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convention withdrawal

2010-09-11T15:03:00.006-04:00

I'm going through SPX withdrawal symptoms today. The anxious feeling that I'm missing out on something important, the feeling that "something's happening and I don't know what it is", missing out on an important fall ritual, the annual gathering of the east-coast alt-comics family that SPX is. I didn't have the $300-$400 table fee when it was due this year, so I'm sitting this one out. It's driving me crazy.
But the skies are blue and it's a beautiful country day in upstate New York and when I really begin to think it over, I'm probably better off where I am rather than at the Bethesda Marriot at $150. a night.

The truth of it is--SPX--and every con I've ever done(solo) for that matter, has never made any economic sense. At the best of times, I've (just) covered my (1/2) table fee--but I've never made enough to cover hotel expenses, plus meals, plus display costs, plus, etc. Never even come close. Never.
and I've been doing it on and off since 1997. I've had 1/2 tables, full tables, no displays, big displays, sold $3.00 books for $1.00, $10.00 books for $5.00, buy one get one free, buy one get two free, given books away, stood in the aisles and flagged people down, stood behind my table and said nothing, engaged customers in happy patter, sat quietly and drawn; you name it, in the name of salesmanship I've done it. None of my strategical variations seem to impact the economic bottom line. Every year I tell myself it'll be different....
"This year I'd better bring a full box--100 books."
I've never sold more than 20 of a single title over two or three days. Never. Usually it's much less. But I still bring the full boxes. Just in case. You never know.

So I don't make money. So what? There's always the possibility of exposure, right? We all want to sell some books, get noticed, have the opportunity to create a career(of a kind) in this medium we love so much.
Certainly one of the reasons we all cite for exhibiting at SPX or one of the other alt-cons is the opportunity for exposure-to fans, to pros, to other creators. But the reality of it is, very few of the more than several hundred exhibitors will be noticed, whether by press or publishers. The same few creators make the post con reports-- every now and again there's a new face, but for the most part the hierarchy is an established one. (compare one and two)
And the big gun publishers are way too busy trying to sell their own books to notice the hapless masses surrounding them. I'll admit it, I've gone to cons over and over again hoping to "be noticed". Never happened. Again --no matter how much noise I make behind my table--or how good I think my new book is--never happened. Once in awhile maybe you connect with someone "important" in the industry, (by connect I mean have a conversation)but over the course of my experiences I can't really claim that I was ever noticed by industry professionals to any significant degree.

Disappointed on those two fronts, finally, SPX and other similar cons do offer the sense of community. The sense that you belong to this great big family we call independent or alternative comics--and the idea that we've come together to celebrate our medium and our collective endeavors. And that, ultimately, is the real benefit from shows like SPX. The sense that you, the creator, working isolated and alone throughout the year and bereft of human connection (except for The Comics Reporter or Journalista or Robot6)--can feel part of something larger than yourself. I have certainly made some nice acquaintances over the years and had some very nice conversations. At the same time, (and I know I'm not the only one who experiences this), I always have the feeling that I'm crashing the cool kids' party.* And many of the other creators I've spoken with over the years have expressed the same observation--cliques aren't just a high school thing. On Sunday when it's all over, as I'm wheeling my suitcase and a stack of unsold books back to the car, I invariably feel more distant from the community I love so much than I do when I'm at the computer screen reading the blogs days later.
Ok. OK. But what about the medium? What about finding new books at the shows? New stuff that knocks your socks off? Yes--that has happened to me a couple of times over the years. I have stumbled across a book or two that I would never have heard of and I fell in love with.(look out J.T. Dockery!)
But truthfully, most of the time I come home with a bag of books that I flip through once and then put in the closet to look over "...some time in the future, when I have more time".
Hey, my stuff has ended up in someone else's bag in the closet too.
Because I'm trying to sell stuff, I rarely have time to go shopping or really pay attention to shopping. I might make my way over to the Fanta table, or D&Q--like everyone else at these shows--they have the new stuff I really want to see( or rather-- I've already heard of and am prepped to go seek out)--and on my limited budget I might be able to buy one book, "so what will it be"?
In the end, while Fanta & D&Q, et.al. are really big draws at these shows and must be responsible for at least half(maybe more) of the attendance, they are also "really big draws" at these shows and whatever expendable cash the attendees might have goes to those tables first. For those of us trying to sell our own stuff, their presence is a double-edged sword. And as a customer, I'm just as guilty as everyone else.
There's a lot of work that goes into preparing for a con. A lot of excitement, hope and expectation. But after reviewing the facts, I really know I'm better off looking out at this clear blue sky today.
But still---part of me(a big part) really wants to be in Bethesda. Perverse, isn't it?

give us those nice bright colors

2010-06-07T22:18:00.040-04:00

What's all this hullabaloo about comics and photo-referencing? Copying photos, tracing photos, deriving inspiration from photos is as American as apple pie. Any look around the larger art world, from galleries to museums to the local library flower show will tell you that photography is central to contemporary art practices and has been since at least Manet. Not only as a source of imagery--which it obviously is---but as Walter Benjamin, John Berger and Susan Sontag(among many others) have observed--as a "way of seeing", a point of reference by which we frame our experience of the world. Photography(in all of its manifestations)is our map of the world. None of us sees the world in a way not impacted by photography.

So much for the obvious. The subject of comics and photography is not one usually given much thought--and when it is, it's usually in polemics pro and con or in discussions of the ubiquitous Alex Ross. (we'll get to him in a minute).
Complaints around photo-referencing in comics usually center around an artist's fidelity to the source material, and the sacrifice of expressive qualities in favor of "photo-like"ness. I say "photo-like"ness rather than photo-realism because realism (in the way the term is usually used) in such works is secondary to the replication of "photo-ness". To artists, and one would assume, editors and writers utilizing or requesting these techniques, drawing( painting/ digital effects) is in the service of said photo-likeness; not so much in a quest for verisimilitude( i.e.-to resemble the empirical world)--but resemblance to the photograph--because "we" view the photograph as something more real than reality.
("It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem real when you viddy them on the screen"; Malcolm McDowell, Stanley Kubrick; "A Clockwork Orange")

Those of us who would judge these photo-based works by the yardstick of traditional cartooning(or drawing)--miss the point. Works of this type--are not playing the game by the same rules and are not concerned with scoring the same points. Despite the obvious illustrative virtuosity displayed by many photo-referenced comics---these have less to do with drawing for drawing's sake than with drawing for photo's sake. Western comics, for example,were inspired by the movies and have always had a strong connection to film and TV. It should come as no surprise then, that some contemporary western comics make the connection to film explicit via imagery(not to mention narrative) that is more cinema-like than cartoon-like.
That "photo-likeness" proliferates today primarily in corporate super-hero comics indicates that said corporate interests may lie with the cinematic manifestations of their properties more so than with comics or cartooning. But the intricacies of this trend are too complex to be purely capitalistic, with connections towards greater illusionism in all forms of digital media, culminating in the seamless integration of cgi into even the most banal television productions, supplanting both sets and scenery.

The big pooba of of all of these developments(re: comics) is of course, the great Alex Ross. And indeed, despite overexposure, the predictability of his imagery and the stodginess of his storytelling, his achievement was truly some kind of breakthrough, for better or worse as the case may be. His vision was full and complete from the point of introduction, and who among us can say that we haven't at some time taken pleasure in his fully rendered god-like embodiments of the heroes of childhood fantasy?
Yet Ross's achievement lies not just in the realization of some collective comics fan wet dream.
Ross is about a tradition in illustration--not cartooning--and it's a mistake to view him solely within the lens of comics and cartooning rather than that of illustration. What makes Ross interesting is the way he's brought a post WWII, 1950's illustration aesthetic( carried forward from the work of his illustrator mother) that trumpeted American Exceptionalism and brought it to super-hero comics---and then--turned it on its head w/ comics work that tends to be critical of American Empire and unlimited power. There is something exceptional in the subversion of the idealized visions of American advertising-- all the more surprising that such a critique has taken the form of the most idealized of pop culture figures: the super-hero.
There are of course a multitude of other uses of the photograph in comics form, not all are so slavishly devoted to the source material. For some, of course-the photograph is simply reference in the traditional sense, information to be gleaned and adapted for a variety of purposes. For others, the photograph imbues a certain spark of life to the imagery-- like roto-scoping in a Disney or Fleischer cartoon-- not for mimicking photography as a way to fashion something "life-like",( or photo-like) more as a way for imparting some nuance of posture or movement--as magic, really. There's a difference between Madame Tussaud's and say-- Kiki Smith.
And still the potential of photographic imagery--not as source material for illustration, cartooning or caricature--but as imagery itself--has only been lightly touched upon in comics, not fully developed. Strange to say in that regard, Jack Kirby's visionary photo-collages from 40 years ago remain ahead of the game--for now.

images by Alex Ross from Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, c. Marvel; Alexander Ross-terrific painter who makes plastecine sculptures, photographs em and then paints from the photos-Amazing stuff! what's the deal with the name and the photo-referencing? Wot a coincidence! ain't the woild grand? Anyway --then there's some serendipitous fan art I found on the web by putting in Jonah Hex/ClintEastwood--y'knew there had to be sumpthin'; and finally Jack himself from FF #51. by the Man and Jack-the King now and ever.

a place for pood

2010-02-11T10:33:00.003-05:00

and now there is a place for pood.
a place for your pood.
& our pood.

but do not make the mistake--this is a place for pood
but it is not pood.

pood is something else.

pood comes later.

for the current moment in this the space/time continuum--this place for pood is the place to read what others have to say re: pood and all things pood.
the place where you will find out what this pood really is.
hahhah! go there now!!!
have fun!

pood is good.

pood?! what is pood?

2010-02-09T08:30:00.010-05:00

You are wondering what this pood is.
"what is it? this pood?" you ask.

Hah! I will tell you.
but only a little...you must suffer first--SUFFER for your pood!
hah! HAH!
hah!

pood is not poo! pood is not ...foo...d.

pood is ....goo...d!

HAh!

Joe Infurnari.
pood

Jim Rugg.
pood

Hans Rickheit.
pood

Bishakh Som.
pood

ummm...there is more.... tobias tak.
pood

lance hansen.
pood

andres vera martinez.
pood

fintan taite.
pood

chirs capuozzo.poodmark sunshine.pood

adam mcgovern. paolo leandri.

pood.pood.

Connor Willumsen. Henrik Rehr. Sara Edward Corbett.
pood.pood.pood.

oh yes---I almost forgot!

kevin mutch.pood.geoff grogan.pood.

hah! I will let you chew on THAT for some unspecified quantity of time! Hah!

reports of our demise

2010-01-26T18:46:00.005-05:00

Those of you who had been following this blog until recently may be under the impression that both Kevin & I have fallen off the face of the planet. I understand the rational for this conception--our posts have become few and fewer far and farther apart until finally like a Cat of Cheshire they exist no longer. But --were you to suggest-- that we have been idle in our irresponsibility, that we have succumbed to the pleasures of the couch and potato -then I must counter your assertion and say nay! shout No! No- you would be wrong,sir! Sorely Wrong! Hah! Have at you!

Indeed-for The Mutchster (of Famous Mutchsters --or those of you of baby-boom age may remember him portrayed by the genial Fred Gwynne in the eponymous television classic) and myself, the Mutchkin of Oz, have been sequestered in our Tower, cloistered in our attic, imprisoned in our castle, plotting and conniving,conceiving and constructing---day in, day out , month after month since before the harvest--preparing--something----grand---something...so special in its specialness--that it exceeds all previous special-nesses ever previously presented as truly special**. Something...for you...something for comics fans so desperate for something...special...that they scan blogs like these continuously looking for that special something. or some such.
Yes--we have a plan. Together, along with the inimitable Alex of Rader, we have combined our forces---our minions, our millions---
and we have hatched it. "IT" is what has been hatched from us-which one I can't say--but rest assured it has reached hatched-ness---and now soft boils in the roiling boil---waiting to be unleashed upon--the world! The World! HAhAhhah--yes! The WORLD!

