Romance in Ice Haven

I was quite surprised by the number of romantic vignettes in Dan Clowes' Ice Haven, though not surprised at how dysfunctional they all were. Just about every character is faced with some sort of relationship issue: Violet and Charles' parents divorce, Violet marries and subsequently loses Penrod, Charles harbors feelings for his step-sister, Carmichael has a crush on Paula, Mr. and Mrs. Ames are constantly on the outs, Vida and Kim Lee share a brief moment of celebratory lust, Julie "Patheticstein" is pregnant. There are no traditional romantic elements, and I would never categorize Ice Haven as a story about love, but it is definitely one of the more prevalent themes throughout the book.

I found Violet's romantic relationships to be the most interesting in the book. She is a young girl who is clearly very confused about the concept of love (her mother does not seem to be a very good role-model), yet desperately wants Penrod to love her and is willing to do anything to make it happen. However, the only person who cares about her the way she wants is her step-brother, Charles. She cares about him in a different way, and it is perhaps one of the most hearbreaking lines in the book: "I hope someday I grow up and marry a guy just like you" (81.5). Nevertheless, Violet does undergo a major transformation due to her failed marriage to Penrod and, by the end of the book, there is a glimmer of hope that things will be better for her in Hawaii.

A few questions about Ice Haven

Clowes' artwork throughout the book seemed so familiar in some instances that I wondered if some of it wasn't imitation or homage, but I'm not well versed enough in my classic artists that I can pinpoint whom he's aping.

The Charles sections with its focus on a small child's deeply philosophical thoughts reminded me of "Peanuts;" but the artwork not so much so . . . though the images of children singing was evocative of Schultz's singing kiddies for me.

Some of the Mr. and Mrs. Ames sections reminded me of "Spiderman" but maybe that's just because Mr. Ame's hair is so reminiscent of J. Jonah Jameson's

Other than that I can say images felt really familiar but can't put my finger on the possible inspirations. Any help here?

The plot itself in which the residents of a small seemingly isolated town goes about it's trivial business against the backdrop of a major crime, reminded me quite a bit if Gilbert Hernandez's Human Diastrophism in which the residents of Palomar attend to their daily dramas while a serial killer is on the loose in town. Not to mention that strange monolith referred to as "our friend" (8.2) in Ice Haven is an echo of those strange idols that appear throughout the Palomar stories. Not so sure if this is so intentional as the earlier referenced artistic homages.

Ice Haven: Artistry/Vulgarity

From the panels on page 4, in which comic book critic, Harry neighbors, eloquently addresses the age old of question of what comics are (all the while, urinating, scratching his ass, and eating cereal in his underwear*), I knew Clowes was going to be pulling a few tricks out of his bag for Ice Haven. If there is a mystery at its core, it's not so much "What happened to Danny Goldberg" as it is "what happened to art?" That is to say if it's at all possible to get a handle on what art is. Or to put it in the words of Random Wilder, Ice Haven's self proclaimed future poet laureate "Is there anyone left with the acuity to recognize a genuine artistic sensibility" (9.1) That the reader is not likely to recognize such sensibility in the bombastic Wilder, complicates a reading of his narration as an organizing voice in the larger story of Ice Haven.

Wilder's young neighbor, Vida, is perhaps the only other character in Ice Haven with artistic pretensions and her work finally pushes Wilder to the realization that he is a hack (71-72). In this section of Wilder's story the colors and line have been simplified, reducing Wilder to a more iconic form, a process that appears to have been in motion throughout the book (look at Wilder's legs in "motion" in each of his sections to get the best sense of this). The last section of the book (before Naybor's comes onpage to "explain" everything), is given over to Vida's narration (whereas the first [main] section of the book introduced Wilder as the narrator). Here Vida reveals that she has finally been discovered and is headed to Hollywood to become the "biggest whore ever" (83.4).

Maybe we were better off with Wilder (who in a sense does get the final word as Danny Goldberg recites one of his poems in the book's final frame).

Or maybe the sections of the book that resonate most, don't have anything to do with meta-masturbation. Maybe the heart of the story rests with the human dramas that Wilder would credit to "a public imagination awash in vulgarity" (19.7).

*This sequence is reminiscent of another Clowes' strip depicting an actor playing the author going about his banal morning routines)

France v. England: Simmonds' culture wars...

The tale of Gemma Bovery's tragic demise was a great story in and of itself, but I was particularly interested by the undercurrent of culture clash between the British and French sensibilities of our dear characters. Simmonds seems to have fun playing with stereotypes, especially in the "graphic" side of the novel. Joubert, for example, is a classic round-nosed old Frenchman, surrounded by his baguettes the first time we see him (2) and several times after throughout the book. Simmonds continues with the awkwardly rumpled (and charmingly British) Charles, and the cool eyes and aristocratic nose of Herve's wealthy French mother (77).

I found the culture clash most interesting as it manifested in the transformation in Gemma. She begins as a slightly plump British woman, clothed in floor-length skirts and oversized t-shirts (23). Her idea of France is romantic at first, a way to escape Charlie's ex-wife. "She begins to dream of a place unclogged by traffic, a landscape of tranquil communities"--in contrast to London, which she now perceives as full of "'nauseating middle-class ghettos full of dimmer switches, panic buttons and kids behind burglar bars.' As for the English countryside, 'nothing left of it, just one big suburbia overrun with cars and garden centres'" (28).

However, the mysticism dissipates soon after she arrives and realizes that France is just as "real" a place as the one she left behind. "I did not come to Normandy to think of bum creams," she complains (39). Failed by the French countryside, she finds her romantic countryside in the arms of Herve, under the failing roof of his aging chateau. This is when she begins to come around, to abandon her British sensibilities--her British husband, the unabashedly in-your-face middle-class Wizzy Rankins (see page 43!), and especially her looks. She gets slimmer and slimmer, gets a more stylish haircut, and streamlines her wardrobe, at the same time daydreaming about becoming "like an 18th-century mistress" (70).

So if Simmonds is showing the process of a character abandoning their culture in pursuit of another, is there a moral? What does Gemma's death mean? And what does it have to do with the role of "Madame Bovery" in the text, especially as it plays out as a symbol of "Frenchness" that Gemma isn't--and is unwilling to become--aware of?

The Jealous Lover

In the last section of the graphic novel, I couldn't help but notice how similar Joubert and Charlie are. On page 102, the last image of the page has the two revisiting the day Gemma died. Separated by a wine bottle, the two men look strikingly alike. Both have a similar shaped nose, glasses, and a look that we've seen on both men's faces numerous times. This image appears three more times on the opposite page (103). It is interesting that we surprisingly learn that Charlie is just as jealous as Joubert. He suspects the worst from Gemma. When he comes back to Normandy and hears a man panting he automatically assumes sex. Unfortunately, Gemma is choking and Charlie's rash actions ultimately cause her death. Joubert acts in a similar, yet not so violent way. His brash actions include the mailing of the pages to Gemma to stop the affair with Herve and then the mailing of the pages to her acquaintances. Both men fit into the jealous lover category, acting out in a ridiculous way. Moreover, Gemma is an unattainable woman for both men. Joubert in obvious ways. He looks at her as a character in a novel that comes to life. To Charlie, she's the distant wife he can no longer connect with. Charlie is the opposite of Herve. Finally, she causes the demise of both men. She leaves Charlie in emotional despair and financial debt. She leaves Joubert with uneasiness and in many ways an unfinished story.

While Charlie explains to Joubert what really happened, Joubert is still stuck in a world of fantasy, or fiction. In this way, the image also works to show how the characters are opposites of each other. Charlie understands the reality of the situation. His wife cheated on him, died, and left him with nothing. Joubert holds on to the fiction, insisting that the Flaubert novel is the story of Gemma's life. The ending of the novel is a confirmation of this when we learn that Jane Eyre has moved in next door. The story continues for Joubert.

Reading Gemma Bovery

I was initially a little overwhelmed by the amount of material on any single page in Gemma Bovery, unsure whether to focus on the text, the diary entry, the comics, the letters, etc., and even more unsure of how all of these elements worked together to form a cohesive story. Though the book is told from Joubert's point of view, the other visual elements provide the reader with a different perspective on the events he is describing. For instance, Gemma's diary entries are initially quite vague and only hint at what is going on in her life, though they do contain the occasional outburst about Judi or Charlie's children. Joubert even comments about how surprised he is that she does not go on at great length about her affair, much to his disappointment. However, after Herve ends things and she is in emotional distress her entries get more personal and reflexive, similar to the way they were after her affair with Patrick ended. Gemma's handwritten entries are a nice break from the excessive amount of text that Simmonds provides us.

Like the diary entries, the comics in Gemma Bovery also evolve throughout the course of the book. At the beginning they are merely drawings to accompany Joubert's narrative, with the occasional daydream or glimpse into Gemma's imagination. They are not especially comic in form, but more like sketches or illustrations. The majority of what would technically be classified as comics sequences typically involve Judi and tend to be the more humorous parts of the book. The pictures that accompany Gemma's affair with Herve could hardly be considered comics, for they are drawn in such a dreamy and romantic fashion (see pages 53 and 67 in particular). This lack of consistency made it difficult to know how to interpret the pictures, whether we should take them seriously or view them as comical interpretations that accompany the text.

Similar to Eddie Campbell, Posy Simmonds is extremely ambitious in her experimentations with the comics form. However, I would argue that she is not as successful as Campbell was. Though her story is much easier to follow, I often found that her lack of consistency in narrative voice and form came across as sloppy. I am unsure of what exactly she was trying to accomplish in terms of form, and wish she had chosen a better way to tell such an interesting story.

