A big Spread-10

Here are some photos from the week Dave Sim appeared at Comics Etc. in Brisbane in 1994, and also, for my benefit, laid out in detail the logical advantages of self-publishing. It turned out to be the most sensible ting I ever did. And when I later obtained the rights to publish From Hell under my own banner I did it as a big 576 page volume in the same style as the Cerebus 'phonebooks', since Dave had already worked out all the angles with that.




The image was painted onto the shop window by a proper sign painter, from a design by Mr j, who was working in the shop at that time.

A big Spread-9

I have circled around and returned to the idea of literalness (see parts 2 and 4). Dave Sim's refusal to be a slave to the literal marked him as progressive from quite early. In the Guys volume that I spoke about already he has a character named Alec MacQuarry who has obviously stepped out of my The King Canute Crowd. When the character shows up in a later scene many pages later he is now, if he is the same character, a version of Alec out of After the Snooter. Here is a panel each of the earlier and the later:


Sim is not interested in explaining this in story terms. You can read it any way you choose. It's not the first time he did this. He has two versions of Oscar Wilde, for example, who are clearly not meant to be the same person (Oscar in Jaka's story and Sebastian Melmoth in Melmoth. he was queried on the mattter in a 1992 interview:

Question: Was Oscar in Melmoth (Sebastian Melmoth) the same character who was in Jaka's Story? People have said you've answered this question differently at different tour stops.

Dave: That was left intentionally ambiguous. If you go by the length of Jaka's hair between issues 75 and 114, Cerebus was on the moon for a longer time than it appeared, or was wandering around dazed for two years. The Oscar character in Melmoth refers to the author of Jaka's Story as a separate person. This was one of the instances where I was ambiguous with a capital "A"; manufacturing two separate, irresolvable interpretations. Nothing frustrates me more than the twentieth century adherence to the notion that you can find out what "actually happened" and that it is necessary for fiction to set out a linear, quantitative and absolute reality for the readers consumption and assurance. I think EVERYTHING is like the Kennedy assassination(s); riddled with inconsistencies, false trails overlapping stories and considerations; distortions wrapped inside fabrications and coated with lies. The sooner we get over the idea that reality isn't like this, the sooner we'll be able to put together a world that fits our circumstances as they are; not as they never were and will never be. I'm not holding my breath.

A big Spread-8

S ize is the red herring of the graphic novel. This is a quotation from way back:

"In a recent Comics Journal interview, Dave Sim complains about the use of the term 'graphic novel' for a mere 60 or 100 page story, pointing out for instance that Marvel has issued a set of science fiction 'graphic novels' that adapted sf short stories. How did a short story become a novel by adding (juxtaposed sequential) pictures to it?"

Sim used to think that the whole 6,000 pages (the size, planned and accomplished, of his entire Cerebus) ought to be counted a significant 'graphic novel' if the existence of such a thing were to be acknowledged in the first place, and Sim tended to be ambivalent about that. Before long the terminology got universally confused, so that instead of the work inside the book being the 'graphic novel', it was the book itself (viz. the phrase 'publish it as a graphic novel' as opposed to 'publish my graphic novel in book form', thus you could publish your short story as a graphic novel.) Sim seems to have adapted to usage, so that we may take the above quote as being very early, but let's not get stuck under it as I'm just using this to get to something else.

The issue is not really about size, but rather what we may call 'closed form.' A short story and a novel are both closed forms, which is to say that they do not continue from something else or continue into another thing, like the daily episodes of afternoon tv soap operas. Nor do they put everything back at the end so that they can repeat cyclically for as long as the property has commercial value, like tv detectives. It's worth noting that in comics in the 1970s, at the same time as the 'graphic novel' raised its head, there was also a revival of the short story, somewhat forgotten since the '50s when it was the predominant form in comic books. But note that there's nothing particularly elevated about this, as the short story in comics is usually a horror story of the most trivial sort (I've never understood the attraction of Creepy and Eerie).

