The Sketchbook Project 2012

Someday, I will go to Brooklyn:

• Picturebox.
• Gary Panter.
• The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival.

And now, The Sketchbook Project sponsored by the Arthouse Coop. This is exactly the kick in the ass that I need to get drawing again. Maybe you should do the same!

Check it out; choose a theme for your sketchbook and order a copy ($25) before October 31, 2011. Sketch your heart out and send it back to the coop before Jan. 31, 2012. For an extra $20 your sketches will be digitized and made freely available on the Web. The physical sketchbooks will tour various cities, including Vancouver, BC, and will then be permanently housed in the Brooklyn Art Library.

How cool is that?

Ticket to “Palomar” by Gilbert Hernandez

Palomar (Fantagraphics Books, 2003) collects the stories found in the original Heartbreak Soup comics. They have been identified as the comics equivalent to the magical realism genre initially spearheaded by Gabriel Marquez in literature, eventually also finding its way into film. Palomar’s strengths lie especially in the strong women and three-dimensional characterization present in the stories overall. A complex narrative web ties characters together from one comic to the next. The town lives and breathes history. We see time unfold before our eyes as we watch the characters mature.

It’s hard to imagine that the artist is not taking great pleasure in drawing Luba’s oversized breasts and skimpy outfits for the benefit of himself and his readers, and the inclusion of gay male characters was probably considered risqué for the time that these works were initially published. Including male nudity was probably equally subversive, even for an “alternative” comic. Frequent sex scenes make this a volume for mature readers only.

Palomar has made an important contribution to the evolution of comics storytelling. The Hernandez brothers have demonstrated on more than one occasion the potential of comics as a “legitimate” storytelling medium. The inhabitants of Palomar are portrayed with a careful attention to nuance, depicted with alluring heavy-handed inks.

This one is a brick, coming in at 522 (!) pages.

Buddy Was There: “Buddy Does Seattle” by Peter Bagge

Buddy sure is coming into his own in these comics, compared with the earlier Bradley family strips. As I’m sure is the case with so many readers of their antics, it’s easy to identify the early twenties slacker lifestyle typified by Buddy, Stinky, Lisa, George and Val. The raging hormones of early adulthood, the low-paying jobs with promise of a nowhere future, and a revolving series of roommates are all part of what makes Buddy’s existence so lovable—from a distance.

The seething arguments and erratic behaviour displayed in these stories are powerful because of the transparency and access that we are granted into the emotional landscape of each character. The loose and expressive style in Buddy Does Seattle (Fantagraphics Books, 2005) is quintessentially Peter Bagge. It brings home the drama with a uniqueness that cannot be imitated.

I am a convert, and will be catching up on all of Buddy’s adventures none too soon! If only I could have appreciated Mr. Bagge’s presence at the Victoria Comic Book Convention all those years ago (1983, I think!) more fully. All I remember is how exciting it was to have met the creator of the gag strips included in the Double Bubble chewing gum, “Pud’s Funnies.”

Going Back in Time with “Walt and Skeezix: 1921 and 1922″

I was totally engrossed by Jeet Heer’s introduction to Walt and Skeezix: 1921 and 1922 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010), and then spent the next three weeks trying to actually get into reading the cartoons themselves. Finally, it clicked. Maybe I was identifying with Frank King’s own struggle to build narrative momentum in the early days of the strip—but whatever the case, once over the hump, the ride was well worth it.

How little has changed in ninety years! Who knew that there were alarm clocks in 1921, that houses had thermostats even back when coal-fired furnaces were being used, or that roads were roughly patched over just as they are today, once natural gas lines to the houses were installed? These are but some of the small gifts that Walt & Skeezix inadvertently offers, simply as a lens into the past.

There are obvious superficial differences that are visible between then and now in Gasoline Alley (for example, fashion trends of the time are very well reflected in King’s portrayals of everyday life). But fundamentally, the heart of his strip—the relationships between Walt, Skeezix, Rachel, Miss Blossom and Walt’s cronies in the alley all stand the test of time. Recognized as the first strip in which cartoon characters aged in real-time as it was published, Gasoline Alley is also one of the longest-running newspaper strips of all time. We are fortunate that the likes of Chris Olivieros, Jeet Heer, Chris Ware and Joe Matt have championed the cause of reprinting these classics in their entirety.

