988, with his Kitchen Sink-published limited series, Kings in Disguise, later collected by W. W. Norton, with an introduction by the legendary Alan Moore, who calls it:
"One of the most moving and compelling human stories to emerge out of the graphic story medium."[1]
This work, with art by Dan Burr, earned both a Harvey Award and an Eisner Award (both 1989) for best new series, as well as another Eisner Award for best single issue/story (also 1989). It also made the list of the one hundred best comic book stories of all time.[2]
In 2013, Vance and Burr published On the Ropes, the long-awaited sequel to Kings in Disguise. On the Ropes was positively reviewed by, among others, the Los Angeles Times,[3] Publishers Weekly,[4] and writer Alan Moore.[5]
Vance also wrote Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man for Tekno Comix in the mid-1990s, and was co-editor of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls as originally serialised by Kitchen Sink Press. He has also contributed scripts towards comics featuring The Crow, and the Dark Horse Comics-published licensed properties Aliens and Predator.
Vance was married to cartoonist Kate Worley for the last ten years of her life before she succumbed to cancer[6] in 2004. After Worley's death, Vance edited and completed (with artist Reed Waller) the final chapters of her Omaha the Cat Dancer strip, which were serialized in Sizzle magazine.[7] He died on June 5, 2017 from cancer.[8]
Bibliography[edit]
Comics work includes:
Kings in Disguise (Kitchen Sink Press, 1988) — with artist Dan Burr
Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man (Tekno Comix, 1995)
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight: Idols #80–82 (DC Comics, 1996) — with artists Dougie Braithwaite and Sean Hardy
Aliens: Survival (Dark Horse, 1998)
Predator: Homeworld (Dark Horse, 1999)
Omaha the Cat Dancer in Sizzle #28–30, 32, 34–35, 38–40, 42–44, 46–49, 51, 53, 55, 56 (Eurotica, NBM Publishing, 2005–2012) — with artist Reed Waller
On the Ropes (W. W. Norton, 2013) — with artist Dan Burr
Awards and nominations[edit]
In addition to his 1989 Eisner and Harvey Awards wins (with Dan Burr), Vance was also a 1990 Eisner-nominee with Burr for Kings in Disguise, and a 1991-nominee as best writer.[9]
James Vance Passes Away At 64
By Chris Arrant, Editor
June 15, 2017 01:35pm ET
James Vance passed away June 5, 2017 at the age of 64 after a two-year battle with cancer.
Vance was born April 2, 1953 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He debuted in the comic book industry with 1988's Kings In Disguise, a limited series drawn by Dan E. Burr based on a play he wrote in 1979. The six-issue miniseries was published by Kitchen Sink Press, and was later nominated for an Eisner Award. The duo reunited for a sequel, On the Ropes, in 2013.
Vance did various work-for-hire around comics including stints on Mr. Hero - The Neumatic Man, Aliens, Predator, The Spirit, The Crow, and Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. In addition to writing, Vance served as an editor on Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls and the final chapters of his late wife Kate Worley's Omaha the Cat Dancer.
Vance was inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2010, with his work featured at the Oklahoma History Center.
Vance is survived by his wife Jodi, eight children, and 12 grandchildren.
The family has set up a GoFundMe account to help with the mortgage and related expenses.
James Vance, 1953-2017
Rites held for James Vance, former Tulsa World writer, acclaimed graphic novelist
By Tim Stanley Tulsa World Jun 15, 2017 2
James Vance, a former Tulsa World writer, as well as an award-winning graphic novelist and playwright, died June 5.
He was 64.
A private service was held Thursday. Rose Hill Funeral Home handled arrangements.
A longtime Tulsa resident, Vance was perhaps best known outside of Oklahoma for his graphic novels, including the Depression-era “Kings in Disguise” and its sequel “On the Ropes,” both based on plays he had written.
“Kings,” published in 1988, is considered a landmark of the genre. Vance teamed with artist Dan Burr on both novels.
By the time he discovered the medium, Vance was already an accomplished playwright.
Among his best-known plays were “Stations,” which Theatre Tulsa premiered and which represented the United States at an international theater festival in Monaco; and “Robin Hood,” a family-oriented adventure that was performed in Mohawk Park for several summers.
Vance was actually thinking about plays when he got his introduction to graphic novels.
“I thought I would check out a comic-book store to see what was big in popular culture,” he told the World in a 2013 interview. “Instead of material for a play, I found a medium in which people were starting to do some pretty sophisticated, adult storytelling — really complex stuff that was moving the medium in new directions.”