Gemma Bovery: Oversexed or Balanced?

After finishing Gemma Bovery, it’s interesting to flip back through the novel and glance over the pages. There are many things of note, such as the inconsistent layout, fonts and depictions of characters, but what catches my eye the most are things that seem mostly consistent – specifically the way couples appear in bed and the amount of time characters spend imagining, recreating or engaging in sexual encounters. In this manner, Gemma Bovery thrives on the disconnect or connect of lovers, and I can’t help but question if this constant attention to sex (or the lack thereof) is balanced in the text or overstated.

For example, whenever Charles and Gemma are depicted in bed, both parties are shown in different states of mind (5.5, 6.1, 7.7, 19.3, 44.3-4, 68.3, 79.1). There never seems to be a moment where we see a sexual connection between them in their own bed. Eventually this disconnect is shown between Joubert and his wife as well (68.4, 90.1-4) to suggest the parallel of Madame Joubert’s and Charles’ affair that Simmonds points out in the interview with Paul Gravett. Simmonds intended (and succeeded) to depict other characters besides Gemma as unfaithful, lustful and out of line. Joubert goes so far as to imagine himself and Gemma in bed together (84.4), yet sexual desires are implied even farther than this. When Patrick takes Gemma out to dinner after they reacquaint, the eyes of every man in the restaurant, many of whom are with other women, are fixated on Gemma (87.1). A few pages later, Mark Rankin visits Gemma to check on her stability, and ends up caressing her shoulder (91.15) and suggesting that she might “let” him have sex with her as a means to pay off her debts (91.16). In showing us a consistent line of unfaithful men (or men who at least acknowledge their attraction to a beautiful and alluring woman), Simmonds creates an interesting balance of sexual desire in the text – a balance that detracts from or, in many ways, lessens the impact of Gemma’s adultery.

Yet as Simmonds seemingly places everyone in the community in which Gemma lives on the same plane of sexual desire to help justify Gemma’s actions, the text then becomes something of an oversexed depiction of life and an example of how marriage lacks this sexual desire. Perhaps Simmonds doesn’t want to depict Gemma as any more wrong than anyone else, something that Flaubert’s Madame Bovary may or may not do as well (I’d be interested to know if anyone’s read Flaubert’s work and knows whether or not Emma Bovary is singled out as the adulterer). And does Simmonds showing of numerous characters’ sexual desire in Gemma Bovery help to balance or weigh Gemma's actions, or simply fill the world with sex to “sell” this story in our present day culture that is consciously sexually-driven?

Gemma Bovery's Verticality

I really enjoyed Gemma Bovery (it seemed oddly invigorating after Jimmy Corrigan), and while I was caught up in the overall story (so much so that I’ve already finished), I did try to notice along the way how Posy Simmonds would strive for the little peaks at the end of each page (something that obviously was dictated by the original newspaper limits).

I think artistically Simmonds was forced to go “vertical” and in the end adapted quite well. While many of our readings this term have concentrated on how our eyes moved from left to right on a mainly square page, Gemma Bovery was the first to force our eyes up and down over a much longer vertical surface.

I’ll take one aspect of this which I found particularly captivating – the “stacked” level of artwork that would appear during the course of the novel, as can be seen in pages 6, 17, 28, 49, and 70, among others. We talked a bit in class about how it was often difficult to tell whether to read, then look at the artwork, or vice versa, or a bit of both, and in the end, I chose to do the last, reading a paragraph at a time before looking for the appropriate picture. It may violate our sense of how comics work (paging Scott McCloud), but I think in the end, Simmonds really manages to establish her own interesting stake in the larger graphic novel world.

And the vertical artwork seems to get stronger as we go on. Page 6 is really the simplest (just a series of panels illustrating each detail of the left-hand text), but in page 10, we’re already seeing some playfulness, as the photos appear to tumble out of Joubert’s hand. In 17, objects are beginning to overlap, and on page 28, there’s a subtle change to the artwork, as gray wash gives way to the black ink of the bottom right corner.

Page 70 is the best of these, in my opinion. Here Simmonds manages to convey a “crown” of sorts above the main character (no gray wash here either), a black-inked Francophile daydream sprouting upward as a tree. Everything works here, and by placing this in the upper left, Simmonds has really highlighted this montage. Our eyes fall upon it as we first turn to the page, and as we read through the text, we are drawn back piece by piece to the artwork, our eyes moving from the main character to the second level, and lastly to the nest and baby at the top. We return to the bottom, and see Herve's reaction to all this - his "deer caught in the headlights" look of shock. This is one of my favorite pieces of art from the book and not coincidentally, it signals the beginning of the end of Gemma’s fortunes.

Voyez-vous lundi!

POV in Gemma Bovery

Granted, I'm only half way through Gemma Bovery, but I just wanted to throw out a question regarding Simmonds' unconventional use of point of view in telling the story. For a graphic novel, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of prose here. These sections the reader has no problem taking as originating from Joubert's point of view. He is telling Gemma's story based on information that he has gleaned from Charlie, Gemma's diaries, or his own first hand experience.

More troubling are the "comic" portions of the novel. Here the reader is presented with a wealth of information that Joubert could not have possibly known. Do these scenes arise from Joubert's imagination or a completely seperate consciousness? For example, on page 13 Joubert wonders what Charlie is remembering about the Christmas that followed his first meeting with Gemma. Then we get a full page of Charlie's converstion with his ex-wife Judi. Joubert later surmises that Charlie's relationship with Judi must be "civilized" (20), but this assumption belies the information that we're given in the comic portions of this page. Was Joubert merely being sarcastic or are the drawn panels conveying a truth to which he's not privy?

On a related note, later in the first half of the book, it appears as if Joubert is conducting the action of the narrartive (giving some insight into why he feels responsible for Gemma's death), as he commands Gemma to turn into Herve's driveway. It does, just as the skies thunder (48). Accorsing to her diary a few pages later, however, the thunder happens once Gemma is already inside Herve's house. This information would seem to rob Joubert of his role as "writer" of the narrative.

Quick Question...

I would like to preface this by admitting that yes, I am a bit of a geek for Barry Manilow. That being said, I was more than a little perplexed by the tape found in Amy's car: "Tropical Nights" by Barry Manilow, an album that I didn't even know existed! However, after doing some research, I discovered that Manilow does not even have a song with this title, let alone an entire album. After breathing a sigh of relief that I was not missing an integral part of Manilow's extensive canon, I began to wonder why Chris Ware made this error. It would be foolish of me to say that it was unintentional, because I think we all know that nothing in "Jimmy Corrigan" is unintentional. I really have no answer to this question, and was wondering if any of you had any thoughts about this.

Posy Simmonds interviews galore

There's a recent Posy Simmonds interview in the Telegraph that you should read. It is occasioned by the recent publication of her latest graphic novel, Tamara Drewe, which was serialized in the Guardian last year.

Simmonds was also the subject of a lengthy cover-story interview in the latest issue of The Comics Journal. You can read an excerpt from that interview here.

Corrigan as the antithesis of Superman

So I wrote a paper earlier on Superman in Corrigan so I decided to give an excerpt here:

Even though Jimmy is continually reminded about how unlike Superman he is, the part of him that believes in Superman and what he stands for is the only part of him that allows him to keep going on in his sad existence. Towards the end of Jimmy Corrigan Jimmy ends up donning a long sleeve t-shirt of Superman in order to sum up some courage in dealing with his father and his father’s family. The first instance of him wearing the shirt, however, shows Jimmy in one of his weakest positions: on the toilet. The page with Jimmy on the toilet (with a large Jimmy face with two men pulling on the mouth in the interface) shows the irony of his wearing the Superman shirt. While he is wearing the shirt he is curled up into almost fetal position with half of him undressed showing his own exposure as he fights to pass a bowel movement. Wearing the shirt gives an oxymoronic feel to Jimmy since he is continually portrayed as almost the opposite of Superman. The shirt also represents how much Jimmy wants to make a good impression to his adopted (half) sister, Amy. By wearing the shirt he is trying to gather his courage in order to face someone he has never met before and under the condition of his father getting sick. Two pages after the bathroom scene Jimmy meets Amy for the first time, the panels that are able to create the most authentic moment for Jimmy are the three vertical panels that show first his face, then a close-up of the t-shirt, and lastly his hurt foot. This moment is able to sum up exactly how Jimmy wants to be and how is completely incapable of being as strong as he wish he could be.
Near the end of the book there are two large snowy panels that show Jimmy standing on the street corner where the Superman had jumped and landed, in the second panel Jimmy stares at the position where the hero had been. These two panels are vitally important because they manage to tie together Jimmy’s sense of loss over the Superman, his father, and Amy. The blanket of snow that is falling down also represents a winter in Jimmy’s life where he no longer feels that he has anybody left to admire or fantasize about. Back in his office Jimmy then pictures himself in the position of Superman, on top of the building preparing to jump. After all he has gone through Jimmy can only see himself following in the sad steps of his hero. The mixture of the snow and his fantasizing about a similar death as Superman shows his unwillingness to continue to exist in a world where there are no supermen, where there are no heroes to look up to.
The second to last page also shows the snow scape, this time with Superman carrying little Jimmy away from the whole entire mess. This scene was very poignant because it represented Jimmy’s memories where Superman was the most important figure in his life. This scene could also be construed as Jimmy’s death, since the little Jimmy is being flown off to an unknown destination with his superhero in the middle of a blizzard. These last final panels represent the end of a very long and sad journey for Jimmy where he has nothing left to look forward to, especially when he meets his new co-worker and realizes that his life is working in a vicious cycle of new people coming in and out of his life that merely disappoint him. Superman, even though he has had bad experiences with him, remains his idol because he remains a type of constant ideals that are not vanquished despite the world around him.

