Comics Comics

Seth Versus Editors

2009-11-23T23:23:00.012-05:00

Just to continue this flurry of posts on Canadians, I thought I'd put up this quote from the cartoonist Seth that I found interesting. He's responding to Dave Sim's question about critiquing other people's work. It made me think of a couple of previous posts about editors we did a while back.

The quote is from Following Cerebus #5.

Seth: [...] I prefer the idea of an artist struggling to learn on his own and figure it out on his own, rather than, you know, being part of a gang that's supplementing each other's work with critique. I guess that's just because my inclination is, I'm attracted to the image of the artist working alone and producing this complete work. For example, I don't know how anyone can stand to work with an editor. I don't really know how fiction writers have become used to that idea. I can understand working with a proofreader: that makes sense to me. But even working as a prose writer, if there was someone changing around all the sentences in an article I had written and as a result of that it turned out to be a better-written article, I'd have to conclude at the end that I wasn't much of a writer.

The Seth Non-Canadians Don't See

2009-11-22T17:30:00.010-05:00

As everyone who follows his work knows, Seth is a proud Canadian. A major visual theme of his work is the landscape, both natural and man-made, of Southern Ontario; on a more literary level he’s clearly been shaped by such Canadian writers as Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence (anyone interested in investigating Seth’s frequent narrative device of having an old person look back on life should read Laurence’s The Stone Angel); his cartoons are heavily sprinkled with Canadian icons (Mounties, igloos, hockey players); he’s been at the forefront of the current effort to recuperate Canada’s comics heritage, designing and co-editing a beautiful book devoted to Doug Wright, co-founding the Doug Wright Awards, and speaking often and eloquently about such forgotten cartooning Canucks as Jimmy Frise and Peter Whally.

Seth’s commitment to Canada also extends to the publishers he works with. Drawn and Quarterly is a Montreal firm, although of course one with an international reach. What non-Canadian readers might not know, however, is that Seth is also closely involved with several other Canadian imprints and magazines, often in his capacity as a book designer but sometimes as a writer. This work is often done for quite small presses, such as the Porcupine’s Quill and Biblioasis (in my opinion two of the best publishers not just in Canada but in the world).

Since Seth has fans all over the world, I thought it might be a useful service to call attention to some of the work he’s done that non-Canadians wouldn’t necessarily know about. If you care at all about Seth’s work, all these items are worth tracking down. Even when working with small specialty presses, he lavishes on each task the same care and attention that he gives to projects for The New Yorker and Penguin Books.

1. For the journal The Devil’s Artisan issue #60 (devoted to “the printing arts"), Seth wrote at length about the artist and book designer Thoreau MacDonald (the essay was earlier delivered as a speech at the Art Gallery of Ontario). This is very much of interest for anyone who wants background on the strip Seth did for Kramers Ergot 7.

2. For the latest issue of Canadian Notes and Queries (#77) Seth writes at length about Doug Wright in an essay taken from the speech he delivered at the first Doug Wright Awards ceremony. This essay is essential reading, I think, for anyone who wants to fully appreciate the new Doug Wright book; and also for anyone who wants to get a grounding in Canada's particular comics tradition, one that has its own distinct history.

3. For Biblioasis, Seth designed and illustrated a beautiful novelty book called The Idler’s Glossary (written by the intellectual jack-of-all-trades Joshua Glenn and introduced by the philosopher Mark Kingwell). The book is a defence of laziness and slackery in all its forms, a topic dear to Seth’s reverie-loving heart. The drawings are done in the mode of the mid-20th century joke-books that Seth loves so much, the sub-New Yorker style of broad big-nosed stereotypes.

4. Also for Biblioasis, Seth has illustrated a new book by poet Zach Wells: Track and Trace. I haven’t seen this book yet but I’ll pick it up later this week at the book launch.

5. Finally, for Anansi Seth put together an absolutely nifty little book: Derek McCormack’s Christmas Days, witty reflections on the holiday garlanded with many pages of cheerful, uproarious cartooning.

Round Table #1: Pim & Francie

2009-11-18T11:26:00.069-05:00

[TIM: After coming to the uncomfortable realization that it has been more than a year since our last Cage Match, Dan, Frank, and I decided it was time to get back in the pen and fight it out over some recently released comic book. Unfortunately for the format, the book we chose as a topic, Al Columbia's Pim & Francie, turned out to be a bad subject for a no-holds-barred, drag-out fight, mostly because we all really enjoyed it. But giving up would be too easy.

So here is the first installment of a new, buttoned up, and possibly less exciting feature, the Round Table, wherein we discuss a comic without coming to blows, though with any luck, we will still find a few things to disagree about to at least somewhat interesting effect. No strict rules here, just an online discussion taking place over real time. Readers should please feel free to participate in the comments section. This is a first time thing, and we haven't really thought it through, so maybe the event will turn out to be a joyless affair, quickly sputtering into sad banalities. But maybe it won't! If you believe, clap your hands!

In any case, welcome to the Round Table. Dan is starting the conversation, and will take the lectern shortly.]

DAN: I suspect each of us will have a very different interest in Al Columbia's Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days. Rather than attempt a comprehensive statement, I'm going to look at it from a couple of different angles.

A one line explanation of this book is: Pim & Francie is a book of drawings and stories about two cartoon children. What is resembles is a stack of fragments, sequenced to indicate a few suggestive narrative threads. But its surface is deceptive.

If I didn't know the back story of Columbia's career (the starts and stops, the destroyed work, etc.) I would assume that the book looks the way it does intentionally. That the artist's intent is to convey disintegration and ennui through the physicality of the drawings themselves. Images are torn, taped together, burnt, wrinkled, and water damaged. When a character disappears into pencil lines, or is obscured by ink blots; when a scene is interrupted by white drafting tape or a massive tear, the characters seem to come to life. That is, the imperfection of the page, the process of the drawing, drives the characters. So, I don't read these pages as "sketches" but rather as full blown drawings akin to something like Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased De Kooning" in which absence animates the page.

The distress is so thorough and consistent that simple coincidence seems impossible. But, then, maybe it's just unbelievably good editing. And then I got to thinking, what if Columbia is so aware of his mythology and such a good cartoonist—such a master of surface effects to indicate sub-basement meanings—that he wants us to believe the P&F is "just" a collection of scraps so that it quietly engulfs us? What if this doubt, this underestimation, is part of his intent? Then I happened on Sam Anderson's review of Nabokov's The Original of Laura in which he suggests much the same thing about that just published fragment. It's wishful thinking, of course—but it speaks to the power of the author to even make us long for some over-arching master plan.

I am also reminded of a much younger cartoonist's new book: Josh Cotter's Driven by Lemons. Lemons is a very different animal, though it also is a brilliant, virtuosic work, and one that needs repeated reads. It as well allows a look at the marks and tones that comprise a cartoon drawing—wiping away the cleanliness of cartoon reality to foreground the process. It's also a young man's book by a cartoonist who still has faith in the kinetics of cartooning—in motion, enthusiasm, and outlandish physics. Cotter may be investing in process, but he's also building his cartoon language, adding new tools and new ideas as he goes.

Columbia, however, has been through it all. This is a book only an older artist could create. His process is up front and part of it is destructive. Reading Pim & Francie is an apocalyptic experience—as if Columbia is demolishing both his own work and the idea of "cartooning" in general. I found it exhilarating and terrifying.

