Because I’m not: Skim

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Skim (Groundwood Books, 2008), written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn by her cousin Jillian Tamaki, is a gentle and unparalleled exploration of one fictional teenager’s inner life.

The splash page for Part I of Skim introduces us to the story’s protagonist, Kimberly Keiko Cameron (aka “Skim”), a half-Japanese student attending an all-girls’ private high school in Ontario. Why the nickname Skim? In her own words, ”Because I’m not.” Though the story does not concentrate on Kimberly’s weight issues, in a world of highly self-conscious teenage girls, we can only guess that this is one of many reasons that Skim is perceived as an outcast.

As readers, we are provided access to Skim’s diary, which indicates her favourite colour as “black red.” The uncertainty communicated through this initial journal entry is a poignant and provocative indication that all may not be as it seems with Skim. To introduce corrections throughout Skim’s diary is also to realistically portray how a teenage diary, or for that matter any diary, might look—unless its author were to erase or white out any errors. The jazz pianist Thelonius Monk insisted on never re-recording tracks when he was in recording sessions, believing that if musicians made errors during these events, they ought to be duly noted as such for all to hear. In Skim, we can assume that Kimberley’s errors are an intentional vehicle used to portray the diarist’s doubleness, her doubts and insecurities. But their inclusion at all is testament to the author’s depth and perceptiveness into teen neurosis.

Skim is the child of divorced parents. Her mother is a cynical workaholic, while her father (in her mother’s estimation) is a hopeless romantic who has recently begun dating a woman who makes a new ceramic mug for Skim every month.

Skim has recently broken her arm tripping while climbing out of bed (she tells her best friend Lisa that she fell off her bike). Skim is drawn to Wiccan religion and teen Goth culture, and has a Wiccan altar in her bedroom; Lisa’s sister, Kyla, is part of a Wiccan coven. Skim and Lisa attend a circle ceremony in nearby Scarborough, run by a group of adults who also happen to be members of the local AA chapter.

Katie Matthew’s ex-boyfriend, John Reddear has just committed suicide. Skim’s school is on high alert. Ms. Hornet, the school counsellor, is actively engaging in intervention techniques to ensure that students are able to cope with the shock and grief accompanying John’s death. Skim is targeted as especially susceptible to suicide, given her largely sullen attitude towards others.

Skim and Lisa conduct a ceremony in the woods to summon the spirit of John Reddear. In Skim’s journal, she writes “but he didn’t appear.” However, in an exquisitely layered two page spread of Lisa and Skim walking in the forest, an evocative line drawing of John drawn in white suggests otherwise. This artful treatment is one of the marks of subtle storytelling in comics, in which text may communicate one concept, while that idea is simultaneously juxtaposed with the total opposite through visual representation.

Skim meets Ms. Archer, the English teacher, while she is taking a smoke break in the woods. They discuss Romeo and Juliet; Ms. Archer suggests,

Maybe it’s a story about two people who fall in love, when falling in love, with the enemy, is the one thing you’re not supposed to do. I’m sorry you don’t like it (37).

Lisa senses that something is awry with her best friend, and observes that Ms. Archer acts strange around Skim. Skim responds that there is nothing going on between them.

In a masterful contrast between word and image, Skim states, “Technically that is not a lie. Technically nothing has happened” (38). The next spread in the book shows Ms. Archer and Skim once more in the woods, this time locked in full embrace.

Immediately prior to the spread, an excerpt is included from a book on Wicca that Skim quotes in her journal:

The “Charge” comes to each of us in a different manner. It is that moment in our lives when we feel the Magick of the Universe coursing through us, for the very first time, and we know beyond all real and imagined shadows that this calling to the mysteries is indeed there.

—Silver Ravenwolf, To Ride a Silver Broomstick

Ms. Archer acknowledges the mystery transpiring between her and Skim, stating, “Well, this is what it is, isn’t it?” At least for Skim, it can only be love. She visits Ms. Archer’s home until her teacher suggests that it’s better if Skim takes a break. Shortly thereafter, a lovesick Skim learns that Ms. Archer is not even finishing her school year, but is joining an “art thing” in New Mexico.

Both Skim and Lisa regularly express contempt and disdain for the prevailing school culture, especially the recently established G(irls) C(elebrate) L(ife) club—GLC. Shortly after John Reddear’s death, Skim’s class is told that Katie Matthews “accidentally” fell off a roof and broke both her arms. When she returns to school, Katie is tailed constantly by a paraparazzi of GLC girls, much to her disdain.

The grade ten girls attend a farewell ceremony for John Reddear, with Katie conspicuously absent from the event. Rumours have been circulating that John may actually have been gay, and that he was in love with a volleyball player on another team. It is also rumoured that he Reddear didn’t actually shoot himself, but overdosed on his mother’s heart medication.

