On Imperfection and Activism

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Tom Head

One thing I’ve very slowly learned about activism is that it attracts a lot of good, strong-willed people with a lot of contradictory opinions who have a powerful internal drive to do, or at least seem like they’re doing, the right thing. This means that activism itself is driven by tensions and contradictions.

You can’t ask for permission to do activism. Back in 2007 or 2008, I put together and bulk-printed legislative fact sheet for people who wanted to organize against bad bills. A longtime lobbyist and dear friend chewed me out for it, citing important context I’d failed to mention, and basically told me to leave this stuff to the professionals. I did, and then I felt bad about that.

You can’t work without an accountability structure. Your numerous conflicts of interest (and everyone has them) will derail you.

Organize in public if you want, but be ready to be told it’s just self-promotion.

Organize in private if you want, but be ready to be told you’re not actually doing anything.

Organize online if you want, but be ready to be told it’s just slacktivism.

Organize offline if you want, but be ready to be told you’re inefficient.

Organize on the neighborhood level if you want, but be ready to be told it’s just a coffee klatch.

Organize on a larger scale if you want, but be ready to be told it’s just advocacy.

Organize with funders if you want, but be ready to be told you’re an establishment sellout.

Organize without funds if you want, but be ready to be told you’re irrelevant.

There is no right way to do *any of this*. We must all work out our salvation, as it were, with fear and trembling. And we will all be wrong enough, in the eyes of at least half of the people doing the work, to burn most of us out.

That’s why activism rewards resilience more than it rewards talent. A good burglar isn’t somebody who steals with exceptional grace or talent; a good burglar is someone who doesn’t get caught. Don’t let your activism get caught. Practice self-care. Take breaks. Don’t surround yourself with people who hate your guts, no matter how much you agree with them. Give yourself room to grow and make mistakes. And if you can—and I fail at this more often than most—be gentle with the people trying, with characteristically human imperfection, to do the work.

Jacen Burrows and the Mystery of Providence

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Ng Suat Tong

Alan Moore’s Providence has been well served by the online community of researchers and critics over the past year. Of greatest note, perhaps, are the detailed annotations at the Facts-Providence blog. It would also be remiss of me not to mention Craig Fischer’s long overview of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Lovecraft cycle at The Comics Journal.

For once the backcover blurbs accompanying Providence have been largely correct. The work is easily Moore’s most heavily researched and intricately devised comic in years. Yet of the many mysteries of Providence, there remains one which has sternly defied explanation.

Why did Alan Moore choose Jacen Burrows to draw Providence?

Was it a true appreciation of Burrows’ art, a choice made for the sake of consistency (since Burrows worked on The Courtyard and Neonomicon), some connection on the personal level, the path of least resistance (Burrows being Avatar Press’ best artist), or some combination of all these (and more)? Whatever the reasons, I think there is little doubt that the choice was fully within Moore’s hands.

Some perspective on this issue might be gained by listing out a few of the artists who have worked with Moore on his long form works over the years: Stephen Bissette, Brian Bolland, Eddie Campbell, Alan Davis, Melinda Gebbie, Dave Gibbons, Ian Gibson, Gary Leach, David Lloyd, Kevin O’Neill, Bill Sienkiewicz, Curt Swan, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, J.H. Williams III, and Oscar Zarate.

Some might argue that the work of Jacen Burrows exceeds one or two of these artists, but I think it’s safe to say that many more would consider his contribution to Providence to be somewhat indifferent and strangely out of place among these illustrious names. Certainly, on a purely technical level, it is very hard to place Burrows ahead of most of these cartoonists but this also assumes that this was Moore’s primary consideration in choosing Burrows to be his partner on Providence.

If Moore’s contributions are generally always visible in his careful structure at the level of both page and book, his obsessive research, and his sometimes baroque dialogue and themes; then the contribution of his collaborators is even more apparent. Eddie Campbell’s contribution to From Hell is an unrelenting crepuscular inking, the rush of lines swiftly scratched across the page suggesting something indistinct, something hidden; the figures in deep black coats suffocating entire panels in impenetrable night. When William Gull does his work, he is the darkest point in the room, his tunic bleeding into the stains hemorrhaging from his victims; the rest is a kind of rolled-on hatch work candlelight.

A quick flip through the scripts of From Hell at hand suggest that Moore was capable of giving Campbell free reign to exercise his imagination (and research) in a number of scenes, while Campbell himself felt free to change Moore’ suggested panel progressions and compositions across entire tiers of panels.

