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Opus Two:
1. All Hail, Hall. Bob Hall, you may recall, is Armed and Dangerous. Armed and Dangerous, you may recall, was a series of comic books that came out a couple years ago in striking black and white. Written and drawn by Hall, the books told tales about underworld types like those Hall had known (or had heard about) in the scruffier neighborhoods of New York City, where he served time as a youth. Hall was producing fiction in this series but some of the incidents were based upon actual events (or neighborhood gossip about actual events). The stories were superbly rendered in a stunning chiaroscuro manner. And Hall demonstrated a spectacular mastery of the techniques of comic book storytelling, too--pacing the action and conjuring up atmospherics expertly on every page. Well, he's back at it--this time with one of comics' icons. Batman: I, Joker ($4.95) is an Elseworlds Batman story told by the Cowled Crusader's arch enemy. But the plot is laid far in the future by which time Batman is a god-king called "The Bruce." The Bruce is maintained in power by the faith of the populace, and the faith of the people is sustained by regularly enacted feats of violence against a re-appearing cast of villains--the Penguin, Two-face, the Riddler, Ra's al Ghul, and the Joker. Once every year, volunteers are invited to capture or kill one of this bunch--and, if successful, to challenge the Bruce to personal combat to the death. If victorious, the successful citizen will become the new god-king. In addition to incorporating elements of the Fisher King myth, Hall has constructed (as I trust you can tell from the foregoing) a clever parable that parallels the relationship between the comic book hero, Batman, and his faithful readers, before whom (like the Bruce), Batman re-enacts periodically the ritual conquest of a litany of arch villains. Having set up the resonances of this situation, Hall then proceeds to explore its implications. And I'll not say more about that in deference to your undoubted desire to find out what happens on your own. Hall's artwork and storytelling abilities are well displayed here. He renders anatomy in chips and chunks like raw meat, making dramatic use of solid blacks and deep shadows, and he paces the tale with breakdowns that create the story's atmospherics in flashes of consciousness. Nifty stuff, deftly done. Look for your copy in the back-issue bins at the summer cons. 2. At Long Last. It's taken over fifty years, but the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) has finally given a long-overdue recognition to cartooning in the comic book format. Will Eisner, believe it or not, is the first working in that genre to win the Reuben. Well, okay. Mort Drucker (who received a Reuben in 1987) works in Mad in the multi-page format; but I suspect his Reuben was more for his surpassing skill as a caricaturist than for his storytelling skills. And, sure, Sergio Aragones (1997) works in comic books. But I suspect his pantomime comedy was the basis of his Reuben. Yes, Groo helped, I'm sure. Okay, okay. Drucker and Aragones. Both cartooning geniuses, no question or quibble. And they both worked in comic books. So you admit I'm wrong, eh? But Drucker and Aragones are Mad men. Their comic book work is high comedy. And that's fine. (In their case, it's more than fine: it's superlative.) But serious storytelling--plumbing the depths, scaling the heights of the potential of the comic book medium--storytelling that aims to affect more than our risibilities, that kind of storytelling in the multi-page format is the kind Eisner has been doing. And that, you'll have to admit, is a different sort of comic book work than the work done by Drucker and/or Aragones. (Both of whom I love. But you knew that, eh?) The comic book work of Drucker and Aragones emphasizes the comic; the comic book work of Eisner emphasizes the book. And the difference is significant. Literature over laughter. Regrettably, NCS has seldom in its history looked upon comic books with much favor. Historically, NCS has been the turf of syndicated newspaper cartooning. Its founders were in fact vaguely suspicious of cartooning in any of its other forms. Those few who suggested that the club reach out to include cartoonists in these other forms were often sniffed at. That has changed somewhat in recent times, but the club still hasn't quite figured out that some of the best cartooning being done these days is being done in comic books. It's as if time has stood still for NCS. Given the shrinkage of the newspaper strip, it should be obvious to anyone who understands cartooning that the most potent format for the practice of the art in print is the comic book. The multi-page format offers more than mere length (sufficient to the telling of a complex tale): page layout can be exploited for dramatic emphasis, panel size and shape can be varied for effect. There are still great things being done in a few comic strips, but the most promising potential for the future of cartooning is in the comic book. Or, to employ the slightly pretentious term, the "graphic novel." It is therefore supremely fitting that Will Eisner, who has been on the cutting edge in developing the graphic novel in form and subject, should be honored by his profession in this fashion. Considering the extent of Eisner's pioneering achievements in cartooning (in developing the grammar of the traditional comic book in the early days, in exploring the educational and instructional uses of comics, and in introducing the graphic novel), the award this year is surely going to a deserving recipient. More than deserving. Richly deserving. Incidentally, the reason that NCS has always shied away from comic book cartoonists is that in the early days comic book artists only drew their features, they didn't also write them like syndicated strip cartoonists did. So comic book cartoonists weren't considered full-fledged cartoonists. (The possibility that sometimes strip cartoonists wrote but didn't draw their features was not, apparently, a disqualification.) Through the 1970s, this bias doubtless continued to infect the voting ranks of NCS (consisting mostly of syndicated cartoonists who wouldn't be caught dead reading a comic book). The only person this bunch was sure wrote as well as drew his comic book was Will Eisner. So Eisner won the category award for Best Comic Book Cartoonist for four years, 1967-69 and 1988. The comic book category was split into two (humor and story), 1970-1987, and Eisner won it under "story" in 1979 and 1987. Eisner's history with this award is ample testimony to NCS's dumbfounding myopia (even outright blindness) with respect to comic books: Eisner wasn't producing a comic book during the sixties when he won three times; he was doing a maintenance magazine for the Army and other instructional comics. Comic book format but not fiction, not literature. The list of winners in the comic book category is somewhat spotty: it skips years with astonishing regularity. The "humor" sub-division has a winner every year, but the "story" listing skips from 1981 to 1987 as if there were no story-telling comic books during that period. Frank Miller finally got the nod in 1991, but no one won the next year. Perhaps now that the ice has broken, the achievement of other cartoonists who work in the multi-page format will be recognized. We can hope. But first, NCS needs to figure out how to find out who the best in the comic book field are. This year's nominees were Alex Ross (for Uncle Sam), Jeff Smith (for Bone), and Aaron Warner, for the comic book version of his weekly newspaper strip, The Adventures of Aaron. Good guys all, but they've been doing work of the caliber represented here for some time. Why pick this year to honor them? Well, better now than never, of course. But what about Paul Chadwick and Don Rosa? Surely they're in the same arena as Ross, Smith, and Warner. (Maybe not Ross; but he's here probably because of his spectacular artwork, not his storytelling per se. If so, what happened to that bias against "cartoonists" who drew but didn't write their material?) NCS has already missed the opportunity to recognize the giants (other than Eisner): Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Cole, Carl Barks, John Stanley, C. C. Beck, Curt Swan, even Wayne Boring (who put Superman in the imaginations of the generation of readers before Swan). Don't miss out with Gil Kane. Neal Addams, Jim Steranko, John Byrne. Then, to return to the current crop, don't overlook Mike Mignola, Erik Larsen, Duncan Fegredo--even Todd McFarland (whose purchase of a multi-million-dollar baseball surely counts for something). If NCS doesn't get in step with the times pretty quick now, the outfit will live to regret its provincialism in the fairly near future. To find out about Harv's books, click here. |
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