On his blog, Rich Tommaso recently posted about his comic Miriam and notes that people often accuse him of "ripping off" Daniel Clowes. In response to such claims, Tommaso says that he has changed from inking with a brush to a pen. When I first read Miriam last fall, I enjoyed the comic yet noticed what seemed to me like similarities to Clowes's work. It wasn't that Tommaso's ink line looked like Clowes, but rather that scenes in Miriam echoed moments from his comics. In the post, Tommaso invites readers to "tell me what you think: Am I still ripping off Dan Clowes?" I am taking this question as genuine and assuming that Tommaso wants it discussed; so in what follows, I post images from the two cartoonists. Tomasso's panels are not swipes, but they show, I think, the influence of Clowes, especially in terms of characters and plot. You can look at this series of images and decide for yourself the degree to which they do or don't echo Clowes.
In Miriam, a former cameraman, now an alcoholic, waits on a couch to be interviewed by a film school student:
In a still from Art School Confidential, a former artist, who is also an alcoholic, sits on a couch and talks to an art school student:
Miriam and Ghost World's Enid have similarly unusual names, body types, and facial features, wear interesting glasses, talk on the phone in various states of undress etc . . . 
A similar moment in Miriam and Ghost World:
No one’s home, and a girl provides a “wisecrack”:
The young Miriam is a little like a visual amalgam of three Ice Haven characters: the fuzzy coat of David Goldberg; the glasses and bug-eyes of Charles; and the stuffed toy of Georgie. Enid also likes the Flintstones and has a Fred Flintstone and Pebbles doll:
A parent attempts to get a child to play with an unwilling participant - Miriam then Ice Haven: 
A similar street scene in Miriam and Clowes's The Death Ray:
This image is like the two that follow, from Clowes's Caricature and the cover of Eightball 15:
Similar establishing shots:
A moment framed by a window:
On the phone while on a bed:
Miriam makes use of a standard Clowes style of lettering – the Clowes in color is from the GW cover:
Some full pages of Miriam can be seen here.
Here's a review that discusses this topic.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Influence?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Triumph of Dr. Payn
Much of the language used when generalizing about Fredric Wertham seems to come from comics itself – many attack the psychiatrist as a “villain,” and others celebrate him as a “defender of children.” And the value of Wertham’s 1954 study Seduction of the Innocent is often reduced to a pro-con argument over its findings about the harmful effect crime comics had on readers. One thing that such an argument misses is a fuller appreciation of Wertham’s wide-ranging approach to reading and understanding comics.
When I first read SOTI, I was taken by how comprehensive Wertham is. He doesn’t just talk about plots and images, but rather he looks at numerous aspects of the comics, their production and dissemination, writings about them in the press and in the educational community, and the responses they generate in readers. It’s true that he presents these things in a fairly scattershot and repetitive manner, but the scope of his interpretive agenda is impressive. Here’s a quick and incomplete survey:
Reader Response:
Wertham talks in detail about children’s readings habits: how many comics they read and the way in which the high rate of circulation of current and back issue among friends affects readership numbers. He also explores the effect of comics on literacy and the different ways in which children of different ages read – or don’t read – the words and focus on the meaning conveyed by pictures. He and his staff interview readers and he connects their responses to their “reading grade,” intellectual abilities, and social conditions. He also discusses children’s fantasy lives and talks about parents’ beliefs about children’s reading habits . . .
The Comic and Meaning:
When he looks at the comics he talks about typography (which words are set in what size type), the material they are printed on and its cheapness, how they are colored, the kinds of plots they share, recurrent character types, the kinds of splash pages they feature - and in each case he talks about what this means. He looks at the relationship between advertising and story content (especially ads having to do with the boy and girl readers' masculinity/femininity and self-image), the way comics feature sexually-charged “pictures within pictures,” the relationship between the repetitious nature of comics and their disposability – how they create a desire to read more. He does numerous short close readings of various scenes and whole comics and discusses where and how the publisher's defenses of the moral value of their books are placed in each pamphlet. Wertham also does his own (and discusses others’) quantitative studies of comic: what types of actions appear and how many times etc . . .
Production:
He looks at publishers' methods and intentions, the ways they defend their product (in the comics and in the press) versus what is happening in the comics themselves. SOTI studies their circulation numbers and looks at the names of companies and how producers represent themselves in the indicia as a way to conceal who is creating what – (he notes one company will use many names, for example). Wertham also talks about the artists who create the books and their motivation for doing so . . .
Social Contexts:
His readings range extensively, covering important issues such as race, gender, sexuality, class, adult-child and sibling relationships and how these issues play out in the lives of characters and readers, and in the culture at large . . .
Cultural Reception and Reaction:
The book examines dozens of arguments about comics and children in the popular press as written by parents, educators, social critics, and medical professionals -- and Wertham puts these arguments in the context of trends in child development and behavior and his own readings of the comics . . .