Artists always liked the short story. For seven or eight pages they could do their thing without having to follow somebody else's character designs, or continuity, or work over another artist's layouts for the sake of some bigger consistency. And they would usually get to ink the thing too, and have control over the final appearance. Whether they cared that they were asked to illustrate a good story or a bad one is difficult to judge as they usually did the job as well one way or the other. Furthermore, on those occasions when otherwise accomplished artists were given carte blanche to create their own thing they often disconcertingly went with the cliche, as though they really believed in it all along. Thus Steranko and his Chandler, a compendium of well polished film noir plot turns, or Doug Wildey and his Rio, a western in which nothing happens that hadn't happened in other westerns. But artists liked the short story most of all because in a sense they were the star of it, not as opposed to the writer, but to the character.

Closed forms were also a desperately needed way of attracting a general audience, the casual reader, as comic book culture became mired in continuity and collectibles. It was a way of clearing the table before it was too late. But I want to stay with this as an aesthetic idea. To return to the 6,000 pages, an attempt to close a form of such dimensions is like closing the gate on a sheep pen whose boundaries are further apart than any sheep can walk, like Europe say. The parts could go to war with each other. Nevertheless Sim followed his course all the way to the death of his protagonist, as he said he would. Then closed it. Interviewed in The Onion shortly after:

O: ... would you consider a follow-up or spin-off Cerebus series?

DS: No. Cerebus is my attempt at a literary work. A literary work doesn't have follow-ups or spin-offs. It's ridiculous to think about More Crime, More Punishment or The Sons & Nephews Karamazov.

(which dovetails nicely with my earlier discussion of literariness.)

A big Spread-7

(still talking about Dave Sim and Cerebus...)

A round 1970 the comics medium was recognized by its more progressive afficionados, mostly in Europe, as a worthy art form of our times (e.g. the 1967 exhibition in at the Louvre). Conversely, American comic books entered into a dismal and conservative phase. The '70s saw the rise of the independent comics producers, but these were fannish efforts in the high fantasy genre with their invented maps and cosmologies and all. I thought The Lord of the Rings was a literary masterpiece, and The Silmarillion even better, but I could never see the point in building a whole imitative genre in its wake, in prose or comics or whatever. There was First Kingdom (1974-) Cerebus (1977-), ElfQuest (1978-). (The anthology Star Reach (1974-'79) was in there too and Pekar's American Splendor started in 1976, but for obvious reasons I'll leave that out of the argument). In the decade that supposedly saw the introduction of the graphic novel, the best comic was Doonesbury, a newspaper strip. It seemed that until Spiegelman launched RAW in 1980 that American-style comic books had chosen to be just another of the geeky genres. Indeed, since the '70s they've never been able to break free of that thoroughly earned public reputation.

I didn't pay much attention to Sim's Cerebus for a long time, until the mid-'80s when I noticed that it was cut from quite a different cloth from the others (plus most of the new ones that had come along in the interim). It would be wrong to say that it didn't take itself seriously, more correct to say that Sim didn't see taking things seriously as being at odds with having Groucho Marx shuffling around in there, or Mick and Keef from the Rolling Stones. In the genre of high fantasy, this would normally be felt to have broken the spell somewhat. Our consumer culture conventionally wants its fiction in general and its fantasy in particular to come packaged along with all the stuff for putting it together, like IKEA furniture. But with Cerebus I looked for issues in which actual people were hauled in. And it was to play their own part and not that of a character. I always felt that Sim saw in a person a way of diverting the thrust of his story rather than fitting in by way of an inoffensive cameo. An early favourite of mine was Issue #92 (nov '86) which had a caricature of the comicbook publisher Bill Marx, with whose imprint there was a possibility of me getting involved. Reading an issue of Cerebus is certainly no way of giving a person an audtion, but I just had to look.

"The springboard for this story-line was a dinner that I enjoyed, courtesy of Harry, at the Now & Then Books 15th Anniversary party. Also in attendance and seated directly opposite were Seth and Bill Marks of Toronto's Vortex Comics artist and publisher of Mister X respectively."

"I don't recall hearing Seth say more than five words so I had to improvise his voice.
I decided to use Diana Schutz's."