Skim finds herself wondering why she is distancing herself from Lisa. At about the same time, Katie and Skim begin to develop a friendship, since both are exempt from participating in physical education because of their injuries.

Much of the rest of Skim is spent exploring in greater depth the development of Katie and Skim’s companionship. Once Lisa starts seeing her boyfriend, proclaiming her love to him, she is less present in the storyline.

Although Skim is ostensibly the story of a young woman falling in love with another woman who is much her senior, it the work has not been ghettoized by its critics as a gay romance. There is far too much complexity in this story for it to be simply classified as gay fiction. Gender relations and sexual identity comprise only one part of the puzzle of late adolescence, through which Skim has no choice but to navigate. This graphic novel bears witness to the ebb and flow of high school friendships, and the challenges that teens experience with other peers, parents and teachers—Skim’s introversion and sensitivity will resonate strongly with many of us.

This is not a “coming out” story, and Skim does not agonize over the possibility of her being lesbian. She is desperately in love, and it is clear that, against the author’s initial wishes for Skim to be written as a gothic lesbian Lolita, her desire to remain close to Ms. Archer is doomed to failure. That said, one provocative panel on page 44 of Skim alludes to Édouard Manet’s “Olympia,” a painting that challenged audiences when it was first unveiled in 1863. For those interested, I strongly recommend reading “About the Olympia by Édouard Manet.”

"Olympia" by Édouard Manet

Nor is Skim necessarily a “coming of age” tale. This is a snapshot into the life of Kimberley Keiko Cameron, as told through her eyes, communicated to the reader through a series of poignant journal entries. It captures the devastation of dropping a papier-maché head and being laughed at, and the embarassment of being hugged by the school guidance counsellor who is convinced that Skim is suicidal. My first teaching job was in an all-girls’ Catholic high school, and much of this book feels frighteningly familiar. Mariko Tamaki has captured with great precision the cattiness that can be the behavioural staple of the school culture. The writer has mentioned in interviews that she wrote the script for Skim in the format of a play, with a very loose set of directions included for Jillian Tamaki, the artist of Skim (and Mariko’s cousin), to work from.

This looseness has been rendered in an equally fluid artistic style, in which heavy inks are generously combined with grey washes and spacious whites to convey tremendously emotion-laden panels. This is not formulaic artwork, but a generous treatment of the subject matter, which, in combination with the text, brings the story to life.

It is most unfortunate, and yet perhaps unsurprising, that only Skim’s writer Mariko Tamaki—and not the illustrator Jillian Tamaki—was nominated for the best English-language children’s literature category of the Governor General’s Literary Awards. Skim is the first graphic novel to have ever been nominated for the award. As for the categorization of this work as “children’s literature,” perhaps this speaks to the maturity of the reviewers more than anything else.

In a letter to the nomination committee penned by Chester Brown and Seth, these two well respected Canadian comics creators state, “We’re guessing that the jury who read Skim saw it as an illustrated novel. It’s not; it’s a graphic novel.” As with so many others, it will take time to educate non-readers of “graphic novels” about the elusive nature of the form, tenuously balanced as it is between word and image.

Links:

Inkstuds interview with Mariko Tamaki

Inkstuds interview with Jillian Tamaki

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARDS

Mariko Tamaki website

Jillian Tamaki website

Dead Fly Funnies

I don’t know who created these but — you are a genius. Thank to Brian Glover and his friend Bree for passing them along!

Comic Books Go to War – The Passionate Eye

I watched this interesting documentary last night, including interviews with Marjane Satrapi, Joe Kubert, Joe Sacco, Chappatte, Emmaneul Guibert, and Ted Rall. Worth watching if it ever repeats:

Comic Books Go to War – The Passionate Eye | CBC News Network.

And while we’re on the subject of CBC, I’ve been listening to some interviews found on the website for The Book Club that cover a broad range of topics (too numerous to list here) related to comics, and include several interviews with Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, creators of Skim (post forthcoming shortly).

CBC archives also includes a wealth of material on the history of the comics industry in Canada. Lots to explore!

The Hole of Humanity

Discovering Inkstuds. Rediscovering Colin Upton

Weird. This weekend I went to Vancouver with my family. We were driving up Main Street and passed by Heritage Hall. I mentioned to my kids that this was the locale where many years ago I sold off much of my comic collection, during comic conventions that were organized by Leonard S. Wong. As we drove by, I mentioned, “I wonder if conventions are still running here…” and lo! There was a sign on the front of the building announcing that a Vancouver Comicon taking place that very same day.

I did a Web search for the convention once we got home, in order to find out what artists were attending the event. I never made it to reading information about the convention, because I spun off and experienced full-on rapture upon discovering the Inkstuds website, where over a hundred (!) interviews with comic artists have been uploaded to the Web for your listening pleasure. And of all the places where this website could have been from, it is hosted as part of CITR radio from the University of British Columbia. Man, my high school years were consecrated to listening to that radio station, from hardcore, to reggae, to jazz, to blues, to world music, and beyond…and now I find out that CITR also has a radio program on comics!