Return of the Book Bus: “The Night Bookmobile” by Audrey Niffenegger

Basically, I can’t remember the last time a book fucked me up as much as The Night Bookmobile by the time I finished reading it. (Abrams ComicArts, 2010). I was a casual tourist along for the ride when I began reading this seemingly innocent fable. By page three, I was spinning off with my own early childhood memories of visiting the “book bus,” which serviced our neighbourhood in Vancouver prior to the local library branch being built. I remember picking out Dr. Suess books and having my Dad read them to me—probably some of my earliest book-related memories. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time, and the connection made me hungry to continue reading.

The Night Bookmobile opens with bone-white narration on a jet-black page, shifting on the next page to black text transposed over the pastel hues used throughout Niffenegger’s story. Dialogue, on the other hand, is rendered using an unsteady cursive hand, a stark contrast to the crisp serifs used for narration. Text serves as a counterpoint to the lush illustrations of The Night Bookmobile, strategically placed in various font sizes throughout the book.

At first I thought that I would buy this book for my Dad for Father’s Day, since thousands of books line the walls of his house, and I thought he’d appreciate the central theme of a life lived navigating the world of the printed word. But I changed my mind by the end. The turn of events in the last pages of The Night Bookmobile makes for sober reading.

The author’s “After Words” provide insight into the book’s grand finale, though this is little consolation. At least we learn that this work is the product of someone who, in her teens, often died in her dreams. One of these dreams had Niffenegger entering a pantry door in her grandmother’s house, only to find on the other side a huge library, which upon waking up was recognized as being “a form of heaven.” The Night Bookmobile explores the psyche of a compulsive book reader, and crafts a metaphor that explores the logical extreme of this behaviour. Why do you read books? What would you give to be in their presence for eternity?

A Mostly Glowing Review of “Radioactive” by Lauren Redniss

Radioactive (!t Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, 2011) by Lauren Redniss lies on the fringes of the “graphic novel” continuum—it is a storybook for grownups, a stunning combination of words and pictures depicting the lives of Marie & Pierre Curie (as well as Curie’s later lover Paul Langevin) and their scientific legacy. The book does not employ comics grammar and syntax (e.g. panels, word balloons, caption boxes), but rather openly manipulates and juxtaposes text with what might best be described as eerily primitive drawings.

Redniss’ drawings are infused with a kind of a right-brained quality. There is a dreamy, ethereal style to Redniss’ work that reminds me equally of David B. and Modigliani.

The New York edition of The Huffington Post has a remarkable article describing an exhibition of Lauren Redniss’ work, as well as artifacts from the library that influenced her research. The author explains that she desired to make a “…visual book about invisible forces,” hence the Radioactive’s byline, “A Tale of Love and Fallout.”

In a collaboration between the New York Public Library and the Parsons School of Design, fourteen of Redniss’ students worked on building a website to promote Radioactive. There are some brilliant interactive multimedia resources on this site: check out the “curiograph” to create your own facsimile of a cyanotype print!

Cyanotype printing involves applying the transparency of an image to chemically-treated light-sensitive paper, which is then exposed to sunlight. A chemical process occurs, which makes any areas that have been exposed to light turn blue.

If you have this book, try viewing the cover in a pitch-black room and you will see that it possesses its own luminous qualities!

Radioactive would read largely as a linear recounting of the lives Marie and Pierre Curie, were it not for the generous inclusion of information interspersed throughout on later and concurrent developments in nuclear science and technology. Much of this information is based on firsthand research conducted by the author:

I traveled to the Nevada Test Site to talk to weapons specialists. I went to Hiroshima to interview atomic bomb survivors. I spoke with an oncologist exploring innovative radiation treatment in San Bernadino, California and the Idaho National Laboratory’s Director of the Center for Space Nuclear Research about how nuclear power and propulsion can enable space exploration – and crystal cities on the moon,” enthuses Redniss. “A biologist studying the land around the Chernobyl nuclear plant talked with me about his research on the animal populations in the 30 years since the disaster there. In Warsaw I visited the house where Marie Curie was born. I interviewed Marie and Pierre Curie’s granddaughter at the Curie Institute in Paris (Gayle Snible, New York Huffington Post, January 14 2011).