By comparison, J. H. Williams’ work on Promethea is almost lightness personified; the manifestations of the comic’s matriarchal thaumaturgy might be colorful, labyrinthine, and decadent but it rarely seems truly frightening. Which is a roundabout way of saying that Moore seems to choose his partners with great intent (more so as his reputation has grown), seemingly tailoring his scripts to their abilities. Which makes the choice of Burrows all the more puzzling.

There is of course the simple matter of reliability and temperament with Moore’s experience on Big Numbers being the main point of provocation (Bill Sienkiewicz having shown a distinct distaste for working on Moore’s detailed scripts). This is perhaps one of Burrows’ main selling points—his willingness to subsume much of his own artistic vision to that of Moore’s; you can almost sense his desire to pay obsessive attention and deference to the details of the script. The plainsong delivery of Providence seems to provide us with an almost unfiltered expression of Moore’s writing (which is arguably not the point of a collaborative piece where we want both distinct voices to be heard).

The clarity of Burrows’ expression is such that almost every element depicted has the impression of being placed in space under the direction of Moore (with a modicum of artistic direction by Burrows). What I am describing is the effect of Burrows’ drawing style and it may be something very far from the truth—its scrubbed cleanliness, its theatrical violence, its precision if not in draftsmanship, then in obsessive depiction and placement. Consider Providence #5 where Robert Black and Hekeziah Massey ascend and descend the same set of steps on different pages, the disparity in their heights across two different pages presumably accounted by the height of the steps they are traversing.

Such is Burrows’ attention to detail that the reader is left to wonder if the height of the steps is sufficient to account for the difference in their heights as seen from the exterior of the house (Massey is considerably shorter than Black as is). The house is based on that in Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the Witch House; an abode existing in indeterminate time and space. The branches which cast their shadows across the facade of Massey’s house were first seen on the cover to issue one of Providence (depicting the site of Lovecraft’s story, Cool Air) suggesting an arcane connection. In this and other scenes, Burrows seems almost mathematical in transcribing Moore’s script.

In this sense, Burrows is the artist who most resembles Dave Gibbons as far as Moore’s oeuvre is concerned. That earlier pairing appears to have been a bit more collaborative in nature; more taken with the squalor and boisterousness of life and drawing. Whatever your opinion about Gibbons’ work, there is something to be said for the way he managed to work around Moore’s voluminous scripts despite the constrictions of the nine-panel grid—a format which forced him to engage in a series of medium shots and close-ups for much of Watchmen.

This is not to minimize Burrows’ own contributions if Dave Gibbons’ experience on Watchmen is anything to go by. Here’s a typical interview by Gibbons explaining his contributions just before the launch of the Watchmen movie.

“…people unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of Watchmen as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations. And that does a disservice to the entire form, because comics are stories in words and pictures.”

“…like the notes where I plot the rotation of a perfume bottle through the air — might not be particularly obvious to anyone who reads it. But those who do will note the consistency, the reality behind it all that exists in great depth. It gives it a more magical quality…”

Burrows describes a somewhat similar experience for his work on Moore’s scripts in various interviews. At the very least, the reader will find a substantial amount of his contributions in the character designs, the style of dress, and the everyday objects which populate Providence—the kinds of things which people only notice when they go horribly wrong. Burrow’s greatest contribution appears to be in the recreation and reimagining of various outdoor locales. While he is not an architectural maestro of the level of a François Schuiten (or even a Dave Gibbons), he seems most comfortable when dealing with the facades of buildings (his interior spaces are another matter; see below). Perhaps the photo referencing helps in many of these instances.

An uncredited writer at Facts-Providence is one of the rare unadulterated defenders of Burrow’s work and suggests other aspects of his art which might be due some appreciation:

“As far as gore and grue goes, it can be honestly said that few artists in the industry get quite the mileage out of their anatomical studies as Burrows does—both in terms of making sure every organ and muscle is in its correct place, and for not shying away from the nipples and genitalia.”

“…the sense of space. Some of the subtle but effective visuals and layout choices focus on shifting perspectives in the same space, with visual cues directing the readers’ attention rather than dialogue, forming an effective visual rhetoric.”

In any case, Moore has persisted with Burrows and his faith in the artist has paid off in a way. Providence is undoubtedly Burrows best comics work to date, and it is done with a level of confidence and brio which suggests a greater sense of mission brought on by the new script. The oft cited stiffness has been reduced in severity throughout. Much of this has to with a better grasp of proportion, a more naturalistic placement of figures within each panel, and a greater variety in his panel compositions.

Having said this, some awkward foreshortening still rears its head at times and there are other more significant difficulties.

