Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...Kleefeld on Comics: What's with Those Weird Color Bars Across the Tops of Old Comics?
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https://ift.tt/WRYQpiP
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
When I was in my early teens, I'd hoped I could become a comic book artist. Not only was I interested in comics, but I was one of those kids who everyone always said was a "pretty good drawer." Which only meant that I was just a touch better than average. But before I even realized that I wasn't talented enough to develop a career in illustrating comic books in the first place, I decided that wasn't really a career path for me anyway.
My father was something of an artist himself. Not full-time, but he did the illustrations for a few books back in the day, not to mention illustrating many of the articles he wrote. So while I was growing up, he did provide some suggestions and guidance with my drawing.
I recall at one point talking with him about comic book art specifically. I don't know how exactly the conversation started, but I'm sure it must have been somewhat informal as I can recall the two of us just standing idly in the kitchen while we talked, and we rarely had real talks in the kitchen. I'm assuming we both happened to be getting something to drink or snack on at the same time. In any event, Dad noted that he never liked the idea of drawing comic books for a living because, he figured, if you were working on a monthly book, that effectively meant that you had to draw a complete page every day, and the vast majority of the panels would feature the same character(s). If you're working on Amazing Spider-Man, then, that's six drawings of Spider-Man every day, every month until they fire you. That's 150 finished drawings of Spider-Man every month, and how many different ways can you draw the same guy swinging from the same webline? (I know the math is a little off there, but that was his example at the time.)
The tedium of that sounded absolutely dreadful, and that's pretty much when I decided I wasn't going to be a comic book artist. (I half-wonder if his comments weren't chosen specifically to dissuade me from trying to become a comic artist. Either to spare my ego from my lack of skill, or to steer me away from freelancing as a career.)
Of course, a lot of artists do find ways to keep themselves interested and engaged in their art. But that's one of the things that surprises me about superhero comics: if you're doing a monthly book where the heroes are almost all white, and largely male, and virtually all have the same muscular body type, wouldn't you want to break up the monotony byt showcasing more minorities in the backgrounds? Just as an artist, isn't it more interesting and engaging for yourself to drawing different-looking characters? Isn't it more interesting if you weren't drawning the same basic body types over and over and over? Isn't it more interesting to draw Asian characters and Latino characters? Isn't it more interesting to draw fat people and skinny people? People with afros and people who are bald? People with dark skin and people with light skin? People with disabilities, and people who are extremely athletic?
It's not a noble motivation, but wouldn't some diversity just make the job of an artist less dull/repetitive? Even if the rationale isn't high-minded, the results for readers would be the same.
My father was something of an artist himself. Not full-time, but he did the illustrations for a few books back in the day, not to mention illustrating many of the articles he wrote. So while I was growing up, he did provide some suggestions and guidance with my drawing.
The tedium of that sounded absolutely dreadful, and that's pretty much when I decided I wasn't going to be a comic book artist. (I half-wonder if his comments weren't chosen specifically to dissuade me from trying to become a comic artist. Either to spare my ego from my lack of skill, or to steer me away from freelancing as a career.)
Of course, a lot of artists do find ways to keep themselves interested and engaged in their art. But that's one of the things that surprises me about superhero comics: if you're doing a monthly book where the heroes are almost all white, and largely male, and virtually all have the same muscular body type, wouldn't you want to break up the monotony byt showcasing more minorities in the backgrounds? Just as an artist, isn't it more interesting and engaging for yourself to drawing different-looking characters? Isn't it more interesting if you weren't drawning the same basic body types over and over and over? Isn't it more interesting to draw Asian characters and Latino characters? Isn't it more interesting to draw fat people and skinny people? People with afros and people who are bald? People with dark skin and people with light skin? People with disabilities, and people who are extremely athletic?
It's not a noble motivation, but wouldn't some diversity just make the job of an artist less dull/repetitive? Even if the rationale isn't high-minded, the results for readers would be the same.
Let's go back to an era when you could only get comics from a newsstand. The guy running the newsstand was getting hundreds of periodicals on a continual basis, almost all of which were running on different schedules. Some came in daily, some weekly, some monthly, some bi-monthly, some quarterly... In the days before computers, this would be an incredible amount of work to keep track of what came in when. And it was important to keep track of that because most periodicals were sold to retailers on a returnable basis. That is, if the retailer didn't sell everything he ordered in a given timeframe, he could return them to his distributor for a refund.
