Post-Modernism in Comics
Written: Mar 26 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A detailed and accurate survey of the medium
Cons: Of interest only to hardcore comics fans
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| linkyaco's Full Review: Alan Moore - Absolute Watchmen |
Any publication that gives an overview of the entire history of comics invites an esthetic analysis of the medium. The Comics Buyer's Guide gives an eagle's eye view. One thing is immediately apparent from the critical perspective: comics began in 1937. Post-Modernism was defined only five years later.
Will Eisner and MAD magazine were Post-Post. Jim Steranko and NealAdams were PoMo. Let me explain.
There is a large body of opinion as to what exactly Post-Modernism is (and whether it is hyphenated), let alone Post-Post Modernism (where, at least, everyone agrees on the hyphen placement).
It is commonly agreed that Post-Modernism, or PoMo, as it has come to be called, was first defined in a near-legendary 1942 issue of Architectural Digest. There it was defined simply as the combining of Classical styles with Modern styles.
For many, this definition applied to the rest of the social, cultural, and aesthetic world as well. The blending of Classical Realism with Abstract Modernism can be seen foreshadowed in the works of the post-WW1 dada-ists, who never hesitated to paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa. And like dadaism, PoMo lacked any moral underpinning, other than a vaguely anarchistic flavor. But dada was parodistic, and PoMo never was. It often had the flavor of parody, but was really more of a tribute. Andy Warhol is a decent example of a PoMo artist. His work took classically realistic images (e.g.; iconic photos of film stars) and combined them with abstract treatments. Unlike Abstract Modernism, where the point was the abstraction of realism, PoMo combines Realism with Abstraction. And the point of the exercise is open to interpretation.
Post-Post Modernism, or Post-Post, as it is coyly nick-named by certain pretentious would-be intellectuals (e.g.; myself), was much the same but with one notable difference—MEANING! The same helter-skelter hodge-podge collision of Realism and Abstraction was used to drive home a point. Photographer Cindy Sherman, who reenacts Classical paintings with herself in male drag playing the roles of Renaissance notables, is a fair-to-middling example of how Post-Post can use the vocabulary of past art movements to make points about gender roles, realism and myth, objectification, and a host of social, cultural, and political issues. Like PoMo, Post-Post has a great sense of play, and the flavor of parody, but it is actually quite affectionate toward the subjects that it toys with. Although moralistic, it is gently so, more in the tradition of Mad Magazine or the related publication (produced by Mad staffer Paul Krassner) The Realist than Mother Jones or The Nation.
If ever there was a medium that mixed disparate sources in a playful fashion, it is comics. Comics have been in the avante-garde of PoMo and Post-Post from the beginning.
In the early ‘40s, Will Eisner’s Spirit was presciently Post-Post just as PoMo was getting started. Eisner’s polished, classically romantic heroic imagery (with which he had inaugurated the golden age of mainstream superheroes) was blended with cartoony abstraction, modernist experimental panel layout, and a host of arty shadow, lighting, reflection, and smoke-filled special effects that are the traditional tools of the modernist filmmaker. The combination was used to drive home points of urban alienation and cynical lassitude, themes utterly consonant with the collision of the classical and modern.
Walt Kelly’s early Pogo comics, also done in the early ‘40s, were similarly composed of detailed traditional brushwork. The lush renderings and fine feathering were juxtaposed with the off-the-wall fantasy setting and characters. And here too, the moral import was subtly shaded irony.
As well, Carl Barks’ duck work from the same period contrasted abstract cartooning with carefully researched settings (often from The National Geographic Magazine). Barks’ use of the Uncle Scrooge character also showed a nuanced approach to the morality of wealth that escaped cliché and combined attitudes of a Classical era with a Modernism cynicism.
Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly, like Mad Magazine, delighted in standing the clichés of the comics industry on end. Mad utilized the shock of perfectly replicating the realism of the real world and combining that with the fantasy of comics. What Mad did with graphics, Mayer did with characterization.
It is interesting to note at this point, that when Wallace Wood satirized Pogo for Mad (which was really guilding the lily, as Pogo was already satire to begin with), Walt Kelly tipped his hat to Wood by briefly renaming Pogo’s swamp boat “Wallace Wood” for a few newspaper installments.
For a purely PoMo take on comics, two West Coasties from Gold Key are under-appreciated exemplars of the style—Jesse Marsh and Russ Manning, in the ‘50s and ‘60s respectively, produced some outstanding and unusual conglomerations of Classic and Modern motifs.
Marsh, with his simplistic, seemingly naive style, was often viewed as the Rousseau of comics. But his minimalism belied his sophisticated sense of visual design. In his John Carter Man of Mars series (originally published in the ‘50s and reprinted in the early ‘60s), he covered the walls of Martian dwellings with abstract art paintings and his architecture was outrageously abstract. Marsh worked with multi-media effects and used globs of rubber cement to produce textural ink blots for terrain and foliage. His invented alien creatures equally creative.
