Pre-Fulbright Panic Attacks

I leave for Argentina in two weeks and two days.

Two weeks. And two days.

I complain constantly about having to live in Chicago (with my parents) while I wait for my Fulbright and real life to begin. But amid all that hemming and hawing I created life for myself. Services at the synagogue, an internship downtown, and friends have kept me occupied. Now, finally I feel settled in Chicago and I’m leaving. If you’ve talked with me these past few weeks, I’ve probably talked about this a thousand times. To get excited for my journey and leave my life in Chicago, I’ve been thinking about awesome things about Argentina, like my Argentine friends, empanadas and steak, cheap comics, amazing public transportation, and 70 degree weather.

One thing I said I would do before I left is to create a list of must-read comics. I obviously won’t be here to suggest comics, so I’m going to make a few lists of good comics to read:

Memoirs:

1. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

2. Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

3. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

4. Epileptic by David B.

5. American Splendor by Harvey Pekar

6. French Milk by Lucy Knisley

7. Understanding Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden

8. Maus by Art Spiegelman

9. Self-Loathing #2 by R. Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb

10. Safe Area Gorzade by Joe Sacco

Reinterpreting Batman

If you talk to me about comics for five minutes, I'll probably mention my distain for superheroes. So many superhero comics have convoluted plots, anatomically impossible females, too many fight scenes and not enough character development. That said, I sometimes enjoy Batman and really enjoy reinterpretations of Batman. Josh Simmons and Kate Beaton have come up with their own Batman stories. Beaton's frisky, flamboyant "Sexy" Batman is my favorite of the two, but Simmon's art is breathtakingly beautiful. Dear readers, look at the two comics below and tell me which one you like best!

From Hark! A Vagrant 295

Batman by Josh Simmons

(Go here to read the entire story)

Nilsen's Birds and Big Questions

I viewed Anders Nilsen’s work in terms of art alone. An assortment of panels from Big Questions, a graphic novel about talking birds, was displayed without a specific sequence. I believe they were generally placed in order from beginning to end, but it was impossible to understand the narrative from the pages given. The panel told the story of an underground cavern filled with sightless birds, some guy ends up there, and a plucky young sparrow saves a friend? I’m not really sure how the stories connected. The show obviously wasn’t about the narrative, it was about the art. And let me tell you, the art was fantastic.

A panel from Big Questions

The panels were much larger than a normal, 8.5X11 page, allowing me to see the details lost when shrunk for publication. The art reveals the little secrets of creation. I could see every stroke of the pen, every tiny dot used for shading or creating a line, details that in a book would blend together and go unnoticed. My cousin Liam just sent me a website where you can buy original work by a bunch of artists. If I could, I would purchase this panel by Nilsen. Does anybody want to lend me $350?

Another panel from Big Questions

My favorite panel showed the sparrow investigating a downed plane. Perhaps it is all for the best that there was no narrative attached to the story, so I can create my own without bias. The sparrow looks into the cockpit of a plane with curiosity, observing the compasses, switches, and buttons that make the machine fly. When I saw the image, I though it amazing the amount of technology needed to do what a bird does effortlessly.

And thus concludes my discussion of the New Chicago Comics. I wish the show would continue, but alas, it has been taken down. I finally found pictures of the show, although I think reposting it on my blog may be illegal, so you can check them out on The Monologuist, Nilsen’s blog.

Lilli Carré Challenges Comics

Don't Drink From the Sea (2010)

Comics comprise a small part of Lilli Carré’s section in New Chicago Comics. Video stills, hand-bound silkscreened books and an assortment of videos surrounded excerpts from the graphic novel The Lagoon (2008). Carré shows the viewer that comic art can be realized in many forms. Don’t Drink From the Sea (2010) and My Dreams Have Been Quite Strange Lately (2010) are short narratives that look like children’s picture books. The short videos were beautifully done, using movement and growth to connect time and space. Head Garden (2009) illustrates the travels of a head that leaves its body. I love the idea of the head as a seed, separating from its body to go on an adventure, and then eventually sprouting and returning to its owner.

Head Garden from Lilli Carré on Vimeo.

The featured portion of The Lagoon shows a clandestine encounter between a woman and a swamp creature in the dead of night, their connection arising from a haunting melody sung by the creature. The scene ends when the woman’s husband wakes up from a deep sleep and attempts to find her. The cliffhanger ending serves a purpose for both the writer and the curator. By entrapping the reader with an intense and mysterious scene, the curator shows that comics can be powerful narratives as well as art. The questions left unanswered by the excerpt encourage the readers to read the book.

Excerpts from The Lagoon

Although I enjoy Carré's work, I did not enjoy the curation. There were too many art forms represented and it seemed almost eclectic. Comics may only be a small part of her repertoire, but it was inappropriate to display everything she’s ever created when the theme clearly was comic art. Perhaps the setup was meant to challenge our definition of comics. What is the difference between a graphic novel and a picture book? Isn't a video simply an animated version of a comic? If this were the case, the curator might be a genius...