Caricature is one of the foundational cartoon skills. Sim presumably studied the work of Mort Drucker in Mad, but until Sim, nobody had integrated caricature into a narrative so well since the great Walt Kelly in Pogo. (in this case however, he obviously didn't know that Seth was going places or he'd have paid more attention to the face than the voice)

That same year, 1986, Sim released the first of his 'phonebooks', High Society, at 512 pages. Reading his rationale now, he appears to have seen this at the time primarily as an expedient manoeuvre rather than a goal in itself. " I have arrived at this decision for a number of reasons (a) the difficulty involved in keeping each volume of Cerebus in print at all times, (b) the convenience of being able to introduce new fans to Cerebus with two large volumes and (at most) two dozen back issues, (c) a manageable format for someday having all 300 issues available, (d) the opportunity to expand Cerebus' exposure by making it available in bookstores." Nevertheless, the first volume that he created with the phonebook in view from the beginning is perhaps the most integrated, and perhaps satisfying, volume in all of his oeuvre, Jaka's Story. He began it in the Sept. 1988 issue, with the book's finished title at the top of each issue for the first time, and concluded it in July 1990. The phonebook was out in Oct 1990. It remains one of the most important of graphic novels. From Sim's own introduction:

"It contains no heroes and no villains; merely people set in motion and in orbit about each other. Like Wilde's ill-advised action against the "screaming, scarlet Marquess' it begins innocently enough and plays itself out against a highly moral backdrop to an all-too human ending which defies (in the case of thinking persons) convenient or reassuring conclusions."

I re-read it recently and enjoyed it like visiting an old friend.

next: about size.

A big Spread-6

A t the time I did worry that putting all these real life people into a Bacchus story would severely hamper the chances of the book's survival as a comprehendible read. Because nowadays we comickers think a great deal about shelf life. Perhaps too much. (is it another one of the negatives of the graphic novel era?).
But then, I reasoned, what sort of future would it be where my Bacchus is not at least still as well known as Alan Moore? Following is part of a two page scene in which Neil Gaiman, having been sent downstairs at the Castle and Frog by Bacchus, is telling Alan Moore that it's time to release the screamin' habdabs. The scene is actually an analogue of a real life event in which Alan described to Neil his intentions for the final murder in From Hell and Neil came over so nauseous that he had to leave the house.


Many people have sought me out at conventions to try to get hold of King Bacchus just for this scene. Far from hampering the future readability of the book, this may indeed be all that it is ever remembered for. Well, that and the four page spread...

I am reminded of George Du Maurier's Trilby, a book I have on my shelf, a late Victorian melodrama, hugely popular in its time, which is now mainly remembered for stuff that happened outside of the pages.

Du Maurier, in his weekly cartoons in Punch, liked to poke fun at the 'aesthetic movement', the doings of the likes of James McNeil Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. He had actually studied art in Paris alongside Whistler and inserted the soon-to be-famous painter into his first sale to Punch in the 1960s.


Du Maurier's lampoons of the 'aesthetics' peaked in 1880, by which time he had developed a whole cast of recurring characters, such as the languid poet Prigsby, clearly modelled on Wilde.


Du Maurier turned himself into a novelist, and his second book, Trilby caused a minor furore when it was serialized in 1894 in Harper's Weekly in the USA before publication in book form. James Whistler recognized himself in the Character Joe Sibley and threatened to sue for libel unless the character was removed and all existing copies of the issue of the magazine destroyed. The character was removed and replaced by another, and the illustrations in which Sibley appeared were not used when the book was published. No apology was made. This appears to be the drawing that caused the trouble, an update of Hogarth's idle and industrious apprentices.



Trilby inspired Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910) and introduced the phrase "in the altogether" (nude) and the term "Svengali" for a man with dominating powers over a female protege, as well as indirectly inspiring the name of the Trilby hat, originally worn on stage by a character in the play. There was a book about it all, Trilbyana (1910).