For the most part, the tangents work magic—they embellish and accentuate the Curies’ central storyline. The one spread where I felt that the connection between past and present didn’t coalesce was on pp. 70-71. “Curietherapie” was introduced in 1900 as an experimental treatment on “…mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits (Redniss, 70).” Radiation treatment on humans followed soon afterwards. Now switch to 2001, with Daniel Fass describing cranial radiation for on-Hodgkins lymphoma. However fascinating the description itself is, the connection between “curietherapie” and thermoplastic radiation was not made explicit, and I was left wondering as a reader whether I was missing something.

Similarly, although the transition from Pierre Curie’s death to commentary on the Three Mile Island crisis was concresced through a description of sociologist Charles Perrow’s “normal accident,” the stretch left me questioning how much the two events actually have in common.

The colours in Radioactive are at once brave and stark, and are rendered with exquisite grace. The washes used for the spreads on each chapter title page are remarkable for their bold use of “white space.” The delicate font used in the book—Eusapia LR—a creation of Redniss’ own, based on typefaces discovered “…on the title pages of manuscripts in the New York Public Library” (Reniss, 201) complements Redniss’ images seamlessly.

Radioactive reminded me that what I have always loved about the history of science is the potential for storytelling that all too often lies dormant beneath the surface veneer of a strict adherence to methodology and theoretical proofs. Redniss has brought the human element in science to the fore, with all its glorious messiness and mishaps.

Reading “Reading Comics” by Douglas Wolk

In Reading Comics (Da Capo Press, 2007) Douglas Wolk speaks convincingly of comics readers and artists alike as secretly aspiring towards some sort of acknowledgment, respect and legitimacy from “highbrow” culture, from whence the origins of the word “graphic novel” arise. This is evidenced most directly by Bruce Eric Kaplan’s New Yorker cartoon, “Now I have to start pretending I like graphic novels too?”

Wolk equally exposes mainstream comics for the boy’s club that they manifest, with their undertones of soft porn and adolescent gender politics. He speaks of the wall of solitude that comics readers may build between themselves and the non-comics reading world, and the fidelity that comics readers may have to particular publishers, artists and mythologies.

Wolk defies the construction of a comics canon, arguing that with the evolution of the medium, the interests and emphasis of participants in the comics community will continue to change. This may be true, but especially with the advent of the scanner, champions the likes of the late Bill Blackbeard, as well as Art Spiegelman, Dan Nadel, Jeet Heer, Chris Ware, Seth and Blake Bell continue to expand upon the giants and unearth lesser-known comics creators from the past, thus contributing to the evolution of a comics canon that at this point it would be difficult to dismiss.

When you look at editors’ selections in volumes like Best American Comics from one year to the next, or McSweeney’s 13, or Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories Volumes 1 and 2, for all of the featured emerging artists, the vast majority of the cartoonists included in these works also comprise a body of work that can at least loosely be characterized as the basis for a canon. And as with other canonical works, one would be hard-pressed to suggest that this is not driven by the publishing industry.

The latter half of Reading Comics is comprised of a series of essays devoted to individual artists, comics, or both. There are generous treatments of artists the likes of David B., Chester Brown, the Hernandez Brothers, Craig Thompson and James Kolchaka, Alan Moore, Dave Sim, Kevin Huizenga, Charles Burns and Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Alison Bechdel—among others. At times Wolk’s appreciation of both artists and comics on the whole smacks of fanaticism (for example and in particular, his essays on Alan Moore and Grant Morrison), which is both the charm and frustration of reading his essays.

And for better or for worse, I have Douglas Wolk to thank for my decision to read the Cerebus run from the beginning. I think I only got up to the two hundreds, before I started selling off my comics collection because I was broke. But Wolk’s essay led to my listening to a couple of interviews with Sim on Comic Geekspeak, and I had already listened to Sim’s Inkstuds conversation. The recent Gerhard interview in The Comics Journal, compounded with Tim Kreder’s essay on Cerebus, have sealed my fate. Right now I’m on page 270 of the first phone book.