A word about the subject matter: A lot of cartoonists have trod the "inverted comics" general territory. Most brilliantly, Chris Ware used Quimby to convey despair, anxiety, and grief by employing the lyricism of 1920s cartoons. Other, more recent cartoonists have had a lot less success. It's rather easy to use the form or characters and then blow their brains out. It's much harder to create something that is empathetic. Columbia isn't aping an old style—he's taken the building blocks of 1920s cartoons and rearranged them entirely (in some places I am reminded of the frightening clown of Monkey Shines of Marseleen.) His static figures, sepia backgrounds and faux-happy waltzes are thoroughly redesigned and made his own. There are also no easy pratfalls here. Nothing is predictable. As I watched knives glint and faces warp into horrific grins the furthest thing from my mind was nostalgia. Instead, as with Ware, I was deeply moved by the experience.

And that's where I'll stop for now. Next?

=====

TIM: Well if I knew this was going to be that kind of party...

Huh. That's a nice idea, Dan, that Pim & Francie only looks like a collection of unfinished stories and pieces, but I don't know if I quite buy it. (I definitely don't buy the New York magazine Nabokov theory you linked.) But I also don't know that it matters, because Columbia makes the "unfinishedness" work for the story, just as you and previous critics have indicated, and the resulting book has its own otherwise perhaps unattainable power. It's difficult to know whether or not these stories would have worked better if Columbia had completed them more traditionally, just as it is to conclude whether or not David Lynch's Mulholland Drive would have worked better as the television series he had originally intended. In the end, you have to read the book you hold in your hands.

It's definitely interesting, and telling, that the text of the book itself draws almost no attention to its own raw state, other than in the spine's parenthetical "Artifacts and Bone Fragments." As you said, Dan, knowing Columbia's career history inevitably shapes the reader's response, and it's fun and fruitful to (attempt to) read the book as if you aren't aware of it.

In either case, the fact that so many of these grotesque stories and vignettes don't really resolve contributes to the reader's growing sense of unease. It's almost like a 12-bar blues song (or an intensifying series of songs) that never returns to the tonic chord: your nerves get a real work out.

Of course, in another way, the fact that so many of these funny-animal-like characters are horribly mutilated only to be resurrected, seemingly unharmed, a few pages later only points back to traditional cartoon tropes of endlessly recurring death, dismemberment, and escape. As if Wile E. Coyote's tortured existence wasn't played for laughs. (Grant Morrison's celebrated attempt to capture something similar looks lame and obvious compared to Columbia's infinitely more subtle work.)

I've said it before in another context, but I'm really beginning to believe it: "In a way, every comic depicts a phantasmagoric dreamscape: Squint just right, and everyone from Spider-Man to Dilbert is revealed as a nightmarish figure." When I was a child, for reasons I can't even now articulate, I remember feeling a irrational fear looking at Minnie Mouse's oversize high heels engulfing her strangely shaped feet. Francie wears the same shoes in this book, and now I find them scary as an adult. That's a big part of what I get out of Al Columbia's comics in general: they really bring out the surreal terror already buried within cartoon imagery.

That's it for me for now. You got anything, Frank? And Dan, I guess there's nothing stopping you (or anyone) from jumping in again at any time, either.

TIM: Also, is it my imagination, or does Cinnamon Jack remind anyone else of Alfred E. Neuman?

=====

DAN: You're wrong, Tim! Cinnamon Jack looks NOTHING like Alfred E. Neuman. Phew. Had to get that one bit of Cage Match energy out of my system. Sadly, yes, Hodler, you're right, they do look alike. Which means I'll never look at either the same way. Tim's blues analogy is a good one: I'm reminded of John Fahey or something like that—ultra tense, repeating patterns that don't allow for a satisfying payoff. But, I have to say, the life & death cycle of cartoon characters, as well as their lurking grotesques don't interest me that much on their own. I almost take it for granted. It's more like what Columbia does with subtly "off-model" versions, like his repeating Goofy/Lena the Hyena figure. It's more than bringing out the horror in an extant design, it's taking components of that design and refashioning them all together. The highly individual result is the scary thing. It's not like I'm arguing, dear Tim, just expanding.

Also, one thing I forgot to mention before: P&F is also a wonderful demonstration of the cartooning and animation process: The insane amount of drawings produced that have just subtle differences or mistakes. The maddening repetition. Ironically, I have to sign off until late this evening as I have to go teach comics at SVA! I should just have a group reading of P&F, I suppose. Below: A version of the Phantom Blot?

=====

TIM: Well, I take Robert Rauschenberg erasing de Kooning for granted, so we're even! (It's probably unwise of me to admit that.)

And I knew that image reminded me of something, and you're right: The Phantom Blot! So many memories just opened up. Time Regained.

=====

FRANK: I read straight through like a narrative. Like a detective, I put the clues together and read the images attentively as they sped by. I could feel the collage of all these fragments, clues assemble and tell a very clear story to me. I've read this story before, have felt the same emotions. Pim and Francie's adventure struck a chord in me that's been dormant for a long time. A haunting wonder, perhaps? A curiosity of the unknown that, when found, rattles one to the core?

Does that all sound too heavy? Insincere? Not to me. Like Dan, I felt really moved by the book. I don't feel the need to explain the "unfinished-ness" of the book at all because I see it as "finished." Notes, fragments, whatever. I read it slowly, turning each page like I was watching a film that had me riveted. Does that make sense? And then I would go back to certain section I wanted to re-read and watch that unfold again and again.

I also wanted to find a way to gauge the "timing" of the author's delivery. Columbia's progression of two-page spreads and how the spreads folded into the next in sequence is truly beautiful. I read each spread as a pairing of the left and right pages. And as I would turn the pages I could feel the changes in tone and how it affected the "loose" narrative. I wanted to be able to feel the changes and mark them so I could return to these transitions and re-read them like chapters.

The way I did this was to determine the first spread in the book, which is this:

Spread #1

The page on the left is, technically, not the first image in the book. That would be this image which is very important:

First Image

The above image of the sun and the torn curtain is, to me, the beginning of the "play" as it were. It feels like it's part of a proscenium stage.

I numbered the remaining spreads as "Spread #2, #3," etc. I then would put a post-it every ten spreads to mark the "time" for me. I could see the rhythm of the images, watch how they played off each other. And most importantly it let me appreciate it as a whole even though I was inserting breaks. But these breaks were just so I could get my bearings, a sort of time code for this world outside of time.

Spread #10

Spread #20

There are 118 spreads by my count. To me, the fragments are expertly pieced together and a sort of "hyper-text" is created. I read it up, down, and sideways, using the symbols of the characters as links to other spots within the story fragments.

I would like the reader to enjoy the first twenty spreads without my description. It's a marvelous fable, a poetic onslaught of images that will deposit you, the reader, into the rabbit hole. And you will find yourself with Pim and Francie, lost in the haunted forest.

And then Grandma appears. She finds you, and all is well. And then, at Grandma's house, we know real fear. A succession of images terrorize our heroes, and like a nightmare, they find themselves on a dream street in a bad part of town. A cartooned detective appears chasing a killer. On the opposing page, a smiling, long-snouted, gap-toothed visage of fear with piercing eyes is depicted. Turn the page and there are severed limbs on the left hand side of the spread. And on the right hand side is an old man smoking a cigar. The words in the balloon are difficult to make out because there is tape and corrections. The one phrase that is readable is, "They enjoy killing! It makes them happy!"

When we turn to the next spread, we see Pim speaking to this older gentleman. Pim refers to him as Grandpa. This is the first time we understand within the order of the images that this character is Grandpa. The representation of Grandpa, like Pim and Francie, is reduced to a symbol, so when we encounter this symbol, we, the reader, bring so much to the table already. Just the word Grandpa and any cartooned image of a pleasant-looking gentleman, fused together, evoke a very particular feeling in me as a reader.

