INTERSECTION

Sounds Objects Words Pictures

A literary journal deconstructing each age at a time

Inside: an article on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art

Two distinctions lie at the heart of ‘Understanding Comics’. The first establishes that comics are an autonomous artistic medium with a history that can be traced back to the ancients who populated two continents — one in the pre-Columbian Americas and the other in North Africa.

McCloud finds artefacts in these times that accord with a definition of what he means by comics. He presents this definition by using panels, strips, gutters, frames, images (both written and pictorial) which he suggests are the necessary materials used to make comics.

The definition is as follows: Com-ics (kom’iks) n. plural in form, used with a singular verb. 1 Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

The first distinction finds its rhythm when McCloud concedes ‘in most cases, this is the only definition we’re likely to need.’ (McCloud, 1994, page 9) This pragmatic assertion captures a sentiment that will feature throughout the text. Comics address a viewer. Other modes of comprehension, like reading or speaking, are not excluded but the primary mode of communication is visual.

The second distinction revolves around the way that comics use juxtaposed sequences of images to convey meaning. For McCloud, comics use juxtaposition in unique ways. He is keen to elaborate on the ways in which meaning is constructed when two images (the basic unit of a comic) are put next to one another. If the first image shows a human wearing a hat on their head, the story of this character has been established. There is a character who resembles something like what we understand a human to be because they have a head, a pair of eyes, one arm extended from a shoulder, holding the brim of a hat.

At this point, when we observe this image we can see that what is before us is a picture. There is enough infor- mation for us to grasp what this picture is saying. See below the primary image that McCloud uses frequently to communicate this idea.

The primary image can be seen in the first column, on the left hand side of the frame. McCloud is at pains to explain that if we find ourselves situated in this panel then the sort of aesthetic experience available to us is akin to looking at static visual image in an art gallery.

We are all familiar with this sort of experience in Western Art. For example, you might go to The Louvre in Paris and look at Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Mona Lisa. The rest of your days in Paris might involve looking at other portraits, such as those of the Dutch masters.

For McCloud, the world of comics begins when a secondary image occupies a juxtaposed place next to first one. Importantly, dramatic action has brought about a change from one image to the next.

In the picture of the human wearing a hat, we can see that the human in the second picture has lifted their hat and a discernible difference is apparent with respect to the subject’s eyes.

That is, their gaze now looks down. A host of meanings can be drawn from the literal differences between image one and two. We might infer that the change in the gaze of the human is suggestive of a greeting.

If words were in attendance, a speech bubble might contain the phrasing of a common greeting, such as ‘Good, Morning.’

The body of McCloud’s treatise can be seen as a survey of western art from which he sets up critical aesthet- ic tensions most notebly between the desire to represent reality of say a human face in such a way that the resemeblance of what we know is an artistic representation of a thing from the reality is so close that we might struggle to tell the difference between the real object and the depicted one.

The diffferences might be so minor that we would have to resort to extranaous information like the fact we know we are walking around The Louvre and looking at the Mona Lisa because there’s an ornate picture frame surrounding the painting and there is a sign that says Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, 1503.

If, using the sequence above, we say that the realism being sought here is located on the left hand side of the plane, then over on the right is the same image, let’s say a human face of Mona Lisa, but on this occasion the depicted image shows Mona Lisa’s hair in garrish pink and a dishevelled face shows the entitled Mona Lisa After an Eight Days Blast, 1999.

The depicted picture has been distored by two instruments of Iconoclasm; amplification and simplification. The hair can be said to be an amplification and the idea of Mona Lisa’s party life catching up on her is simplification.

The triangular schemata takes shape with the introdcution of the third axis — abstraction. Tracing the ruptures brought about revolutionary art movements like Cubism, McCloud speaks of the ways in which abstraction afforded artists a point of departure from the dichotomy between language and meaning.

For comics artists the same liberating effect occured. Art Speigelman in his series Maus fused naturalism and iconoclasim — the concepts governing the primary and secondary axes — with an overarching surrealism. This move toward abstraction allows Speigelman to represent the unspeakable haunting that paralyses his father — an Auschwitz survivor. While iconic imagery is used to depict the various generic characters of the story — pigs represent Polish collaborators, mice Jewish people and cats sadistic Nazis — natural humanistic dialogue between the father and narrator engenders the sort of authenticity required if an artist is drawn to subjects like the Holocaust, that is, when the the term Auschwitz is used, this place is to be understood by the viewer that it is real; there is no fiction to

the term. Surrealsim permits Speigelman to explore the absurdity of inter-generational trauma or the state sanctioned racism with out falling into gratuity or sentimentality.

McCloud’s project or ambition is realised when he concludes that the subordinate position that comics has occupied for too long is not reflective of the history comics has created for itself. He is keen to suggest that comics does not need to be seen as a derivative of other art forms, like painting, literature, drama, film. Rather, if these are seen as whole and their functional mediums thought in the following terms by which each of them communicate aesthetic meaning in the following fashion, such as:

Painting uses 2 dimensional images; Literature — words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters; Poetry — words in lines and stanzas; Drama — speaking, space and performance; Film — moving images with sound; Musics — patterns of sound; then,

Comix uses juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence.

A short story: Owl and Pico

by David Norman

Owl glanced the hallway as Pico stumbled right. He’d left his quarters gliding one hand from ear to nozzle, then scalp and his other hand held a cigarette and the flumes trailed his gait.

Owl took the chance to gauge his countenance before deciding on which mood he might perform during coffee.

He had a range of moods, as did Pico. Their relationship had a few dimensions. Naturally, they were companions and fellow residents.

Pico, as Owl referred to him as, opened a sitting room curtain and stubbed his cigarette on the window sill ashtray. The light entered gently as clouds assembled for morning.

Owl threw out a chat and Pico gave a grumble to his exhaling breath. Owl didn’t take this greeting too seriously. It wasn’t the sort of sign that would alter his morning. He also knew that Pico would be contemplating similar sorts of thoughts about how he would perform the morning routine that began with coffee.

Apart from some attendant expletives, Pico referred to Owl as Owl. Owl’s manners meant he didn’t resort to petty put downs or expletives. His barbs came in the form of tricks or deceptions, like shifting commonly placed items or situating himself in lofty corners or cliffs.

Owl took advantage of the fact that he could fly and Pico could not. Pico could throw, lash out a hand, but couldn’t fly. As Pico went about making coffee, Owl reflected on the night’s events. One of the rules established between the two was that Owl could come and go from the apartment as he pleased.

This happened through a vent where Pico had removed the fan, so Owl could survey not only night time in the apart- ment, but also Paris as he wished.