The Comics Bureau

Kevin Huiz­enga writes up a thought­ful post on Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, Groen­steens Iconic Solid­ar­ity and Typography.

Draw­ing Nancy and Sluggo almost exactly the same each time, it’s like he’s mak­ing them into a font, like he’s writ­ing “Nancy” in Hel­vetica.  All the draw­ings of Nancy are trans­par­ently Nancy the way a com­monly used font will make a word “trans­par­ent.”  But I think say­ing that Bush­miller rep­res­ents the “dis­tilled essence” of com­ics is like say­ing Hel­vetica is the essence of the writ­ten alphabet.

Go and read the full post here.

Apo­lo­gies for the lull in post­ing, I have only excuses, not reasons.

Any­way, head over to Kerry Cal­len’s Blog to have a look at an inter­est­ing idea; Cross Panel Com­ics. They are con­struc­ted in a sim­ilar way to Scrabble, and are read in a way sim­ilar to cross­words. You can see more cross panel com­ics here, here and here.

Head over to the World Com­ics India site to look at some superb Wall­poster Com­ics — inform­a­tional com­ics cre­ated by com­munit­ies that deal with local issues, includ­ing cor­poral pun­ish­ment in schools;

The school teach­ers of Maha­ra­jganj in Uttar Pra­desh are a wor­ried lot. Gone are the days when they could pun­ish stu­dents at will, for the most ridicu­lous reas­ons, slap them, beat them with sticks, or make them sit or stand for hours in uncom­fort­able, pain­ful and awk­ward pos­i­tions. The age-old notions of a good teacher – a strict dis­cip­lin­arian who would use the rod lib­er­ally on his stu­dents – is being ques­tioned and chal­lenged, by the stu­dents themselves.

Well worth check­ing out is their  Com­ics Manual, that runs through the entire Wall­pa­per Com­ics pro­duc­tion pro­cess, from con­cep­tion to deploy­ment. Not just a com­ics manual, this is a primer for social act­iv­ism and social engage­ment. Drop everything imme­di­ately and devour the entire site right now.

Once you have fin­ished read­ing the site, head over to Zee­news to read a fas­cin­at­ing inter­view with World Com­ics founder, Sharad Sharma;

It is simple, easy, non-threatening and can con­vey a power­ful mes­sage. But it is not just World Com­ics India, which is using comics/ car­toons to deliver social mes­sages, but across the world sev­eral organ­isa­tion are doing the same. The dif­fer­ence is they have done the same job by hir­ing artists, and we have done it by teach­ing com­mon people. Since the com­mon people are the ones who pro­duce them, so the 100% own­er­ship of the con­tent is theirs. They know the artists liv­ing next door. It is not for mass dis­tri­bu­tion, but for local use – so they pro­duce say 20 copies.

Barath Murthy writes up some thoughts on how to build a suc­cess­ful Indian com­ics pub­lish­ing scene here;

This essay is a present­a­tion of my views on the com­ics medium in India, and my solu­tion for the growth of the form. These ideas are the res­ult of the last few years spent try­ing to under­stand the medium. My back­ground is in paint­ing, (I stud­ied paint­ing in col­lege) and I want to cre­ate as well as pub­lish com­ics suc­cess­fully to the end of my life. These views come from this com­mit­ment to the form. I also stud­ied film mak­ing, and strangely enough, I had an oppor­tun­ity to make a fea­ture length doc­u­ment­ary film in Japan about its vast self-published com­ics (doujin­shi) cul­ture. I learnt about the manga industry and found out why it is the the most suc­cess­ful com­ics industry in the world. I met many manga authors, pub­lish­ers, print­ers, read­ers and real­ized how little west­ern­ers and Asi­ans like us know about Japan­ese manga. Before mak­ing this film, I also sniffed around a little bit into the Indian com­ics scene, hav­ing received a grant from the India Found­a­tion for the Arts, Bengaluru, to study Indian com­ics. I wrote a 5000 word essay about Indian com­ics which is to be pub­lished in Marg magazine. While doing this, I star­ted a dis­cus­sion forum on the Inter­net called Comix Dis­cus­sion Board of iNDIA (CDBi) http://www.comixindia.com/cdbi .What fol­lows is a ‘fact find­ing report’, and the ‘recom­mend­a­tions’ of this report on how we can have fun, make money and gen­er­ally enjoy cre­at­ing and con­sum­ing com­ics in India.

