Friday, December 18, 2015

Elsa



Murió Elsa, allá en el ya lejano 21 de junio del año que ahora termina. Recién ahora me entero, pero bueno, lo que verdaderamente importa es que me viene a la memoria la única vez que la vi. Fue en Amadora, cuando conocí a sus nietos Martín y Fernando y, momento inolvidable, me presentaron a Elsa. Lo que en la ocasión le dije, lo que pude decirle por entre la emoción en un balbuceo fue "es un honor". Y sí que lo fue, y sí que lo es, uno de los más grandes de mi vida.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Hector Germán Oesterheld's and Francisco Solano Lopéz's The Eternaut


Hector Germán Oesterheld (w), Francisco Solano Lopéz (a), The Eternaut, Fantagraphics Books, November 23, 2015 [Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 1, Editorial Frontera, September 4, 1957 - Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 106, September 9, 1959.] 

Fantagraphics will [...] reprint the series for the first time in English  (translated as The EterNOnaut because as Eternaut it sounds like "Eat her not"). 
Diego Cordoba on this Blog, December 5, 2014.
Oesterheld's work will never be published in any English speaking country.
Yours truly on this very blog on August 31, 2014.
Both quotes above are wrong, as you can see above. Kudos to Fanta! Now, if they only published Oesterheld's and Solano's masterpiece Amapola Negra - "Black Poppy"! That would be truly amazing...

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Ed Brubaker


Ed Brubaker (w), Stefano Gaudiano (a), "Here and Now," Dark Horse Presents # 96, April 1995.

Digging through my comics collection I stumbled upon the above anthology with the first installment of a story I remember loving twenty years ago... ...and then it hit me: there's no Ed Brubaker in my comics canon! How is that even possible? What a blunder!...

Well, that's corrected now. I don't remember a thing, really, but I'm confident enough to include "Here and Now" and An Accidental Death in my first post (the latter was also serialized in Dark Horse Presents, # 65 - 67 - August - November 1992, to be exact, being compiled later by Fantagraphics Books - see below). 

I followed Ed Brubaker's career since his Lowlife days until his noirish, mainstreamy collections Criminal 1 - 5 and 6 - 10, 2007. It's true that he was a mediocre draftsman, but he was (is?) a brilliant writer.

If you can tell me what's Ed been doing since then, please don't hesitate and do.


Ed Brubaker (w), Eric Shanower (a), An Accidental Death, Fantagraphics Books, December 1993.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Nosotros somos los muertos #1


Francesc  Capdevila (Max), Nosotros somos los muertos # 1, May 1995.

It was twenty years ago already. Max's Nosotros somos los muertos anthology started a fifteen issue run after a number 0 two years before. The issue included some of the best Spanish comics (Arnal Ballester, Max, Pere Joan, Micharmut, Gallardo) joined by a couple of great authors from Germany (Hendrik Dorgathen and Anke Feuchtenberger) and Italy's Lorenzo Mattotti. 

As you can see below Max was also part of the great Drawn & Quarterly adventure. Read about it here.


Francesc Capdevila (Max), Drawn & Quarterly Vol. 2 # 6, June 1997.

By the way: Matthias agrees with me: the nineties were special. I even idealized a book titled 1996 (the greatest year in comics history).

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Chris Oliveros - Coda

The Pompidou Centre in Paris published online (and accessible to everyone) a sociological study about comics readers. (As an aside, the cover reminds the old Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales whose managing editor was Pierre Bourdieu. Powerful icons can't be escaped, I guess...)

This data is not about North America, but to prove my pessimistic views on these matters I'll post below some charts extracted from said study.


Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 19.

As you can see above comics readers are decreasing. Not surprisingly the chart also confirms the stereotype that women don't read comics.


Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 29.

As for women's comics reading habits the chart above shows that there are only four genres that women read more than men. Two of said genres, autobio and reportage, are almost the only ones that interest The Crib. (This means that, ideally, I would be blogging at least for 50% women and 50% men. The reason I think this doesn't happen is because women tend to be less involved in the comics community, whatever that is...) Anyway, in view of the reading habits indicated above Christophe Evans titled one of his chapters thus: "Le roman graphique: une catégorie féminine?" [graphic novels: a women's genre?]

The data would be different in North America because super-heroes would most certainly be over represented.



Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 40.

The above chart shows how few comics readers read graphic novels in comparison with the number of comics readers who read trash.


Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 41.

How many, you ask? Well exactly 93 % read trash and 7% read graphic novels. If we subtract the number of readers who read trashy graphic novels (even if the enquirers were careful enough to avoid mixing graphic novels with formulaic genre; see also note 4) we know for certain that comics continues to be mostly trash culture.

Quelle culture? Well, now you know.

Note 1: thanks to Jean-Paul Gabilliet for calling my attention to this publication.

Note 2: as Christophe Evans says himself Jiro Taniguchi's books should be under "Graphic Novels" instead of being under "Manga."

Note 3: speaking of which I continue to be baffled by the use of the Japanese word. I can't imagine a academic essay in English about Munch talking about "maleri" instead of "painting."

Note 4: here's what Chistophe Evans says on page 29 of La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? (my translation):
En effet, il y a fort à parier – malheureusement, cette enquête ne permet pas de le vérifier – que les reportages dessinés autobiographiques d’un auteur tel que Guy Delisle plaisent aux femmes. [In fact, I bet - unfortunately, this inquiry doesn't allow a confirmation - that women like drawn autobiographical reportages like Guy Delisle's.]
If Christophe is right that's exactly what I mean by mediocre graphic novels.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Chris Oliveros

Here's what Chris Oliveros had to say 25 years ago. Unfortunately things didn't improve much a quarter of a century later.