He discovered, he added, that there’s not a lot of difference between writing for actors and for comics.
“Both are about putting words and images together,” he said.
Former Tulsa World writer John Wooley, a close friend, said Vance was “an absolutely brilliant writer and playwright and one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever known, a quality that shone through in everything he created.”
Vance’s graphic novels, he added, have been compared by critics to the work of author John Steinbeck.
“That’s not hyperbole,” Wooley said. “Like Steinbeck, Jim had a poet’s eye, a huge heart, and a soul that was repelled by injustice and tyranny. He was the kind of artist we’ll always need more of.”
Vance was born in Muskogee, but he lived most of his life in Tulsa and was a 1971 graduate of East Central High School.
Over two stints with the World, Vance had been an entertainment writer, including reviewing local theater, before writing for the newspaper’s weekly TV World magazine.
Vance was married to Kate Worley, herself a well-known comic book writer, until her death in 2004.
He was also preceded in death by his parents, James Vance Jr. and Margaret Vance.
Survivors include his wife, Jodi Vance; four children, Brigid Vance, Jacob Vance, Sarah Vance and Kaitlyn McBryde; four stepchildren; one grandson; 11 step-grandchildren; and a sister, Janet Korowitz.
JAMES VANCE is an award-winning writer whose career has embraced forms ranging from graphic novels to live theater and journalism.
His 1988 graphic novel Kings in Disguise (with artist Dan Burr) was honored with the Eisner and Harvey awards � the Oscars of their field � and its reissue in 2006 was hailed as one of that year�s ten top comics events by Time.com. His other comics work includes the whimsical Mr. Hero adventure series, and stories for the Batman, Aliens and Predator franchises.
A multiple winner of national awards for playwriting, he was commissioned to write the drama �Halls of Ivory� as an official event of the Bicentennial Celebration of the United States Constitution. His play �Stations� was chosen to represent the United States at the International Theater Festival in Monte Carlo.
He was commissioned to write a monograph in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution touring exhibit �Climbing Jacob�s Ladder,� and his script for the related television documentary �Hope is the Last Thing to Die� was honored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
In collaboration with his late wife Kate Worley, he has written a novel for the mystery market, and is presently at work on a new book in a similar vein. Working with artist Reed Waller, he is also shepherding Kate�s all-new conclusion to the popular Omaha the Cat Dancer comics series into print.
Once again working with Dan Burr, Vance is currently completing a sequel to Kings in Disguise. Titled On the Ropes, that sequel will be issued by W.W. Norton in the near future.
Awards
Eisner Award for Best Single Issue/Single Story
1989 Kings In Disguise #1, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)
Eisner Award for Best New Series
1989 Kings In Disguise, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)
Eisner Award Nominee for Best Black-and-White Series
1989 Kings In Disguise, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)
Eisner Award Nominee for Best Writer/Artist
1989 James Vance and Dan Burr, for Kings In Disguise (Kitchen Sink)
Eisner Award Nominee for Best Writer
1991 James Vance for Owlhoots
Harvey Award for Best New Series
1989 Kings In Disguise, by James Vance and Dan Burr (Kitchen Sink)
Harvey Award Nominee for Best Single Issue or Story
1990 Kings in Disguise #6
Harvey Award Nominee for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work
1991 Kings in Disguise by James Vance and Dan Burr
Harvey Award Nominee for Best Continuing or Limited Series
1994 From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell; edited by James Vance
Harvey Award Nominee for Best New Series
1994 Melting Pot by Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot and Simon Bisley; edited by James Vance
Harvey Award Nominee for Best Domestic Reprint
1994 The Spirit: The Origin Years by Will Eisner; edited by Dave Schreiner and James Vance
Harvey Award Nominee for Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation
1995 Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years by Dave Schreiner; edited by Phil Amara and James Vance
The Squiddies Awards - rec. arts. comics awards
Voted for Limited Series Award and Favorite Story within a Series Award
The Governor's Arts Awards - Oklahoma Arts Council
The Who's Who of American Comic Books
Fireflies (1978) Second-place winner of the David Library of the American Revolution playwriting award, presented for original works on the theme of American history.
On the Ropes (1979) First-place winner of the David Library award.
Stations (1981) Chosen to represent the United States at the 1981 International Theatre Festival in Monte Carlo.
