Self-P, part four

Case in point: Dan Clowes' self-portrait is the second-to-last component of his new book Wilson. Meta-Clowes writes, "He finds it uncomfortable to hand-letter information about himself in the third person but feels the need to fill this space with a block of text for design purposes." Exactly: need and design.

Douglas Wolk notes, "Paul Gravett observed that 'Wilson' is a partial anagram of Daniel Clowes (like 'Enid Coleslaw' from Ghost World)--maybe this is some kind of nastily refracted self-portrait, and in fact the final images we see of Wilson are very close to Clowes' actual self-portrait a few pages later" (via Techland). The image above teases loose continuity with the comic vignettes (he's like his character) and subsequently teases loose correspondence with real life Clowes (his character's like him).

This publishing necessity, however, makes me wary of both because the bio becomes a new focal point for sabotaging sincerity. Even though it's jokey, it does exactly what it needs to do: dates, location, family, works, this work. The midsection of humor attests to the fact that we the audience love Clowes' sensibility, that we will follow Clowes anywhere, and more importantly that peevish Wilson, however Clowesian he may be, is but a temporary manifestation of our beloved clown Clowes. Long live the string-puller, no matter how short-lived the pulled was.

Self-P, part three

From the copy to Omar Calabrese's Artists' Self-Portraits:

"At first a self-portrait was hidden in a narrative painting: an artist would paint his image as part of a crowd scene, for example, or as a mythological figure. On the other extreme, once the genre was accepted, it was practiced by some artists—Rembrandt, van Gogh, Munch, and Dali, for instance—as almost an obsession."
--
For these comic book book jackets, hiding is not an option. These artists, no matter what measure of control they assert in their portraits, are winners in the publishing world: a-mythological, unflayed, nowhere near a crowd. The book precedes the self-portrait; the self-portrait is the book's penultimate manifestation. Joe Schmoe gets no. Zinesters give only the ghostly fingers of their email addresses. Drawing obsessive autobiography is perhaps the compromise, the build-up, but the surrogate self as a narrative subject opposes the typical self-portrait. Crumb and Spiegelman have the obsession, and have achieved both surrogate and self. Joe Sacco's obsession, however, netted him a real life photo to bolster his real life reporter credentials.
--Ho ho: Norman Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait (from Autoritratti).

Self-P, part two

-artist with tools (David B. at drawing table)

-artist with accoutrements (Lynda Barry with some animals and her own creation Beat Poodle Fred Milton; Lynda Barry in Eden)

-artist descriptive, r-e-a-l-i-s-t-i-c, non-ironic (Crumb); yet, also artist iconic (older Crumb still recognizably Crumb)

-artist styled as character, brought into characterworld (doglike Jason and Renaissance Sikoryak, but also Barry and B.)

-artist all of the above (Spiegelman on the Maus flap)

Self-Portrait in a Comicvex Mirror

Author self-portraits from Epileptic, The Greatest of Marlys, The Book of Genesis, I Killed Adolf Hitler, and Masterpiece Comics, respectively.

Dimension

(From Urasawa's Pluto Vol. 1.) Reading right to left, of course, we see ears behind the panel's frame. We skip panels with an ear still under and confront an amazing nose that comes close to breaking the frame. Ear and nose relative to the same y-intercept! Gesicht's nose approaches the asymptote of the frame. From now on I need to think about the coordinates of separate characters.

Centre

Conjecture: the middle fold of a newspaper creates a top and a bottom. I sense that below the fold Foster attempts to reorient his story using the bottom's centre. Foster uses the bottom's centre only a handful of times in the first 2 years of Valiant. Although it's not a typical tactic, it does self-consciously and momentarily challenge the virtues of his medieval adventure strip.

Two examples of below the fold.

1, up) Val, so youthful, so handsome, is singled out in the centre and then laughed at. (I have cropped the panel to the left of Val.) We hear nothing from Val, though us loyal readers already know the grand story, and so the finger in the centre demands something more from him. The row below these 2 out of 3 panels shows Val getting violent; this moment of judgment, therefore, has been incorrectly answered. Foster denies Val his story to foreshadow his failure.