I have been looking for exactly this website for weeks, having finally tired of listening to Buddhist podcasts at work (check out Buddhist Geeks: “Seriously Buddhist. Seriously Geeky.”) Even weirder, one of the participants in the radio shows on Inkstuds is none other than Colin Upton (dubbed by Dave Sim the “Canadian Dean of Mini-Comics”). Colin, I doubt that you remember me, but when I was a nerdy thirteen-year-old kid, I bought copies of your Socialist Turtle and Granville Street Gallery mini-comics. You were The Shit, man! Your drawing style was simple enough so that in my mind I thought I could perhaps emulate it, but refined enough to come across as exuding a bare-bones, pared-down sophistication.

And there I was today, listening to a podcast where you were describing the evolution of your mini-comics, all these years later.

Nervous Tic Nic

You were not the only one out there creating mini-comics. One of my best friends in high school, we’ll call him Nic (not short for Nicholas, but an abbreviation of “Nervous Tic) was privately slaving away at his oeuvre, The Enlightenments of Samuel Stonerolling in: the Hole of Humanity, which to this day probably has never been publicly distributed. Well, I’ve hung onto said volume for twenty years, for no rational reason that I can think of other than my love for and attachment to Nic.

The only time that Nic’s rather violent neck-twitches would cease was when he was stoned. Let’s just say that didn’t happen infrequently. Interestingly enough, this weekend while I was in Vancouver I stumbled across Peter Kuper’s Stop Forgetting to Remember, a volume I had never seen before. I’m halfway through it right now, and I’m finding it astounding. Not only does Kuper’s confessional memoir focus on his endless dope-smoking antics as a teenager, but he also reminisces on his inability to engage in opportunities to lose his virginity, even when the occasion presented itself no holds barred! And I thought I was alone…Stop Forgetting to Remember is confirmation that there is strength in dorkiness—who’d have thought that during my teenage years, I had inadvertently joined forces with a legion of dope-smoking, comic-collecting geeks with an inability to socialize with the opposite sex?

But back to Nic: Nic, you are an asshole. It’s not enough that you took six hits of acid and phoned me one evening to tell me “I’m in Hell,” then blurting out an address near the corner of Broadway and Arbutus and hanging up. I went to find you, yelling out your name late on the street, only to discover you in a nearby restaurant preaching about God to the restaurant’s patrons. We went to Kits beach and I spent hours listening to you ramble on, until you’d come down enough for me to know that it was safe to take you home.

No, that’s not enough. Some weeks later, you had to walk out the door in the middle of your shift at Caper’s, take all of the money out of your bank account, and disappear. Never to be seen again. Well, the hell with you, copyright law or no. Here is your story. So sue me.

I still miss you.

———–

Download (28.6 MB): Stonerolling

Poem (written twenty years ago): Fallen Angel

———–

Many thanks to Brian Glover for his conversion of the original mini-comic into PDF format. I owe you one.

LINKS:

Interview with Peter Kuper on Inkstuds.

Tales of an Ageing Baby-boomer Love Child

Aline Kominsky Crumb’s Need More Love

Recently, I have been inexorably drawn to the work of Bill Griffith, Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Justin Green and Art Spiegelman, among others. Part of the fascination has something to do with all of these people having lived in San Francisco when the city was first becoming a freak magnet. What will do when all of our aging hippies have disappeared? Sure, there will remain a younger generation of patchouli-scented love children with dreadlocks and Bohemian skirts, paired with their dope-smoking radical-subversive boyfriends who play the bongos. But it’s not the same. They won’t have been there when it all began.

This week, I finished reading Need More Love (MQ Publications, 2007) by Aline Kominsky Crumb. This is a memoirist’s memoir—Kominsky Crumb didn’t just decide to look back on her life once reaching a certain age of maturity (you should go to a local Writer’s Society meeting! You’ll understand what I mean), she diligently documented her life as it was unfolding before her eyes. The comics included in the volume date back as early as 1976.

Kominsky Crumb acknowledges the influence and inspiration of Justin Green’s “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” the first comic artist to work within the graphic memoir form. Kominsky Crumb assumes the proud moniker of being the first woman artist to follow in Green’s footsteps. She was involved in the earliest meetings of Wimmen’s Comix in 1971, inspired by the charismatic leadership of Trina Robbins, who incidentally despised Robert Crumb. Robbins was critical of Aline Kominsky for her involvement with Crumb, for what was argued to be his misogynistic portrayal of women in his work. Later, Kominksy Crumb was also involved in the development of Twisted Sisters Comics.

Need More Love is infused throughout with commentary and photographs on various phases in the author’s life, which provide further rich background information and insights into her comics. Each chapter includes an introduction designed to supplement the illustrations that follow.