Chris Oliveros, Drawn & Quarterly # 1, Spring 1990.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Harvey Pekar

I'm revisiting a few of Harvey Pekar's short stories (forget his so-called graphic novels). In my next post I intend to think about comics using one of his stories as a pretext. For now enjoy this interview of the author in his later years (you can watch Pekar's appearances in David Letterman's Late Show online, but don't bother...).



Friday, September 4, 2015

Feliz Día de la Historieta!



Carlos Trillo (g), Alberto Breccia (d), "El hombre de azul", Skorpio Gran Color # 58, diciembre de 1979.

Hoy se celebra el Día de la Historieta en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (Capital Federal) y en toda Argentina.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Ana Hatherly - Coda

Neste tema com duas variações Ana Hatherly, a poeta-pintora, como alguém a cognomizou, demonstrou mais uma vez que o espaço da página como lugar expressivo e construtivo, no seguimento dos exemplos modernistas pioneiros de Mallarmé e Apollinaire, nunca deixou o seu espírito. É este aspecto da poesia visual, movimento em que foi um dos principais expoentes, que aproxima o trabalho de Ana Hatherly da banda desenhada, arte da palavra escrita e da expressão visual por excelência (sem essencialismos bacocos, evidentemente, antes com laivos barrocos, ou não fosse Ana Hatherly a maior especialista das visualidades escritas barrocas em Portugal). De notar que o "mote", por assim dizer, tem apenas uma tímida nota espacial no final e que as "variações" se abalançam decididamente no caminho experimental (a referência a "Il pleut", de Apollinaire, é clara). É como se Ana Hatherly descrevesse, em microcosmos, um dos caminhos mais ricos da poesia europeia (e não só, quando tudo se tornou global) desde os simbolistas aos poetas visuais e concretos.

O tom elegíaco do poema pretende, evidentemente, ser uma homenagem à memória de Ana Hatherly.



Ana Hatherly, Rilkeana, Assírio e Alvim, 1999.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Ana Hatherly



Ana Alves aka Ana Hatherly. Photo undated and uncredited.

Another artist in The Crib's pantheon died yesterday: Ana Hatherly. I wrote about her work (which I included in the expanded field of comics) here and here.

Today I just want to post part of Ana Hatherly's introduction to her TV show Obrigatório Não Ver [forbidden to watch] aired October 22, 1978, in Portugal's public TV, RTP [Portuguese Radio and Television]. What Ana Hatherly calls "vanguard art" we call today "contemporary art" (my translation):
Good evening dear viewers: this show is titled Obrigatório Não Ver. Said title, given by Jorge Listopad, who is at the head of the RTP's Department of Cultural Programming, was dubbed by the press as one of the most unfortunate in the current programming.
I would agree with this opinion if this wasn't, as it is, a show about vanguard art. What happens is that this title, deliberately or not, illustrates a more or less generalized attitude of the public towards vanguard art. An attitude that is founded in the ignorance of what is refused and self-indulgently based on the law of the lesser effort, because any knowledge, any new knowledge, demands a will to learn and, above all, persistence and effort.
This effort, in the field of the arts, is particularly real in vanguard art's case because of its excessive nowness. I mean, because the vanguard implies an immediate experience of our time's reality it doesn't allow the less trained the retreat that, for instance, the art of other times permits.
This is just one aspect - because there are others - but it allows us to mention what, in part unintentionally, the title of this show suggests: I mean, that what's nearer is what's more difficult to see, or, in other words, that nothing is more difficult to see than what's constantly in front of us.
Add to that a huge bias and apply the above words to the situation of the art form of comics.  (And I mean "the art form", not "the entertainment industry.")

  



Luís Alves de Matos, Ana Hatherly - The Intelligent Hand (trailer), 2002.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Captivant de Chaland Cornillon Por Paulo Pereira - Coda

Elogiei Paulo Pereira no meu último post, mas em texto do mesmo sobre Hergé no Expresso, Revista de 2 de julho de 1988 este demonstra ter o sentido crítico atraiçoado pelo seu tintinofilismo; nada mais mortal para o crítico do que o embotamento provocado pelo fanatismo. Referi que nada tinha a ver com o gosto convencional franco-belga de Paulo Pereira, mas noutros textos sobre Bilal e Moebius / Charlier esse seu gosto não o impediu de referir as fraquezas das obras que analisou. Por isso o admiro. Aqui, não. O sortilégio da obra de Hergé demonstra ser demasiado poderoso. Não encontramos neste texto uma palavra sobre o racismo chocante de Tintin no Congo, álbum apelidado de "clássico". Onde estão agora as referências ao colonialismo da banda desenhada infantil tradicional, tão ligeiramente aplicadas a O Cavaleiro Andante e a O Papagaio? (Neste último caso seria o colonialismo de "Tintin em Angola"?) Não encontramos uma palavra sobre as razões (colaboracionismo) que levaram Hergé a "desaparecer" no lago Leman (como é referido).

Mas este meu novo post tem outro intuito. A verdade é que depois de lamentar a ausência de crítica de banda desenhada no jornal Expresso, por ironia resulta que o Expresso desta semana (revista E de 1 de Agosto de 2015) tem precisamente um texto crítico sobre O Árabe do Futuro de Riad Sattouf (Teorema, 2015). Não tenho grande coisa a comentar sobre o texto de José Mário Silva ("Entre ouro e lama") até porque não li o livro. Mais do que um texto crítico é de uma resenha que se trata. Atente-se, no entanto, no final do texto, citado abaixo, e observe-se a imagem (66).
Se [Riad Sattouf] mantiver a qualidade gráfica (linha clara, pranchas densas), a escrita precisa e o humor cáustico, merecerá sem dúvida a atenção de um círculo de leitores mais vasto do que o habitual público consumidor de banda desenhada.