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH JAMES VANCE
BY GREG HUNTER
August 6th, 2013
I emailed James Vance having just finished On the Ropes, his recent collaboration with the cartoonist Dan Burr, and after several days spent in the world of his book, I tried to not take the ease of communication for granted. On the Ropes continues the story Vance and Burr began in Kings in Disguise, a Great Depression narrative that won Eisner- and Harvey Awards in the late 1980s. Ropes follows the trials of Fred Bloch, the young lead of Kings in Disguise, now prematurely old at seventeen. Fred travels the Midwest with a WPA Federal Theater Project traveling circus while acting as a liaison for union workers in the region, relaying messages and avoiding the wrath of “labor controllers.”
Vance stayed active in the comics industry following the success of Kings in Disguise, but On the Ropes marks his first return to the Great Depression. The book is not a deliberate comment on the more recent global recession, as Vance is quick to note. Even so, readers are likely to recognize its depictions of dashed hopes for progress or abuses of power. Vance and Burr’s Fred Bloch is, if not wholly a victim, than not a hero, either. But he’s likewise recognizable as a person straining to live according to his heart and his principles in a time when much lies beyond his control.
Vance and I discussed the Depression, creeping pessimism, and the challenges of exploring these subjects within the comics form.
***
The Rumpus: Describe your collaboration with Dan Burr. How detailed is a script of yours when he first sees it?
James Vance: When I first started writing comics with Kings in Disguise, Alan Moore was becoming famous for his phone book-thick comics scripts, and I’m afraid that had an influence on me. I used to pile on the detail, which was probably a way of hedging my bets while I was working out my own way of doing things. I’ve cut it back over the years, but some of the descriptions can still be still pretty dense. So the answer is somewhere between fairly detailed and maybe too detailed. Fortunately, people are seeing the final pages and not my raw script. On The Ropes book jacket
I suppose we have a fairly old-fashioned way of doing things: I write a full script, and Dan draws it. But it isn’t the master-slave relationship that it sounds like. We’ve worked together so often over the years that I have a pretty good feel for what he’s going to be able to do with a scene, and of course, we’ve already batted his preliminary character sketches back and forth—so even though the descriptions and dialogue are written by me, while it’s being written it’s all influenced by a good working notion of the way Dan’s going to interpret it. And of course, there’s always the understanding between us that unless we’re talking about a vital piece of action that a beat depends on, my descriptions are just suggestions. If Dan has a better idea, I want him to go with what he thinks is best. We’re telling this story together.
When we started working together back in the ’80s, we were being serialized in comic book format, because that’s largely the way everything was done then. So I’d type up a script, send it to our editor, and he’d pass it on to Dan. If I wanted to send him visual reference, I’d make copies from books or newspapers on microfilm and snail-mail those to Dan’s home. With On the Ropes, of course, we could do the whole thing via e-mail and I could send him links to reference online, or photos I’d taken of something that wasn’t immediately available. So the whole process was very streamlined compared to those old, prehistoric days, and it was possible to discuss the little problem areas that came up and have them resolved the same day.
And a huge advantage this time was not having to serialize. The length of those installments of Kings was set in stone, and the story was being published before we’d completed it. With Ropes coming out as a single unit, we had the luxury of not publishing until we decided it was ready. The published book was as long as we needed it to be, not as long as someone else dictated to us—so I could send Dan a couple of pages to insert after page 111 or whatever, or say, “How about we expand the opening this way?” It gave us the freedom to give the story more depth and to have greater control over the pace and texture.
The important thing about collaborating with Dan is the complete confidence I have in him. I tell people that he can read my mind, because he has a practically infallible grasp of the emotional nuance of a scene. The style he uses when we work together isn’t full of flashy effects, but he’s such a master of the life-size human moments that I think Ropes is a bravura performance on his part. I made it a point to include silent sequences in this story just because I wanted those pages to rely completely on his art. There are wordless passages in the book that take my breath away because the changes he’s putting the characters through are so human and so real.
OnTheRopes_5to9_Page_1
Rumpus: I was also curious if, for the story you wanted to tell, the comics medium presented specific advantages.
Vance: I’d forgotten how challenging comics can be until I started working on Ropes. Yes, you’re restricted by the boundaries of the page, but we all work within technical limitations of some kind. There’s a certain pressure you put on yourself to use the comics page to full advantage that can focus your mind to a pinpoint, and when the juices are flowing, that’s incredibly exciting. When you’ve managed to fit a complex set of actions or a complicated emotional passage into a single page there’s the sense of satisfaction that I suspect a sculptor gets from chipping away at a piece of stone and ending up with a fully-realized work of art.
