In a reply to Ng Suat Tong in an ongoing discussion of Crumb’s Genesis, I commented on a panel that I think is particularly successful in ways that get at why Crumb’s adaptation as a whole is compelling -- the pastoral tableaux that opens chapter 2:
I wrote: "Alongside of Adam, Eve, and a few birds and rabbits, God rests against a tree after creation, hands on his knees, eyes closed. I can’t quite explain why, but the decision to show God resting this way is a moving and unexpected choice; God seems strangely human and naturalized, just after his world-creating supernatural powers have been demonstrated. There is a little idealizing at work in this pastoralism of this panel, but it is of a very earth-bound, domestic kind."
Many paintings of Eden in the tradition that Suat refers to focus on Adam and Eve, and those that include God never show him (as far as a I know--which isn’t that far) resting as human characters often do in religious and secular pastoral images.
[Shepherd and Shepherdess: Abraham Bloemaert, 1627]
In the Edenic scene, God is usually positioned above the earth-bound Adam and Eve, floating on a cloud (a cliché Crumb avoids) as he condemns his creations:
[The Expulsion from Paradise: Charles Joseph Natoire, 1740]
In Crumb's very different imagining of the exile, God, feet firmly planted on the ground, stands behind Adam and Eve, without any regal or magical apparatus (clouds, crowns, angels, heavenly effects) to separate him from them:
I like the fact that this resembles a father kicking his misbehaving kids out of the yard.
Even when a heavenly figure is depicted standing (as in Aureliano Milani’s Expulsion of Adam and Eve below), obvious visual cues (halo and color choice) signal that it is outside of the physical reality Adam and Eve inhabit:
As seen above, many representations show Adam and Eve with the fig leaf or positioned to hide their genitals, which Crumb repeatedly exposes, as part of his “literalism” and commitment to the physicality and “presence,” both of God and humans.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Crumb's Genesis, The Pastoral, and Presence
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Buenaventura Press Gone Out of Business Sale - San Diego Comic Con 2010
Since I already have the booth that I reserved from last year I'll be in San Diego this week at booth #1734 (near Fantagraphics and D&Q, directly across the aisle from Giant Robot.) Here's what I'll have for sale: Lisa Hanawalt and Johnny Ryan will both be with us. Come by to get your books signed and to check out their new prints and original drawings!
28 Recent Clowes Interviews and Features
UPDATED 7.20
In some of the excerpts I have reprinted here, Clowes talks about a few issues that may be of interest to those who have read or written about his recently released graphic novel Wilson.
NPR 7.20.10
San Fransisco Bay Guardian 6.16.10
SFBG You've always had a really strong interest in perversity and human weirdness, and that’s not so central in Wilson. Was that a conscious move away or a permanent move away, or just a change in interests?
DC I think that’s true, you know. I always had a real interest in outsider culture. When I first began doing comics, that kind of thing was so inaccessible. I had a little group of friends who would send me all these weird things. You’d find out about little groups of people who were all linked together by some really odd interest, but they were so segregated. They’d maybe have some little newsletter that they all communicated through, but it felt like the world was filled with these little secret societies. And ever since the Internet has taken hold, it doesn’t feel like that anymore. It feels like the minute anybody hears about any weird little perversion or interest or anything like that, that everybody finds out about it and they know all about it, so it’s sort of lost its interest.
The Guardian (UK)6.13.10
Chicago Tribune 6.8.10
"I wanted the (title) character to feel about things much the way I feel about things," he said. "He's just hopelessly inept at getting it across, the kind of person who doesn't want to be dishonest in any way. He wants people to like him in his worst possible state, and he's gotten so used to that, so used to expecting the world to tag along, he has no sense of what an off-putting creep he's become.
"The thing is, I look for commonality no matter how objectionable a character. Still, it's not reality. Compared with reality, I barely scratch the surface."
Vice 6.1.10
[Wilson] reminded me of myself quite a bit, which wasn’t too hilarious.
Ha. Yeah. I find though that the people who are actually like Wilson are the ones that really do not like the book. I’ve had a few people who say that he’s unbearable. They’re often the people who are sort of insensitive to others and have a lack of awareness of how they come across to people. It’s interesting, it’s like they’re seeing themselves and it’s really painful. People who tend to not be so much like him, at least in his anti-social behavior–they have more sympathy for him.