Our hatched thing called "it"--or something else---is soon to be presented --to you,loyal reader,long suffering, true-blue comics fan---Our "It"ched--that which we have christened "pood"--pood the beauty-ous, pood the generous, pood the large---is soon to be revealed to you--because you--deserve it. Yes--we have a present of pood for you--because you are special and we like you!
We have worked on our pood and we are so sure that you will love it too that we will tell you very soon what pood is and wot pood does and where pood wuz---and you will be happy. Or the hell with you. I don't care anymore. I luv pood and you will too. Big beautiful, colorful pood is just for you--all of you--pood people--everywhere!

So be on the lookout---Kevin, Alex and I are bringing pood to you very soon--whether you like it or not! (but you will--I promise you you will!)
more to come.........

** special lines unabashedly stolen from the great, supremely cheezy Michael Palin in the "Concert for George".

less than Corben, more than zero

2009-12-01T20:24:00.025-05:00

Man I love Richard Corben, don't you? the First time I saw his stuff was in Heavy Metal in the late seventies--and I was just blown away.
Seeing Corben for the first time was like stumbling into some kind of adolescent comics paradise---all color and naked women-naked purple women! and realism-so volumetric, so tangible, so much space and atmosphere! More real than Neal Adams! NEAL ADAMS!!! (any comics geek growing up in the seventies was irrevocably impacted by Adams, right? He was like the Clapton of comics--& Clapton was God. Well-when he was in Cream, anyway. & the same when Adams was on Batman--or Conan--hmmm..maybe I ought to save this for a post on Adams--yeh, I think I will)
At the time I was sure that one couldn't aspire to any better embodiment of great comics illustration. This was it! Corben was the pinnacle! (& I'm so glad Kevin brought him up--particularly in relation to the discussion of color)

But even then--even when I was in awe of Corben's verisimilitude, I had this impulse for something else---something...less. While I stood in abject subjugation before Corben's neo-pyschedelic interplanetary elseworlds, more often than not I found myself thinking about Alex Toth, about Milton Caniff, Harvey Kurtzman and Walt Simonson. Later on I was thinking about George Herriman, Charles Schulz, Johnny Hart, Garry Trudeau.
Today I admire Alex Ross's technique, but I'm a fan of Jaime Hernandez, of Darwyn Cooke, Seth, of David Mazzuchelli, Jason and Patrick McDonnell.

Corben, like Ross, speaks to desire--a desire to see fantasy fulfilled in three dimensions--the equivalent of the Iron Man movie, the dioramas at Museum of Natural History, a Robert Zemeckis film; the same desire we have for hot fudge sundaes and blueberry pancakes doused with butter, maple syrup and whip cream at IHOP. (!#$!!??*&$ and doesn't everyone seem happy at IHOP ? at least --the last time I was there--oh, but that was years ago.)

Hernandez, Toth-they play upon our understanding that the comics page is first and foremost a work of design, of pacing, of communication. They speak to the intellect. They do so not by bravura demonstrations of illustrative skill(although skill is surely evident)-but via their restraint. By holding back-they force the reader to work the imagination and to acknowledge the page. While representational illusionism is in evidence, it is firmly in the service of design.
In a Corben page-we are seduced by his mastery of illusion--the page falls away, and we enter into a dream state before his exquisitely rendered vistas. This is not to say that we are not also aware of craft in his work--we are. But as with any great magic act, the wonder is in not knowing how the trick is done- and in the face of great illusion we sublimate our need to know to our desire to believe.

There are some who argue for one approach over the other--that one provides a "truer" comics experience than the other*. I could easily fall into that pattern-I do have my prejudices--but my experience as a reader trumps aesthetic dogma. There are times when I want my comics lean, and then there are times when I want the works; butter, syrup, whip cream--oh hell! I'm a big fan of IHOP, of magic--and Richard Corben too.

Black Metal Comics or If It Ain't Baroque, Don't Fix It!

2009-11-12T12:09:00.004-05:00

As Geoff mentioned in his last post, we're moving to a more conversational format, where we'll be responding to each other's posts (and to your comments of course) as a dialogue rather than creating standalone essays. So, in that spirit, here are some loose responses to Geoff's thoughts about the centrality of drawing to comics:

(Quoting Geoff:) "it crosses my mind that our (I mean "our" as in comics-making people) reluctance to fully exploit appropriation, collage or other means of image-making may in part be the result of a deep commitment to drawing, rather than any distaste for alternatives."

Hmmm, yes, although I think that "deep commitment" might be another way of saying "heavily invested". Learning to draw comics is difficult and (super) time consuming, so it's no surprise that once people get good at it they tend to get a bit conservative about the whole undertaking - "I don't need photo reference like these kids today - I memorized the way every single thing in the world looks! From every angle!"

(Quoth Geoff:) "The more corporate comics trend to the de-personalized, mechanized look of digital photo-realism, the more I turn away." I sort of know what you mean about this, Geoff - I say "sort of" because I haven't actually read a "corporate comic" since 1980, except Watchmen (which I finally read a couple of months ago) and the first four Wednesday Comics. But I go to comics shops with my kids and I see a page spread or two (and the covers, of course) and I think "Yeesh, this shit is really baroque! Too much fussy detail everywhere! My eyes are bouncing off the page! Ouch!"

(Above: notice any resemblance? Some superhero thing or other and The Fall of Phaeton by Rubens)

But I honestly don't think it's "digital photo-realism" (or even photo reference per se) at fault here - nor the use of computers to color the comics into dense gaudy confections. I think the problem comes down to how we organize and read comics as stories (and by we, I guess I mean old codgers like Geoff and myself - my 9 year old son gobbles new corporate comics up like, well, "dense gaudy confections").

Comics, like music, and books, and paintings - any other art - make use of various kinds of "dynamic range" - typically via variations within the work between, say, dark areas and light areas, or action and dialogue. One way artists use these differences in the densities of parts of the work is to organize them structurally, to help readers grasp the entirety of the piece and keep them interested.

But sometimes - especially with a form that's specialized itself into a tiny niche for hardcore fans - that larger, structural "dynamic range" becomes unnecessary. The fans are so immersed in the particulars of the form that they don't need them. Instead we get dense, thick virtuoso barrages of technique. Think about the relationship between older "heavy metal" music and its newer sub-genre "black metal". Heavy metal employed structural dynamic range - verse/chorus/break, loud/quiet, even melody - but "black metal" just goes for an unremitting wall of metal noize.

This situation may be the result of historical trends (things always get more complicated, don't try to keep up with your kids you stupid nostalgic old fossils) or it could be cyclical (new technologies lead to enthusiastic abuses, which eventually correct themselves, like what happened with the use of fonts in "desktop publishing" in the 80's/90's) - but either way, it's created an over-ripe type of comics that could reasonably be called "digital mannerism".

Personally, I like structural dynamic range - I still want to be able to pull back and appreciate the overarching organization of a panel, or a page or a story, and "flat" color and simplified, "cartoony" drawings certainly lend themselves to that - but I think it's just as possible to do it with photo-realistic drawing (or photographs!) and digital color. I think it boils down to a certain discretion or restraint on the artist's part, and a willingness to work with the reader - to allow for the possibility they may need a little coaxing to come along on this particular trip, and a little breather here and there.

I've got more I want to say (about color in particular), but I'll hold off until next time and see what Geoff (and everyone else) have to say. In the meantime, here's a couple of examples of my all-time favorite photo-realist cartoonist, using every goddam speck of structural dynamic range. He's the Ozzy Osbourne of comics, ladies and gentlemen: Richard Fucking Corben!!!

(Above: Pages from Den)

Musings and Meanderings, mental doodles

2009-11-07T14:15:00.001-05:00

This post represents a little twist on our usual format--Rather than put up an essay as we usually do, Kevin and I will more or less put out some mental doodles, topics for conversation, initiating a little back and forth between us --and you--we hope. Join where it suits you!

***** Yeh--so my mind hasn't been good for much lately--but I've been thinking about Kevin's recent posts about appropriation. And it crosses my mind that our (I mean "our" as in comics-making people)reluctance to fully exploit appropriation, collage or other means of image-making may in part be the result of a deep commitment to drawing, rather than any distaste for alternatives. And I know that in my case, when I conceive of a project visually, my automatic response is to think in terms of drawing. I'm deeply invested in drawing, as are most of us--I'd go so far as to say that it's central to my self-image. And my love of comics--and art- is in no small part due to the love of drawing-in all its manifestations.

Yet drawing has not been central to contemporary art practices for a long time. Arthur Danto once asked a colleague of mine..."Why do you continue to teach drawing?" And indeed, more than a few art schools are trending away from the traditional emphasis on drawing in the foundation curriculum.

But comics has been a refuge for those of us devoted to pencil and pen. We respond to the simplicity of means, the direct connection to another human being, the warmth and immediacy of the line on a page. The more corporate comics trend to the de-personalized, mechanized look of digital photo-realism, the more I turn away. I feel this way intuitively yet I'm curious about alternative means, intrigued by the potential for a new means of visualizing narrative( or non-narrative, as the case may be). But when I've got an idea, I still pick up the pencil.

* **********************************************************************

In reference to graphic novels/comics collections and trades- someone in publishing circles told me the other day that a current trend among a good many publishers is to shy away from original material in favor of re-packaging older, proven materials. I have no idea whether that's true or not--I have no idea what the economics of that position are, I can guess of course--but I do know that there are so many terrific collections out there that I can't keep up--and I have less free cash to experiment with. I know that Diamond has increased their minimums, killing a good many books before they get out of the gate, and all of that says this environment is more difficult for original material.

So--when publishers do go out on a limb--what kind of new stuff are they printing? Is there a trend, is there a sign of where things are going? Or will we all just cozy up and dig back into "Prince Valiant" , "Melvin the Monster" and "Peanuts" for the next few years?

(well, worse things can happen)

************Of all of the many attractions comics have held for me since childhood, the one I cherish most but speak least of is color. The bold, flat, saturated color on the glossy cover of a comic book. I'm a sucker for it. Less so for the highly rendered, computerized color of many contemporary comics. I'll take flat color every time. (Well-"All Star Superman" is an exception. ) Is it any wonder I love Ellsworth Kelly?

How many contemporary cartoonists/creators think in terms of color when they begin a project? And who are they? Certainly Chris Ware, David Mazzuchelli, Seth, maybe Frank Santoro.

Cartoonists have traditionally thought in terms of line and --maybe- chiaroscuro. Color--if a consideration at all-has been secondary. And for obvious reasons--both the prohibitive cost and the assembly-line production of the comic book encourage that mode of thinking. I'm never less than dismayed when comic credits are divided as "Words by.... Art by.....Color by.........." as if color is somehow separate from "Art".

The great Sunday comic strips of the past certainly offered a cartoonist a full visual playing field--and while I don't know the division of labor (my history isn't that good) my guess is that the best made the color choices themselves; Hal Foster, George Herriman, Roy Crane, Frank King-- took full advantage of the opportunity. Playboy, first among a number of magazines, offered a good many cartooonists the opportunity to play with color, and Harvey Kurtzman's marvelous preliminary paintings for "Little Annie Fannie" show an artist making the most of that chance . But --in print anyway-- that chance has been all too rare.

In contemporary terms-the web offers cartoonists that opportunity again.

As does the mini-comic--wherein a great many younger cartoonists are exploiting silkscreen in limited print runs. Are we seeing a new way of interacting with color among those who have this opportunity? Rather than as a secondary consideration-has color become primary? Or is color being used as just something to fill-in the spaces between the lines and hatchmarks?

*************************************************

thoughts, anyone?

Swiper! No Swiping!

2009-11-06T13:45:00.002-05:00

Aaron Dumin kindly came up with several more examples of comics artists using appropriation, all excellent:

Art Spiegelman's "Malpractice Suite":

Shane Simmons' "Money Talks":

And Joshua Hale Fialkov and Kody Chamberlain's "Punks: The Comic"

Thanks Aaron!