I’m not sure I can name a kind of story that wouldn’t work in comics form. It’s words and images, and we’ve been telling all kinds of stories with that combination since theatre was invented thousands of years ago. I’ve been asked if I’d consider doing Ropes as a straight novel—which is flattering, I suppose—but I can’t imagine why I’d want to limit myself that way. There’s a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room… And, of course, in a piece like this that’s set in a specific period, and which flashes back to several other specific times and places, it places the reader so firmly and viscerally in the setting that we can concentrate on the characters and the story that they’re living, without piling on verbiage devoted to endless world-building.
OnTheRopes_5to9_Page_2
Rumpus: I know that you wrote a version of On the Ropes—or at least a play that shares its title and the character of Fred Bloch—in the late 1970s. Had the On the Ropes graphic novel been in development for many years, or did more recent events spur you and Dan to collaborate again?
Vance: Right, the stage version of Ropes was written several years before the stage version of Kings—the Kings play, in fact, came about just because I found myself curious about how our protagonist Fred had gotten started on the path that led him to his situation in On the Ropes. (I hope that’s convoluted enough for you.) So when we were transforming Kings into a graphic novel, I already knew where Fred would go next and I had the possibility of adapting Ropes as a follow-up in the back of my mind. It was something I kicked around on and off for years after that, but I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking in terms of research and rethinking, and life was just too chaotic at that time to make the commitment.
The truth is, we started on the book a couple of years before the global economic collapse, so we weren’t piggybacking on everybody’s misery. There was a point when Dan called me and said, “We started out doing a period piece and now we’re current affairs,” and we had a good laugh over it, or at least as much of a laugh as you can manage while people are struggling to make ends meet. But knowing that the world had come full circle to our Depression story didn’t change the way we worked on it, or encourage us to change our thrust. I want people to be able to pick up this book in the future no matter what’s going on in the world, and appreciate it on its own merits, not for any perceived winks at the headlines.
OnTheRopes_5to9_Page_3
Rumpus: On the Ropes even addresses the problems of art that’s too polemical or too baldly allegorical—at one point, a journalist takes issue with all the leftist rhetoric in a manuscript Fred asks her to read. Can you recall any works of art that did help shape your politics?
Vance: Understand, my own politics aren’t necessarily interchangeable with what any of my characters believe. You could take each of the characters in On the Ropes, and I’d probably be in sympathy with a different one on any given day, depending on what’s going on in the world. My personal beliefs were shaped more by experience and by watching the news when I was young: images of angelic-looking college students in Mississippi crying like the world was ending because black people were being allowed on their campus; the slow mounting horror of Vietnam on the evening news every night; sitting with my parents in front of the TV and being appalled at the way the Chicago police were treating the protesters during the ’68 Democratic convention. Being eyed with suspicion because of my age and the way I wore my hair.
In researching Kings in Disguise and On the Ropes, I’ve tended to read historical accounts and oral histories instead of artistic interpretations. It was a deliberate choice to avoid duplicating other writers’ work about the subject or the period. I’ve never read or watched Ironweed, never seen Wild Boys of the Road. I know I did read In Dubious Battle years ago, even before I started on the stage version of Ropes, and I remember it as being a good piece of work that wasn’t too polemical, though I have little working memory of it now. For the original play I did spend some time reading magazine articles from labor-friendly little magazines of the ’30s, like The Anvil, and I thought they were pretty rough-going. Lots of mount-the-barricades rhetoric, very heavy-handed. I was working from that experience when I wrote the scene you mentioned with Barbara trashing Fred’s manuscript. And I’m sure, below the surface, there was something of the older me telling the much younger me to take a step back, to try writing with the head as well as the heart.
OnTheRopes_5to9_Page_4
Rumpus: In researching the books, did you have any revelations about the Great Depression? How often did you come across a piece of information that suddenly demanded to be a part of your story?
Vance: The play served as a good basic outline for the book version of On the Ropes, so the main historical framework was already in place. But what particularly struck me were some of the grace notes I lucked into. Just to name one, an oral history I ran across talked about a union campaigner being framed by police who planted dynamite in his car, and I repurposed that with a punch line of my own to illustrate the climate of paranoia while the steel strikes were being planned. And there was the realization that the “Battle of the Overpass,” a famous incident when Henry Ford’s goons beat up a couple of UAW organizers, not only took place simultaneously with the beginning of the Republic Steel strike, but also at the same place where Fred witnessed his first act of violence against labor in Kings in Disguise.