The scene above comes from a less than successful sequence in Providence #5 where Robert Black talks to Frank Stubbs at a meteorite crash site. Like many other parts of Providence, there is lengthy exposition through dialogue here with two figures talking and striding across a barren landscape, almost always equidistant from each other with the occasional reverse shot.

The foliage, background and foreground are unremarkable, the figures seem to pace forward like graceless stick figures wearing whalebone corsets, hands largely in their pockets and at their sides except for the odd stray cigarette hand; and it just seems like a very tired exercise in drawing, perhaps a combination of fatigue, boredom, and time pressure. We can see what a relatively old hand like Vittorio Giardino does with a similarly unremarkable sequence set in a barren landscape in the page below.

An unfair comparison perhaps because of the lack of expository dialogue (and the demands of the script) but also a useful one because of Giardino’s passion for naturalistic clean-clear lines. You might have qualms about the art, but at the very least, these people seem like human beings and their clothes lived in

Burrows’ failure at such pedestrian scenes of everyday dialogue is in sharp contrast to an episode later in the same issue where a placid, bulbous hag sits comfortably breast feeding her familiar (Jenkins).

This almost seems to be drawn from nature when compared to many of the somewhat staid and geometric beings who otherwise inhabit Providence. Yes, the protagonist (Robert Black) doesn’t seem especially distressed as he puts on his clothes in a situation which would have most wetting themselves; he could just as easily be speaking to his wife after breakfast in bed. But Burrows’ feeling for the grotesque helps obscure his deficiencies in depicting the commonplace. One could almost make a case that the sheer tedium and falsity of the everyday images throughout Providence is exactly the point—the real world is the one we should be rejecting.

The six page sequence where Black encounters the ghoul King George shows a similar limitation in facial expression. The postures are once again unnatural and repetitive and the reactions of the protagonist fall far short of the requirements. For an encounter of such psychological terror, Black seems almost sphinx-like in parts.

The repetition in the perspective and background highlights a sort of anergia in Burrows’ line, a kind of disinterest in the psychological effects of lighting; the terror in this underworld is imperceptible and almost fully to be imagined by the reader.

Readers will also need to use their imaginations to determine what could have been in the alternative lives of a comic named Providence—the possibilities as you would expect are endless. In just the last month, a young artist by the name of Ian Bertram has shown what can be done to elevate a relatively sedate horror script in House of Penance.

But would the lack of photorealistic architecture affect our appreciation of Moore’s script and displace us from its everyday possibilities and ever present terrors? By the same token, would the dreams, fantasies, and terrors which haunt Providence’s North American underworld have been brought that much closer to us if we had someone other than Burrows to chart our course?

In the final analysis, it seems unlikely that Providence as a whole will attain the kind of status it probably deserves because of this weak link. If comics are to be seen as a truly collaborative process, then the wide disparity in achievement in Providence (between script and drawing) can often be ruinous if not quite tragic—a conductor and composer can only achieve so much with a tolerable orchestra. We can read the music and imagine its aborted pleasures but in comics, there will almost never be a second performance.

_____________

Addendum – Different Perspectives

(1) Craig Fischer writing at The Comics Journal has a few short thoughts on Burrows’ work:

“I’ve talked up Providence among other comics fans, their opinions of Jacen Burrows have been wildly different, with some liking his cool, architectural approach, and others sorry that his art lacks gonzo energy. (One friend wishes that the splash page of Leticia’s rape had looked more “like a mind-blowing combo of Steve Ditko, Rory Hayes, and Henry Darger” and less like an airline safety brochure.)”

(2) In the same vein, I asked a few of my own friends about Burrows art. First up is Domingos Isabelinho.

“…the art is stiff and the characters are lifeless, but what I can’t bear looking at is the computer coloring. It’s the worst thing that happened to comics ever, apart from the stupid stories, of course, but Alan Moore is never stupid. On the contrary, sometimes he’s too intelligent for his own good.”

(3) I also had an email exchange with a working cartoonist (henceforth known as Cartoonist Z) and here are a sampling of his remarks:

“Jacen’s style reminds me of Steve Dillon’s work. I think because his faces and expressions are reminiscent of Dillon, and with him also being tied to Garth Ennis (like Dillon) on whatever slightly grotesque stories come out of Avatar. For me, Dillon is the standard for ‘good’ comic book art in America (clear storytelling/consistent art) and I feel Jacen’s works falls just short of that Dillon quality.

What I particularly like about his work is it’s completely realized. Meaning it’s not phototraced or pulling inspiration from conflicting voices. It’s drawn in his hand, in his own voice. If you showed me a few images of this I’d know it instantly as “that guy who works for Avatar.” What I think he has improved on is at times his work can be stiff, but here I’m impressed with things like his hands, some lively expressions, and of course a gross lumpy body or two.