The comics that Aline and Robert co-author are ingenious; they are a demonstration-in-action of the complicity and affection that the two share for one another. Aline draws herself in the shared strips, and Robert does the same. In one comic, which must have been produced when Sophie Crumb was around eleven years old, she even draws herself!

The end of the memoir includes “Unlocking the Kominsky Code,” the transcription of an extensive interview between Aline Kominsky Crumb and Zaro Weil, the publisher of Need More Love. The interview situates the author in the relatively recent present; she is invited to reflect on being a member of the post-war Baby Boomer generation, and stresses the importance of having been part of a youth culture that rebelled against the conservative mores of the time.

Kominsky Crumb draws a parallel between the Bush-era backlash of the religious right, and the McCarthy regime that dominated mainstream 1950s America. She diagnoses the prevailing illness of western society to be shopping, but obviously has a soft spot herself for shoes and designer clothing labels. Kominsky Crumb emphasizes the free will that she exercises in choosing her outfits, not necessarily falling victim to the dominant trends of the day. Clearly, wearing clothes is a creative act for her.

Perhaps even more important than her personal style in fashion, Kominsky Crumb’s comics convey the artist’s ability to communicate tremendous self-awareness and complex emotions in her work. Beyond comics, Kominsky Crumb also includes photographs of her paintings, her shrine-installations and revealing snapshots of the (busy!) interior of the fifteen-bedroom chateau that she shares with her husband R. Crumb in southern France.

For all of the truthfulness in Kominsky Crumb’s insights, it’s hard to reconcile her opinions about the materialist values of the nation with her own consumer behaviours. She does point towards the revolutionary tendencies of the French compared with the complacency of Americans, and the family’s moving to France was inspired by Robert and Aline’s disgust with the changes that they witnessed over the years to their home surroundings in Winters, California. The area grew from having three churches when the couple first settled down to an astounding thirteen churches by 1990, with the ten new churches all being evangelical denominations.

Much of “Unlocking The Kominsky Code” focuses on the author’s ability to have given up on many of the addictions that defined her habit-forming tendencies in the past. Admirably, Aline Kominsky Crumb seems to have discovered an equilibrium to her life, which, as she describes in her introduction, has led to experiencing so much love, she now feels she has to share it with everyone else!

There is a wealth of priceless stories in Need More Love. Here is a smattering:

• details about Kominsky’ Crumb’s father’s affiliation with the Leone (think “The Godfather”) crime family
• the tumultuous relationship between the author’s parents
• her early self-identification as an artist, and addiction to praise early romance and friendships with peers
• a hilarious close encounter with George Harrison from The Beatles
• marrying Carl Kominsky and moving  to Arizona
• seduction by the local cowboy
• meeting R. Crumb
• a story of two husbands!
• commentary by R. Crumb, and an interview with Sophie Crumb, daughter to Robert and Aline

As is the case with so many great graphic memoirs, the greatest strengths of Need More Love are its accessibility. Kominsky Crumb’s storytelling makes you want to be her friend, precisely because she is so generous in sharing her weaknesses and desires with the reader. In one passage, she describes her drawing as “scratchy” and “ugly” (176). Well, it ain’t no Michelangelo, but on the other hand, reading a memoir like this makes me think that maybe I could do it myself! After years of not confronting the fear of failure, I can only commend Kominsky Crumb on her fearlessness and shamelessness. Her self-deprecating humour brings out the fallibility in all of us, and the naïve (in the best sense of the word) quality present in her artwork serves as an inspiration.

Oddly, when I did a Web search for MQ Publications and the website supposedly advertising Need More Love, neither URL was live. This would suggest that the publisher is now defunct, which is a misfortune—to have been able to churn out such a fine graphic memoir, I would have hoped that others would follow in its wake.

LINKS:

Exhibition of Aline Kominsky Crumb’s work at the Adam Baumgold Gallery

One Man’s Collapse—In the Shadow of No Towers

9-11 Comics: Part One of Three

If the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York was good for nothing else, at least it got Art Spiegelman to return to creating comics full-time. So the creator of In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon, 2004) explains in the book’s introduction, entitled “The Sky is Falling!” This is an intensely personal glimpse into one man’s neurosis, fuelled by the author’s parents’ having survived Auschwitz, and now this—what was seemingly the end of the world. Spiegelman’s reaction to the event was to recoil into the past, poring through the innocent pages of a world now long passed by, that of early cartoon supplements. The cartoons of yesteryear selected for inclusion in In the Shadow of No Towers are a brief snapshot into the state of cartooning at the turn of the century—they are also, however, much more than this.