In fact, the sheer cascade of events during the short time comprised by the main part of the story was so loaded with incident that I had to be careful not to end up writing 1937’s Greatest Hits. The Hindenburg exploded. The Golden Gate Bridge was opened. Within a few weeks, the pro-labor musical The Cradle Will Rock would break away from the WPA Theater and mark the beginning of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater. Amelia Earhart would vanish. The more I read, the more I was taken with the pressure people must have been living under at that time, with something new either literally or figuratively blowing up in their faces on almost a daily basis.
Rumpus: The WPA traveling circus seemed too strange a thing to be drawn from anywhere but real life, and sure enough, this was a real phenomenon. Was a WPA circus part of the original Ropes stage production?
Vance: Yes, the setting was the circus from the beginning, and the actor who played Gordon really performed his sideshow escape act every night. The main difference between the real WPA circus and the one in both versions of On the Ropes was one of scale. The real-life circus traveled, but pretty much only between sites in New York and New Jersey. It was a fairly large set-up with elephants and horses and a genuine Big Top. The idea of creating a smaller traveling circus in the Midwest as a pilot program was my invention, a way of getting the action near Chicago. And by limiting its scope to units that could be trucked down the local roads—as opposed to using a circus train—I could tie its route into Fred’s particular mission for the union organizers.
Rumpus: Despite what On the Ropes and Kings in Disguise have in common, readers can find a striking contrast in the books’ respective closing lines. The ending of Kings has an optimistic pitch: “So I took to the road once more—on my own, yet accompanied by multitudes. There was another dream out there, and I knew that somewhere on that road, we would find it.” In On the Ropes, Fred cautions himself not to waste his life and refers to the fight for worker’s rights as “a cause that would break my heart.” Some of this ambivalence is Gordon’s, but we wonder if Fred shares it. Do you believe this sequel is a more pessimistic work than the one that came before it?
Vance: In a way, yes, because it’s deliberately more realistic. In Kings in Disguise, Fred is a child, and his understanding of the world is simplistic, interpreting what he sees in black-and-white terms and cartoonish dreams. At the beginning of Ropes, he’s older but barely more mature, and during that story he starts to grow up and gain a more nuanced view of human nature. In his case, it’s a particularly brutal lesson, but still one that’s awakened him to the shades of gray in human relationships. In On the Ropes, it can seem that no good intention goes unpunished – but there’s also the realization that the most damaged of us can rise above the guilt that weighs us down and commit an act that makes a positive difference in our small part of the world. And, yes, for all the idealism that propels him through the story, if you read between the lines you may see that at a moment which he considers a defining point in his life as an activist, he’s also set the stage for potential ugliness down the road.
OnTheRopes_5to9_Page_5
Rumpus: I ask about optimism/pessimism in part because I read George Packer’s survey of long-form reporting about the Great Depression and Great Recession, from the April 29th New Yorker, around the time I read On the Ropes. Packer describes Edmund Wilson and others surveying the depressed United States and producing work focused on working-class causalities of the economic downturn. Often, the pieces are calls to arms. Whereas Packer notes that many of the more visible stories about our contemporary crisis document shame, futility, without the earlier expectation of a vast societal change. This is all a way of saying that, inasmuch as Ropes is a stark read, it’s very much of our times, and I wanted to know if you had hoped to emphasize any parallels between the Great Depression and contemporary life.
Vance: The idea wasn’t to make a direct political statement since the current economic collapse hadn’t begun when we started on the book. The parallels I’m most interested in are the ways that human nature never changes, no matter how far back in time you look. I did a lot of work with early 20th century attitudes, the kind of superficial notions and behavior that prompt people who don’t know history very well to think that “people were different back then”—but beneath all that are characters who react in ways that we can all recognize, and will always be able to recognize.
All the same, I can’t blame anyone for being pessimistic when they look around, after all the blood spilled and energy spent to gain ground for working people in the past, and see it all happening again. I wasn’t pointing a finger when I wrote the book, but sometimes the message is there even when you aren’t actively trying to be the messenger.