Time Wares on...

Rather than doing a broad post I wanted to focus on pages 195-197. What interested me about these pages is the way in which Ware uses time. Panel 195.5 is a small panel containing a digital clock. This is the first of a series of clock panels. Not only does Ware use the clock to illustrate the slow passage of time, but there are a number of panels showing Jimmy lying on the bed not doing anything, indicating his boredom and the overall sense of time standing still. On page 197, nothing much really happens to advance the story. We see Jimmy sitting on the bed in 197.1, and then his reflection in the mirror in two identical panels (furthering the sense of repetition without progress) followed by 197.4, which is identical to panel 197.1. The entire page seems to be frozen; even the largest panel on the page, panel 197.9, showing the apartment building, gives an eerie sense of stasis. The panel, like most of the panels in the work, is composed in dark muted colors except for the bright yellow deer crossing sign. The deer crossing sign furthers the idea of stasis because it is a frozen image; a deer suspended in mid-jump. The deer is representative of Jimmy in this sequence as far as Jimmy is frozen in time and space in his father’s apartment; a place in which he clearly does not want to be, given that on page 195 he calls the airline and tries to change his flight. This sense of stasis follows throughout this graphic novel. Jimmy himself appears suspended in a child-like state, bound and dependant on his mother and socially stunted, unable to function in even the most basic social situation.

Jimmy Corrigan takes flight

As I was reading Jimmy Corrigan, I was struck with awe and amazement at nearly everything: the colors, storyline, artwork, symbols, tone, etc. Then, when I returned to the text a second time (although I still have yet to finish the last section), I was overwhelmed at how well Ware has woven all these elements together to produce an overall helpless and sympathetic effect on the reader. As there's so much to highlight, I wanted to pick one small element (that is not so small) - the birds - that we didn't have time to discuss in Tuesday's class.

Just as the interlude "smack[s]" the reader like a commercial out of Jimmy's accident with the mail truck, birds generally serve as an interlude between time and scene shifts, as well as show the passing of time. Even in this mail truck interlude, Jimmy sits in a park and records the birds singing. But what he records next - the sound of an airplane - perhaps gives us our first clue into what purpose the birds serve for the text. In this juxtaposition of birds and airplanes, the birds are the natural flight of the manmade device. The airplane is also what carries Jimmy to his father, what would seemingly carry Jimmy to his mother for Thanksgiving, and where Jimmy dreams of being a robot (perhaps addressing the robotic nature of his parental relationships and the synthetic element of the airplane all in one). In the latter panel where Jimmy is a robot, a bird sits behind him on the airplane seat and a peach tree hangs over him. In this manner, the artwork futhers the case that birds are the natural version of airplanes. Often as the reader is overwhelmed with scenes of the sterile city background, nature imposes upon the landscapes: dead branches stick out from many angles (take the uploaded image or 6.7 or all of 23 as examples) and plants appear indoors (in the airport in pots, the flowered pillow at Jimmy's father's place, in the hospital, etc). This idea of nature versus synthetic can be applied not only to the birds and airplanes, but to many elements in the Corrigans' relationships and the span of generations over a changing environment.

Of course, however, looking at the birds in comparison to airplanes only covers one aspect of "flight". The birds also parallel the superman motif in the text (an interlude in Jimmy's head in the hospital scene clearly demonstrates this) and show how the red color of the bird is also important (i.e. the mask). Again during this hospital interlude, the word "smack" appears when the bird hits the window, and the doctor chalks the noise up to, "Yeah...it's just some stupid bird." But where the bird is natural and the airplane is manmade, superman is obviously make-believe, and the leap of the superman from the building addresses how the imagination fails to mix with reality.

It's no accident either that Thanksgiving becomes Ware's focal point, and the turkey is covered often with the name Estelle, Jimmy's mother. It's also no accident that the bee (another representation of flight) appears on James' grandmother's deathbed. The connections that stem from the bird (and its flight) are amazingly detailed and serve the novel in meaningful and complex ways. For example, one can futher analyze the element of sounds (the bird's singing, the noise of the airplane, and the "smack") a step further, comparing the sound of the horse hoofs on the porch and up the stairs and the "slap" of the screen door with all the other sounds this novel makes.

Cartoonists Recommend Comics for the Holidays

From the Comics Journal website, suggestions from various cartoonists on what comics they think you should buy your friends. Click here for their lists.

Acme Novelty Cut-Outs: Online Exhibition

If you'd like to see a number of Chris Ware's novelty contraptions as assembled by faithful readers, check out this link. (Note that many of the thumbnail pictures show just a detail from a much larger image.)

Ware at Play?

The "multi-faceted" nature of Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth has already been mentioned, but I'd like to dig a little deeper into one facet that has caught my eye since my first experience reading Ware (in The ACME Novelty Library). We first encounter the "cut-out" page on pages 24-25, where Ware exclaims "Well here's a fun thing which is sure to appeal to the young boy, girl, or airship passenger in all of us" (25). At first, the pages made me smile, seeming like a light-hearted break from the grayish Chicago narrative. It spoke to a sense of play, but his description negated that with its ironic tone, as well as the realization that the instructions are on the back of the pieces themselves, thus making the "fun" project considerably more difficult to undertake.

The pages (we've seen three so far) don't seem to fall anywhere in particular--this first is between a scene with Jimmy and his mom and then he and his dad; the second (page 166, if I'm not mistaken), a set of flashcards with places around town on them, falls between the end of a scene with James in bed and another story entirely, not just a scene; and the third, (page 206-207), in the middle of the hide and seek game. So what is Ware's motivation for these placements? He admits that they "truncate [our] experience of an evocative work," and encourages anyone who encounters difficulty to give up immediately.

Though I can't speak to their respective placements, I think that they work to bring together an interesting symbol of "building" in the text--the White City, a relationship between father and son, a relationship with the world at large. Though they look playful and childish at first, the delicate and ultimately impossible nature of their construction speaks to the greater (and equally saddening) failures of the story they intersect.

The “Other” Character in Jimmy Corrigan

One of the more interesting characters of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan is the landscape the characters exist in. Jimmy and the father move through the rather bleak suburbia of Waukosha and Chicago, conversing in the well-traveled and temporary worlds of an airport lounge, diner, medical office (with plastic plants), and the father’s simple apartment. Even the ubiquitous Golden Arches appear more than a few times as a background behind Pam’s Wagon Wheel Restaurant (open since 1977!)

Chris Ware seems to praise their surroundings with his artwork, drawing the mythical Michigan town and Chicago’s skyline through Jimmy’s window in loving detail and with crisp, sharp lines, and yet damns it as well, poking fun at the blandness of these environs with his text. The modern world comes off as sterile more than anything, offering a sort of bland sameness for the characters to shuffle through.

Ware pulls out all the stops in his 12-panel look at the Waukosha “highlights,” including a famous rock (hidden behind a Dairy Queen), and the modern colorful miracle of vinyl siding! He seems to be poking fun at all this, taking swipes at the larger spheres of advertising and the rapacious beast of modern commercialism and modernization, but is also espousing a lesser brand of vitriol displayed by R. Crumb in Crumb. In the film, Crumb complained bitterly about the modern American architectural aesthete, and one scene shows his artistic rendition of a forested enclave’s descent into suburban sprawl hell (also 12-panels, titled: “A Short History of America”). Here’s a link to that - http://www.zubeworld.com/crumbmuseum/history2.html.

History is also under Ware’s lens. At surface glance, the author seems to reminisce about a beautiful, historical Chicago and the World Fair’s “White City,” (the shift in artwork from the modern world to that always favors the past) and yet shows at the human level an environment very similar if not worse than the modern world, with issues of abandonment, racist behavior, and bullying (the worst human behavior comes out during the Great Fire sequence). The “White City,” although beautiful in its design, is ultimately a temporary and illusory utopia, a fake city designed to attract scores of people to the city, before being torn down (and I found with a little research) also largely burned by fire. Ware’s landscapes, like everything else in the book, have been carefully and deliberately thought out.

Choices?

For me, Thanksgiving immediately conjures warm memories of family, and as idealized as those memories might be, I can now be thankful that whatever the levels of dysfunction in my own family might be, at least they don't rank up there with the Corrigans'.

In trying to trace the rioot of the sad and awkward existence of these men (and more specifically Jimmy as the last of the line), it seems like the Corrigan men's inability and refusal to accept the responsibility the family life is key. OK maybe that's a "master of the obvious" kind of statement. I just got such a nice, happy, wholesome feeling when Jimmy dines with the Italian family and the father shows affection to his wife. It was a relief to know that such emotion existed in the cold misogynistic world to which the reader has gotten used to at this point.

(In the doctor's office scene), Jimmy's Dad seems to justify his abandonment saying, "Y'know sometimes I think they're the ones who invented gettin' married and all that just so that they could sit around and get fat and ugly in comfort" a few paged later he out right admits that he'd been d0wn the marriage road before and it wasn't his "cuppa tea." The doctor in this scene is a mirror to Jimmy's dad, as he has a daughter that he hasn't scene in years, rationalizing "I guess we all make choices as to how we want to live, right?" But what he doesn't consider is the emotional fall-out that seems to have on the lives of others who were given no choice.