Monster Mash-ups

2009-10-30T17:51:00.005-04:00

In my last post I started a little exploration of "appropriation" (to use the art world term) in art comics on the theory that work made in such a spirit falls closer to a conceptualist tradition than, say, a lot of the sturm and drang we see in currently fashionable art comics circles. To start with, I focused on "stylistic appropriation" such as Robert Sikoryak's work in Masterpiece Comics. This time, I'm going to grasp a thornier nettle - flat out swipes, or what we might call "collage narratives".

I say thornier because, whereas stylistic appropriation has a long and honorable history in comics in the form of parody (see Mad magazine and many others), full fledged image (or text) appropriation is much less common. Unlike the contemporary art scene, where it's a longstanding and uncontroversial mainstream practice, appropriation in comics is mostly seen in moralistic terms, as something sneaky and dishonest - check out this long-running thread on the Comics Journal website dedicated to discussing (and exposing) the practice.

We're all familiar with the use of appropriated comics images to make fine art (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton's seminal collage Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, so Appealing? with its Kirby romance comic swipe - see above) but I'd like to turn that around and look instead at the use of appropriated images to make comics, as narratives. I'll muddy the water, though, by starting with a couple of examples that straddle the line between art and comics but are generally considered in the context of art.

First, there's surrealist Max Ernst's collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté from 1934. Ernst cut up Victorian illustrations to create this (quasi) narrative which has had a tremendous, albeit underground influence in contemporary art.

Next, there's the use of comics in Situationist art, mostly from the 1960's and 70's, in a practice termed "détournement" where comics panels and other imagery were recontextualized (often with new texts superimposed on the old word balloons) to make fractured "comics" stories. This example is from Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti by Andre Bertrand from 1966.

Next, here's the only example I can think of where a comics artist regulary employed appropriation, at least in his early work: Chester Brown, who used to redraw found comics panels and use them as (typically absurdist) points of departure in his own stories. If you know of others, please add a comment...

(Above, an example of Chester Brown's narrative collage and his description of the process involved)

And finally, here's an example of an entire comic book (inspired by Brown's example) which was created by collaging found comics panels together to make a new story. Although it was created in a fine art context (it was funded by an experimental art gallery) it was distributed through the "direct market" network of comics shops back in 1993. I won't mention the artist except to say that he's Canadian and sort of old.

(above: a page from Captain Adam and the collaged panels it was based on)

Addendum:

Paul Dwyer was kind enough to comment with some terrific additional examples (see his comment below for links), including Jess's highly influential Tricky Cad:

Dan Walsh's brilliantly minimal Garfield Minus Garfield:

David Malki !'s (that's how he spells it) Wondermark (which I was completely unfamiliar with, betraying my lamentable ignorance of most webcomics):

And of course Paul's own terrific collage narratives, such as The Beginning (which we published recently at Blurredbooks.com):

The Swipe File Addendum

2009-10-23T17:49:00.001-04:00

Geoff is taking this week off so we'll be back next week with part two of my post about appropriation in comics. Meanwhile, Jim Rugg emailed me to suggest another example of stylistic appropriation: certain stories in Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers.

Thanks Jim!

(JOHN STUART MILL in the style of Charles Shulz from ACTION PHILOSOPHERS vol. 3)

The Swipe File

2009-10-15T19:18:00.005-04:00

Cowed by the howls of outrage that greeted my last post (about "ambience" and "abstract comics") I've decided to play it safer this time around by focusing on something much less controversial - stealing. Or, as we artistes prefer to term it: appropriation.

Geoff and I have both bellyached here about the mysterious sway that expressionism and its related styles (symbolism, art brut, wild style, romanticism... stupidism) have had over "art comics" of the last, oh, 40 or 50 years. I wrote a post digging up Kenneth Clark's hoary old dualism between Apollonian and Dionysian forms of art, and lumped most art comics under the Dionysian (dark, raw, primitive, emotional) rubric. I came up with a couple of examples of work that I thought was more "Apollonian", but didn't really explore that side of the fence very thoroughly. So this time I'm going to gingerly hop over there and grab some low hanging fruit: comics that employ the Conceptualist (and therefore Apollonian) strategy par excellence of appropriating "readymade" cultural artifacts (objects, images, texts, entire styles) and redeploying them in a different context so as to problematize their presumed meanings. What could be more fun?

Since this is just a first stab at examining the use of appropriation in comics I won't pretend it'll be exhaustive - in fact, I'd be delighted if anyone can suggest more examples. I'll tell you what - any good ones that come up in the comments will get added to the post with a little credit for the finder. I also won't pretend that I have any clearly worked out organizing principles behind these choices, just some initial thoughts, so I'd be indebted to anyone who cares to add to the conversation with comments.

So, off the top of my head, I can think of two basic types of appropriation in comics: style and collage. They overlap in various ways even on first inspection, but I'm going to split them for now so as to break the discussion in half (and get two posts out of it). I'll address the collage stuff next time - this week: style!

By stylistic appropriation, I'm referring to comics that self-consciously use a style or genre of drawing or writing so as to call attention to it. I don't mean the way Bill Sienkiewicz used to "use" Neal Adams' style - I mean the way Robert Sikoryak deliberately uses different cartoonists' styles to create bizarre new versions of stories from classic literature. His new collection of these mash-ups, Masterpiece Comics, is so good that I have trouble reading it - I keep stopping to think about how good it is.

Unlike, say, a Mad Magazine parody that employs the same basic strategy to easy comic effect (see Goodman Starchie for example), Sikoryak's work pushes collision between idioms so far that something substantial and new starts to emerge. His version of Wuthering Heights in the style of an EC horror comic doesn't even need to be funny (although it's hysterical): after a while I found myself forgetting the underlying joke and just reading it as a strange, strong compelling piece in its own terms.

Another artist mining similar territory is Matt Madden, whose 99 Ways to Tell a Story is subtitled, appropriately, "Exercises in Style". As the title implies, Madden restages a single, short narrative in a wide variety of comic book (and fine art, and even cartographic) styles. This is fascinating stuff - not just because Madden deploys these styles so expertly and imaginatively, but also because of the way his process underscores the central claim of Conceptualism: that "styles"- far from being immanent phenomena that mysteriously arise in our individual artistic selves - are actually cultural constructions. Or, to paraphrase one of the Art and Language artists (I forget which one):

The Expressionist says "I feel X!", whereas the Conceptualist says: "what would be the consequence of saying 'I feel X!'?"

(two examples of Matt Madden's Exercises in Style: the same story told in the "ligne claire" style of Tintin artist Hergé and in a classic superhero style.)

One final example of a comics artist employing stylistic appropriation (again, please feel free to suggest others): Jim Rugg in his art for Afrodisiac, his Blaxploitation themed comic collaboration with Brian Maruca. Rugg goes to incredible lengths to get the details right, not just in his evocation of Blaxploitation as a genre (both of comics and movies), but the textures and patinas of early 70's comics. Then, just in case this wasn't enough of a tour de force, he shuttles between early 70's comics styles, giving us Vampire Afrodisiac, Young Romance Afrodisiac, and even Funny Animal Afrodisiac. And they're all perfect.

bArt Comics

2009-10-08T10:13:00.009-04:00

I like Bart Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror". That's a pretty good comic book.

I like where Portlius Maximus, great god of chubbiness, drops giant onion ring creatures and

evil skysauce on Homer and Bart. That's pretty good. I laughed 'til I started to choke on Honey-nut Cheerios. I also like clone Simpsons and poison bootleg candy. Also, John Kerschbaum draws a pretty awesome Homer. I also like where Bart says "You will all be consumed" in"the Call of the Vegulu"--it's like the title of the next Fletcher Hanks book or something.

those are the things I like. there are some things I don't care one way or another about. But there's not really anything I don't like. Except that last bit-it looks like something I did in a notebook in 7th grade.

So, if you like Simpsons, and you like Art, then this is the comic for you.

p.s. I bought this comic with my own money.

Ambient Comics

2009-10-02T11:38:00.002-04:00

Emboldened by Geoff's merciless attack last week on shibboleth-in-the-making Asterios Polyp, I've decided this time around to have a poke at the whole idea of "abstract comics", which is currently receiving a similarly warm reception from comics critics thanks to Andrei Molotiu's new Abstract Comics anthology from Fantagraphics. I'm going to do this despite the fact that:

A: Geoff is in the book

B: Andrei is also a friend of mine, as is his contributor Henrik Rehr, and I've published their abstract comics in an anthology I co-edit and also shown them at a gallery I co-curate in Brooklyn.

C: I haven't (properly) read the Abstract Comics anthology yet - although I did see the related show at The James Gallery at CUNY in NYC.

Fair enough? Well, anyway, here goes:

In an earlier incarnation, I used to write art criticism for magazines up in Canada - which, unlike blogging, actually paid some (admittedly modest) cash money - and one time I was asked to review a show of "video art" in Vancouver. Now, I went to art schools that were pretty steeped in Conceptualism, so I've had to develop lots of patience for obtuse and difficult art: I know better than to expect to actually, you know... enjoy myself in an art gallery. But Jesus Christ, these were some boring-ass videos I had to watch! Had to, because I was being paid.

To be fair to the artist (I can't even remember his name after all this time*), the videos were gorgeous. They consisted of various snippets of footage - most of it quite compelling - strung together in a, well, abstract fashion. The problem - for me at least - was that after about a minute of watching these various disconnected sequences I started to zone out. Without something to tie them together - a narrative, or even some sort of clear theme - they got really, really boring.

And let me the first to admit - I said as much in the review - that other viewers might have had longer attention spans. But isn't it also true that people used to go suffer through the entirety of Matthew Barney's marathon video installations because it became some sort of art world badge of honor to have survived them? Like going to a sweat lodge or something? Art as endurance test.

(Image by Matthew Barney)

So for me, and I suspect for lots of other earnest artlovers, the problem with video art boils down to its relationship to time. Video art, like performance art, is what gets called a "time-based" medium. It expects you to sit (or worse, stand) there and pay attention, for whatever the duration of the piece is. Whereas pretty much all other forms of western visual art have, traditionally, been ambient.

I mean this in the same sense that Brian Eno applied the term to music (for airports!): work that doesn't care when you come or go. You can take it in in little sips, obliquely, whenever it suits you. The ideal ambient art experience might be a painting in your house that you gradually come to know intimately, through a thousand little glances out of the corner of your eye. A very different experience of art than shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot waiting for an interminable video to finish.

Now comics - as always, a hybrid special case - are both time-based and ambient. For starters, although they unfold in a (typically) specific sequence, the panels co-exist in pictorial space, beside and on top of each other, not at all like a film or performance or video. You can experience a group of them simultaneously as a page or spread. You can flip back and forth through the book, etc, etc. More importantly, each panel can be considered in isolation, a condition so obviously ambient that art schools to this day are rife with Pop art paintings of blown-up comics panels.

Comic book panels also have a narrative order, a path between them that entails a necessary duration - however much the reader might care to bend or interrupt it. But in abstract comics most of the elements used to create this path - characters, settings, texts in balloons, plots and subplots, etc. - are absent. What's left tends to be the naked organizing structures of comics (panels, grids, pages) and the formal relationships between the ambient elements contained by the panels - and this minimal narrative apparatus is expected to engage us for the duration of the piece. That's where I have a problem - I pretty much zone out after four or five pages.

Of course, your attention span may be more robust: check out this review on Jog the Blog to see just how involved it's possible to become with an abstract comic (please feel free to skip over his disparaging remarks about my own work). But let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this level of engagement is rather more the exception than the rule for abstract comics. If so, does this make them an esoteric waste of time, doomed to be confined to the margins (or gutters) of art comics history?

Not at all. First of all, most abstract comics tend to be fairly short - I suspect their authors are well aware of the limits of their audience's patience. But more to the point, I don't think these comics really belong in books**. I think they're more suited to ambient display, by which I mean either on computer monitors or a good old fashioned wall - places where the experience of the work requires less of an appointment or commitment. Let me just make this quick point, based on my peculiar position of having both published and exhibited abstract comics:

When my co-editor, Alex Rader and I put experimental or "difficult" work into Blurred Vision, we take a certain perverse pleasure in it. "Suck on this, bitches" is a phrase that gets used as we lay out the books, knowing that many readers will lack the fortitude to make their way through, for example, all 32 pages of Doug Harvey's Captain Eelbegone. And so it's been with the abstract comics we've published - we don't expect them to be a walk in the park for most readers, but we think the work is strong and important and needs to be seen - so in it goes... heh, heh.

