Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #19: Trauma

15 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Graphic Novels, War

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #19 by Drew Barth

Trauma

Comics can, and should, be a space in which a multitude of subject matters and issues should be tackled. Comics are a medium in which the blending of text and visuals can make for a story that is easily accessible to a wide range of readers and, as a result, can have a far-reaching influence on the audiences that do inevitably choose to pick a book up. Couple comic’s accessibility to readers as a medium with stories that handle heavier subject matters and creators have a way in which they are able to present works with lasting impact. Graphic novels in particular are incredibly well suited this task. I’ve mentioned my love for graphic novels and the work they do previously with Kelsey Wroten’s Cannonball, and I would like to continue my undying adoration for graphic novels with Guillaume Singelin’s PTSD.

PSTD_CASE_04a.indd

PTSD centers on Jun, a veteran from a recent war in an unnamed country. After returning home, Jun, and many of the other veterans who returned with her, are shunned throughout the unnamed city they have returned to. Almost all are homeless. Almost all are addicted to painkillers or are barely able to function due to starvation. The homeless vets huddle together when they can to trade stories of the past and to keep themselves safe from a city that does not want them there. Is it topical? Considering Singelin has been working on PTSD since at least 2015 when the book was first announced, it feels even more topical than it did four years ago.

PT2

There is a distinct feel to a book like PTSD and in what it aims to do. Just from the art alone we can see the more simplified character designs, the expansive color pallet, and the Kowloon Walled City-esque setting the story takes place in. All of the above elements blend together to create both a unique image for the book as well as a distinct tone. Singelin’s art throughout PTSD typifies what Scott McCloud brought up in Understanding Comics in regards to the balance between art and story. A graphic narrative with more simplified art is a story that will likely stick to a reader more than a work with much more realistic art. The reason being that our eyes will focus more on how a character looks more than what the character is saying. Singelin uses this idea to his advantage. Although the characters have an almost cartoon-like design, the trauma they go through is all too real.

PTSD deals with its titular disorder with a clarity and insight that is only served by the art. Violent moments stand out as gruesome and carry a weight with them that has been missing from many other recent comic works due to their focus on the shock. Singelin knows what is shocking in PTSD and instead of treating violence like something to be fetishized—Jun is shunned from the rest of the homeless vets as a result of violent vigilante actions against local gangs. Where characters would parade around someone taking justice into their own hands, the response in the world of PTSD is very different. And the fact that all of these acts of violence—from the fights in the city streets to flashbacks of active combat—are rendered in Singelin’s particular style lends the weight to these moments that many other books miss. I remember everything that happens to Jun and still feel that pressure in my chest with how hard with scenes of her at her lowest impact.

PTSD is a book about struggle and the violent lengths someone will go through for revenge or survival, but it is also a book laced with hope throughout. And the kind of hope Singelin is showing the reader isn’t the sanguine or sentimental. The hope in PTSD is something that the characters build throughout the story. A restaurant owner, Leona, hands out food to the homeless not as a means of simple charity, but because she is a kind person who wants to see people doing well. And that act of kindness evolves. Soon the same people Leona was serving are partnering with her to provide vegetables they’ve been growing in small gardens. Jun’s vigilante crusade against the city’s gangs ostracize her from the rest of the veteran population, but in her amassing of medical supplies from those same gangs she becomes the single point of medical care for the whole community. And I think that’s one of the greatest strengths of PTSD. Singelin shows us the struggle and the grasping at dirt and air for any kind of relief from the hell we’ve created for ourselves, but he also shows us an alternative. The world of PTSD is in no ways perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction where we can create something lasting for ourselves. And with this book, Singelin has created a story that lasts.

Get excited. Something better is coming.

drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #15: Graphic Cannon

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Graphic Novels, Uncategorized

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #15 by Drew Barth

Graphic Cannon

For this blog, I’ve mainly focused on the serialized comics since I’m in A Comic Shop every Wednesday. But graphic novels are a bit different. Their releases are scheduled like books, typically on Tuesdays or Fridays, and are new, original works that have not been previously serialized. And that brings me to a graphic novel that is coming out on April 19^thfrom Uncivilized Books: Cannonball by Kelsey Wroten.

Cannonball

You may recognize Wroten’s work from The New Yorker, The New York Times, or her Instagram. But with Cannonball, we’re getting her first long-form graphic work and already it’s one of the strongest graphic novels out this year. It’s top five for me, and it’s only March.