East Bay Express 6.2.10
"I'm a little surprised at how often the term 'misanthrope' comes up" in discussions of the book, said Clowes, who will be at Diesel (5433 College Ave., Oakland) on Thursday, June 3. "While Wilson holds his fellow man and woman to an impossibly high standard, he seems to have a constant, unfulfilled faith that each person he meets will live up to those ideals." Badmouthing passersby for not admiring his dog, imagining his dying father calling him a miserable slob, "he's like the opposite of a misanthrope in a way: someone with an inherent faith that each human interaction will lead to a satisfying connection despite an overwhelming history of failure and isolation," Clowes said.
LA Times 5.30.10
But in some ways, Wilson shares Clowes' DNA. "I think we have a similar worldview," the author allows. "And his sense of humor — finding humor in the razor's edge between tragedy and comedy — there's a lot of resonance between me and him."
Oakland Tribune 5.25.10
"Wilson has a noble struggle," Clowes says. "He is trying to get something bigger out of his life. He's expecting other people to live up to his vision of how things should be, and they don't."
San Fransisco Chronicle 5.18.10
"Certainly a lot of what he says is me if I had an unfiltered id, if I was able to speak without any self-censorship. Because I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people," Clowes explains. "As my wife says, I'm Wilson's victim. I look like a good listener, I think, so people are always sitting down at my table, sort of unbidden, and telling me about their years of alcoholism."
National Post 5.14.10
“I kind of realized that it was never going to coalesce into one [style]. I had to use them all, for it to work. That just became clear. [Wilson] had to shift as much as these styles,” he explains. “That’s actually something you can do in comics that you can’t do in any other medium. I don’t think you could make a movie where each scene is in a different style of filmmaking without it seeming really hard to watch. It’s too jarring. But somehow ... people are used to seeing a bunch of different styles on the funny pages.”
Torontoist 5.14.10 [part two]
Torontoist 5.12.10 [part one]
Clowes: Well, I wouldn’t say approaches necessarily. The one example I can think of, in terms of techniques, is making comics that are easier to change around. Certainly when you’re making a film you really have to make every second count because it’s very expensive. Before you make the film you really have to cut away absolutely everything that’s not essential. And the first time I had to do that, I found it at times really painful to lose things that I thought were great. And then later on I realized how useful it was for me to be forced to do that. In comics I was never forced to do that, I could just go on as long as I wanted, nobody was editing me, paper is cheap. And on this book, Wilson, I really took it to heart to chop away everything that was not essential. Not to keep anything I thought was just exposition or just for the sake of being part of a storyline.
Portland Mercury 5.14.10
Well do you want the reader to empathize with Wilson at all?
I've found the people who seem to get the most out of the book are the ones who have to begrudgingly admit that they like him or that they kinda agree with him. And then there are readers who are just utterly resistant to him. Where he's just alienating and not someone they want to throw their lot in with. Right off the bat they're not willing to make that leap. I mean they might find it funny but I don't think they're getting as much out of it as those who are generous enough to find some humanity in the poor fellow.
Do you empathize with him?
I find I do more and more. As I was working on the book I found him endlessly entertaining. He was just such a good character to work with. It was never not fun to see what he would do. It was always sort of a surprise. You could just throw anything at him and he kind of has his own thing, it's not something I'm in control of necessarily, he sort of steers where the jokes would go, and so it was endlessly fun to work with him. I didn't really look at him as good or bad. And after the book was done I could see that there are a few points in this story that are really going to challenge a reader to empathize with this guy. But I find myself defending him more and more. I think he's actually right about a lot of things but perhaps he doesn't say them in a manner that is easily acceptable to the whoever he's talking to. But it doesn't make what he's saying or thinking wrong.
LA Weekly 5.13.10
When you were writing Wilson, did you have a specific range of years that you were working with?
I did have it sort of figured out. I wanted it to be as timeless as possible. I have him using a pay phone in one of the strips. It's really supposed to be 2008 or so, there weren't a lot of pay phones, but it's still plausible. He's certainly the guy who would walk eighty blocks to find a pay phone because he doesn't have a cell phone. It kind of fit his character. It's generally in the 21st century. The ending strips I think are maybe in the future, they're maybe 2014, but it's in the first fifteen, twenty years of the 21st century.
Amazon 30 minute podcast
Mother Jones 5.13.10
MJ: So what are the outsider nerds into now?
DC: I don't think there are any outsiders anymore. It's good for the outsiders; I don't know if it's good for our culture. I think it was good to have this mass culture that we all reacted to in some way. I was thinking the other day that there will never be another form of music that everybody has to respond to—like disco.
Willamette Week 5.12.10
Do you ever get bored with making comics, or is it more fun now than when you were younger?