For me, In the Shadow of No Towers serves not best to entertain, nor to admonish, but to educate. In the span of two concise pages, Spiegelman explains the origins of the cartoon supplement, in so doing bringing home the central role of New York’s early newspaper publishing industry to the birth of comics. Spiegelman’s nostalgia for turn of the century America is seamlessly intertwined with the post 9-11 traumatic present.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the publishers Joseph Pulitzer (New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (New York Journal) were engrossed in a distribution war. Pulitzer’s aim was to outsell his rival by bringing fine art reproductions to a wide readership. As it turned out, the first colour presses were not up to the task, but were well suited for less detail-oriented printing, such as cartoons.

Beginning with Richard Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley and Yellow Kid, using a series of full-page reproductions of early cartoon broadsheets to accompany his essay, Spiegelman tracks the development of the comic strip. Rudolph Dirks, originator of The Katzenjammer Kids, is attributed as one of the first artists to introduce “…many of the devices—speech balloons, sweatdrops, frantic motion lines—that became the basic lexicon of comics (11).

Other early cartoons featured in In the Shadow of No Towers include:

• Happy Hooligan by Frederick Burr Opper
• Kinder Kids by Lyonel Feninger
• Upside Downs of Littly Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo by Gustave Verbeck
• Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay
• Bringing Up Father by George McManus
• Krazy Kat by George Herriman

Spiegelman’s re-visitation of these early works brought me back to being crouched alone on my knees as a child on the carpeted floor of my grandparents’ living room, poring through Bill Blackbeard and Martin William’s The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. In the Acknowledgments for In the Shadow of No Towers, Blackbeard and Peter Maresca are accredited with sharing their expertise and early comic collections.

Spiegelman not only honours these pioneers by writing about and reproducing them in his volume, but also through emulating the artists’ styles throughout his recapitulation of witnessing the bombing of the Twin Towers.

Spiegelman’s talent as an illustrator shines in In the Shadow of No Towers. The variety of styles he brings to every page makes each a unique pleasure to view. The layout of the book is equally stimulating; there is a dynamic flow to each page, sometimes with multiple layers contributing to a seemingly 3D effect. One of the most brilliant examples of this occurs on page ten, where two narratives unfold inside parallel rectangular frames—zooming out, we realize that the towers are being depicted, with an airplane flying between them.

Spiegelman states, “Comics pages are architectural structures—the narrative rows of panels are like stories of a building…” (12).” I recall hearing the author speak at McGill University in 1999, at which time he drew a relationship between the word “history,” whose roots are said to be derived from the Greek historia, referring to “finding out,” or “narrative.” The word “story,” obviously related to narrative, can refer to the graphic depiction of events from history or a legend, for example in the form of stained glass windows in a cathedral. The word “storey” is also related to the root historia, since sometimes the floors of a building possessing these finely detailed narrative works were referred to as “storeys.” The parallel between comics and buildings runs even deeper, since thematically In the Shadow of No Towers directly engages just this subject.

I would only discover later that this topic is addressed in Spiegelman’s Breakdowns: From Maus to Now (Belier Press, 1977). The author mentions that the:

…dictionary defines comic strip as a ‘narrative series of cartoons.” A narrative is defined as ‘a story.’ Most definitions of story leave me cold. Except the one that says: ‘A complete horizontal division of a building…From Medieval Latin historia…a row of windows with pictures on them.’” (Comix 28).

Spiegelman Pays tribute to the Katzenjammer Kids (4, 5) in the Tower Twins, a satire in which Uncle Screwloose (sporting a star spangled banner top hat) pours oil on his nephews’ heads—whereupon they instantly catch on fire. While the now skeletal (but still living, in true cartoon form) heads of the twins discuss their uncle’s behaviour, he madly rushes about trying to kill hornets with a chemical spray. The insects consequently swarm in even greater numbers and attack the twins, who run away in a panic. Spiegelman adroitly captures not just the folly of Hanz and Fritz in the original Rudolf Dirks strips, but also the hysteria of post 9-11 America.

In the strip on page six, Spiegelman describes being verbally abused in Russian by a homeless woman on his walks to and from work. After 9-11, the woman screams at anti-Semitist remarks at him in English, to which Spiegelman finally responds, perhaps out of some misguided compassion, “DAMN IT LADY! IF YOU DON’T STOP BLAMING EVERYTHING ON THE JEWS, PEOPLE ARE GONNA THINK YOU’RE CRAZY!”  On page seven, the author despairs the new Republican America. In the last panel found on both pages, Winsor McCay’s signature “…and then I woke up!” ending is reproduced in an exacting artistic likeness.

On page eight, the styles used in Bringing Up Father and Krazy Kat are faithfully reproduced, and on page ten, Spiegelman assumes the form of Happy Hooligan, with a recapitulation of his failed interview for NBC.