Naturally, though, this wasn't a completely open-ended arrangement. You couldn't return something, for example, a year after it was published and expect anything back. You had a window of maybe a couple of months at most, depending on the frequency of the periodical.
Now you'd think that since most periodicals post their publication date on the cover, this wouldn't be an issue. The December 15th issue of the New York Times came out on December 15, right? With magazines and comics, though, publishers frequently tried to look more current than they actually were. So they'd print a date somewhat later than when the book actually went on sale; a book that was actually published in January would have a February date and would (theoretically) look more current than the other magazines next to it with the actual date.
(This got out of hand eventually, and you'd have comics' publication dates off by 6-8 months!)
So to keep track of when comics ACTUALLY hit the newsstands, retailers would literally write the date it came out right on the cover. Here's a copy of Fantastic Four #1. It's cover dated Novemeber 1961, but you can see the "8/9" clearly written under the "R" in the title, indicating it really hit the stands on August 9th.
Writing on each and every issue was a bit tedious, though, and retailers no doubt complained to their local distributors. What many of the regional distributors started doing was slapping a bit of paint across the top edge of the comic. So, now, instead of having to make note of the actual date, the distributors could just say, "We're accepting returns on all red-coded books." As they'd change the color with each shipment, it became easy for a retailer to just scan through his inventory and pull out any comics that had a bit of red (or whatever the color was for that week) on the top. Take a look at the top of this Machine Man #10 where you can see a bit of red splotching above the "Marvel Comics Group" banner.
Not coincidentally, I expect, the color bars ceased around the same time when publishers began emphasizing the collectibility aspect of their books with foil, die-cuts, embossing, and the like. It was part of a general realization that their comics were no longer going to a mass audience, but almost exclusively to people who were collecting them. But that's another set of issues entirely!
Naturally, though, this wasn't a completely open-ended arrangement. You couldn't return something, for example, a year after it was published and expect anything back. You had a window of maybe a couple of months at most, depending on the frequency of the periodical.
Now you'd think that since most periodicals post their publication date on the cover, this wouldn't be an issue. The December 15th issue of the New York Times came out on December 15, right? With magazines and comics, though, publishers frequently tried to look more current than they actually were. So they'd print a date somewhat later than when the book actually went on sale; a book that was actually published in January would have a February date and would (theoretically) look more current than the other magazines next to it with the actual date.
(This got out of hand eventually, and you'd have comics' publication dates off by 6-8 months!)
So to keep track of when comics ACTUALLY hit the newsstands, retailers would literally write the date it came out right on the cover. Here's a copy of Fantastic Four #1. It's cover dated Novemeber 1961, but you can see the "8/9" clearly written under the "R" in the title, indicating it really hit the stands on August 9th.
Writing on each and every issue was a bit tedious, though, and retailers no doubt complained to their local distributors. What many of the regional distributors started doing was slapping a bit of paint across the top edge of the comic. So, now, instead of having to make note of the actual date, the distributors could just say, "We're accepting returns on all red-coded books." As they'd change the color with each shipment, it became easy for a retailer to just scan through his inventory and pull out any comics that had a bit of red (or whatever the color was for that week) on the top. Take a look at the top of this Machine Man #10 where you can see a bit of red splotching above the "Marvel Comics Group" banner.
Not coincidentally, I expect, the color bars ceased around the same time when publishers began emphasizing the collectibility aspect of their books with foil, die-cuts, embossing, and the like. It was part of a general realization that their comics were no longer going to a mass audience, but almost exclusively to people who were collecting them. But that's another set of issues entirely!
In the 1990s, I worked as an office temp. I logged a lot of hours in a lot of different offices, and I had an instant and accurate way to sense how dysfunctional and toxic a workplace was as soon as I walked in.
I took note of how many Dilbert comics were pinned up, and where.
If I saw one or two Dilbert comics scattered around, I knew people had their gripes and complaints about their co-workers, but it was nothing too serious.
