" How to Read Weathercraft; or, How I Read It and What I Learned."
1. Read only the interior pages, the story proper. Do not read the material on the book jacket, which gives information about the characters, their world, and the story. Do not think about the significance of the title, and do not look closely at the cover.
2. After a first reading, then read all of the material on the jacket: realize how much you missed, how much you could have understood if you had read with greater care. Realize, also, that if you had thought about the title (and/or the cover image), many scenes that mystified you would have been clear. Acknowledge that you are an inattentive, and at times even a sloppy reader; but don’t get down on yourself. It was great to begin with, and will be even better the second time.
3. Read it again; during the second reading, achieve a new, but still incomplete sense of clarity, much like MH himself. Realize that a good comic changes each time you read it; ponder the implications this has for any theory of comics; such theories typically do not have a good sense of the roles played by different types of readers in creating meaning, nor do they recognize what happens to things like closure on the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th reading. 4. Watch the video at the Flog, in which cartoonist Jim Woodring works his way through the book. Again, realize that many of the things he talks about are clearly presented, but that you didn’t pick up on what was being laid down. Also, understand that some of the imagery is highly personal to Woodring, and so what it means to him and him and how it works in the story, is inaccessible to you, though on the book jacket he promises to explain some of it if you ask him in person. Plan to do so.
5. Read it a third time, thinking about Woodring’s video commentary, and recognize how cohesive it is. There’s a real clarity to the plot and to Woodring’s character designs and panel compositions. You will think that, in some way, the key to much of this is the artist's omnipresent wavy line, but will be unsure.
Plan to return to Weathercraft soon.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Weathercraft
Friday, June 11, 2010
Buenaventura Press Closed
In January of 2010, I closed the doors at Buenaventura Press in Oakland, California. I was forced to let go of the dedicated employees who had worked so tirelessly for so little money in order to create art that we all believed in. This meant that I had to abandon all current and future projects and discontinue sales and distribution.
I deeply regret having to take these actions, but the press experienced a devastating financial blow that made it impossible to continue. (I will release more details about this problem in the future.)
I consider myself lucky to have collaborated with many of the best cartoonists and artists of this generation. I am genuinely proud of the books and prints that the press released, and I am extremely grateful for all of your support.
-Alvin Buenaventura
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Best American Comics Criticism
In the introduction, editor Ben Schwartz frames the just-released Best American Comics Criticism in terms of ‘the rise of literary comics,’ which unofficially began in late 2000 with the simultaneous release by Pantheon of Daniel Clowes’s David Boring and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan. Though the growing prominence of the 'literary comic' provides a context, BACC’s reach is far greater, including pieces published from 2000-2008 on children’s, superhero, and newspaper comics, as well as literary graphic novels. Schwartz includes many kinds of writing, such as reviews, interviews, introductions to collections, historical and analytical essays, panel transcriptions, etc. -- and even a court document and two comics. In the pieces, novelists, critics, and academics write on comics; cartoonists talk to each other; cartoonists write about artists; critics interview cartoonists, etc . . .
The above lists get at one of the collection’s great strengths: it offers an extremely wide range of writing produced over eight years. Although I can imagine critical disagreements with some individual pieces, it’s harder to imagine objections to the philosophy behind BACC and the volume as a whole. While there’s a great deal to be learned by reading any such collection, Schwartz’s editorial approach makes BACC far more entertaining than I would have thought a collection of criticism could be.
(See the introduction and table of contents here.)
N.B.: An essay of mine is included, but don’t let that dissuade you from buying it; there are over 30 other pieces.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
“My Cola Silo is Out Back”: Wally Gropius
Tim Hensley’s Wally Gropius was released a week ago, and while I closely followed the story during its Mome serialization, the book (which has many new pages) is a whole nother thing. It has quickly become one of my favorite graphic novels. Here are some reasons why:
Parody and/or Something Else?: It’s Hard to Describe
What is it? Is it a parody? Maybe, but Hensley’s sense of parody is so original that it’s difficult to characterize the book or his approach. Wally Gropius is formally and thematically parodic in that it imitates visual, character, and plot conventions of Dell, Harvey, and Tower teen comics and children’s comics. For example:
The “teen comic that never misses an opportunity to pun” -- like Harvey’s Bunny (one of the “Blog Flume’s Top 50 Comics”) or dozens of other 1960s comic books. (Click on images to enlarge.)
