Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Austen Reader / Pride and Prejudice #1
Who is the audience for this . . . ?
The cover, modelled on fashion magazines like Cosmo, makes it female-friendly, with the promise of romance, bling, and summer dresses. And Nancy Butler, the scripter of this Austen adaptation, says it's specifically marketed to female readers. Yet inside the covers, the women are drawn and colored in a way that calls into question the female-friendliness. Rather than emulate the look of Austen's characters as found in popular BBC and film adaptations, the (male) artist and colorist create women who resemble porn 'actors,'
with spray-on tans, drowsy bedroom eyes, full lips covered in lip gloss, frosted hair, and 2000's style haircuts (with Mary's retro shag). Note at the center of the panel Lydia's open mouth, the position of her hands directly below, and the way her eyes (and no one else's) look directly at the reader. This oral sex fantasy makes the real audience clear: heterosexual men.
These visual traits are the hallmark of women and super-heroines produced for male readers by mainstream comics companies. And if it is intended for women, the ads are an equally odd choice. Here's a two-page spread that moves from Austen's Regency England to The Marvel Universe in one blood-splattered gesture:
The best panel to panel transition in the comic.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Ditko and "Word v. Picture"
In The World of Steve Ditko, Blake Bell recounts a story about the editing of Ditko’s Static, which appeared in the first three issues of Eclipse Monthly in 1983. Dean Mullaney altered Ditko’s script for the episode in #2 because he felt it was “too wordy, and visually unappealing.” (Bell agrees with Mullaney’s assessment, noting that Ditko’s debt to Ayn Rand “continued to have an impact on the quality of the storytelling” (145).) Ditko rejected the changes, and the story ran as he intended.
Mullany’s criticism reflects a common belief about comics storytelling: comics is primary a visual medium and so the text must always be dramatically subordinated (at least in terms of the amount of space it fills per panel) to the image. But I think the intensity of Ditko’s sequence visually depends upon the fact that, moving through the first three panels, the words take up an increasing amount of space as the image area decreases (with the fourth panel echoing the first):
The third panel brings the focus solely on the image of Mac’s calm, yet intense eyes, surrounded by his philosophical argument:
To lessen the text would be to lose the visual effect – the art would read differently, featuring more of the character and diminishing the focus on the eyes (a Ditko hallmark). The words function both as a visual frame and as dialogue; the image becomes an extreme close-up because of the text, not because of the “camera-to-subject” distance, a uniquely comics effect.
Here is the passage in context. Ditko frames the part of the conversation that takes place on this page with parallel long shots with full figures (panels 1 [figures are stationary] and 7 [figures in motion]):
It’s true that pages four and five of this story are relatively ‘text heavy,’ but the pages before and after return to a much more conventional word/text ratio. This fact gives the story a kind of rhythm clearly intended by Ditko, one in which conversation-heavy pages are followed by action sequences:
If we look at Ditko's independent comics in the period, we find a real diversity of text/image ratios. In many ways, page 5 from EM #2 is an exception, that like Ditko's text-minimalist pages (e.g. 1985's "The Expert"), demonstrates the considerable attention he paid to the issue.
It seems that Mullaney was not thinking of Ditko as a cartoonist and designer, but as a writer whose characters spoke too much for the tastes of 1980s comic fans, who Mullaney likely believed (and was certainly right), wanted more action than dialogue. Readers often come to Ditko with narrow expectations about how the comics page should look and strict rules about the visual balance between word and picture. They often wish that Ditko remained “faithful” to the corporate storytelling principles that governed his mainstream work, especially his 1960s Marvel comics. Although I enjoy this work, his independent comics (and his Charlton work with Joe Gill) reveal an artist constantly expanding comics’ visual and verbal aesthetics. And you can look at the word-picture ratio on pages by artists such as Kevin H. and Ivan Brunetti and trace a formal lineage back to Ditko:
From Brunetti's Schizo #2.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Charles Burns: Soto Pelle
So there's a massive exhibition of Charles Burns' work, Soto Pelle, in Italy right now hosted by the BilBOlbul international comics festival. "The exposition will show more than 100 works, among comic tables from Black Hole, sketches and illustrations realized for magazines and books during the last thirty years."
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The Old 'Hit on the Head' Routine
Four comics I read this week featured the same classic gag . . .
Sam's Strip (11/3/1961): Walker and Dumas. Reprinted in an excellent collection of Walker and Dumas's 'metacomic' Sam's Strip just released by Fantagraphics.
Yogi Bear #29 (7/1967): Artist unknown.
The Yellow Streak and Friends Annual #1 (1968): Artist Boring. Reprinted in David Boring (2000): Artist Clowes.
Nubbin (5/5/1986). Artists Boltinoff and Burnett. Reprinted in Robin Synder's Revolver Annual #1 (11/1986). Please note the umbrella in the last two comics. Was there really a chance of rain the day shown in Nubbin? I don't see any clouds in the sky. I think the "WOP!" was premeditated. Where would children's comics be without the "injury to the brain" motif?Toth Cover
I had never seen this attractive Alex Toth cover before; much more of an 'underground' feel than the other work by him I'm familiar with. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Friday, March 13, 2009
Marc Trujillo: Drive Through
New Marc Trujillo gallery show Drive Through, MARCH 12 - MAY 01, 2009 at the Hackett-Freedman Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The Seven Faces of Alex Niño
See a 'new and improved' version here: http://www.tcj.com/category/columns/grid/
Friday, February 27, 2009
Brunetti's Covers
A beautiful Ivan Brunetti cover titled "Ecosystems" appears on the current issue of The New Yorker (3/2/09). This one's loaded with details, so you really need to see it up close.
His art also graces the cover of the current volume of Ecotone:
[I think this illustration first appeared in an issue of Brunetti's comic Schizo. . .]
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Smart Robots
Two of the comics I got last week [ Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom #9 and Tom Gauld's The Wise Robot Will Answer Your Question Now] feature computer-robots that look a little alike. Here's some of the attractive title lettering of the Solar story:
A day late and a . . .
"Strange Romantic Customs." From another recent purchase, Hi-School Romance Date Book #2, January 1963.
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