This book has been hidden in one of the “to blog about” piles for almost two years. I read it once and then never got back to rereading and writing. My previous exposure to Kindt’s work was his awesome Super Spy: The Treasure, which was a small box of individual panels with a map to help lay them out (scroll down a bit) (Oh, and look you can read it online now!). This Super Spy is 336 page comic about spies during World War II.

Kindt is a formalist working in a traditional genre. These are spy stories with secret codes, double agents, assassinations, and even a few gadgets, but these stories are far from straightforward narratives. Nor does Kindt offer a James Bond-esque glamorization of espionage. Through a diverse series of 52 interlocking narratives, Kindt shows us the spy’s life and death. The portrayal is not completely bleak, but there are few happy endings. Violence is pervasive and swift. Kindt evokes empathy for many of the characters, those struggling to get along in war torn world, often forced to work for governments to keep their lives. Plus, it’s an entertaining read that requires enough thought and engagement to make it more than a simple genre entertainment.

A wonderful loosening of the drawing to accompany the dancing.

I say Kindt is a formalist for two reasons. For one, the narrative organization of Super Spy is complicated. A note on the indicia page, tells the reader that the chapters are purposefully ordered non-chronologically, but that it is possible to read them chronologically by using the “dossier” numbers attached to each chapter. The numbers are not simply 1,2,3′s, so the reader wishes to get the chronological experience would probably have to do some calculations. The non-chronological organization is highly effective and a propos for the content. In a story filled with spies and espionage, the organization keeps the reader in an expanded state of unknowing. The pieces come together at varying times and with varying amounts of clarity. You have to pay attention to the characters to get the full effect out of many of the chapters. I appreciate that Kindt expects the reader to work a bit in reading the book.

Note the shift to a colored image.

Visually, Kindt offers a surprising amount of variations in the artwork. While many comic artists are comfortable altering the art for some kind of “story within the story” moment, or drawing flashbacks in a different color, Kindt simultaneously manages to keep a consistent style while offering a plethora of visual variations. One chapter is drawn with black lines and a coffee colored wash, except for a single color panel. Another chapter is drawn with black and a solid blue-gray except for one final panel drawn with many colors. One chapter is drawn sort of like a newspaper comic. One chapter intersperses children’s book illustrations into the story. Most of the chapters use black and one color, though that color varies at times. Photographic images of notebooks or postcards make appearances. Some chapters have large blocks of texts, while others are mostly silent. At one point a blue color drawing of a photograph appears in an otherwise brown colored chapter, and the careful reader will note this photo appeared in an earlier blue colored chapter. These little variations add spice to the book and emphasize the different characters and perspectives that the narrative takes on.

One of the more text heavy chapters, here making use of a repeated image of an spy whose identity is unknown.

Kindt integrates all these little variations so skillfully with his narrative, that you don’t give them a lot of thought (except for one or two really blatant ones, like the pages done like old comic books pages (tattered paper edge and all) that forces you to turn the book sideways). This makes it easy to overlook how impressive the book is from a formal perspective. You can breeze through, enjoying the story and not really taking in the skill. At least, I did, my first time through. Second time, I started noticing a lot more.

Love the topographic map in this one.

My main quibble with the book is that a lot of the characters look too similar. I don’t think this is a purposeful attempt to further complicate the narrative (though I could see how that might be done), but rather a limitation of Kindt’s figure/character design. His style is often loose and sketchy, which works great for backgrounds and objects and action, but it misses the mark a bit when the story requires the reader’s ability to infer who is who at any one time.

I’ve thrown a few images into this post that I liked for various reasons as I flipped back through the book. No analysis for now, maybe another time. I need to look up some of Kindt’s recent work (he’s got a recent book from Dark Horse and a forthcoming book from Vertigo).

[This is part 14 of a 30 part series where I am writing daily reviews for the month of December.]