New Chicago Comics at the Museum of Contemporary Art

I am extremely lucky to live in a city that has such a vibrant comics community. I can find a wide range of comics in bookstores and libraries and many of my favorite artists, like Chris Ware, Lucy Knisley, and Ivan Brunetti, live in this very city. So it comes as no surprise that The Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting “New Chicago Comics” an exhibit dedicated to the work of four comics creators from Chicago—Jeffrey Brown, Lilli Carré, Paul Hornschemeier, and Anders Nilsen.

As a former tour guide at the Smith College Museum of Art, I am acutely aware of how exhibits are curated. The media poses a potentially difficult problem for a curator. How do you showcase the work to exhibit the artistic merits of comics without compromising the unique sequential narrative? Michael Green, the show’s curator, recognized this dilemma and created an exhibit that explored the sequential narratives while exhibiting the pages as works of art.

The cover for The Three Paradoxes in German

(There was a sketch of this at the exhibit)

A panel from The Three Paradoxes

Pages from Hornschemeier’s The Three Paradoxes were pasted on a part of the wall, allowing the viewer to read quite a large chunk of the narrative. The original panels were presented to the side of this printed copy, not yet colored, with visible blue pencil drawings. Green presented the comic’s narrative while showcasing the original work. Very little happens in The Three Paradoxes, and exhibiting only a few panels might not capture the attention of the viewer. By allowing the viewer to read part of the comic, he or she understands where the individual panels fit into the larger story.

An excerpt from Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown

Green similarly excelled in his presentation of Jeffrey Brown’s various sketchbooks, published works, and stories. Two tables in the middle of the room displayed each book open to a narrative, interesting sketch, or script for a comic. Usually, I have a problem with displaying books as art objects because I find it frustrating to only see one page out of an entire book. However, Brown’s short vignettes were so amusing and well paired that I was not bothered. The one-page stories moved from childhood to Brown’s pimpled teenage years to his sometimes-awkward adult life. Although only a random sampling of his work, these stories presented a seemingly complete narrative.

One of the most important aspects of Green’s presentation was that he revealed the process of making comics. He showed this by combining Hornschemeier’s original pages and finished comic. With Brown’s work, he paired a rough sketch and notes of a cartoon with the final version. Green created an exhibit that not only presented comics in a unique way, but provided an intimate look into the creator’s mind as well.

(I didn’t forget about Carré and Nilsen. They are, out of the four, the two artists that draw the most beautiful and detailled comics. I plan on discussing their mind-blowingly fascinating art in my next post.)

Forbes Library

Avery reading in the comic section at the Forbes Library

I can probably credit Forbes Library, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, as one of my most important influences when it comes to my taste in comics. In the summer before my sophomore year of college, my cousin Liam gave me a list of indie comics that drastically changed my preference in graphic novels. The comics section of Forbes Library, comprised of an entire wall, began a similar transformation.

I began going to Forbes Library after Smith College cut me off. I went from having millions of books at my disposal to nothing. (Technically, I graduated and was no longer a student.) I was in Northampton for quite a bit of the summer and needed something to read, so I went to Forbes and got a library card. Their comics section was impressive. It contained a wide range of titles I had only heard and others I didn’t know existed. Owly, A Treasury of Victorian Murders, and Tamara Drewe are just a few titles I encountered during the summer.

Going to Forbes helped me form a distinct taste in comics. Usually, I check out around five comics each time I go to the library. My only criteria are that I haven’t read it before. Some graphic novels have a profound impact on me and I continue to think about them, while others make me uncomfortable and angry. When I was in high school, I read a selection of comics that my friend chose for me, ignoring all others. While I might not have liked them, I continued with these because I didn’t know what else was out there. Reading a wide assortment has allowed me to discover the elements I enjoy in comics: strong female characters, travel, mystery, and terror comics, complex relationships between characters, suburban dystopias, etc. Thanks to libraries, I now know that I do not like superhero comics and randomly disgusting, gory violence, or evil characters without back-stories. While reading Tamara Drewe, for example, I was enthralled by the complex relationships between the characters, and found myself thinking about them long after I finished the story. The Great Hoax, in contrast, was a noir comic that showed a woman constantly abused by an evil, sadistic lizard character. (What motivated this lizard, but a desire to be cruel? Why was the woman only able to fight back when prompted to by a man?) I felt so disgusting after finishing it, that I had to read another comic to just forget about it. The comics that I choose to read now are based off these experiences.

So, dear readers, even if you don’t have a collection as extensive as Forbes, you can still develop your own taste in comics by visiting your own library.

Vacationing in Western Mass

My trip to Argentina is approaching all to quickly. There are about a million things I need to worry about and resolve before I go. I should be working on lists, stocking up on products I can't find in Argentina (maple syrup, Tupperware, etc.), and reading everything I can possibly find about comics.

But...I'm on vacation in Western Massachusetts visiting friends and former professors.

The vacation will not be comics-less, however. I plan to visit the comic store Modern Myths, check out comics from Forbes Library, and look in my former college's archive. I want to research ghost stories for a comic I might possibly want to create in the future. While biking in the summer and fall, I would always create intricate stories for comics. My favorite plot involved a student encountering ghosts at my college. I had heard rumors of ghosts (a man burned to death in an attic) and had read about a few violent stories (in 1909, a man shot his fiancee and then himself in front of the Campus Center), but nothing concrete that I could turn into a comic. I'll let you know what I find and how my research progresses.