One thing that sometimes bothers me about his art, and I think holds him back as a clean line style/detail guy, is that his backgrounds can tend to be off. Not in reference and detail, but sometimes in the basic use of perspective. Clean line style doesn’t let you get away with those minor hiccups. Whereas someone working in a bit more ‘artsy’ style (think Sienkiewicz) can use suggested brush marks, artistic fades, crosshatching, splatter, and spot blacks for quicker backgrounds that are impressionistic (and have a lot of wiggle room to be technically off but still work in the context of their respective styles).

With Jacen’s clean line style, his use of perspective could stand to be tightened up. Examples of the very best working in this fashion are Moebius, Darrow, and Quitely. I can look at their work and use a ruler too learn perspective by finding the vanishing points and figuring out what they were thinking. Or simply just be mesmerized at their use of perspective, and how easily things exist and move within their environments. Jacen’s work isn’t at that level of skill yet.

Here’s some organic stuff I love, stuff that lets me know he has the potential to be really good. But for me right now his work feels like its good in spots.

Great face, eyes are alive.

Excellent expression for a small female figure.

Nice hands. His work tends to be a bit stiff (and hands are particularly difficult for all artists), so you’d expect his hands to be as such, but they are pretty organic and expressive.

Terrible. I know this is supposed to be a painting or whatever in the comic but it breaks the one big thing Jacen has going for his art—that consistent voice. I talk about this a lot with comic book making. You can read a great comic with stick figures as long as it’s drawn honestly and in the same voice.

It’s why a little kid’s drawing can resonate with you. It’s honest. Not in the romantic sense but in the mechanical sense. This painting in the middle of the comic is just an absolute turd. Terrible drawing. Terrible Photoshop coloring. It doesn’t fit in with the art whatsoever. As such, all of his flaws are amplified and made apparent. It just doesn’t work. I’d much rather Jacen draw the painting in his current style and just have the colorist color it slightly different. Or even color the same and color hold (lighten) the line art.

Notice how Moebius handles paintings and posters in environments. It’s all the same voice.

To better get across my point of his backgrounds being close but not exact. I picked a few things out to draw over.

On this page here, let’s look at panel four. I like the concept of the cuffed hands being in the foreground, but the figures in the background aren’t engaged in the scene. As of now they are too far back from the inmate (based on the established distance in panels 2 and 3). So to make the drawing ‘right’ (referring back to my earlier point that clean line style perspective needs to be exact), you’d have to put the inmate back into the shot (version A); or keep the great concept of the hands in the foreground, but actually move the camera down to the hands, moving the vanishing point lower and allowing the vanishing point to guide the rest of the drawing. The lowered vanishing point would mean more of an upshot on the officers in the mid ground (version B).

This allows for a much more engaging shot, really establishing a foreground, mid-ground and background, and creates all kinds of nice overlaps which creates the perception of depth. I also think, storytelling wise, the reader would feel the investigators urgency and get sucked to a greater extent into the story. I feel that Jacen’s work while clearly thought out in a storyboard type of way, can sometimes fall flat in the finish and not engage up to its full potential. In this sense, every so often an environment while referenced and detailed accurately can just feel ‘there’, and doesn’t feel 100% lived in. I hope this over draw brings a little bit of clarity to that point.”

Let’s look at panel one of this page.

Mechanically speaking the perspective is off. The figures have a different vanishing point than the well. You would either have to pick the vanishing point for the well or for the figures, and that vanishing point must dictate all objects in the environment.

Here the well perspective is corrected to align with the figures.

It’d be tougher to align the figures with the well perspective at this point. A quick rough if we did correct it that way.

To correct what Jacen already has down I’d choose to handle it as such.

I believe with a little more care when it comes to the mechanical workings of perspective and environment drawing, Jacen would level up as an artist. I hope these over draws help clarify my perspective.”

(4) Jacen Burrows on his first experience working on an Alan Moore script (Neonomicon):

Bleeding Cool: Well, Alan’s famous for long involved script descriptions that at the end say “but if you have a better way, do that instead”. What changes, if any, did you make while working on the book?

JB: I haven’t made any that I can think of off hand. I pride myself on trying to get as close as I can to the writer’s vision. It’s kind of a game for me. I think I must have a little OCD buried in the back of my mind somewhere that this kind of thing triggers.

