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January 10, 2001
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Comic Relief
| Cat and Mouse |
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In the two-volume work, Maus, cartoonist Art Spiegelman told the story of his parents' struggle and survival against the Nazis in a comic book format. In Spiegelman's world, Jews were depicted as mice and Germans as cats. The book grew out a series of interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father, Vladek, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the book, the elder Spiegelman's story is presented through a series of flashbacks as the account moves between present-day Queens, New York, and 1930s and '40s Poland. By varying panel size, adding balloonless or "silent" panels, and shifting angles, Spiegelman brought a rich emotional depth to his work. Spiegelman explained in a 1992 interview in The Fish Rap Live! that Maus filled two needs. First, he realized that people wanted comics to tell a story, and he "had to find a story worth telling." The second need was "the most central need for me," continues Spiegelman, "of trying to make sense of my own personal past." He commented that working on Maus was a "process of trying to understand, trying to understand myself and trying to understand other things, and my medium for understanding is comics."
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The first real American superheroes debuted on the pages of comic books in the late 1930s and 1940s, a period now referred to as the "Golden Age" of comics. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America fought crime, pursued adventure, and emerged as larger-than-life icons. But not all comics deal with fantasy. How can a subject presented in a comic book be taken seriously?
Maus was published to critical acclaim in 1986 (volume 2 appeared in 1991), made it to the bestseller list, and earned Spiegelman a special Pulitzer Prize for his unique effort. But booksellers had difficulty classifying the books as fiction or nonfiction because of the unusual presentation of the content. (Most chose nonfiction.)
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| Little Boxes |
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Ware's perception about his own medium is that the pictures convey the message. In a CNN interview in October, Ware said that "the pictures tell the story...comics are the visual equivalent of poetry. You're using imagery, in a limited space." Drawn in Ware's small, meticulous squares and rectangles, the book weaves together stories from four generations of Corrigans to provide clues to Jimmy's lonely existence. Some scenes in the book are lifted from Ware's own unhappy childhood. During that time, he was picked on in school but found that his artistic talents impressed people. Ware spent seven years researching, drawing, and writing the book. To ensure accuracy in the details, he scrutinized photographs and historical and architectural drawings. Ware's distinctive artistic style and lettering harks back to the late 1800s, an era that Ware prefers for its skilled workmanship.
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Spiegelman isn't the only artist to draw on an emotional family situation to tell a story through comics. Cartoonist Chris Ware recently published Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, a 380-page comic narrative chronicling Ware's fictional hero. Ware admitted to being directly influenced by Maus in an interview for Pantheon Books. He "decided to try and do comics that had a truly 'serious' tone to them" by going beyond "just cool drawings and spaceships." He drew cartoons and a comic strip during his college years, and it was during that time he was approached (by Art Spiegelman) to draw for the well-known alternative comic book, RAW.
| A New Genre |
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Almost 60 years ago cartoonist Will Eisner suggested combining comic book-style stories with serious themes. By appealing to an adult audience and tapping into a range of emotions, Eisner believed he could give more credibility to a medium that was geared to teenage boys. Eisner's A Contract with God wasn't published until 1978. The work consisted of four loosely connected stories that addressed such issues as poverty, immigration, and tenement life in 1930s New York, presented in a comic book format. Working class and urban characters not usually featured on comic book pages moved through Eisner's stories, adding to the sense of realism for the reader. It was touted as "the first graphic novel." In "The Spirit," which ran from 1940 to 1952, Eisner drew the first non-superhero: a comic book hero who was an ordinary person, one without super powers, special costume, or vehicle. Not only was that revolutionary during the Golden Age, but Eisner developed techniques that went beyond the balloons and panels of traditional comic book art (or "sequential art"). For example, by mixing the sizes of panels on the page, Eisner suggested action or established a mood. He also presented the story from varying perspectives and angles (similar to using different camera angles in a movie). And he was the first to change backgrounds, lettering, and logos. Eisner added a seriousness to the industry of comic book making when he established the first "comic art shop," a studio where publishers could contract to have stories written and illustrated (in much the same way that today's movie producer contracts with George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic to develop special effects). The industry's highest awards, bestowed annually to artists, writers, and creators of comics, are named for Eisner.
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