Captivant de Chaland Cornillon Por Paulo Pereira

Comparto três grandes interesses com Paulo Pereira: a história da arte, o xadrez, a banda desenhada. No século passado (há uma vida) Paulo Pereira era crítico de banda desenhada no jornal Expresso (por estranho que possa parecer já houve crítica da citada no dito cujo). Não comparto grande coisa com os seus gostos convencionais franco-belgas, mas o pouco que dele reli parece-me arguto e verdadeiramente crítico. Só a título de exemplo, e de homenagem, reproduzo (com muitas desculpas pelo formato algo, ou muito, estranho) um dos seus melhores textos. 

Uma das características mais irritantes da crítica tradicional de banda desenhada (praticada por bedófilos) é a completa falta de sentido crítico. Tintin é racista? Nunca! Astérix é xenófobo? Nem pensar! "O Caminho do Oriente" é propaganda fascista e revela orientalismo? Que ideia! Etc... Ora acontece que se bem que en passant Paulo Pereira  diz que a banda desenhada infantil que os bedófilos tanto presam era colonialista (e extremamente racista, acrescento eu). Para além disso Paulo Pereira é certeiro ao apelidar o "modo" que descreve como desconstrução pós-moderna. Bravo! 

Eis, portanto, um verdadeiro crítico de banda deesenhada português há quase três décadas. Não tinham havido muitos antes, não houve muitos depois...

Paulo Pereira, Expresso, A Revista, 19 de Dezembro de 1987.

PS Marcos Farrajota lembra-me que Sara Figueiredo Costa escreve no Expresso. É bem lembrado e penitencio-me por não fazer a ressalva, mas a crítica de banda desenhada é tão esporádica no dito jornal que, espero, a Sara me perdoará o esquecimento. Aliás, o meu comentário não quis dizer "há quem escreva, mas sem qualidade". O meu comentário quis mesmo dizer "ninguém escreve porque a política editorial não está p'rái virada".

Du9's Interview With FRMK's Yvan Alagbé and Thierry van Hasselt

Yvan Alagbé, Nègres jaunes et autres créatures imaginaires [yellow blacks and other imaginary creatures], FRMK, February 2012.

You can read here (in French) a very important interview by Du9's Xavier Guilbert with two of the FRMK publishing house most important pillars: Amok's Yvan Alagbé and Fréon's Thierry van Hasselt. The FRMK or the Frémok is the result of the merging of two previous artists co-ops (no publisher would ever dare to publish what they publish because comics publishers are mercenaries), the aforementioned Fréon and Amok.

The main reason why I find this interview very important is because it touches in a couple of points that are crucial to explain why comics are not an art form among all the others. Namely the reason why comics lack intelligent readers and what are the limits of what we may call comics or not.

One of the obvious reasons why this art form is what it is in the public's view is because comics lack a critical voice in the media. In spite of what you may hear from more optimistic folks this continues to be true. Either those optimists are just that, optimists, or they lack critical standards. I said it before on this blog: let's take the city where the FRMK is based: Brussels. I know that even a city like London, for instance, is Disneyfied to cater to tourists (dumbing down, anyone?). Brussels is no exception except that Disneyland is not the inspiration. They use the Belgian history of children's commercial comics underlining the idea that comics are just meant for an idiotic consumption and not, like literature or painting, capable of serious work exploring adult themes. Whenever comics critics celebrate the new Astérix book (this one is French, I know...) a new nail is sealing this art form's coffin. 

What's Wrong With American Newspaper Comics? Coda

David Wright, Illustrators # 2, 2012.

My last post ended thus:

So, what's wrong with newspaper comics, you may ask? It's a commercial medium that must both entertain and sell paper(s). In spite of their straitjackets some great comic strip artists did remarkable work once in a blue moon, I'm not denying that, but from the moment that 99 % of what they did isn't that good they're overrated in The Crib's book.
"Matt Marriott" by James Edgar and Tony Weare excepted, of course, but "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" are Brit realistic newspaper series. And those are a different animal altogether. It's a shame that no one ever noticed the difference.

That's not exactly true. Roger Clark, at least, knew the difference.