Desde Töpffer, pelo menos, que há uma grande tradição do uso da caricatura na banda desenhada. Tanto é assim que para muitos banda desenhada e caricatura é quase o mesmo. No já longinquo ano de 2009 escrevi sobre tudo isto e não vou agora repetir-me. Direi apenas que essa ligação é circunstancial e que não importa o estilo em que se desenhe (ou pinte, ou fotografe, porque não?) desde que esse estilo seja adequado ao que se pretende transmitir. Ora, não é o que se passa acima. Repito que não li o livro e não sei o papel que o humor cáustico ou não tem na história, mas basta-me a seguinte descrição de José Mário Silva: "[Riad Sattouf é] capaz de saltar de um episódio cómico [...] para outro de inaudita brutalidade (os pés dos enforcados em plena rua, escorrendo água durante uma bátega)" para dizer que algo está profundamente errado aqui. Chris Ware disse que, e faço uma paráfrase, autores como ele estavam a tentar contar histórias potentes com instrumentos próprios para contar anedotas. Observe-se acima o estilo big foot de Sattouf (não, não é linha clara) e pergunte-se: como os leitores de banda desenhada estão completamente imersos, quase desde o berço, em caricaturas é natural que já nem reparem, mas, e os outros?, aqueles que, nas palavras de José Mário Silva, não são "o habitual público consumidor de banda desenhada", aceitarão eles de bom grado este achincalhamento do sofrimento humano?

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Captivant de Chaland Cornillon Por Paulo Pereira

Comparto três grandes interesses com Paulo Pereira: a história da arte, o xadrez, a banda desenhada. No século passado (há uma vida) Paulo Pereira era crítico de banda desenhada no jornal Expresso (por estranho que possa parecer já houve crítica da citada no dito cujo). Não comparto grande coisa com os seus gostos convencionais franco-belgas, mas o pouco que dele reli parece-me arguto e verdadeiramente crítico. Só a título de exemplo, e de homenagem, reproduzo (com muitas desculpas pelo formato algo, ou muito, estranho) um dos seus melhores textos. 

Uma das características mais irritantes da crítica tradicional de banda desenhada (praticada por bedófilos) é a completa falta de sentido crítico. Tintin é racista? Nunca! Astérix é xenófobo? Nem pensar! "O Caminho do Oriente" é propaganda fascista e revela orientalismo? Que ideia! Etc... Ora acontece que se bem que en passant Paulo Pereira  diz que a banda desenhada infantil que os bedófilos tanto presam era colonialista (e extremamente racista, acrescento eu). Para além disso Paulo Pereira é certeiro ao apelidar o "modo" que descreve como desconstrução pós-moderna. Bravo! 

Eis, portanto, um verdadeiro crítico de banda deesenhada português há quase três décadas. Não tinham havido muitos antes, não houve muitos depois...


Paulo Pereira, Expresso, A Revista, 19 de Dezembro de 1987.

PS Marcos Farrajota lembra-me que Sara Figueiredo Costa escreve no Expresso. É bem lembrado e penitencio-me por não fazer a ressalva, mas a crítica de banda desenhada é tão esporádica no dito jornal que, espero, a Sara me perdoará o esquecimento. Aliás, o meu comentário não quis dizer "há quem escreva, mas sem qualidade". O meu comentário quis mesmo dizer "ninguém escreve porque a política editorial não está p'rái virada".

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Du9's Interview With FRMK's Yvan Alagbé and Thierry van Hasselt


Yvan Alagbé, Nègres jaunes et autres créatures imaginaires [yellow blacks and other imaginary creatures], FRMK, February 2012.

You can read here (in French) a very important interview by Du9's Xavier Guilbert with two of the FRMK publishing house most important pillars: Amok's Yvan Alagbé and Fréon's Thierry van Hasselt. The FRMK or the Frémok is the result of the merging of two previous artists co-ops (no publisher would ever dare to publish what they publish because comics publishers are mercenaries), the aforementioned Fréon and Amok.

The main reason why I find this interview very important is because it touches in a couple of points that are crucial to explain why comics are not an art form among all the others. Namely the reason why comics lack intelligent readers and what are the limits of what we may call comics or not.

One of the obvious reasons why this art form is what it is in the public's view is because comics lack a critical voice in the media. In spite of what you may hear from more optimistic folks this continues to be true. Either those optimists are just that, optimists, or they lack critical standards. I said it before on this blog: let's take the city where the FRMK is based: Brussels. I know that even a city like London, for instance, is Disneyfied to cater to tourists (dumbing down, anyone?). Brussels is no exception except that Disneyland is not the inspiration. They use the Belgian history of children's commercial comics underlining the idea that comics are just meant for an idiotic consumption and not, like literature or painting, capable of serious work exploring adult themes. Whenever comics critics celebrate the new Astérix book (this one is French, I know...) a new nail is sealing this art form's coffin. 

Monday, July 13, 2015

What's Wrong With American Newspaper Comics? Coda


David Wright, Illustrators # 2, 2012.

My last post ended thus:
So, what's wrong with newspaper comics, you may ask? It's a commercial medium that must both entertain and sell paper(s). In spite of their straitjackets some great comic strip artists did remarkable work once in a blue moon, I'm not denying that, but from the moment that 99 % of what they did isn't that good they're overrated in The Crib's book.
"Matt Marriott" by James Edgar and Tony Weare excepted, of course, but "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" are Brit realistic newspaper series. And those are a different animal altogether. It's a shame that no one ever noticed the difference.
That's not exactly true. Roger Clark, at least, knew the difference.