Manning was, stylistically, Marsh’s polar opposite. Manning had a slick Raymond-derived style that was, in surface detail, a direct contrast to Marsh’s Caniff-inspired patchy brushwork. Both artists spent the larger portion of their career working on Tarzan. It was, however, lesser-known work that allowed them to experiment. With Marsh, it was John Carter, and with Manning it was the back-up feature to Magnus Robot Fighter. The back-up was another John, more or less—Captain Johnner and the Aliens. This sophisticated but small strip (usually six pages in length) showed Manning at his most imaginative. The height of this was achieved in an episode entitled “Nerves” in 1964. One page consisted entirely of shots of a spaceman crawling through panel after panel of splashes of pure color. This was achieved with the use of the technique called “color hold” where the black outlines of the form are not printed. When this comic was reprinted in the early ‘90s, the black lines were used and the coloring was clearly inferior to the original. Just goes to show that laser printing technology is only as good as the colorist, eh?
In the early ‘60s, Stan Lee revitalized the entire industry with his concept of adult characterizations. But his innovations were turned into soap-opera cliché by succeeding generations of derivative writers. The original PoMo impulse was reverse-engineered into a more staid Classical form.
In Lee’s hey day, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams followed his lead and turned heads with their conjunction of a flat comics vocabulary with eerily three dimensional graphics and a hyper-realist emotionalism.
Steranko and Adams used fish-eye lens distortions to make images leap off the page. This was what Kirby had accomplished with a less-sophisticated audience in the ‘40s. Kirby’s full-page and double-page splashes, chaotically-shaped panels, and leaping figures were certainly an eye-full. Steranko and Adams, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, added a good measure of realism to the brew and juiced up the impact for a Vietnam-era audience. Adams was particularly effective with his finely-shaded photo-realist rendering, whereas Steranko, using a more conventional Eisner-esque approach to his surfaces, utilized actual photographs in his comics montages. Additionally, Steranko used unmistakable tributes to Dali-esque surrealism, Warhol-esque Pop art, and the brief style of Op art. Adams paid tribute to Op art and Fifth Avenue Abstraction with some darn fancy and out-right psychedelic uses of color splashes, color reversals, color “holds,” and marvelously formless fields of cross-hatching.
Curiously, however, the work of Adams and, even more notoriously, Steranko, was more PoMo than Post-Post, and more Modernist than Classic. The meaning of their work was secondary to the visual impact. Whether by intent or design, their stories were pretty hard to make sense of. Like a lot of Vietnam-era avante garde, they seemed to revel in abstruseness. Very heady stuff for comics, to say the least. But more a throwback to dada than the more forward-looking, from a Post-Post Modernist perspective, work of Eisner. It is predictable of twenty-something near-geniuses to reinvent Modernism, and mistake opaqueness and obscurity for profundity. Then they realize that this was all done to the max after World War One. Moving on is what Post-Modernism...and Post-Post Modernism is all about!
In the early ‘80s, Alan Moore took the same realistic approach to character that Sheldon Mayer had in the ‘40s, Mad in the ‘50s, and Stan Lee in the ‘60s. Moore’s Watchmen retooled the Charlton superheroes with menopausal characterizations, Mcarthy-ite politics, and toxically real nuclear physics. His illustrator, fellow Brit Dave Gibbons, attempted to utilize a Mad Magazine-like realism but, admirably proficient craftsman though he was, the effect had not nearly the impact one might have hoped for. Nonetheless, the result was one of the most notable Post-Post exercises in comics history.
It is often compared with Frank Miller’s reworking of the Batman mythos in his Dark Night story cycle of the same vintage. It is difficult to re-examine Miller’s work with much excitement, however, as the material dates badly. This is not the fault of Miller, but rather because his work had such impact that it established a new benchmark that has become cliché, ultimately resulting in Tim Burton’s innovative Batman movie that likewise engendered a succession of tedious franchise movies. As with Stan Lee, the innovation has become the cliché.
In the proliferation of comics today, it is difficult to sort out any truly clear-cut examples of fully-realized artistic endeavors. In many of today’s books, there are brilliant moments but few sustained fully realized concepts. Although the reputations of Adams and Steranko rests on a only few dozen books, that length of run seems dynastic compared to today’s occasional bursts of creativity. With many of the major publishers’ books selling in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, it would appear that today’s creators have failed to ignite the same creative spark that their predecessors did.
Perhaps what is needed is a POST Post-Post movement! Now what would that be?
Link Yaco has written comic books for several publishers. His comic collection, SPACE CHICKS AND BUSINESSMEN is due to be out from Fantagraphics/EROS in June, 2000. Paul Rudolph, lead guitarist for The Pink Fairies (Pigs from Uranus, et al) and many other art rockers e.g. Brian Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets) said, "I'm pleased to see that the comic art and story are way out enough for my warped tastes."
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Member: Link Yaco
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