***
Excerpted from On the Ropes by James Vance and Dan Burr. Copyright © 2013 by Cat Dancer Corporation and Dan E. Burr. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
On the Ropes
Gordon Flagg
109.13 (Mar. 1, 2013): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
On the Ropes. By James Vance. Illus. by Dan E. Burr. Mar. 2013. 256p. Norton, $24.95 (9780393062205). 741.5.
In this sequel to the Eisner Award-winning Depression-era graphic novel Kings in Disguise (1988), Vance and Burr pick up the tale of their young protagonist, Fred Bloch, five years after his father's disappearance left him homeless and riding the rails. He's now with a WPA traveling circus as an assistant to an alcoholic escape artist who, like Fred, is haunted by his harrowing past. Inspired by the brutality he saw on the road, Fred is also secretly working for a group of radical labor organizers and is being hunted by a murderous pair of strikebreaking thugs who threaten his life and that of his circus friends. Kings was one of the first graphic novels to win widespread critical acclaim, and this successor is equally praiseworthy. Once again, Vance provides vivid, intriguing characters and a strong, suspenseful plotline, replete with period details that are enhanced by Burr's simple but powerful black-and-white drawings and straightforward storytelling. Readers should hope the team doesn't wait another 25 years to continue Fred Bloch's story.--Gordon Flagg
Flagg, Gordon
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Flagg, Gordon. "On the Ropes." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2013, p. 40. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA322479462&it=r&asid=fd63b673dacdf8be7d364f43c8ec5dc9. Accessed 27 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A322479462
Vance, James: ON THE ROPES
(Dec. 15, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Vance, James ON THE ROPES Norton (Adult Fiction) $24.95 3, 11 ISBN: 978-0-393-06220-5
An oft-praised graphic novel of the Depression era belatedly spawns a sequel. Following the picaresque hobo's fable of Kings in Disguise (1990), writer Vance and illustrator Burr follow their latter-day Huck Finn, as recast by Steinbeck, into young adulthood. Freddie Bloch is now Fred (except when he isn't), and he has left the life of riding the rails and living in hobo jungles for employment in a WPA circus. In a setup that is heavily fraught with symbolism and adds resonance to the title, Fred now serves as an assistant to an escape artist who nightly feigns his own execution by hanging. Enmeshed within the plot are a female writer (now also employed by the WPA), some union-busting thugs and a lot of characters from various back stories that both enhance the narrative and confuse it. For the workers, it's the same old story: "The same demand for dignity and survival. The same answer from those who hold the power. The same lesson learned." Yet, Fred's role in this struggle between the powers that be and those who would challenge that power remains murky, even to him, as double crosses lead to the possibility of triple crosses. Relationships reveal various twists as they leap back and forth chronologically, as Fred learns at 18 what he hadn't known at 13, when he first hit the road: "I'd had no idea how large the world was, nor how fragile the lives it contained." As he attempts to put what he has learned into writing, to tell the story within this story, he learns another lesson: "Most of us don't want a better world, kiddo. We just want the old one back." The old world isn't coming back, but at least one more volume of this series appears inevitable.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Vance, James: ON THE ROPES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA311828576&it=r&asid=05cfb731bf296457f4f37f1d3844c060. Accessed 27 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A311828576
On the Ropes
259.35 (Aug. 27, 2012): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
On the Ropes
James Vance and Dan E. Burr. Norton, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-06220-5
The subtitle on the cover of this sequel to the Eisner-winning Kings in Disguise reads, "A Novel." The telling absence of the word "graphic," paired with the quality of the storytelling herein, indicate that Vance and Burr's ambition is to craft a Depression-era story as layered and encompassing as the classics of Steinbeck or James M. Cain--and they are successful. In 1930s, teenager Fred Bloch works as an assistant to circus escape artist Gordon Corey. Bloch's checkered past and Corey's unstable reputation make them mismatched partners who are nevertheless mutually dependent. Blooming romance and labor unrest provide the external dramas against which Bloch struggles to understand himself and his era as he moves toward adulthood. Meticulous research is reflected on every page: the economics and social dynamics of the era, the challenges faced by organized labor, the psychology of alcoholism, and the politics of the Works Progress Administration, among other topics, are clearly outlined by both writer Vance and artist Burr. The black-and-white art stylistically reflects the clean outlines and emphasis on faces found in classic EC comics. This informative, melodramatic story paints a vivid picture of a tumultuous era that fostered a political divisiveness that will be all too familiar to contemporary readers. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"On the Ropes." Publishers Weekly, 27 Aug. 2012, p. 60. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA301282652&it=r&asid=8a6495419d5f63f97b8445d34ae153a8. Accessed 27 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A301282652
Vance, James. The Crow: Flesh & Blood
Erin Dennington
51.5 (May 2005): p167.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
VANCE, James. The Crow: Flesh for Blood. illus, by Alexander Maleev. 96p. Dark Horse. 2004. pap. $10.95. ISBN 1-59307125-6. LC number unavailable.