If virtually every cubicle had more than one Dilbert comic pinned up, I knew everyone working there disliked each other. The atmosphere probably wasn’t going to be too terrible for me as a temp, but I wouldn’t want to work there permanently.
Whenever I saw a disproportionate number of Dilbert comics in one cubicle, I knew to avoid that person. They were clearly the asshole in the office, and they were usually on a hair trigger. I once saw a cubicle that was practically wallpapered with Dilbert comics, including several where he had labeled the characters with co-workers’ names, and then pinned them on the OUTSIDE of his cube. Yikes! Steer clear of that dude!
If there was even one Dilbert comic pinned up to a communal bulletin board, watch out! The hatred went from workers up AND management down.
God forbid someone had used the photocopier to enlarge it; that meant they wanted everyone to see how much they hated everyone.
In this last situation, I would usually call my agency at the end of the day and ask if they had any other assignments.
If I saw Dilbert plush toys, I’d just tell my agency I couldn’t continue the assignment.
The Dilbert gauge never failed me. The more Dilbert comic strips I saw, the nastier the place was.
I worked at a one place where Dilbert was banned. Specifically, just Dilbert. Sounds extreme, but the bosses knew exactly what Scott Adams was peddling, and they didn’t want any.
That office ran smoothly and was among the nicest.
So Dilbert was my canary in the coal mine. I can’t think of another comic strip that functioned like this. Cathy was drawn almost exactly as badly as Dilbert, but the only thing I learned from seeing that strip in an office was the person pinning it up had body image issues. Peanuts meant the person had self-esteem problems. (Or, contrarywise, they identified with Snoopy.)
If anyone had ever pinned up a Mutts strip or Zippy the Pinhead or Nancy, I would have wanted to hang out with them in the lunchroom. Even Tumbleweeds might have been a welcome change. Sadly, it was almost always fuckin’ Dilbert, all the way down.
So I guess the moral here is: Scott Adams was a thin-skinned, egotistical monster who wrote and badly drew a hateful comic strip called Dilbert, and all his “humor” punched down, and he used sock puppet accounts to brag about his own genius, and was a racist, and he thought Donald Trump was great but for all that, if I were forced – I donno, at gunpoint, maybe -- to utter one nice word about Scott Adams, I guess I’d say that for a few years, he was... USEFUL.
It's a trend that ebbs and flows periodically, but the first anaglyph 3D image (i.e. the first 3D image created using the 'standard' red/blue filtering technique) dates back to 1853. Because of production costs, it wasn't really developed as a media form unto itself until the 1890s and it wouldn't be until the 1950s that it became cheap enough to make it into the pop culture zeitgeist. While the popular form it has historically taken has been though those squared off cardboard glasses, in more recent years further production cost reductions has meant you can get readily obtain sturdier, 'permanent' glasses that can used over a longer timeframe.
Speaking personally, the 3D technique was always a form that frustrated me because I wore prescription glasses and the cheap cardboard stereoscopic glasses never fit well over or under my 'real' glasses. I could get them to work, but it often involved having to physically hold the cardboard glasses over my regular ones leaving only one hand for holding the comic in question AND turning the pages. It was only a couple years ago that I happened across a pair of lens that, instead of having their own frames, could clip on to an existing pair of glasses and finally make reading 3D comics a practical option for me.
I think, though, the bigger "problem" with 3D comics is that it's largely a novelty gimmick. This recent i> Fantastic Four #51 book for example. It reprints the original Jack Kirby/Stan Lee comic from 1966; it's frequently used as one of the best single-issue examples of their work from that period. The 3D effect has obviously been done retroactively here, but thanks in large part to Kirby's dynamic drawing style to begin with, it works well. Kirby naturally drew with a very strong sense of depth to his comic panels, so applying a 3D effect to his work is relatively easy. But here's the thing... it's the exact same story. Whether the 3D effect is there or not, it reads exactly the same in terms of the storytelling and the emotional beats.
All of which is to say that when people see a story like this, they look at it and say, "Hey, neat!" And they look at the next one and say, "Hey, neat!" And for the third one, they say, "Hey, neat!" And there's never anything more than that. So after the third or fifth or twentieth story where they see the same effect done in the same way for the same impact, they eventually get to the realization that the extra effort of wearing 3D glasses isn't worth it for just one more "Hey, neat!" and they move on.