Spread #25

Spread #26

So when Grandpa reveals to Pim what the murderer does, it also sets up the reader to feel for Pim as he goes down the rabbit hole. On the opposing page, the grotesque, exaggerated visage of a few pages ago is replaced with it's "flipped image" double. Only now it is hacked to pieces, dead or dying and still smiling. A haunting mad image that bears the text, "Sonny Blackfire had returned."

When we turn the page again to spread #28 we meet "the Bloody Bloody Killer." His face, the angle of how it is drawn, all match the "grotesque visage" of the previous spread which of course, rhymes with the original spread. It is this phrasing that interests me a great deal. Spread to spread, Columbia directs my eye to see, in succession, more than the images reveal singularly. It reminds me of how a musical chord progression is built out of single notes, played together in time.

Break.

=====

TIM: Good one, Frank. I feel like we've barely begun to get anywhere, but I have to bow out for the rest of the evening, and do some stupid parenting. Maybe you and Dan will come up with more tonight—either way I'll rejoin the conversation tomorrow morning.

=====

DAN: Top of the morning to ya! A few responses: To the anonymous comment below: The reference to Wolverton's MAD cover is mentioned above: Columbia merges Lena Hyena with Goofy. And, I'm not pulling art from the book, necessarily. Comics Comics HQ doesn't have little helpers scanning books so I just grabbed stuff from the vast internet. So, you can stop searching for these images in the book (except for Frank's spreads. Those ARE in the book). Finally, I wanted to add to Tim's thoughts on the object-ness of, say, Minnie's shoes. If, as in a previous post, one could make a list of invented comic strips within fictional narratives, one could also perhaps make a list of invented comics museums within stories. There is a brilliant and haunting spread of a ballroom filled with cracked cartoon visages frozen in song. P&F enter the space wearing their Mickey hats—fresh blood in a toon graveyard. It's the only literal depiction of these old icons (Snow White, Mickey, the Ducks, et al) and it's a great disruptive moment. Two other cartoon museums come to mind immediately (and there must be a ton more): Francis Masse's brilliant "The Museum of Natural History" in Raw Vol. 2 #3 and Spiegelman's own satirical museum drawn as a poster to benefit Danny Hellman.

=====

FRANK: I think Columbia's approach points the way to a more intimate reading of the text. The fragments, the feel of the paper, grant us access to the material in a way that is more tactile than we get from most who employ this "style;" there is an almost uncomfortable intimacy. Partly because of the violent imagery but also because of the torn and shredded pieces of paper themselves. The humor and the horror and the presentation do not feel contrived at all, but authentic, sincere—REAL in every sense. The approach, the style of drawing interests me but I don't feel repelled by the treatment. Meaning that it could be read as "cold" somehow. There's a seduction to the drawing, the style, the pencil, the stages of development. The "behind the scenes" look can be startling.

I must sound like a broken record to those who know me but here goes: This book makes me think of Be-Bop. Notes, chords but skirting the melody. Playing up and down the scale. There's a beat (page spreads, rhythm of turning pages, the architecture of the spread—two fixed pages—and the architecture of the page; how it's presented as illustration, as symbol, as comic strip, as movement, as march), and there are notes, chords, but the melody line comes in and out like Charlie Parker playing a standard from The Great American Songbook.

I listen to Charlie Parker everyday on WKCR in NYC. While writing the above paragraph I heard a live recording of Parker where he riffed on the theme from Popeye. I forget the song but the band is chugging along and Parker is playing up and down and around the melody and slips in "Popeye the Sailor Man" without loss of tempo or control or anything—incredible. And to me, that's akin to what Columbia is able to do in the way he sequences the notes and fragments together in Pim & Francie. (The above Parker video isn't the song with the Popeye riff, FYI. Just an example of playing with intention and focus and still finding room to "play")

Columbia's style of drawing doesn't evoke a nostalgia in me; I don't feel he is drawing in an "affected" way. Hokey it ain't. It's very REAL. And his take on this American symbolism is strikingly elegant in its delivery. It's through this elegant delivery that we connect to the fable, the song which somewhere we have all heard before.

=====

TIM: Frank, your musical comparison seems pretty apt to me.

Dan, have you read Michael DeForge's Lose yet? Because there's a bar in hell there that you really need to see. (I should review that issue—it's really a great debut. Go order a copy, people.) It's not exactly the same kind of thing you're talking about, but it's close enough for blogonet work.

Also, it's funny that you began this Round Table by saying that you thought we'd all have "very different interests" in the book, but in fact, our responses seem to have been very similar. Maybe that's indicative of the power of Columbia's art, that a book so ostensibly "obscure" and "difficult" can provoke such strong, unified responses. (Or maybe its says more about our own limitations as critics, but that's too depressing to contemplate.) The relationships and situations seem to shift from "story" to "story" and page to page (are Pim and Francie siblings or spouses? children or adults? dead or alive? etc.), yet always make strong emotional sense (for lack of a better phrase), even as they avoid more traditional, "logical" closures.

One other small effect I don't think has yet been mentioned: I really enjoy the sense you get (through book covers, logos, film stills, etc.) of an alternate universe full of Pim & Francie books, cartoons, and merchandise. That so many of the characters and images mirror those from real (and often long-forgotten) commercial culture only increases the effect.

I don't know how much more there is to say about this book, without going into the kind of close analysis that Frank began to attempt yesterday, but maybe you guys will prove me wrong. Or actually do some of that close analysis! Like, I mean, what does it mean when they poke their eyes out? Whose "revelation" is it near the end, and what causes it? And what about that final scene in the meadow? What does it mean, man? Actually, those kind of analytical questions appear to me to be largely pointless. But am I wrong? Is that just lazy thinking?

=====

DAN: I have only flipped through Lose but am looking forward to getting my hands on it. Looks amazing. His Cold Heat special is genius. As for the rest, well, man, I think we've run out of steam. Those major questions of yours will have to wait until we next meet for beers. Or at least, me and Frank won't be answering them. Perhaps some kind souls in the comments will help you through this ontological quandary. If not, you can call me up until midnight tonight. Just kidding.

I think that about does it, folks! Thanks for reading. Now back to your regularly scheduled Comics Comics programming.

=====

TIM: Aw, you guys are chicken.

"Research" 1

2009-11-15T17:59:00.009-05:00

George Wunder

In a vague attempt to try to write about comics more frequently, I'm going to start a series of posts wherein I detail my daily trips through the library, the storage bin, other people's libraries, and, of course, the internet.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday messing around with George Wunder. First I read his obituary and then I read his wife's. Then I read his sister's. And man, it was like watching the whole family escape me one by one! Down they went, click by click. I took some notes and thought about contacting his nephews or grandnephews. I ought to. Then I discovered a cache of original art at Syracuse, but apparently no papers. I can't find an interview with him (though my index to Cartoonist Profiles is in storage -- there's probably something in there) and am intrigued by the dearth of info. He had no children. Where are all the letters and such? Where are the diary entries that explain his inky grotesques? He had a way of depicting giant craniums that verges on abstraction. Wonderful, odd stuff. But who was he? Caniff we know, right down to his shoes. But Wunder? I dunno. Wood assisted him at one point, I know that. And he apparently was in the military sometime. But what else? Ah well.

Then I got distracted and went down a rabbit hole looking for more on Jesse Marsh. Ordered a copy of a fanzine with a supposedly long Russ Manning article about him. Marsh died unmarried, but he did have siblings -- seven according to some reports. In all my research for Art in Time, I wasn't able to turn up anyone still living who knew him first hand, though I imagine someone from Western must still be around, and the thought tweaks me a couple times a week. Marsh remains a mystery to me. There might be some info in the hands of E.R. Burroughs collectors, which is the rabbit hole I dove down yesterday, mired in ERB fan sites trying to find some new little morsel that might have recently appeared. Has someone from his family contacted Dark Horse, I wonder? What became of his paintings? Of his legendary reference library? Some of these West Coast guys passed before fandom really kicked in (though according to Alex Toth, Marsh most likely would've rebuffed any queries anyway) and so we're left with lots of questions. Manning seemed to have known him well, but he's not talking either.

