Maus

When I first examined Maus I figured, okay, this will more or less be a graphic novel that uses animal characterizations to approach a very serious subject. However, I was surprised by the fact that the characters as animals had almost nothing to do with how the story was written, but had everything to do with how the story was perceived. The telling of Maus isn't a recounting of a Holocaust experience. Instead, Maus is a very comprehensive tale about Spiegelman's experience in gleaning the information about the Holocaust from his Father. Their relationship to each other, as separate from the Holocaust was very intriguing. Getting to know the author and reading the book as it was being created inside itself was very, for lack of a better term, inception-like.

With the characters as animals, Spiegelman was able to use clever devices to sell the reader on certain things that would have been much more difficult or bland had the characters been human. One device he used was mask-wearing, in order to hide from enemies. During the recounting of the Holocaust, Vladek is often seen wearing a pig-mask to represent himself as Polish instead of Jewish and when Spiegelman is being questioned by reporters and businessmen in Maus II. Of course the text does not directly state that any masks were worn, but the device itself is instantly recognizable and understood by the reader, which helps to grease the storyline and make this point clear.  The specific use of mice, cats, and dogs all seemed to make a lot of sense to me, but the choice of pigs to represent the Poles, or the mention of frogs to represent the French, was puzzling. It wasn't that I maybe didn't buy the connection, but rather why he would intentionally use such undesirable animals to do so. In some ways, the use of animals seemed like a metaphor that exposes our own animalistic nature in the face of survival and the horrors of war. Maus of course is not the first to do this. The use of animals has often been used to approach serious human dilemmas, such as seen with Animal Farm. Making the decision to depict the characters as animals does however make the story more sympathetic and relative to the reader in the way that we are capable of assuming the faces and roles of those characters as ourselves instead of distinct 'other' individuals had they been human.

What I struggled with when reading Maus was the fact that I began to see Vladek as a racist caricature of the miserly old Jew. I was happy when Spiegelman made reference to this aspect later in the book, but I often questioned myself on how to interpret the stereotype if indeed this was the truth to this character. Although, what I think Spiegelman really showed by highlighting these characteristics was that these traits were what kept Vladek alive. His craftiness, planning and wit that resulted in his stinginess were also relevant in survival situations. Vladek often bought his way out of situations, with things that he had held secret from others, or presented food when everyone else thought it was gone. This resourcefulness really paid off for him, even if it painted him unfavorably in other ways.

All in all I think Maus transcends being just a holocaust book and enters a realm that deals with universal human instinct and relations. I was very inspired by this text, despite how depressing it could be.

Underground Comix

I always had an affinity to things labeled "underground" and I knew these comics would begin to channel my high school self, even though they were from an era that I didn't have the pleasure of participating in. The shock value of these comics is instantly recognized by the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll, however I saw most of that as husk. While all those ingredients played a role in shaping the characters and story-lines, the stories themselves dealt with very real issues, both personal and political.

The first samplings I read were Cheech Wizard and Mr. Natural. I enjoyed that they both employed 60's slang into the dialogue and that their character ramblings had the heady and ultimately senseless appeal of someone on acid trying to describe the universe using breakfast cereal, yet with slightly more cohesion. At times, Mr. Natural even turned the medium on it's own audience, by poking fun and exposing the hypocrisy of some Counter-Culture values. The story I read from Cheech Wizard approached the topic of Capitalism vs. Communism in a very zany way. What I found interesting was that, given the era, it didn't set out to demonize one side or the other, as is often seen. Of course instead, the story comes away with the old hippie mantra 'Can't we all just get along?'

The topics really ran the gamut, but I felt if you looked closely you could always find a theme that related back to the hippie or counterculture movement. In Crumb's Whiteman, it tells a bizarre tale about a guy stolen from society by bigfoots and forced to live in the woods and mate with a bigfoot woman. In the end, the guy realizes that this return to nature was all that he was ever searching for and that he desperately wants to return to the woods with his bigfoot lover. To me this drives right back to the idea of the return to the natural world and themes of love for nature, yet tells it in such an awesomely hilarious and raunchy way.

However, not all of the comics were hilarious or attempted to be lighthearted. The sampling of Junk Comix that I read was all about the struggles of drug addicts, in particular heroin. The comic was created by junkies for junkies and the irony is not lost on anyone. Having known a few Junkheads that are no longer around, it was really kind of sad to read, even if its intentions were that of a cautionary tale. The edgy subjects of all the underground comics coupled with their often scratchy drawing styles is what makes them seem more real than some of the professionally published and polished works. It's clear that these stories are meant to appeal to anyone who has ever been a part of street culture and societal underbellies. I would safely assume that folks that have either grown up sheltered from these truths, or who are religious, right-winged or straight edged would have had a hard time understanding what these comics were really getting at besides just gratuitous sex and drugs, but it wasn't for them anyway, so who fuckin' cares.