Here's what he has to say about "Carol Day" (Illustrators # 2, "My Affair With Carol Day," 39, 40):
What I found [in the "Carol Day," comic strip] was: 
● Tightly plotted stories set in the real, recognizable world 
● 3-dimensional, often psychologically troubled, characters with dysfunctional family relationships 
● An absence of easy answers and happy, tidy endings 
● Minor touches that add a great deal to the texture of the strip, for example the surprisingly blunt observations of characters about each other, particularly Carol. Another example is Wright's habit of casting people from his family and daily life or the movies as characters for example his son Nicky as Ian Carr in 'Ebb-Tide', and Burl Ives in 'Caribbean Captives'. 
● The universe of 'Carol Day' is not a benign one. Most situations don't resolve happily for everyone or even most people. Carol doesn't smile and laugh a lot-in fact it's so rare that when you encounter an episode in which Carol expresses joy it immediately stands out. Most characters have serious psychological problems and dysfunctional families. Difficult relationships between siblings are the norm. Treachery abounds. Jealousy, greed and self-interest drive many situations. In short Carol Day doesn't live in a neat and tidy soap opera bubble where problems get worked out, relationships get back on track, the evil get punished and the good rewarded.
Roger adds:
The somewhat dark universe of 'Carol Day' stands in stark contrast to the major American strips of the time, such as Leonard Starr's 'On Stage', Stan Drake's 'Heart of Juliet Jones', or John Prentice's 'Rip Kirby'.
Yup!

It's official: I will only fully believe that comics publishers deserve my respect when a complete Carol Day collection sees the light of day (no pun intended).

The sad reality is that in any other art form "Carol Day" would be considered and admired as the master piece that it is. Not among comics readers, though, because they're still attached to children's comics such as The Fantastic Four or "Dan Dare" (to stay in the UK). If they present their laughable children's canon to "normal" readers instead of the truly great comics like "Carol Day" how can they support their mantra "comics are not just for kids anymore"? It's a small wonder that they can't, obviously.

Visit Roger's Carol Day site and buy the ebooks.

A stunning bit of storytelling by David Wright, below:


David Wright, "Carol Day: Where There's a Will," December 1959. Notice how Michael flows in the reading sense in the first panel in contrast to a worried Carol in the third panel and how that changes completely afterwards until disaster occurs. Michael is already off-balance at the beginning (the composition is tilted), but the left to right direction helps the slippery slope in the second panel. David Wright, like his friend Tony Weare, was a master of chiaroscuro (conveyed by hatching, cross-hatching, thick blacks, negative space and white paint). Here the ghastly weather at night is perfectly conveyed. Peter Richardson also calls our attention to: "Wright's sublime use of silent panels to add to the already oppressive atmosphere." (Illustrators # 2, "A Brush With Fitzrovia," 31.) 

Sunday, June 14, 2015

What's Wrong With American Newspaper Comics?


Hal Foster, "Prince Valiant" Sunday page (panel), April 22, 1951. Hal Foster was a great landscape artist, but that's all... Notice also the great coloring job.

A couple of posts at The Crib have been, lately, about how American newspaper comics have been and should be reprinted. The coloring was the main focus of my attention, so, no Fantagraphics' Peanuts (because the Sundays are reproduced in black & white) or IDW's Dick Tracy reprints (ditto).

It all began with Fanta's Prince Valiant, to continue with a couple of Gasoline Alley editions.

Yes, but, what's my critical opinion of these series, you may ask? Where does The Crib critically stand re. both series in particular and American newspaper comics in general?

OK, The Crib´s header is part of a Krazy Kat panel by George Herriman and that must mean something, I guess...

I can't deny that I like Krazy Kat as much or almost as much as the next guy... I can understand why some people may consider it the best comic strip of all time (cf. also Fanta's list a while back). To the heirs of the French auteur theory Krazy Kat is the perfect comic. As comics qua comics it certainly has inventive language and page layout. Also, Herriman's highly artificial painted backdrop desert is visually gorgeous.

And yet... I can't stop feeling that something is missing. Sure, I like the naive main character and some poetic moments a lot, but is this enough? Not for yours truly. Something visceral is missing; something utterly realistic about the human condition. Something brutally adult.

Same with Gasoline Alley (some Sunday pages where Walt and Skeezix just walk around are wonderful, but nothing really harsh happens to the cardboard characters) and Prince Valiant (with its great landscapes, but also with it's adventurous vacuous melodrama and kitschy family life).

So, what's wrong with newspaper comics, you may ask? It's a commercial medium that must both entertain and sell paper(s). In spite of their straitjackets some great comic strip artists did remarkable work once in a blue moon, I'm not denying that, but from the moment that 99 % of what they did isn't that good they're overrated in The Crib's book.

"Matt Marriott" by James Edgar and Tony Weare excepted, of course, but "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" are Brit realistic newspaper series. And those are a different animal altogether. It's a shame that no one ever noticed the difference.


Frank King, "Gasoline Alley" daily strip, January 18, 1929. Racist imagery is a real problem in old newspaper comics. 