The “male teen pop star pursued by countless female fans” -- like DC’s Swing with Scooter and many others.
The “omnipresent visual money pun” -- objects in the shapes of money symbols -- which, of course, come from Richie Rich. (“Cola Silo,” I assume, is an allusion to Uncle Scrooge’s Money Silos.)
The “adult condescension toward teenage habits” -- from every teen comic ever.
The familiar character types and drawing styles -- from comics like Richie Rich, Ponytail, Thirteen Going on Eighteen, Tippy Teen, Beetle Bailey, etc . . .
And the libidinal/obsessive energy present in Harvey Comics, Archie, and countless teen comics is taken to a disturbing place -- taking the “grope” in “Gropius” to new highs and lows.
In this last instance, Wally Gropius is the kind of parody that works as commentary on the earlier material, by exposing, in an exaggerated yet insightful way, energies/ideologies that animate the source comics [more on this later]. But this, too, oversimplifies things . . . The comic is too odd to be described as “commentary.” It seems far more synthetic than parodic: it blends recognizable influences into something truly new (I always avoid the word “truly,” but in this case it’s needed). And yet, it’s not that far from being a teen comic -- remove a few scenes, a few words and it’s kind of “tween friendly.” It’s hard to describe.
Sensical or Nonsensical?
The dialogue and scenarios are often weird/absurd, but they always make sense; they can easily be understood as exaggerations of, or skewed takes on, typical tropes of kid’s comics. The plot of Wally Gropius has been described as surreal or random, but it’s coherent and far more complex than I first thought, especially when I read it during serialization. You’ll likely need to read it few times before you can understand how some of the characters, such as Plenty, fit into the narrative, and how Banks and the reporter are connected. The apparent sense of absurdity might distract an inattentive reader (I include myself in this group) from the fact that things fit together in very specific ways.
The Joy of Drawing
The book is an encyclopedia of cartoony facial expressions and bodily gestures, and should be studied at the CCS as such. WG radiates a real sense of joy, of “cartooning unfettered.” The visual surfaces -- bold colors, elegant compositions, and assured inking -- are extremely inviting. Enjoy the faces and hands in this sequence:
The Ludic Punisher
Puns rule, both visual and verbal. Take the subtitle, for example: “The umpteen millionaire” -- Wally is a “teen millionaire.” The “ump” in umpteen foreshadows the many sports jokes/puns, which all seem to stem from the Huey Lewis’s “Sports” album conceit, a metaphor that pervades the comic. Umpteen also oddly modifies “millionaire” (traditionally what comes after umpteen must be a plural noun) in that Wally has umpteen millions in the bank. (And umpteeen just sounds funny). [See another Hensley ump joke here.] See also the back cover’s riff on Ox, Fort Knox, Babe the Blue Ox, and “olly olly oxen free.”
Writing and the Logic of Saddest and Married
Hensley is one of the best, and most idiosyncratic, writers of text in comics. Toward the end of the novel, Wally launches into a brilliantly executed disquisition on the linguistic and logical problems of marrying a girl who also must be “The Saddest Girl in the World.” A compelling interrogation of “the limits of language” by a recently-pummeled teenager millionaire at his wedding; and it’s also brilliantly staged by Hensley.
Allusive Density
Part of the fun of rereading is finding more puns and allusions, such as the images and literary references to suicide -- Mishima, Sylvia Plath, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s a web of allusion, jokes, and puns about things that are funny, and things that aren’t . . . The constant visual jokes also recall the side-features in kid’s comics that asked readers to find the dozen eggs -- or the like -- in a single drawing.
Money-pun in lower left corner: "Penny pinching"? "Money’s tight"?
Quote Ability
Hensley creates unforgettable phrases that, if there’s any justice in the world, will appear in all of the best quotation dictionaries:
“The Book as Art Object”
Like Clowes with Wilson and Ice Haven, Chris Ware with Jimmy Corrigan and recent Acme Novelty Librarys, or Seth with George Sprott, Hensley in Wally Gropius has exercised careful control of every aspect of the book’s design, creating a beautifully designed object that seems strangely modern while clearly showing its debt to earlier forms, such as the European album format of Tintin collections:
Note the band across the front cover with the subtitle and the head of the main character (the red-headed Wally is Archie [freckles] + Tintin [rouge cheeks]), and “Hensley” is placed where “Hergé” would be; also note the style of the encircled page numbers). For all of Hensley’s interest in past comics, there’s little that’s really nostalgic about the book and its design. Though it gives off a comforting sense of familiarity (evoking the thick covers of a beloved children’s picture book), this feeling is challenged by the book’s at time uncomfortable contents. And the peculiar clarity of Hensley’s drawing and inking on the cover -- and a phrase like “the umpteen millionaire” -- instantly tell us that we're not in Riverdale.
