Index: Comics

Behold! The cosmic hand
of Jack Kirby

> Transmissions, Art, Books, Culture, Design

Behold! The hand of Jack Kirby! Behold! The hand of him who is like unto a god! Behold! The clutch of harnessed power — about to be released! Somewhere in the endless cosmos, the hand is opened! Somewhere in the swirling mists of space the power is unleashed! In the awesome vastness of infinity, in the panoply of a billion billion universes, where giant galaxies are ever born and ever dying, who will note the passing of a small and nameless planet? Behold! The hand of Jack Kirby!

(Selected panels from The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, a 1978 prestige format one-off by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Absentmindedly pulled this off the shelf the other day and promptly lost my socks. Track this masterwork down, arguably Marvel’s first “graphic novel” and prepare to lose your socks, bub! — knocked clean off by the cosmic hand of Jack Kirby! Behold!)

Fellini & the Allure of Comics

> Reader's Digest of the Blog, Art, Books, Culture, Movies

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[RERUN: Originally Aired Sept. 2009 / An old favorite lost in the great SQL database corruption of 2012. I never tire of thinking about the electric confection that is Fellini & Manara’s Trip to Tulum, so here it be. Admittedly dated by my still fresh allergic rejection of the very idea of Zac Snyder’s appalling adaptation of Watchmen}

Comics, and the ghostly fascination of those paper people, paralyzed in time, marionettes without strings, unmoving, cannot be transposed to film, whose allure is motion, rhythm, dynamic. It is a radically different means of addressing the eye, a separate mode of expression. The world of comics may, in its generosity, lend scripts, characters and stories to the movies, but not its inexpressible secret power that resides in that fixity, that immobility of a butterfly on a pin. –Federico Fellini

The graphic novel Trip to Tulum has its roots in an aborted film of Fellini’s called the Journey of G Mastorna. Fellini’s entry in the “whoa… he was dead the whole time” mini genre, the movie was plagued by strange mishaps throughout its production. Already haunted by nightmares, Fellini threw in the towel after a huge Gothic church set collapsed minutes after it had been erected. The script and its attendant themes and vignettes sunk back into Fellini’s imagination. Over time bits and pieces floated to the surface in other films.

Fellini’s affection for comics and graphic storing telling is well known. In the mid 80’s, he allowed an Italian newspaper to serialise a version of the story, now called Trip to Tulum, with accompanying illustrations by Milo Manara. Manara, mostly known for his tony, Euro sci-fi erotica, is an illustrator and artist of the highest caliber. When Manara wanted to expand the story into a graphic novel, Fellini agreed, and took to the collaboration with gusto.

The result is simply one of the lost classics of the form. It begins with a stunning Anita Ekberg ringer finding Fellini asleep on the edge of pond in a a lush grove swept through by gusts of wind. Fellini’s hat flies off and as she reaches to grab it she falls in. Swimming after the sinking hat she descends to a vast, surreal field of sunken planes and ships. It emerges that they are all physical manifestations of Fellini’s films and unrealized notions. On one plane she finds a nattily dressed, kelp encircled Marcello Mastroianni, and…. oh never mind, from there the story just unfurls from one scene to the next like wax balls in a lava lamp… it’s a frisky fantasy adventure, a hallucinatory dream, a self referential commentary, an allegory of film-making, and finally a meditation on the creative act itself. Out of print now, copies can be found here.

(Incidentally, the Fellini quote is one of the definitive statements on the relationship between movies and comics. The notion of characters on “loan” lies at the heart of Chris Nolan’s respectful yet inspired cinematic interpretations of Batman. Its warning against literalism is precisely what an earnest vulgarian like Zach Snyder does not understand – which is why there is nothing whatsoever to be gained, and everything to be lost, in seeing Watchmen)

Hmm… That’s quite a drop.

> Transmissions, Art, Books, Culture, Design

The first page of the legendary comic Watchmen sold last weekend at auction for $33,460. Aptly described as the “Call me Ishmael” of comics, it’s one of the icons of the genre. All of the formal inventiveness that author Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons established in their 12 issue 1986 masterpiece is prefigured here. (Fascinating to see it stark black and white – the page also came with an ace bonus, an annotated color guide. Gander here, and here at larger images) Notice especially the convergences between Rorschach’s psycho-noir-messiah narration and the visuals in each panel. This tight choreography between seemingly unrelated visual and verbal elements is one the the primary sources of the book’s tremendous impact. It adds a crucial layer to the storytelling, one uniquely rooted in the format of comic books – the ability to directly interweave elements from one part of the story into another and thereby elicit new interpretations, resonances, and meanings. Watchmen established Moore as a virtuoso of this technique. So, so good…

Great story behind the provenance of the comic page itself. It was bought in 1987, in a comic bookshop in Covent Garden one morning by a bleary-eyed, hungover Stephen “Krusher” Joule for $180. Krusher was an artist and designer who worked with Motorhead, Uriah Heep, Blondie, Sex Pistols, Hawkwind, and Japan. He designed the covers for Iron Maiden’s Live After Death and Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman. In 1982 he became the art director for the legendary British heavy metal magazine Kerrang! In short, he’s exactly the kind of wonderful freak who deserves to score the first page of the Watchmen one hungover morning for a hundred and eighty bucks.