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

David A. Beronä



Davis A, Beronä

The Crib is in  mourning yet again. David Beronä, the comics scholar who dedicated his whole attention to wordless novels, passed away. Here's how he presented himself on his site
In addition to my professional duties as the Dean of Library and Academic Support at Plymouth State University, I have  researched the history of wordless books and woodcut novels, referred by Scott McCloud as "missing links" in the development of comics. In Wordless Books, I have narrowed my focus on the works of Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward[,] Otto Nuckel, Helena Bochoraková-Dittrichová, William Gropper, Milt Gross, Myron Waldman, e. o. plauen, Istvan Szegedi [...] Szutz, Giacomo Patri, amd Laurence Hyde. The themes in these wordless books show a powerful relevance to our world today, the significance of wordless stories, and the growing importance of visual narratives in all cultures.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Coloring of the Prince Valiant Series Published By Fantagraphics - A Coda of Sorts


Frank King and Chris Ware (c and d), Sundays With Walt and Skeezix ["Gasoline Alley"], Sunday Press, 2007 [1921 - 1934].

After my last post I thought a lot about newspaper comics reprint coloring. According to my (Nelson Goodman's) theory, recoloring is out of the question, but being "amenable to notation" (it was Kim Thompson who called my attention to the fact that color guides are indeed notations) colors may be remade from scratch if the guide is respected. On the other hand colors may be autographic if color proofs are used (as in Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant edition) or fac-similes of printed pages are made.

Anyway, I think that, thankfully, the days of recoloring (usually with appalling results) are over and most reprint collections today respect the original color. 

Are they all equally successful, though? That's another problem entirely...

The most (only?) important text about these matters was written by Zavier Cabarga in his intro to Gasoline Alley The Complete Sundays, volume 1 (Dark Horse, 2014). Here are three quotes with some comments by yours truly:
Typically in old newspaper comics the color registration [...] was pitiful and the ink saturation weak.
I remember a time when I liked the out of register colors. This may be linked to the modernist idea that artists should show their process, but it's more likely that I wanted to see fallible human hands behind the machinery. I like imperfections. I may admire the craft involved in folk art, but it's the naivete that I find appealing. Anyway, all this has nothing to do with coloring... As for the weak saturation, I rather prefer it because it respects the drawings. Highly saturated or highly shaded colors provoke a muddiness and a visual heaviness that I find unappealing as we have seen in my last post. Thankfully I don't need to deal in this post with that scourge of recoloring: computer generated gradients!...
[In color proofs] the hues are usually very dark.
Hear! Hear! I absolutely agree (again, as we have seen in my last post). Below we can see Zavier Cabarga's laborious process (that's what Paul Baresh should have done, but didn't!).


Frank King as restored by Zavier Cabarga, header for the July 10, 1921 Sunday page. Gasoline Alley, The Complete Sundays, 1920 - 1922 volume 1, Dark Horse, March 2014. 
CMYK process inks are crass and unappealing. In old comics, the colors were richer, more somber, more elegant, such as Prussian blue or deep turquoise, vermilion orange-red or burnt sienna [sic], and golden yellow or ochre. In my restorations I have tried to retain these wonderful old-time colors.
Indeed! In the Dark Horse Gasoline Alley edition yellow may be wheat and red may be amaranth or crimson, for instance, which is great, but there are three minor problems in my humble opinion: 1) the paper is glossy which is a no no in my book (fortunately it's not bright white, but magnolia); 2) in spite of what Zavier Cabarga says above some hues are still too dark (this may be the printer's fault though); 3) the drawing is always reproduced in a thick black which, paradoxically, may be distracting if there's a certain amount of it as in Walt's pants (see below).


Frank King, October 9, 1921 Sunday page (Dark Horse). Sunday Press' edition avoids the problem because Walt's pants are light onyx instead of a very dark pastel green.


Sunday Press. My scanner darkened the original black. Notice the light yellow in the tree canopy. As I found out during my research old newspaper colorists preferred it to other, more aggressive, yellow variations.


Frank King, August 29, 1926 Sunday page, Sunday Press.

The gray above is a shadow. Being a thick black it would simply be a blot.

Don't get me wrong though, as I said, this is me clearly nitpicking. 

My favorite Gasoline Alley reprint is Peter Maresca's Sunday Press wonderful (wonderfully standard sized - Dark Horse's, by the way, is tabloid) Sundays With Walt and Skeezix (see above). It's a fac-simile project reproducing the original newspaper pages in their glorious colors (huge dots and all). It's very similar to an old Drawn & Quarterly reprint (see below). The matte paper color of the Sunday Press edition is absolutely perfect (not so their Little Nemo's which is a bit too deep).



Frank King, November 28, 1926 Sunday page, Drawn & Quarterly volume 3, May 2000.


Sunday Press.


The whole page in Drawn & Quarterly volume 3. It was published four times smaller than the newspaper standard size.

Drawn & Quarterly's also has the same problems (to me), with glossy paper and thick black, as the Dark Horse edition, but it's a pioneering effort with wonderful results. Being smaller though, Walt's trousers don't jump at us (so to speak) as much...

Chris Ware's pastiche colors in the cover of the Sunday Press book above are great (I don't like the electric yellow though), but lack the dots diminishing the contrast between the 25%, 50%, 100% areas and turning everything a lot more impersonal and dull (as he usually does). On the other hand the fac-simile colors and drawing lines aren't as sharp sometimes, but.nothing's perfect...

Note: many thanks to Manuel Caldas for our conversation about comics coloring during last week!

Sunday, May 10, 2015

The Coloring of the Prince Valiant Series Published By Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics blew their own horn in 2011 (or... Kim Thompson did; I miss you terribly, Kim!) praising their new Prince Valiant reprint collection. Kim gave a "special tip of the sword" back then to Paul Baresh who retouched/corrected the old color proofs donated by Foster to Syracuse University and used (Fanta deserves all the credit for it) for the first time in this reprint collection. Unfortunately, I can't say that I agree with Kim (we rarely agreed on anything, by the way, but I respected his intelligence and everything that he did for comics)...

