So the real start of this module begins with delving a little into the history of comics, and initial exposure to some of the variety that existed even a hundred years ago. In this research task, I was given a list of comic artists and cartoonists to investigate, compare and contrast. First up:
Peanuts (Charles M Schulz)
Whilst I don't own any Peanuts materials any more, it was one of my first experiences with comics. When I was five I moved to Saudi Arabia; the ex-pat community and English-speaking media was dominated by American content for many of my years living abroad. At home in the UK, I had a healthy diet of The Dandy, Beano, Buster, Eagle, and 2000AD. When I started to spend most of my year half-way around the globe my input changed to Peanuts, Garfield and Batman.
In fact, my very first watch (which I still have) was a red Snoopy watch! Garfield was the first character that I could draw accurately without reference. And I swear that when I get bored with authority figures, my brain still translates their droning into the muted trombone wah-wah-wah of the 1970s Peanuts movies.
Although there are examples of full-page Sunday 'funnies' as well as the later albums, annuals and compilations, Peanuts is best known as a syndicated comic strip. It has a loose and cartoony style. The very early examples seem to have a more simple and cleaner look to them. The style evolved over time to become looser and wobbly. I think that this lends itself to the evolution of the comic's characters, allowing for a greater range of expression, and to take on some of their neurotic personality traits.
There is little use of spotting blacks or shading, except for elements of clothing detail. While scratchy in nature, the line weight is pretty uniform. However, I would not classify this under the same "Ligne Claire" umbrella as Hergé below. The stories told are people-focused, so almost exclusively use bubbles.
There are lovely examples of physical comedy in some of the stories, and the ones featuring Snoopy are usually my favourite. All of his 'dialogue' is internal, which is a lovely touch of blurring the line between fantasy (he thinks and acts like a human) and reality (dogs can't talk). It's because he can't spar verbally with the other children that he tends to represent the 'actions speak louder of words' maxim.
The stories seem to be perennially set in 1950s/60s America, which gives the comics a timeless feel and sense of Americana. They manage to be wholesome and cheeky at the same time. Whilst the series is set around the perspective and lives of a group of children, I think they also satirise adulthood by giving the kids very adult characteristics.
1960s The Fantastic Four (Stan Lee & Jack Kirby)
The power-house team in comics, I'm always sad that Kirby left Marvel studios so acrimoniously. Both prolific in their own rights, Lee and Kirby's collaboration in a time where extreme productivity was needed gave birth to the "Marvel Method", a writing approach now only used by a handful of Marvel writers like Dan Slott [6]. Jack Kirby is lauded by many who enjoy and study comics, but I can't say that he's one of my favourite comic artists.
Looking at the comics the pair creates in the 1960s, they typically use a 6-panel layout, sometimes with double-width panels for larger action pieces. Figures are depicted realistically, but proportions and poses are exaggerated. The Fantastic Four and Thor comics are a combination of science-fiction and modern fantasy adventures. They are grounded in reality by the characters, settings (New York features prominently) and having relatable situations. The Fantastic Four, at its heart, are the stories of a loving yet dysfunctional family dynamic.
The inkers of the comics use judicious amounts of spot blacks for contrast and shading. Colours, being limited by the printing technology of the time, are bold and simple. Kirby in his pencils uses variable line width to depict form and contour. Hatching is used sparingly, mostly for shadow work. I really enjoy Kirby's use of circles and dots together to represent cosmic aspects in his visual storytelling. These 'Kirby Dots' have been used by other artists in later work, even being employed as a direct visual homage in the "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse" motion picture [10]. I found it interesting to learn about how different inking artists interpret the penciller's work.
Particularly interesting to me was the story of Vince Coletta's time inking Kirby's pencils. I was shocked to see how, in order to save time would sometimes simplify, obscure or even erase characters from the pencils in order to save time! [1] When contrasted with Joe Sinnott (who replaced Colletta inking the Fantastic Four after only four issues and an annual) you can see how Sinnott respected Kirby's pencil drawings, creating work with greater visual fidelity.