Here's what he has to say about "Carol Day" (Illustrators # 2, "My Affair With Carol Day," 39, 40):

What I found [in the "Carol Day," comic strip] was: 

● Tightly plotted stories set in the real, recognizable world 

● 3-dimensional, often psychologically troubled, characters with dysfunctional family relationships 

● An absence of easy answers and happy, tidy endings 

● Minor touches that add a great deal to the texture of the strip, for example the surprisingly blunt observations of characters about each other, particularly Carol. Another example is Wright's habit of casting people from his family and daily life or the movies as characters for example his son Nicky as Ian Carr in 'Ebb-Tide', and Burl Ives in 'Caribbean Captives'. 

● The universe of 'Carol Day' is not a benign one. Most situations don't resolve happily for everyone or even most people. Carol doesn't smile and laugh a lot-in fact it's so rare that when you encounter an episode in which Carol expresses joy it immediately stands out. Most characters have serious psychological problems and dysfunctional families. Difficult relationships between siblings are the norm. Treachery abounds. Jealousy, greed and self-interest drive many situations. In short Carol Day doesn't live in a neat and tidy soap opera bubble where problems get worked out, relationships get back on track, the evil get punished and the good rewarded.

Roger adds:

The somewhat dark universe of 'Carol Day' stands in stark contrast to the major American strips of the time, such as Leonard Starr's 'On Stage', Stan Drake's 'Heart of Juliet Jones', or John Prentice's 'Rip Kirby'.

Yup!

It's official: I will only fully believe that comics publishers deserve my respect when a complete Carol Day collection sees the light of day (no pun intended).

The sad reality is that in any other art form "Carol Day" would be considered and admired as the master piece that it is. Not among comics readers, though, because they're still attached to children's comics such as The Fantastic Four or "Dan Dare" (to stay in the UK). If they present their laughable children's canon to "normal" readers instead of the truly great comics like "Carol Day" how can they support their mantra "comics are not just for kids anymore"? It's a small wonder that they can't, obviously.

Visit Roger's Carol Day site and buy the ebooks.

A stunning bit of storytelling by David Wright, below:

David Wright, "Carol Day: Where There's a Will," December 1959. Notice how Michael flows in the reading sense in the first panel in contrast to a worried Carol in the third panel and how that changes completely afterwards until disaster occurs. Michael is already off-balance at the beginning (the composition is tilted), but the left to right direction helps the slippery slope in the second panel. David Wright, like his friend Tony Weare, was a master of chiaroscuro (conveyed by hatching, cross-hatching, thick blacks, negative space and white paint). Here the ghastly weather at night is perfectly conveyed. Peter Richardson also calls our attention to: "Wright's sublime use of silent panels to add to the already oppressive atmosphere." (Illustrators # 2, "A Brush With Fitzrovia," 31.) 

What's Wrong With American Newspaper Comics?

Hal Foster, "Prince Valiant" Sunday page (panel), April 22, 1951. Hal Foster was a great landscape artist, but that's all... Notice also the great coloring job.

A couple of posts at The Crib have been, lately, about how American newspaper comics have been and should be reprinted. The coloring was the main focus of my attention, so, no Fantagraphics' Peanuts (because the Sundays are reproduced in black & white) or IDW's Dick Tracy reprints (ditto).

It all began with Fanta's Prince Valiant, to continue with a couple of Gasoline Alley editions.

Yes, but, what's my critical opinion of these series, you may ask? Where does The Crib critically stand re. both series in particular and American newspaper comics in general?

OK, The Crib´s header is part of a Krazy Kat panel by George Herriman and that must mean something, I guess...

I can't deny that I like Krazy Kat as much or almost as much as the next guy... I can understand why some people may consider it the best comic strip of all time (cf. also Fanta's list a while back). To the heirs of the French auteur theory Krazy Kat is the perfect comic. As comics qua comics it certainly has inventive language and page layout. Also, Herriman's highly artificial painted backdrop desert is visually gorgeous.

And yet... I can't stop feeling that something is missing. Sure, I like the naive main character and some poetic moments a lot, but is this enough? Not for yours truly. Something visceral is missing; something utterly realistic about the human condition. Something brutally adult.

Same with Gasoline Alley (some Sunday pages where Walt and Skeezix just walk around are wonderful, but nothing really harsh happens to the cardboard characters) and Prince Valiant (with its great landscapes, but also with it's adventurous vacuous melodrama and kitschy family life).