Basics: Cannonball is about Caroline Bertram, a recent art school graduate, queer, and a “self-proclaimed tortured genius” who rips up her thesis novel to use as cat litter for a stray she picks up outside her first apartment. Caroline and her best friend, Penelope, struggle to become adults with bills, rent, jobs, and the ever-encroaching sense of dread that comes with being a newly-minted adult. Throughout Cannonball, we see Caroline dealing with failure—personal and artistic—that permeates her new adult life. And although she draws some strength from a professional wrestler, the titular Cannonball, these feelings never truly leave.

Cannonball is a graphic novel about the crushing loneliness that follows us throughout our lives. From the first to the last panel, we see Caroline alone. Even if in both of these panels she’s either in bed with someone else or at a party celebrating her achievements, she is emotionally alone in both situations. Caroline goes forward with herself, slips backwards, picks herself up, stumbles again, continues to stumble, and stumbles into success. But her success never feels forced or cheapened. Through a constant struggle, she earns every achievement she receives, and yet is never satisfied or cured by these successes.

A great moment happens toward the end of the book where Caroline talks about not being able to get a story published in the same zines she’d had stories in after getting her own book. Caroline’s art has touched people in ways she hadn’t imagined, but because she didn’t imagine her work having that impact, such success is alienating.

What Wroten works with marvelously throughout Cannonball is this existential idea of identity. Midway through the book, Caroline has an argument with her father about being an adult, about her “lifestyle” and what she plans to do with her life. It’s the kind of argument that is familiar and devastating in equal measure. Wroten’s art only heightens this tense moment with stark backgrounds, darkened panels, and onomatopoeia that floats around Caroline’s father like nagging insects.

CB_005_1600

Her father’s words physically float and haunt Caroline even after she leaves the argument, and we can’t help but feel the bile and bitterness as though we just had the argument ourselves. But it brings up questions that the rest of the book hinges on: who is Caroline going to be and what does she even want to be?

She has a constant struggle throughout to answer that question.

With Cannonball, Wroten provides us with a staggering work that can act as a guide for creating a near perfect graphic novel. From its pitch-perfect art to a story that feels familiar and achievable to Caroline’s character living and breathing in a way that is perfectly flawed and human, Cannonball is a wondrous achievement in graphic storytelling. There are so many small moments and instances throughout the book that it’s hard to talk about all of the in the scope of one article, but I do hope all of what’s written above gets you just as excited for Cannonball as I am for it.

Get excited. The best stories are happening.

drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 333: Peter Kuper!

22 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Episode, Graphic Novels

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Episode 333 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to Peter Kuper about Kafka, the remarkable art form of comic books, the indie comic book scene in the late 1980s, Spy Vs. Spy, finding your Muse when it leaves the marketplace, and so much more.

Kuper author photo Gray

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Kafkaesque Final color front Ruins- Cover Peter Kuper.jpg

NOTES

Check out Brian Turner, Jared Silvia, recordings of Elise Kusnetz, and others in a performance of The Interplanetary Acoustic Team at the Timucua White House in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, September 25th.

Check out Kyle Eagle’s impeccable new jazz podcast, The Major Scale. If you search the iTunes store, you can find it there as a free download you can and should subscribe to.

Leslie Salas reviewed Peter Kuper’s adaptation of The Metamorphosis for the Drunken Odyssey back in 2013.

Details from Kafkaesque:

Kafkaesque 1 Kafkaesque 2

Episode 333 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Buzzed Books #69: Home After Dark

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Graphic Novels

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Buzzed Books #69 by Joshua Begley

David Small’s Home After Dark

We often forget that growing up is a terrifying process. As adults, looking at children, all we can see is the amazing vistas of possibility. A child has the potential to be anything, and when you’re long past childhood, that plethora of potentiality is alluring, almost intoxicating, and we sometimes wish we could go back to that time, before we became locked into who we are now.

That point of view is part truth and part romantic fantasizing. For many children, the future is a terrifying prospect. It’s the terror of the unknown, the terror of having too many choices. The terror of going against parents, friends, and society to forge a new and different path.

David Small Home After Dark

This terror permeates David Small’s Home After Dark (Liveright, 2018). Set in the 1950s, the graphic novel follows Russel, a thirteen-year-old boy. After his mother runs away with his father’s best friend, Russel and his father travel to California to forge a new life.