2, down) There's no lower row to these big panels, but once again I have cropped a third panel (this time on the right). The knave's face is so strong, so desperate, that we need to be reminded of Val's valiance or the knave will cease to be a knave. Foster gives this knave so much life at his moment of death. His wild and detailed face obscures young Val, obscures the capture of Sir Gawain, and obscures the grand story of Valiant. And so, Val must take centre stage again, swift and surefooted.

Continued...

5 O'Clock Shadowface

Ahhh my normal degradation in a day.

Dino Buzzati's recently restored Poem Strip (1969) is full of: rock songs that do not rock; nipples; pin-ups that want to be three-dimensional; images like verbs (melting, creeping); all the ripe twentieth-century malaises (bureaucratic, existential, masculine, sexual, urban); and a really wicked talking jacket, guardian demon of the underworld.

I Went Looking for a Writer

I thought, Novelist! Novelist's gotta make it work, right, and latched onto Ian Rankin's John Constantine ditty Dark Entries for the new Vertigo Crime imprint. Already there's the benefit of its title, deliberate and mysterious. If you can buy into the loose spirituo-supernatural guff, the story's readably perverse and cute (Constantine's stoicism is reliably cute and so is the premise of Constantine as a reality show contestant). Right from the get-go, Rankin's words: "No news inside, just synapse-numbing junk." Good, I'll take it.

However, I went looking for a writer and found an artist. Manga-inspired at times, Scott McDaniel-y at others, Werther Dell'Edera has to invent new ways of laying out the many interrogation scenes. The central question: how are these reality show contestants connected? Below, the second panel shows Tom hiding his eyes, while the third panel shows Dell'Edera hiding Tom's face; the artist comes off as a sympathetic cameraperson to the reality show's all-consuming eye.

Have another drink, John.

2000s

I have also elected my best of the decade, best of the naughts, best of the oohs, best of the ahhs. Trimmed to five, this list is neither shocking nor necessary. Call it an excuse to put up images on a sinking comics blog.

1. Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison and many fine artists (2005-6).Thirty issues born to the world in an odd order made me feel the full happy weight of the floppy. Above, J. H. Williams III gives me a face I'll never forget from issue zero.

2. 100% by Paul Pope (2002-3).

Pope's story of Gastro -- exotic dancing for the lovers of digestion -- has many pulsating and moving moments like the one above. See-through pocket, new gun, clenching fist, clenching fist.

3. Eightball #23 by Dan Clowes (2004).

Archaic pop American ennui. Tights. Andy the Death-Ray is our hero. He pops a squirrel. He very majestically cannot sleep.

4. Cecil and Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Bell (2008).

I have spent good time with Bell's collection. The scale of all these smart stories still wows me; the cage above lets you witness an illusion of magnitude.

5. The Fixer by Joe Sacco (2003).

The dizzy story of Neven and Joe, storysellers of Sarajevo. Read it for weird intimacy, for clear-as-mud conflict.

Two Funnies

Two cartoons this evening. The first is an historical scrap from the life of fictional explorer Chance Oxblood by Grant Reynolds from his Comic Diorama: Collected Comics. The second is by best-of-the-bunch Roz Chast from the 30 November 2009 issue of The New Yorker. I've tagged "faces" so pay deep attention to those. Enlarge both for the reading.

Define.
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Coming soon: an eating-my-shoe post and a rare color image.

Now, End-Product-of-Laughter "Stitches" I Can Get Behind

My favorite sequence from David Small's Stitches (2009).

One of the reasons why I was underwhelmed by this book is that it feels like a series of painted cartoons instead of a comic. The last two panels on the page above are art school exercises: draw a curious and youthful eye (good!) and then a scary eye (good!). They are oddly free-floating illustrations, as if from a sketchbook, and it doesn't seem worthwhile to add them up. Add to the mix many pretty scenic double splash pages and there's almost too much independence.