The stories are told with both dialogue and captions. I found the pages to be very wordy, sometimes almost crammed into the page. There is a reliance on exposition to move the story along, and odd use of bold emphasis in the text. I love the use of classical archetypes and mythos translated to a modern science fiction setting. I find the way the characters represent the four elements of air, fire, earth and water intriguing and enjoy the way their personalities mimic those elements in these early stories. Kirby and Lee are also very successful in combining realistic grounded settings with fantastical and complex futuristic elements (the tech of the Fantastic Four, Baxter Building laboratories and Kirby's future-psychedelic Asgard).
Hergé
Hergé's work is defined by his signature use of dead ink lines (called ligne claire in European Comics. This gives the work a clear and easy-to-read appearance but creates challenges for the artist in creating plane separation and contrast. Something Hergé does successfully with his use of colour. The characters are realistic but simplified. This contrasts with Hergé's backgrounds and props which are rich, lush and detailed. There is a different visual language at play, with Hergé and his European contemporaries employing specific symbols (like those for dizziness or confusion) not in use in American comics.
His artwork has a very strong composition both in panel and layout. Most of his comics seem to use a 4-row layout, with an overall 12-panel distribution. There are interesting variations in camera angle and shot distances. He also uses panel size variation to pace his narratives. His larger panels allow for his accurate backgrounds to be on display.
The simplified character features of the people in his work allow for dynamic expressions and poses, increasing the efficiency of visual communication. It also allows him to add elements of comedy and slapstick, important for the intended audience and comic relief. Hergé's ability for comic timing and pacing is really quite excellent.
The colours are flat and neatly printed (essential with the use of thin, dead linework). Colour is used to add depth, light and handle value. Spot blacks are very rarely used - only really for extreme blacks like dark doorways or stark cast shadows on railway bridges. This doesn't mean that Hergé was not able to use other black ink techniques. His work in The Castafiore Emerald is a masterclass in using shadows to set the mood.
The stories are told through the images' narratives as well as dialogue. Sometimes Hergé uses captions, but mostly to inform changes in time or location. He varies the use of dialogue a lot. Sometimes none is needed, and he can rely on his imagery, at other times massive amounts of text are used in order to tell the story. This device is often used when telling the story through radio broadcasts.
I really enjoy his use of symbols, like his use of notes for music. The stories of Tintin were set from 1930 - 1976, yet the characters don't ever seem to age, much like The Simpsons cartoons. Being set across these periods mean the adventures were influenced by real social and geopolitical events of the time. Later editions of some of the stories were effectively re-written and re-drawn to abstract the stories away from dated references or real places to fictional countries. The amazing amount of change that happened over the time period the stories were written allows them to cover many different genres. Tintin's adventures cover aspects of science fiction, occultism, slapstick, fantasy, crime thriller, political suspense and swashbuckling adventure.
Each book is a snapshot of the time it was written, and often contained elements of cultural and political commentary, as well as being subject to the prejudices, assumptions and biases of Belgian society and Hergé at those times. With a modern lens, some of the content and depictions are uncomfortable, and I found myself having to talk to my son about the comics and how they represented people before he started to read them closely.
Marjane Satrapi
Satrapi's style is simple and very stylised. In her book, Persepolis (Satrapi, 2008) the layout seems to favour a 9-panel design, but she often uses variation. The content of her works seems at first glance simplistic, but the choices in style are juxtaposed by the very complex subject matter of her works.
Her imagery gives me the impression that it's almost been created by woodcut-printing. With strong bold lines and selected use of a carved hatching style. Her mark-making is rustic and uneven which adds to the character and storytelling. Satrapi seems to use simple posing and body language for her figures. This simplicity makes communication very efficient and adds to a sense of symbolism. Often I noted how some of her frames have a quality like they are taken from the Bayeux Tapestry.
There are aspects of abstract modernism to her work, which I enjoy. There is a lot of black in her work, which uses a very simple contrasting palette. Black is used not just for shading, but to provide contrast and form to her images. It feels like she's been influenced by German Expressionism by the way she uses shadows, light and geometry.
Her works are biographical in nature. Persepolis is set in 1980s Iran, depicting the events and experiences of that time and place. Sometimes the depictions are literal, and other times she references them through symbols and metaphor. The imagery can sometimes seem child-like, but I find that this tallies well with the autobiographical child's perspective. Family is at the heart of her work, and that's shown in Persepolis and Embroideries (Satrapi, 2008) which deals with the generational relationships of the women in an Iranian family.
