The One-Panel Critics: Lots Going On in Mister Miracle

So a week or so ago, Ed Piskor put together an interesting collection of comics panels in which "cause" and "effect" both appear in the same image. (I first heard about Piskor's collection a few days back from noted trendspotter Mike Sterling. By now, though, even that old fogey Scott McCloud has jumped on the bandwagon, so I'm probably about two days from being tragically unhip here.)

I think what Piskor has in mind is that the originator of an action and its results seem to exist in slightly different time-frames in the same panel: for example, Andy is at the end of the follow-through of a throw, and the thing he's thrown is already shattering a faraway window.

To be precise, this isn't just a matter of causes being visible alongside their effects, but being visible in different temporal frames of reference within the same panel. It's as if the motion line were a sort of time-distortion device, guiding the reader from a slightly-past "present" to a somewhat-more-present "present," all within the panel.

In order to add my own two cents to the discussion, here's my favorite example of this weird feature of the way comics represent time:



Go on and click to enlarge it. Take the time to read it. That's a splash panel from Mister Miracle #15 (Sept. 1973), written and drawn by Jack Kirby.

What's going on in that panel? I detect at least three, and maybe four, temporal frames of reference swirling around each other there.



Okay, some stuff happens before the panel actually begins. This includes everything leading up to ...



(A.) the tossing of a grenade.



Shilo (B1.) sees the grenade, (B2.) calls out a warning, and (maybe not simultaneously—so B3? or C?) trips Mr. Miracle.



(C? D?) Mr. Miracle falls to the ground.

Of course it's weird that all these different causes and effects are visible simultaneously. I think it's extra-weird that they don't simply "read" from right to left, but follow the actions around the page counter-clockwise from twelve o'clock, like so.



I can't tell whether this panel is a muddled mess or a masterpiece of compression and efficiency. I've looked at this comic so many times since I was a tot that I can't imagine what it would be like to read it without already having read it.



What do you think? Does this panel work to convey its complicated chain of cause-and-effect clearly, or is it confusing?

The One-Panel Critics: the Vanity of Swamp Thing

It's been nearly a month since my last measly post, and I don't think I'm going to break any postyness records for July, either. But here's a little something I noticed recently.

I've been re-reading my old Swamp Thing paperbacks, thinking about the storytelling as well as the story there, and I noticed a couple of panels from the slow build at the end of Saga of the Swamp Thing #30 ("A Halo of Flies") that I hadn't paid attention to before. Probably I had skipped past these quickly because they're pantomime (there's no text to read), which is a shame, because they build up to an awfully strong final-page reveal—one that anticipates the rug-jerking surprise at the end of the eleventh issue of Watchmen, in its small way.

Here are those panels I mentioned.



Maybe you're already seeing what I saw.

Even if you're not an avid Swamp Thingophile, you may be familiar with Bernie Wrightson's cover to House of Secrets #92, which included the first Swamp Thing story:



(This image borrowed from the Grand Comics Database, like the next image.)

This story was later reprinted, with a new framing tale around it, in Saga of the Swamp Thing #33, with John Totleben providing a cover swipe or homage from Wrightson's original—with the post-Alec-Holland Swamp Thing's sweetheart, Abby Cable, in the place of Linda Olsen.



By now you've probably figured out what I've noticed: the elaborate vanity setup that the silent swamp monster stalks past on his way to Abby's curtained four-poster bed.



My hunch is that this is an earlier homage to House of Secrets 92. Maybe Steve Bissette will correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I think it's deliberate.

As he looms through the house, Swamp Thing is framed to look like a monster, even though he's the hero of the tale, and the "cinematics" of the scene help to build a really nice sense of foreboding that the chapter's conclusion pays out in spades. It's a nice touch—and a subtle thing to notice more than two decades after the comic was originally published.

Kokonino Street View

I've been thinking about the landscape in George Herriman's Krazy Kat for the past few days. In particular, I've been thinking about the effects generated by the protean backgrounds—the mesas that turn into weird-looking trees, the melon-rind moon that appears and disappears, and so forth. Kokonino County is famously unstable, and Herriman's background doodles are one of my favorite things about the strip. (Also among my favorite things: the characters, the writing, and the concept. There is nothing about Krazy Kat that I do not love, except for its finitude.)

I have also been thinking that although Kokonino does not present a stable mien, it does have features: places that the characters (who never comment on the shifting scenery) recognize and can easily find. There's the Old Smoke Tree, for example, or the Enchanted Mesa of Joe Stork. And there's the Elephant's Legs.



That's an image from 8 July 1923. Krazy is walking on stilts amid the waters of Red Lake, and the Elephant's Legs are there on the shore.



Here they are again, one week earlier, by the side of the selfsame lake.



They don't exist only in 1923, mind you. Here's a funny bit of business from 3 October 1926, in which they wind up pinning Krazy's "[caudal] appendage":



Don't worry. She (or he) gets loose when Ignatz squeaks nearby and the legs jump up in fear. And here they are, meandering with clouds in the shape of an elephant's rump and haunches above them, in the throwaway central panel from 20 September 1925:



Maybe that's how all of the Kokonino landscape features get around.

I had always assumed that the Elephant's Legs were a flight of Herriman's fancy, but it turns out that, like the Mittens (which also appear repeatedly in Krazy's backgrounds), they're a real geological feature in our real Arizona, near Tonalea, in the northern part of the state, on the Navajo Trail. (The actual formation is called The Elephant's Feet, and there's a rest stop nearby that Google Maps will hit. Pull back far enough on that map, and you'll see the names of Shonto, Kaibab, Kayenta, and Kaibito, all of which also feature in Krazy Kat regularly.)