At first, the plan is to stay with his Aunt June in Pasadena. For reasons unknown, June refuses to let them stay when they finally arrive. She tells Russel’s father that there are no jobs in Southern California, and he should head north. They end up in a small town called Marshfield and end up renting a room with the Mahs, a Chinese immigrant family who own a restaurant in Little China Harbor.

Things seem to pick up when Russel’s father finds a job teaching English at San Quentin penitentiary (“Teaching Shakespeare to the inmates, huh?”). He gets a G.I. loan and buys a house, and Russel settles in as best he can into this new life. What follows is a tale of increasing quiet desperation as Russel’s father grows more and more bitter with his life and situation, and Russel struggles to discover who he is and what he wants out of life. The compelling and sad truth to this story is neither of them truly discover the answers to those questions.

Again, it all comes back to the future and the potential it holds. Russel’s father thought going west would allow for him to carve out a better future, but he was wrong. Instead of an uplifting Horatio Alger story of pulling himself up by his bootstraps, Russel’s father self-sabotages himself at every turn. The comic never puts us in his head, because it’s all from Russel’s point of view, but there’s a real sense of a man trapped in a world not of his making, but still of his own design. The scars of the past and the coping mechanisms of the present give way to a systematic dismantling of the future, and the greater tragedy here is that Russel might well be on the same path.

Tied into all of this is the question of masculinity. Russel—a frightened boy whose life gets upended time and time again—doesn’t fit the cultural script of 1950s masculinity, and because of that, he’s perpetually bullied and his sexuality questioned. He even experiences a homosexual encounter with the first friend he makes, and immediately shuns the friend afterward. I’d like to tell you that at the end Russel discovers who he is, what he wants, and learns to stand on his own two feet, but this isn’t that type of story. Home After Dark poses questions and doesn’t provide any easy answers, and it’s all the stronger for it. Like Russel, like his father, like his friends, you have to discover your own truth and your own path. No one can do that for you.

Home After Dark Detail

Small employs a loose artistic style to tell this tale—more cartoony than photorealistic. The style works for the story, because it fits the narrative and overall premise. For the most part, the backgrounds aren’t filled in, save for a few specific images to anchor the pages, and the minimalist style for the characters helps Small define them in as few lines as possible. Small also uses a great deal of negative space and plays around with the gutters depending upon the emotional context of the page. It’s a style that, at first blush, looks simple and perhaps a little unsophisticated, but it’s actually nothing of the sort. Every line has purpose in this piece, and it’s one of the aspects that makes this such a compelling work of fiction.

The back cover of this work features a quote from the legendary Jules Feiffer, who compares this work to The Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye. While I can see that, I couldn’t help but think of The Outsiders more than those other two works. The main difference here is that I have no idea if Russel will “stay golden.” I’m not even sure that he was golden in the first place. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that he goes on and finds himself, but that might just be wishful thinking on my part.

Joshiua Begley

Joshua Begley (Episode 284) teaches Creative Writing at Full Sail University. He has been published in Ghost Parachute, The Cut-Thru Review, and in the anthology Other Orlandos. He also writes reviews for The Fandom Post and Inside Pulse.

Heroes Never Rust #48: War at Home

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Heroes Never Rust, Violence

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Alan Moore, Saving Private Ryan, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Violence

Heroes Never Rust #48 by Sean Ironman

War at Home

This morning, I watched the opening battle scene of Saving Private Ryan. My internet was down and I decided to check out what DVDs I had while I ate breakfast. I don’t know why I chose Saving Private Ryan. It’s been years since I’ve seen the film. I only watched the first twenty minutes or so. I left off a couple of minutes after Tom Hanks and his crew make it off the beach and start obliterating Nazis in retreat. I was fourteen when the movie was released and I thought the battle scenes were the best part. Explosions. Limbs blown off. A Nazi throwing his hands up and surrendering just to be gunned down. It was good action and that’s what I was looking for. But I’m old now and tired. Today when I watched the film, it was horrific. Not just because people were dying. Not because I understand that real people had to go through this. Before I turned it off and went to start my work for the day, a few Nazis began to run away. About three of them were in their trenches, not firing, just running. Running to safety. Running home. Running from death. And then, about two dozen U.S. soldiers, who are above the retreaters on solid ground, gun them down. As a kid, I probably cheered when that happened. Take that Nazis! But watching it now, there was something so animalistic about it. I understand these same Nazis were killing American soldiers just a few minutes earlier. But I felt the scene showed what war does to a person, how it changes a person, how it destroys everything.