My last stop of the day was a lengthy digression into my favorite comics web site, Comic Art Fans, on which I combed through the Jack Kirby holdings hoping to find material for the 1940s and 50s Kirby exhibition I'm curating for the 2010 Fumetto Festival. For sheer volume of incredible visuals, it's the best site going.

On the not-comics-but-related front, went to see a buncha exhibitions yesterday, including the Mike Kelley show at Gagosian and the Robert Williams show at Tony Shafrazi. Best of all were the Hockney show at Pace and the Sister Corrita show at Zach Feuer, but man, seeing the Williams and Kelley shows in the space of a few hours was awfully fun. Couldn't be more different artists, but both are insightful painters of male angst/worry/paranoia/obsession. Check 'em out.

Mike Kelley

And that, dear friends, was my "research" for the weekend.

p.s.: Our offer still stands: Comics Comics wants a good, serious article about The Studio, 30 years on. We want to know about shag carpeting and questionable wall hangings? We want to know where the work came from and where it went. We want to know the economics of it, and the relationship between it, comics, fantasy, and illustration. Contact us!

Barry Windsor-Smith

Black Line Vs. Color: Odilon Redon Weighs In

2009-11-14T16:48:00.008-05:00

Odilon Redon:

“Black is the most essential of all colors. Above all, if I may say so, it draws its excitement and vitality from deep and secret sources of health… One must admire black. Nothing can debauch it. It does not please the eyes and awakens no sensuality. It is an agent of the spirit far more than the fine color of the palette or the prism. Thus a good lithograph is more likely to be appreciated in a serious country, where inclement nature compels man to remain confined to his home, cultivating his own thoughts, that is the say in the countries of the north rather than those of the south, where the sun draws us outside ourselves and delights us. Lithography enjoys little esteem in France, except when it has been cheapened by the addition of color, which produces a different result, destroying its specific qualities so that it comes to resemble a cheap colored print.”

From The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon (Dover Publications, 1969) but I got it from Artists’ Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000 (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2002)

Quite hits: Barks and Tomine

2009-11-14T12:39:00.017-05:00

1. I'm a regular reader of The New Left Review and a constant re-reader of Carl Barks' duck comics. So I was naturally delighted to see in the latest issue of NLR has a long disquisition by the German belles-lettrist Joachim Kalka on the disappearance of money as a material object, reflections that lean heavily on the writing of Leon Bloy and the comics of Carl Barks. Kalka's essay can be found here.
An excerpt:

Carl Barks’s comic-book stories of Uncle Scrooge—a spin-off from the Disney cartoon series—offer a canonical encyclopaedia of libidinous relations to money. His Scrooge is obviously related to Dickens’s miser and kindred topoi of European comedy from Molière to Antiquity; but he far surpasses these classical embodiments of avarice. Uncle Scrooge’s famous money-bin contains a hilly landscape made out of coins, interspersed with banknotes, in which he spends his time. He likes to announce the ritualized programme of actions the money-drive imposes on him with reiterated phrases: ‘I dive around in it like a porpoise—and I burrow through it like a gopher—and I toss it up and let it hit me on the head.' Clearly recognizable in this trio of money joys are three movements of any playful child: leaping into the pond, rummaging under the duvet and—the earliest gesture of delight—tossing toys high up into the air. The impressive massif of Uncle Scrooge’s money, the backdrop and punch-line of so many of Barks’s stories, might by its sheer volume obscure the crucial fact that for Scrooge McDuck (‘world’s richest duck and darn well going to stay that way’) all coins are individual. This gigantic accumulation of ‘dough’—to use the idiom of Scrooge’s disrespectful antagonists, the Beagle Boys, a gang of safe-crackers for whom indeed only its volume counts (which, according to the magical laws of this narration, in the end prevents them from pulling off a successful robbery)—is for Uncle Scrooge a concentrate of intimacy, in which every item is
saturated with memory.

2. This Canadian Business article has already received some attention from the comics world. I just wanted to point out that for any Adrian Tomine completists out there, the print edition of the magazine is worth acquiring since it has a fine full-page Tomine illustration of Chris Oliveros, a portion of which I've pasted above.

Wally Wood And Jack Kirby

2009-11-13T00:03:00.008-05:00

I read Jeet's post about Jack Kirby and Dave Sim and thought about Kirby in the early '70s. Specifically, his transition to DC from Marvel. So, I went down into my basement and dug out a DC comic from 1971. It's a "Super DC Giant" reprint of all the Kirby Challengers of the Unknown material inked by Wally Wood. When were they first published, the late '50s? And then I tried to imagine Wood being part of the Fourth World material, just inking one of the books like Vince Colletta did for Forever People. And then I smoked a cigarette. Man, that would have been amazing. For me, anyhow. They could have really turned up the romance angle. Look at those girls. Hubba Hubba.

Can you imagine Big Barda inked by Wood? Oof.

Dave Sim Versus Jack Kirby

2009-11-12T10:29:00.004-05:00

Anyone interested in Dave Sim should try and get a hold of copies of Comic Art News and Reviews, a fanzine he frequently wrote for in the early 1970s.

As a teenage fan, Sim interviewed and analyzed many major creators who shaped his art, including Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Jules Feiffer. In retrospect, the Feiffer essays Sim wrote are particularly piquant because the young fan praised the alternative cartoonist for his insights into gender relations. Who knew back then that Sim would grow up to be a character out of Carnal Knowledge?

Equally ironic is an outburst against Jack Kirby that Sim penned in the very first issue of Comic Art News and Review. Sim was upset that Kirby had been given too much artistic freedom by his editors at DC:

I maintain, as I have for some time, that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the early work of Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality. [...]

Now for some conclusions on this topic. Why do these characters exist? They are Kirby creations and it is a well-known fact that the only way to maintain Jack Kirby as a staff artist is to cater to his wants. One of these wants is total freedom to change, distort or completely destroy anything in the panel art at DC. He changed Superman into something less than he should be, totally demolished anything it took DC thirty years to build Jimmy Olson into....and left both characters when he was through with them. This is somewhat reminiscent of ushering a spoiled child into a room full of antique toys, permitting him to smash them at will and guiding him to yet another room.

Now, the almighty King demands that he be granted a team of artists at his California headquarters that he might continue his Fourth World Farce. Whom would he take? Neal Adams? Jim Aparo? Joe Kubert? Certainly sacrificing these gentlemen to the pseudo science fiction slop of the Fourth World means nothing...if the King is satiated by it.

At least on the issue of creator rights, Sim became wiser as he grew older. The entire magazine Comic Art News and Reviews testifies to the vital fan culture that existed in Southern Ontario in the early 1970s. A run of the journal can be found in Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. If anyone has access to the library, they should definitely check it out: it’s a goldmine waiting to be opened up.

Paid Advertisement #2

2009-11-10T14:23:00.003-05:00

Well, here we go. Mark your calendars to come to Brooklyn and meet tons of artists, including much of the Comics Comics crew (me, Frank, probably Tim, Dash). Now you can tell us that we're snobs/hipsters/idiots/intellectuals/low-brows in person! Official text below. Watch the web site for panel schedules, updates, and other goodies.