Why did Whistler think suing somebody might be a good idea? There was his earlier lawsuit against the critic Ruskin, who had written, "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler won but was awarded a mere one farthing in damages. The costs of mounting the suit wiped him out. Wilde, you will recall, is another who mistakenly thought suing a worthwhile enterprise, and who lost everything.

A big Spread-5

Continuing a couple of thoughts following the 4-page Bacchus spread shown here on Friday 15th.


On the far left of the panorama is Dave Sim, under attack. Dave's name has come up a couple of times on the net over the last few weeks. The Comics Journal posted an excerpt of Tim Kreider's evaluation of Sim's complete Cerebus that appears in the huge issue #301
"Its parodies of characters, creators and trends in the world of comics circa 1980-2000 date badly, and were never even comprehensible, let alone of much interest, to anyone outside that marginal subculture."

I can't remember who started this thing among the self-publishing crowd of using each others' characters and personages with impunity. It could have been Rick Veitch, or James Owen. This is Owen using Frank Miller's Marv, and that looks like Jeff Smith's Big Red Dragon in the foreground.


James had also helped himself to Dave Sim's whole panel technique from around the time of Jaka's Story. And here is a character named Martin Humble, based on British comedy actor Marty Feldman.


Dave Sim pinched the Marty character for a role in Guys (1995-97), a book in which all of the supporting characters came from real life or other artists' comics.


Guys is not so much a narrative as a series of comings and goings in a tavern, where everybody drinks huge tankards of froth until somebody comes in and shows the barman how to pour the stuff properly. Here's Sim's version of Bacchus.


Even the screamin' habdabs make an appearance.


It turns out that Bacchus is actually 'wee Callum's granny', and Alec MacQuarry comes to take her home.


Through the whole of Guys Cerebus is wearing a bandage on his eye following the 'Injury to eye motif' incident at the end of the character's previous volume.


My King Bacchus (1995-96) also takes place entirely in a pub, though the coincidence is not something we gave much thought to at the time, since Dave and I had both done books set in, or mostly in, taverns before (Jaka's story, 1001 Nights of Bacchus). You will notice at the top of my post that my Dave Sim character is wearing the same bandage as Cerebus on his own eye. After suffering the attack that you see there, the next time we see him he is wearing the same bandage on his own somewhere else.

A big Spread-4

I was writing here on Saturday about the outward signs of a literalness that prevails in comic books. I regard it as a bad thing, in case that isn't clear. Today I'm delving deeper.

I've just found out that there's a wikipedia entry for Death in Comics that looks as though it's as important as the scientific one for Life on Mars. Death in comics, as you probably know, is completely bogus. It is hardly ever 'permanent or meaningful.' You would expect any artist of integrity to say 'Well I certainly won't be contributing to this dishonesty' and sure enough, there's Geoff Johns up near the top saying, 'death doesn't exist in comics the same way it does in our world. I wish death existed in our world as it does in comics.'

Comics operate like soap opera, where every effect is caused and every price must be paid, and what comes next is all that matters. Everything is literal. A death is literally a death. We can't just say, 'oh well, it's only comic books' and resume business as if nothing has happened. The character must be returned for further commercial exploitation, and so the death must be explained away. Comic books being very limited in their range of invention, there are only four ways of getting out of the difficulty. A death must in due course be dealt with by means of a retcon, (the wiki entry gives these instructions believe it or not) a bad dream, mistaken identity or the character is simply replaced by a doppleganger who in every possible respect is the same as the person who is supposedly gone.

Why do characters have to be killed if they are going to be needed again? (you may innocently ask). Cheap fiction demands that the reader should, in the words of Oscar Wilde, 'experience a feeling without having to pay for it.' Thus the reader may wallow in the sentimental excess of suffering a loss without ever losing anything, even a character that didn't exist in any tangible sense in the first place.

Can a fictional death be non-literal? Yes, Kenny's death every week in South Park, not counting the famous thirteenth episode of the fifth season. And of course the author's death, or 'The death of the author' in Eddie Campbell's The Fate of The Artist, in which he is found double-bagged and filed in the permanent collection of the State Library under the number newly allotted to the graphic novel by the Dewey Decimal System. I mean, you knew I wasn't literally dead, didn't you?