Most of the strips that Spiegelman selected date from over a hundred years ago. Upon initially viewing the strips, the reason for which they have been chosen may not be entirely obvious. Upon closer examination, however, we see that almost all of the cartoons can be closely linked to the the Twin Tower bombings:

The Kin-der-Kids have left New York Harbour to travel abroad in a bathtub. The Statue of Liberty looms in the background, waving a white handkerchief. Up until 9-11, if the same cartoon were to be depicted more recently, the Twin Towers would also have graced the New York skyline. The Yellow Kid (as Spiegelman explains, a satirical commentary on the “Yellow Journalism” surrounding the sensationalist coverage of the Spanish-American War by the press) depicts a troupe of rag-tag youth arming themselves for battle. During Foxy Grandpa’s recitation of the Declaration of Independence to celebrate the Fourth of July, Hanz and Fritz are depicted exploding bleachers being used by the local citizenry to attend the event. Happy Hooligan is requested to parade on a camel disguised as the “Arab Chief,” who has fallen ill with the measles. A giant-sized Little Nemo scales the buildings of New York  Harbour in the company of a “Jungle Imp,” only to be discovered by a giant Flip, who comes crashing through the downtown core, leaving destroyed buildings in his wake. Lastly, in Bringing up Father, the family visits Genoa, where Father experiences nightmares that the Leaning Tower of Pisa threatens to collapse.

Spiegelman attempts to seek refuge in the alluring nostalgia of the funnies, but the subtext is abundantly clear: there is no escape from the reality of 9-11. It is as though the author wishes to suggest that his subconscious has favoured these images over all others from which he could have chosen. However, the opposite is the case—these cartoons were selected by an all-too-conscious archivist to communicate a powerful allegory for the age.

LINKS:

Spiegelman’s essay on the early history of cartooning from In the Shadow of No Towers, The Comic Supplement.

Link to page one

Link to page two

Reliability, Authority and Authenticity

Confessional Comics: Part 4 of 4

The real mystery is this strange need. Why can’t we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe, if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem—don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer (quoted in Gill, p. 67).

—‘Ted Hughes: The Art of Poetry’, The Paris Review 134: 54-94.

To situate the term “confessional comics,” let us examine a working definition of “confessional poetry,” a term generally applied to a group of poets working in the 1950s and 1960s who were experimenting with a hitherto unfamiliar poetic form, deeply personal in character. Elizabeth Gregory (2006, p. 34) assigns the following characteristics to confessional poetry:

• It is derived from the poet’s autobiographical context, and is usually written in the first person.
• The work assumes an authorial stance, insisting that the events and emotions being described are the narrator’s own.
• The confessional poem generally expresses ideas that are antithetical to conventional social mores; mental illness, familial tensions, acrimony between family members, childhood trauma and abuse (sexual and/or psychological), and a preoccupation with one’s body are topics that are often present.
• Where subjects generally considered forbidden to discuss are named and even explored in depth, the term “confession” may be applied. From within generally accepted religious, psychoanalytic, and legal frameworks, the events being described are considered sinful, neurotic and/or psychotic, or illicit: in short, the subjects being discussed are usually considered taboo.

Gregory contextualizes confessional poetry in terms of the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic approaches to self-revelation beginning to take root in American soil at the time (33). Confessional poems were simultaneously an expansion of the poetic innovations introduced by modernist poets, notably the use of free verse.

Undeniably, artifice and the careful construction of a first-person narrative persona are trademark signs of confessional writing. However, the presence of a singular authorial voice may not have been established to misrepresent the author or delude the reader, but to articulate a lucid storyline out of what would otherwise exist as the seemingly disparate experiences of a fragmented self.

Gill emphasizes that a writer’s duplicity may be fully intentional. Consulting secondary sources may prove to be a dubious activity, if a writer is writing letters or journaling as a form of experimentation that may later lead to fully polished fictional works. Some excellent examples of this can be found in two highly complementary essays in Modern Confessional Writing, in which the claims of Sylvia Plath’s biographers blatantly contradict one another, and Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, written by Plath’s husband many years later, adds a new layer of interpretation to the events of Plath’s life.

To suggest that “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” and its offspring wield literary merit is also to suggest that the problems of literature, and more specifically, the problems of confessional writing, apply to graphic works as much as their exclusively text-based cousins. Issues concerning “reliability, authority and authenticity” (Gill, p. 1) are fundamental to an understanding of confessional comics through the lens of postmodern literary interpretation.

Certainly, no narrator is to be entirely trusted—whether the author’s intent is to convince the reader of certain truths, to convince himself or herself, or both. We may nonetheless appreciate the narrative trajectory constructed by an author through the combination of linear fluidity and artful incongruity.

The Internet has exponentially increased the availability of information on any subject, autobiographical testimony and biographical fodder not excluded. We remain best to sustain belief in any one truth, to remain sceptical at every turn. Tracy Brain (p. 13) cites Lucretia Stewart’s injunction,

…Now that we live in an increasingly confessional age there are perhaps fewer secrets and lies. There are, however, surely more half-truths and many more opportunities to present things as you want to rather than as they actually are or were (1999).