(5) Mahendra Singh on Jacen Burrows (added 27th May 2016)

Jacen’s Providence work is pretty much the current American corporate comix house-style for realism. He’s a younger artist and his draftsmanship and cropping (the latter is very important in his style) are indicative of this. They will improve over time although there is a potential to devolve into a slick, hack-style if he’s not self-aware. In short, he is a competent artist with a full set of competent skills but is still going through an apprentice phase. The flow of his panels and the on-off draftsmanship need improving but I suspect that he knows this. The worst thing he could do, if he wishes to do seriously good work, is continue drawing for fanboyish tastes. The inherent limitations and demands of this material are going to wreck him.

It’s the same old story: do work that pays and also destroys your talent or do work that no one cares about and that will allow you to become a real artist. Jacen is on the cusp of that decision. He can draw and he can tell a story, he needs to pull it all together by throwing off the shackles of this corporate style.

Utilitarian Review 5/14/16

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

News

In very sad news, Consuela Francis, who wrote a couple of posts for HU over the years, died earlier this week. Details are here. Consuela was wonderfully smart, and I felt lucky to work with her and get her to write for us. We’ll miss her.

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Darryl Ayo on Michael DeForge’s sketchbook.

Ng Suat Tong on the mediocrity of Max Landis’ Superman: American Alien.

Me on the documentary Nuclear Nation and the Fukushima tragedy.

Chris Gavaler on the difficulty of defining comics.

Me on how Merrick Garland’s unique merit lies in his being a white man.

Me on Air Supply and the virtues of inauthenticity.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Establishment I wrote about Mark Kirk and hating sex workers to make yourself look moderate.

At Random Nerds I wrote about how the definition of comics today is superhero film.

At Quartz I wrote about how Disney reboots may not be so bad.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—the continuing relevance of music labels and some great releases from Hausu Mountain.

—how Psycho is a vampire film for my weekly post on the Hammer dracula series (this one on Dracula: Prince of Darkness.)

—employment discrimination against women and that 77 cents statistic.

Other Links

Yasmin Nair with a nice profile of prison activist Mariame Kaba.

Jonathan Bernstein on what he got wrong about Trump.

Chloe Angyal on how anti abortion terrorism isolates women.

Out of Nothing At All

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Splice Today.

What is good music? In America (and not just America) the answer often comes down to, what is authentic?

Bob Dylan is certainly a touchstone of authenticity. The roughness of his singing and the improvisatory almost/randomness of his lyrics signal honesty, down-home genius, and virile swagger; his is a world where you meet women working in topless places and stop in for a beer. His references to folk, blues, and country sources points to experiences of pain and loss. He knows about folks who are real, and so he’s real too.

Obviously, Air Supply is coming from a somewhat different place.

The reason Air Supply is a butt and a punch line is because it isn’t Bob Dylan. Instead of gritty amateurishness, Air Supply has that professionally slick piano tinkling along someplace that is absolutely not a cross roads and Russell Hitchcock emoting like a fruity castrati in too-tight pants. The winking reference to making the “stadiums rock” (emphatically in quotations) as a vivisected guitar pretends to be cock rock for a couple of bars just underlines the gratuitous lack of grit. Because there is no grit. There is only schmaltz.

So, yes, if you’re looking for authenticity, Air Supply is telling you right there in their name they are the wrong vendor. Instead, what Air Supply has to sell is their very inauthenticity; the transparent showmanship of bathos. Instead of knowing earthiness, you get that preposterously gifted voice soaring amidst lyrical puffery like “The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you.” It’s a towering cotton candy blank; emotions pinned, as the song says, to not much if anything. Rather than pretending to be real when you listen to Air Supply, you get to pretend to not be.

Air Supply isn’t a great band…but some inauthentic bands are.

The Carpenters are working the same sort of territory as Air Supply — you’ve got the tinkling piano, you’ve got music heading for the ramparts, you’ve got the voice heading up there with it. Karen Carpenter’s singing has a purity and expressiveness that Hitchcock’s helium novelty lacks, though, and Neil Sedaka’s lyrics manage sophisticated cheese that’s a significant improvement on Air Supply’s more lumpen brand. As a result, the smooth surface comes across not just as exuberant bombast, but as a kind of disavowed desperation. The smiling Disney mask gapes open, and inside is a bleak emptiness of soul.

That’s the appeal of Brian Wilson’s music as well. Why exactly the Beach Boys are critical darlings is a bit unclear; perhaps it’s just that they timed their careers right in the middle of boomer heaven, or maybe it’s the flashes of Chuck Berry-esque guitar on their early hits. But by the time of the 1968 Friends, such authenticity as there was is gone, and what you’re left with is the kind of fruity, neutered vocals that will later lift Air Supply aloft, and the funkless, polished plastic jazz arrangement that Richard Carpenter would clone. Even more than his successors, Wilson wallows in his inauthenticity — the vacuous space where a real self should be.