In the conclusion to volume one of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, war has come. Professor Moriarty’s airship bombs Limehouse, which is engulfed in flames by page two. In the opening, Moriarty says in regards to the cavorite, “This wonderful, celestial material…It’s given me the sky, this element that I was surely born for. Ah, Sergeant, does your soul thrill as mine does to these seas of cloud, to this God-like perspective? To this God-like power?” Moriarty is an evil son-of-a-bitch. He even comments on the “countless tiny lives” below before commencing the bombing. He must kill thousands this issue. And for what? So he can defeat a rival crime lord? As the neighborhood is burning to the ground, I no longer see Kevin O’Neill’s beautiful artwork. Even though it’s fiction, I think about all those people who were sitting down to dinner, who were getting ready for bed after a long day working construction. They have no stake in what’s happening. And now, they’re dead.

When the Chinese crime lord, The Doctor, sees the destruction, he orders his troops to attack. They fly at Moriarty’s airship with their own personal flying devices. I feel bad for them. What do they get out of this? They fly to their death, and from what we see later, it is a gruesome death. Nemo and Mr. Hyde lay out what looks to be hundreds of men. In the end, when the league wins, and of course they win, men fall to their deaths. And, again, for what? Because two crime lords can’t get along? What’s a crime lord any way, other than an asshole? What’s he a lord of? We’re smart people. How does someone lord over us? Why would anyone follow these mad men? They can’t pay well. The hours must suck. Who’s dream in life is it to work for a crime lord? To kill for someone else? I say if The Doctor and Moriarty can’t get along, then let them fight, but leave everyone else out of it. They can kill each other all they want, but London would be safe. The battle is made worse because people follow the villains. The villains themselves can do barely any damage. It’s the numbers of men, the numbers of bombs. Moriarty didn’t make those bombs, or his airship. He didn’t load those guns, sharpen those swords. He told someone else to do it, and someone else did as they were told. Why?

In the television show Game of Thrones, Varys poses a riddle to Tyrion. I couldn’t find the quote for the show, but riddle in the books is: “In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me – who lives and who dies?” The sellsword has the power over the three men. He can kill them all or just walk away. Yet, people go on and pretend the other men have the power, and most people do what others tell them.

At the end of volume one, the league triumphs. Moriarty is beaten. London is saved. But it all seems so anticlimactic. It was all for nothing. And I don’t mean that as a criticism of Moore’s script. That’s just he way things are. A couple of crazy, power-hungry men cause destruction, and then we’re left to clean things up.

Maybe I’m thinking too hard about things. Maybe I should just look at the pretty pictures and be in awe of how the league fights their way through the masses of soldiers to win the battle. I can say that it’s pretty cool, and I enjoy the comic greatly. But maybe I’m just tired. Tired of seeing new mass shootings on the news. Tired of soldiers killing people. Even tired of people who do work they don’t love just because they’re following what other people tell them to do. No one can tell us what to do. I think from time to time about superheroes in our own world. If they would be helpful or not. But we wouldn’t really need them if we just did what we know is right. The league of extraordinary gentlemen would have no purpose. Maybe if the league didn’t have to fight these mindless battles, Mina could fight for equal rights of women. Nemo can fight against England’s treatment of India. But I guess the important things will have to wait. A little orb that makes things float seems to be much more important.

___________

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Heroes Never Rust #29: Filling in the Gaps

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Heroes Never Rust

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Gwen Stacy, Heroes Never Rust, Jeph Loeb, sean ironman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man Blue, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #29 by Sean Ironman

Filling in the Gaps

One of the more frustrating aspects of comics in the 1960s is how fast-paced they seem. Each issue has a villain rise, fight the hero, and then get defeated. At times, at least by today’s standards, there’s no room for the story to breathe. Within a few issues, characters like Spider-man seem to have a handle on being a superhero. Weeks and months pass between issues. Relationships go from being good to bad and back again in no time. But, what that approach has given us in modern comics is the ability to fill in the gaps. Comics today can go back and tell previously untold tales in a character’s early years to connect events and relationships, and even add a new dimension to the comics.