As for the story, even though it's Small the small child who gets caught between Small the artist's tug-of-war between extreme innocence and extreme cruelty, my arms were hurt.

I am very close to declaring 2009 the Year of Trite Acclaimed Comics. Formal sophistication meets flat sentiment and thought. A thrilling style can't convincingly offset or reignite sitcom writing.

The following spring to mind:
1. George Sprott by Seth.
2. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli.
3. Greg Rucka's unbearable Detective Comics dialogue.
4. AD: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld.
5. The Nobody by Jeff Lemire.

You can still use words, you know.

My comic of the year? Citizen Rex for its immense difficulty and absurd final issue "message"? Maybe. Gaiman and Allred's "Metamorpho" from Wednesday Comics? Maybe. The ever-reliable Joe Sacco's Footnotes From Gaza, which I haven't yet seen and may not even be out? I'll go with Sacco any day.

Sorry, The Graphic Novel, I'm wanted elsewhere.

Cultivar

(From Jules Feiffer's Ronald Reagan in Movie America. Enlarge.)

Norm MacDonald roasts Bob Saget: "Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower -- yeah, cauliflower. No offense, but...your face...looks...like a cauliflower." Reagan's Feiffer-made face looks like the Grinch made out of broccoli. So it's plainly obvious why I have quoted Norm MacDonald on Bob Saget.

Pot-o-gold

This plum wonder's from a Gary Panter sketchbook in RAW Vol.2 No.3. The page break of the notebook officiates the surprise of page two. Bottom left to right and then up up up. Those leaky eyes!

Okay, I'm on a faces kick.

Shaw Could Use a Lish

Scan a 700+ page monster and you get the blurs.

Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button is a cushiony comic. Place it behind your head and its brickiness will soften. I mostly mean that it's a huge hug, a pat pat on the back. No hard feelings. Barely any hardness at all. Precociousness heals all wounds.

His faces, though, on the other hand, however. Strange to think that nuance enters the picture during moments of highly overt wretchedness, but that's what I think.

Someone pioneer comics physiognomy right now. Add Sean Phillips' work on Criminal. Who else for faces? Lynda Barry's bulgers and frighteners. Basil Wolverton. John Cassaday. Charles Burns.

And now for something grocery related (also from Shaw):
BzzzzileyCyruzzzz.

The Creeps

(From Hellblazer #25 by Morrison and Lloyd.) Note the thickness of each nested mask's outline. This is for tomorrow.

Fumbling Loggerheads

I regret that I've seen so little of Tony Millionaire's work save for this, a Sock Monkey story, and his recent piece about Iron Man battling criminal cold cuts in Marvel's Strange Tales #2. This is "The Bat-Man" written by Chip Kidd in DC's Bizarro Comics.

I could inhabit those nostrils.

Faces

(From Criminal #1, the first two panels. Click to enlarge.)

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips turn crime into a drama of human faces. Their series Criminal reminds me of Dreyer's silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc: unsettling close-ups of confusion and sadness and revelation overshadow and kill plot. Without Phillips's patient rendering of Leo's face, Criminal would be a banal heist flick. Miraculously, the face is the starting point of the series: Leo simply cannot remain as implacable as his mask.

More faces, all Leo's:

&

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To counter the carte blanche reading of Little Orphan Annie in my last post, here's an interview with York University scholar Jeet Heer on the cartoon conservatism of Harold Gray:

In reaction to the New Deal, Gray became much more of a partisan right winger, turning the template of his story (Annie and Warbucks battling against powerful and corrupt forces) into an explicitly conservative populist allegory.

I wanted to emphasize that Annie, without Daddy Warbucks in the picture, is a high-spirited kid, pushing beyond the adult world of business for a time. Escape allows the orphan girl to encounter the blind man, fringe element to fringe element. This storyline progresses to the point where our blind fiddler is roped into performing to packed houses under the crooked tutelage of business manager Mr. Chizzler. But early on, on the coast of this new storyline, Annie's out!