“The detective is a true son of the murderer Oedipus, not only because he solves a riddle, but also because he kills the man to whom he owes his title, without whom he would not exist in that capacity (without crimes, without mysterious crimes, what would he be?) because this murder was foretold for him from the day of his birth or, if you prefer, because it is inherent in his nature, through it alone he fulfills himself and attains the highest power.”

Butor, Michel. L’Emploi du Temps (1957). Translated as Passing Time by Jean Stewart. John Calder, 1965, p.145.

And so we both maintained a heavy silence which our sparse words did not infringe, as we listened to him pointing out that in detective fiction the story goes against the stream, beginning with the crime, the climax of all the dramatic events which the detective has to rediscover gradually, and that this is in many respects more natural than a narrative proceeding without a backward look, where the first day of the story is followed by the second and then by subsequent days in their calendar order, as I myself at that time had been describing my October experiences; in detective fiction the narrative gradually explores events anterior to the event with which it begins, and this, though it may disconcert some readers, is quite natural, since obviously in real life it is only after having met somebody that we take an interest in his previous actions, and only too often it is not until some disaster has struck our lives that we wake up enough to trace its origins.

Ibid., p. 167.

Thus each day, evoking other days like harmonics, transforms the appearance of the past, and while certain periods come into the light others, formerly illuminated, tend to grow dim, and to lie silent and unknown until with the passage of time fresh echoes come to awaken them.

Thus the sequence of former days is only restored to us through a whole host of other days, constantly changing, and every event calls up an echo from other, earlier events which caused it or explain it or correspond to it, every monument, every object, every image sending us back to other periods which we must reawaken in order to recover the lost secret of their power for good or evil, other periods often remote and forgotten, whose density and distance are to be measured not by weeks or months but by centuries, standing out against the dark blurred background of our whole history…

Ibid., p.283

I discovered Beanworld back in the early 90′s just in time for its original run to come to an end. I found a few of the last issues in the cardboard long boxes of my local comic store, and for a long time the other back issues were on my “want” list. I never did get the whole series, giving up on it as lost and never to be continued. So I was delighted to hear the announcement that Dark Horse would be reprinting the series in hardcover volumes and that Larry Marder was making new material to follow up on the reprints.

Wahoolazuma! is the first reprint volume, collecting the first nine issues of the series. Beanworld is a strange comic, a series of stories taking place in an abstracted ecosystem. This book begins with a map of the “Known Beanworld,” showing the primary geographic features of the circumscribed world these stories exist in. Accompanying the map is a glossary of terms and characters. The placement of the map and glossary at the beginning of the book is an odd choice. You see, these stories are all a slow process of unfolding the world. A number of places on the map and entries in the glossary don’t exist until a few issues in.

Beanworld is primarily concerned with the Beans, a group of beans with arms and legs who live on a small island. Their world and lives are a carefully balanced system of interactions, exchanges, and involvements with their surroundings. The first issue shows us how they get food, a process involving attack and exchange with a group of one armed creatures called “Hoi-Polloi” who gamble with the Bean’s “chow” (that is, “chow” is food to the Beans and money to the Hoi-Polloi). The Bean’s have to attack the Hoi-Polloi to steal chow, so they can live. In exchange they leave behind a “sprout butt” which is the product of the tree that grows on the Bean’s island and looks over them (they call it “Gran’Ma’Pa”). The Hoi-Polloi transform the sprout butt into chow and then go back to their gambling. After explaining this system, the first issue then introduces an invader, a group of creatures killing the Hoi-Polloi. Despite the fact that the Beans are always fighting the Hoi-Polloi to get chow, they must defeat the invader because they need the Hoi-Polloi to make chow. If this all sounds rather odd and a bit cutesy, it is, but Marder makes it work by balancing the cutesy with an underlying thematic seriousness.

The narrative scheme of the first issue–where an aspect of the ecosystem is explained and then a new variable is thrown into the mix–is the primary one for these issues. Each new variable ends up leaving behind some new part to the world. The ecosystem is changed, the Beans are changed. Marder starts with a fairly simple world/system and then grows it, one step at a time, as the series continues. With a series based on a world (and the characters in that world), the structure of the series is unlike most narratives that focus on individual characters or plots. One might call it an evolutionary narrative: a narrative that is design to change slowly and, potentially, endlessly.

