Reich Issue 6 Page 4 Panels 5-6

Issue 6 of Elijah Brubaker’s Reich just arrived from Sparkplug. I’ve been reading and enjoying the series since it started–one of the only serialized pamphlets I still get–but haven’t had the time to write about it. Brubaker’s got a great style, geometric, hatched and patterned, with the occasional burst of abstraction and expressionism. The story itself, a biography of Wilhelm Reich, has also proved interesting. Reich was an unusual thinker and character, and he lived in a tumultuous time (Germany in the early part of the 20th century). I wanted to share these panels (above) from the latest issue, one of the more unusual pairs of panels. The first panel shows Reich’s wife at a skewed, dynamic angle, pointing along the same angle as the abstract shapes and lines that form the background. The way she is represented is the normal way Brubaker portrays the characters, with big heads that have a geometric cut to them. Between the lack of representational background and her closed eyes, we see a transition into thought. The second panel’s composition is dynamic, proving a mix of representational figures and expressionist abstractions. Accompanying the wife’s words, her head seems to open up to display a chaos of thoughts and feelings. The abstractions in the second panel are considerably more quick and nervous than the almost dark pall that backs the first panel. Together they make a great transition that is not both technically attractive and thematically expressive.

Someday I’ll write more about the whole series. I do recommend you give it a try.

Click to see larger size.

You don’t see many pages with that many panels. Chadwick can jam a lot onto this page because he is showing us a repetitive action/image. This scene takes place at night, so he can excise any background detail and with Concrete mostly sunken in the water he can leave out most of the character. What’s interesting to me is that he doesn’t do a very direct moment-to-moment style panel transition. The gap from one panel to the next is inconsistent. He doesn’t show an arm raised, then it splashing into the water, then the next arm raising, then it splashing into the water. On one hand it makes the page a little more interesting to read, but on the other, it takes something away from communicating more of the repetition and possibly boredom of the action. Perhaps, Chadwick is trying to avoid that sense of boredom because, in the context of surrounding pages, it does not seem that Concrete himself is bored by these motions. Doing a schematic moment-to-moment breakdown would be easier (you could start just copying panels after one cycle of motion), and it says something about Chadwick that he didn’t take that route.

The sheer number of panels does communicate time passing in a repetitious way, particularly if you actually look at every single panel. I’d have to wonder how many readers do that, instead of just scanning and moving on. The page is also an economic way to make the reader feel time passing, rather than stretching it out over numerous pages (something I often get stuck doing in my work).

I can’t off the top of my head think of other pages with this many panels (a question that came up on the list), books like Ninja reach 50 and Mister O has 60 per page. Though something like Longshot Comics where the style is an extreme form of minimalism could pack a lot into tiny panels like that, most comics would reach incoherence at that level. [Edit: There's a 160 panel page from Longshot Comics in this review.]

I have some pages with an extreme amount of panels in one sequence of Things Change Book Three where I start with a single panel page and then doubled the number of panels every page. It quickly became hard to maintain any narrative inside a single tiny panel, so my panels became fragments of larger images. That’s not quite the same thing, though for my story the fragmentation of perception was the point of all those panels.

1. A friend pointed me to the website One Sentence where are posted, in blog format, stories of one sentence in length. They seem to be all autobiographical (though as with any story, who can say?) and not particularly good, but I'm intrigued by the idea of narrative brevity and constrained format.

1.1 Constraint in art has been a particular interest of mine for a long time. Briefly, I mean a purposeful use of rules decided upon before the creation of a work, generally differentiated from conventional rules such as grammar. For some particular uses in comics see my blog posts here or the Oubapo America's page on constraint.

2. A great portion of these single sentence stories rely upon what is implied by the author and what is inferred by the reader. Much like comics, all the information is not there, but we can fill in what is not explicit.

2.1 A superb example: "For sale: baby shoes, never used." Attributed to Hemingway, though I haven't found a reliable citation for it. Either way, the concision here is countered by the implications of what is written.