Where does this leave us with confessional comics? In terms of co-opting the tools of literary criticism to examine the graphic memoir, we are left high and dry on unstable ground. The fact that dialogue on such matters can take place within the comics medium is testament to the intelligence that artists are bringing to their work. And to have arrived at this point, we have Justin Green to thank.

Justin Green – He’s out of his mind! I love every stroke of his nervous pen, every tortured scratch he ever scrawled! He was the FIRST, absolutely the FIRST EVER cartoonist to draw highly personal autobiographical comics. Binky Brown started many other cartoonists along the same path, myself included. By me, he’s tops! Someday Justin will get the recognition he deserves, if only by the scholars and connoisseurs of comics, but for the time being, it’s just as well he doesn’t get it. It would only cripple him and add more weight to his already heavy burden of guilt.

—Robert Crumb. “Testimonials” Justin Green’s Binky Brown Sampler.

Bibliography for Confessional Comics Parts 1-4

Obsessive-Compulsive Comics

Confessional Comics: Part 3 of 4

Equally intriguing as Green’s original masterpiece “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” originally published in 1972, is the “Apocrypha” included at the end of the Binky Brown Sampler (Last Gasp, 1995), which walks the reader step by step through the rationale behind Green’s irrational acts, as he now understands them since having been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and having spent over thirty years learning to manage his obsessions.

In the “Message to Parents” in the Binky Brown Sampler, Green acknowledges that modern medicine has developed solutions that may help individuals suffering from OCD, a point that did not find its way into Binky Brown. Green goes on to self-identify as a “fugitive from the church and the A.M.A, (American Medical Association)” and concludes that he continues his lifelong quest for equanimity. (8).

“Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” gave implicit permission to a new generation of comic artists and cartoonists to explore their inner worlds without restraint. Perhaps not coincidentally, OCD also plays a central role in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and in Need More Love Aline Kominsky-Crumb makes mention of her own obsessive-compulsive tendency as a young girl to arrange her dolls to sit perfectly straight, with the threat looming that her family would fall apart if the dolls were not properly lined up. Kominsky-Crumb also includes mention of “Binky Brown Meets the Virgin Mary” as inspiration for her work in her memoir.

The combination of word and image has proven to be a highly accessible and powerful medium through which the storytelling tradition—and the expression of neurosis—has assumed a new vehicle for expression. Artists plagued with varying degrees of mental affliction continue to revolutionize what the term “graphic memoir” can mean, and remain welcomed by their readership with open arms.

Here is an excerpted dramatization of the first extended conversation I had with my now-wife—almost twenty years ago—during a fourteen hour drive from Smithers, BC to Vancouver at the end of a treeplanting contract:

Confessional Writing: A Mini-Primer

Confessional Comics: Part 2 of 4

Widespread recognition for the graphic memoir first occurred with the publication of Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale. Maus I took centre stage on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize Letters Award in 1991. Largely due to the success of Maus, confessional comics now loom large in the public imagination.

In broad brushstrokes, the roots of western confessional writing are most often attributed to the respective Confessions of St. Augustine (397-398 CE) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1781). In the Introduction to Modern Confessional Writing (Routledge, 2006), Jo Gill describes the historical and literary significance of Augustine’s work. St. Augustine’s tripartite confession begins with an inventory of his past sins; he then concedes that temptations to the spirit continue to plague his conscience, and finally declares his unwavering faith in God, acknowledging God’s splendour and magnificence. The passage through these stages is one early example of a confessor-persona engaging in active dialogue with a separate and distinct other.

St. Augustine by Rubens (1636-1638)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions is described by Gill as possessing a doubleness in which evasiveness and self-delusion are present in the authorial voice, a quality that is also seen in many recent confessional works (5).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In the Protestant tradition, emphasis was placed on the faithful practicing introspection to maintain an accurate sense of their relationship (or the absence thereof) with God. It is out of this exploration of the spiritual practitioner’s inner life that the roots of the novel are said to have emerged. The birth of the novel is often attributed to the works of Daniel Defoe and other authors of the day, whom Gill, citing Lawrence Stone, suggests led to the emergence of “secular individualism” and the rise of a “literature of self-exploration” (1990: 155, 154).

Gill also cites J. Bossy’s Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford University Press, 1985), which identifies the fourth Lateral Council (1215 AD) of the Christian Church as the first instance where confession was mandated by religious authorities. Church followers were to practice “prescribed annual confession and penance for the faithful, making it a condition for admission to Easter communion (5).”

The Roman Church instigated confession as one of the seven sacraments during the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and considered it of “divine origin and necessary for one’s spiritual salvation.” The trajectory of these events shows us that Binky Brown’s neurosis is not just his own, but contains the traces of a profound historical imprint branded into the hearts and minds of faithful subjects for hundreds of years.

In Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Volume One: An Introduction (Penguin, 1981, pp. 61-62), confession is defined thus:

The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocuter but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile (quoted in Gill, 2006, p. 4).

In a substitutive act, the reader of “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” assumes the role of judge and jury and is witness to Binky’s confession. Who is Binky? Arguably Green’s protagonist is little more than a thinly veiled alter ego. Nowhere has Green suggested that Binky Brown is in any way differentiated from himself—perhaps the name change was psychologically necessary to create distance between the author and the subject matter being divulged. In Sophie Aline Kominksy Crumb’s Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir—a compilation of forty years’ worth of the artist’s work, boasting the moniker of the first woman’s autobiographical comic strip—our heroine is affectionately addressed as “The Bunch,” possibly for similar reasons.

What is the attraction of the confessional work? Elizabeth Gregory (2006) suggests that the allure of the literature may be that the construction of the self is made transparently obvious in confessional prose. There is reassurance for the reader in the fact that the self is an impermanent fixture, a constantly evolving process, since it promises the possibility of change. Conversely, we are perhaps attracted to the narrative voice in confessional works because the authors’ stories resemble those that we tell ourselves.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Enter the “graphic novel.” Whereas past confessional genres have been limited to textual representation, the graphic memoir is a dance between word and image. The language of comics, the sequential narrative, forces the reader to actively engage in the meaning-making process. Words may describe one series of events, while the images accompanying those words tell another story. Images may bring life to memories not only as they are told, but as they are seen in the mind’s eye. The problems associated with confessional narration will not disappear—however, graphic literature has introduced new terrain within which those problems, may thrive.

Beware the Pecker Rays!

Confessional Comics: Part 1 of 4

If literature is considered fictional prose of superior or lasting artistic merit, the kind of creative work that you can read more than once and still enjoy, then “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” qualifies not just as the first instance of comics autobiography, but also as one of the original greats of graphic literature.

This is not just because the story is intellectually, imaginatively and emotionally engaging, but also because Binky Brown, originally published in 1972, remains highly unorthodox, even by today’s standards. How many comics have you read with a protagonist who agonizes over the belief that ill will is being caused by rays emitting from his penis and fingers, the latter of which also assume the form of phalluses? In my books, one of the only comics that rivals “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” for sheer eccentricity is Chester Brown’s Ed the Happy Clown, in which “…the bizarre misfortunes of the title character include being chased by cannibalistic pygmies and having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature, talking Ronald Reagan from another universe” (“Ed the Happy Clown.” Wikipedia). In spite of this fierce competition, Justin Green remains the originator of the confessional comic, an illustrious title that will no doubt endure throughout the annals of history.

Make no mistake of it: Binky Brown is a serious psychosexual journey, a victory of id over superego, a subversion of the censor. Binky’s tale is an afflicted parable of male torment, by none other than our old friend (or maybe your enemy) the phallus. Between the covers of “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” a veritable Hall of Shame unfolds, in which Brown atones for years of religiously induced self-reproach and delusion. As if this were not enough, the comic serves also as one man’s testament to the stranglehold that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) held over his life long into adulthood.

In “Symptoms of Disorder/Signs of Genius,” the introduction to Justin Green’s Binky Brown Sampler (Last Gasp, 1995) Art Spiegelman remarks that Green “…Profoundly changed the history of comix….Justin turned comic books into intimate secular confession booths (4).”

Spiegelman attributes the realization of Maus in large part to Justin Green’s encouragement. In commentary accompanying the exhibit Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art, Justin Green is said to acknowledge Robert Crumb as the first artist to create autobiographical comics. Seth and Art Spiegelman, curators involved in the exhibit, mention that Crumb adamantly insists that Justin Green is the originator of the form.

Some may criticize those artists who wear their neuroses on their proverbial sleeves—fuelling their creative endeavours with one unadulterated dark moment of the soul after the next—for their narcissism. In “A Confession to my Readers,” the introductory page to “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” Green provides the rationale behind creating his work: the aspiration that others may benefit from the author’s insights into his tormented psyche, through identifying with Binky’s neurotic plight and recognizing that they are not alone. For this reason and no other, in spite of its historical import, The Binky Brown Sampler should be in the “graphic novel” section of every mainstream bookstore in America.

Though the themes in “autobiographical narrative comics,” (as Green himself has described the genre) are unwaveringly personal, the stories recounted in confessional comics are consistently elevated to the level of craft. This is illustrated writing—complex storytelling recounted through the visceral combination of words and image. To successfully deliver one’s life story means to succinctly combine the loose strands of memory, raw emotion and factual information into a unified, and thoroughly contemplated vision.

LINKS:

Interview with Justin Green by Jon Randall

Binky Brown volumes available through Last Gasp Books