Black Widow

Art, Culture

WINTER SOLDIER #4
Variant cover by John Tyler Christopher

Agent Diana Prince

> Reader's Digest of the Blog, > Transmissions, Books, Culture, Fashion

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Wonder Woman is really confusing.

Consider the other members of the comic book trinity. Batman: Bruce Wayne, Gotham, detective. Superman: Clark Kent, Metropolis, boy scout. Their essences are schematic. Wonder Woman has been an Amazon and an Olympian. She’s been a god, a mortal, and a mix of both. She’s Diana Prince sometimes, she’s Diana Prince always, she’s never been Diana Prince. She had the invisible plane, gained the power of flight, then gotten the plane back – which I guess she uses when… she…umm… flyes back home? Yes home, which is on the island of Themyscira… or is it Boston, Gateway City, New York? Severe shifts in character and narrative continuity are endemic in comics, sure, but this schizoid blackboard eraser approach is more than a little nuts. It has left her less an icon than a notion of one.

That said, one of Wonder Woman’s most random, and most enjoyable, phases was her 60’s incarnation as a mod boutique owner and secret agent. Pop culture was undergoing a massive collective spy fantasia. Bond movies were at the height of their popularity and surreality. Every flavor of espionage was in vogue – Harry Palmer, Michael Caine’s working class spy, Italian comic book adaptations like Danger: Diabolik and Modesty Blaise, and Dean Martin’s candy colored Matt Helm absurdities. The genre’s high point is probably James Coburn’s peerless set of Flint movies (don’t miss this extended montage of highlights). They all shared a common widescreen Technicolor palette – mod fashions, mid century modern design, a taste for a splashy op art and the occasional dose of the lysergic. On television, Aaron Spelling’s pioneering swinging lady detective series Honey West had just been annihilated by the arrival of a fab new import from the UK – the Avengers.

The Avengers featured the espionage escapades of dapper Victorian John Steed and incomparable hepcat Emma Peel. In Peel, played by Diana Rigg, the genre had found it’s female icon. She was a stone cold fox, a brain box, a wit, and singularly, unforgettably stylish. (Peel’s wardrobe is virtually a case study in 60’s mod fashions – saturated pop colors, geometric patterns and cuts)

Emma Peel became the explicit model for the 60’s manifestation of Wonder Woman. She shed her powers and permanently adopted her mortal alter ego Diana Prince. She opened a fashionable clothing store. She rebuilt her fighting skills under the tutelage of her new sidekick, the wise, blind kung fu sage, I-Ching. The art was fantastic – a perfect blend of 50’s Romance comics, Good Girl Art, and Dan DeCarlo’s Josie and the Pussycats. The result was derivative, obvious, and absolutely delightful. (DC has recently reissued 3 volumes of this era – all are worthwhile, all easily found).

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane

Art, Books, Culture

Now these are a blast. Superman’s girlfriend Lois Lane in the late 60’s and early 70’s underwent a kaleidoscopic recombination of her character. It was a result of a desire by DC Comics to extend the line of superhero stories to girls who were captivated by romance comics. What they arrived at was an exuberant pop cultural mashup.

The comics are a swirling melange of styles – the overheated emotional sakes & teary cliches of the romance yarns; the can-do spunky mystery vibe of Nancy Drew. Light moments of the basic superhero world blow in and out, and sometimes there are gales of sci-fi weirdness. Compositionally, it’s the classic Lichtenstein/pop art configurations, and the art is as fine an example of va-va-voomish good girl art as you could hope for.

Wonder Woman was swept up in these currents as well – reconfigured as an Emma Peel-eque Mod avenger. Also, great fun. I wrote more about that era here, and the books were recently collected by DC. For Lois Lane, you’re still gonna haunt long boxes.

(Also to those interested in this confluence of styles and sensibilities there’s a great site that explores them – Sequential Crush, which is a blog devoted to preserving the memory of romance comic books and the creative teams that published them throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The woman who edits it, Jacque Nodell, also published a PDF of a lecture she gave on the topic. It’s called The Look of Love – The Romantic Era of DC’s Lois Lane, Supergirl and Wonder Woman. It’s a great read, smart, and replete with well chosen art. The blog is just as ace. Go, poke around.)

Frank Frazetta: 1928 – 2010

Art, Books, Culture

In weighing the loss of Frank Frazetta I think about what I always think about when I think about Frazetta – Caravaggio.

That is, he, like Caravaggio, took the fables and fantasies he passionately depicted just seriously enough, a precise ratio of rigor and rapture. It’s why the work is so powerful, so definitive – Frazetta painted with just enough supple realism, while conjuring just enough alien atmosphere, that he imbued the fantastic with the weight of fact.

(above, Frazetta’s covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series)

Aw Yeah Titans!

> Transmissions, Art

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My daughter and I are both over the moon for Tiny Titans, DC Comics’ toddler takedown of their side-kick league. The graphic style is a note perfect blend of Jack Kirby’s blocky Biff! Bang! Pow! style and the emotive power and cuteness of Peanuts. The storytelling is a savvy remix of the source material – all the villains are reconfigured as hapless authority figures, all the adult superheroes as parents and guardians. The stories themselves are frothy little capers that squeakers will dig, with an additional level of meta commentary on the main DC universe for the nerds.