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale have worked on the Color Series (although I don’t think that’s an official name) for Marvel Comics. The series focuses on relationships in a character’s early years. There have been three mini-series so far—Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Grey, and Spider-Man: Blue. (A fourth, Captain America: White, was announced but never released.) Spider-Man Blue, I believe, is the greatest of the series. I’ve used it on many people to show them what superhero comics are capable of. The series is memoir-like in that Peter Parker from the current day reflects back on his relationship with Gwen Stacy, his first love who was killed while Spider-Man battled with the Green Goblin.

The comic begins with the present-day Parker testing a recorder device. It’s Valentine’s Day. He’s speaking to someone, but we don’t know whom, not yet. “I remember the first time. How you sent me a Valentine that wasn’t signed. You just drew in one of those happy faces.” Spider-Man, in a blue tint, swings toward the George Washington Bridge. He places a rose—the red color sticking out from the blue tint background—on the bridge. When he swings off, the rose falls into the water. “Hello, Gwen. My funny valentine.”

Then the comic jumps back. Spider-Man in the ‘60s has been captured by the Green Goblin. This isn’t when Gwen died, though. Spider-Man breaks free and defeats the Green Goblin. “At first, I thought he was dead. And I’m ashamed to say, Gwen, in that moment, I was relieved. It could have ended right there…all my worries…gone. And Maybe you would still be…” The Green Goblin lived. Spider-Man helped him out of a burning building. Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin and the father of Peter Parker’s best friend. Trying to help his friend cost Peter Parker his first love in the end.

Throughout the six issues, we get a balance of Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy. For a while in the comics, Peter Parker had his choice of beautiful women. Gwen Stacy was the nice girl type. Mary Jane was the wild one. By showing the balance between the two loves of his life, there’s sadness in the story. In the final interactions Peter has with Gwen, there’s another woman—another woman taking him away. Many of Spider-Man’s enemies show up—Rhino, the Lizard, the Vulture, Kraven the Hunter. Aunt May, of course, is used wonderfully. In a breakfast scene halfway through the story, Peter looks at Aunt May, and in the captions from the present day, Peter says, “I never, ever, though I would be burying you before her. It’s just no the way life is supposed to work.” No matter where the comic goes, Gwen stays the focal point.

The greatest strength of the comic, though, is that it never shows Gwen’s death. The story doesn’t exist to capitalize on a past story—to repeat what has already been done. While reading, I expect to see Gwen die in the end—to have Spider-Man fail. The Green Goblin doesn’t return, though. Kraven is the final villain of the piece. It turns out the Green Goblin had previously hired Kraven to kill Spider-Man. Even in defeat, the Goblin still had reach. “I look back on my life as Spider-Man, and God help me, there are days when all I can think of is how much time it’s taken away from my family…and from everyone I’ve loved.” In the end, the cost of being Spider-Man comes back to Parker—a theme that reoccurs throughout the early years of the comic.

The final shot we get of Gwen is of her kissing Peter. “That’s when you had me, Gwen Stacy. All of me.” It’s a full-page shot, usually reserved for big battles. The last few pages catch up on the present. Peter’s in the attic of the home he shares with Mary Jane, his wife. He talks into a recorder about trying to find something he could call good that came from Gwen’s death. “But something happened that night. I think now your death was MJ’s wake-up call—that we weren’t all going to live forever and the party was going to end.” The comic, which is still about Gwen, becomes also about Mary Jane, and even Peter growing up. The comic doesn’t just repeat Spider-Man’s past, or even just show previously untold parts. It helps characterize the current timeline. It’s important to the characters in the present. In class, I’ve heard professors go on about how flashbacks can be bad for a story because they end up stopping the present-day story from moving forward just to explain things the reader never needed explained. But in Spider-Man: Blue, we get an understanding of Peter, Gwen, and Mary Jane that goes beyond the traditional love triangle into a story about how there’s always something good, something hopeful, even in death.

___________

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Gutter Space #15: When Worlds Collide: Bone, by Jeff Smith

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Graphic Novels, Gutter Space

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art styles, Bone, Graphic Novel, gutter space, Jeff Smith, leslie salas, Sequential art, Worldbuilding

Gutter Space #15 by Leslie Salas

When Worlds Collide: Bone, by Jeff Smith

To springboard off my post last week about how differences in art styles can affect the reader’s ability to perceive differences between characters, I’d like to take some time to discuss the differences between the way characters are drawn based on where they are from. One of the best examples of this is Jeff Smith’s Bone.