So, what's wrong with newspaper comics, you may ask? It's a commercial medium that must both entertain and sell paper(s). In spite of their straitjackets some great comic strip artists did remarkable work once in a blue moon, I'm not denying that, but from the moment that 99 % of what they did isn't that good they're overrated in The Crib's book.

"Matt Marriott" by James Edgar and Tony Weare excepted, of course, but "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" are Brit realistic newspaper series. And those are a different animal altogether. It's a shame that no one ever noticed the difference.

Frank King, "Gasoline Alley" daily strip, January 18, 1929. Racist imagery is a real problem in old newspaper comics. 

David A. Beronä

Davis A, Beronä

The Crib is in  mourning yet again. David Beronä, the comics scholar who dedicated his whole attention to wordless novels, passed away. Here's how he presented himself on his site: 

In addition to my professional duties as the Dean of Library and Academic Support at Plymouth State University, I have  researched the history of wordless books and woodcut novels, referred by Scott McCloud as "missing links" in the development of comics. In Wordless Books, I have narrowed my focus on the works of Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward[,] Otto Nuckel, Helena Bochoraková-Dittrichová, William Gropper, Milt Gross, Myron Waldman, e. o. plauen, Istvan Szegedi [...] Szutz, Giacomo Patri, amd Laurence Hyde. The themes in these wordless books show a powerful relevance to our world today, the significance of wordless stories, and the growing importance of visual narratives in all cultures.

The Coloring of the Prince Valiant Series Published By Fantagraphics - A Coda of Sorts

Frank King and Chris Ware (c and d), Sundays With Walt and Skeezix ["Gasoline Alley"], Sunday Press, 2007 [1921 - 1934].

After my last post I thought a lot about newspaper comics reprint coloring. According to my (Nelson Goodman's) theory, recoloring is out of the question, but being "amenable to notation" (it was Kim Thompson who called my attention to the fact that color guides are indeed notations) colors may be remade from scratch if the guide is respected. On the other hand colors may be autographic if color proofs are used (as in Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant edition) or fac-similes of printed pages are made.

Anyway, I think that, thankfully, the days of recoloring (usually with appalling results) are over and most reprint collections today respect the original color. 

Are they all equally successful, though? That's another problem entirely...

The most (only?) important text about these matters was written by Zavier Cabarga in his intro to Gasoline Alley The Complete Sundays, volume 1 (Dark Horse, 2014). Here are three quotes with some comments by yours truly:

Typically in old newspaper comics the color registration [...] was pitiful and the ink saturation weak.

I remember a time when I liked the out of register colors. This may be linked to the modernist idea that artists should show their process, but it's more likely that I wanted to see fallible human hands behind the machinery. I like imperfections. I may admire the craft involved in folk art, but it's the naivete that I find appealing. Anyway, all this has nothing to do with coloring... As for the weak saturation, I rather prefer it because it respects the drawings. Highly saturated or highly shaded colors provoke a muddiness and a visual heaviness that I find unappealing as we have seen in my last post. Thankfully I don't need to deal in this post with that scourge of recoloring: computer generated gradients!...

[In color proofs] the hues are usually very dark.

Hear! Hear! I absolutely agree (again, as we have seen in my last post). Below we can see Zavier Cabarga's laborious process (that's what Paul Baresh should have done, but didn't!).

Frank King as restored by Zavier Cabarga, header for the July 10, 1921 Sunday page. Gasoline Alley, The Complete Sundays, 1920 - 1922 volume 1, Dark Horse, March 2014. 

CMYK process inks are crass and unappealing. In old comics, the colors were richer, more somber, more elegant, such as Prussian blue or deep turquoise, vermilion orange-red or burnt sienna [sic], and golden yellow or ochre. In my restorations I have tried to retain these wonderful old-time colors.

Indeed! In the Dark Horse Gasoline Alley edition yellow may be wheat and red may be amaranth or crimson, for instance, which is great, but there are three minor problems in my humble opinion: 1) the paper is glossy which is a no no in my book (fortunately it's not bright white, but magnolia); 2) in spite of what Zavier Cabarga says above some hues are still too dark (this may be the printer's fault though); 3) the drawing is always reproduced in a thick black which, paradoxically, may be distracting if there's a certain amount of it as in Walt's pants (see below).

Frank King, October 9, 1921 Sunday page (Dark Horse). Sunday Press' edition avoids the problem because Walt's pants are light onyx instead of a very dark pastel green.