I have to say, it gets much, much more fun. When I was younger, it was such a struggle to get what I was trying to achieve, I would work and work and work to just get one page right, but then you’ve got to do the next page. I had to do that with Velvet Glove, I had to keep that style going for 150 pages, and that got really tiresome. And I was constantly just going, “That looks horrible!” and feeling terrible about it. In the last 10 years, I like the way the drawing looks, and it feels sort of effortless.
CBC Q podcast 5.6.10
The Star (Toronto) 5.6.10
About Wilson, as a character, it would be kind of hard for readers not to make a connection between you and Wilson himself.
(He takes deep breath) Apparently not. . . (he laughs). He’s certainly written from within, but he’s not at all like me in most ways. I’m not the kind of person who can come up to a person and sit at a table and start talking. Wilson is completely uncensored. He has no self-regulating mechanism. He is like a walking id who does not filter himself to make himself more palatable.
I’m very much the opposite. I’m overly polite and quiet and shy, and sort of more the victim of the Wilsons of the world, often. On the other hand, I kind of admire that. I wish I had a little bit of the Wilson in me. I like that he doesn’t change anything to make himself more lovable. He wants to be loved, but he’s not going to do it on anything but its own merits. The funny thing is I’ve found that the people who seem to respond really negatively to Wilson are the ones who are the closest to him.
The Eye 5.5.10
“I’m like a target for the Wilsons of the world,” says Clowes. “My wife said that he’s my nemesis, because every day I’ll try to get out of the house and I’m always complaining about the guy who sat next to me and started blathering on about god knows what. But in a really profound way, I also really admire that kind of guy. I often feel the same need to [do what Wilson does], and yet I’m this reserved Midwesterner who’s not going to sit down at somebody’s table in an internet café. I can’t even imagine doing that. But I kind of wish I could.”
Gothamist 5.5.10
Why did you decide to draw in different illustrative styles for the different pages?
Well, when I actually sat down to draw this thing, I thought I better come up with a style for this. And I'd drawn different books in different styles, and I thought I'd come upon the perfect style that encompassed all of what needed to be said about this guy, and I just couldn't decide on one. I kept veering really drastically from the most cartoon-simple style, to the most detailed, over-rendered, drawing-every-eyelash kind of style. Ultimately I decided the only way it would work is if I had all of these, and if each strip had its own reality and its own personality that was related to the others, but kind of different in the way it sort of modulates the humor, and deals with the emotions of the story. In some cases I wanted it to just read as a joke, and others I wanted it to seem like a joke but actually it's the furthest thing possible from a joke.
Yeah, I liked how parts of it are very funny, and parts of it are very sad and intense.
It's a difficult line to walk. It's interesting, It involved a lot of changing things around and a lot of editing to it to flow correctly. I wanted it to set up a pattern at first, wherein the you think it's just going to be goofy, unrelated jokes—and sort of halfway through you'd realize there was a reason behind the sequence all along.
Weekly Dig 5.4.10
Express Night Out 5.3.10
» EXPRESS: "Wilson" strikes me as a story that's intrinsic to its form. How important is that to you?
» CLOWES: It's certainly more interesting to do that, because I always feel that if you can explain what you're doing or if you could just as easily write it as a screenplay or a short story, you're probably better off doing that — it's much easier than drawing a comic and much less time consuming. There's got to be a reason you're hunched over a drawing board eight hours a day. But I felt Wilson could only work as a comic character. It'd be very hard to imagine an actor playing him. It's possible that it could work as a weekly sitcom, but something where you're with him for a long time, like a movie, I think it would be unbearable to some degree. In a comic you can go at your own pace, and you can stop if you're feeling [laughs] oppressed.
Washington City Paper 5.3.10
WCP: Wilson’s a fairly unlikable individual—apparently incapable of having a conversation that’s not about him. He actually seems like a sociopath to me (and I see that the book’s back cover describes him that way, too) without any redeeming graces. Why did you create such a consciously unappealing character?
DC: Likable characters are for weak-minded narcissists. I much prefer the Rupert Pupkins and Larry Davids and Scotty Fergusons as my leading men. And I actually kind of like Wilson. He’d be fun to hang out with in short and finite increments.
New York Magazine 5.2.10
{Check this one out for Clowes's comments on his influences in Wilson}
DCist 4.30.10
Time Out New York 4.29.10
What do you think about the fact that you’re always being accused of having misanthropic characters, especially, say, in Ghost World?