While we are on the topic, visit Barath Murthy’s site (we are word­press theme-buddies), read his books, Learn­ing to See and the Col­lec­ted Blog Writ­ings and then buy them. Also have a nose around the fas­cin­at­ing Comix.India site.

PJ Holden writes up an excel­lent ana­lysis of a page lay­out and com­pos­i­tion;

I think, the import­ant thing is we read let to right, but only when there’s some­thing to “read” — fail­ing that we go search­ing for some­thing of interest. In the case of panel one, my eyes scan down until we get to the mutant, whereupon I read and move towards Dredd. Panel two, I think, nat­ur­ally, I fol­low the eye­line of the mutant to Dredd (and I read his body and end at the knee — oddly). Panel 3 focus goes from Dredd’s chin to the bit of the Hel­met he’s work­ing on. And Panel 4 doesn’t really force the reader to any par­tic­u­lar point — save around the mask — below the “S” shape (whereupon they’ll be met by the dialogue).

As ever, head over to Paul’s Blog, Web­site and fol­low him on Twit­ter.

If you are near Manchester on the 12-14th April, you should prob­ably try and get along to the Graphic Novel & Com­ics Con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing speak­ers such as Mar­tin Barker, Mel Gib­son, Paul Gravett & Roger Sabin.

Com­ics and graphic nov­els enjoy a para­dox­ical rela­tion­ship with main­stream cul­ture. Their nar­rat­ives and char­ac­ters are famil­iar to mass audi­ences through their adapt­a­tions in film, tele­vi­sion and other mass media. How­ever com­ics’ texts are rarely known or read out­side comic book cul­tures. In recent years com­ics have instig­ated them­selves into the pub­lic con­scious­ness due, to a num­ber of diverse cir­cum­stances such as the nar­rat­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies they offer in an increas­ingly com­plex trans­me­dia landscape.

If like me you have ever wished that you could have 3,856 stor­ies in a single book, you are likely to be wait­ing for Jason Shiga’s ‘Mean­while’ with baited breath.

“Mean­while” begins as our young hero in dire need of a bath­room, knocks on the door of a mys­ter­i­ous recluse. His man­sion is in fact a won­der­ous labor­at­ory filled with amaz­ing inven­tions: A mind read­ing hel­met, a dooms­day device and a time travel machine (although it can only go back ten minutes).

Which inven­tion will young Jimmy play with? YOU, the reader get to decide in my branchi­est and most com­plex inter­act­ive comic to date. “Mean­while” works via a net­work of tubes con­nect­ing each panel to the next. Some­times these tubes split in two giv­ing the read­ers a choice of which path they would like to fol­low. Some­times these tubes even lead off the page and onto tabs stick­ing out from other parts of the book.

Head over to Ori­gami Yoda to read an inter­view with Jason;

Q: Can you explain how Mean­while works? Nearly 4,000 pos­sible story com­bin­a­tions? I can’t wait!
A: Mean­while works via a series of tubes that con­nect each panel to the next one in sequence. Some­times the tubes lead right off the page and onto a tab on another page. Some­times the tubes branch off and the reader can choose which dir­ec­tion they want the story to unfold. It sounds com­plic­ated but once you hold the book in your hands, it makes more sense.

The fig­ure of 3,856 pos­sible story com­bin­a­tions is a bit of an under­es­tim­a­tion. The fig­ure didn’t include storylines where you enter the incor­rect code, or storylines that end in an infin­ite loop. There’s lit­er­ally an infin­ite num­ber of story com­bin­a­tions if you include storylines that have repeat­ing panels.

Then imme­di­ately head over to Com­ic­BookRe­sources to read up fur­ther on the book;

Branch­ing stor­ies can be more dif­fi­cult to write than their lin­ear coun­ter­parts, and the phys­ical design of “Mean­while” also plays a role in how the story is per­ceived. “One of the most chal­len­ging parts of cre­at­ing a branch­ing story is man­aging the tradeoff between giv­ing the reader lots of choices and restrict­ing the expo­nen­tial growth that fol­lows from all those choices,” Shiga said. “One prob­lem I had with Choose Your Own Adven­ture was that the stor­ies were typ­ic­ally very short. Fight­ing Fantasy had longer nar­rat­ives, but the tradeoff was that they ten­ded to be more lin­ear. Two books that really com­bined the best of both strategies was ‘House of Hades’ by Steve Jack­son and ‘Escape from Ten­opia’ by Edward Pack­ard. Both of them presen­ted a geo­graphic area that the reader could explore in their own way. I almost see those books as being closer to the parks of Fre­drick Law Olmstead than to any other authors.”