Bone follows the protagonist, Fone Bone, as he gets lost in a new uncharted land and has the adventure of a lifetime. As he searches through miles and miles of desert (with only a few supplies—a map, a canteen, a bedroll, and a copy of his favorite book, Moby Dick), Fone finally encounters a lush valley.

Taking a moment to look at Fone, we can see that he looks rather cartoony. He’s all white, doesn’t really have any clothes, and his features are simplified. His feet don’t have toes. He doesn’t have hair or nostrils, but he does have expressive eyebrows and a bulbous nose. His four-fingered hands are typical of old-school comics and cartoons—much quicker to only draw four fingers than all five.

However, when we see the valley, it is rich with detail. There are clearly different types of trees and fascination topographical variety. This world that Fone has come to the cusp of, is unlike the boring and vast nothingness of the desert. So it only makes sense that it’s people should look differently also.

Enter Thorn, the beautiful young woman that finds Fone Bone and helps him (and his cousins, who have also come to the valley) out. Fone helplessly falls in love with her, and for good reason. Look at her! Look at those lovely lashes, those muscled thighs, those five-fingered hands. She’s drawn in rich detail, and clearly comes from a world much different than his own.

Unlike some of the other characters that live in the valley, Thorn does not discriminate against Fone and his cousins based on their appearance. Almost every new character makes some sort of comment about how strange they look, but once the weirdness is addressed, the people of the village grow used to the Bones and accept them as guests and visitors.

It is in this manner that Jeff Smith visually addresses the weirdness of people who come from different places. The vastly different drawing styles, combined with the characters’ recognition of the difference, helps the reader navigate the cultural, economic, and societal differences between these two types of people. Overcoming these differences is a recurrent theme throughout the graphic novel Bone, and adds an element the realism of prejudice in this fantastic setting.

___________

Leslie Salas writes fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and comics. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida and attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute. In addition to being an Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Leslie also serves as an assistant editor for The Florida Review, a graphic nonfiction editorial assistant for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and a regular contributing artist for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Gutter Space #9: Flashbacks in Will Eisner’s A Family Matter

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Gutter Space

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graphic novels, gutter space, leslie salas, Will Eisner

Gutter Space #9 by Leslie Salas

Flashbacks in Will Eisner’s A Family Matter

We’re going a little bit old school this week by taking a look a cartooning legend Will Eisner’s A Family Matter.

Before we jump in, I’m going to take a moment to be honest. As you can see by my previous Gutter Space posts, I mostly focus on contemporary (and rather mainstream) American independent comics and webcomics (that aren’t superhero comics—that’s Sean Ironman’s domain). But besides reading the classic American funnies in the newspaper, I wasn’t really exposed to American comics until more recently. I got interested in sequential art by reading Japanese manga. (We can get more into whether or not my obsession with manga may or may not have started with my obsession with Sailor Moon at a later time. See Mark Pursell’s post for a similar sentiment.)

I bring this up because A Family Matter is the first Eisner graphic novel I’ve ever read. And because of the heavy contemporary manga influence in my background, my approach to understanding his sequential art comes from more of an outsider’s perspective.

Over the span of 72 pages, Eisner covers a 24-hour period in what seems like a normal family’s life. We readers get to know each of the family members in the present as they make their way to their father’s 90^th birthday party. But we also get snippets of each of the family members’ troubled past with their father and each other through flashbacks. The placement and braiding of these scenes further informs the particular nuances of this family’s dysfunction.

These flashbacks often are presented side-by-side with present action, offering contrast and introspection to the interactions between the family members. The flashbacks are drawn with what seems like a wispy hand, less detailed than the present, with fuzzy shading around them, functioning similarly to thought bubbles. The result is a punchy, immersive storyline that fully engages the reader in the conflict of past and present influencing the future.

A Family Matter is a quick read that exhibits technical mastery in many areas. Boldly inked with soft grey watercolor shading, the art itself is typical of American cartooning in the late 90s. There’s some great work going on here, especially with narrative braiding, but I’m still not sure how I feel about the story as a whole.

Yes, the story is rich with details and provides a thought-provoking ending. There are no captions at all in the comic (except for an epigraph at the very beginning), so the story is driven entirely by drawings and dialogue. The work undoubtedly showcases Eisner as a master of the form, but I still feel like something’s missing—or maybe that it’s trying too hard.