Jimmy's Great-Grandfather sets this wheel in motion with his refusal to be a responsible family man. He can't settle down with a woman because they soon lose "novelty" for him. "How could he be expected to bank on a long term partnership with that?" Jimmy's grandfather writes of his own father's take on a widow he had been rutting. Retrospectively, knowing that this father will soon abandon his own son, we understand that he can't bank on a long term partnership with anyone.

All the Corrigan men seem to have their own different but equally damaging relations with women, and though in Jimmy's (II) case it's simply the fact that he "can't meet them," viewed over the generations, it looks like the problem's in his genes. Or maybe it's just that he wears funny pants.

I Can SEE Myself in this Comic!

Two things are true about Jimmy Corrigan and I:
One: I didn't really enjoy reading it.
Two: I can think of more to say about it right off the top of my than I could about any other book we've dealt with this semester.

After much pondering i decided it made sense to write about the most global Jimmy-related issue that's been knocking around in my head, and that is the issue of self-conciousness in comics. I feel like over the carious reading of this course, I've noticed that self consciousness in various is more prevalent in comics than it is in other types of literary media.

Obviously, it's true that many comics contain explicit themes and topics related to self-consciousness (and, in many cases, social awkwardness), but the kind of self-consciousness I'm referring to is more structural. I note that in many graphic novels, the artist makes specific, often explanatory and/or humorous reference to their own stylistic choices within the actual text. Nowhere is this trend more apparent in Jimmy Corrigan, with it's actually roadmap diagram (in which Ware cops to the fact that the plot may have been hard to follow), it's various paper-folding instructions and the final Corrigenda complete with a glossary explain the word "peach". Other books we've read this semester that reference their own style include Fun Home and Mauss II.

While I've put a bunch of thought into why this phenomenon may exist, I haven't come up with any answers satisfactory enough to share with you (the temptation to blame Dave Eggers is strong, but I suspect it's a longer story than that), so I'll focus the the effect that it has on my experience.

The effect that this self-consciousness has, at least for me, is that artist him or herself has a more palpable presence in the text itself than I am accustomed to with most prose. In this sense, even when a work is not about the artist him or herself topically, it always is FORMALLY, to some extent. This is cool, but it can also be annoying and self-absorbed-seeming (See Fate of the Artist).

I think it's more often cool when the self-consciousness is somehow derivative of the self as opposed to focused on the self. This difference is actually apparent in a certian movement of prose as well. Think Dave Eggers versus David Foster Wallace. When the actual self is the focus topically and formally, I get annoyed. When, however, an auteur of comics or prose uses stylistic elements derived from or referential to the self, as focused topically on the self. Oh man, i would like to see two wrestling matches: Foster Wallace vs Eggers, then Ware vs Campbell.

"Jimmy Corrigan"

In Thursday's class we were instructed to come up with the things we admired about "Jimmy Corrigan" as well as the things we didn't like. Since this is such a multi-faceted book and it is pretty difficult to narrow down what exactly I want to post about, I figured I would go into more detail about my personal pros and cons concerning Ware's work.

Aesthetically, there was very little about the book that bothered me. It did take me a little while to get used to, and I still sometimes find myself getting confused about which direction the panels are going, but overall I found Ware's work to be extremely detailed and accomplished. I suppose my biggest concern is how small the text is, especially in the part of the story concerning his grandfather as a young boy. I found the tiny, stingy script awfully hard to read, but I am sure that was intentional on Ware's part.

I'm still undecided on my feelings about the Corrigan men. At this point in the text, none of them are particularly likable. Though Jimmy is not as crude and aggressive as the other men in his family seem, he comes off as rather spineless most of the time. Furthermore, he lacks the sense of passion that his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all possessed. I am hoping that Jimmy will redeem himself by the end of the book and make himself worthy of the title "the smartest kid on earth."

My favorite thing about the book so far is how seamlessly Ware threads themes from one story into the next, which lends to the incredible smoothness of the transitions between time periods. One thing in particular that stands out to me is Ware's use of the color pink. This is most obvious when the doctor tells Jimmy and his father that the paint in the hospital room causes the outside world to take on "this sort of pinkish-peach color". The men notice this when they leave, but this is not the only part of the book that this color comes into play. Jimmy's father's bathroom is pink, the sky is often this color, even young Jimmy and his grandfather are sort of pink. This, as well as the recurring images of peaches, are prevalent throughout the text.

I have found the story to be quite riveting. Though it is kind of difficult to get through some of the sections, Ware is not a careless writer and even the smallest details on a page eventually work their way back into the story.

R. Crumb

SB: What are the purposes of satire?

R. Crumb: To give us all relief from these taboos and these nervous tensions where things can't be talked about. So humour and satire are a safety valve for releasing these nervous tensions. But there's such a thing as cruel humour. A lot of old time humour is based on making fun of some ethnic group - it's not so funny for us any more.

After watching the documentary on R. Crumb, I was interested in how much his art was a reflection of his life. The satirical humor in his cartooning is very much how Crumb presents himself on film. He's quite funny and in many ways over the top. At one point, we learn that Crumb likes to spend his days sitting outside, on a street bench or in a cafe, drawing passerbies. While drawing on the street the camera sits and watch Crumb, allowing us to observe the artist at his work. Crumb draws contently. At one point the camera cuts and allows us to see what he is drawing, or would draw on a typical day. One such item is called "Jackets" and features a variety of different people wearing different jackets. Another pokes fun at the fact that everyone now has earrings. Most of the drawings are of men and the eye is immediately drawn to the earring. In these mundane images of every day people, we can almost hear the oddball Crumb snicker. Moreover, this relief from a taboo is evident in the fact that men are now donning earrings. When Crumb has finished his drawing, he gets up and tells the camera that there is music coming from everywhere, negatively commenting on rap music.

Short scenes such as the one described above made Terry Zwigoff's 1994 documentary so fantastic. Zwigoff provides us with glimpses into Crumb's very personal life: his traumatic family life, his marriages, and his deeply personal drawings. While Crumb always provides us with a sense of humor (during his talks with his brother Max who is a severely depressed recluse) both Robert and Max make jokes about Max's situation. Interspersed with these snippets of conversation are comics created by both Max and Robert. We learn that Max was the original cartoonist in the family. While the comics are altogether amusing, there is a certain sense of despondency underneath. The reality of Crumb's family life is very sad. One has to wonder whether Max would have also been a successful cartoonist had he not suffered from depression.

As a whole, I really enjoyed the documentary. Everything from the cinematography to Crumb's family to the many acquaintances Crumb had throughout his life is presented in a very real way. There is no glitzing and glossing; it’s just real. The lighting and the setting are very natural. This was a very effective technique. The documentary is hoping to show the real Crumb and I think it succeeds in many ways.












The above quotation was taken from an interview with R. Crumb: http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1442859,00.html

Conversations With Campbell (in my mind)

It might be telling that The Fate of the Artist caused me think a whole lot of the role of self-indulgence in art. In a lot of ways, I buy many people's response to Campbell as being somewhat obnoxious in his obsession with his own inner workings, but I also hesitate to dismiss this in-toto as a bad thing. Perhaps Campbell is just more honest than many of us artists-- he's willing to admit that he is always the primary subject of his ponderings.

I think it's also worth considering that people who are very eccentric are faced with uncommon dilemmas regarding existence-- they don't see a lot of prototypical examples of their sort of mind during their formative years, and the subsequent feelings of alienation cause them to appear grandiose, when they are actually simply trying to reconcile the self with the other.

As I said in class, I was happiest when Campbell really copped to this experience, as in the dog-hair bit that we discussed at length. At other times, such as in the pseudo-interview with his daughter, I became frustrated. I felt like, in that, he came closer to indulgence and even exploitation that he did to genuine exploration or reconciliation.

I guess the heart of this for me is the question of how two important elements in art can intersect. On the one had, we have the artist's goals, their exploration and their journey. On the other hand we have the reader's experience. There were definitley times when reading The Fate of the Artist where I said to Eddie Campbell, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME". There were other times when I said to him "Oh, you old dog!". Times like that, I got the sense that what was going on on the page had nothing to do with me. Other times, however, I said to Campbell "I know JUST what you mean". At moments, the things he capture about living inside a particular mind are really remarkable. And maybe that's the point. The book is a chronical of his particular mind. Maybe the maximum delight and discovery for the reader comes from reading with openness, and having no expectation. I think that's ok, every once in a while.

Collecting Superhero Dues

There was an article today in the Post addressing the (lack of) readership of comics and the new comics money-snatcher named technology. Hopefully this link will work for everyone without a Post login:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111302003.html?hpid=topnews

Whether subscription services are forward progress for comics or not, the use of "geek" in this article pushes my buttons in a not-so-nice-why-do-you-stereotype kind of way.

City of Campbell

Pretentious or not pretentious, that seems to be the question. In the end, I am left feeling that The Fate of the Artist has an affected air at times, but I am also torn between how much of that supposed pretension is intentional, serving the purpose of the work, and how much is to be attributed to Campbell being full of himself. As far as pretension serving the purpose of the work goes, being that this graphic novel focuses on, as stated in the title, the “fate of the artist,” and artists are often seen and depicted as having an air of superiority, the pretentiousness benefits the piece by supporting in tone (however disagreeable that tone may be to the reader) the subject of the work.