Comparative:
He defines his subject by talking about the ways they echo or deviate from other forms of entertainment: non-crime comics, comic strips, children’s books, adult fiction, movies, classic comics and the literary classics they adapt. . .
I can’t think of any other study on comics that pulls from so many different methods to make its claims. Because of this, put me in the pro-Wertham camp; it's hard not to appreciate someone who takes comics so seriously and from so many perspectives: psychoanalytic, ethical, literary, political, sociological, material (objects and production), reader reception/response . . . He may be comics' most wide-ranging critic.
{Apologies for the bad scans - but I wanted to show the images that Wertham uses and his commentary on them -- and the book's binding often gets in the way of a flat scan.}
Reminders
Leon Beyond: new strips by Ted May, Kevin H., and Dan Z. are here.
Jordan W. Lint: Part 2 of Chris Ware's serial is in the latest VQR. It's a comic-friendly issue, with a cover by Art Spiegelman, a comic by Ross MacDonald, and an essay on cartoonist Rory Hayes by his brother, Geoffrey.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities
Take a look through the Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities, a great blog best explained in their own words:
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features new acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This ongoing exhibition is curated by Tim Young, Associate Curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature.
Among the interesting work they feature you'll find: The Real adventures of Tintin, and this fun and beautiful piece of ephemera: The Test Flight of Sky Robin.
Wow, there is just too many incredible things shared at that site.
Click below to see a random sampling of stuff you will find in the archives.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Tomine's Scene
Had it been widely available, Adrian Tomine’s 2007 mini comic Scenes from an Impending Marriage likely would have made its way onto many best-of lists.
Scenes features a stripped-down approach to storytelling in a simply designed, attractive book, two hallmarks of Tomine’s work. It includes six strips (each is 1 to 4 pages) and two single-panel full-page gags, all of which narrate humorous moments as Tomine and his then-fiancée-now-wife, Sarah, prepare for their wedding. They almost hire a DJ, who gives them some CDs so they can “get a sense of his flow,” but they’re not feeling it; they visit a salon, where Adrian supportively comments on—and according to Sarah, tries to decide upon—her wedding-day hair style. The couple also undergoes the “bizarre ritual” of registering for wedding gifts; and they negotiate their two families’ request for different kinds of traditional ethnic entertainment.
In the indicia Tomine writes that “some of the characters and . . . events . . . are fictitious, or at least highly distorted for the sake of clarity and/or humor,” reminding us that, as with all autobiography, Scenes should not be taken literally, though it’s fun to do so. And Tomine’s work, like that of many artists I like, is often far funnier than it's given credit for. And his sense of humor is on full display here. The comic is only 16 pages, but Tomine packs a lot of comedy into the small 6-9 panel grids, making it feel far longer, like a typical full-size comic book. When I talked about the comic with someone who had read it, he recalled it being around 30 pages . . .
Tomine takes a looser approach in Scenes than he does in recent work like 2007’s Shortcomings where, for example, each panel shows a high level of detail, with backgrounds that are meticulously drawn:
The comic features a polished version of the style that Tomine uses for strips in his sketchbook, as in this one from his 2004 collection, Scrapbook
and it has an incredibly appealing breezy and minimal visual look that’s cute and almost delicate, with a thin and relaxed, natural ink line (the only straight lines to be found are the panel borders).
And its cartoony-ness is a little like that of Tomine’s recent New Yorker cover
or in his story The Donger and Me, which first appeared in Giant Robot a few years ago and more recently was posted on NPR’s webpage:
As in Tomine’s other comics, what stands out in Scenes is the way he connects facial expressions and body gestures, though here they have more of the exaggeration typical of newspaper comic strips (a few panels show a clear debt to Peanuts). In one scene—a phone conversation with the almost-hired DJ— Sarah’s facial expression changes slightly from panel to panel—the eyebrows shift slightly, the head moves up or down, she bites a fingernail then a thumbnail, and the gentle comedy of the visuals matches the quickly shifting rhythms of the conversation’s ebb and flow. There’s a lot of charming self-deprecating humor, as in “Poor Us,” where Tomine draws attention to the couple’s narcissism as they obsess over problems with the wedding and honeymoon plans. This story, too, shows Tomine’s skill at cartoon gestures; it includes a perfectly executed nine-panel sequence of distinct poses that ends in a great moment of Peanuts-esque self-pity.
In the mini comics tradition, each copy (a few hundred were made) was hand-assembled, and in a way it’s a throwback to Tomine’s roots, as the early numbers of his series Optic Nerve were assembled and self-published (Tomine recount his self-publishing history in the introduction to his mid-'90s collection 32 Stories). But the fact that this comic was self-produced in a short period of time shouldn't mislead us. It’s the polished work of a confident and sophisticated cartoonist who knows how to work to great effect with an economical visual style and a compressed narrative sense.
All in all, a perfect mini comic.
A few panels from Scenes:
The Shortcomings Site
The "Donger and Me" at NPR.org
Tomine Interview at The Believer
Tomine's Official Site
