This guy.
So I went to the Haarlem Stripdagen today, the first time in twelve years I actually managed to go to a comics con. It was great, a nice sunny, got a lot of neat comics and the cherry on the cake was getting a sketch by Joost Swarte, who just has a nice retrospective collection of his work out. I didn’t know he was going to be there, so that was a happy surprise. I’ll see if I can scan it in tomorrow.
Tom Spurgeon recommends the comics adaptation of Jack Vance’s short story The Moon Moth
This has to be the oddest stand-alone science fiction comic I’ve read in years. While I can’t tell yet how good it is, it was certainly memorable and I encourage those of you that like such things — and as much as the new science fiction-oriented Image stuff is on everyone’s minds I’m thinking that’s a lot of you — pick this one up and take a look. Jack Vance has an almost Kirby-sized issue with neglect in terms of his influence and the ubiquity of his approach.
Interesting to compare Vance to Kirby, where I can sort of see what Tom means as both were incredibly influential on their own terms and somewhat neglected now, though I do think Vance does not quite have the stature in science fiction that Kirby has in comics, if only because the field is more contested. The true difference between the two is of course that Vance got to keep the copyright and trademarks for all his stories and Kirby could not, which means that we did get a fan driven Vance Integral Edition, but not a Kirby equivalent.
In the eighties Dutch cartoonist Theo van den Boogaard became popular all over Europe with his Sjef van Oekel comic, a classic clear line gag strip subverted by an anarchistic, scatalogical sense of humour. I talked about him last year, when there was an exhibition of his cartoons and architectural drawings in the Amsterdam City Archives. While Sjef van Oekel, despite its anarchistic undertones was a thoroughly commercial comic, van den Boogaard had actually made his reputation in the seventies as part of Holland’s underground scene, with a series of highly personal comics, of which De Ideograaf is one.
The plot is simple: van den Boogaard, fed up with all the hassle of going from idea to comic, invents a “simple extension of the lie detector” to skip all that tedious writing and penciling and inking and skip directly from the ideas in his head to the finished comic. Van den Boogaard then muses on what this invention would mean for society as a whole, as everybody, not just cartoonists, but other artists as well will be able to realise their ideas perfectly.
What’s great about this is the execution. Van den Boogaard draws in a lighthearted, big footed, big nosed, super exaggerated style, with no panel borders and lots of page filling images as well as several huge two page spreads. I would’ve included such a spread, was it not that my scanner was too small for it; i think the two examples above and below of van den Boogaard’s art give enough of a picture in any case. It’s all incredibly groovy, somewhat reminiscent of e.g. Harvey Kurtzmann or some of the great underground caricaturists (Crumb in his more playful moods, or a Howard Cruse), but also of Franquin.
It’s also very meta; the first quarter of the story has van den Boogaard blowing off steam about the slow production of the very comic it appears in, and throughout he keeps up this knowning wink. Unlike most attempts at being meta it doesn’t come off as forced, as he’s smart enough to trust the reader, doesn’t hit you over the head with it.
To make a long story short, The Ideograaf is one of those rare comics that makes you happy reading it, both for the art and the story as it’s so damn joyfull. A shame it’s out of print when van den Boogaard’s more cynical commercial offerings are still widely available.
Got a new blog, or “Tumblr” as the kids call it these days, for all those throwaway comics links I can’t do much with here. Y’all might be interested. Or not.
Apart from that, it’s too hot to blog or do anything but obsessively play Football Manager.
I don’t care about the shitty way Marvel treated Jack Kirby, all I want is to enjoy my Avengers movie and anybody who cares about how the big comic companies treat their creative talent is a cynical meanie.
No, really. Here’s a direct quote if you don’t believe me:
But I am a grown ass man, and I can tell you this: the real world does not operate like the morality plays we see acted out on the silver screen in movies like “The Avengers.” Life can not be summed up by “that’s not fair.” It’s not as simple as “Give Jack’s estate some money, Marvel. You can afford it.” That’s not pragmatic thinking. That’s cynicism. And I’m so tired of the cynicism.
Here we have a manchild deeply offended that he is forced to think about the moral implications of his favourite entertainment. He’s neither the first, nor the last fanboy to feel this way and his arguments, as shown up by the Mighty Mighty Godking are the same tired old excuses fanboys have always been dredging up: it’s all in the past, it’s the way the world works, Kirby wasn’t actually all that important, he signed a contract, etc. etc.
More so perhaps than any other art form commercial comics have always depended on screwing over the people actually creating the stories, with every attempt by these creators to gain a modicum of fair treatment quashed, either by the companies themselves or by fan indifference. Kurtz’s argument fits in neatly with this shameful tradition, another confirmation that for most fans it’s more important whether or a Captain America or Thor are done justice in a movie than whether their creators were.