As I already mentioned, I am torn between liking and not liking this book, which is why I waited a day to post, I needed more time to stew in it. After completing the book and two days of discussing it in class, I still don’t have a solid opinion about this graphic novel one way or the other; I am hovering between thinking it is great and not liking it at all because this seems to be one of those works where there is not much middle-ground…you either like it or hate it (as far as was revealed in class). However, it is not just a matter of liking or disliking the work, but rather a question of the overall effectiveness of the work. This work appears so disjointed, constantly shifting from one thing to the next with each turn of the page, that it is hard to feel grounded in the story since it is forever shifting, despite the (at times weak) thread of the investigation into the author’s death. In a way this shifting reflects the role of the artist. This elusiveness of what begins as the storyline and then gives way to other, seemingly unrelated elements, mimics the ‘fate’ of artists as people who exist for their art and, as such, are elusive to a certain extent themselves.

One other thing I wanted to mention briefly, to tie in the title of my post, was that I could not look at Campbell’s crayon image of God without thinking of the similar image in City of Glass. This similarity, though probably not intentional or particularly relevant, became comforting because it served as a point of familiarity in a text that was so different from that which we have read so far; so while not really an academic point, I thought it worth mentioning if just to give a reason for the title of the post.

The End?

For me, the most striking two-page spread in "The Fate of the Artist" was from 58-59, for both visual- and narrative-based reasons. As far as the visuals go, I find the aesthetics fascinating--different from both the "strips" and the watercolor Siegrist scenes, and from most of what comes after. The art in this spread seems to become symbolic of an "answer"--the simple crayon on the one hand, and the rich, slightly abstract watercolor wash on the other. We see it again later, after his conversations with his imaginary friends, on page 82. Here, Campbell recognizes that "all of existence is held together with paper clips and sticky tape," later exclaiming, "Look, Monty. Isn't it wonderful!"(82-83.3). But while this section seems to be "Campbell's" revelation, the spread on 58-59 is ours--we have an answer to what "the fate of the artist" was.

Sort of.

The reader could look at the images and text literally (a risky choice with this text, but still). Campbell is on a flight from Sydney to the States, having just made the flight after forgetting his passport, when the plane crashes and he is washed ashore. His "fate" is that of Crusoe (and Jack, Kate, and Sawyer...). Even taking the scene as allegory (a wiser choice, especially given Campbell's interpretation of O. Henry in the last scene), we are at least given an "answer"--"the artist's journey finishes with him washed ashore on the desert island of his own mental isolation." The artist has been lost in his own work, no longer sure of or familiar with his surroundings. For this reason, I think it could be interesting to consider this the conclusion of Campbell's story, and all that comes after a sort of extended post-script. It opens the question of ordering--when you're dealing with this many threads and fragments and trying to build a story from them, how do you rank them in terms of narrative importance? And what is the difference between the natural ending and the "right" ending?

Comics as Persona

I think one of the most interesting aspects of a nonfiction comic--especially one that is a memoir (or "autobifictionalography", or whatever you want to call it)--is how transparent the form can be. Style obviously comes into play in prose writing, but even at its most recognizable, it can't come close to the expression of personality that can be achieved in comics. The visual aspect of works like Barry's "Demons" and Campbell's "Fate of the Artist" tell us more about the author than prose alone ever could.

Barry, as we've already discussed, captures the creatively eccentric tone that her "Lynda Barry Experience" showcases in "One! Hundred! Demons!". Her offbeat drawing style, quirky lettering choices, and use of collage all speak to a childlike spirit and exuberance for storytelling. The images on each page, working with the text, evoke a sense of Lynda herself--or at least the side of it she has chosen to portray in these stories.

Interestingly enough, it is this same sense of "art as personality" that allows us a glimpse of Eddie Campbell despite his best efforts to excise himself from "Fate of the Artist." Most of us noticed some level of pretension and ego in its conception, also evident in his interviews. However, his stylistic choices also show an artist interested in pushing his medium to the limit, one who is serious about his art and its potential. Though we see Hayley and "Honeybee" and Siegrist, and don't see much of Campbell himself, (until the last scene, really, and even then he is playing O. Henry), his artistic choices show his personality as artist, one that is less constrained in his expression by form than the writers in the "other" sections of the bookstore.

The State of the Artist: O' How They Limbo

In many ways, The Fate of the Artist leaves me confused, unfulfilled, and grasping at straws. Yet, at the same time, I think these reactions help me accept what's at the heart of the novel - that is, that the "artist" lives in an unfulfilled state of confusion that keeps him or her grasping at straws. The sense that Campbell is a perfectionist and inventor who lives life through failure after failure is well established. And as most scenes end on a note of failure, the scenes that end on a slightly uplifting note or that convey sparks of hope in the narrative (for example, the playfulness of the Honeybee strip on 53 or the humor in the monument to chaos on 38-39) become much more powerful in contrast. In this way, the novel progresses to show us how an artist lives in a state of failure that is only sometimes interrupted with small successes.

This portrayal of an artist's state of mind is further explored in scenes that seem to be disjointed from the novel's underlying narrative of Campbell's disappearance. Scenes depicting Mozart or Schobert or Fowler appear for the same the reason that the Honeybee strips are set earlier in the twentieth century and that the last story is an adaptation of O. Henry. Through his appeals to the past, Campbell demonstrates how the artist consistently judges his own work and looks for connectivity and inspiration in standards that predate his or her own work. Campbell asserts that in the act of creating art, the artist inevitably invokes the spirit of art that already exists (an idea that further implies that "original" art doesn't exist). For Campbell, this idea continues further still as he continuously suggests that life is art and art is life (again, the monument to chaos on 38-39 or the preparations for a trip on 55-57). The fate of the artist then, according to Campbell, is entrapment in between the realistic and fictional world.

To make this last point clearly, Campbell takes his character of Eddie Campbell in The Fate of the Artist to exactly where his character must go - to the point of blurring the two worlds of reality and fiction so intensely that Campbell is said to "wander around in a state of despair...[smelling] a distinctive smell that reminds him of a very old book he once owned." (59) Again, it's no accident here that Campbell is reaching to past art for inspiration, and it's certainly no accident that the character's body is then found in a library. But, as Hayley Campbell points out, "he only really started going mad when his imaginary friends stopped calling." (80) The 2 pages following this comment from Campbell's daughter unravel in a very bizarre and chaotic manner: the pages lack form and borders, and the images add up to nothing substantial. Although Campbell's breakdown in the narrative was predictable in many ways, the reader sees Campbell's undoing on the page in a fresh way. And while The Fate of the Artist could have stopped here to make this point resonate, I think Campbell continues on to solidify the chaotic mind of the "artist" in full.

Separation of Campbell and State

For me, it’s very interesting how disorientated I become not only when reading The Fate of the Artist but in perusing interviews of Eddie Campbell, and trying to assemble a coherent message. The more I try to do so, I think the more I’m bound to fail. He’s a bit like a moving target, pontificating a bit on one subject and then heading down a road quickly to something else (and then often doubling back on his own message). For an artistic representation of this confusion (and sense of humor), read his 8-panel comic self-interview about The Fate of the Artist - http://www.powells.com/ink/campbell.html.

Thus, I think overall I come away a bit impressed with the amount of thought, the aura of “ground-breaking” artistic flexibility (and indeed passion) exhibited by Campbell in his book but wanting a lot more clarity (a criticism others have made about Fate). I don’t think that Campbell himself knew what he wanted. In an interview with Tom Spurgeon, http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/interviews/4621/, Campbell refers to Fate as a “colossally elaborate jest” and “postmodernist soup,” and then toward the end of the interview, he even states “What all of this means I leave to somebody else to figure out. I got my brain in enough knots just creating it.”

And the graphic novel controversy? On page 83 of the Comics Journal interview, Campbell fires a general broadside at the “definers” to throw out the riffraff, when they should be discussing: “Does this thing make us wiser, does it make our lives better, would the world be poorer if it disappeared?” and then of course barrels along trying to define the thing, later throwing out his manifesto to the world. He has even come to verbal blows with a fellow cartoonist over the subject, and this naturally has been turned into more comics fare - http://nickigreenberg.blogspot.com/2007/08/smackdown-campbell-vs-greenberg-title.html.

OK, Eddie, I’m going with your idea above because the rest has become a big jumble. I think I’m wiser for your book, I’m not sure it made my life better, and I’m 50/50 on whether the world would be poorer if it disappeared. I guess the tie goes to the cartoonist (whoops ... I mean graphic novelist).

A Graphic Novel?

As a narrative story, I had many issues with "The Fate of the Artist." Aesthetically, I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the first half of the text I thought that the detective story would be the thread that wove the story together. However, by the end of it I discovered I was wrong. The detective story begins by telling us that Eddie Campbell has gone missing and that the narrator is hoping to figure out why. Yet, by the end of the text, we never find anything out. It's as if Campbell (the author) stopped writing or forgot how to compose a story. There is no concrete resolution at the end of the text. The last image of the cartoon "Theatricals" doesn't resolve anything. It's almost as the story walks off the cliff with Richard Siegrist. On the other hand, I did appreciate the humor of the text. Numerous times I found myself laughing out loud. The humor did not however, mask the fact that there was something missing in the narrative.