Gr 10 Up--Federal conservation officer Iris Shaw is murdered in a bombing by a bunch of right-wing extremists in the midst of a rural land-rights struggle. Her killers have no idea that they also destroyed her unborn child. Although Iris wasn't sure that she was going to keep the baby, she still mourns the fact that she never got to make that decision before she died. With the help of the Crow, she returns from the dead in order to avenge not only her own death, but also that of the fetus. Armed with nothing but her anger and a few weapons, Iris hunts down her killers one by one and teaches them what it's like to suffer and lose your family. She also begins to wonder: If exacting ultimate pain is the goal, when does vengeance cross the line to brutality? Once she has killed her killers, what happens next? What is the price to the soul? This graphic novel lacks the original bizarre and captivating artwork of J. O'Barr, but Maleev's black-and-white illustrations manage to capture the horror and brutality of the original Crow with minimal effort. The story is a trifle predictable, but fans will not want to miss this version.--Erin Dennington, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA
Dennington, Erin
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dennington, Erin. "Vance, James. The Crow: Flesh & Blood." School Library Journal, May 2005, p. 167. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA132776409&it=r&asid=4f94c3e52a0bdc575ad525501086c1e7. Accessed 27 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A132776409
The Reading Life
James Vance and Dan E. Burr's new graphic novel goes to the circus
March 05, 2013|By David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic
It’s not accurate, exactly, to say that I’ve been waiting for James Vance and Dan E. Burr’s graphic novel “On the Ropes” (W.W. Norton: 248 pp., $24.95) -- until I saw a copy, I had no idea that it was coming out.
But it is the case that Vance and Burr’s first book, “Kings in Disguise,” first published in 1988, is one of my favorite graphic novels — a stark bit of social realism tracing the travails of a 12-year-old named Freddie Bloch as he wanders through the Depression — and with this new work, which picks up the story in 1937, the creators have outdone themselves.
Freddie, now known as Fred, is older: 17, and working in a WPA circus as the assistant to an escape artist named Gordon Corey. Gordon’s trick is to appear to hang himself, although it’s clear from the outset that he is ambivalent at best about the prospect of dodging death.
As Fred (who narrates the book) tells us the story of the circus, he also spins another narrative, about a pair of anti-union goons out to disrupt plans for a steel workers’ strike. This taps into many of the concerns of “Kings in Disguise,” which also dealt with the union movement, and the strong-arm tactics used by American business to try to put it down.
It’s tempting, given this material, to draw parallels to the present, when unions are being challenged from all sides. And yet, if politics and workers’ rights are, as they should be, a key part of “On the Ropes,” Vance and Burr never lose sight of the story they mean to tell.
Fred is a compelling figure: tragic, courageous, a survivor despite his years. He is also complicit in a deep and nuanced way, causing danger for the people he most cares about, forced by circumstance to make difficult choices — choices that continue to trouble him, choices that he can’t resolve.
This was the strength of “Kings in Disguise” — its lack of sentimentality, its refusal to sugarcoat — and it’s a strength of “On the Ropes,” as well. There’s nothing romantic about Fred’s journey through the hobo camps and carny shows, and his political engagement is less the result of idealism than of a kind of steely realism, a sense that it takes sacrifices to foment change.
Vance highlights this with his writing, which is straightforward, matter of fact, telling the story with few frills. But it is Burr’s art that drives the point most fully: black and white, etched in broad strokes like a sequence of woodcuts, evoking the bleakness of the times.
Late in the book, he gives us a three-page sequence of textless images, intercutting Fred and Gordon, both on their own, on the edge. In the course of 18 simple frames, we see each of them come to a decision, irrevocable and inevitable all at once.
This is the power of graphic literature, to bypass intellect in favor of emotion, to draw us directly into a scene. With “On the Ropes,” Vance and Burr have created an epic out of just this sort of compression — one that more than lives up to “Kings in Disguise.”