The stories, whilst biographical are also political and historical because of their content. It's a very real world that her characters inhabit, but Satrapi is not afraid to use more fantastical elements to tell her stories. Told with captions and dialogue, the focus of storytelling seems much more focussed on the interplay and discourse of the people involved over a sense of place.
Winsor McCay
The style of Little Nemo in Slumberland seems heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau art movement, which was drawing to close when these stories were being created between 1905 - 1911. It gives a sense of being coloured in watercolour, even with the printing technology of the time. In keeping with the Art Nouveau styling, characters and prominent objects have a heavier weight ink outline, while other aspects use thinner dead-weight lines. This makes the work feel European and feels connected to the ligne claire style of European comic artists.
The subject matter is drawn realistically, but being set in a land of dreams, it often can take on outlandish and surreal proportions. As well as strange and almost psychedelic combinations of ideas, like a giant turkey eating his house! McCay seems to use a 5-row layout, which in its basic form works out at about 20 panels per page. However, he cleverly mimics the surreal content of his stories, growing and shrinking panels as the subject matter changes. This keeps the focus and pacing of his work tight.
Dialogue bubbles are used, but comparatively sparingly. There is a lot of space left for the images to do a lot of the heavy lifting when telling the story. When captions are used, they feel squashed into place. Whilst set in a fictional dream world (and later dream versions of real places) the worlds McCay depicts are grounded in reality. The buildings he creates are also grounded in an Art Nouveau aesthetic concordant with the time the comics were written.
The stories seem to be surreal fantasies and draw on imagery and dream psychology. Coming from a boy's perspective the dreams can be very fantastical, and these night-time adventures reminded me of similar adventures I watched as a child watching "Jamie and the Magic Torch" on TV.
Conclusion
This exercise as taken me to familiar territory that I realised I didn't know nearly as much as I thought, and brand new comics history that has expanded my horizons. I think it will be important for me going forward to keep resisting historical aspects as it's obvious the way that these and other works influence generations of comics-makers around the world. I have enjoyed this research, but please that in retrospect I didn't delve too deeply all at once!
References
ComicTropes, 2020. Vince Colletta: The Inker Who Ruined Jack Kirby's Art. [video] Available at: https://youtu.be/RZs836b449M [Accessed 10 December 2020].
Disney, 2020. Marvel 616 - S1 Ep7: The Marvel Method. [video] Available at: https://www.disneyplus.com/video/9c1f3599-493d-4671-aa5e-22188d26449b [Accessed 10 December 2020].
GoComics. 2009. Peanuts By Charles Schulz For November 07, 2009 | Gocomics.Com. [online] Available at: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2009/11/07 [Accessed 11 December 2020].
Hergé, 2012. The Black Island - The Adventures Of Tintin. London, England: Egmont UK Limited, p.16.
Hergé, 2012. The Castafiore Emerald. London: Egmont, p.40.
IMDb. 2020. "Marvel 616" The Marvel Method (TV Episode 2020) - Imdb. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11646716/?ref_=ttep_ep7 [Accessed 10 December 2020].
Marjane, S., 2020. Embroideries Cover Design. [image] Available at: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81D85dRNiaL.jpg [Accessed 17 December 2020].
Marvel Comics, 2019. Fantastic Four Comic Cover. [image] Available at: https://terrigen-cdn-dev.marvel.com/content/prod/1x/0_cfcd.jpg.
McCay, W., 2020. Little Nemo In Slumberland Collection Cover Design. [image] Available at: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81Mt0oKrP8L.jpg [Accessed 17 December 2020].
Wired, 2019. How Animators Created The Spider-Verse. [video] Available at: https://youtu.be/l-wUKu_V2Lk?t=31.
Wolfe, T., 2015. "Encapsulating" The Moment In Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. [online] Comics in Education. Available at: https://www.comicsineducation.com/home/encapsulating-the-moment-in-marjane-satrapis-persepolis [Accessed 17 December 2020].
Comentários