3. I had been paging through the new collections of Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace from Fantagraphics at the bookstore. Not immediately taken with the single panel comics, I checked-out a retrospective of the series (Dennis the Menace: His First 40 Years from Abbeville Press) from the library, expecting to find more comic strips.

3.1 It turns out the comic strips I remember were only the Sundays of the series (an odd variation on the ways strips differentiate dailies and Sundays). The strips I found in this collection turned out to be much less interesting than the single panels.

4. The single panel comic seems most used for the purposes of a gag, as seen in The New Yorker, The Far Side, and others. I've not been particularly found of this genre. Most of the Dennis the Menace panels are gags too, but a few of them point to something more.

4.1 What about single panel dramas? Single panel romances? Single panel tragedies?

4.2 The form seems ripe with possibilities.

5. In his Case, Planche, Recit, Benoit Peeters discusses individual comic panels — those within a series of panels — as looking back to the previous panel and looking forward to the next. They are both individual and collective. We don't read one of those panels on its own, or if we do, they are without context, appreciated on that level for humor (as you see done on a number of blogs) or on a visual level for the quality or style of the art.

5.1 Single panel comics, on the other hand, stand on their own as a complete work.

6. The single panel comic, like its brethren in a longer work of comics, looks backwards and forwards. The difference being that what exists before and after is implied on some level by the single panel and inferred by the reader.

6.1 We might relate this in some way to McCloud's "closure", but I believe the implication of the author/artist is what creates the events in the gutter that surrounds the single panel.

7. The implied narrative is directly related to the density of content in the image and the the word-image interaction. The greater the density of content in the image, the more room there is for inference and the creation of the narrative past and future. The words underneath or within the image similarly create a sense of time having passed and continuing to pass. Words rarely exist in isolation in these panels, rather they are part of a mostly unseen dialogue.

7.1 This sense of narrative time is one place to look for the difference between a single panel comic and an illustration.

8. The terms "compressed" and "decompressed" are often used to describe narrative styles in comics. The use of these terms is relative to some platonic ideal of comics narrative probably related to the "golden age", because one can't consider any narrative to have some kind of original length which is then shortened or lengthened. I found these terms problematic to use but have no better ones to offer.

8.1 In a sense, single panel comics can be read as compressed narratives. They could be shown in more panels but are instead only one. This can lead to a certain density of information and use of shorthand. Reading the comic is often reliant on assumed context and pre-packaged signifiers.

9. Not all single panel comics work in this way. Some are very much an illustration and text that work together to create a gag. A different use of the word-image interaction.

9.1 For instance, see Silent Kimbly (picked from the WCCA nominations), where the strip is generally based on a humorous visual pun, more illustration with text than comic narrative. I don't see a story, a before or after, in it. (Which isn't to say it's a bad comic, just that it's not what I'm looking for narratively.)

10. As I am interested in the narrative possibilities of the form, I'm less concerned with simple gag panels.

10.1 Perhaps this is a call for narrative single panels. A story in a single panel. Something more than a quick laugh.

10.2 A challenge to create narratives constrained to one panel, word and image.

11. To me the most interesting single panels, contain a number of elements which work together to create the story: characters, objects, settings, and, of course, words.

11.1 A side-effect of this may be closer attention paid by the artist to compositional elements, since all the attention will be focused on the single panel, rather than spread out across many.

11.2 In the Dennis the Menace series, much comes through from the directed gazes of the characters or the expectation of the character's reactions to the action seen in the panel. There is enough information to set-up the narrative past and future.

12. Example 1:

12.1 You have to appreciate not only the movement of the parents in this one but also the joyful smile on Alice's face. The blacks all point inward to the area between the parents, that is, the space of movement. Narratively, this is more than just a word/image gag. We can fill in the past with Dennis waking to noise coming from downstairs, as well as the parents taking a chance to enjoy some time with their troublesome son off to sleep. We can even imagine what happens after, the laughing parents trotting their son off to bed or maybe having him join them in dancing about the room.