Sunday Press. My scanner darkened the original black. Notice the light yellow in the tree canopy. As I found out during my research old newspaper colorists preferred it to other, more aggressive, yellow variations.

Frank King, August 29, 1926 Sunday page, Sunday Press.

The gray above is a shadow. Being a thick black it would simply be a blot.

Don't get me wrong though, as I said, this is me clearly nitpicking. 

My favorite Gasoline Alley reprint is Peter Maresca's Sunday Press wonderful (wonderfully standard sized - Dark Horse's, by the way, is tabloid) Sundays With Walt and Skeezix (see above). It's a fac-simile project reproducing the original newspaper pages in their glorious colors (huge dots and all). It's very similar to an old Drawn & Quarterly reprint (see below). The matte paper color of the Sunday Press edition is absolutely perfect (not so their Little Nemo's which is a bit too deep).

Frank King, November 28, 1926 Sunday page, Drawn & Quarterly volume 3, May 2000.

Sunday Press.

The whole page in Drawn & Quarterly volume 3. It was published four times smaller than the newspaper standard size.

Drawn & Quarterly's also has the same problems (to me), with glossy paper and thick black, as the Dark Horse edition, but it's a pioneering effort with wonderful results. Being smaller though, Walt's trousers don't jump at us (so to speak) as much...

Chris Ware's pastiche colors in the cover of the Sunday Press book above are great (I don't like the electric yellow though), but lack the dots diminishing the contrast between the 25%, 50%, 100% areas and turning everything a lot more impersonal and dull (as he usually does). On the other hand the fac-simile colors and drawing lines aren't as sharp sometimes, but.nothing's perfect...

Note: many thanks to Manuel Caldas for our conversation about comics coloring during last week!

The Coloring of the Prince Valiant Series Published By Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics blew their own horn in 2011 (or... Kim Thompson did; I miss you terribly, Kim!) praising their new Prince Valiant reprint collection. Kim gave a "special tip of the sword" back then to Paul Baresh who retouched/corrected the old color proofs donated by Foster to Syracuse University and used (Fanta deserves all the credit for it) for the first time in this reprint collection. Unfortunately, I can't say that I agree with Kim (we rarely agreed on anything, by the way, but I respected his intelligence and everything that he did for comics)...

I don't want to put Manuel Caldas' (in Spanish) shoes on, of course! He's, after all, the foremost authority in all Valiant and Foster related things (him and Brian M. Kane, I guess). If you don't read Spanish, I'll just sum up his opinion saying that Manuel thought that Fantagraphics used the best possible material to do a definitive Prince Valiant edition, but didn't. Among other things he mentioned the small size of the books and how poorly the material was scanned (by Syracuse U., it seems, not by Fanta) blurring the art. In his own Cerebus TV, Dave Sim says more or less the same thing while comparing the reprinted pages with old newspaper pages. 

That's what I'll do below too adding what, to me, is the biggest problem in these reprints: color saturation.  

Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 726, January 7, 1951 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 8, Fantagraphics, January 2014 (r).

As you can see above the colors are a lot less saturated on the newspaper page. The result is a lot lighter; so, the drawing isn't blurred and overwhelmed by the coloring. (The out of register red on the character's lips is another story.) 

Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 504, October 6, 1946 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 5, Fantagraphics, April 2012 (r).

In the example above we can see how Prince Valiant's cape became a formless blot. Notice also how some lines blurred and bleed until becoming (or almost becoming) black surfaces (the stick on the left, the shadows on the snow).

Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 1016, July 29, 1956 (l); the same panel as published in Prince Valiant # 10, Fantagraphics, January 2015 (r).

The example above is the more telling of the three, methinks. The Fanta panel is so heavy that the drawing details disappear almost completely under the saturated color.

Hal Foster (et al), "Prince Valiant" Sunday page # 470, February 2, 1946 as published in Prince Valiant # 5, Fantagraphics, April 2012 (l) and Tarzan # 6, NBM, 1994 (r).

I'm comparing above the Fanta edition with a page published in one of the Tarzan volumes published by NBM. Do I need to say more?

All in all, it's a shame that Kim Thompson didn't accept Manuel Caldas' offer to work in this collection. With a little increase in size it would definitely be the definitive Prince Valiant reprint. No doubt about it.