Desert Island and PictureBox present:

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival
A gathering of the best of contemporary graphic art

Saturday December 5th 2009: 11 AM - 7 PM
Our Lady of Consolation Church
184 Metropolitan Ave.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

www.comicsandgraphicsfest.com

Free admission

New York has long been the hub of contemporary graphics and comics publishing, and Brooklyn the borough of choice for many of the city’s best cartoonists and graphic artists. Bringing together an international cast of cartoonists, illustrators, designers, and printmakers, The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival , founded by local bookstore Desert Island and local publisher PictureBox, is the first festival to serve this vibrant community.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival will consist of 4 components:

- Over 50 exhibitors selling their zines, comics, books, prints and posters in a bustling market-style environment
- Signings, panel discussions and lectures by prominent artists
- Exhibition of vintage comic book artwork
- An evening of musical performances

In the cozy basement of Our Lady of Consolation Church, exhibitors will display and sell their unique wares. Exhibitors include leading graphic book publisher Drawn & Quarterly of Montreal; famed French screenprint publisher Le Dernier Cri; artist’s book publisher Nieves of Zurich, Switzerland; Italian art book publisher Corraini; master printer David Sandlin; and tons of individual artists and publishers from Brooklyn.

Featured guests include the renowned artists Gabrielle Bell, R. O. Blechman, Charles Burns, C.F., Kim Deitch, Ben Katchor, Michael Kupperman, Mark Newgarden, Gary Panter, Ron Rege Jr., Peter Saul, Dash Shaw, R. Sikoryak, Jillian Tamaki, and Lauren Weinstein, among others.

The commerce portion of the Festival is partnered with an active panel and lecture program nearby at Secret Project Robot gallery, down the street at 210 Kent Ave. This mini-symposium will run from 1 to 6 pm and is being overseen by noted comics critic Bill Kartalopolous. Also at Secret Project Robot will be an intimate exhibition of original comic book pages from 1950s romance, western and science fiction comic books, curated by PictureBox’s Dan Nadel.

Finally, at the end of the day visitors can troop over to Death by Audio at 49 S. 2nd Street, for an evening of musical performances by cartoonists, organized by Paper Route, and including performances by Boogie Boarder, Ambergris, Scary Mansion, Nick Gazin, and many others.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

Exhibitors and Artists:

Our Lady of Consolation Church
184 Metropolitan Ave .
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
11 AM – 7 PM

Panel Discussions, Lectures & Art Exhibition:

Secret Project Robot
128 River @ corner of Metropolitan Ave.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
1 PM – 6 PM

Musical Performances:

Death by Audio
49 S. 2nd St Between Kent & Wythe
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
9 PM onward

Poster image by Charles Burns

Frank's Soapbox #3

2009-11-10T02:32:00.015-05:00

Why do "art books" by comics artists usually have titles like The Art of [Fill in the Blank] and not just show the artist's name? This has always confused me. Like when you go into Barnes & Noble or Borders, all the books in the Art section usually just have the artist's name.

Hunh.

Ware is Everywhere

2009-11-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

In a recent Inkstuds interview, Seth said that that three most influential contemporary cartoonists are Crumb, Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. For Seth, what sets these three apart is not so much the quality of their work, as the fact that they've changed the syntax of comics, greatly expanding the range and depth of stories that can be told in the medium. I agree with Seth, with the proviso that Gary Panter and Lynda Barry also belong on this list.

Will Staehle cover of Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs

The type of influence Seth was talking about is fairly subtle: in the case of Ware it means making other cartoonists aware that comics can have minutely delicate shades of emotional meaning hitherto unexplored in the medium. But Ware's influence on some artists is also more blatant in the sense that he's clearly informed their style and design sense. Recent examples of Ware-inflected design include the cover for the new Michael Chabon essay collection, an art catalogue designed by Ellen Gould, and a illustration by Mark Matcho from the August 24, 2009 issue of Time Magazine.

Ellen Gould's design for Imaginative Feats art catalogue

Certainly Ware has raised the bar in terms of design, just as he has done for comics, but it is odd to see Ware pastiches popping up all over the place. I'm divided on how I feel about this phenomenon. On the one hand, most of the Ware-influenced art is quite good: if you're going to steal a style you might as well do it from the best. On the other hand, in Ware's work his style isn't just for show but is integral to the total artistic package. To take use his style for other purposes almost seems like your missing the point of what it is that he's doing.

Mark Matcho illustration for Time

Comics Enriched Their Lives! #15

2009-11-06T16:36:00.009-05:00

Most of the collectors whose libraries we bought were dead years before the libraries came to us, so the only way we could judge the level of eccentricity in the collectors was the books themselves, or from other evidence. ...

An Orientalist named Paul Linebarger, whose father, we were told, had been Sun Yat-sen's lawyer, had absolutely wonderful books, but he had other things, too. He was an early expert on psychological warfare, which I believe he later taught. In one of his closets, for example, we found a huge pile of anticommunist comic books in Mongolian. Paul Linebarger also wrote science fiction, under the name Cordwainer Smith. And he had an interest in ladies' lingerie. One of the more unusual things we bought from his estate was a bra mannequin, complete with bra. Several drawers full of bras we let lie.

—Larry McMurtry, Books: A Memoir

I realize that most of you have probably never heard of Smith, but that's okay. We won't shy away from celebrating the unjustly obscure here. Scanners need no longer live in vain.

[via]

Decoding Steranko

2009-11-06T09:13:00.011-05:00

I had the good fortune of meeting James Romberger at this year's MoCCA festival. James is, like me, obsessed with color in comics. So, we're becoming fast friends.

He also has conducted a remarkable interview with Steranko. The magician/escape artist/cartoonist is in rare form. My favorite part: "When the men who created the rules and rhetoric of the comics form got together to decide on the architectural details, they failed to invite me. Consequently I found no reason to subscribe to their tenets. When I joined their ranks in 1967, the narrative devices that had been adopted and sanctioned for about half a century were considered untouchable commandments that were permanently etched in stone. Pages, panels, captions, and balloons were the essence of the comics format, all artifices considered unalterable by my peers."

I asked Mr. Romberger if he would mind me putting up a link. He said OK but wanted me to mention that it is only an excerpt from a much longer, fairly comprehensive interview that has yet to find a home in print. If we ever print another issue of Comics Comics maybe I'll beg him to let us publish it.

Check it out here.

Teach House Styles

2009-11-05T01:10:00.010-05:00

I studied cartooning at SVA and recently visited CCS, and so how to teach comics has been fluttering around in my mind for a while. What follows is a suggestion of how to run a Cartooning BFA or MFA course, just a potential direction that I think would be worth considering…

Instead of hiring teachers based on their achievements (and many of the current teachers are geniuses, no doubt about it), hire people who previously worked for many years in a now-defunct house style. Someone who drew Archie for years and is now selling their originals at Comic Con? Hire them. Did they draw Hanna-Barbera comics for years? Hire them. Did they ghost draw a daily comic? Hire them. Look for people who knew exactly how to execute a project on a regular basis and know, completely, the ins and outs of that particular assignment. They know everything about how that unique (now outdated) comic job should be done. They lived it.

The courses would be titled their house style—Archie, Hanna-Barbera—or I also think it’d be possible to get someone who has an expert knowledge of something like Little Lulu or Nancy or Astro Boy comics. There would be no courses devoted to “tools,” no penciling or inking classes. People can learn that elsewhere, like in their foundation year drawing classes. When that separation of responsibilities is brought into the cartooning class it’s usually based on an American production model that leads to people struggling with a tool for a whole year when they’re naturally suited to something else. The house style comic courses would require all of the students to draw everything with the same tools: whatever students write with naturally in non-art classes, probably just a ballpoint pen and paper. Everything tool-wise is nuts-and-bolts, no weird “try a Conté crayon” moments or “how to use a rapidograph” lessons. That’s for other classes.