A big Spread-3

S till on the subject of that big spread, here's a photo of Pete Mullins beside the original art, taken in 1996.


Next door to that in my files I have this better photo of Pete posing as Luke Skywalker for a Dark Horse Star Wars cover from around the same time. That was for our brother of the brush and fellow Brisbane artist, Hugh Fleming. The pictures were in an interview with Hugh in a Star Wars magazine. The Pete image was very small and I've enlarged it and put it side by side with the painted figure.


I have no idea what Hugh's doing these days. Maybe he's still as busy as we all appear to have been back then
Pete's always busy doing design work for tv.

A Big Spread-2

A fter yesterday's post about the upcoming Bacchus collection I had a couple of follow-on thoughts. Firstly, all those ugly little creatures were drawn by Pete Mullins. You can see how he's turned this one into a Kubrick reference:


They are called the screaming habdabs:

abdabs /ˈabdabz/ (also habdabs)
▶plural noun
Brit. informal (often in phr. the screaming abdabs) nervous anxiety or irritation.
– origin 1940s: of unknown origin.

The habdabs have often been read as synonym for Delirium Tremens (or 'giving the invisible man a handshake') an unspeakable condition that I personally hope never to suffer. Tremens is a character in the story, and thus so are the habdabs. The great thing about cartooning in its very essence, is that nothing is literal. Abstract ideas, propositions, medical conditions, can be made into characters. A character can wear all of his guilt in a wretched suit of Tattoos.


One of the saddening tendencies of the late comic books is the habit of getting literal. There are some obvious outward signs of this. One such example is the decline of the thought balloon, because although we hear the speech of others, as seen in their speech balloons, we are not privy to their thoughts and so, the theory goes, these should not be made visible. Thus in the more literal-minded comics of our days, such as those from Vertigo, thought balloons have been expunged and replaced by the cinematic technique of the voice-over.
Another comics trick that has largely gone south is the speaking building. This was a staple of the newspaper Illustrated strips, used as a way of setting a scene while simultaneously jumping into the dialogue. It could also be a way of breaking up a static conversation, by cutting to an exterior view. But this had to go. Why? Because buildings don't speak.




I have always liked the talking building:


But the talking building has got nothing on the thinking truck:


***********************************

Just pointed out to me is this interview with Stephen King from May 14 2010 :

But he fell away from the genre for several years, and in that time the form had evolved considerably, which made writing for the medium a new challenge for even as seasoned a writer as King. “You have to be very humble, and you have to take advice because it’s a new way of seeing, to actually write it is a new way of writing...
One example:Thought bubbles—those puffy, dotted clouds that were a staple of early comics—have been phased out. “I got this kind of embarrassed call from the editors saying, ‘Ah, Steve, we don't do that anymore.’ ‘You don't do that anymore?’ I said. ‘No, when the characters speak, they speak. If they're thinking, you try to put that across in the narration, in the little narration boxes.’” So King happily re-wrote to fit the new style—though he still laments the loss of the thought bubble. “I think it's a shame to lose that arrow out of your quiver. One of the nice things about the written word as opposed to the spoken word in a movie is that you can go into a character's thoughts. You do it in books all the time, right?”

Poor old Stephen King, made to write in the Vertigo house style. I hope he didn't go away thinking all of comics work that way.

A Big Spread-1

I'm scanning and preparing Bacchus for its big printing coming up soon. This spread was tricky. It's four pages that all connect up to show a huge absurd brawl in a pub. In the original comic it was printed on two spreads, and will be probably be in the same configuration this time around. You can click on it and blow it up to the width of your screen. Bigger than that if you like..


The original is in two large pieces 22x17 inches and I drew it with Pete Mullins away back in April 1996. A four-page spread is something I always wanted to do at least once in my life after Jim Steranko, a childhood hero of mine, did it back in April 1968.


I got the Steranko scan from Bully's blog. You'll need to go there for the enlargeable version.