Sex and Sublimation
Gropius tells a strange story about sexual desire and sublimation. One of Wally’s songs argues for teenagers redirecting their urges into a sport (there’s that metaphor again), in this case a marathon ping pong session that must end in frustrated teens spewing vomit, which perhaps functions as a “surrogate oral ejaculate”: the body will ‘out’ its desire in some way. This part of the narrative about human nature and self-censorship -- like much of the book, really -- lives on the edge of cartoony comedy and disturbing revelation. The book’s approach is all the more profound because it blends ‘funny’ and ‘upsetting,’ such as when Jillian beats the shit out of Wally: it's a "boy meets girl, girl beats boy" story . . .
The book deals with many such “issues,” and could be read in a number of “serious” ways: as parable about celebrity; a meditation on female suffering, histrionics, and culture (or a reimagining of teen Sturm und Drang in the “Bieber-fever” media climate of the early 21st century); a critique of beliefs underlying the popularity of sports and connection between sports and patriotism (or an exploration of a nationalistic sentimentalism); a harsh critique of misdirected mothering; etc . . . While I think it’d be fine to see the book as “about” these things (as a parody that criticizes or even mocks some of its subjects), this approach also seems misrepresentative. . . There’s a weird tension between the book’s appealing surfaces and its “content” that disrupts attempts (at least my attempts) at generalizing about the comic.
As Hensley recently said at the LA Times blog: “I have a love/hate relationship with those old comics. There are things about them I'm nostalgic about, but there are things about them that infuriate me as well.” These conflicted feelings play out in the book.
Each Panel / Page is Beautifully Designed
The book’s size (printed larger than it was in serialization) is a real plus in drawing attention to the elegant, uncluttered panel compositions.
Hensley’s Skill as a Letter and Title Designer
Color and Space
A while back, I wrote about a number of other things I liked about the comic: http://blogflumer.blogspot.com/2009/09/gropius-in-space.html
Other Highlights:
+Best use of photo/drawing collage since Fantastic Four Annual 3.
+Oddest Abu Ghraib allusion, one that makes sense in the context of the previous panel’s images and reference to patriotism and sports.
+Most Disturbing Scene of Extispicium in a Teen Comic.
Eight Sources For Further Study:
1. Eric Reynolds Interviews Tim Hensley at the Flog
2. Gary Groth Interviews Hensley in Mome
3. Amazon Message Board Interview
4. Five Questions for Hensley at the LA Times Blog
5. Daniel Clowes on Wally Gropius at The Daily Beast
6. Dash Shaw on Wally Gropius at Comics Comics
7. National Anthems
8. Huey Lewis and Sports
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday
This Sunday, there's a can't miss event. Unfortunately, it's across town at Cinefamily and starts exactly when the event I'm now attempting to promote ends! Oh, well, I'm pretty sure my parents will still show. Come one, come none--there may not be another event like it for quite a while.
Printmaker Jordan Rae sent me this lo-fi work-in-progress photo this morning; he's printing a black velvet poster out of my salute to Successories. The remaining black flocked portion runs along the lines of an elementary school glitter and Elmer's project. Jordan explained he has to add black shavings to a sticky ink base, possibly using a DDT-type sprayer and hazmat set-up of tarps last seen on the TV show Dexter during disembowelment. Wish him luck! The end result will be on sale Sunday. He's also working on some other artist prints which he plans to sell online.
Finally, last weekend's Silverlake Jubilee street fair was something of a wash. The patrons seemed most interested in the traffic jam of amuse bouche fusion trucks lining the street. These upscale "roach coaches" are a craze in L.A. at the moment, with people monitoring Twitter feeds to discover transient locations to line up for Kimchee sliders. If we had had a bookmobile and some vegan stroopwafels, we might've been in business. During our downtime though, Ted Stearn, fellow Mome employee currently among those carrying the serial burden, drew this funny version of Wally, no longer "waiting for a flood."