13. Examples 2:

13.1 This is a masterfully composed panel, with multiple planes of depth as well as numerous different heights. Everything fits together into the space so perfectly, from Dennis down in the corner to the giant salad bowl hovering over the heads of the guests and Henry. The smoke going off the panel and breaking the border is a great touch that Ketcham used rather frequently. The text here doesn't make the panel funny, but it does work in conjunction with the relative size of the salad bowl. Perhaps it is just an unsuccessful gag (I don't find it funny), but I don't care.

[Originally published at: http://comixtalk.com/Panels_and_Pictures for my Panels & Pictures column.]

Just another one of those simple but brilliant panels by Hergé.

You’ll note the silhouetted leaves in the outer panels and a rock in the center panel that Raymond uses to open up space for his text. This is a much more clever way to insert the text than his usual method of putting the text right over a colored section of the panel or having the art just stop around the text. It integrates much better into the panel and looks great. (I should mention this is after Raymond gave up the use of word balloons in the strip.)

Calculus, the hard of hearing inventor, has created a color television (seemingly unconcerned that such an item was already invented at the time as one of his friends points out). Hergé’s love of abstract and pop art comes out in his visuals for the less than perfect television screen. Here are three panels from the two page sequence.

When the characters make Calculus turn off the tv, we get this panel. No that’s not a bad scan or poor printing. In a rare bit of experimentation, Hergé alters the readers view of the scene.

I’ve read Van Dinther’s album CHRZ a few times now and I can’t tell you what it’s all about. That I keep rereading it despite my confusion is a testament to the visual invention and graphic force of the work. Van Dinther has a diagrammatic, filmic approach that he combines with innovative page layouts and a concise direct drawing style.

The story has the feeling of being constrained. The settings, characters, and objects are severely limited in scope. The whole story has a surreal, dreamlike style: sex, violence, strange juxtapositions, minimal settings, hazy connections. It’s also completely silent. The beginning of the story shows a giant hand (God?) pulling a fly from a flower and setting it off on a journey down from the sky to a group of buildings. Through the eyes of the fly, we see the settings and characters. Van Dinther uses honeycombed panels to replicate the multiply lensed eye of the fly. We first see the honeycombs as simple moment-to-moment panel transitions as the fly flies about, but a page later the effect is used to show the same object or character multiple times in a small grouping of the panels. This shifting from a close following of events to a multiple perspective approach is used often in the comic, not just from the fly’s point of view. The use of multiple perspectives is where Van Dinther gets most inventive in his layouts and narrative breakdowns.

In one section we see panels of a woman watching the fly as it flies into her companion’s ear. Running on the rows between those panels are honeycombed panels showing us the fly’s perspective of the same situation.

Panels are often grouped together on the page. One page has ten rows of panels grouped into five groups of two through the use of an extra wide gutter after every second row. The panels are all the same width, but the top panel in each grouping is shorter. The top panels all follow a woman, who is kept in the top room of a building, as she picks the lock on her room and collects a book from the bookshelves on a lower level. The bottom panels in each group show the two men, who seem to be keeping her there, leaving that same building and going for a walk into the country.

Another interesting section shows four different simultaneous perspectives on across a two page spread. The top of the pages shows the woman in the top room reading a book, watching as the fly approaches her. The second row of panels shows us the honeycombed perspective of the fly looking at the woman. The bottom (fourth) row shows the man and woman who are in an opposite building. The man is making sexual advances on the woman, but the row above this (third row) shows his thoughts (he is thinking of the woman in the other building). His companion seems to be able to see his thoughts and rejects his advances. In a narrative symmetry, the fly’s perspective goes dark as it is smashed between the pages of the book by the woman, while the man’s thoughts go dark when his companion punches him in the face (her rejection of his advances).