I don't want to put Manuel Caldas' (in Spanish) shoes on, of course! He's, after all, the foremost authority in all Valiant and Foster related things (him and Brian M. Kane, I guess). If you don't read Spanish, I'll just sum up his opinion saying that Manuel thought that Fantagraphics used the best possible material to do a definitive Prince Valiant edition, but didn't. Among other things he mentioned the small size of the books and how poorly the material was scanned (by Syracuse U., it seems, not by Fanta) blurring the art. In his own Cerebus TV, Dave Sim says more or less the same thing while comparing the reprinted pages with old newspaper pages. 

That's what I'll do below too adding what, to me, is the biggest problem in these reprints: color saturation.  


Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 726, January 7, 1951 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 8, Fantagraphics, January 2014 (r).

As you can see above the colors are a lot less saturated on the newspaper page. The result is a lot lighter; so, the drawing isn't blurred and overwhelmed by the coloring. (The out of register red on the character's lips is another story.) 


Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 504, October 6, 1946 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 5, Fantagraphics, April 2012 (r).

In the example above we can see how Prince Valiant's cape became a formless blot. Notice also how some lines blurred and bleed until becoming (or almost becoming) black surfaces (the stick on the left, the shadows on the snow).


Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 1016, July 29, 1956 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 10, Fantagraphics, January 2015 (r).

The example above is the more telling of the three, methinks. The Fanta panel is so heavy that the drawing details disappear almost completely under the saturated color.


Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 470, February 2, 1946 as published in Prince Valiant # 5, Fantagraphics, April 2012 (l) and Tarzan # 6, NBM, 1994 (r).

I'm comparing above the Fanta edition with a page published in one of the Tarzan volumes published by NBM. Do I need to say more?

All in all, it's a shame that Kim Thompson didn't accept Manuel Caldas' offer to work in this collection. With a little increase in size it would definitely be the definitive Prince Valiant reprint. No doubt about it.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

The Graphic Novel, An Introduction by Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey


Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, The graphic Novel, An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2015 (cover by Chris Ware).

Maybe it's my fault, but I expected so much from two of the comics scholars that I respect the most that I can't avoid feeling deeply disappointed. I just read 133 of this 258 page book and the least that I can say is that I'm not impressed, far from it. 

I understand the need not to be an essentialist, I really do, being a non-essentialist myself, but Baetens and Frey exploded the definition of graphic novel so much that it became unrecognizable. According to Baetens and Frey, from newspaper comics ("Terry and the Pirates"? Please!) to underground comics (Robert Crumb? Come on!) to you name it, everything is, or can be, a graphic novel or a proto graphic novel. Sometimes "graphic novel" seems just to mean "serious comics," other times "graphic novel" seems to mean "not traditional comics - in the formal sense." This happens because they commit what is, in my view, a capital aesthetic sin: they separate form from content. Isn't it possible that the two categories annul themselves? How can a conventional genre melodrama action story be a graphic novel if, according to the authors in the Intro, "[in graphic novels] [c]ontent matter is "adult," not in the sense of pornographic, but in the sense of "serious" and too sophisticated - or simply uninteresting - for a juvenile audience [...]" (10)? Considering the work of Frank Miller as serious and sophisticated in the next sentence defies all meanings of those words and it's a symptom of what's profoundly wrong with this book.

Since I believe that the use of the expression "graphic novel" is, since 2001 at least, but even before that if we consider Will Eisner's ideas about the expression, simply a P. R. method to allow boutique publishers' access to bookstores and the general reading public (escaping the comic book fanboy subculture as practiced in the direct market ghetto; a ghettoized subculture that ghettoized them), I don't believe that there's any reason to think that a graphic novel is not a comic. I disagree with Baetens and Frey when they say that the graphic novel is a medium (8). The medium is comics, the graphic novel is a P. R. clever tactic, as I said above, and a format: the one-shot paperback or hardback book (as opposed to series published in pamphlets or newspaper pages).

The "serious" content is indeed a problem because we can't base anything on content. Can't there be a comical graphic novel? Are there graphic novels for children? The answer is yes, and, yes, because all this backfired as it always happens when corporations co-opt (as they always do) the independents' small victories. To my eyes a superhero graphic novel or a fantasy sword & sorcery graphic novel is both unthinkable and perfectly natural. It's unthinkable for publishing policy reasons, it's perfectly natural because everything fits between a cover and a back cover. Since this blog is what it is you know where my heart lies.

Anyway, going back to The Graphic Novel, An Introduction, the authors contradict themselves yet again when they say (23):
The very existence of the label "graphic novel" enables modern readers to reinterpret works and models of the past that had not been read as such but that clearly belong to the same universe.
This [David Beronä's exploration of the woodcut novel tradition and Jonathan Lethem's fascination with the Fantastic Four] does not mean that one should be anachronistic [...].
I agree with the first assessment and Baetens and Frey must agree too, since they wrote it. But it seems to me that they want to have their cake and eat it too. I won't even comment that Fantastic Four bit.