The entire year-long class taught by these teachers would be based solely on teaching their house style. This would do a number of things:

The critiques would actually make sense. The teacher knows exactly how these stories are drawn, paced, structured, etc. Most of the cartooning class critiques I’ve been in are totally scattered, surreal happenings where the teachers are alternating between talking about character design, inking, storytelling, whatever. All of the students have different goals, and they’re often showing four pages of a long project out of context. Believe me: Usually nobody knows what the hell is going on. Everyone having the same goal (example: to tell an Archie story) would level the playing field. The teacher would know what they need to do to make it fit the assignment, how the characters behave, and the students would, over the school year, slowly hone in on the target, critique after critique.

Personal style and originality would be put on hold. In our current cult of originality, the pressure is to have a personal style as soon as possible, and the classroom environments often have this mentality as well. Everyone is freaking out: “What’s my style? What’s my thing?” It’s too much too fast. This race for originality has, over the years, spread from that future-goal timeline to just after college to (now) inside college itself. A safety zone no longer exists. For the most part, hardly anyone is hiring newbies fresh out of college to draw in a house style and then expect them to grow out of it. If these classes are explicitly devoted to learning a specific form, the anxiety for uniqueness would disappear and everyone would breathe out and look at their comics. The college would be the safety zone and after they graduate they’d start doing their own thing.

The more outdated and inapplicable the house style is, the better. They only have the understanding; they're not being bred for a specific job that currently exists.

These would be year-long courses, so students would devote a substantial amount of time figuring out these comics. Most cartooning courses are extremely rushed-through. That’s understandable, since if you’re trying to teach a general Cartooning course, there’s probably a lot to cover! But these wouldn’t be general Cartooning courses- they’re very specific. And focusing on a specific world of comics for a whole year, I think, would offer more than week-long (one class) samplings of different worlds.

Finally, and maybe this goes without saying, I think there’s a lot to learn from digesting these house styles I’ve suggested. Regardless of what kind of comics you’d want to do later on, it’s probably going to involve some of the same elements that comprise these house styles.

This is all based on the assumption that the students are there (and pay to be there) to learn something, and the teachers exist (and are paid) to try to teach the students things. If they don’t believe that cartooning can be taught, then they aren’t involved in this exchange.

Students will probably hate this plan because they’ll want to work on their own comics. They’ll be pissed off for Sophomore Year, start to do their own thing through/inside a house style Junior Year, and then maybe Senior Year would be open. I donno. I’m still plotting this thing out…

Proto-Graphic Novels: The Prequel

2009-11-04T09:00:00.012-05:00

In the aftermath of Jeet's recent post on "proto-graphic novels," the inimitable Eddie Campbell has generously agreed to let us post his excellent review of an A. B. Frost collection, Stuff and Nonsense, and Rodolphe Töpffer's Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. The essay originally ran in the 260th issue of The Comics Journal, from May/June 2004. As usual, Campbell's voice is unmistakable, and his ideas are ignored at the reader's peril.

Jeez, I'm making this sound too frightening. It's actually quite funny. As the Coca-Cola company so memorably put it: Enjoy.

Live Free or Blog La-Z

2009-11-03T12:51:00.019-05:00

I had planned a better post, but scanning problems are delaying things a bit, so here's a few links to tide things over.

You know, there's a prominent comics link-blogger who likes to go on and on about how hard it is to put these things together, but based on my limited experience, it actually seems like a great and incredibly easy way to post stuff online, even when you're busy with a day job, a baby, election day, scanner foul-ups, early morning meetings, etc. If I was actually paid to do this every day, I bet I could get a routine going with my RSS feeds where it took me less than an hour to round up links to all of the "important" comics ~~blogosphere~~ blogonet sites every morning. Kind of fun!

1. Austin English is a great guy and all, but he has weird ideas about what's ugly and what isn't. (And seems to compare Denny O'Neil favorably to R. Crumb, an aesthetic crime that should not go unpunished. (Jk Austin! Sorta.))

2. I knew about Talking Lines, but didn't realize there was another interesting looking new R.O. Blechman book out.

3. Birthday tributes to Steve Ditko weren't even a dime a dozen yesterday, unless you pay way too much for your internet service, but this one, despite its brief length, was particularly provocative and original.

4. Naoki Urasawa talks process. [via]

5. A too-rare interview with Peter Blegvad appears in the new Believer. [via]

[UPDATE: And I didn't realize it when I originally posted, but the issue includes a TON of good comics material that I should have mentioned.]

6. Almost every post Jog writes these days is worth linking to, but since everyone already reads him anyway, what's the point? That said, this review of J.H. Williams III and Detective Comics is unusually thorough and well-wrought, even for him.

7. And here is an insightful appreciation of last week's Chris Ware New Yorker work. Click on it; it's not boring.

8. Finally (but not leastily), for those of you who didn't notice, this weekend brought the grand debut of our newest online team member, the great Jason T. Miles. Please make him welcome and stay tuned for more. I don't want to ruin his next post by giving anything away, but it sounds pretty awesome.

That's it. I hope you found at least most of those worth reading. Nothing is more annoying than linkblogs full of garbage. On second thought, I have to admit that maybe this isn't that easy to do exhaustively if you hope to maintain any kind of quality control. Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding less and less of interest in the actual comics ~~blogosphere~~ blogonet these days. Writers outside it seem more thoughtful lately. Still, ninety minutes tops.

Quick One #3

2009-11-02T12:28:00.007-05:00

Edward Penfield, 1906. Kelly Collection.

Very quick one in this case.

1) I really enjoyed this post at David Apatoff's blog, Illustration Art. It's an excellent explanation of what to look for in a Leonard Starr drawing. Even if the work itself is not to your liking, the flair for craft shines through. My friend Norman prefers early Neal Adams strip work, as well as Alex Kotzky. I don't have an opinion on the matter, but I bet a lot of other people do, and that's why I love comics

2) T. Hodler turned me on to John Crowley's writing. Recently Crowley wrote about the lovely sub-genre of comics created within fictions. The discussion begins with his Oct. 16 post. [And continues Oct. 20.] Love Crowley's header art, too.

N.C. Wyeth, 1917. Kelly Collection.

3) About 6 weeks ago, under the auspices of old pal and fearless comics collector/historian Warren Bernard, I visited the Kelly Collection of American Illustration in Virginia. I've seen some amazing collections and this really knocked me out. It's a private museum of the great period of pre-WWII American illustration, 1890-1935, with deep holdings in Leyendecker, Harvey Dunn, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, among others. These paintings and drawing hold up remarkably well. I was particularly struck by the expressive hatchwork of Leyendecker and the nearly-sculptural attention to paint of Cornwell. Harvey Dunn was a revelation of me, as the paintings seemed more vibrant and energetic than anything in print. It's all contained in a gorgeous museum setting, complete with extensive information and archives. I particularly liked the focus of it -- no pulps, no pop -- a tight look at one spectacular period of image-making. It's not even the period of illustration that most resonates with me -- but I can't imagine this collection, so beautifully curated and hung, not being an affecting experience for anyone, no matter their aesthetic proclivities. In its dedication to an oft-neglected artform, the collection is a national treasure. For now, I believe it is open by appointment to scholars only. If you fall under this category, make the pilgrimage.

What the Comics Journal Does Right

2009-11-01T14:51:00.005-05:00

The Comics Journal, as I noted in an earlier posting, needs to re-invent itself to make it relevant for the new era we’re in, a period where there is a much greater public interest in comics combined with a much more fragmented discourse about comics (found mostly these days the internet). It looks like the editors of the Journal were thinking along the same lines as I was, because they’ve decided to radically change the magazine by upgrading its web-presence while transforming the Journal itself into a twice-yearly upscale publication.