I suspect there's some way the effect can be legitimately designed into the story to provide something truly additive. Something beyond just adding the illusion of depth. Maybe where the reader is given a perspective unavailable to the characters. Or maybe some kind of faux animation that results from the red/blue dichotomy. Something that takes advantage of the unique aspects of anaglyph stereography to do something with the story that simply is not possible without it. I certainly haven't played with the form enough to know what all is possible. But what we see here today is pretty much the exact same implementation that people might've seen back in 1853. And until someone comes up with a new use for it, every time it circles around to pop culture again, it will continue to remain a short-lived "Hey, neat!" gimmick.
If your sense of history is a little fuzzy when it comes to dates, I'll start with a little perspective. The US Civil War didn't begin until 1861 and slavery wasn't abolished until 1865. Some states had passed laws to abolish slavery before then, but they were very much a hodge podge of different plans and processes. New York, for example, passed its law abolishing the practice in 1799 but it was a gradual rollout and slavery wasn't fully outlawed there until 1827. Southern states, of course, had no such laws independent of federal ones, which is why the Underground Railroad existed to help enslaved people move to Northern areas. Some, however, pursued other, less covert means of attempting to gain their freedom and Nat Turner famously led a rebellion in Virginia that resulted in the deaths of over 50 people in 1931. Turner made national headlines and was executed later that year, in part to make very public the notion that enslaved people attempting to gain their freedom would be thoroughly and aggressively punished. This was, of course, a scare tactic designed to try to counter the fear that slave owners had of what a retribution-minded enslaved person could do.
That is all offerred in the book's introduction before getting to the main story. And it's with this backdrop that Prudence Crandall made her Canterbury Female Boarding School, that itself had opened only 1831, an integrated institution welcoming Black girls and women beginning in 1832. While locals tolerated, often with some measure of mocking dismissal, the idea of educating women, they found the idea of intergration downright insufferable. Crandall soon found all of her white students removed by their parents, and rebuilding the class of only Black girls and women turned out to be a slow process, but its unique opportunity for Black women did eventually draw a number of students from all over.
Crandall, not suprisingly, faced a fair amount of opposition. When being publicly snubbed didn't work, she was cut off from getting supplies locally. Her father had to travel a fair ways to obtain basics, and his longer trips led to physical harassment. Threats to both the school in general and people associated with it individually increased, and intimidation tactics include everything from smearing the front door with feces to poisoning the school's well water. With those means proving ineffective, legal means came into play and laws were passed to make Crandrall's school illegal, leading to her arrest and imprisonment. Crandall, with the help and funding of the absolishment movement, were able to fight these charges legally and eventually won in court. This, not surprisingly, enraged some locals who attacked the school and burnt it to the ground. This drove Crandall away for good. And while she and many of her students did well elsewhere, the town essentially resumed its technically free but still heavily segregated platform from before.
The story is told well overall. Fert's artwork has almost a Mary Blair quality about it and Lupano is impressively restrained in his dialogue, letting the artwork do much of the heavy lifting. I would've liked to have a seen a little more with regard to Crandall's motivations, though. Were her convictions exclusively rooted in her faith, or were there any life experiences prior to the 1830s that influenced her thinking? Perhaps that veers a little more into speculation than what they wanted to do here; the book sticks to the facts (well, the facts as I'm familiar with them at any rate!) and the basic human behavior of the people of Canterbury is sadly predictable, again, as I suggested with the book's subtitle.
As far as I'm aware, this is the first comic to cover Crandall or her school and I'm definitely very appreciative of that. There are an infinite number of stories of Black histories that haven't been covered very well -- or at all -- in the medium and I'm thrilled to see more of them, rather than another biography of Harriet Tubman or Rosa Parks (impressive a woman as they each are). I think Crandall's story isn't widely enough known, and I'd love to see more of these stories from Lupano and Fer.
Surrounded actually came out a year ago, so it still should be readily available from your local book retailer. It was published by NBM and lists at $24.99 US. However with NBM having recently been purchased by Ablaze, I'm unsure if that means the book will remain in print and for how long.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