Part one of the book is a supposedly historical contextualization of the graphic novel beginning in 1945. I almost wrote "arbitrarily beginning," but then I remembered that this book is U.S.A. centered, so, maybe the post-WWII years is not a bad place to start. Again, this is not much more than another history of the American comic book with yet another reference to Fredric Wertham and yet another overrating of EC Comics, etc... etc... and not a word about East of Fifth by Alan Dunn (1948) or any other important graphic novels like To the Kwai - And Back by Donald Searle (1986). In case that you're wondering, no, I'm not being anachronistic. Here's what John Crosby wrote in 1948:
[...] "East of Fifth" by Alan Dunn, a cartoonist who is also a subtle and polished writer, is the story of twenty-four hours in the life of a large, fashionable Manhattan apartment house and, of course, of its occupants, told in cartoons with accompanying text.
I bring it up here because Mr. Dunn's book may well be a brand new art form, a sort of sophisticated, literate extension of the comic books, rather horrifying in its implications to writers unable to draw. This isn't the first book in which cartoons and text tell a complete story but, to my knowledge it's the first time anyone has attempted serious literature in this field. 
Talk about knowledge without concept!
There's no doubt in my mind that Justin Green's groundbreaking Binky Brown book is crucial in this story, but what are other underground comics doing here, Robert Crumb's and Art Spiegelman's included? And what about superhero comics? Do we really need yet another official, corporate bowing, history of comic books? In a supposedly historical contextualization of graphic novels, no less? Does this happen in the literary or visual arts fields?

Why is it that the authors don't report a detailed Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly publishing history? Why isn't Debbie Drechsler even mentioned? Because Howard Chaykin (mentioned four times) or Michael Chabon (mentioned eleven times!) are more important to the history of the graphic novel than her? Why is Lynda Barry barely mentioned (once!)? And what about John Porcellino and Mat Brinkman? Is this the world upside down?

Talking about upside down, what is the stupidest television show ever created, 1960s Batman, doing in a historical context of the serious graphic novel? And what about Pop Art? What's an art movement about our media saturated frivolous world doing in a historical context of the serious graphic novel? It's there because Roy Lichtenstein appropriated a few comic book panels?

At least Raw magazine is put in its appropriate place as an important and pivotal moment in the graphic novel movement. Not because of its publishing history ("Maus" pre-publication excluded - it was a magazine and an anthology, after all), but because of what Raw Books published over the years. Ditto Harvey Pekar even if he just wrote short stories until he appallingly jumped into the graphic novel wagon.

Baetens and Frey have a peculiar meaning for the word "coined." Twice do they use it in their strange way. On page 69 they say "R. C. Harvey underlines that it was Richard Kyle who first used the phrase "graphic novel"." So, they know the truth. Why do they say, then, on page 22 "the term was coined in the late 1970s by Will Eisner, among others, although he was not the first to use it [...]."? Will Eisner coined something that he didn't coin? I'm definitely confused! On page 128 it's written: "closure (a term coined by Scott McCloud [...]." How is this possible if "closure," as used by McCloud, comes from the Gestalt theory?

Another related problem is this one (107): "[...]Fresnault-Deruelle's pioneering discussion of linearity versus tabularity[...]." How is it pioneering if it's a swipe from Gérard Genette (Figures III, 77) as pointed out by Clare Tufts (European Comic Art # 1, 47, a magazine edited by, among others, Hugo Frey!)? 

Winsor McCay, "Little Nemo In Slumberland" Sunday page, February 2, 1908 (part of the Befuddle Hall sequence). 
In his book Case, planche, récit [panel, page, narrative] Benoît Peeters said that the above page has what he calls a productive layout (the characters' transformations follow the shape of the panels). Is it a productive page or is it a rhetorical one (the panel shape adapts to the characters' movements)? No one can decide, of course...

Part one of this review was about the Intro and "Part One: Historical Context." Now I want to add a few comments about "Part Two: Forms."

Things improve in part two, I'm glad to say. At first it's just a new attempt (after Thierry Groensteen and Joshua Caldwell) to improve Benoît Peeters' pioneering taxonomy of the page layout. I know that Peeters' theory has a few flaws (to put it mildly, namely, calling "decorative" to one of his four conceptions of the page or saying that the regular grid is conventional, among other problems that lead to serious doubts about where to include a certain layout or, as Thierry Groensteen put it, lead to a page belonging to more than one category at once). All that said, it still is the most useful categorization of page layouts, in my opinion (I'll explain why on some other occasion)... Baetens and Frey want to avoid formalism coupling page layout with narrative content (I doubt that, at least in good comics, the former is independent from the latter - it's that form and content split again!)...

Chapter six, the best one in the book, in my opinion, draws (no pun intended) on Philippe Marion's concept of graphiation as explained by the authors in page 137 (a good decision because I seriously doubt that most readers know what graphiation is - Marion's book is, perhaps, the out-of-printest of all the out-of-print books about comics). This chapter is also about word and image relations. Baetens and Frey don't develop the topic much and the slippage into literary adaptations is not the most interesting road, in my view. It's OK though and I have just one more remark: why use the abstruse word "grammatextuality" to explain the visual in written (or drawn) words if there's an older, perfectly useful, if not much less abstruse expression, by C. S. Peirce: iconic-diagrammatic?

The next chapter could be about narratology, but it only mentions it tangentially. It is about the importance of the setting and space in comics instead. Characters are also mentioned, but what bothers me in this section of the book is the authors' endorsement of an essentialist text by Charles McGrath after being radically non-essentialists at the beginning of the book (pages 177, 178). Fortunately they are a bit more cautious a few lines further (179, 180):
Perhaps graphic novels are more appropriate to tell this or that kind of story, and to do it this rather than that way [really?], but it is important to avoid any overgeneralization beyond our contextual discussion offered earlier herein [...].
(Whew!)
Chapter seven ends with an examination of abstract comics (did I ever mention that I was the first critic to talk about abstract comics?) and what Lev Manovich named "the database." If you look here you will find out that that's exactly what I called the locus (unfortunately Baetens and Frey don't read this blog and, even if they did, there's a dogma in academia that forbids quoting blogs at all costs; even if it means plagiarizing):
I also want to put a geometry concept on the comics theory table (Hokusai loved geometry, by the way...): the idea of locus (the totality of all points, satisfying a given condition; the locus, as applied to comics, is a third way between narration and description). That's certainly what Hokusai did around Mt. Fuji: he searched for geographical points, hither and yon, from where the mountain could be seen. But that's also what every other comics artist does... all the time... even if their Mt. Fujis are called Mongo, or Metropolis... even if their points are just figments of their fertile imaginations...