“I get a lot of thoughts in the morning
I write ’em all down
If it wasn’t for that
I’d forget ’em in a while.”

The next verse is him trying to remember a friend’s phone number and thinking about it and remembering it and calling, but then the friend isn’t home so he has to write a letter. No doubt consumption of weed (and other things) is in part responsible for this anti-narrative, but through whatever chemical combination, the song is about its lack of being about anything — it’s adrift in its own expansive hollowness. Proponents of authenticity often argue that you need to be real to be an individual, but in their different kinds of lacks, Air Supply, the Carpenters, and the Beach Boys show that you can be idiosyncratic and even occasionally beautiful and still be made out of nothing at all.

The Merit of Merrick

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

Merrick Garland’s cursed voyage in limbo continues; even the prospect of a Trump Supreme Court nominee hasn’t budged Senate Republicans, who care less about getting a qualified nominee than about the potential career consequences if a Supreme Court vote inspires a primary challenger. Merrick’s fate has been especially denigrated because he’s so clearly a qualified appointment. As Michael Gerhardt declared when the nomination was made at Slate, Gerhardt “the nomination of Judge Garland is therefore not a political statement but rather a bold effort to encourage everyone to recognize that if they ever want to see what a merit-based appointment looks like”, they need cast their gaze no further than Merrick Garland.

That formulation is interesting though. So, if you want to see a merit-based appointment, look at Garland. And what do you see when you look at Garland? You see a white guy.

Gerhardt makes this more or less explicit in his piece; Garland, he points out, is not a person of color, nor a woman. He graduated from Harvard Law, which is de rigeur on the court. His appointment does not make a political statement. If Obama had selected a woman, or a black person, it would have been in order to change the gender or racial balance of the court. Since Garland is a white guy, you can be sure his appointment was based, as Gerhardt says, “on merit, not anything else.”

But of course, the very fact that Garland’s white maleness is synonymous with merit is the tip off that “merit” is not, in fact, the only consideration. Or rather, choosing a white man is a deliberate sop. Obama is quite aware that the choice of a non white man would be seen as a provocation, both by Republicans and by neutral serious punditry. To be a woman, or to be a person of color, is to be unusual, special, marked; it means your identity is a statement in itself. White men, on the other hand, are the default; when you choose a white man, you are choosing someone who has no identity, and so can be judged solely on accomplishment and qualifications. It’s natural for white men to be Supreme Court justices; ergo, a Supreme Court justice who is a white man is not chosen for his identity, but for his merit.

There were other reasons to choose Merrick, of course—and they are also linked to his race and his gender. Obama wanted someone who was moderate, to disarm Republican opposition. White men tend to be more conservative than other folks, so looking for a conservative candidate was likely to lead to a white man. Obama also wanted someone older, again to placate conservatives who don’t want a liberal justice sitting for 30 years. Looking for older justices means seeking people from a time when women and people of color had fewer opportunities for career advancement than they do now. Again, that points disproportionately towards white guys.

This isn’t to say that Garland is unqualified. Rather, it’s to point out that his qualifications or lack thereof aren’t separable from his identity. When you want an appointment that says, “quality, and nothing else!” you pick a white guy.

What is a Comic?

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Chris Gavaler

I was just reading Amazon reviews for a collection of essays by philosophers on the topic of comics, and one disgruntled reader complained that the authors “spend most of their time simply trying to define precisely what comics are,” which felt to him like an “elitist” attempt “to justify the fact that one is writing an academic work on comics in the first place.”

Actually, analytical philosophers spend most of their time simply trying to define precisely what everything is. That’s where philosophy and genre theory happily collide. For me the collision took place in front of my English department’s photocopier. Nathaniel Goldberg had descended from the Philosophy floor because their machine was dead. A year later and he and I have drafted a book on superhero comics and philosophy together. In the process I learned what is now one of my favorite phrases, “necessary and sufficient,” as in “What are the necessary and sufficient qualities for something to be a comic?”

It sounds like an easy question. The above mentioned disgruntled reviewer answered in one sentence: “I think most people who are passionate about comics would define the medium (not to draw an exact equivalency) much like Justice Potter Steward defined pornography: They know a comic when they see it.”