But we've shown some of the same work in ArtLexis, our gallery space, as prints hung in sequence, and the experience is very, very different. Once I'm excused from the responsibility of "reading" them all at once - once the experience of the work is ambient - it's possible to return to the piece many times and gradually build up a sense of the relationships between panels and pages, to see the larger abstract forms that emerge from the confluences of the smaller ones and to absorb a sense of the "narrative" while seeing the work as a whole. All of this happens both slowly and quickly, while you're talking or thinking about something else or walking by on your way somewhere - outside of any particular time. These are ambient comics.

(installation view of Andrei Molotiu's work)

*okay, okay, it was Bill Viola.

**I'll grant an exception for beautifully produced "coffee table" books like Andrei's anthology - which are meant to be experienced in sips, after all.

Throat Polyps

2009-09-24T13:05:00.001-04:00

Look, I like Asterios Polyp but enough already. Has anybody written an unkind or critical word about this book? Honestly-any cursory examination of reviews across the web reveals unanimous praise-really, seriously, unanimous praise- for David Mazzuchelli's graphic novel about an arrogant architect with relationship issues. Look for reviews about any other book of 2009 and tally positive and negatives. How many receive one hundred percent positives? How 'bout books from any year receiving unanimous praise? The Ghost Writer or Zuckerman Bound or any of the other Philip Roth novels that seem to have inspired "Polyp" haven't received raves on this scale. Nor has War and Peace for that matter.

What 's the deal? There are two possibilities (to argue on Polyp's own terms): either Asterios Polyp is the greatest novel of this -or any year--or-- there is some serious flaw in the critical discourse growing around the graphic novel.

I vote number two.

This is not to say that I don't like Asterios Polyp. I do. I enjoyed reading it. and more than that, I admire it. There is a great deal to admire in Mazzuchelli's work, he is a consummate craftsman. Nevertheless, I don't love Asterios Polyp. and I've tried. I really have. We've gone out several times now, but it just hasn't clicked. I had to cut him loose.

And to my surprise, I'm not alone in this assessment. I saw AP sitting on a colleague's bookshelf at work, the ensuing discussion revealed that she also "liked it", but didn't love it. And I know of at least two similar responses in my immediate circle of friends and colleagues.(Yes, I know everyday people who read graphic novels-amazing!) So-despite my neuroses -it's not just me. But I have to ask, where is that kind of ambivalence among comics critics and reviewers? Where are the critical chops?

A preponderance of the reviews seem to be caught up in illustrating the sheer number of Mazzuchelli's formal devices, literary references and repeating motifs-as though this were an undergraduate course in post-modern lit--and as if the sheer number of such will overwhelm any potential misgivings --about the book, the characters, the story. (imaginary book club meeting: Reader 1:" I didn't really care about Asterios" Reader 2 "But you don't understand! he's like Orpheus! You know-in mythology! And there's duality! and look at how everyone is drawn different! according to the way they perceive the world! get it?! get it??") As if this were a mechanism defending against some imagined threat to the seriousness of the graphic novel. As if a ton formal devices were equivalent to passion for a character and a story.

Among the few caveats expressed by critics, this ( largely ignored)observation in Douglas Wolk's NYTimes review of AP:
"...The result is as overdetermined as any graphic novel has ever been — formalist to its core. And if the core seems to be empty, Mazzucchelli has anticipated that, too: at the precise center of the book is a two-page image of an enormous crater, about which our hero quips: “Now, that’s a hole.”

A point that strikes me as fairly damning, yet Wolk glosses over it as if he were looking past a spot on the carpet, a smudge on a window. There is a hole in the center of the book. Wolk very nearly turns that observation into a complement---suggesting that Mazzuchelli is detached enough to perceive that he is not only constructing an empty shell of a narrative, but that he contrived to do so. And that is somehow a good thing.

A number of reviews note some weakness in the story, but most choose to underplay this in lieu of Mazzuchelli's dazzling array of formal devices. Yet formal techniques, no matter how ingenious, do not necessarily add up to a great narrative, and AP's narrative seems to exist primarily to provide Mazzuchelli the opportunity to explore ideas, concepts and formal tricks-rather than out of any inner necessity. Asterios Polyp is such a modest tale-an intimate tale--told not with the touch of the miniaturist (which would be appropriate for a story of this scale) but with the detached air of the academic-devising characters as allegorical stand-ins, personifications of abstract ideas. Mazzuchelli doesn't convey passion for his characters and his story so much as cool detachment; a little more of the former and he might have created a less ambitious but more heartfelt work.

Despite this rather general complaint, there are some absolutely exquisite passages in Asterios Polyp where one glimpses the poetry in the poet; a sequence of intimate moments featuring Asterios' estranged wife Hana is beautiful, poignant, ultimately heart-breaking-but that kind of direct, emotional engagement doesn't last. The fire sequence at the beginning of the book is as good as anything in contemporary comics, but the sense of urgency that propels it dissipates with the flames. There are others, but too often one feels the artist peering over one's shoulder, pointing out the intricate details and references in every panel.

That Mazzuchelli ultimately cares more about concept than character is revealed in the book's ending-a blunder of massive proportions in which he obliterates his protagonist and displays a complete disregard for the small, but potentially meaningful journey Asterios has travelled--in effect trivializing the entire narrative--all in the hope of making some grand DeLillo-esque statement.
One recent analysis of the ending finds justification for it (not surprisingly) in the formal techniques that Mazzuchelli is so adept at, and in the very structure of the narrative; the ending functioning as bookend with the narrowly avoided disaster that begins the book. The suggestion is that such an end was inevitable-built into the foundation of Asterios' story. And yet the book's conclusion feels so coolly dismissive, so overblown and contrived. An ending seemingly about the intrusion of the unexpected and random in life is nonetheless the most pre-determined and controlled of events.
Again-it indicates that the artist is more in love with the grand gesture than with the small pleasures his story affords. One never gets the sense that the author is carried away with his characters so completely that he's lost in them-that they may be steering the narrative somewhere unexpected, somewhere off the map--not for a moment does he trust enough in his characters to let that happen, to risk losing control—and despite all of my admiration for his craft, technique and inventiveness- I think that's where the book loses me--and thus lands on my bookshelf -to be admired from afar. Not dog-eared and next to the drawing board-when I look to something for inspiration. For that- I'll turn to Rubber Blanket.

Too often the critical reaction simply has echoed the formalist stance and ambition of the author- perhaps demonstrating a collective desire that this book, and thus the graphic novel, be taken seriously as literature, as art, once and for all. I, too, had lined up to buy Asterios Polyp hoping for the graphic novel of the century. (high expectations sure-but it is David Mazzuchelli, after all. ) That I didn't get it is no sweat off my nose, I'm sure he's got another in him- whatever he does next I'll be in line for it, he's that kind of artist's artist. But somehow, I think when the next great graphic novel arrives, whether its by David Mazzuchelli or someone else –it won't be quite so tidy. No, it’s likely to be a far messier affair…like life.

(Despite my premise-there are indeed some reviews of the work that are truly illuminating:
Matthias Wivel at Metabunker

and the afore-mentioned discussion of the ending:

Derik Badman at Madinkbeard

and I'm sure there are others I missed-- but I read enough that I wanted to toss my laptop out of the window)

Art for Comics' Sake

2009-09-17T13:11:00.030-04:00

Geoff's post about the persistence of a print-based esthetic in comics despite the advent of digital imaging and the web left me guiltily pondering my own "practice", as we contemporary artist types (especially the MFAs) like to call it. In my case it hits home pretty hard -- my ongoing comic Fantastic Life couldn't look more conservative: simple cartoony drawings in a clear black line with flat colors - no fancy gradients or painterly effects for me!

(image from Fantastic Life)

And yet I'm no Luddite: I've been making my living as a photoshop artist for the last 15 years, I curated a web-gallery for experimental digital art for seven years, and I've got a background in the sort of experimental/conceptual visual art that positively fetishizes formal novelty ("You made your new piece out of circuit boards? Fabulous!"). So why no hint of that in my comic?

Well, let me just dodge my own question for a second while I look at the broader picture. I think that one of the main differences between the use of images in comics and "fine art" is function. Western fine art (which I'll just confine to easel painting for the sake of simplicity and laziness) evolved to fulfill a particular "use value": representing perceived or imaginary visual experience. Oil painters got really good at this, as many a Luddite will tell you, but the invention of photography pretty much put them out of business. The few that stuck it out had to go looking for other reasons to paint, and started making paintings that did things photographs couldn't (at least not easily, not until photoshop) -- so since then we've had abstraction, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, etc, etc.

Today, if you're going to set out to be an accomplished "figurative" painter you'd better have a damn good explanation (irony still works best: see John Currin), or else you'll be treated to withering scorn in the "serious" art world. But if you're setting out to be a comics artist and you've got, say, Hal Foster-level drawing chops, that world can still be your oyster.

(images by John Currin and Hal Foster)

This is because comics has never undergone the same functional upheaval that beset painting. Whereas painting fulfilled a specific need for representation that could be easily replaced by a technology that was faster, better and above all cheaper, comic book art is illustration (or, as Art Spiegelman put it, a type of "diagramming") in the service of something else: a narrative. In other words, once painting stopped being "useful" it was - in the classic Duchampian sense - reduced to being "art for art's sake". But comic book art still retains its use value: art for narrative's sake.

Granted, this is small comfort in the face of the marginalization of comics by other narrative forms - television most obviously, which helped wipe out 90% of the comics market in the 1950's - but comics retain a key advantage: as Geoff pointed out, they can be made by individuals with few resources, unlike TV shows, films or video games. And the internet is leveling the playing field by making TV shows, films and video games too expensive to produce relative to the size of the audiences they're able to attract: as audiences shrink, scripted (narrative) shows go out the window and "reality" programming takes over. Comics may have a brighter future than we think.

So, getting back to my question about my own comics: being a digital artist, I've tried making CGI comics and I agree with Geoff that they're unlikely to replace drawing soon - it still takes far too much work per panel to get anything remotely nice looking. That level of time/expense might be fine for Pixar (for now), but comics panels need to be ridiculously cheap and quick by comparison. This was already true 45 years ago, when Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder were pouring crazy amounts of time and effort into Little Annie Fanny - the technology and talent to make every panel a beautiful little painting existed, but it only made sense to do it in the context of a slick magazine selling millions of copies every month.

(images from Finding Nemo - top- and Little Annie Fanny)

So, until I see a better alternative, I'll keep making comics that would look at home on any cheap piece of newsprint, and hide all of the gee whiz digital legerdemain that goes into them. Speaking of which, just for fun, here's a peek at a CGI panel I've been working on, showing the digital image (which looked too harsh to me) and the "hand drawn" (in Photoshop) final version I made from it.

Post-Nasal Comics

2009-09-08T18:11:00.087-04:00

Comics that don't smell ? Well - I once told my wife I loved her because she smelled like old comics. (ahem - not a line I would encourage anyone to use - not that anyone else is that stupid - and no, she doesn't really smell like an old comic book and I'll slug anyone who suggest she does. So there. nyaah.)

Ok - so I am - admittedly - "mired in the past" (I won't say "hopelessly") and devoted to paper. My personal blog is "Pulp Ink", what does that tell you? Nevertheless, it would be absurd to quarrel with the digitization of books, of newspapers, of comics -- it's a tsunami, an asteroid, an earthquake... indifferent to the pleas of those in its path; the players, bystanders, critics, small press comics geeks. And what's not to welcome with the new developments in presentation, in the Kindle and the Apple "Cocktail"? (*see K's last post)

While it's obvious that the advent of "Cocktail" (or something similar) is a game-changer, it will not be the end of print comics. Print will continue - whether for those of us stuck in the past- or those who simply love the aesthetics of the book - yet print is likely to become something altogether more "precious" -- and expensive -- dare I say marginal? (an evolution already underway - see assorted posts here and elsewhere) The question arises, aside from marginalizing print, (hmmm) what impact will the "Cocktail" (or a more graphics friendly Kindle) have on comics? Not economically -- although the economic issues are paramount and will impact all others -- but aesthetically.