Seth (d), Charles Schulz (a), The Complete Peanuts Vol. 1, Fantagraphics, 2004.


Part three of my review of Baetens' and Frey's The Graphic Novel, An Introduction is also about part three of the book titled "Themes." This section is about the relations between comics and literature (literary adaptations and comics inspired novels: chapter 8) and "Nostalgia and the Return of History" (chapter 9). The book is rounded up by a bibliographical guide to those who want to read more about... comics (chapter 10). Rest assured that among the books included an occasional tome will contain an occasional reference to graphic novels...

After a brief incursion on the interesting concept of psycho-geography, chapter 8 is about novels inspired by comics (so, not graphic novels or even comics) and graphic novels adapting novels. That's OK, but most of these are not exactly the most interesting graphic novels around. Other comics cited, a reference to (A Suivre) included (if we exclude Tardi and Muñoz & Sampayo), are equally mediocre. The true exception here is a well-deserved homage to Chip Kidd's work as an editor at Pantheon.

Before leaving chapter 8, some more pet peeves:

On page 195 we may read "fine art elevating pop culture." in a reference to Roy Lichtenstein. Again, Roy Lichtenstein didn't elevate anything. On the contrary, being a neo-dadaist he appropriated and modified comics panels as Marcel Duchamp appropriated a urinal and a comics character's name (in what may be considered the most influential aesthetic gesture of the last century). Being compared to a urinal is hardly elevating anything...

On page 200 there's this extraordinary claim (!):
[Chip] Kidd is at the center of this new world that pulls graphic novels and comics close together in publishing, linking Spiegelman to Miller, Ware to Batman, and many other points in between. This has raised the profile of DC-style superhero material for intelligent adult book buyers, and partly it has grounded graphic novels close to their roots in comic strips and dailies.
There're so many wrong ideas above that I don't even know where to begin! Let's just say that "superheroes" and "intelligent adult book buyers" in the same sentence is an oxymoron (but, then again, there's Watchmen, so, one never knows). In any case I doubt that intelligent adult book buyers touch superheroes with a ten-foot pole (and I mean sociologically).

On page 213 Floc'h is mentioned. I know that this book is U.S.A. centered, but if the authors wanted to cite someone related to graphic novels from the French-Belgian milieu why cite someone as mediocre as Floc'h? Why not Thierry van Hasselt (Gloria Lopez) or Vincent Fortemps (Cimes) or Olivier Deprez (Le château - Kafka!, he's not midcult enough?; silly me, sorry!...) or Fabrice Neaud (Journal) or even Edmond Baudoin (Le portrait)? Is this the world upside down? It definitely is, this time, no doubt about it!... (But wait! Wasn't it Jan Baetens who wrote for Frigobox, where the former three artists published their work?, how time changes people...)

We all know that graphic novels about autobiography and reportage are few and far between. That's why there are no chapters about the aforementioned topics. There's one about nostalgia though... Unfortunately it's a chapter more about comic strip reprints than graphic novels (with the blind spot of the influence of Peanuts by Charles Schulz on alternative comics artists, as seen in the image above, but that's just a minor detail). On the other hand Baetens and Frey manage to make some interesting points in this final chapter... My problem with it is that, to me, it stands as a symbol of the authors' unease with their topic...

I'll finish on page 225 though. To Baetens and Frey Jack Kirby couldn't draw fascist comics because he fought in WWII. That's a non causa pro causa logical fallacy if I ever saw one. That's the same thing as saying that Leonardo da Vinci couldn't paint beautiful women because he was gay. Or that Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos isn't a militaristic, violent, childish, manicheistic, fascistic piece of crap because some highly intelligent neo-nazis complained about it. 

Olivier Poppe, Frigobox # 1, Fréon, November 1994.

This book is a sad sign of the barbarian neoliberal times in which we are unfortunately living in. If you think that the political reference is uncalled for, think harder. With education systems running at double speed: with good schools for the wealthy; and crappy underbudgeted schools for the 99 %... With a capitalistic world view in which only what sells is worth doing resulting in a culture running at double speed also: with sophisticated art for the 1 % paid at its weight in gold; and the lousy lowest common denominator for everybody else... It's no surprise that a future which once looked like this (you may notice that Jan Baetens was supposed to be part of it), is now ashamed of itself (it's elitism) trying desperately to backpedal to square one.

This art form deserves to die.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Dave Westaway In Memoriam


Dave Westaway, photo by Des Shaw.

I missed his passing, but Dave Westaway passed away last November 29. Who was Dave, you ask? Dave Westaway was the heart and soul of the ADCCC's (All Devon Comics Collectors Club) Brit newspaper comic strip reprints.

Needless to say that British newspaper comics are some of the most interesting and most neglected comics ever published (Brit comics collectors had eyes for children's comics only; the usual panorama in this art form's strange history... sigh!). It was through the ADCCC's booklets that I read many "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" story arcs.

Thanks Dave!

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Political Kitsch

Look at the images below. Do you find any significant aesthetic differences between them? If you do your eye is keener than mine because I don't.


Alex Ross, Justice # 1, DC Comics, 2006.


Jules Perahim, Lupta pentru pace [fighting for peace], 1950.


Hubert Lanzinger, Der Bannerträger [the standard bearer], 1934 - 36.