Perhaps, this relates back to the graphic novel question. It seems to me that Eddie Campbell is stressing the fact that the graphic novel is just a label like fiction, memoir, etc. With labeling comes preconceived notions that are not always correct. Moreover, I think that this idea can explain why some people have had problems with "The Fate of the Artist." I think Eddie Campbell created a work that not only broke the mold of what a graphic novel aught to be, but also tries to break down these notions we may have as to what a graphic novel can or cannot be.

Confronting "The Fate of the Artist"

For all of the previous texts we have read in this class I have been able to pinpoint what exactly I like and dislike about them. However, I am having a difficult time pinpointing what it is about Eddie Campbell's The Fate of the Artist that captivated my attention. As I said in class, the book as a whole made me feel incredibly anxious, but I am not entirely sure why. There is no uniformity to the style, so I never knew what to expect when I turned the page; I could be faced with all text or a Honeybee comic-strip or pictures of Campbell's teenage daughter. Perhaps it was this element of surprise that contributed to my eagerness to finish the book, but it was not a particularly enjoyable read at the time.

Upon finishing The Fate of the Artist I read the interview with Campbell in "The Comics Journal" and my mind was changed completely. I went back over the book and was not consumed with the same anxiety I had the first time around. Obviously, I knew what was going to happen this time so there was no room for surprise, but I think it was the things that Campbell had to say which made me feel more at ease. I personally found him genuinely likable and proud of his contributions to the graphic novel genre. I did not pick up on the same air of pretension that many others in the class did, but instead I found him to be a truly ambitious and dedicated artist. Re-reading the book with this interview in mind made me more aware of the stylistic risks Campbell took and how the lack of structure was more of a personal experiment in form than a mind trick on the reader. Though this is by no means my favorite book we have read thus far, it is probably the one that I most admire.

Eddie Campbell on formal questions

For a link to the various posts on Eddie Campbell's blog where he considers the question of what a graphic novel is (or isn't), click here.

And for a link to a page where Eddie Campbell has sorted his posts on such varied aspects of comics craft as scripts, balloons, composition, inking, coloring, logos, fumetti (i.e., photo comics, like those featuring Hayley Campbell in The Fate of the Artist), and assorted "rules"—click here.

Girlness

In One! Hundred! Demons!, the demon of “girlness” seems to plague Barry throughout. She was not given the opportunity to behave like a “girly girl” as a child; her mother would not let her grow out her hair or buy her Barbie dolls and, as a result, the novel, at least aesthetically, seems to be an explosion of suppressed “girlness.” The scrapbook pages are prime examples of this “girlness.” They are feminine in appearance, composed of flowers, feathers, dots of glitter, etc., and are, in general, pastel in color. The bright colors also serve as a backdrop for all the panels in the novel, thus enhancing the feminine “girly” aspect of the novel. In the penultimate panel of the “Girlness” section, an adult Barry is contemplating buying stationary “that brought back such painful memories I had to put it back. It was too frivolous, too girlish too late” (192.1). This momentary doubt about the stationary is put to rest by “the powerpuff girl” (192.2) and in buying the stationary Barry allows herself, for the first time, to engage positively in an act of girlness, realizing “its never too late for Super Monkey Head and her pals” (192.2). Perhaps this incident allowed Barry to create such an aesthetically girly work in One! Hundred! Demons!

Maybe I'm just playing the devil's advocate here . . . maybe . . .

I fear I may have come off as a bit rigid in my suggestion that Lynda Barry is being equivocal by refusing to place 100 Demons squarely in the realm of either non-fiction or fiction; and I was hoping that my reading of its second half would somehow convince me that there's a point to her decided line straddling . . . but I'm still not buying it.

Maybe it's just that 100 Demons follows so closely on the heels of Maus, which I think we can all safely classify as non-fiction, yet so skilfully uses ironic authetication to question the veracity of the stories that it tells. As Hatfield describes it in "Irony and Self Reflexivity in Autobiographical Comics:

"ironic authetication, then, need not boil down to self-regarding playfulness or mere navel gazing equivocation. On the contrary it may represent a passage through skepticism and anxiety - anxiety at times strong enough to threaten the singularity of self image" (151).

Of course Spiegelman's stakes are set higher than Barry's. In tackling the Holocaust he is portraying the unprotrayable. It is of the utmnost necesity that he validate his account by denying that a valid account is possible. Barry on the other hand gives us one panel in the book's introduction implying the falsity of portions of it by asking, "Is it autobiography if parts of it aren't true?" It's too easy and makes me question then, what the purposes of the made up parts are. Are they only in service to the lofty, universalizing statements she is so fond of making? I'm not saying that's the answer, but if she leaves me guessing as to what parts are fictional that's the sort of answer I'm going to come up with.

We all know that tools from the fiction toolbox must come into play when writing nonfiction. Otherwise it probably wouldn't be very interesting to read. But when too many liberties are taken with the facts, it's time to call a spade a spade. 100 Demons gives us no clue as to where on the spectrum it falls, and though I found it equally, entertaining, poignant, and humorous, ultimately it left me frustrated . . . probably just because I'm more rigid than I like to think.

One Hundred Demons: A Scrap-book?

Scrap-Book: (n) A blank book in which pictures, newspaper cuttings, and the like are pasted for preservation (taken from the OED Online).

I have to admit I fell in love with this book immediately after flipping throughout. The entire layout reminded me of a young girl's scrap-book. I'm reminded of being a young girl and collecting little odds and ends that meant something to me at a particular moment and time. Many of which I still have and often wonder why I even kept. This is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this book. I feel like Lynda Barry's "autobifictionalography" is a collection of these memories from her childhood.

Each chapter begins with a collage of sorts, similar to a messy scrap-book. We see this style immediately in the "Table of Contents." On the first page of this two page spread is the publication information. The main publication information appears to be a wrinkled, torn piece of paper stolen out of an old dewey decimal system pre computers. The other information on the page looks to be taken from various pieces of paper (handwritten or typed) as if they were collected over time and pasted onto the first page. The same goes for the chapter list on the second page. The other graffitti on this page seems to be made from a young girls hand. The scribbles, the awkward script, the check this box game, and the funny looking animal drawings all attest to a young girl decorating her scrap-book. Moreover, there are what appear to be different colored pieces of paper, foil, and even fabric scattered throughout both pages as if a little girl found these lying around her house. We also see the picture (a very important aspect of the scrap-book) of a presumably teenage Lynda leaning against a building. The picture indicates that this will be Lynda's scrap-book, a collection of her memories.

This scrap-bookesque style perseveres throughout "One Hundred Demons." The scrap-book feel begins every chapter. Furtheremore, each chapter can be taken as a picture, a snapshot, or a time in the past complete with a seemingly hand-written caption. This style added a much more personal touch to the graphic "autobifictionalography" novel. In a text such as this, where it is difficult to seperate fact and fiction, the personalized scrap-book style allows for the reader to forget that everything is not true as it seems to a "preservation" of Lynda's memories.

Don't Get Too Emotional

So, after our rousing discussion a few classes ago regarding Mauss II, I've been thinking a lot of late about critique of comics. In general, I find critique of artwork very difficult to parse, because it often blends aesthetic preference and technical examination, without making a whole of disticntion between the two. I must admit I find this troubling, particularly when someone tries to pass the one off as the other. I am pretty accustomed to handling critique of prose, but critique of comics strikes me as much more complicated because not only to you have to deal with text, you also have to deal with visual art, and make sense of the relaionship between the two media.

Since we're on about Lynda Barry these days, I did some research on the web to try and figure out what people have to say her and what it can tell me about comic critique in general. One article I found, published in Melus in 2004 by Linda L. de Jesus, is called "Liminality and Mestiza Conciousness in Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons". Whoa. Ok. de Jesus offers a pretty good, pretty insightful reading of the book (although she leaves the punctuation out of the title which is a bummer). She certainly addresses both the textual and the visual elements of the narrative. I would call her examination balanced, but admiring of Barry's work. At one point she says:

Her deliberately "naive" graphic style complements the brutally honest musings of its young narrator and the often harsh subjects of the strips themselves.

de Jesus is taking a personal aesthetic reaction (to Barry's oft-discussed drawing style) and peer at it through the cannonical lens of theme.

On the other hand we have Ken Chen's Wilson-Center published annotated bibliography of comics, which says that

The tale, which is not dissimilar from a ­heavy-­handed New Yorker short story, caters to the taste of readers who wouldn’t otherwise like comics. While great comic artists, like great painters and filmmakers, enrich their medium with a paradigmatic visual style, Bechdel’s stiff illustrations merely reiterate the text. It’s a comic book with closed-captioning.

Ouch. But again, Chen's critique mixes personal reaction-based aesthetic judgments (her illustrations are "stiff") with more cannon-based comparison and examination (while great comic artists...) It's so interesting that neither of these people, as "scholars" are allowed to come out and totally cop to the huge emotional/aesetic component to their reaction to their respective fodder. I think for me, this is the problem that I have with art critique-- that people make observations in which they temper personal opinion with a dash of critical/cannonical knowledge and then think they can make absolute statements.

In this sense, I much prefer people who are open with the emotional component of a critique. I think it makes for more fodder (as opposed to emptying the discussion of relevance, as many people seem to fear. I think it also allows us to examine of of the most fascinating aspects of reading-- the way that the text interplays with our own personal set of aesthetics, associations and perceptive styles. It acknowledge passion as a critical tool, not a handicap.