The story itself lacks the complex sophistication of many contemporary graphic novels. It really just feels like a collection of dysfunctional-family clichés. A daughter catches her father with a strumpet and becomes the favorite after she promises to keep his secret. The oldest son becomes an outcast because he refuses to follow in his father’s footsteps. A woman sleeps with her sister’s husband. Everyone has daddy issues, and sucks up to Dad in the hopes that they’ll get a cut of his substantial inheritance. And so on. We’ve heard these stories before.

I’m not sure it is fair to draw this kind of parallel given that Eisner was on the forefront of establishing comics as a long-form medium for storytelling. He practically invented the graphic novel, so of course the medium itself will undergo substantial changes in just a few decades. Were these themes as prevalent in literature in 1998? Probably. But what about in comics? Maybe. But maybe not presented in this manner. And maybe it’s just my MFA talking, being snooty about storytelling quality and what may or may not be considered fresh and literary.

Either way, there are definitely great things to learn from A Family Matter, and I’d certainly suggest it as a good short read. Check it out and let me know what you think?

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Gutter Space #4: Worldbuilding in Megan Kelso’s Artichoke Tales

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Gutter Space

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Artichoke Tales, coming-of-age, Fiction, Graphic Novel, gutter space, leslie salas, Megan Kelso, nudity, vulnerability, Worldbuilding

Gutter Space #4 by Leslie Salas

Worldbuilding in Megan Kelso’s Artichoke Tales

Worldbuilding—whether in graphic novels or prose novels—is the long and arduous task of creating and enriching social, cultural, and economic setting of a narrative. Worldbuilding is done best when it is invisible to the reader. When an author establishes a foreign setting through the storytelling itself (and not in awkward, stilted dialogue or blatant, uncrafted listing), a reader’s growing understanding of how the world functions becomes a natural element of the reading experience.

Graphic novels are uniquely suited to establishing a great deal of this kind of detail in the span of a few panels thanks to the power of visual literacy. One of the best examples of worldbuilding done well in the medium of sequential art is Megan Kelso’s Artichoke Tales.

This graphic novel, which took Kelso six years to complete, follows the coming-of-age story of Brigitte Quicksand, an apothecary girl from the South who has fallen in love with a soldier boy from the North. Because she and the boy are from opposite ends of the continent and have very different backgrounds and cultures, they are forced to part ways and say goodbye.

Frustrated by her lack of understanding about why people from the North and South—both of whom have artichoke-looking hair—don’t get along, Brigitte asks her grandmother to tell her about the history of the continent.

Brigitte’s quest for understanding and her desire to reconnect with the boy from the North serves as the vehicle that propels a comprehensive account of this history of the Artichoke people and the consequences of a civil war.

Although the reader goes into Artichoke Tales knowing nothing about the world the Artichoke people live in, by the end of this epic tale, one has a comprehensive understanding of their world—and how it mimics our own.

As a side note, one of my favorite things about Megan Kelso as a cartoonist is that she is unafraid to draw provocative or embarrassing scenes.

Throughout Artichoke Tales, there are illustrations of urination, birth, plenty of sexual encounters, and even of a certain member of royalty experiencing gastric distress.

This inclusion of characters in nude and/or vulnerable positions adds to the realistic effect of good worldbuilding (and good fiction in general). We see these characters in their natural environments, at their best, and at their worst. We get to know them, we recognize ourselves in them, and this is what touches us as readers of good writing.

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Gutter Space #2: Thompson’s Narrative Braiding in Habibi

15 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Art, Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Gutter Space

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Craig Thompson, graphic novels, gutter space, Habibi

Gutter Space #2 by Leslie Salas

Thompson’s Narrative Braiding in Habibi

In the graphic novel Habibi, Craig Thompson uses the theme of willing- versus forced-sacrifice to effectively braid narratives from the Bible and the Qur’an with the coming of age stories of orphans Dodola and Zam. This juxtaposition of stories and images emphasizes influences the novel’s pacing and tone. To focus more readily on Thompson’s style in Habibi, this discussion is limited to a close reading analysis of pages 46 through 49.