Beanish, the artist bean, works on his 'Look See' show.

Marder’s ability to create this form of narrative starts from the extremely simplified nature of both the world and his representation of it. Beanworld if rife with repetitions, patterns, and simple shapes, perhaps best exemplified by the “four realities” that exist just beneath the water the Bean’s island sits on. These “realities” are layered fields, each filled with its own primary shape objects, “slats” (rectangles), “hoops” (circles), “twinks” (stars), and “chips” (triangles) which the Beans use to make tools and art. The Beans themselves are amazingly expressive despite being, at their most basic point, a bean shape with stick figure arms and legs and a dots for eyes. Marder makes the most of his constrained and abstracted representations, pulling out an arsenal of tricks from the cartoonist’s grab bag to add expression, motion, emotion, and explanation to the art.

Mr. Spook, the soldier leader, and Professor Garbanzo, inventor/scientist, gather 'chips' in one of the 'four realities.'

Beanworld is that rare comic that is, to my mind, truly “all ages.” Any reader (such as a child) can enjoy the stories and art at their basic visual/narrative level, while many older readers can dig deeper for the thematic elements running (just) beneath the surface. I’m looking forward to Book 2, out in July, which reprints the rest of the original series, and Book 3, out in December, which has all new material.

I gave up on going to comic stores regularly over a year ago. Instead I discovered Mile High Comics where I can order from the direct catalog months in advance. Unlike when going to stores, I never miss those obscure comics I want copies of (the stores where I am have let me down), and bonus points in getting a shipment once a month right to my apartment. Anyway, since making this change I don’t find comics by paging through them at the store, I have to read descriptions from the catalog and sometimes search out publisher or creator websites for art samples. I occasionally have to try something new just based on a description that appeals. A while back I ordered RabbitHead. The description talked about formal experimentation, multiple narrative threads, something like that. I am so often let down by the unknowns I try. Not so this time.

RabbitHead is a daring experiment in comics narrative. The story begins with one row of panels going across the middle of the magazine size page. Throughout the comic, all the panels that follow each other in time across pages are connected by a thick black line, a thread to pull them together. The comic starts with the black line coming onto the page and ends with it going off the page (not without reason). There is an inexorable forward movement to the work.

The beginning shows a rabbit-headed woman (dressed in a kind of medieval fantasy garb) at a grave site. She throws down a plant (flower?) of some kind and rides off on her strange horselike beast. As she starts her ride she spits off to the side. One gob hits a tree and another lands in the dirt. At this point the story branches. A second and third row of panels (one above, one below, the original row) branches off with the two gobs of spit. The gobs grow into weird creatures.

Click for larger.

From there the multiple rows of panels, each telling a different branch of the narrative, go on their way, branching further until there are 7 rows that fill the page. As the story progresses the branches integrate back together, one by one the rows disappear until we are left with the single middle row and the rabbit-headed woman. The story grows and shrinks, and in the end we are left with the same scene as in the beginning. The black line travels off the last page and comes back onto the first page.

The formal experimentation here works amazingly well. The artwork is simple and effective, done in black ink and a dynamic line. It’s detailed enough, neither very realistic nor too abstract, rather cartoony (though less so than, say Bone). The majority of the story is made of strange creatures interacting with each other. They grow, eat each other, die. An underlying life-cycle, organic connection metaphor is prevalent. In the end, RabbitHead seems to bring about her own downfall (with a sidetrek for others doing their own damage to her). On first reading I was not too impressed with the story, a bit turned off by the profusion of strange creatures, but the more I think about it, the more the story seems to integrate with the form of the work: the connections, the constant forward movement, the growth and death of the creatures/narrative threads.

I’ve never heard of Rebecca Dart before, but I plan to keep my eyes open for more of her work. This single comic shows a lot of promise for more interesting things to come.