One more great quote from a Barry fansite, another end of the "critical" spectrum".

her comics are in a lot of the free weekly papers of major cities, and a lot of ppl say they are "too busy" and "weird" or "ugly", but THEY ARE WRONG! lynda barry is the total god of you!! (www.blairmag.com)

The Overbearingly Genuine Barry

Even though my attention is drawn first to the oversized text in One Hundred Demons, Barry's drawings often allude to what isn't said. One particular image, a depiction of an older Lynda in panel 172.2, makes a connection between her and her mother quite clear (see 173.1). The caption in the first panel reads into this juxtaposition, as well, as it points out that her "response, of course, is the wrong one. I yell at them. Loudly. Repeatedly." Barry doesn't need to say that she disapproves of her upbringing for the reader to understand her feelings towards her mother's repeated reprimands.

But Barry isn't satisfied with this kind of semi-subtle connection. In this particular story of Dogs, Barry then explicitly makes the connection between her treatment of Ooola [the dog] and her mother's treatment of her as a child (for instance, panel 175.2 directly compares Lynda to Ooola saying, "But I also grew up in a violent house.") By the end of the story, the reader has been coralled so deeply into the extended metaphor that he or she falls easily into the last frame - one depicting Lynda, her husband and pets sleeping happily and soundly (180.2). The text in this frame reads, "All she needed was to find the right home. But that's true for all of us, isn't it?"

Yet this mini happy ending doesn't just appear in this story. Almost every story in One Hundred Demons lands on a positive or grateful or, at worst, neutral frame. Where a few last frames beckon for her specific past to reach back to her, Barry uses other last frames to make universal statements like that in Dogs or in Hate, where she's grateful for "the feeling every child craves, the feeling of finally being understood." (84.2) And it's in this universality that Barry's Autobifictionalagraphy shines. While Barry's story structure often is repetitive and overbearing and, dare I say, gimmicky, Barry's method of universalizing her experiences allows the reader to identify with her childhood. Barry is not trying to alienate her reader from her awkward experiences growing up; rather, Barry wants to unify her childhood and her adult-self with the world of her reader. In this way, I uphold Barry not as an elitist or pretentious author obsessed with self, but as a down-to-earth writer who is more concerned with benefitting the reader than telling her life story for self-therapy (a self-therapy that Bechdel largely exhibits in Fun Home). And while it might not need to be said that doilies aren't pretentious, I think it's necessary to point out the overly accessible and genuine attributes of the text.

"Two Questions" & "One Hundred Demons"

I think the conclusion that Lynda Barry reaches at the end of "Two Questions", that she does not need to know exactly what it is that she is doing or whether or not it is good, is illustrated in "One Hundred Demons". Barry is quite frank about the fact that this book is not one hundred percent true, but she did not let this hinder her creative process. If anything, it helped to make the book easier to follow. Instead of attempting to tell her stories in chronological order, she chose to depict them in a seemingly random order which she chose. The stories sometimes end abruptly and there are many things about her life that she only briefly alludes to, but this lack of cohesion enabled her to tell her stories without the pressure of making huge moral statements or points about why she made the decisions she did. She was able to write this book the way she wanted without questioning "if this is good?" or "does this suck?"

The question of Barry's self-loathing was brought up in class on Thursday, and I must say that I do not think she is as unhappy as other people do. She seems rather satisfied with where she is at this point in her life, and is writing about some of her more difficult experiences with a sense of humor instead of regret. While Barry is aware that she may not have always made the correct decisions, I don't think she would have changed anything. Unlike Alison Bechdel, she is not trying to come to terms with the pivotal events in her life, she is just trying to depict them in a creative way. Perhaps it is her honesty concerning the "autobifictionalography" of her work that allows her to write this way.

I personally think "One Hundred Demons" is an excellent book. I found Barry's art to be equally comical and poignant, and was intrigued by how openly she wrote about her life. And, as opposed to "Fun Home", I never found myself questioning which parts of the book were real and which were fiction.

Beware the Aswang!

I’d like to elaborate a little bit on the subject that I brought up in class … that the family “culture” (of a Filipino-American family) that Lynda Barry digs up and then expresses in “100 Demons” allows her a unique frame of reference to look at aspects of her childhood. Granted, it’s only one part of her artistic muse in this book (hypocritical or imaginary Hippie culture being another, an omnipresent “outsider” and “Tomboy” complex, etc.).

But without this, “Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend (i.e. Ira Glass!),” “Dancing,” “Common Scents,” “The Aswang,” and “Girlness,” would either cease to exist, or be of a different form, and I think these are among the more interesting chapters of the book.

I think that a bi-cultural lens is one of the most incisive ways to dig into and gain a new perspective of “what we do” (one could argue that the travel and distance of age is another natural way toward wisdom). “Common Scents” especially seemed to capture this aspect – offering a unique “take” on Barry’s childhood neighborhood and people, the larger cultural instinct to hide the powerful smells of our lives and houses, and how this turns out to be an unnatural and wasteful exercise, for we become inured to our manufactured scent (be it bleach, tangerine air freshener, or fish), regard others’ pervasive odors with scorn, and yet mark our territory in a peculiar way that others are bound to criticize or be affected by.

The grandmother (with her Tagalog swear words) and mother (with her memories of the war) are the main voices of this culture, and are as much an omnipresent figures as Alison Bechdel’s house and literature-obsessed father, helping to push the younger artistic Barry toward childhood experimentations (into San Francisco) and toward other figures (the kindly teacher who gives her space and praise for her drawings). They’re obviously much more verbal in their affectations yet equally caustic as the elder Bechdel, and family discord and bad communication make this another sort of Fun Home without the funereal trappings.

In her own way, I think Barry is seeking a sense of peace with them yet she does find some peace with the smell – in the end of that chapter, she obviously wishes she had a spray can of “Filipino fish and wild food” scent to spray in her room to bring back a sense of comfort.

Skewing It

I've been surprised, in reading Mauss, what a non-issue the whole mouse thing has been for me. When I first found out about mouse as a kid, it seemed so gimmicky, and to be honest, my first reading of it was cursory enough that the gimmickyness stayed with me. This time around, I guess I didn't really notice that the characters were mice past the first ten pages or so. What I do notice (and have trouble with) is the characterization of other peoples as other animals (Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, etc). When I first saw the Pole depicted as pig, I was pretty shocked, and it still makes me feel uncomfortable, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

My feelings hear are harder to express than I thought they might be. Growing up, what was emphasized over and over again was the fact that Jews really worry often a real part of the culture in their home countries. Certainly not so much in Poland as in Germany, but even there, the rudeness of the shock, the perceived rejection by their own countryman, the people they had served with in war and celebratedwith in life, was what stung Jewish folks even before the brutal murder began. I feel like the depiction of the Jews, Germans and Poles as different "species" is incongruous with this historical fact, and that makes me sad.

I kind of wonder on the whole whether it would have been better if Speigleman had just made everybody mice. I guess some folks would say that this not having the different factions be different animals would defeat the purpose of doing it with animals at all, but I don't think this is so. For me, the whole mouse thing is about getting a little bit of distance from a story many of us have heard over and over again. The mouse thing makes it almost the story of the Holocaust, but also something else. This sort of titling or skewing gives us a way into the complexities of a story that is often impenetrable, which I find immensely exciting, particularly as a Jewish kid who has often found herself dissatisfied by the orchestrated blare and hush that defines modern Jewish discourse around this part of our history.

Memory's failings

Hatfield explores in his chapter "Irony and Self-Reflexivity in Autobiographical Comics" how effective Spiegelman is at pointing out the problems with memory. The best representation of this is shaped by the metaphor of Anja's papers. We learn at the end of the first book that Vladek destroyed all of her pictures and diaries when he was having a particularly difficult day. "Did you ever READ any of them?... Can you remember what she wrote?" asks Art. "No, I looked in, but I don't remember... only I know that she said, 'I wish my son, when he grows up, he will be interested by this.'" Vladek replies, his honesty about Anja's wishes and his actions doing nothing to assuage Art's rage--"God DAMN you! You-you murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing!!" (159.3-4).

The silence created by the absence of these papers causes Art clear distress. This feeling remains an undercurrent to the text as Vladek's health worsens and Art fights to get the rest of his story recorded. We can see simultaneously the desperation to capture memory--and with it, the stories of our loved ones--and the realization that it is ultimately impossible. Vladek seems to have accepted this, and in turn dismissed Anja's papers (and with them, their metaphorical value). He attempts to put Art's mind at ease in one scene, saying "But, before I forget-I put here a box what you'll be happy to see. I thought I lost it, but you see how I saved!" Art, the bold-faced text in his speech bubble showing his excitement, replies, "Mom's diaries?!" "No, no!" Vladek says. "On those it's no more to speak. Those it's gone, finished!" (113.5-7). Vladek is willing to share his own story with Art despite some misgivings, but now that Anja is gone, he seems to be saying, her memories are too.

Even his own memories are qualified, not only through Art's continual self-examination, but in several scenes where they go against "documented" stories. "You heard about the gas. But I'm telling not rumors, but only what really I saw" (69.8), he tells Art at one point. At another, when Art asks him about the orchestras at the gate of Auschwitz, Vladek replies, "No, I remember only marching, not any orchestras..." "It's very well documented," Art says, almost defensively. "No. At the gate I heard only guards shouting" (54.3-4). It is scenes like these and images such as the destroyed diaries that make "Maus" such an excellent representation of nonfiction comics, and that capture so vividly the bittersweet and temporary nature of memory.