I would hope that if you really read the work carefully, that wouldn’t be all you took away from it. Because certainly that’s not my intention. And I often don’t see the parts that people find especially grim and depressing. I usually find whatever I’m doing to be funny. And often I’m surprised when people say, “I was so depressed for two weeks after reading that comic.” Not me. When I work, my wife hears me upstairs laughing at my own stupid jokes. [Laughs
The Phoenix 4.27.10
Also: The Believer May 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Crumb's Genesis and Comparisons, Briefly
The fundamental achievement of Crumb’s Genesis for me is that it avoids something that’s central to so many illustrated versions of the bible or representations of biblical scenes: Crumb rarely idealizes his subject matter. He is not creating an inspirational text, a magical text, or a sympathetic mythology -- nor is he mocking the bible. The wonder of Crumb’s Genesis is not the unknowable wonder of God’s ways but of people’s actions as the bible recounts them. If there is reverence in Crumb’s work, it’s for the flesh, for the materiality, both ugly and beautiful (though more often ugly), of biblical characters and the things they do. Crumb’s Genesis, then, despite its use of visual source material from biblical film epics and other religious ‘propaganda’ (even comic books) is in a different genre than these previous adaptations. In an interesting and substantial post, Ng Suat Tong compares Crumb to another tradition of biblical art by invoking Michelangelo, Blake, and others, arguing that, if we look at images from these artists side-by-side, we’ll agree that Crumb gets the worst of it.
Blake and Crumb can make for a valid comparison, but it helps to keep alert to many key differences. For instance, Blake is a mythologizer who uses biblical and non-christian mystical works to create his own counter-metaphysics; he was not an illustrator of the bible in the way that Crumb is here. Crumb is, as he says, treating Genesis as a “straight illustration job.” Very differently from Blake (who created a vast religious system, complete with numerous characters and a poetically realized anti-dogma), Crumb acts as a “straight man” to the bible. He’s not putting in "any jokes," he tells us, for that’s not the straight man’s job (for biblical “jokes,” see Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”); rather he is bringing out and interpreting the carnality, power, beauty, and worldly absurdities that he sees as already present: the bible delivers it own dark comedy and tragedy. I feel a greater sympathy with Crumb’s strategy than I do with, say, Michelangelo’s. In its refusal to idealize, Crumb’s seems more ‘real’ to me. The thickness and gritty texture of Crumb’s line and character designs (thick legs, thick lips, thick fingers) tell a truth about the Book of Genesis obscured by more reverential approaches. (It's almost as if the medium of cartooning is better than painting for this text . . .)
And Crumb's God often looks a lot like Blake's -- it all depends which image you select. Suat uses perhaps the most famous: Blake's The Ancient of Days. But I have selected a detail from his God Judging Adam:
Followed by Crumb's:
They look very similar to me: Intense, stern, white-robed patriarchal males with long flowing white hair and beards, sporting furrowed brows of disapproval as they point and chastise their creations. Equally powerful images by two great cartoonists.
Also, Michelangelo and Blake are not illustrating the same thing in the images Suat uses; I think the figure in Blake's Ancient of Days is his god-like character Urizen, who, in Blake's mythos, represents values often opposed to that of the Christian god; in fact, Urizen embodies some 'satanic' attributes, at least as Blake sees them. These artists have different beliefs and each one’s version of god is really an image of a very different character, though they are close enough visually to make a valid comparison.
On a thread at ComicsComics Noah Berlatsky asks Tim Hodler: “Do you feel that Crumb’s Genesis can in fact stand next to Blake?” I would answer yes, but you have to be clear about the grounds of the comparison. And as the above images show, Blake and Crumb -- at times -- have a similar coarseness to their work that connects them and their methods as it distances them from Michelangelo. But as a mythologist, Blake’s work, like Michelangelo’s, is often more idealized and lyrical than Crumb’s. Perhaps coarsely put, Blake is metaphysical and Crumb is physical; but even this doesn't prevent them from participating in a related tradition of religious iconography.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Judicial Fumetti and Narrative
The front page of the print edition of today’s New York Times features a fumetti about the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings. The photo comic emphasizes design over chronology, yet it maintains a clear sense of the “story” being told. In other words, while the sequencing of the images has narrative implications, the comic does not follow a time-based ordering: the symmetrical design gives me reason to think that the photos are not shown in the order in which they were taken. It's not really a narrative comic, in the traditional sense -- but it's not non-narrative either . . .
Kagan, as the subject of the hearing, is at the center of the grid, surrounded on every side by a male senator. All of the senators in column one look to the right, as those in column three look to the left; so all face the center column, the one occupied by Kagan (only her face looks toward the reader/viewer). And for balance, the senators above and below her face the opposite direction from each other.
