Defining a group

More and more, I'm beginning to think that the one, elusive thing that all the comics in my 'central' group have in common - that strange quality that I sense about them all without being able to say what it actually is - is simply... 'literariness' (for lack of a better word).

Of course, that is probably the single most unhelpful discovery I've made so far, because 'literariness' is not a clearly definable category like "sf/fantasy comics" or "self-published comics". So how can I use it to help define a group of works?

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What I'm dealing with here just might be its own sub-genre, too, although a singularly difficult one to define. It's neither clearly sf nor fantasy, though it frequently contains elements of both. More than anything it's characterised by a certain messiness, an organic quality, a sense of having not so much been written as grown.

Carla Speed McNeil calls the world of Finder a 'magpie world' in an interview. That works, too.

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(Why, oh why are Cerebus and THB so difficult - read: impossible - to acquire? I *need* to read them... THB especially.)

Desperately seeking Paul Pope

Anybody here have any idea how to search databases, the internet etc. for Paul Pope - without ending up with ten thousand results for pope Paul?

Expensive M.A.

Since I've just placed another two big orders with amazon and Donna Barr's web store, I've taken a moment to add up all the money I've spent on books for my thesis so far. I can't reconstruct all the prices, but it seems I'm approaching the 400 euro mark rather rapidly. That's a full month's pay, or the equivalent of my rent plus phone bill for a month. (Yes, I'm earning less money per month than I need to live. I'm getting some additional financial support from my parents, and I also take money out of my savings every month - which are also rapidly dwindling. Hardly surprising, seeing the recent development of my comics spending habit...)

I'm also running out of shelf space. Have run out of shelf space, in fact. I'm now stacking books on my desk, behind the monitor. Thankfully it's a flat screen, so there's some space there.

I hope and pray I won't have to buy Cerebus (estimated price: another 400 euros. Plus another half metre or so of non-existent shelf space). There's a library in Berlin which has it, and I have family in Berlin... if I can get a cheap deal for getting to Berlin, this may be an option. Though it would probably mean a week or two of hardcore, non-stop reading and note-taking in Berlin...

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In conclusion: I must be utterly mad. Nobody should spend this kind of money on an M.A. thesis.

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Also, a note to Fandom: amidst all the insanity, I actually committed fic the day before yesterday. Unpublishable fic, fic for a readership of one, but still fic. Note to space_oddity_75: Sam's fighting back now. I cut myself on the paper I was writing on, yesterday. Deeply.

400 euros' worth of comics:

Just in case anyone is wondering what those 400 euros got me in the past six months:

Donna Barr: The Desert Peach (complete); Stinz (complete?); Bosom Enemies (complete?); other stuff (mostly very relevant indeed, I think - some still unread)
Colleen Doran: A Distant Soil 1-4 (still haven't decided how relevant this is thematically - apart from its historical significance)
Roberta Gregory: Winging It 1-2 (highly relevant)
Rod Espinosa: Neotopia 1-4 (relevance doubtful, not self-published, but at least it's pretty *g*)
Rachel Hartman: Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming (relevant, but probably not going to be a main focus due to incompleteness)
Layla Lawlor: Raven's Children 2 (I already had part 1; fairly relevant, I think)
David Mack: Kabuki 2, 4 (not self-published, but features some interesting stuff about identity that sort of struck a chord. Also: pretty. I don't have the money to buy the entire series, so this is just to get a general kind of impression, really.)
Linda Medley: Castle Waiting, vol. 1 (fairly relevant, but probably not central to whatever argument I'm going to end up making)
Paul Pope: PulpHope (Not a comic, really, but since I can't get THB before 2009, this seemed like the best option for getting an impression of the man and his work; I have a strange gut feeling he may be relevant.)
Dave Roman, John Green: Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden 1-2 (mostly irrelevant, but fun)
Dave Sim: Cerebus: High Society (just to get an impression - hasn't arrived yet. Definitely historically relevant.)
Mark Smylie: Artesia 1-3 (fairly relevant, possibly)
Teri Wood: Wandering Star (haven't read enough yet to judge relevance)

Not all of these are strictly relevant for my work. Some don't quite fit thematically, others aren't really all that 'independent' (I still want to focus mainly on self-published books)... but I needed to get something *approaching* an overview of the field, and it's really difficult to find any literature about it. Obviously, this small a selection still does not qualify me to really claim I 'know' the field of indie/self-published sf and fantasy. But reading as widely as I could under the circumstances definitely helped me to develop some ideas, although they're all still very vague.