(Click to see a full page. Warning: Abstractly illustrated sex.)

The man’s thoughts in this section are themselves done in a sequence of panels, creating an imbedded panel grouping, not something one sees very often (but filled with possibility).

In a later section, a two page spread is covered with 108 square panels in nine rows. Each row shows us the same events focused on a different character or object in the scene. The first row shows the events from above, while subsequent rows focus on each of the other characters. Another row follows the movement of a bullet, another a knife. In this way we piece together the whole event from numerous perspectives, an almost narrative cubism.

Van Dinther’s art is very simply rendered, mostly outlines, little shading or even detail, with a thick, mostly unvariegated line. The one building and its inhabitants (the woman locked in the room and the two men) are all drawn in browns and oranges, while the other building and its couple are drawn in black and grey. At this point I have no explanation for this. The pages we see from the book the one woman reads have a crowded and flat composition that is reminiscent of medieval style illustration.

Most of the panel transitions are moment-to-moment, giving the book the occasional feel of stopped animation or film (which you can see in some of the examples above).

A mysterious and fascinating graphic novella.

Great use of silhouettes here that is reminiscent of Toth. Nicely balanced with the three black figures/shapes in the front (skewing a bit to the right where the next panel is) and the two delineated figures in between. The black shape on the guy’s Batman mask bridges the two women similar to the way the woman on the right’s arm connects to the black wall. Great use of the spot blacks. The top edges of all the characters also move across the page pleasantly.

Another great use of black here. It’s a night scene and I love the way he’s made the trees and bushes in the background white. We can still tell it’s night but there’s visual contrast. The shadows here are not very realistic, but, rather, done with a sense of design. Why is the side and back of Ray’s (that’s him on the left) face black but not his neck or back? Why just part of his arm? It doesn’t make much sense in a realist way, but it works to make us see the scene as “night.” Jaime rarely uses shading or lots of shadow particularly in the way we see on Ray’s arm, but it makes him a little more equal in weight to the two women with their black shirts.

Also note the juxtaposition between Ray’s narration (“She sorta laughed”) and the slightly pained expression on her face.

This one’s here because of the very simple tree line that goes across the top of the panel behind the word balloons. It’s very very simple, but instantly recognizable. Like something out of an Archie comic (which, having recently read a bunch of, must have been an influential on Jaime’s style). That Archie style simplicity and iconic identification is part of what makes Jaime’s style so attractive to me. The simplicity combined with his advanced sense of composition, subtle line work, and spare but skilled use of blacks (to say nothing of storytelling and narrative).

Today’s clouds (click on the image for a bigger version) come from Frontline Combat #12 (1953) and are drawn by the great Alex Toth (which means the text is by Harvey Kurtzman). This whole story takes place in the air and clouds are often used as a environment and grounding for the planes. In this two panel sequence we see clouds as both sky and ground. I love the way the foreground clouds in the second panel act as negative space but also obscure most of the panel borders. The clouds themselves are drawn very simply and contrast nicely with the black wing and mountain which are both very abstract and mostly unrecognizable out of context (like here?). This was actually the first Toth comic I ever read.

I love this panel by Gene Colan and Dick Giordano from “As Time Goes By” (My Love #16 (1972) reprinted in Marvel Romance (2006), written by Gary Friedrich). Blue monochrome always works for me, but it’s aided by the angular realism of Colan and Giordano’s use of both heavy blacks and thin hatching (look at that hair!). The woman’s pose turns her away from us which emphasized her emotional distance (she’s in love with the deceased Humphrey Bogart). The background is extremely abstracted, such as the few lines at the bottom right that represent a grasped bedsheet, and the two thick black lines across the middle and far left serve to box in the woman’s head and that of Bogart floating in her thoughts (separating them from the bed, interestingly enough). We also see the annoying Marvel style of excessive use of bolding words (as bad as Kirby’s silly use of words in quotes all the time).