Art's Harsh Words

We mentioned briefly in the last class that the last panel of Maus Part I is altogether shocking. After telling us of the horrors Vladek experienced (prior to entering Auschwitz), Art calls his father a "murderer." The statement is so horrific that it resonated with me even after closing the graphic novel. I was appalled at Art's reaction to his father burning Anja's diaries. Vladek explains "These papers had too many memories. So I burned them" (panel 1, p.159). Two panels later, Art screams at his father, yelling "God Damn You! You - You Murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing!!" (p.159). Yet, we understand why Vladek burned the diaries. As he explains, the memories were just too painful. His wife committed suicide. After surviving the horrific events of the Holocaust, she could not survive everyday life. Or maybe the memories of the Holocaust were just too painful for her. There is an anger and a hatred in Art's words as he leaves his father. It is altogether shocking, for lack of a better world, that Art would respond to his father in such a way.

While this seems uncharacteristic of Art (yes, he does often times have a short temper with his father, but this statement is over the top), it is not. This resentment towards his father continues into Part II. Chapter 1, "Mauchwitz." presents us with another disturbing view of Art. During his car ride, he explains to his wife Francoise that he has yet to understand the dynamic between himself and his father. However, the following panels are the most startling. He states, "When I was a kid I used to think about which of my parents I'd let the Nazis take to the ovens if I could only save one of them ... usually I saved my mother. Do you think that's normal?" (panels 7-8 p.14). It is through this graphic novel that Art is trying to figure out why he saved his mother and not his father. More importantly, "Maus" is providing Art with the opportunity to understand his father. His harsh reactions don't seem so out of place in this first chapter. It is easier to understnad that his outburst are out of confusion, not out of hatred. He does not yet understand why these memories are so painful for his father.

While it is obvious that Anja spoiled Art, we can not really call Vladek a bad father. Quite the opposite. As an outsider, it is easy to assess that Vladek's miserly tendencies, his overbearing personality, and neediness, are more for Art's benefit. Vladek is trying to forge a close relationship with Art; to enable him to have the life and happiness that Vladek never did.

Chapter 2, Maus II

For me, one of the most impressive chapters of the “Maus” series is Chapter 2, Part II. I think most of the power and artistry of “Maus” is on display in this chapter – the “inside-outside” dynamic of Vladek’s story and the struggle between father and son, Art Spiegelman’s own conflict in producing this story, and the effective mix of narrative and artwork.

Of course, you get a real sense of foreboding heading into this chapter with the title (“Auschwitz (time flies)”), the disturbing picture of the mice in flames, and the flies spread here and there outside the frame of the picture, but Spiegelman goes somewhere very different when he begins the chapter with a frank discussion of his own struggles with his writing, the publicity and questions generated by his first book, and critical forays into therapy. He also starts the chapter hidden behind the mask of his own creation, caught in his own world, fighting off the flies swarming about him.

As the narrative continues, you can see Spiegelman literally shrink in size, before he rises up to the task, gaining enough from his mice-masked therapist to head back into the story. Chapter 2 concerns itself with many of the details of the struggle to stay alive, the compromises and deals Vladek makes along the way in an attempt to keep in touch with Anja, and even one of more interesting conflicts of the story, where Art and Vladek have a back and forth over the Auschwitz orchestra (the artwork here frames this conflict nicely, with the phalanx of prisoners showing the orchestra, and then hiding it when the father disputes its existence).

The final details of the chapter are all too powerful, as they focus in on the “cremo building,” and the burning of bodies, which brings us full circle to the title page, and what we’ve been building up to for the length of the book, a steady gaze into the blackness. But there’s a last touch here that I found very interesting – after Vladek has gone to bed and Art and Francoise are on the porch, the author attempts one more level, literally and figuratively killing the flies on the porch (a disturbing reminder of the Zyklon B pesticide that we’ve just read about) but also putting to rest any last doubts that this story will be completed. Spiegelman has slain the last dragon of doubt in his mind, it seems, and will bring the rest of this story forth into the world.

Characterization in Maus

One aspect of Maus that really stood out to me was how minimalistic Spiegelman's characters are. The faces of the "mice" are practically indistinguishable, yet I never had a problem figuring out who any of the characters were. Witek brings this point up in his article, saying that "Spiegelman performs subtle wonders of characterization and expression using only two dots for eyes and two lines for eyebrows, and the unobtrusive quality of his drawing is one of its strengths." I agree with this completely, and cannot help but notice that this was not the case in his earlier renderings of "Maus", and was one of the many improvements he made in his final version. For me, the main way I could tell the difference between characters was their posturing. For instance, in his flashbacks Vladek has a very confident and composed posture. Though he is not always the tallest person in the scene, it often seems as though he is. This is also the case for the present day scenes with his son. Art is usually slouching and has an extremely agitated posture, and Vladek's remains calm.

I'm sure Spiegelman had many reasons for making his characters so similar. Perhaps he wanted to further emphasize that the Holocaust affected so many people, not just the ones in this story. Or maybe he felt that giving them certain distinguishing characteristics would make them too cartoonish, as is the case in his original renderings of these characters. However, I think that Spiegelman's main point was for the reader to focus on the story and not the people in it. It is very easy to get hung up on the visual aspects of characters, especially in a story that features a lot of them. But more often than not, this can lead to confusion, i.e., in Heartbreak Soup. By stripping his characters of all physical differences and having their distinguishing traits be reflexive of their personalities Spiegelman has forced his reader's attention to the more important elements of the story.

Borders that Bleed

Witek cites the insert of “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” as proof that “Speigelman’s visual style [in Maus] is a narrative choice, as constitutive of meaning as the words of the story.” (Witek, 100) But before Speigelman presents this juxtaposition, he has already made a distinct stylistic impression on the reader; the background of panels, in particular, draw the reader’s attention away from the mice and place emphasis more on the scene that surrounds the mice. That is, Speigelman busies and details the environment in which his mouse father lives to create a more realistic setting. Speigelman’s attention to shading (solid, stripes, checkered, flowers, polka dots, etc.) grounds the Maus world in the physical and adds believability, ultimately encouraging the reader’s identification with the mice as people.

And, as Speigelman capitalizes on a reader’s ability to suspend his or her disbelief more easily in a realistic setting, it’s worth zooming in on other instances where the background disappears. Many panels that depict Vladek on the treadmill as he tells Art a story provide a full image of Art’s “old” room (for instance, 12.2 or 23.4). But many other panels break outside the borders altogether when depicting Art and Vladek in the old room. In the first chapter alone, panels 14.2-3, 15.1, 17.1, 20.1, 23.1 and 23.6 break borders and defy Speigelman’s shading rhythm. This switch from background to no background is mirrored in chapter 2 in scenes of Art and Vladek at the kitchen table (for instance, 26.1 versus 40.8), and, in fact, progresses consistently throughout every chapter in Maus. In this way, the present tense of Art and Vladek is the only form that can transcend borders or, as Speigelman says, step outside the “neat little boxes.” (Witek 101) Yet the allowance for Art and Valdek’s transcendence of borders doesn’t stop here. In other instances, the present tense of Art and Vladek appear to cross into the Holocaust story (45.1 and 115.6 are good examples) to further disrupt the already disjointed narrative of the past. As Speigelman stylistically and subtly suggests (if there ever is any question of how Vladek has changed) that the present holds a stronger version of his father, he gives the present an advantage that the past doesn’t readily possess.

This stylistic approach of Speigelman is so effective in establishing power, that the image of the large rat (147.7) and the bleed of the Nazi truck and concentration camp (157.1 and 157.4) becomes more jarring and effectual. These remain the only two times in Maus that Speigelman shifts the power from the present tense to the past. The last panel in Maus, then, is worth scrutinizing under this same scope. Art leaves the novel and, in many ways, transcends the borders of the last page as if it was the only page in the novel. The borders on page 159 intentionally encompass him and his father, and Art's breaking of the boxes in the last panel implies a new transcendence and shift in power in Art and Vladek's relationship.

Fictional Parents...

To backtrack slightly, there was something from Fun Home that I wanted to post on briefly:

One of the most interesting lines to me from the whole of Fun Home is when Bechdel is describing her parents and says, “I employ these allusions of James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms” (67.1). This line appears above a panel depicting an ordinary mundane family scene: Alison and her mother are cooking (with the ever present “Sunbeam Bread” on the counter), her brother is leaning against the wall, and her father has just come home. Perhaps, for her parents, this ordinary scene of domesticity was a fiction. Her father obviously lived a “double-life” of sorts and her mother seems to be trapped by her family obligations. There always seems to be a sense of regret surrounding her mother of a life not lived. Her involvement in the local theatre and playing the piano seem to be the last vestiges of her former life and ambitions. Bechdel describes her mother’s appearance in a passport photograph, saying that her “luminous face has gone dull” (72.4) as compared with the younger, freer woman she was in the passport photo on the previous page, 71.1. She even describes her mother at that time through the lens of a fictional character, Isabel Archer from James’s The Portrait of a Lady, and describes the reason her mother stayed with her father as the same reason that Isabel stayed with Gilbert: “[b]ut too good for her own good, Isabel remains with Gilbert / … and despite all her youthful hopes to the contrary, ends up ‘ground in the very mill of the conventional’” (72.2-3). Relying on fiction as a way to relate to her own family serves to reinforce the sense of separation and “cool aesthetic distance” (67.2) Bechdel describes to the reader. At one point she even describes her household as being “like an artists’ colony. We ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate pursuits. And in this isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion” (134.3). The only way left for Bechdel to relate to her family seemed to be through art.