\
I would call this a semi-narrative comic because there is a kind of ‘story,’ but one without a plot. The image sequence is a-chronological and there’s no way to tell (from the comic) what the real sequence might have been. Narrative comics typically feature characters who reoccur within the story, but here no one appears more than once (yet Kagan is the implied subject of every panel). Despite this, there’s a continuity of place and time that holds the ‘story’ together.
One of the metaphorical 'narratives' here is about hands as dramatic and emotional signifiers (only one senator's hands are not visible), perhaps another is about gender and power -- Kagan is the smallest main character, and if we know she will get confirmed, then the hearings are really about the performaces of the senators, the larger characters. Appropriately, the comic’s 'punch line' -- the last panel -- is a photo of Senator Al Franken, a former comedian (and we see both hands of a senator only in this last panel).
We are always told that western comics read from left to right, but this kind of ‘news fumetti’ (like some advertising comics) really doesn’t. Of course, you could read it this way, and it would work. I'd guess, however, that most readers would randomly scan across/around the images to get the 'story.' Reading order doesn’t matter and closure between panels seems absent. The 'story is told by the structure of the page -- Kagan surrounded, literally "boxed" in from all sides. The gaps between the frames, then, are non-narrative spaces.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Reading and Why
In a recent post at The Hooded Utilitarian, Ng Suat Tong uses numerous ideas from Walter Benjamin as ways into an insightful discussion of comics criticism. Along with text from Benjamin, the thread features quotations and comments from a number of HU contributors, and me. Most of the writers, myself included, paint a fairly positive picture of their motivations in writing about comics. But such uplifting beliefs seem like only a part of the picture. No doubt, we are often motivated by things like a genuine desire to “express ourselves”, “learn about something by writing about it,” “entertain”, “raise the public discourse,” or “elevate standards.” All worthy goals . . . But
there are many other possible motivations, ones that we -- or speaking for myself, I -- would usually prefer not to think about. What follows below is a post I wrote a few months back (I had posted it once and then deleted it, thinking it too negative . . .).
_______________________________________________
When I'm tempted to write a screed against an artist, comic, or graphic novel, one I'll be clever enough (or self-deluded enough) to present as an “objective critique” (though clues to my real motive for writing will inevitably rupture this academic veneer), I try to remember to ask myself: “Why is it that I take this as a personal offense against me?” It’s one thing if the art endorses truly hateful or harmful ideas -- but otherwise, why am I so worked up? Why don’t I say, “This sucks” and move on? Or write a critique that deals with the art in a reasonable way?
But I sometimes think something like the following, which I'll put into words more honest than those I typically allow myself: “I need to set straight those readers and critics who just fail to get it, who foolishly admire X. If they were honest and read X carefully, they would feel just as I do. Must . . . correct . . . wrong . . . ideas. (My hard-drive has a few nasty critiques un-posted, like the first drafts of letters a therapist might suggest you write to your parents but not send . . .)
Sure, plenty of comics and cartoonists stink, and do so aggressively. But that’s life, right? I can enjoy a well-written critique of anything, but when it’s wildly out of proportion to the “offense,” the critic should do the hard work, not of analyzing the comic, but of analyzing his/her motivation: “Why does this make me so pissed off/angry/hurt/unappreciated? What sacred ideas of mine does it threaten? Am I even aware of these feelings or their origin? Do I evade dealing with them by characterizing my motivation in the unassailable terms of “high standards?” All of this, I can attest, is a lot less fun than going off on some cartoonist or comic book, or even another critic.
Perhaps at some level we all write because we want some kind of validation; it’s not simply a need to express ourselves or to direct fellow consumers toward or away from a given “product.” “My attack proves to others and myself that I am one who calls it like I see it -- Like It Is.” (Or: "My praise proves what a nice guy I am.")
(The Hyper-Aggressive Misreading always mistakes the subjective reaction for the objective fact.) And the best way to build yourself up is by tearing someone down, right?The hyper-aggressive misreading likely stems, not from the critic’s interaction with the text, but from his/her ideas about something more amorphous, some kind of internal conflict triggered by, and then projected onto, the text (which therefore becomes invisible to the critic, obscured by self-deception). So the ostensible “reading” reveals only truths about the unsettled reader, truths that remain to be critiqued.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Hawthorne
The Spring 2010 issue (36.1) of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review was just released. It features ten essays on Hawthorne's writing for children, one of which is by me:
Friday, June 18, 2010
Weathercraft
" 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 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.
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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:
