Comics as Art
Despite the fact that I don't have tons of boxes sitting around, posters or statues gracing my walls and shelves, and I don't wear t-shirts emblazoned with men on steroids in tights, I am admittedly a comic book geek. These days I don't really collect comics anymore, and I have mulled over in my mind possibly selling some or all of my collection. I still enjoy comic books and comic strips though, and have quite a few books, anthologies, and histories of comics, both in strip and book form.
For a long time, comics were something you bought, initially for a dime, then 12 cents, 20, 25, and upwards-- now you can head down to the drugstore or your comics specialty shop and plunk down close to $2 for a book. They were long considered the province of young children, perhaps teens, and weren't bought, collected, or hoarded beyond junior high-- or so people thought. Most of the time they ended up in the garbage, either as part of cleaning out one's childhood, or as part of Mom's cleaning out of one's childhood (my own mother threw out my collection of Heavy Metal magazines from the 1970's-- I could probably pay down part of my debt with what some issues are worth now!). Sometime in the late 1960's and early 1970's, comics started to develop a more serious reputation, as conventions, conferences, and the like started to be held. By the time my friends and I started developing a pile of more than five comics to keep, comic-cons were big deals, collectors were scouring attics, basements, thrift shops, and flea markets everywhere in search of old and rare issues. I had a lot of fun at the time collecting and trading comics-- we even had a teacher who collected comics, and one day he said we could bring our collections to school and he'd bring his. Turned out he was a serious collector, and we were able to see (and briefly hold!) Whiz Comics #2-- better known to serious aficionados as the exact issue that introduced Captain Marvel to the world (DC Comics now owns him, and he's more popularly known as "Shazam"). He was a pretty cool teacher- probably retired by now. I sometimes wonder what happened to him.
But I digress-- by the mid 1980's, there seemed to be a comic store everywhere, and tons of people trying to cash in on the growing collectability of comics. It got to the point where both DC and Marvel ran up high print counts of all of their titles, and over-saturated the market.
As all interests and fads do, things cooled down a bit, a lot of little shopkeepers went bankrupt, both DC and Marvel faced severe financial difficulties of their own, and comic books and comic collecting veered down a new path. About this time, you had a resurgence of interest in old comic strips, and companies like Denis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press were reprinting in anthologies and volumes old strips like "Little Orphan Annie," "Lil' Abner," "Terry and the Pirates," and the like. While Kitchen Sink Press isn't really around anymore, the trend has continued unabated in recent years, and both DC and Marvel have gotten into the act, reprinting dozens of their titles in the Archives and Masterworks series. A couple museums opened here and there; one in San Francisco, the Cartoon Art Museum, and one currently in Boca Raton, Florida (but will be relocating to the Empire State Building in NYC in 2007), the National Cartoon Museum (previously known as the International Museum of Cartoon Art). I've visited the San Francisco one, but never had a chance to get to Boca. Perhaps I'll have better luck in New York a year or two down the road. Cartoons and comics have also found a resurgence, through such vehicles as DC's Vertigo comics line, and a number of graphic novels, some on historical or serious topics. For instance, Art Spiegelman's "Maus," a graphic novel re-telling of his parents' experiences in the Holocaust, won a special Pulitzer Prize. Another example is Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis," a fascinating autobiographical work of a young girl growing up in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran. Somehow, these types of books aren't exactly for the pre-teen set; today's comics aren't the Harvey and Dell comics of yesteryear.
But this year, cartoons and comics have hit the big time. The first is an exhibit here in L.A., mounted by both the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, titled "Masters of American Comics." It opened in November, but we hadn't gone yet due to the absence of one-half of our duo, plus the dreaded Bar. We finally went today, heading first to the Hammer, and then to MOCA, to take advantage of free admission (this isn't DC, you know). One of the co-curators is Brian Walker, the son of cartoonist Mort Walker, so we knew it was going to be an interesting exhibit. We weren't disappointed. The curators chose to focus on a select group of top artists (always a subjective call!), rather than an overview of comics and comic strip history (instead letting the books in the museum bookstores do that for them). While this approach worked on one level, I still think having a broader overview would have helped (especially for viewers who were coming to comics for the first time or after a long break). There were introductory sections giving a general introduction to the origins of comic strips/comics, but not enough that people could see how it influenced American pop culture. Still, the Hammer and MOCA are first and foremost art museums, so that was probably appropos. As it is, having comic art displayed as art is definitely a departure from the norm (which is to treat comics/comic strips as pop culture/fads), so I think the show was successful from that standpoint. The artists chosen for the Hammer segment represented comic strips and cartooning from roughly 1900 to 1950, with Charles Schulz bringing up the rear ("Peanuts"ran in its entirety post-1950, but Schulz's influences were definitely pre-1950). Each artist had a brief biographical sketch, and then examples of strips they worked on, usually the sole or most famous work they'd done. We agreed with most of the choices: Winsor McCay ("Little Nemo in Slumberland"), George Herriman ("Krazy Kat"), Frank King ("Gasoline Alley"), Chester Gould ("Dick Tracy") and Charles Schulz ("Peanuts"). The others were interesting, but could have been replaced by other examples. In this group are Lyonel Feininger ("The Kin-der-Kids"), E.C. Segar ("Thimble Theatre," which featured Popeye), and Milton Caniff ("Terry and the Pirates"). While Feininger's work was interesting, I felt someone like R.F. Outcault ("The Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown") would have been a better choice as an example of an influential cartoonist at the dawn of comic strips. A similar strip to "The Kin-der-Kids" was "The Katzenjammer Kids" by Rudolph Dirks, and also would have been a good artist to profile. But as I said, these things are subjective... Part of the reason for choosing the artists was to highlight innovations or techniques they introduced to the field, but it was sometimes difficult to see exactly what these changes were, since the strips were actual pre-publication strips or newspaper sheets carefully saved over the years and now owned by collectors or actual cartoonists themselves (Patrick McDonnell, the creator of "Mutts," loaned quite a few strips from his personal collection for the show). I appreciated knowing that Gould was one of the first to introduce violence as a consistent theme in the comics, and things like that, but it would have helped to have had a fascimile made and then had a circle, arrow, or other indicator printed on top to show how the artwork changed. In other words, we were seeing the actual work of the comic artists themselves, but we weren't always seeing the link between their art and how it changed or influenced comic art overall.
The second half of the show was at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles, a good ten miles or so from the Hammer, which is in Westwood by UCLA. The MOCA display focused more on comic book artists and more recent artists from the second half of the twentieth century. The featured artists were Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware. With the exception of Panter, I felt these were pretty good choices (for what are fairly obvious reasons to any comic book aficionado). For Eisner, most examples focused on "The Spirit", his comic book pull-out distributed in the Sunday newspapers during the 1940's and 50's. Kirby's work was largely examples from "The Fantastic Four," along with some of his earlier work with Timely Comics. Kurtzman had representative material from MAD magazine (naturally!), as well as his risque "Little Annie Fanny" feature from Playboy. Crumb had his usual large-figured women and odd geezers from his 60's and 70's comic book materials (and Fritz the Cat too!), but there was also an interesting (and true) comic-book story of old-time delta blues musician Charlie Patton -- that segment changed my opinion of Crumb- I'm starting to think maybe he's underappreciated.
Spiegelman is known for "Maus" and that comprised most of the selections for his portion of the show, while Ware's artwork is from Jimmy Corrigan and some of his other works. The only artist I'd never heard of, and whose work I didn't "get," was Panter. If anyone reading this now wants to try to explain why I should appreciate Panter, go right ahead.
The show was definitely worth it, but it ends March 12, and as far as I know, isn't being shown anywhere else. So sorry if you missed it. But there's another interesting show coming up; this one focuses on superheroes and science. Science, you say?
Yep-- we saw the banners on Wilshire on our way to and from food shopping-- Wolverine, the Invisible Girl, Storm, and others. My curiosity piqued, I decided to find out what this is all about. It seems the California Science Center, in Expo Park by the L.A. Coliseum, is hosting what is billed as the "premiere" of the Marvel Superheroes Science Exhibition. Apparently here people will be able to learn about the science behind their favorite superheroes. As the site says, "Is there a biological basis to the Hulk's transformation?" "How can knowledge of simple mechanics help us command the strength of Iron Man?" It sounds really interesting, but I predict a lot of the on-hands stuff is going to be monopolized by the under-18 set. Still, we'll probably go at some point.
Finally, lest DC feel left out, this year's stamps from your friendly Postal Service includes the release of a series of DC Superheroes stamps, including obvious choices like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, rounded out by Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Supergirl, and Plastic Man. Given that generally you have to have been dead at least ten years before you can have a stamp issued, that definitely includes Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Supergirl. Not sure about the rest... (and yes, I know-- these are fictional characters)
So there you have it-- from pop culture to art to science to paying our credit card bills, this is definitely shaping up as a banner year for cartoons and comics in general.