Comics - or the sequential art that we identify as comics - developed in the forms we know largely in response to the demands of economics and technology. The daily comic strip had its roots in the broadsheet, was codified in the newspapers of Pulitzer, Hearst and Patterson and became a daily event, serialized-as an economic imperative. Later on, the newspaper broad sheet was folded over twice and... yadda yadda yadda...staple staple.. yadda yadda yadda... Max Gaines.

Ok - we all know that story. But just as interesting -- the technology not only impacted the format but form of the imagery as well. Brush, pen and ink, cross-hatching, spotting blacks, zip-a-tone, ligne-claire, audacious and flat primary colors, etc. - the entire approach to comics' graphic imaging - derives from its final form in print (or newsprint) -- that is, the state of the technology at their inception. Printing on newsprint was perhaps the most economical option available - as well as the least trustworthy. The dependence on a strong linear approach to drawing - one that emphasizes simplicity and clean, bold, solid contours is a direct response to the unreliable characteristics of the early 20th century printing process.

Entire schools of comics art have been built upon this foundation - which is now so obscured under layers of history and evolution that it's as remote as Grant beneath that tomb. Whether one is talking Kirby, Toth or Barks, the success of their highly personalized styles was dependant upon their realization in four-color newsprint. 20th century printing -- or rather, economical 20th century printing, could not accommodate the vagaries of charcoal drawing, pencil drawing-any gestural approach in which media plays an expressive role. So 20th century comics do not have a Kathe Kollwitz, an Edvard Munch - a Georges Seurat (love those charcoals).

Comics developed its own standards for good drawing that have been - until recently - quite distinct from "good drawing" as it is practiced in other media (and this is not to say that comics drawing necessarily suffered for being distinct - see Kirby, Toth, Barks, DeCarlo, Rogers, Bushmiller, Wiseman, et al).

21st century printing - or printing since the mid-late 1990's - the digital age, is something quite different. Digital technology has offered comics' artists an enormously expanded playing field-multiplying their expressive capabilities exponentially. For example, a book such as Gipi's
"Notes for a War Story" - with all of its subtle shadings of watercolor and ink wash -- would be difficult to capture in print in the 1960's.

What will new technology such as Cocktail bring forth? Who knows? But as yet, a look over the ACT-I-VATE website - one of the premier webcomics sites around - indicates that most webcomics artists continue to think in terms of print. Much of the imagery is still black line and color -- a process steeped in tradition -- but not necessitated by the computer screen (and I admit to same - my serialized graphic novel Nice Work at ModernTales.com is conceived of in traditional terms).

Of course, amidst the relatively traditional approaches on view at ACT-I-VATE there are a multiplicity of variations - and Joe Infurnari's "The Transmigration of ULTRA-Lad" is certainly among the best of them - one that might be difficult to recreate in print, given Infurnari's attempts at digital verisimilitude. Infurnari displays a good many of his pages on faux-yellowed and torn newsprint signaling that "Ultra-Lad" is a product of the Silver Age of comics, recently uncovered at the bottom of a bin of smelly old newsprint. Except that "Ultra-Lad" doesn't smell -- it's a webcomic.

Oh well - verisimilitude only goes so far.

Nevertheless - in lieu of our discussion, a more enlightening example is Infurnari's own "The Process" - an altogether more experimental and daring approach to visualization-enabled by current technologies and not so deeply indebted to print (see page 18 of chapter 2).

Of course, where does one look for insight into the future of comics in the digital age? Our very own Marshall Mcluhan; Mr. Scott McCloud: philosopher-guru of all things web-comics-y and otherwise. I have to admit-I loved Understanding Comics , used it as a text (but didn't commit it to memory) - still, I haven't bothered with Reinventing Comics so I'm behind the curve on this - (HEY!Gimme a break!-"Pulp Ink" remember?) -- but even McCloud's own webcomic "The Right Number" - while its format is ostensibly more web-based, its imagery is nonetheless beholden to print comics.

Well the language is iconic now, isn't it? All these years post- Lichtenstein, to use bold lines, flat color, benday dots, etc. - is a sign, a signal, of "comics-i-ness", of pop, of flash, of a certain now or some re-imagined now -both of this now and of some undefinable, unattainable "now" long past.

As comics artists move from bristol to graphics tablets and drawing directly on the screen, those "signs of comics" become increasingly detached from their original function and meaning. (How to "read" a Lichtenstein in 20 years? and why would anyone use ben-day dots in 2029?)

I don't think comics will mimic corporate animation's seismic shift from the hand-drawn to CGI. Comics are as much the territory of individualists, cranks and crackpots (lovable crackpots, of course) as corporations (how's that for alliteration?) - and they can be constructed by one creator, laboring alone (with difficulty) over a dank and dismal drawing board (in Canada), whereas animation is (not always-of course) most frequently a collaborative effort. (*except in Canada-where last I heard they had a terrific National Film Board supporting equally terrific independent animators).

So we can keep our drawing boards, we can keep our bristol , but the
Wacom--and the Cocktail- beckon.

Images: I admit to using this essay as a shameless excuse to put up images by Rudolph Dirks, Kathe Kollwitz, Al Wiseman, Gipi and Joe Infurnari.

Comics That Will Never Smell

2009-09-04T18:44:00.024-04:00

Geoff's love letter to newsprint (this is after all a writer with a blog called "Pulp Ink") left me fondly recalling my teenage stint as a comic shop clerk up in Winnipeg, Canada in the 1970's. The place where I worked ("Doug Sulipa's Comic World") was a big business as Canadian comics shops go, and part of my job was filling mail orders from all over the continent at a basement warehouse in the suburbs. There were endless rooms and halls filled floor to ceiling with stacks of moldering old comics, and you can be sure I squandered lots of time leafing through them when I should've been working. Needless to say, the experience left me with a Proustian response to the aroma of decaying newsprint: I get weak-kneed with nostalgic pleasure.

(Doug Sulipa)

But this is another century, and as we all know by now, everything is moving to the Internet, where nothing smells. In my last post, I got glum as I worried that the postmodern explosion of styles and schools of comics would lead us to a dystopia where artists outnumbered readers, and I laid at least part of the blame on digital delivery via the Web. So this time, in all fairness to the internet, I'd like to offer the optimistic side of the coin.

As Geoff pointed out in his post, music's move to digital distribution, via the CD and then the MP3 has had a pretty drastic effect on the aesthetics of what used to get called "album art". I happen to work in that very field, and I can tell you from long experience that everyone in the music business is acutely aware of what a shadow of its former self music packaging has become.

But what digitization taketh away, it can sometimes also restore - the new buzz is all about a project called "Cocktail" being cooked up between Apple and the major labels. Cocktail is supposed to be an attempt to revive the concept of "albums", which have withered away in the era of iTunes, by allowing listeners to download an elaborate package of liner notes, art, photos and even videos. The kicker is that Apple will (as the rumors have it) be releasing a new "tablet" computer - a sort of giant iPod - for listening, watching and reading it all.

Obviously, this sounds like the perfect platform for digital comics - a big portable e-reader with a color display. Whether it's really going to go according to rumor is an open question, but unquestionably devices like this are starting to pop up and will become ubiquitous soon enough. Still, what makes me optimistic that digital comics will even work, given their spotty track record up until now? Two things:

1. The embarrassment factor: I am a middle aged man, and I find it very difficult to go into comics shops. Something about them makes me feel a bit icky, like I'm shopping for porn videos. Frankly, I use my 9 year-old son as a "beard" when I want to go pick up some new altcomics treats: "Hah hah! Sure son, I'll take you to see the funny books". And when I read comics, it's in the privacy of my home. On the commute to work, it's the New York Times all the way.

But if I could read comics without having to flash them around... well, fuck the grey lady!

(Besides, it's already happening with little bitty cell phones.)

2. The convenience factor: I used to own thousands of comic books, but I got rid of them some time during my bachelor years because they were too much trouble to lug from pad to pad whenever I moved (also, they got embarrassing - see above). Lots of things get less convenient as your life gets more complicated - I owned hundreds of vinyl LPs too (which I kept - not quite as embarrassing), but I went through a period of about - jesus - fifteen years where I stopped buying new music and barely bothered listening to the CDs and tapes I had lying around. Too busy!

Then the whole iTunes thing happened. And within the last five years, I somehow managed to amass a collection of ... (goes and checks iTunes) ... 14,147 songs. Which is about 1400 LPs' worth, or about five times as much music as I owned when I was a 20 year old punk rock fanatic with no mortgage and no kids to feed.

This is the digital logic of it all. I'm already saving PDFs of old scanned comics I find around the web, stuff I'd never buy as books or floppies for any price because I have no where to put it. But would I spend money for say, the complete works of Carl Barks for an e-reader? You bet I would - even without the smell.

Super Sexe

2009-08-30T22:20:00.007-04:00

Dear Readers: I'm next in line for a post, but I'm up in Montreal, Canada on vacation and won't be back for a few more days. In the meantime though, here's the most comics-related thing I've seen in several days of wandering around this famously charming city: Le Club Super Sexe, a strip joint on Rue Sainte-Catherine. See you later this week!

The Aesthetics of Crap*

2009-08-17T23:27:00.122-04:00

For my money, as elaborate and informative as some cd collections can be, there hasn't been a boxed set that tops the aesthetic merit of a vinyl lp in a gatefold cardboard sleeve. As an art-object, the record album has a presence and significance that cds, in all their permutations, have aspired to but rarely (if ever) achieve. And this- despite the stellar work of world-class designers. The flaw is not theirs, but in the object itself. The cd simply does not have the significance, the scale, the mass of the lp, and its packaging cannot help but reflect that. Even at its most elaborate, the cd and its package are playing against a stacked deck.

One cannot compare the experience of purchasing, opening, holding, examining and finally listening to the lp version of "Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (or "the White Album" or "Physical Graffiti" or "Sinatra at the Sands"-- whatever) with the experience of the cd of the same material-despite whatever aural improvements there may(or may not) have been. And as its been pointed out elsewhere-we no longer find a moment,put on an album and listen-in the way once encouraged by the record album and its packaging.

Has the diminishment of the object meant an equivalent reduction in cultural importance? Has the transformation of the vehicle of music had an impact on the manner in which we listen to it , and how deeply we appreciate it?

How tightly bound is the music with its packaging?

Well, if popular music is no longer an agent of social change, as it may have been decades ago, it's for any number of reasons; the minimizing ( or near disappearance) of the lp/object notwithstanding. But Kevin's last post, "Troubles with Tribbles" (great title), has me thinking, not only about the business of "art-comics", but about some of the cultural and aesthetic ripples induced by the packages that deliver those comics.

Which is a roundabout way of asking-which is more important, the comics or the package? And is the experience of the one inexorably bound with the other?

Today comics come to us in any number of ways, but 30 years ago (in the U.S.) that was not the case. There were newspaper strips and comic books. Every now and again there would be the odd collection of a daily newspaper strip-"Doonesbury", "Peanuts" or "Far Side"; very rarely one might stumble across a collected edition of material first presented in comic books. ( "Superman: (or Batman) from the 30's to the 70's" or "Origins of Marvel Comics") More often, an important comic book story-arc might be collected by DC or Marvel in giant-size in "Treasury Editions"; really just oversized comic books printed on larger sheets of newsprint with the addition of cardstock covers. And of course, more adult-oriented material was printed black and white and magazine size.

Package design, such as it was, was generic, simple--and while the variety of packages served a purpose-that purpose was primarily for easy identification on the magazine rack, rather than any aesthetic imperative. The cost of these books(in the late 70's) ran from .25 cents for a traditional "floppy", $1.00 to $1.50 for b & w magazine comics and Treasury-size editions - up to $6-$9.00 for ultra-deluxe hard-cover comic strip collections. Which is to say-they were all affordable -to the general comic-book buying public.