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Clowes, Wilson, and Drama
The most obvious antecedent to the episodic structure of Wilson is the daily comic strip and its familiar "a few panels of setup followed by a panel with a punch line" format. But another influence, one that can account for some of what makes Wilson so strange, is the theater. Clowes has said he conceived of his previous comic, Mister Wonderful, as a "two-man play." This gave him a chance to play dramatist by trimming down his approach: in much of the story, two characters just sit and talk. In a recent interview, Clowes noted that theater was again on his mind as he worked on Wilson, a "one-man play" that develops theatrical conceits in ways that reveal some profound ambiguities of narrative practices present within comics.
Mister Wonderful used an expansive archive of comic techniques -- speech balloons, thought balloons, interior monologue boxes, fantasy scenes, flashbacks, and unusual formal approaches -- to give us access to Marshall’s thoughts and feelings:
But Wilson strips away nearly all of these devices, featuring only the present-tense image overlaid with the word balloon:
But "word balloon" isn’t quite right. Convention has taught us (or perhaps deceived us) that what appears within a word balloon is spoken. At a recent talk on Clowes’s book tour, an audience member asked if Wilson was speaking or thinking the text that appears in the balloons. "That’s a really good question," Clowes replied; "I’m not sure."
In Wilson, the balloon (it’s not quite right to call it a speech balloon when referring to Clowes’s work) has no single function -- sometimes it implies spoken text, other times thoughts, and elsewhere its meaning can’t be fixed: “I’m not sure.” Clowes is rarely schematic with these things. Just because a type of balloon functions a certain way in one strip doesn’t mean it works the same way (or needs to be interpreted the same way) in another.
Here’s where the dramatic conventions come in: In the traditional theatrical soliloquy a character speaks to no one. But a soliloquy is often interpreted as if it’s unspoken, as if it embodies the uncensored and most truthful thoughts of the character (Wilson is uncensored -- hostile to others and himself, for example -- in a way that most people are only in their heads). It is spoken, of course, because that’s the way to deliver thoughts on the stage. The book’s second strip (and many others) fit neatly into the soliloquy mode:
On this kind of page, Wilson, essentially alone on stage, speaks-thinks to himself; the balloon signifies speech and/or thoughts. But the soliloquy has another strange aspect. Even when other actors occupy the stage near the soliloquist, tradition suggests they simply do not hear him -- they act as if he isn’t talking (because in a way he’s not) or as if he isn’t there. Many of Wilson’s single-page "blackout gags" take this approach: he says awful (and awfully funny) things to people, yet his speech gets no reaction from them. In the vaudeville blackout gag, the theater’s lights are cut off immediately after the joke. There’s no reaction from other characters, only from the audience. And this often happens in Wilson: Clowes cuts the scene right after his hero speaks. The last two panels of "The Money":
A sense of Wilson as documenting ‘Wilson alone on stage’ is reinforced by his many phone conversations. He talks, but we never once hear the words of his interlocutors:
Throughout the comic, so much of the action is off-stage or off-page: these are the same thing in Wilson. Other characters begin to feel like props in the main character’s psychodrama -- they don't have quite the same "ontological" status as he does.
A few strips replicate the visual perspective of being in a theater: the static position of an audience member watching a play. The characters are drawn at the same size in each panel and are fully visible:
(Clowes discuses the above strip here.) There are no filmic shifts of perspective implying a moving camera or a mobile viewer; the scene is unedited, as it would be in a playhouse. And the panel border becomes an analogue for the proscenium arch, creating a frame that houses the actors and scenery -- the entirety of the fictional world available to the viewer.
--------------------------------------------
When I first wrote about Wilson a few weeks ago, I mentioned that one way to think about the strip was as a “dramatic monologue,” a poetic form connected to theatrical conventions. This discussion of the form may offer some ideas that can be applied to Wilson. . .