For a long time, comics were something you bought, initially for a dime, then 12 cents, 20, 25, and upwards-- now you can head down to the drugstore or your comics specialty shop and plunk down close to $2 for a book. They were long considered the province of young children, perhaps teens, and weren't bought, collected, or hoarded beyond junior high-- or so people thought. Most of the time they ended up in the garbage, either as part of cleaning out one's childhood, or as part of Mom's cleaning out of one's childhood (my own mother threw out my collection of Heavy Metal magazines from the 1970's-- I could probably pay down part of my debt with what some issues are worth now!). Sometime in the late 1960's and early 1970's, comics started to develop a more serious reputation, as conventions, conferences, and the like started to be held. By the time my friends and I started developing a pile of more than five comics to keep, comic-cons were big deals, collectors were scouring attics, basements, thrift shops, and flea markets everywhere in search of old and rare issues. I had a lot of fun at the time collecting and trading comics-- we even had a teacher who collected comics, and one day he said we could bring our collections to school and he'd bring his. Turned out he was a serious collector, and we were able to see (and briefly hold!) Whiz Comics #2-- better known to serious aficionados as the exact issue that introduced Captain Marvel to the world (DC Comics now owns him, and he's more popularly known as "Shazam"). He was a pretty cool teacher- probably retired by now. I sometimes wonder what happened to him.
But I digress-- by the mid 1980's, there seemed to be a comic store everywhere, and tons of people trying to cash in on the growing collectability of comics. It got to the point where both DC and Marvel ran up high print counts of all of their titles, and over-saturated the market.
As all interests and fads do, things cooled down a bit, a lot of little shopkeepers went bankrupt, both DC and Marvel faced severe financial difficulties of their own, and comic books and comic collecting veered down a new path. About this time, you had a resurgence of interest in old comic strips, and companies like Denis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press were reprinting in anthologies and volumes old strips like "Little Orphan Annie," "Lil' Abner," "Terry and the Pirates," and the like. While Kitchen Sink Press isn't really around anymore, the trend has continued unabated in recent years, and both DC and Marvel have gotten into the act, reprinting dozens of their titles in the Archives and Masterworks series. A couple museums opened here and there; one in San Francisco, the Cartoon Art Museum, and one currently in Boca Raton, Florida (but will be relocating to the Empire State Building in NYC in 2007), the National Cartoon Museum (previously known as the International Museum of Cartoon Art). I've visited the San Francisco one, but never had a chance to get to Boca. Perhaps I'll have better luck in New York a year or two down the road. Cartoons and comics have also found a resurgence, through such vehicles as DC's Vertigo comics line, and a number of graphic novels, some on historical or serious topics. For instance, Art Spiegelman's "Maus," a graphic novel re-telling of his parents' experiences in the Holocaust, won a special Pulitzer Prize. Another example is Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis," a fascinating autobiographical work of a young girl growing up in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran. Somehow, these types of books aren't exactly for the pre-teen set; today's comics aren't the Harvey and Dell comics of yesteryear.