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On the Ropes comics review
By Leroy Douresseaux
Mar 26, 2013 - 16:50
ontheropes.jpg
On the Ropes cover image is courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.
On the Ropes: A Novel is a 2013 hardcover, original graphic novel from writer James Vance and artist Dan E. Burr. It is the follow-up to Vance and Burr’s Kings in Disguise, a graphic novel that was originally serialized as a six-issue comic book miniseries and published in 1988 by Kitchen Sink Press.
Kings in Disguise was a highly acclaimed comic book. At the time of its first publication, it drew praise from such comic book luminaries as Alan Moore, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Art Spiegelman. It won a Harvey Award and two Eisner Awards.
Set during the Great Depression, Kings in Disguise was the story of 13-year-old Manfred “Freddie” Bloch, a Jewish boy from the fictional town of Marian, California. Freddie and his older brother, Al, are abandoned by their father, a widower who can no longer support his family. In 1932, Freddie takes to the rails – traveling the country by train as a hobo – where he meets Sammy. Calling himself “the King of Spain,” Sammy is a sickly, older hobo who takes Freddie under his wing. Together, they travel through a scarred America, searching for Freddie's father.
On the Ropes opens in 1937, some five years after Freddie Bloch left home. Now 17, Freddie works in a traveling WPA circus. He is apprenticed to the circus’ star attraction, the escape artist, Gordon Corey. The act, called “Gordon Corey Escapes,” is a hangman’s illusion that plays it dangerously close to the edge.
After surviving the Detroit labor riots and violent anti-Communist mobs, Freddie has found home and has even befriended Eileen Finnerty, a gracious young woman who works at the circus. Could she become Freddie’s girlfriend? Before he started working for the circus, Freddie discovered that he has a talent for writing. Thus, he finds a kindred spirit, of sorts, in Barbara Woodruff, a WPA guide book writer who is interested in Gordon’s life story. In her own acerbic way, Woodruff nurtures Freddie’s talent.
Freddie also has a double life. He has joined the Workers Brigade, and he moonlights as a delivery boy for the different groups of workers trying to secretly coordinate their countrywide strikes. As “Jim Nolan,” Freddie receives and sends out secret letters as he travels with the circus. Freddie does not know that Virgil and Chase, two murderous union busters, are trying to find out who the “mailman” is.
Gordon sees that Freddie is playing a dangerous game, and although he is jaded and tired, Gordon wants to see his young assistant make something of himself. Both Freddie and Gordon, however, are haunted by the tragic past, which causes friction between the two. Each man can save the other or bring about their mutual destruction.
I will certainly be among the many reviewers and critics voicing great praise for On the Ropes. In the last decade or so, I have read few comic books that I felt in my heart as I read them. On the Ropes is one of those books. By the end of the year, On the Ropes will likely still be the best comic book or graphic novel of 2013; it will take a miracle for there to be a comic book that knocks On the Ropes off its perch.
James Vance’s story is unflinchingly human, telling a story that captures humankind both in stark contrasts and in perplexing shades of gray. The characters are basically stock characters, but Vance imbues them with humanity. Combine that with the intricacies of the narrative and with the various plot twists and these characters are largely unknowable, but have intriguing quantities that make them worth the effort to know. Vance delves so deeply into plot, setting, and character that his comic book script is more like a novel than a comic book script.
Dan E. Burr’s art is so earnest and heartfelt that it wrings the humanity out of Vance’s story. His compositions are painterly and reminded me of American art movements like American regionalism, social realism, and the Ashcan School. Thus, Burr’s graphical storytelling has more than twice the narrative heft than many of the best graphic novels of the last 30 years.
On the Ropes has a straightforward plot, and past and present are seamless in the way they move the story towards its conclusion. There is such complexity in this graphic novel that the entire time I read it, I thought of On the Ropes as a novel and not as a comic book (not saying comic books are junk).
Of course, the title, On the Ropes, is both literal and figurative. Vance and Burr take on the social and political turmoil of the Great Depression in ways that are intensely poignant and heartrending, but also ardently involved. Vance and Burr aren’t sitting on the sidelines, being dispassionate in recounting the past.
They have turned American history into great drama. This is a hypnotic account of who we were and where we came from that shows us who we are now and why we are where we are. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, time is neutral. Then, On the Ropes is not only a timeless masterpiece, but it is also quite timely, especially if you’ve been paying attention to where we are now.
Rating: 10 /10
Last Updated: May 15, 2017 - 12:13