Thompson’s braided narrative structure is perhaps the most obvious in this selection—there are clearly two separate conflicts: 1) Dodola and Zam’s quest to “provide for [them]selves,” and 2) the dilemma of “which son was it?”—Ishmael or Isaac—that Abraham sacrificed when God asked him to sacrifice a son (Thompson 46, 48). While the selection begins and ends with Dodola and Zam, Thompson’s introduction of the sons dilemma as a bedtime story innocuously implants the idea of sacrifice as a potential solution for Dodola and Zam’s plight. The main component of the story of Abraham and his sons is bookended with Dodola’s refrain asking how she and Zam would “provide for ourselves” (Thompson 46, 48). In addition to the story being framed by her question, a single panel amidst Dodola’s journey to meet the caravan and acquire food implies sacrifice with the image of Abraham’s arm raised, knife in hand, over the crouching body of one of his sons. The reader may not yet know that Dodola has chosen to prostitute herself for food and supplies, but Thompson heightens the tension with the simple reminder of Abraham’s plight through the juxtaposition of images.

As Habibi is a graphic novel, notions of images are quite literal and focus on line of sight and effective use of light and dark shading. Thompson makes great use of his images, choosing to invoke patters in the borders of panels to help distinguish between Zam and Dodola’s narrative and Dodola’s Biblical bedtime tale. The panels surrounding the stories from either holy book, the Qur’an or the Bible, are rich and vibrant with intricate detail, all in line with the aesthetic of art as illumination. In terms of panel real estate, almost half of the selection is devoted to the story of Abraham and his sons, and the other half belongs to Dodola and Zam. Thompson’s choice to equally distribute the space on the page to both narratives emphasizes his stylistic preference to the braided narrative and the power of suggestion.

Another strong aspect of the selection is Thompson’s use of repeated images. These images, when repeated with slight changes, can affect perceptions of time or character development. For instance, the camels in caravan progressively become more indistinct and shady (Thompson 48-49). This development creates a sense of mystery and heightens tension at the unknown. In terms of the Zam watching Dodola through the porthole, and interesting transformation occurs in the span of two panels—Zam grows a from screaming infant into concerned adolescent with the repetition of a single panel (Thompson 49). Not only does the reader jump through time with Zam, but his posture and demeanor in a single panel also characterize their situation—Zam and Dodola have survived, and Dodola continues to sacrifice her body so that they both may live.

Speaking again of sacrifice, the repeated images of Ishmael and Issac are particularly effective. While some of these images are repeated throughout the novel, in particular the image of Abraham pressing both of his sons to the altar (Thompson 48), the repetition of the two sons in this section is unique. Although the boys differ in age by thirteen years, they are drawn as equivalents—same age, same height (Thompson 46). Their clothing is similar—although Isaacs may seem a bit finer, and the biggest difference is Ishmael’s thin, dark features as opposed to Isaac’s rounded, fairer ones (Thompson 46). These physical characteristics, as well as their emotional dispositions, are also projected on each of the boys’ respective mothers, further emphasizing their differences. When Ishmael and Isaac appear in the same panel together, it is always Ishmael on the left, and Isaac on the right. While Isaac may be Abraham’s legitimate son and thereby his right hand man, Ishmael is the compliant son. The contrast between these two sons and their character tie into the central theme of sacrifice—voluntary or not.

The juxtaposition and braided narrative not only applies to the religious texts and the lives of Zam and Dodola, but within the texts themselves. The teachings of the Qur’an and the Bible are often presented side by side in what appears to be Thompson’s objective perspective on the nuances of story. This is most evident in the full-page panel depicting the sons of Abraham carrying bundles of firewood to “to the site of the slaughter” (Thompson 47). On the left side of the panel, Ishmael is a “willing participant,” on the left Isaac “was tricked” (Thompson 47). The actual quotes of both Ishmael and Isaac are also provided, along with their location in the Qur’an and Bible, respectively, giving not only Dodola authority as an expert storyteller to Zam, but gives Thompson credibility as the author making a conscious choice to cite the passages themselves.

The study of the differences between the Qur’an and the Bible are culturally pertinent to the current state of affairs between the Western world and the Middle East. While this segment of Habibi does not expand on the radical juxtaposition of first- and third-world living conditions, the excerpt does touch on the power of storytelling, as an oral and written medium, and its influence in society. Dodola begins with a bedtime story about Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, but this story grows into a metaphor for their situation, a willing or unwilling sacrifice to “provide for ourselves” (Thompson 46, 48). Thompson’s deliberate use of a braided narrative structure paired with clever use of juxtaposition in images creates compelling pacing and a resonant tone to speak to his theme of sacrifice.