Actually, defining porn is damn near impossible. What precisely is the difference between a Playgirl centerfold and Michelangelo’s David? They’re both representations of gorgeous naked guys. My friend Chris Matthews has a great story about bumbling into a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition with his father back in 80s. Which is to say, context seems to matter. The U.S. courts spent a lot of time changing their minds about the words “lust” and “obscene” and “importance” and “value” and how much of each is and isn’t enough to be or not be pornographic.

Comics should be easy in comparison. Except scholars keep changing their minds about the words “narrative” and “sequence” and “image” and “art” and, well, “words.” One-panel comic strips like Gary Larson’s The Far Side or Bill Keane’s The Family Circus present a particular brain teaser. Most definitions include something about pictures working in relation to each other, which means there’s got to be more than one picture. But then there’s The Family Circus right in the middle of the newspaper comics page, so it’s a comic in the seeing is knowing sense.

So maybe then it’s the combination of words and pictures? Philosopher David Carrier even includes word balloons in his “necessary and sufficient” list. So then Larson and Keane made comics because their cartoons include both an image and a caption–which, okay, a caption isn’t a word balloon, but close enough. Either way, the definition opens an unexpectedly large door. What precisely is the difference between a one-panel comic strip and, say, René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images?

Magritte is even making a joke, so it’s a comic in the “funny papers” sense too. And what about a one-panel comic that doesn’t have any words?

Dietrich Grünewald would call that Far Side an “autonomously narrative picture” because the single image prompts viewers to “create further images in our minds,” images he calls “ideal” or “non-material sequences.” So in that sense a single image can be multiple. But then comics suddenly include a massive array of representational paintings. What further images does Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp create in your mind?

And what about moving pictures? Why aren’t films comics? They’re art made of images viewed in sequence to create narratives. Silent ones even have word captions. Some animated films include not just any pictures, but the same specific pictures that appear in related comic books. Like those God awful Marvel cartoons from the 60s, those are the same Jack Kirby drawings on the screen as on the page. And yet seeing any animated film is knowing it’s not a comic book.

Roy T. Cook offered a definition last year that separates comics from films by adding: “The audience is able to control the pace at which they look at each of the parts.” I also control that pace I wander through an art gallery, so are exhibitions a comic book? Framed painting are a lot like panels, and how is the white wall visible between them not a gutter? Greg Hayman and Henry John Pratt define a comic as “as a sequence of discrete, juxtaposed pictures that comprise a narrative, either in their own right or when combined with text.” Plus “the visual images are distinct (paradigmatically side-by-side), and laid out in a way such that they could conceivably be seen all at once. Between each pictorial image is a perceptible space.” Thierry Groensteen agrees, since according to him a comic contains “always a space that has been divided up, compartmentalized, a collection of juxtaposed frames.”

Great, but have you ever seen an episode of 24? When my TV screen divides into four frames, does the show become a comic book? Even some seeing-is-knowing comic books aren’t comic books by those definitions. John Byrne’s Marvel Fanfare #29 (Marvel, 1986) is all splash pages, no compartmentalized panels, no gutters. Though maybe that’s why Marvel rejected it for The Incredible Hulk #320? Emma Rios’ 2014 Pretty Deadly includes at least one page with overlapping images that are not “discreet” or “distinct” and include no gutters, and even the sense of sequential order is questionable.

I like the term “graphic narratives” because it combines graphic novels and graphic memoirs into one category, but it’s got problems too. Like Hayman and Pratt, David Kunzle, Robert Harvey, and David Carrier all rely on “story” or “narrative” to unify what they call a “sequence,” but as Andrei Molotui shows with his 2007 collection Abstract Comics, comics don’t always tell stories. The images just have to relate in some way. That means any diptych, wordless or not, representational or not, might be a comic. So anything from Piero della Francesca’s Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino to Roy Litchenstein’s WHAM! to Mark Yearwood’s Natural Ambiance Diptych.

Roy T. Cook challenges even the assumption that comics need to contain pictures–though his example of “a completely blank issue of a previously established series” would be a comic book only because the issues before it were. Context really is everything.

The bigger challenges are not thought experiments though, but works of art that already exist. Scott McCloud criticizes Will Eisner’s term “sequential art” for not separating comics from other art forms that might also be called sequential art, and Aaron Meskin in turn criticizes McCloud’s definition—“juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”—for the same reason.

Meskin also objects to the anachronistic use of “comics” to include artworks, such as the 9^th century Bayeaux Tapestry, that predate the term. But by that logic, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are not science fiction authors because “science fiction” was coined in 1929. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “chiaroscuro” dates to 1686, after the deaths of its exemplary artists, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, and the technique is commonly traced to Ancient Greece. Anachronistic terminology is a norm of categorization and analysis.