Contracts and Blankets

I find it strange to think that a graphic novel had not been developed before Eisner's Contract with God, simply because it seems that the format is so conducive to storytelling, even in its long-form narrative. The stories Eisner created seemed to flow and deliver just as well, if not better than standard novels. Where the text left off, Eisners pictures picked up, for the images were able to express a page's worth of textual description at a glance which was how the stories gained such a fantastic momentum.

Comparing Eisner's work with Thompson's, I could see that Eisner was still working out the kinks with just how to make a graphic novel work. At times I felt as though the way Eisner handled the text in blocked form made it seem too much like a children's story-book format. Sometimes the text felt very well integrated, while other times it separated itself from the graphics like oil and water. Nonetheless, Eisner's approach to borderless imagery really seemed to segregate this work from episodic comic books or comic strips and gave it a feel of it's own. The stories themselves were very unlike what I've come to expect from a comic book in that they deal with very real scenarios and rarely distinguished a character as a hero or villain. The endings to the tales were what I noticed most about his work. The fact that Eisner didn't feel the need to wrap up the stories into neat packages was really compelling. They were often just open ended and allowed the character to really come to their own conclusions about what may or may not have happened next. Having experienced 4 years of being taught the linear narrative structure to storytelling, I found these short stories to be refreshing.

To me it was interesting that both Eisner and Thompson used graphic novels to capture pieces of their own history. It was as if the format somehow captures memory better than text alone, inviting the viewer to try and experience the scenario as they did. Thompsons work was hugely emotional and managed to pull me through from beginning to end without any breaks. I could see that by the time Thompson completed Blankets, graphic novels had developed much more of a sound structure. Thompsons text and imagery seemed to work much better than had Eisners, yet maintained the same black and white illustrative approach. I feel that despite such a limited palette, Thompson managed to capture an immense amount of mood and atmosphere. The way images were arranged with lots of negative space or conversely with lots of claustrophobic energy, managed to set up scenes in my mind that text alone can sometimes fall short of. All in all, I feel both Eisner and Thompson have really managed to legitimize the comic art-form with these works.

Jack Cole & Plastic Man, Carl Barks and Herge

The past week I started my readings with Art Spiegelman's essay about Jack Cole and Plastic Man. The best part of that book was the fact that huge portions were devoted to the source material of plastic man, so one could familiarize themselves with the subject matter while reading, should they not have had any prior exposure to it. Plastic Man really took me by surprise given the lurid and often violent nature of the comic, coupled with the era in which it was produced. I had always believed that the further back in time a comic began, the more censored it was, however that was not the case with Plastic Man. It was a mashup of gag humor with the most unlikely of heros painted in vivid color, incorporated into violent themes with sexual overtones. The stories often seemed as though they were being written on the spot and never revised, or rather revised on the spot by dedicating a panel or two to explain away an inconsistency and then pushing onward with the story. Having read about the comic code that was introduced in the 1950s I could see why I had this preconceived notion that comics became more 'watered down' the further they go backwards in time, but I guess I had just never taken the opportunity to read some as far back as the 1930s and 40s. I felt the essay was a very concise tale of Jack Cole's legacy that really introduced me to the realities of comic history.

I made an effort to read some TinTin, but I fear I'm too much a product of my time, craving fast paced stories with a lot of energy. TinTin for me was a little boring and the humor often was too flat to carry me onward. I was surprised to see that some of the TinTin books were 80+ pages and ultimately felt that the pacing was just too slow for me to get involved. TinTin himself seemed a bit too generic and wholesome for me to find interest in him, however I did enjoy some of the captain's antics as well as the professor. It may have been that I wasn't in a proper mood or place to be reading it and I might return to it someday and give it a try, but my first impression left me feeling as though it just wasn't my style. I will say that the art style was pleasing and very well done.

So my favorite of the readings I did was Carl Barks' Donald Duck Disney Comics. I was first introduced to Duckburg when I was a child watching the DuckTales cartoon show, so I was pretty sure I knew what I was getting into when I started reading Barks' work. I will say that Barks' work is a bit more sophisticated than the TV show ever was, while maintaining an appeal for all ages. I am a big fan of stories that have broad character bases where each character has his or her own subplot and relation to the others, so these comics I found very satisfying. Who knew that a world full of ducks could be so compelling? Barks' work had a lot going for it with the familiarity of Disney and the new yet separate world of Duckburg. In a way, a lot of what drew me to Barks was the nostalgic value of the characters, but I could see that despite all that, the work was very well composed and directed. The Ducks are just all around fun to read and I hope to one day own a collection of Barks' work.