Obviously we live in a different world, a different market- or rather markets-which Kevin addressed in his last post. And package design has evolved as the markets and technology have. But the technology for good book design has always been there-it is the shared sense that this material (comics) is deserving of consideration as something more than a throw-away, along with the growth of a supportive market, that has driven the aestheticization of the comic "book" (and I use book in the broadest sense).

It is right then to acknowledge, that the aesthetics of the comics package-have been driven by a need for cultural legitimacy --and are bound up with the evolution of a specific marketplace. These aesthetics are not only "formal"(in the traditional art-school application of the term) but ideological-and economic, with the latter frequently serving the purposes of the former.

Not to beat a dead horse(as it were) but --Kramer's Ergot no.7, which is 16" x 21" and retailed for $125. when first released, is likely the apotheosis of this evolution. Its not likely that we will see anything like it again--at least until the economy climbs out of the gutter. Its size and ambition are unparalleled. The inclusion of so many of the creme de la creme of contemporary cartoonists in one anthology is likely a unique event. Its scope and design assure its consideration as an authentic art -object, and its price tag, no doubt an economic necessity,--serves its larger ideological purpose-which is to lay claim to the status of "Art" --for the anthology, for the cartoonists, for alternative comics, for all of us in the field.

pretty friggin' awesome.

I haven't read it.

In fact-outside of the small-press conventions I do...

I haven't even seen it.

(Ok-that's hyperbole. But I barely had time to flip a page or two at the cons--I'm working here, dammit!--and honestly, I was afraid of doing damage to the pages. No, I'm being serious.)

That I have not read it is not because I object to the enterprise--far from it. As an artist, I salivate at the thought of working at that scale--c'mon! who we kidding? I admire the hell out of the ambition, the guts-the sheer chutzpah of this project. Man-I only wish I had the bucks, the imagination , not to mention the temerity to put it together.

But I haven't read it. and I'm not likely to anytime in the near future. But I have read a lot about it.

Listen-I live in upstate NY now. At my local comics shop they've never even heard of Kramer's (what the f&*k you call it? what's an)Ergot. The local B & N doesn't have it either. And if I ever spend $125. on one comic my wife won't just kill me-she'll do something else to me first. But if I ever did spend that kind of dough on a single comic it'd be "Little Nemo" first, right? Right.

The fact that KE7 is unavailable to someone such as myself is not a failing of the book-or the publisher-or of the marketplace-or even me.( well, partly me.) In fact-its inaccessibility works to the publisher's advantage. (no- I don't think they planned it-they want to sell billions, zillions!-we all do.) Its scarcity-or rarity-lends mystery and authority to its larger than life status-to its aura of art. You may not have seen it, but you've heard of it-like the Abominable Snowman... or Bigfoot.

And as we all know-in the age of digital reproduction-art lives and dies with its aura. That's why Mary Boone or Gagosian galleries are the neo-fascist tombs they are, and why that imposing neo-SS officer sits silently behind that judge's bench in the back of Boone(what has he been doing all these years?*)-the whole enterprise creates an atmosphere of money, power and significance.

And it works. Seeing a crappy painting at a premier Chelsea gallery is not like seeing a crappy painting downtown or in upstate New York. Art has aura--crap doesn't.

Which brings me to Wednesday Comics.

There ain't no aura about this, baby. (well-- there's a different odor surrounding this project, but more on that if we have time). This is newsprint-big and cheap and ready for packing dishes---and super-heroes, bold and colorful and as stupid as they ever were.

And I love it. I have no idea what anyone has been saying about this project-so I'm likely to be off the wall here in my opinion-but I think it's terrific-the most exciting comics package since-well, Kramers Ergot no.7.

But unlike the big book- it is everywhere-and I can actually buy it. It's four bucks. And it's BIG--comics big and beautiful and ready to be splashed on the wall-they way they were meant to be. Eye-candy for the soul of the working stiff.

Does it have problems? You bet. Do I like every strip? No. Are some better than others? Definitely. Would I have preferred to see more diversity, imagination in the genres, styles, etc. etc. yadda, yadda,yadda-of course-but this is DC corporate comics- fer chrissakes!

Is it art?

%6#@^&&!!!! F*&K man! I don't know! And what's more -I don't give a sh*t! I just love turning--and snapping back the pages-enveloping myself in the images; being caught up in a pulpy adventure story once a week. The tension between the bold, colorful imagery, the density of the ink and the frail weight of newsprint. These are the pleasures it affords.

Wednesday Comics makes no claims to art. In fact -its package moves in the opposite direction, away from art and towards the disposable. And the format celebrates the disposable, it revels in its nature as cultural detritus-it's crap. It'll rot your teeth and eat up your insides. And therein lies its joy--its life--its rewards. Comics are deeply invested in crap(or is it the other way around?)--and it is the discovery of something--inexplicably wondrous --within crap-that is so unexpected, so revelatory, so subversive and so central to the nature of the medium. It is the genie in the bottle--and the adults, the authorities, the so-called experts-- are blind to it. F*%k 'em--it's ours.

Have we really improved on the .10 or .12 cent comic book? Or the Sunday Funnies? Are the comics that much better? Or have we gotten so caught up in the imprimatur of art --and cultural legitimacy-- that we risk losing something less tangible but more --felt? Something more authentic?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I know the direct market makes demands on its publishers-and in order to survive they have to use whatever tools are at their disposal-aura, mystique, whatever you got. But I do know that the next time I print a book, I'm going to think long and hard about its package, about its aura--about the genie in the bottle.

some notes:

* I mean "crap" in the best possible sense of the word

* alternative title: or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cheez Doodles"

this essay deals with print comics--still the predominant arena for those of us working in "art-comics"-and so webcomics, and other digital manifestations are left for another discussion.

* I know someone out there is going to feel the need to write and tell me who that guy at Mary Boone is and what he does. thanks in advance.

Sgt.Pepper cost $5.49 in 1967. But you could probably pick it up for $3.99

Conversely-or perversely-the change in direction from high art to low-(or perhaps more accurately from art to entertainment)-exemplified in Wednesday Comics--imbues the rather generic offerings in its pages with a life they may not otherwise have in other circumstances. (the novelty of the format also impacts the work) Might one suggest then that weaker comics are more susceptible to the influence of context? I'm throwing that one out there without thinking about it.

****there is something in the tension between the bold color and illusionistic imagery, the density of the ink and the weight of newsprint, the paper's frailty and the saturation of the ink in the paper. Newsprint is a deeply under-appreciated support.

this is the last time I use Kramer's Ergot as a whipping post-I swear.*

Troubles With Tribbles

2009-08-14T13:30:00.004-04:00

(Image from Star Trek: the Animated Series © Filmation)

Geoff's post responding to Frank Santoro's observations about the bifurfaction of the comics market has me contemplating my own geezerdom (Tuesday was my - yikes! - 47th birthday) and place in this fractured continuum. Like Geoff, I went to university art schools and like Geoff I underwent a pretty severe hazing. In my first year (1980) I produced a "comicsy" painting (suffice it to say the dancing frog from the old Warner Bros. cartoon was involved) and had the pleasure of seeing it held up to the class as an example of what NOT to do. Traumatic stuff, but I take solace in the failure of Google images to turn up a single example of that prof's own work.

I agree that these sort of experiences can't help but contribute to a profoundly different attitude toward making comics (assuming that they don't completely eradicate the desire to make them) among artists of say, the last quarter century but, per my last post here, I see the ruptures that Santoro and Geoff discuss between these types of comics and what's left of the comics "mainstream" in terms of a larger economic/technological process (yeah, yeah - Postmodernism) that's been splintering and re-splintering the whole industrialized world since the 60's. For this reason, I like Santoro's Boichelian tree diagram - and feel it's clear that we've already advanced pretty far in terms of the branching it illustrates.

There's been some discussion of a few of these sub-forms within "art comics" here on this blog: the Fort Thunder derived style I related to "Stupidism" and the "Abstract Comics" group coalescing around Andrei Molotiu are relatively recent examples, but there are plenty of others - artists working with a more literary sensibility for example, like Jessica Abel, autobiographical cartoonists like Joe Matt, surrealist cartoonists like Hans Rickheit, and so on. To me, the interesting point is that none of these new movements ever really replaces anything older - they just keep multiplying, as though they were born pregnant like Tribbles.

This has obvious ramifications for disseminating one's work: audiences shrink as choices grow. The 1980's "ground level" comics model that allowed Dave Sim to make a decent living selling 30,000 copies of Cerebus the Aadrvark was already a profound recalibration downward of what it used to take to be considered a success in comics. But nowadays artists are aspiring (!) to models like "1000 True Fans" which wouldn't come close to covering Dave's limousine bills.

(Dave Sim)

As we slip below 1000 copies of anything, the economics of manufacturing and distributing these things (whether it's floppies, graphic novels, CD's, whatever) stop making sense. Of course, this is a moot point if all of these forms are able to migrate to the web for iTunes-style digital distribution, but the relative ease of entry that this entails poses an even greater problem for artists. Once everyone can live out their dreams of alt-cartooning without the bottlenecks of printing costs and disinterested distributors the amount of work available for sale (or for free) becomes truly mind-boggling - and audiences start getting really, really tiny. I recently read an estimate that 90% of the songs available for sale on the web don't sell even once in any given year. A year between sales is a long time even for the Long Tail.

Where does this trend lead? Do "art comics" differentiate into hundreds of mini-styles, each with audiences in the dozens? I don't know, but I think I see an interesting counter-trend: art forms like music, comics and literature that until now have relied almost entirely on "multiple" forms of reproduction have started to market "authentic" objects at much higher prices. One recent strategy in the music business has been to release extremely elaborate boxed sets of an artist's complete work, with lots of art prints, replicas of old tour swag, and other such tchotchkes.

(Image grab from http://bitstream.soundandvisionmag.com/blog/pearl-jam/)

In "art comics", we're seeing something similar with publishers like Picture Box offering free art prints or even original drawings to help sell their books - to say nothing of the recent practice of producing books of comics that seem designed more for art museum gift shops than comic book stores:

(Kramers Ergot publisher Alvin Buenaventura with a copy of volume 7)

Whether these contortions will do anything to staunch the long-term trend is uncertain (I'm dubious), but the trend itself - an increase in the number of artists and art forms coupled with the increasing fragmentation of their audiences - is clear everywhere you look. Its ultimate impact even has a catchphrase: "the death of the professional".

For "art comics" artists the idea of being a "professional" probably already sounds awfully foreign (this is a milieu where "careerist" gets used as an epithet - just ask David Heatley) but let's face it: wanting an audience is at the very heart of making art, the occasional hermit notwithstanding. My sinking feeling is that the modest pool of readers the "direct market" offered to a few hundred "art comics" artists may start to look like a mass market by comparison once thousands or tens of thousands of us are trying to sell downloads on the Net.

Baby and Bathwater, over "The Bridge"

2009-08-06T01:40:00.052-04:00

Frank Santoro's essay "The Bridge is Over" on the ComicsComics blog has really hit me hard. Jeezus I feel old. Or odd. I'm not sure which - probably both.

In the course of an analysis of the Direct Market 2009 and what he perceives as a rupture between an alternative audience and a mainstream audience, Santoro identifies something that strikes me as more significant - a generational divide in the larger comics audience, between those with a connection to comics history (ostensibly older readers) and those without (a new generation raised in an era of alternative plenty). More to the point, he extends that split to creators as well. Anyway-don't take my word for it, go read the essay (if you haven't already).

The comments around Santoro's post tend toward the economic rather than aesthetic, which is fine. Personally, I'm happy to buy my comics in whatever venue and form I find them in, which here in upstate NY tends to be online and as graphic novel or trade collection. I'm afraid I don't follow a lot of current mainstream, and so I don't much miss pamphlets (except when I'm feeling nostalgic -- and despite a great love of the form). Where I'm going to sell my work in the future-is an entirely different concern - and fuel for another post.

