Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Calvin and Hobbes, and the Peanuts Gang

The first of the strips that I read was Little Nemo. I had some prior exposure to Little Nemo via an Animation History course, friends, and the fantastic McCay exhibit that took place on campus. I found it interesting that the first of the Nemo strips included both dialogue and narration text, but as time went on, the narration began to disappear altogether. I remember thinking that both the narration and dialogue together made for a very broken and turbulent read which left my eyes darting around the page, but it was fun to see how quickly the strip evolved, having most likely gain self-awareness on the issue that pictures can speak for themselves. I also noticed that as time progressed, the strip allowed itself to get past that repetitive first step of having to lead Nemo into Slumberland and began to start off right in the middle of a scenario. While charming, I did find a lot of the Nemo strips to be rather repetitive, of course ending with Nemo awaking and realizing some reason for having had his odd dream. Despite the inevitable ending, the journeys that took place inside Slumberland were very interesting and the characters that became mainstays, such as Flip, added a lot more to the experience.

In Nemo, as with Krazy Kat, the strip is very telling of the era in which they were made, yet they are completely different in style. Everything about Little Nemo seemed sophisticated. The dialogue used in Nemo was very proper and the art that filled the panels could almost stand alone by itself as individual art pieces. So much thought and planning seemed to go into the Nemo strips, while Krazy Kat on the other hand was just a wild and sometimes violent sketch comedy on paper, with the use of slang and broken English, and scratchy drawings that looked like Herriman finished them the night before they were due. While I love both the strips, I feel my personal comic preference is more of the Krazy Kat approach. Thinking back to what McCloud said in Understanding Comics about the abstraction and simplification of character, I feel I was able to put myself in Krazy Kats shoes more often than Nemos and view the comic from that vantage point. With Little Nemo, I always read it as a story about a boy named Nemo, not me as Nemo. Perhaps that is just me. Also, it took me all these years, but I finally made the connection between Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons and Ignatz and Krazy Kat. It hit me like a brick.

After reading Little Nemo and Krazy Kat, when I returned to more modern comics such as Charles Shultz's Peanuts and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, it was interesting to see how the medium had grown and was made more concise. I noticed that the contemporary comics tended to remove themselves from larger narratives such as Nemo and Krazy and focused more on more common human experiences. The strips used a lot more 'silent' panels that spoke for themselves than did Nemo or Krazy, which I often found to be the most charming and funniest. I always felt that Calvin and Hobbes was very philosophical in the points that it made, making excellent use of the polarity of their characters and their opposing viewpoints. Peanuts was very similar in this way, but was able to make more of a statement about different kinds of personalities because of the broader character base. I find it very clever and charming that both Schultz and Watterson, used children to discuss ideas that were often very mature, but kept their viewpoints from that of childhood innocence. Had the characters been adults, I'm not sure these comics could have lasted.

Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics

I'd like to start by saying that this book was a far more comprehensive look into the world of comics than I imagined it would be. I found it clever that McCloud used the medium itself to analyze the anatomy of comics and how perfectly suited it was to do so.

While there were many profound observations in this book, I particularly enjoyed the section that used the trianglular 'reality/ language/ picture plane' diagram to graph different drawing styles and how they are perceived. I had never seen this graphic before, yet I wish I had because it applies to every visual art-form. The idea that the more minimal a representation is, the more personally identifiable it becomes, is something that really stood out to me. This concept is something I feel I've always known subconsciously, but was brought to the surface by this book. It is seen in the very way that the narrator character was drawn and the conscious choice of the author to do so. This use of a more graphic approach to character design is also seen in animation and for the very same reasons. I think that some of the reductive qualities of comic art is what gives it the stigma that is discussed in the book. Somehow people feel that the cartoonish nature of comics makes them less qualified as art, but for the very sake of being able to communicate and identify, that approach is in and of itself a sophisticated art form. Before arriving at Ringling, I too felt that simplistic characters were on a lower tier of art, until I was faced with having to design one. Choosing which elements to include and which to leave out, while still maintaining appeal is something that can be very difficult. McCloud mentions that masters of their craft are able to reduce their work to its most basic elements and still produce a masterpiece and that statement couldn't be more true.

I also liked how the simplification of design added to what McCloud called 'closure'. Our ability to make leaps in the storytelling process is eased by how iconic the images are. Of course not all comics go this route, but I felt the side-by-side examples of realistic vs. simplified images and how they read worked perfectly to explain the concept. Yet even comics that take a more realistic approach to their design still employ the use of icon via speed lines, speech bubbles etc.

This book was very informative and at times absolutely hysterical (i.e. The 'I Guess' panels depicting how to express a long or short pause, or the panel with the creepy guy and the dog that didn't love him anymore - pure gold) As rich as the text was about comics, I feel that I also learned a lot about the psychology of images as well as evolutionary biology. I will be recommending this book for sure.

Shaun Tan - The Arrival

The Arrival reads much like a black and white silent film, not only because of its monochromatic schemes, but also because of the reliance on expression, direction and staging of the compositions. Since 'The Arrival' lacks any supporting text and the language and characters of text found within the book are of a foreign and invented language, there is heavy reliance on gesture and subject matter to communicate to the 'reader' just what is meant to be interpreted. I found the book to be surprisingly fluid in how it read and that I wasn't left scratching my head as to what it meant. From the first page I could see that the story was going to be that of an immigrants tale with the display of all the uniquely different faces. Tan made effective use of familiar imagery and fantasy to create a universal experience that any reader would be able to interpret. It may be a convention of cinema, but I instantly understood what Tan was conveying when the sepia toned pages turned to gray scale to depict back-stories and memory, as well as the passage of time that was depicted in the life span of the leaf. I found it clever that the architecture, textiles, creatures and food, were all very stylized as to place the reader in the shoes of an immigrant arriving somewhere new for the first time, where everything is foreign and bizarre.

Being an animator I find that pieces such as 'The Arrival', truly strike at the essence of communication and expression. Without a reliance on text or dialogue this piece transcends culture and enters into a universal language. Stories such as this show just how many words can be formed from one image. I found that the illustrative style also matched the soft silent appeal of the book and where each panel seemed to have been given so much attention. I feel that given the panels in the book, this piece could just as easily read as a short film if someone were to adapt it for that medium. The direction was spot on and overall I really enjoyed the artwork and simplicity of the story.