A Brief Look at Printing and Comics

Winsor MacCay. George Herriman. Charles Schulz. Kate Beaton. All of these illustrators have reached notoriety through comics, however, their acclaim was achieved during different points in history. George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Winsor MacCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland were published earliest, Krazy Kat in 1913 and Little Nemo in 1905. Charles Schulz's Peanuts wasn't started until 1950, and Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant was only published six years ago in 2007. Dates aside, these illustrators have all experienced different levels of technological advances with the publication of their comics, ranging from taking advantage of old printing presses to the development of computers and online publishing. 

Winsor MacCay was well known for being one of the first American animators and cartoonists. His home animations have brought him as much acclaim as his posters and comics, most notable of them being Gertie the Dinosaur. but none of his works seem to rise up to notoriety quite like Little Nemo, the tales of a little boy who would go on fantastical, unbelieable adventures in his dreams.

The strip is considered McCay's masterpiece for its experimentation with the form of the comics page, its use of color, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective, architectural and other detail. MacCay brought surreal life to the page, but his use of illustration easily outweighed the spoken words in his comics, found in shoddy, unattractive, forgettable speech bubbles spread throughout the strip.

George Harriman's iconic and poetic strip, Krazy Kat, soon followed. Krazy Kat, the story of a lovesick cat and a brick-throwing fiend of a mouse, was profoundly less fantastical than Little Nemo in terms of scenery and adventuring, yet it retains the same quality of narrative and print-making that Winsor MacCay was known for. It's panels were less fantastical, more easily organized, but although the story seemed much simpler and sillier in comparison, it retains a sense of understanding about the world, more interesting themes and morals with each strip.

Several decades pass and Charles Shulz's Peanuts, the tales of Charlie Brown, his pet beagle Snoopy and the other neighborhood children, is published. By this time a certain standard for publishing cartoons and comics has been established, reflected in Shultz's almost geometric pattern of paneling. Environment takes a strong backseat to the character illustration, everything is simpler and follows a strong pattern, and dialogue is used to bring closure rather than action or composition. Shultz's four-panel comic structure feels like an almost complete 180 shift from the works of MacCay and Harriman.

Last but not least is Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant. Beaton's comics follow a certain artistic style that, although organizationally is is similar to Charles Shulz and many other popular cartoonists, has a style all of its own. Historically accurate yet entirely sarcastic, its humor is pulled both from the absurdity of the past and the resigned of the present. What really sets it apart from past successful graphic narratives is its varied media, how it doesn't focus on one cast of characters for longer than one strip, and the nature of its publication. Unlike MacCay, Harriman and Shulz, Beaton's comics were published in the 21st century, where computers, the internet, and other technological advancements exist. Thanks to the networking capabilities of the world-wide-web, Hark! A Vagrant has received an astounding amount of positive reception that could not be so easily achieved one-hundred years ago.

January 21st - Notes

Virtuality in Hogarth

-       Virtual  - Real

-       Virtuality – Reality

Internal vs. External

Internal virtuality is the kind of virtual reality when we read—it happens inside our own heads. It remains and is influenced by our sense of style.

External is found in comics. 

The following is an exercise in what out internal viruality appears when reading Max Ernst's collage-like surreal comics. 

 A Weekness of Kindness or The Seven Deadly Elements

The sequence follows the exploits of an enchantress and her ties with poultry, both in ways of public display and creatures who have the bodies of men and women but the heads of chickens.It seems that most of the story has to do with the frivolity of happiness for it is fleeting.

 Page 1: An enchantress dances with a chicken, possibly for coins. 

Page 2: A large chicken-human creature finds the enchantress on her death bed with the help of her little chicken. 

Page 3: Two large chicken creatures try to stop the angel of death from taking the enchantress through supernatural means.

Page 4: They unearth the enchantress and revive her, much to her confusion and dismay. 

Page 5: They come to find the enchantress, expecting her to be asleep in her bed but find that she has taken her own life in the middle of the night.

Understanding Comics and Scott McCloud

Although until recently I have only had a passing interest in comics, thus far this class has given me a new perspective on comics as an artist medium. My main focus has been on pre-production for film and television and graphic design, but I had little idea of how significant the narrative aspect of these art forms can be just as important as the design aspect.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud has since helped shed some light on that subject for me. Especially on the concept of the iconic cartoon.

I had never realized until reading this book how significant the use of simplification could be used as amplification, or how simply it is for people to pick out human faces from a circle, two dots and a line. And through this simplification we are able to see our own loose understanding of how we look like and project it onto the comic subject matter.

Another interesting subject that jumps off of this point is masking. Through creating a cartoon out of simplified human representation, we can more easily pick them out from a more realistically rendered illustration and identify with them better, such as from the image above. Though the background is exceptionally rendered, we establish more of a connection with the character in the lower left-hand corner because of his simplified nature. His sense of person is amplified in comparison.

Although this technique has been used by many Western comics in the past, what really surprised me was how much more efficiently this technique is taken advantage of in Japanese comic books, commonly known as manga. Due to their long-standing tradition with comic books and cartooning, their rich architectural culture and beautiful scenery, and their rising interest in photography, manga has taken the use of masking and transformed it into an art form.

This among many other topics touched upon in Understanding Comics has given me a whole new perspective on the world or illustration, and that is not even touching upon what was discussed about sequencing and panels. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would need a fresh new look at the illustrative and artistic world.

The Arrival

I have had the pleasure of reading The Arrival by Shaun Ten before, but thanks to this class I finally was able to read it in more extensive detail. I've always had an appreciation for media that approaches storytelling without use of words, leaning more towards pantomime than a graphic novel approach, and The Arrival may be one of my favorite approaches to word-less storytelling right along with Charlie Chaplin films.

I liked the comic in the past and I still enjoy it, namely for it's use of values and saturation to show change in both the scenery and the character's view on his new-found home, and the resolution never fails to make me smile. It has a wonderful sense of atmosphere, draws great world-building aspects from the audience's previous knowledge of immigration, and it not only smart but warm and unexpectedly uplifting.

What sets it apart from what I was expecting of most comics we would read in this course was it's use of images, values, atmosphere, and expression to further the story rather than rely on dialogue. Rather, the fact that it makes a point of not using dialogue, considering it is a story about a man immigrating to a country where he does not speak the native language, understand the native customs, or even eat similar foods, drives home the feeling of isolation we feel for the character. The lack of dialogue grants the reader empathy, for the country he has moved into has such a strange alphabet and vocabulary that we can only understand the language as much as the main character. Like during this scene, where he is progressing through the story's interpretation of an Ellis Island, where foreigners are screens for work and granted passage into the mainland.

At no point does the comic grant the reader a translation, but through a series of moments in time the readers receive a tangible language, atmosphere, and culture through the use of grand establishing shorts, and smaller, more personal images following the main character's screening. The last page is particularly poignant because the pacing has changed. We no longer see bits and glimpses of this confusing, intimidating yet warm world the immigrants have landed in, and we now focus on the main character. We watch him try and fail to communicate in this new home of his.

I would recommend this comic to anyone, enthusiast or non, if only for it's clever sense of narrative and pacing.