These are promising changes, although much will depend on the execution. I think one way to guide the magazine forward is to look at what it does right. Here is a list of highlights from the most recent incarnation of the magazine (the more compact, literary magazine format they started with issue #288 in February of 2008).

The Deitch family issue (292) was the stand-out interview. By conducting separate interviews with Gene Deitch and his three sons, Gary Groth created almost a new genre: a family saga in the form of oral history. With each Deitch offering conflicting accounts of their family life, we got a rounded image of their careers, one that read like a novel. This was one of the best issues ever. There have been other strong interviews (like the ones with Trevor Von Eeden, S. Clay Wilson, and Jason) but the Deitch interviews stood out for telling a cohesive story.

As for the critical essays, I think the Journal was strongest when its stalwart critics wrote long think pieces. Gary Groth’s novella-length, keen-eyed piece about the relationship between Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman was superb as both portraiture and analysis. It gave a much livelier sense of what Thompson was like than the recent documentary Gonzo, or any of the other films about the notorious journalist.

Although many found it too long, I though the symposium on the Michaelis’ Schulz biography was important and necessary (full disclosure: I participated in the symposium). There were serious problems with that much-praised book, and it was good to get Monte Schulz’s objection to it in print for the record, so that future students of Peanuts won’t treat Michaelis as gospel.

Other strong pieces of writing were R. Fiore on Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague and Tim Kreider on Bill Mauldin. In general, Donald Phelps is the magazine’s most genial and idiosyncratic voice, although he often writes about things other than comics. I know many people have a hard time with Phelps’ rambling, quirky, allusive prose but his essays always give me a new way to look at art, something few critics can achieve. I have to confess though that I’ve never developed a taste for another dense Journal stylist, Ken Smith.

The strength of the magazine is in presenting essays that have a depth of analysis that can’t be found elsewhere. Most writing on comics tends to suffer from a shortness of breath: small reviews and bite-size blog postings. The Journal, at its best, doesn’t settle for such small snacks but offers a full-course meal.

Among its reviewers the Journal has a contingent of solid, trust-worthy writers: Kent Worcester, Rich Kreiner, Shaenon Garrity, and Kristian Williams, but they tend to get drowned out by crankier and less-informed critics, writers who mistake abrasiveness for insight. The magazine’s review section does seem too diffuse and scattershot. I’m never quite sure why some books get reviewed and others don’t. There’s a lot of good critics on the web now – Rob Clough comes to mind right way. The most promising prospect for the next incarnation of the Journal is to recruit these writers (I know Clough has already signed on).

Visually as well, the magazine has improved greatly in recent years. But if it comes out less frequently, there is more room for growth and experiment. Fantagraphics has a great design team which consistently puts together wonderful looking books. A Comics Journal that looks more like a book would be really exciting.

In terms of the print magazine, my strong sense is that the Comics Journal has always been strongest when Gary Groth has been most involved with it: his interviews with cartoonists have always set the gold standard in terms of being informed by the deepest research and asking the most searching questions. I’m thinking here of the classic and memorable conversations Groth has had with Chaykin, Crumb, Gil Kane, Jules Feiffer and many other creators. Now Groth is of course a very busy many with many broths to attend to, so the amount of time he gives to the Journal has wavered. But with two issues a year to put out, he should be able to reshape the magazine into something more closely resembling his own sensibility.

The Journal has often been accused of being just a mouthpiece for Groth’s opinions. To my mind, it’s regrettable that the Journal hasn’t often enough been Grothian enough.

BEHOLD! THE ULTIMATE MAN!

2009-10-30T05:33:00.007-04:00

The only thing I'm really obsessive about is trying to find the real worth of something and my relation to it. It doesn't matter whether it's comics or anything else, you know. So that's an ongoing process. It's a matter of possibly trying to find, to develop, what I know so that I can grasp things that I'm only seeing in an overt way. You never get to the essence of anything. What you do is just peel back layers. I just wanted to pass the first couple of layers. I feel like my whole life is wasted if somehow or other I respond to a lifetime of work exactly the same as the fucking fans.

—Gil Kane, 1977 conversation with Gary Groth included in his tribute "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Remembering Gil Kane", The Comics Journal #222, April 2000

The first comic book I remember getting my hands on was Superman Special 1983 #1, written and drawn by Gil Kane. I obsessed over this comic book. The chunky drawing composed of spindly, coarse lines and bold, slanted hatch marks gave everything a tactile and chiseled look that made the unreal seem real to my young, impressionable eyes. I must've spent hours studying the cover alone: An angry Superman shoving his fist in the air, lines radiating out from under his cape, a giant flash of fire and smoke echoing his rage ... A large, disembodied head hovers behind the man of steel ... nervous hands reel, anticipating what might happen ... and what happens is lurid, colorful, intense, over the top ... an oratorio of a comic book, full of bubbly slime, furrowed brows, sweat bullets, clenched fists, tornadoes, tsunamis, an erupting volcano and Superman. Lots and lots of Superman as he navigates the silly world of mere mortals ... and it's the "mere mortals" part, which today makes me find Gil Kane's frustration, smoldering and pinched between Superman's black eyes.

Tonight I made the rounds; visiting several different quarter and dollar bins. I came home with a nice haul. I used to do this with more regularity but too often I found myself revisiting the same bins with the same shit, so now I go less often giving the retailers time to replenish their stock of cheap, unwanted comic books. For me, these bins are where it's at. Flipping through thousands of grimy, moldy, water-damaged comic books in one night can be a heavy trip. It's not out of the ordinary for a prismatic range of emotions to move through me as I spend hours digging through what seems to be the world's supply of Image comics. But more often than not, by the second or third hour, I've settled into an undulating balancing act, sliding back and forth from cosmic excitement to common existential dread.

Gil Kane's work on Superman Special 1983 #1 is fucking awesome. But it's not enough.

It's over! He's gone ... destroyed by his own ambitions! His mind and body couldn't endure the trauma of endless accelerated mutation! Ambition pursuing its own ends, indifferent to the world about it ... corrupts all! No matter how well-intentioned, ambition without compassion makes us ... not more ... but less than human!

—Superman's thoughts from panels 1 and 2 from page 43 of Superman Special 1983 #1, written and drawn by Gil Kane.

separated at birth?

2009-10-28T09:25:00.006-04:00

Dash Shaw and David Mazzucchelli.
I know, I know, a ton of cartoonists have done the same thing with the balloon tails. But I thought this was funny.

Paid Advertisement

2009-10-27T12:04:00.004-04:00

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And don't even get me started on Ken ("Snoopee" and Deerhoof) Kagami's brilliant, subtle zine, Celebrities' Penises. It's a masterpiece of drawing and humor in full compliance with the Golden Mean, The Golden Lasso, The Golden Triangle and The Golden Shower.

We also have the excellent Cosmic Collisions by Anya Davidson, the brand new 1-800 MICE by Matthew Thurber, and signed copies of Archer Prewitt's latest book.

Also, note that we're now carrying zines and projects from the British collective Famicon. We like these funny British people, and are pleased they're allowing their publications to reach the colonies. Last but not least, a hot new publication from Michael Williams detailing his views on Copenhagen.

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APE

2009-10-25T20:06:00.011-04:00

Best in Show

Malachi Ward

Zack Soto

Brandon Graham

George Mensah

John Pham

Grant Reynolds

Various

Frank Santoro here. My notes for last week's APE show. I think this about sums it up. Fun festival. Sure has changed tho' in 15 years. I'll say one thing: Comic-Con running it seems like a good thing.