And if that wasn’t enough for you, an endorse­ment from Scott McCloud should tip the scales a touch.

Matt Brady, over at War­ren Peace writes up a couple of knock-down art­icles on Didier Lefevre & Emmanuel Guibert’s The Pho­to­grapher. The first is a par­tic­u­larly insight­ful review;

While this is Lefevre’s story, told dir­ectly from his per­spect­ive and mak­ing heavy use of his memor­ies and accom­pan­ied by hun­dreds of the pho­to­graphs that he took, French car­toon­ist Emmanuel Guibert is the one that really brings it to life in com­ics form, cap­tur­ing the like­nesses of every­one Lefevre encountered and mak­ing the land­scapes and vil­lages seem like real, lived-in loc­ales. The pho­tos are inter­spersed through­out the pages, such that they often seem like com­ics pan­els among the rest of the illus­tra­tions, but Guibert fills everything out, mak­ing the char­ac­ters seem to move and live in the way that static pho­to­graphy can’t. But he does this without being showy, stick­ing to muted col­ors and subtle fig­ure work. It’s only when you look closer that you real­ize the great work he does, cap­tur­ing real­istic ges­tures, move­ments, and facial expres­sions, and put­ting just the right amount of detail into the folds of cloth­ing and the objects in the back­grounds, such that the art­work doesn’t stand out from the pho­tos, but also emphas­izes the way they can more fully cap­ture real­ity. It’s all per­fectly paced and put together for the best flow, pro­pelling the eye across the page without call­ing atten­tion to itself.

The second is a short ana­lysis of one sequence from the book;

This is actu­ally nearly four pages of com­ics, with two pan­els per tier, but I sep­ar­ated them and laid them out hori­zont­ally to demon­strate the way Guibert makes the whole thing work as one long walk through a detailed land­scape. It’s pretty gor­geous, like one of those scenes in a Woody Allen movie in which two char­ac­ters have a con­ver­sa­tion while walk­ing down a Man­hat­tan side­walk and the cam­era just fol­lows them, never look­ing away. But what struck me was how well the chan­ging land­scape matches the mood of the scene; at the begin­ning, when the con­ver­sa­tion between Didier Lefevre, the pho­to­grapher of the title, and Juli­ette, the leader of the human­it­arian mis­sion to Afgh­anistan, is lim­ited to a fairly benign sub­ject, they are cross­ing smooth ground:

This of course goes without say­ing, but if you don’t already own a copy, sweep your com­puter from the desk and run out without a coat or shoes to get a copy of this book. I’m sure I’m not alone in stat­ing that this isn’t just a comic book. This is a mas­ter­class in the sub­tleties of visual storytelling.

For some reason, I also some­times take Scott McCloud’s Under­stand­ing Com­ics for gran­ted. Shaun Hus­ton, over at Pop­Mat­ters writes up a great appre­ci­ation of the book. If you haven’t read Under­stand­ing Com­ics yet, leap away from the com­puter and hunt down a copy immediately.

There is vir­tu­ally no recent work in com­ics the­ory and cri­ti­cism, in Eng­lish at least, that does not ref­er­ence or owe a debt to McCloud’s writ­ing on the nature of the medium. No other work, not even his own, has yet to emerge as a suc­cessor or equal influ­ence to Under­stand­ing Com­ics.

The reach and appeal of McCloud’s ini­tial foray into com­ics the­ory is, I think, partly a res­ult of its form: Under­stand­ing Com­ics is a comic about com­ics. On one level, this is simply cool, but its sig­ni­fic­ance is deeper than that.

The decision to make the book as a comic has the effect of mak­ing it invit­ing to a range of poten­tial read­ers. I sus­pect that many people who think of them­selves as being oth­er­wise dis­in­ter­ested in mat­ters of the­ory have picked up and read, or at least skimmed,  Under­stand­ing Com­ics. For aca­dem­ics, the cool­ness of McCloud’s text appeals because of its nov­elty, and the fact that few lit­er­ary crit­ics, human­it­ies schol­ars, and semi­ot­i­cians have the skills or the pro­fes­sional sup­port and encour­age­ment to pro­duce a sim­ilar work of their own.

Thought Bal­loon­ists write up three ques­tions about the art of Har­vey Kur­tz­man.