In fact, you can see the Elephant's Feet with Google Street View:



Go have a look.

The One-Panel Critics: Dan Clowes's Wilson

Speaking of Dan Clowes and his new book...

I enjoyed Wilson, which I read on the day of its release. It's got an unusual pace. It's constructed of single-page comic strips, some of which are separated by years of intervening time, and some of which happen indefinite hours or moments apart. Assembling these disjunct moments in the narrative is a big part of reading and understanding Wilson.

But one page, and really one panel in particular, stood out to me on a personal level.

Maybe it's because I've been reading with great interest James Sturm's column for Slate about quitting the internet cold turkey, or maybe it's because I'm becoming increasingly self-conscious about the time I spend consuming rather than producing in front of this little screen.

But when Wilson—misanthropic enough to puncture any social piety, but also repugnant enough that we can't follow him in all of his criticisms—surfs the internet ...



Well, this one put a dagger of ice through my withered heart.

And then I decided to blog about it.

Even taking the panel out of context, you can see the stasis in Wilson's posture, the gravity bending his pipecleaner arms and his hunched-over back. From this angle, you can see how hopelessly small the Powerbook is, and how clownish his features (and his feet) have become.

Taking the panel in its context, we see Wilson almost totally static, with small changes of hand position from panel to panel. Wilson's not a very active character, but this sequence embodies the combination of inertia and disdain that characterizes so much of our online universe. (By hating things, and merely rejecting them, we never have to reflect on ourselves or to change.)

Here are the third and fourth panels from this sequence, so you can see what I mean.




Mike and I have been talking about doing a series of "one-panel critics" posts. Maybe there will be another such post shortly.

Doodle Penance: "how do you pronounce daniel clowes"

Mike here, posting the Doodle Penance for a change. Today's formerly fruitless search item: "how do you pronounce daniel clowes." Well, it so happens that Isaac and I are well qualified to answer that question, having both had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Clowes more than once--myself as recently as last night, when he appeared at a local DC bookstore to promote his new book Wilson.
And indeed, the first word uttered by Mr. Clowes was his own surname, to correct the first of several mispronunciations of it by the employee who was introducing him as "Daniel Clothes." In an instant Mr. Clowes swiveled his microphone to his mouth to pronounce his name rightly, which did not stop the employee from calling him "Daniel Clothes" at least twice more. (At one point Mr. Clowes lowered his head in mock despair.)

So let's clear this up right away: it's NOT PRONOUNCED LIKE "CLOTHES." Or like "CLOSE" (with a voiceless S). Nor is it pronounced like "CLUES" (though it might have been in Chaucer's day). No, Isaac's handy doodle below should set the record straight once and for all:
Got it? Maybe if Mr. Clowes had resorted to the language of cartooning, as above, he might have reached the reptile brain of the employee and fixed his goofing.

Clowes was joined in the formal part of his appearance last night by Washington Post writer Dan Kois, who helpfully shouted out "Clowes as in cows," but to equally ill effect. But no matter; the mispronunciations were soon forgotten as Clowes & Kois (as in "voice") jointly commented and questioned an amusing slide-show presentation of material from Clowes's life and career, including a picture of 13-year-old Dan; two pages from his early minicomics ("Melvin the Clown" and "Sidney the Cat," based on TV's Bozo the Clown and an animated cartoon of Felix the Cat); snippets of Clowes's video for Tom Waits's "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" as performed by the Ramones;

and a few minutes from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! including a rube of a gas-station attendant scorned as an "eightball" mere moments before someone else (or was it something?) is described as "like a velvet glove cast in iron." Anyway, it was a pretty cool appearance, and I'm glad I got to check it out. And I even got Mr. Clowes's permission to post this sketch, so check it out:
Pretty sweet, huh? Meanwhile, you may have noticed that I haven't exactly offered up my own image for this week's Doodle Penance. Fact is, Isaac's cartoon pretty much covers it, plus I had a narrative to offer on the very topic that takes care of it as well as, or better than, another cartoon. But I do have a doodle, inspired by the cover to Wilson and dedicated to my co-cartoonist:

Not the best likeness, by a long shot, but perhaps partaking of some small measure of that creepy face-front pose that Clowes has been seeking at least since his mid-70s sketch of Gerald Ford (pictured in the slide show) and exemplified in this charming specimen from Eightball 8:

A Chaucerian comic for a Chaucerian day

So it's May 3 (for a little while, yet), a day with interesting significance for the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, supreme English poet of the fourteenth century (no matter what those Langlandites say!). The significance of May 3, 2010, for me was Chaucerian twice-over: first, I graded a bunch of Canterbury Tales exams (um, whoot?); second, one of my grad students sent me THIS:

It's merely the latest and greatest take on the blank Dinosaur Comics template. Images arranged by Ryan North; Chaucerian dialogue arranged by Erin Webb. Go, litel comik!

Two Poetry Podcasts? I Guess So.

Sorry for the blog silence these last few weeks, folks. It's the end of the semester. Regular posting will probably resume in a week or so.

Meanwhile, here's an odd collection of two poetry podcasts:

One, here, has the audio from a reading I gave last month at the art museum here on campus. (I read with another poet, Abby Paige, who has the second half of the reading.)

Another, here, went out on the radio Thursday morning when my advanced creative writing students took a field trip to the campus radio station to read their poems on-air.

I think they're both pretty pleasant to listen to. My thanks go to Chris Evans, whose "Writers@WRUV" program hosted both the broadcasts and the podcasts.