APE
San Francisco, Ca
2009

Dean Haspiel

Last Gasp mixer

Ben Catmull

Tim Goodyear

Dylan Williams

North Beach

Saturday
Dean Haspiel (told a great story about Howard Chaykin)

Tom Devlin is funny

Unclothed Man book looks good

Mike and Janice at Fantagraphics are good people

Jon V signing

John Pham mini-comics score!

Alvin, Lisa Hanawalt, Eric Haven

Marc Bell in a good mood

Steve Oliff is the secret history of color comics in one person

Personal Stories panel
Dean Haspiel: inject personal drive into work for hire
Dash And Phoebe Gloeckner steal show

Chicken dinner and Bob's donuts

Sunday

Marathon crowd noise wake-up call

Jeff Smith and Dash conversation. Jeff's APE thoughts.
1994 to now. Seemed genuinely excited at how things have changed.

Slow Sunday

Webcomics panel
(monetizing and formating same old shit. like conversations about the internet in the '90s - all that familiar "it's gonna be like this..." double talk)

Grant Reynolds

Zack Soto

Ryan Sands

girl with Tintin 24 hour comic (Angie Wang)

Brandon Graham is really good.

George Mensah (Ninja comics)

Keeping it real department: Ron Turner pushing dolly of boxes

El Toro burrito

Joe from Image / Shannon from Stumptown

Jesse Moynihan

Brett Warnock

Monday

North Beach hangout w Dash/ City Lights

Two More Oliff Akira Color Guides

2009-10-25T12:12:00.003-04:00

Cynical/Naive

2009-10-24T13:18:00.017-04:00

I've futzed around with this piece after initially publishing it, retaining the ideas but rearranging and clarifying a bit, I hope. Anyhow, I normally try (though not that hard) to avoid writing about press, but I must note a few things about David Hajdu's review of Crumb's Genesis in the NY Times Book Review. Look, I'm not cynical enough to dismiss the Times, as many do, as stodgy or useless, etc. Instead, I'm somehow naive enough to still believe in it as an institution that has tremendous resources and can produce great work. Nevertheless, I also realize that (and sort of understand, from a logistical point of view) irresponsible or ill-informed writers like Hajdu slip by when writing about a somewhat specialized topic. After all, this stuff matters most to those of us who take it as a primary subject. But in the spirit of trying to improve the discourse around comics, Hajdu should be addressed. Especially because again and again Hajdu pops up with some ill-formed opinion or straight up error (and we at Comics Comics, like groundhogs, pop up and object like the big fucking nerds we are). So, onto the review. In a somewhat positive, though oddly condescending piece, Hajdu commits a number of blunders. We'll start with this doozy:

"The first book of the Bible graphically depicted! Nothing left out!" brags a banner on the cover. This is scarcely the first time the Bible has been adapted to comics pages, of course. In the first decade of the comic-book business, the man who claimed to have invented the medium, M. C. Gaines, founded a whole company on a line of 'Picture Stories From the Bible.' (When he died suddenly, his young son, William M. Gaines, inherited the company, and in a 20th-century case study in the enduring vagaries of primogeniture, the son discontinued the Bible strips and started publishing lurid, spicy crime and horror comics.)

Given that Hajdu wrote a book (The Ten Cent Plague) involving those exact "lurid" comics, he should also know that Crumb's "brag" on the cover is a knowing nod to his medium. As with the works inside, Crumb's cover text and design is a consciously mid-century comics stance. That is, like Crumb's childhood comics, the cover is garish and loud, and interior pages rely on established cultural/visual types and straightforward storytelling in the Stanley/Barks vein. It's a brilliant, thoroughly subversive choice that works both on a literal and meta level, commenting on the history and form of comics-the-medium. And further, as Hajdu well knows, Bill Gaines sought to produce, yes, sensationalist comics, but he also instituted the most rigorous set of standards yet (and in the case of crime and horror comics, maybe ever) imposed on comic books. He aimed for literary quality as he understood it. Hardly just the "lurid, spicy" comics of Hajdu's description, though he was obviously trying to make a cocktail party smarty pants comment about fathers and sons, blah blah). And yes, the Bible has been in truncated comics form many many times. But as Hajdu also knows, that is hardly Crumb's point. His task was a word-for-word adaptation.

And then there is this classic:

At points, Crumb withholds exactly the kind of graphic details he built a career on revealing: In an image of circumcision, he shows us two splatters of blood, rather than the actual penis being cut. Onan practices coitus interruptus turned away from us. This book, I believe, is the first thing by Crumb ever published without a single image of flying sperm or a sharp blade approaching male genitalia.

Besides the sheer idiocy of saying Crumb "built a career" (whatever that means in an underground context) on anything besides drawing exactly what he needed to draw, the facts are simply wrong. Crumb has been making "clean" comics right alongside his "dirty" stuff for over 30 years now: American Splendor; the blues biographies; the P.K. Dick biography; the Kafka book; right up to his recent masterful memoir of his brother Charles. This kinda knowledge is not the area of specialists -- it's the stuff of Amazon.com and Wikipedia. Crumb doesn't need me to defend him (oy vey) but his efforts deserve better than this utterly wrong characterization. It is all the stranger since Hajdu has, in fact, interviewed Crumb himself and would have to be willfully and then persistently ignorant not to know better.

But wait, there's more:

For all its narrative potency and raw beauty, Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” is missing something that just does not interest its illustrator: a sense of the sacred. What Genesis demonstrates in dramatic terms are beliefs in an orderly universe and the godlike nature of man. Crumb, a fearless anarchist and proud cynic, clearly believes in other things, and to hold those beliefs — they are kinds of beliefs, too — is his prerogative.

This seems an especially disingenuous statement. First, Hajdu's interpretation of Genesis is strictly that of a believer -- I can't see how, as an irreligious reader, you come away with that interpretation. I mean, there are two conflicting accounts of creation. Not exactly orderly. Also, Crumb is not, as far as I know, an anarchist, but he is, by his own account, spiritual. Which is to say, Crumb seems to be exploring the sacred. Maybe not Hajdu's sacred, but sacred nonetheless. A quick scan of Crumb's statements (From Vanity Fair, just one Google search away: "I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I'm interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality") on the matter will give you that much.

Anyhow, one wonders why an author would persist in writing about a subject he clearly disdains and isn't interested in actually learning about, but I guess that's between Hajdu and his own idea of the sacred. Next post I'll be happy, I promise.

[UPDATE: I realize it seems odd/rash to pick on this one piece of writing out of the avalanche of material devoted to Crumb's Genesis, but it strikes me so wrong headed that it just needed to be addressed. If nothing else, given the talk of mature comics criticism, etc., it seems important to me to address writing that, whatever else I might say about it, aims for seriousness, and is generated by someone who claims a certain authority in the field.]

Full Circle

2009-10-22T15:20:00.024-04:00

Dan just somehow hacked into my computer and stole my planned post almost word for word, but that won't stop me. Those of you who aren't color blind should hie thee to Same Hat, like, now to see some of the incredible work that inspired Frank to "riff" on Steve Oliff. Color nerds united.

Then wish you were at APE so you could have bought some of these yourself. The picture of Frank that was going around kind of scared me, but now I think the trip would have been worth it.

UPDATE: Also, I feel bad for linking to this for some reason I can't put my finger on, but I can't help it: Frank Miller has been leaving appreciative comments on toga-crazed warmonger Victor Davis Hanson's blog, a sampling of which can be found here. [via] I kind of don't believe the ones at the end where he repeatedly decries anonymous commenters as cowards, but the others seem genuine.

And whether it's Miller or not, I agree with him: "Use your real names, or I will call you cowards."