[See here for part 1, which explains some things.]
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This thing has meaning [click on images to enlarge]
The beginnings of philosophy -- now if you can only find the meaning you have the all. But it’s good even if you only come to the point of suspecting a meaning. If you can be part of the flow and aware of it at the same time (which doesn’t seem apparent here) you can get out of your bucket.
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Some days I feel confident
Confidence in itself has no real validity -- mayhem and horror have been created by people with confidence. Humanity should always be, perhaps, in a state of semi-confidence. Confidence obscures awareness -- resists understanding and denies relationships and rights. No man individually has a right to confidence.
In a different pen, Dean added "(individually)" with an arrow indicating that this word should be inserted after "man." So, the final sentence first read: No man has a right to confidence. Dean's philosophy emphasized that understanding our connection with others was crucial if we were to understand ourselves, so it's not surprising that he would see the "right to confidence" in social terms.
A few days back, I wrote an appreciation-analysis of Moench, Jones, and Madsen's Batman Unseen #1 and #2. The comics racks at my local shop has somewhere around 70 new comics today -- and Batman Unseen #3 is the only cover to have a word balloon. This choice clearly seems to be part of the author's decision to evoke a retro feel, and though a word balloon on a cover shouldn't seem like a risk, given current trends, it almost seems a little subversive; and it's a small reason why this comic stands out to me . . .
Abner Dean’s papers include notebooks in which he commented on dozens of cartoons from his 1947 collection What Am I Doing Here? In this commentary he adopts different personas: in some he talks as if he were a character in the drawing; in others he sympathizes with or scolds characters or the reader in his own voice; in many he offers either straightforward or obscure observations on the cartoon; and in others he moves between these approaches. Dean’s comments are a strange and compelling form of criticism on his own work, the kind that we don’t often get to hear from an artist. I don't know why Dean wrote these kind of notebooks, when they were written, or if he ever shared them with anyone . . .
I use quotations from the notebooks in an essay on Dean in Comic Art #9, but on the blog today (and in the next few weeks) I will post cartoons and writing from Dean that did not appear in that essay. [Dean's text is in italics below, in part because it's in cursive in the notebooks -- click images to enlarge.]
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I'm important
Well! don’t just stand there! Prove it! I don’t have to prove it –– I got monuments, coats of arms, bigger feet than you have –– smaller feet than you have –– a higher forehead –– anyway I descend from ancestors. The record is written –– I can coast. I’m the fulfillment. I’m really a bauble headed brachycephalic babitt in this response. Is it possible that anything yet is a monument to my own importance or yours? Our survival so far is pure accident –– and the accident has humored us long enough it seems. I can prove I’m important not by monuments to my past ego –– but by a continuous developing state of logic and peace. I can’t be important by myself. Take back your metals and your monuments. etc.
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You can give too much of yourself
Of course you recognize yourself -- you're the man inside the lunch counter! Or are you someone else in this group? Look again -- inside yourself.
Perhaps out of some misguided allegiance to my youth (when I was a “reader-collector” of Marvel and DC comics), or even out of some need (equally misguided) to prove to myself that I'm not an “art comics snob,” I've long been scanning the new comics racks for a mainstream-superhero title that I could “follow.” With the exception of Marvel’s Omega the Unknown (by a team fully outside of the mainstream stable of writers and artists), nearly every comic I have purchased or read in the store (a lot) has been a disappointment, especially the horrible Jimmy Olsen one-shots of the past year. Even the work of Grant Morrison (I just stopped reading his Batman and Robin), is a kind of letdown. I have been told for decades, and once believed, that Morrison is not just a great writer of comics, but a great writer. In his current Batman series, Morrison creates villains who are pretty creepy, scenes that are somewhat disturbing, and avoids most of the clichés that bury other writers. Frank Quitely’s art is stylish, but his line is so thin at times that it seems to disappear into the color. The comic’s solid, but that’s about all I can say for it.
I have been reading another Batman series, one that rises above corporate sub-mediocrity to the level of interesting and successful entertainment: Batman Unseen.
[click images to enlarge ]
What first attracted me to the comic, and one of the main reasons it works, is Michelle Madsen’s coloring, which manages to be both “moody” and bright, almost garish (attractively so) in its gloss. She avoids the coloring clichés that plague many current superhero comics, such as "muddy brown scene with indistinguishable characters" means “this story is seriously intense and grim.” Here is her "signature" in first panel of issue #2: a stained glass window with blocks of bright colors.
The way that artist Kelley Jones designs the white spaces on some of the pages functions in concert with Madsen’s color schemes. Jones uses a lot of white space and large gutter-like areas to ensures that all of the elements of the layout are easily read. And the pages often have an "airy" and open feel, a look that's surprising in a comic that uses so many horror tropes:
While computer fonts typically clash with the natural hand of the artist, Madsen's bold coloring of the sound effects here integrates them into the look of the panel and page by echoing the colors of nearby objects -- I still prefer hand lettering, but the coloring helps:
The comic evokes the simple and blocky color patterns of silver age superhero comics and makes use of computer-based shading effects in a manner that's unobtrusive:
Though Jones’s art often creates the dark atmosphere typical in Batman comics, it always displays a nice blend of comedic exaggeration and horror tropes; so the story never gets weighed down, trying to tell us visually that we must take it seriously, even when we are seeing some fairly dramatic images of Gotham:
Subtitled “A Lost Tale of Bruce Wayne as Batman,” Batman Unseen appears to be completely outside of the cosmic crossover continuity chaos that makes so many current mainstream comics unreadable for me. It’s a bit of a throwback, a very pulpy comic with a mad scientist-invisible man, and some two-bit hoods directed by a super-villain type. But writer Doug Moench never overplays his pulp hand in a self-conscious way, and nothing is being revised, rebooted, etc . . . There’s very little pretense: it’s far more entertaining detective fiction than collectible superheroic drama, and it helps that the comic focuses more on the cast of criminals than on Batman.
So far, Batman Unseen has been an entertaining comic.
Here's a three-page story from Bugs Bunny #102, November 1965. Bugs demonstrates some tricks that you might find useful at a Halloween party.
These images are admittedly just the result of curious web surfing after watching an old sort of frustrating BBC documentary series called Comics Britannia, a portion of which mentions Ken Reid as an unsung hero. Creepy Creations, not mentioned, reminds me of Plop! covers. Jonah is supposed to be Reid's best work, a character who sinks a ship in every episode in a neat inversion of British naval supremacy.
Congratulations to Lisa Hanawalt, who won an Ignatz for 'Outstanding Mini-Comic' for Stay away from other people. It's available for purchase from BP here. See more of Lisa's work at her site, and see my comments on her comic I Want You.
This week’s issue of The New Yorker (10.12.09) features a three-part cover sequence titled “The Food Chain." The covers are illustrated by Daniel Clowes (above), Zohar Lazar, and Mark Ulriksen. Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker’s art editor, dicusses the cover in this video.
Please check out Sean T. Collins's review of Matt Furie's Boy's Club 3. One of my SPX highlights was Matt's comments on the "Make it Funny" panel. And he did.