Nevertheless, it is the aesthetic, theoretical and historical aspects of "The Bridge" that are of interest to me. And I am troubled -- or perhaps simply disaffected. Not because there is a new model, or as Santoro puts it, comics creators unencumbered by mainstream comics history and tradition are"grafting" new techniques and traditions onto the larger"tree" that is comics. "Grafting" is part of the creative process - and I hope that those "alternative" traditions are as diverse and fruitful (ha!) as can be.

But I'm not an advocate of willful ignorance, or disdain for history or tradition simply for the sake of the new and novel (nor am I suggesting that Frank Santoro is - he's a well known devotee of comics history and he assumes the identity of "Watcher" in this essay). I'm not an advocate for the rejection of genre simply because it is genre - the rejection of stylistic choices and subjects that are bound to tradition. It smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water, or, if you will, over the bridge, the result being the imposition or embrace of a creative limitation.

Now - Santoro's observation is not definitive, I'm not aware of any data-based research into the subject, and I'm sure there are alt-comics fans and creators of the "new generation" as tied to history as any of us geezers. But from behind the convention table, at SPX or MoCCA - one bears witness to the essential "rightness" of his supposition. (I say this as one whose books are steeped in genre and tradition.)

Years ago, I was a student in the class of a well-known art-critic who was speaking of the recent work of a contemporary photographer , much of which featured the use of mannequins. In discussions with her, he was dismayed to find out that she had no knowledge of the work of Hans Bellmer, nor did she express any interest. She didn't want to be burdened by too much history-it might freeze her creativity. In the critic's view, this weakened her work and her standing as an artist. His words have stayed with me-

"It's her job to know--her responsibility."

The lesson was- that awareness of history informs the work, broadens its scope -- it doesn't limit it. And if you want to be a world-class artist you have to engage it.

Now that's not the reason for the split Santoro identifies, the disregard for (mainstream) comics history that he speaks of springs from a different set of conditions - but the result is the same. Work that is less informed. Less interesting. Less a participant in the generations long conversation that is art.

The rupture between mainstream and alternative, the shift in the audience, the "grafting" that Santoro speaks to - may also be related to another shift-- among creators-- which I'm not sure anyone has as yet catalogued to any great degree. From the first generations of urban, working-class, self-taught, immigrants practicing the craft, to art-school trained/University educated BFA's, MFA's, and dropouts of the last 10-15 years, that shift has resulted in numerous changes to the ways in which (some) comics are perceived, packaged and understood. Attendant with that is a move towards cultural legitimacy, a standing previously unavailable to the "degenerate"medium assailed by Frederic Wertham.

I admit, I haven't given it a great deal of thought myself - but if I am to consider it, I know that art-school culture is a very different environment than the Eisner-Iger studios. And the comics produced are likely to be very different.

There are plenty of contemporary art surveys taught at University level, there are few examinations of comics history. There are plenty of classes in which one learns to draw from life, but few where one learns to spot blacks. In the first year of art school, freshman students, the "class artists" in high school because they could draw manga and Disney characters, take foundation classes wherein they learn to disavow the "slick" techniques they've practiced and admired for years.

Do these circumstances contribute to the rupture Santoro has identified? I don't know-I'm just hypothesising. It's not a negative for young art students and cartoonists/comics creators to be exposed to a variety of visual experiences and approaches-far from it. But there does exist the potential - for the establishment of a mindset that encourages distance from comics tradition and craft, and fuels the outright rejection of popular models of the form - i.e the super-hero.

It's not that corporate entities and their representatives haven't contributed to the degeneration of the super-hero themselves. They've done what they can to speed disaffection among readers. But the end result has been the de-legitimization of (mainstream) comics, of the super-hero in particular, at a time in which comics are taken more seriously than ever. And the young creators Frank Santoro encounters can't perceive the beauty of a page from a "Spider-Man" comic-simply because it is Spider-Man.

One last anecdote (I promise - no more, at least in this post). In art-school, one of my first painting classes -- I brought in a large piece for the critique.

My instructor frowned at it, dismissing it thusly:

"...it looks like a cartoon..."

image: Superman #15; copyright DC Comics/Warner Bros. 2009

Postmodernism Reflux

2009-07-30T21:06:00.003-04:00

Geoff's last post speaks to the difficulty of applying (let alone agreeing on) a definition of Modernism to comics. Add in the complicating factor of the shift to Postmodernism and you've got Hobbes by the tail. I think that the problem with this discussion is that comics produced during the heyday of Modernism were still almost entirely a popular ("low") form. Other, older media - the novel for example - already had a well developed spectrum of production ranging from popular (pulp magazines) to modernist/experimental (the Bloomsbury Group) - and it's the latter type of work which the particular definitions of Modernism getting discussed in the last thread were developed for.

So - instead of weighing in on Geoff and Andrei's back-and-forth about the Ur-text of Modernist comics, I'm going to take my cue from commenter Jason Ramos and look at the larger picture historically and structurally - to try and articulate definitions of Modernism/Postmodernism broad enough to apply to early comics as well as other media.

(Occasionally I'm going to make use of a pair of loaded terms: "high" and "low" culture. I don't mean these in the irritating heirarchical sense of "high" being better than "low" (I tend to like the "low" stuff myself - just ask my wife) but I'm using them anyway because of their handy old Modernist associations: with experimentally inclined artists working for a smaller, critically engaged audience on the one hand ("high") and craft oriented artists working for a larger audience disinterested in experiment ("low") on the other. Please bear in mind that it's just for the sake of convenience. Agreed? Okay, here goes:)

From a very broad perspective, Modernism seems to me to be mostly about the technologically-driven erosion of geographically-based difference. The rise of industrialization demanded the rise of standardization, so that widgets produced in Birmingham would be interchangeable with widgets produced in Chicago. This also applied to labor - instead of extended families rooted to local village traditions of craft, Modernity wanted the "nuclear" family, headed by an "individual" worker who could be shuttled from place to place as capital dictated.

At the same time, new communication technologies were making the rise of national and international popular culture possible for the first time. Decoration and embellishment were stripped away so things could be mass produced and as cheap as possible. For instance, by midcentury people had so many clothes that for the first time most new homes included closets to put them in (too late for my World War I row house in Jersey, sadly). The high water mark for this process was sometime in the 50's/60's, when it seemed for a while as though the whole world would be speaking English, watching Milton Berle on television, and eating McDonald's hamburgers.

(images collected by Roadsidepictures)

Then, to just about everyone's surprise, it all started to shatter. New differences appeared, but this time they weren't based on geography. Instead, they resulted from overproduction: once industrial abstraction had triumphantly delivered TV sets and too much food into every home in the western world, new indiosyncracies could (had to) emerge. Three TV networks became three hundred channels, and eventually three million websites. Rock music became punk, heavy metal, prog, emo and on and on. Coca-Cola became New Coke, and Coke Classic, and then Diet Cherry Caffeine-Free Crystal Coke - you get the idea.

None of these new micro forms ever seems to go away - they just splinter into tinier and tinier sub-genres, each with its own increasingly narrow demographic. That's Postmodernism in its broadest sense - the abandonment of the single abstract Truth around which we could all rally (or be herded) in favor of millions of lifestyles we can mix and match. Instead of being defined by your town or neighborhood as in premodernity, or belonging to a global monoculture as in moderism, postmodernity allows us to form borderless tribes - the Goth kid from Montreal recognizes his tribemates in San Francisco without ever having been there before.

(Bangkok punk gig. Image by Cedric Arnold)

Mostly this is a familiar point: trends in culture are driven by trends in technology and economics. But these forces express themselves differently in different media: in architecture and industrial design it's easy to see how a loss of ornamentation could be driven by a need for standardization, but in visual art it's more complicated. Painting was forced into abstraction by the invention of photography - it had to reinvent itself once its traditional role as the recorder of visual reality was usurped. Comics, as Jason Ramos points out, are themselves the product of a typically Modernist set of technologies of mass reproduction and had no need to reinvent themselves until television starting killing their market.

So does that make early-to-mid 20th century comics Modernist? In the broad sense I described above - sure, why not... they mass produced 'em, right? Are they Postmodernist now? In that same sense, yes - the million selling pop comics of 1950 (see: Walt Disney's Comics and Stories) have been reduced to the 100,000 selling "fanboy" comics of today. Moving down the spectrum of popularity, hundreds (thousands?) of increasingly niche-y titles are produced for ever smaller audiences connected not by geography but through comic book shops and websites (and blogs).

But this hardly satisfies the problem of relating comics - especially "art comics" - to trends in "high" culture. Prior to the 1960's, comics had genres like the rest of mass culture but not yet a real axis of "high" to "low". Suppose painting never had an avant garde, only a populist mainstream. Was Norman Rockwell more "abstract" than Howard Pyle? Does it really matter?

(top image by Howard Pyle, bottom image by Norman Rockwell)

Only after "underground" comics emerged - right as Modernism ruptured! - and provided American comics with its first deep break from mainstream populism did these questions start to make sense. That break multiplied in a typically Postmodern way: underground comics begat "ground level" comics and "art comics" and "indie comics" and "literary comics" and "abstract comics" and on and on. These forms, produced in the context of a real engagement with "high" culture, finally bear direct comparison with it.

So, when Andrei (Molotiu) says, in one of his comments on Geoff's first post:

"The problem is that from the chronological standpoint that sees modernism as somehow surpassed by postmodernism, my own interest--abstract comics--could be seen as old hat. I don't think it is (obviously!), but I also don't think it could comfortably fit into a specific pomo section of art history..."

-- I think he has nothing to worry about. Abstract comics are entirely Postmodern in a way that abstract painting - because of its history - never could be.

Modernism redux

2009-07-27T23:10:00.022-04:00

In last Sunday's NYTimesBookReview, Douglas Wolk opens his review of David Mazzuchelli's Asterios Polyp with the following assertion:

"Modernism came late to comics."

A convenient opening line for an examination of a book Wolk describes as "formalist to its core", but a declaration so final that it stopped me in my reading, and ever since, in my idle moments- brushing my teeth, waiting for the kettle to boil, standing at the urinal-I've been trying to compose a list of "modernist" comics. Ok, not a great imagination, I admit, but then, there it is.

Now, this is, of course, in light of my exchange with Andrei last week, after which I also find myself asking (myself, mostly) what the hell is modernism, exactly? (and this is after umpteen zillion years in art school, two master's degrees, thousands of dollars in student loans, teaching, tenure, the whole shebang) So I looked to Mr. Wolk for some assistance-and he throws us a few lines suggesting his definition:

"..style as content..."

and

"...formal and stylistic exploration the chief focus of ... work..."

Ok-I'm not going to make too much of that--it's only a book review for gosh sakes, conciseness is indeed an art, and well, ok,---it'll do for the moment. But--that does seem to characterize an awful lot of stuff--doesn't it? comics included? Old and new?

Okok---it's overly broad. Let's try and focus, narrow our definition a bit---Modernism is a term that can be applied to a specific historical period, correct? Perhaps we can identify a period and comics produced in that period--but wait...there is the argument that Modernism has not ended, that it continues into the present, and...

Screw it.

I don't know what it is. But like pornography, I know it when I see it. How's that?So, Modernist comics? Well---sure. Three guesses the first one on the list.and if you don't get it- you have to go back and read my first post and all the comments again, so there.

C'mon--speak up, don't be shy---

you got it!-the one with the Kat, the Pup and the mouse-what the hell is his name? Oh yeh, Irwin-or Ipschwitz or something like that.

Now-why is it Modernist? hmmm--well, (nevermind that I don't know what "modern" with or without the "ist" ...or "ism" ...is(m)) uhm--cos it's got all those "art deco" patterns and stuff, and the mouse keeps hitting the Kat on the head with the brick. and the backgrounds change. when they aren't going anywhere. awesome! that is soo cool. I wish that happened in real life.

Ok--now we're getting somewhere.

Second on the list: this one is harder.