Also: Here's an odd "reaction shot"; perhaps the "inscrutable" Pippi's response to the always antagonistic Wilson appears as the image on the screen:
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
NSFW
For a long time I had saved among my paperwork a xeroxed rant of the type usually found stapled to telephone poles that was given to me by my friend George Woods. His girlfriend at the time worked downtown under what was then the B of A skyscrapers in a mall bookstore and was given multiple copies by the author himself, a Balwant Singh Choudry. I've always enjoyed the neural telemetry and meticulous/hopeless documentation found in these sort of tracts. It's as if the author feels so forsaken that he overcompensates by imagining he is under relentless scrutiny. At the end of 2006, a decade after receiving the screed, I decided to illustrate it for the anthology Kramers Ergot 7. Because the book's page size was that of a broadsheet, I tried to replicate the hideous gradient fills found in modern Sunday newspaper coloring. There's also my usual lifts, this time from Woody Allen, B.C. and brethren, and Prinzhorn Collection psychiatric art. I'm sure the likeness is not even close.
It reminds of when I worked in the complaint department at a computer company, and someone wrote in that their laptop had been stolen by the FBI/CIA/Catholic church and also mentioned deployment of a time machine. As a joke, I prepared a form letter, a portion of which read, "We do indeed have your laptop." Obviously, that wouldn't have been a good reply. I still hope Choudry would enjoy this comic, though I suspect he is no longer among us.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Lady Pugaga
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
35 short 'essays' on comics
The Blog Flume has been on the web for 30 months. In that time, I've posted around 35 short illustrated 'essays' (a few of these were initially written for other publications). I tend not to write reviews (though I have done a few); often, I find some aspect of a comic that seems interesting to me and try to develop my ideas about it in a way that will (hopefully) make these observations interesting to others. The methods I use and the issues I explore vary, but I would call an approach I often use 'visual close reading': I focus on details -- and often on formal aspects -- that lead me to ideas about the artist's aesthetic practices and perhaps to observations about cartooning as a whole.
Rather than produce something new, here they are, identified by key terms and somewhat organized, but in no particular overall order:
Casper, Harvey Comics, single page, close reading, form, the great page.
Richie Rich, Harvey Comics, design, money, sex, gender, power, close reading.
Tim Hensley, Wally Gropius, form, color, space, Walter Gropius, children’s comics.
Daniel Clowes, Wilson, multiple styles, narration.
Daniel Clowes, Ice Haven, genre, stillness.
Daniel Clowes, Ghost World, dialogue (last line), close reading.
Daniel Clowes, Mister Wonderful, word balloons, narration, psychology.
Steve Ditko, word-text relationship, design, reader expectations.
Steve Ditko, representation, abstraction, beauty.
Steve Ditko, movement, close reading.
Jack Sparling, Tiger Girl 1, superhero parody, stupid but good.
Sammy Harkham, Crickets 2, genre, humor, review.
Chris Ware, Acme Novelty 19, design, form, shape and color leitmotif.
Lisa Hanawalt, I Want You 1, form, types of comics, narrative.
Alex Nino, multiple styles within a story, DC Comics.
Jack Kirby, aging, psychology, horror, DC Comics, reader expectations.
Dave Sim, Glamourpuss, punctuation, editing.
Marvel Comics, Girl Comics 1, gender, editing.
Roy Liechtenstein, lettering, design, comics.
Tomine, mini-comic, style.
Pete Morisi, design, Charlton horror comics, stillness, appreciation.
Pete Morisi, static, stillness, design, Charlton western comics.
Charles Schulz, Peanuts, punctuation, prose, poetry.
Charles Schulz, Peanuts, time, narrative, background, conversations.
Teaching comics and describing style.
Four Great Stories of 2007, Clowes, Ware, Tomine, Gilbert Hernandez, close reading, general commentary.
Kelley Jones, Doug Moench, Batman Unseen, “quality entertainment.” Ivan Brunetti, John Buscema, Avengers, design, unintentional connections between panels.
Ivan Brunetti, New Yorker cover, design, sentimentality, Central Park, close reading.
David Chelsea, point-of-view, subjectivity, autobiography.
Ted May, Injury Comics, art comics, adventure/action.
Jason, Sshhhh!, Ugo Rondinone, high art, appropriation, swipes.
John Stanley, Thirteen Going on Eighteen, shading, craft. Critics, artists, validation, cartoon elite.
Criticism, analysis, reviews, close reading, judgment, negative criticism.
On "The Comics Revival.
On original art and collecting.
Also:
Abner Dean.[Faces by Sal Buscema and Frank Giacoia, from Nova 12 (1977)]