If comics are the art form of juxtaposed images, then a great many artworks not typically considered comics retroactively join the club–including the Bayeaux Tapestry, Matisse’s Jazz, the engraved poetry of William Blake, and the word and photography-combining art of Barbara Kruger. Lots of road signs and magazine ads creep in too–unless we limit the category to “art,” whatever that may be.

My course “Superhero Comics” makes my job a lot easier since that subgenre squats squarely in the middle of the definitional zone. My reading list includes only comic books–a term that used to mean a collection of reprinted newspaper comic strips. I know of no single-panel superhero comic strips, so Larson, Keane, Magritte, and Rembrandt are irrelevant. And superhero graphic novels all tell stories (though I asked my library to order a copy of Abstract Comics just because it’s really cool). Plus they’re filled with panels and gutters and word balloons, so every one of the above definitions applies.

But things get trickier the further you stray from Action Comics No. 1.

Nuclear Nation

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

This piece first ran at the Dissolve.
_________

Nuclear Nation
Director: Atsushi Funahashi (Not Rated, 96 min.)
Distributor: Big River Films, Documentary Japan.
Documentary
In Japanese with English Subtitles
Three Stars

March 11, 2011 was a disaster of almost inconceivable proportions in Japan. A massive earthquake triggered tsunamis that reached more than 130 feet. Almost 16,000 people were killed, and the resulting devastation caused meltdowns at a number of nuclear reactors, releasing dangerous levels of radiation and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. There was $235 billion in damage, making the event the most costly natural disaster in recorded history.

Such an apocalyptic tragedy seems to call for apocalyptic representation, and indeed there’s plenty of oh-my-god footage of surging waters on YouTube for those who want to see it. Atsushi Funahashi’s Japanese documentary (with English subtitles) goes a different route, though. Nuclear Nation, despite the dramatic title, is a determinedly low-key, and even soporific, take on the aftermath of March 11. The documentary deals particularly with the residents of Futaba, the town that is home to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Radiation released from the reactors has made Futaba unlivable; everyone has had to leave. Refugees who couldn’t find another home were housed in a high school, living communally with their few rescued possessions. The film is mostly set in that high school, as the refugees wait and wait and wait for someone from the government or the power plants to find them new homes, or recompense them, or at least apologize.

If this does not sound like a particularly exciting premise for a film — well, yes. That’s kind of the point. The documentary is deliberately slow, and even deliberately bland. The camera lingers on people sleeping or people eating. Certain refugee’s lives are followed — one father and son lost their wife and mother in the tsunami; a family where the father is working back at the dangerous Futaba reactor; the embittered Futaba mayor. But the focus, and the narrative is diffuse. The stories don’t have a clear beginning, since the men and women are already homeless and adrift when they first appear onscreen. And they don’t have a clear ending; some refugees do move into new homes, but that feels less like closure or resolution than like the same slow-motion grinding on. They have to be somewhere, and so they are. But the past isn’t resolved.

“Not doing anything takes a lot out of you,” says one refugee, and that’s a good tagline for the film as a whole. Their town destroyed, the former residents of Futaba are suspended in a kind of anti-narrative. Stuff happens, but slowly, and without catharis or even impetus. The mayor goes to a meeting where various high-level officials apologize and bow and then scurry off on official business without taking questions. People go back to Futaba to gather some belongings and place flowers, all while dressed in radiation suits. The residents march demanding to return to Futaba, though, as they admit, they can’t return, and, maybe don’t even want to. A farmer explains that he’s determined to keep his cattle alive, even though he can’t sell them and they’re useless. The camera follows the irradiated animals about for a while. Later we see some cows that were abandoned by their owners; they’ve starved to death in their pens, and are now mummified corpses.

The mummified cows are certainly an arresting image, but, again, for the most part, the film eschews the gothic for the mundane, day to day weariness of displacement and uncertainty. Even the agitprop anti-nuclear message gets little traction; this isn’t Michael Moore, with his staged confrontations and clear villains. A couple residents curse at the television screen as officials blandly lie; the mayor talks sadly about the choice to bring in the nuclear plants and how they’ve been betrayed. The failure to pay compensation is numbly infuriating, but compensation isn’t going to give people back their homes anyway. The damage is done.

The result is not exactly riveting cinema. Nor is the documentary quite willing to embrace its anti-narrative elements; it often seems caught between trying to tell a story (about the evils of nuclear energy, or about particular families) and its recognition that the story it has to tell is no story. Still, despite its limitations, Nuclear Nation remains a quiet, painful reminder that disasters aren’t disasters because of the sound and excitement, but because of the blank spaces they leave in people’s lives.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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