Uhmmm... I give up. Do they have to come in any specific order, or can I just make 'em up as I go?

doesn't matter-as long as you've got the one with the Kat and Pup and Mouse it doesn't matter what the hell else you say--you can make 'em all fit.

Ok then--what about the one with the kid and the dreams? the "Nemo" one? Nice lines. great buildings. awesome dreams. Can't read it for shit. But pretty awesome anyway. Oh--but wait. Modernism is flat. that's one thing--it's definitely flat. Ask Mondrian. and that other guy--Malevich? No--Clem. Clem Greenberg. He knows. (big comics fan)

Ok-so we figure out it's flat---no windows! No picture windows like Raphael or those guys--so "Nemo"? lotsa space-lotsa buildings in space. But

it's not like...real space...it's like picture space. Like dream space. Like a space that's conscious of itself being a picture space-it's not trying to be a real space-so because it's obviously an illusion of an illusionistic space it's a 2-d space--and therefore a flat space and so therefore a modernist comic. AND therefore I win a million bucks just because I said so. Excellent.

This is an excellent list.

What is number three? (We will stop at number three because three is a good number and because.)

this is the toughest one of all.

It is the toughest one because I can't remember any other comics right now. I wish I had a book. A book with a list of comics. What about the one with the kid with the round head and the dog with the bulb-ish nose? that's pretty flat. And it repeats --kites and footballs and baseballs and doghouses and vultures and things--and...(yeh-repeats--and repeating--that's modernist. I say so so you'd better believe it. believe it. believe it. believe it. a rose is arose isarose) no? too easy? Ok-what about the caveman? Before he got all religious. That's pretty flat--

or wait!!---the philosopher kid and the tiger.-- I love that one!

Uhuh--nope. Not flat. and definitely space --altho' it is a space that is not a "real" space --it's an imagined space that they know and we know is an imagined space-a space in a comic strip and definitely a comic strip that is aware that it is a comic strip and aware that you are aware that you are reading a comic strip about a comic strip boy and his comic strip tiger named after philosphers.

What do we call that?

I couldn't begin to guess.

*(consciousness is indeed an art)

and Speaking of Apollo...

2009-07-24T11:57:00.004-04:00

I think Geoff hits several nails on the head with his first post, which might as well serve as a manifesto for this blog. There does seem to be a dawning recognition that the dominant model for "art comics" is too straightjacketed, but even when when this is explicitly discussed it's striking how close to the expressionist/symbolist/romantic pole everyone sticks:

(image captures from comicscomicsmag.blogspot.com)

Given this, I want to expand on Geoff's comment about the "few exceptions" he sees to the reliance on notably older modes of art in art comics by looking at some artists who venture farther afield and which directions they take.

When I was in art school (this was in the early 1980's) we used to throw around various glib ways to categorize art, mostly as a way to get our own bearings and reassure ourselves that we had a handle on all this weird shit. One term we liked was "stupidism": a type of art characterized by bright colors, "looseness" in execution, obsessive patterning and repetition, and childish (or infantile) subject matter often drawn from pop culture.

Stupidism as we defined it was very countercultural and opposed mainstream art dogmas like formalist abstraction, minimalism, conceptualism, and postmodern "critical theory" in general. Chicago's "Hairy Who" were the only artists we applied the label to that made much of a splash, but it seemed like every art school in the 80's harbored some young guys attracted to this style - usually they smoked a lot of pot and skateboarded in the parking lot.

The reason I bring this label up is that most of the few "art comics" I've seen that bear a clear relationship to contemporary, postwar art - Paper Rad, CF, Matthew Thurber, Brian Chippendale and so on - strike me as "Stupidist".

(image by Matthew Thurber)

(image by Paper Rad)

(image by Brian Chippendale)

These cartoonists belong to a broader generation of artists who came up in the 90's and reacted against the triumph of the "Pictures Generation" brand of 70's/80's conceptualism. It's a large and interesting group - I guess you could include Raymond Pettibon in there as an early member, and "Beautiful Losers" like Chris Johanson, and my fellow ex-Winnipegger Marcel Dzama, and hundreds of others.

On the whole, these artists are clearly much less interested in the sort of systematic "readings" the Pictures Generation artists (Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger, etc) brought to bear on art and all its academic reliance on poststructuralism and related critical theories.

(sculpture by Sherrie Levine)

(image by Richard Prince)

(image by Barbara Kruger)

I'm on board as far as all that goes. I've always felt that the rise of "critical theory" was made possible by a weakness in art at the time: theory should be chasing after the work, trying to catch up and describe it - not serving as art's basis. And I've always enjoyed a lot of this type of "anti-intellectual" work - up to a point. It's just that all its avoidance of logic and rigor and coherence can start to make for pretty thin gruel after a while. As someone (I think it was artist/critic Doug Harvey - something of a Stupidist himself) said: "once you've seen 10,000 Raymond Pettibon drawings, you've seen them all".

(Raymond Pettibon at work)

At any rate, my point is not to critique the relative merits of these styles - it's to emphasize their relationship to that expressionist/symbolist/romantic pole that Geoff brought up. The art - and the comics - coming out of this group is overwhelmingly oriented towards what Kenneth Clark, way back in the day, used to call the "Dionysian" side of art.

This is half of the old split that always gets made between the two supposed main currents of culture, the other being "Apollonian" (other distillations of this same dichotomy get played up too: expressionist/conceptualist and romantic/classic for example). The Dionysian side of culture is seen as dark, raw and primitive, while the Apollonian side is said to be light, ordered and civilized.

In art as a whole, these two poles act as the extremes between which the zeitgeist tends to swing, but in comics - especially "art comics" - the Apollonian side is little in evidence. Without wanting to advocate for one deity or the other (honestly! I like both), I think it's fair to argue the creative benefits of a little balance. So - just for balance - here are a few examples of comics artists working the other side of the fence, with nary an emotional outburst, a lurid color or an expressive mark between them:

(image by Icecreamlandia)

(image by Paul Dwyer)

(image by Ethan Persoff)

Art Comics Supreme!

2009-07-22T00:20:00.007-04:00

For all of the promise of daring and innovation implied by the sobriquet "art"comics (as its been applied to a handful of comics creators and publishers in recent years), anyone familiar with developments in contemporary art of the last 60 years and undertaking a sampling of recent "art comics" must surely feel as though they've unearthed a time capsule from an era pre-1960, if not pre-WWII. For with few exceptions, the dominant visual modes seem to be stuck in some version of the modernist-past, and a relatively distant past at that. Jumping into the art comics scene today is rather like finding oneself transported to a moment where expressionism and surrealism were still radical and new.

There is, across the spectrum of contemporary(post-Ware) art-comics, particularly American art-comics, the preponderance of a pre-WWII aesthetic characterized most blatantly by a naive primitivism rooted in expressionist and symbolist models.
If these sources seem a bit distant, a more contemporary touchstone can be found in Neo-Expressionist painting from the 1980's; Basquiat, Guston and Baselitz as distilled through the work of cartoonist/painter Gary Panter. Even so, the sardonic stance of Neo-Expressionist image -making is all but absent from contemporary art-comics, steeped (as some are) in an affected fin-de-siecle innocence and signaling a closer connection to the earnestness of late 19th century/early 20th century sources rather than the irony-infused post-modernism of the current day and age. While there are would-be Munchs, Redons and Dargers at work in contemporary art comics, at present there doesn't yet seem to be a Cindy Sherman, an Andy Warhol, a Jeff Koons or even a Takashi Murakami.

Given the peculiar history of comics in the United States, the oppressive nature of the comics code authority,the resultant infantilazation and denigration of the art-form, it's not surprising that a reactionary expressionism would rise in response to the highly polished illustration that currently dominates the major outlets for the form. As the avant-garde of the modernist era took a position in opposition to academic standards and bourgeois tastes of the day, so too does the comics "avant-garde" situate itself in opposition to the restrictions of the mainstream--(in visualizations, high-polish has been replaced with improvisatory expressionism; in narrative, melodrama has given way to the memoir; in packaging, the slickness of corporate mass-production has been replaced with the preciousness of the hand-bound, limited -edition mini-comic)-- a strategy useful for a young movement seeking to define itself to the broader culture at large.
Yet it is also a strategy mired in the past, for in a post-modern world(or post-post-modern as it may be) alienation from the culture is both the norm and an impossibility, and the avant-garde a shibboleth. Like it or not, nearly half-a- century later we still live in Andy Warhol's world.

So a reactionary primitivism, celebrated in some circles as the vanguard of the progressive comics movement-is actually its opposite, a conservative and regressive approach to art-making, disdainful( or oblivious) of the cultural shift from modern to post-modern, from alienation to assimilation.
What then would a truly contemporary art-comics movement consist of ?
In contemporary art, the dominant conceptual strategies of the last 40 years have been Duchamp-ian in origin: appropriation, pastiche and the disruption/exploitation of context . From Warhol to Johns to Basquiat to Barney to Hirst...on and on.
Examples of these contemporary strategies exist within comics-but oddly enough they're as likely to be found in the mainstream as anywhere else. Alan Moore, in particular, has been responsible for a number of works that are uniquely post-modern: his pastiche of the Superman mythos in "Supreme" ; the appropriation and re-definition of classic literary heroes in " The League of Extraordinary Gentleman"; the re-contextualization of pulp adventure in "Tom Strong" and the re-creation of the "historical" past in "From Hell" are all post-modern in their conceptualization and execution. That is to say they are works aware of their context and conceptualization-they explore fiction as a construct , not as a reality, and the comic book as context, not "universe"- inviting their audience to do the same. The concept behind each is at least as important as its execution.
Even "Lost Girls", which is a deconstruction of the erotic mode as art more than an actual work of pornography, is totally post-modern in its construction. In very concrete ways, Moore's work is a good deal more in tune with contemporary art and literature and therefore more progressive in its nature than a good many art comics of the recent past.

Among creators who continue to work along these lines, Seth and Darwyn Cooke have produced artfully post-modern works of depth and sophistication that do not resort to primitivism in order to distinguish themselves. More importantly (from a post-modern perspective) they don't differentiate between "art" and comics. The rejection of the more traditional or "professional" elements of craft (for ex: panel borders, de-personalized lettering) by some creators working within the new tradition implies a distinction between low-art and high art, the re-establishment of old hierarchies between popular culture and fine art. As though Greenberg's high-brow modernist culture had never been supplanted by Danto's pluralism.

The suggestion is then that for those of us engaged in the making of "art comics"- there is much to be gained via the embrace (and appropriation) of popular comics' idioms and genres-via the exploration of a broad array of mediums, techniques and conceptualizations- -and a good deal lost in reactionary posturing.

images: C.F. "Powr Mastrs vol. 1"Picturebox c. 2007; Cindy Sherman; Untitled Film Still, 1978. Alan Moore and Jerry Ordway; "Supreme", Image Comics.

all images copyrights to the respective copyright holders.

Welcome

2009-07-21T14:26:00.000-04:00

Welcome to "Next Issue!" a place for the discussion of comics, art and ideas - in particular the ways in which comics and art weave in and out of larger cultural trends and contexts. This is not a review site - in the usual sense of the term. Criticism will naturally play a role in the discussion, but rather than critiquing specific books and their creators (there are plenty of excellent review sites for that) we'll be focussing on broader issues and ideas relating to works (new or old) that we are seeing, reading or otherwise encountering - with the intent of initiating critical dialogue.

We're hoping "Next Issue" will be a forum to turn ideas around, look them over, and consider them from different points of view. A place to argue a position - a place for debate. So please feel free to agree or disagree - and to offer your thoughts. Consensus is not necessary - or even desirable. But interesting and provocative dialogue is.

We're your hosts: Geoff Grogan-artist, creator and self-publisher of Look Out! Monsters, an over-size Xeric-winning collage comic, and Kevin Mutch, comics creator, painter, and co-editor/publisher of Blurred Vision, an anthology of experimental and alternative comics.

We'll be following a format in which one of us offers an opinion piece and the other responds -- and after the inital volley we'll open the discussion up to interested commentary. Please join us - it promises to be an engaging discussion!