Women in Comix and Sharing

I think I might take the presence of women authors and artists in the current comic/graphic novel scene for granted.  I also think that webcomics skew my assumptions about women involved in comics in general - they're there, not a super small minority, but present less frequently than men.  I wonder what the actual numbers are but then I suppose we'd fall into a debate about what constitutes a comic/graphic novel and the importance of being published through traditional mediums vs. the internet.

As I said in class - I'm surprised that Aline Kominsky, Robert Crumb's wife, was an artist.  Truth be told I am not a huge fan of Crumb's work so maybe that's why I never investigated his ties to other artists.  It occurs to me that for the vast majority of the golden age there no prominent artists who are women.  I'm sure there are a lot of factors, and logically it makes sense with the historical context is realized.  Even so I was only reminded of the absence until we got to section in Kaplan's book dealing with underground comics.

There is an assumption expressed on page 139 (the first full paragraph) that doesn't sit too well with me.  I'm a little unconvinced that autobiographical comics/graphic novels are really mostly in the domain of women because 'they like to share more'.  What about the subtle influences Will Eisner put into his work that were certainly representative of aspects of his life?  Coloring the process of sharing one's life experience through art as an almost entirely female artist's pursuit seems silly.  Even if it's not as overt as an autobiography real life experience shining through artistic expression has been a large part of this book.  It has been exhibited or analyzed with most of the artists introduced in previous pages.

Tales From the Crypt and Revival

I've been a fan of Tales from the Crypt since I was little kid, mostly due to reruns of the HBO show that scared the ever-living-daylights out of me.  Because of the brand's rebirth in the late 1980s and 1990s Tales from the Crypt was the first thing I looked for when a comic book shop open up near my house.  I think I spooked the owner a little bit as an eight-year-old searching for horror comics and not for something a bit lighter and more age-appropriate.

I noticed a few other classmates had this same experience though - enjoying a well known title after it's rebirth in the 1980s or 1990s.  It's a really cool wave effect after the CCA lost a lot of it's power.  It some ways it's a perfect symbol of the revival of comics, old titles and new, during those years.

Oh and for those who liked those comics but don't know a lot about horror film CreepShow (1982) was a horror-comedy film done very much in the spirit of the Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror.  It was a collaborative work between Stephen King and George Romero who were probably greatly influenced by the EC comics of the 1950s.

Did I mention you can also buy really awesome hard-cover reprints of the old EC comics now?

Gumby as an Incarnation of Jewish Folklore?

We spent a little bit of time in class discussing the origins of the golem and it just occurred to me that the comic book cover shown on page 18 of Kaplan's From Krakow to Krypton depicts Gumby.  You know, claymation, was-on-the-air-for-forever-and-three-days Gumby.

This guy:


What catches me off guard is that this seems like a pretty obvious piece of trivia but a google search of 'gumby' and 'golem' turns up nothing for the first few pages and even Gumby's wiki page, usually the first place for such trivia, makes no reference to the golem tie although it does mention the comic book (which won the Eisner award in 2007 for Best Publication for a Younger Audience).

In any case it's really interesting that an aspect of Jewish folklore, often explored in the early years of comics, was reinterpreted in 2006 with an easily recognizable children's television character.  It's an interesting demonstration of how ideas move across cultures and time and are transformed for different purposes.

I'd be really interested to see how that specific comic book handles the whole Gumby as a golem angle.

Intense Backdrop in 'A Contract with God'

I noticed something interesting toward the end of this week's discussion while flipping from page to page in A Contract with God.  Not only does Eisner have a way with letting the backdrop, or lack there of, in each panel speak for the characters or play a role in setting the tone for the story, but it is actually an integral part of the beginning few pages and the last page.  It's a line strung through the "other tenement stories" that ties them together on an interesting visual level.

The first few pages of A Contract with God really emphasizes the weather - the absolute downpour of rain specifically.  I think it has more to do than foreshadow the lightening/argument with God a few pages on.  It illustrates perfectly Fremme's emotions upon losing his daughter.  It's all so overwhelming that it 'floods' his perception and actions the same way the street outside his tenement is being flooded and everyday items (like the fire hydrant) are being engulfed and disappearing.  This 'flood' of complex emotions carries us beyond A Contract with God and into the other stories within the book.

The last frame of the book and Cookaline is also a perfect example of background speaking for the whole graphic novel and not just the story at hand.  There is no text, just a young man peering out into the city.  The city is rather detailed on these last two pages, underling the complexity and interconnectedness of the people and everyday events.  In the context of Cookaline and the graphic novel as a whole is gives a simple message to the audience: city or not people and places are complex, daily events can have an impact, merely living implies a furious range of experience we all might be left to ponder.

Taking Comics Seriously

I've always loved comics, graphic novels, manga so to me it's rather natural to view these things as something with layers of meaning, a medium with the potential for expressing difficult subjects, and a 'legitimate' form of story telling.

While it was never my parents who shook their heads at my reading material I did get playfully teased my friends, coworkers, and even former relationship partners.  One former significant other simply could not understand the notion that 'simple childhood comics' could deal with more adult subjects.  I bought him a copy of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers to prove a point and because I enjoyed that bit of work and wanted to share it.  We'll be reading Maus but I was happy to see In the Shadow of No Towers referenced in the introduction of The Jewish Graphic Novel - Critical Approaches [xxi] as another example of the medium being used in a way that's not aimed at children.

This assumption that 'comics are for kids... and only for kids' is still pretty prevalent.  As much as I enjoy NPR, columnist David Lipsky indulged in this assumption pretty heavily even today during a review of Runaways.  The refrain "I like it but I feel guilty for liking it because it's kid's stuff" gets old fast.

I'm looking forward to the class because I feel that this is medium that gets shuffled aside a bit and examining it with a specific topic in mind, the Jewish experience by Jewish authors in this case, will be challenging and give my reading a better focus.