But this year, cartoons and comics have hit the big time. The first is an exhibit here in L.A., mounted by both the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, titled "Masters of American Comics." It opened in November, but we hadn't gone yet due to the absence of one-half of our duo, plus the dreaded Bar. We finally went today, heading first to the Hammer, and then to MOCA, to take advantage of free admission (this isn't DC, you know). One of the co-curators is Brian Walker, the son of cartoonist Mort Walker, so we knew it was going to be an interesting exhibit. We weren't disappointed. The curators chose to focus on a select group of top artists (always a subjective call!), rather than an overview of comics and comic strip history (instead letting the books in the museum bookstores do that for them). While this approach worked on one level, I still think having a broader overview would have helped (especially for viewers who were coming to comics for the first time or after a long break). There were introductory sections giving a general introduction to the origins of comic strips/comics, but not enough that people could see how it influenced American pop culture. Still, the Hammer and MOCA are first and foremost art museums, so that was probably appropos. As it is, having comic art displayed as art is definitely a departure from the norm (which is to treat comics/comic strips as pop culture/fads), so I think the show was successful from that standpoint. The artists chosen for the Hammer segment represented comic strips and cartooning from roughly 1900 to 1950, with Charles Schulz bringing up the rear ("Peanuts"ran in its entirety post-1950, but Schulz's influences were definitely pre-1950). Each artist had a brief biographical sketch, and then examples of strips they worked on, usually the sole or most famous work they'd done. We agreed with most of the choices: Winsor McCay ("Little Nemo in Slumberland"), George Herriman ("Krazy Kat"), Frank King ("Gasoline Alley"), Chester Gould ("Dick Tracy") and Charles Schulz ("Peanuts"). The others were interesting, but could have been replaced by other examples. In this group are Lyonel Feininger ("The Kin-der-Kids"), E.C. Segar ("Thimble Theatre," which featured Popeye), and Milton Caniff ("Terry and the Pirates"). While Feininger's work was interesting, I felt someone like R.F. Outcault ("The Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown") would have been a better choice as an example of an influential cartoonist at the dawn of comic strips. A similar strip to "The Kin-der-Kids" was "The Katzenjammer Kids" by Rudolph Dirks, and also would have been a good artist to profile. But as I said, these things are subjective... Part of the reason for choosing the artists was to highlight innovations or techniques they introduced to the field, but it was sometimes difficult to see exactly what these changes were, since the strips were actual pre-publication strips or newspaper sheets carefully saved over the years and now owned by collectors or actual cartoonists themselves (Patrick McDonnell, the creator of "Mutts," loaned quite a few strips from his personal collection for the show). I appreciated knowing that Gould was one of the first to introduce violence as a consistent theme in the comics, and things like that, but it would have helped to have had a fascimile made and then had a circle, arrow, or other indicator printed on top to show how the artwork changed. In other words, we were seeing the actual work of the comic artists themselves, but we weren't always seeing the link between their art and how it changed or influenced comic art overall.
The second half of the show was at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles, a good ten miles or so from the Hammer, which is in Westwood by UCLA. The MOCA display focused more on comic book artists and more recent artists from the second half of the twentieth century. The featured artists were Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware. With the exception of Panter, I felt these were pretty good choices (for what are fairly obvious reasons to any comic book aficionado). For Eisner, most examples focused on "The Spirit", his comic book pull-out distributed in the Sunday newspapers during the 1940's and 50's. Kirby's work was largely examples from "The Fantastic Four," along with some of his earlier work with Timely Comics. Kurtzman had representative material from MAD magazine (naturally!), as well as his risque "Little Annie Fanny" feature from Playboy. Crumb had his usual large-figured women and odd geezers from his 60's and 70's comic book materials (and Fritz the Cat too!), but there was also an interesting (and true) comic-book story of old-time delta blues musician Charlie Patton -- that segment changed my opinion of Crumb- I'm starting to think maybe he's underappreciated.
Spiegelman is known for "Maus" and that comprised most of the selections for his portion of the show, while Ware's artwork is from Jimmy Corrigan and some of his other works. The only artist I'd never heard of, and whose work I didn't "get," was Panter. If anyone reading this now wants to try to explain why I should appreciate Panter, go right ahead.
The show was definitely worth it, but it ends March 12, and as far as I know, isn't being shown anywhere else. So sorry if you missed it. But there's another interesting show coming up; this one focuses on superheroes and science. Science, you say?
Yep-- we saw the banners on Wilshire on our way to and from food shopping-- Wolverine, the Invisible Girl, Storm, and others. My curiosity piqued, I decided to find out what this is all about. It seems the California Science Center, in Expo Park by the L.A. Coliseum, is hosting what is billed as the "premiere" of the Marvel Superheroes Science Exhibition. Apparently here people will be able to learn about the science behind their favorite superheroes. As the site says, "Is there a biological basis to the Hulk's transformation?" "How can knowledge of simple mechanics help us command the strength of Iron Man?" It sounds really interesting, but I predict a lot of the on-hands stuff is going to be monopolized by the under-18 set. Still, we'll probably go at some point.
Finally, lest DC feel left out, this year's stamps from your friendly Postal Service includes the release of a series of DC Superheroes stamps, including obvious choices like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, rounded out by Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Supergirl, and Plastic Man. Given that generally you have to have been dead at least ten years before you can have a stamp issued, that definitely includes Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Supergirl. Not sure about the rest... (and yes, I know-- these are fictional characters)
So there you have it-- from pop culture to art to science to paying our credit card bills, this is definitely shaping up as a banner year for cartoons and comics in general.
posted by Mr. Sandman | 10:45 PM
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