Hectór Germán Oesterheld's (and others) Ernie Pike

In 1961 Argentinian comics writer and publisher Héctor Germán Oesterheld sold his publishing house, Editorial Frontera. He suffered serious economical difficulties since the end of 1959. That's why, trying to minimize his debts, he sold Hugo Pratt's original pages in his possession. Retaliating Hugo Pratt published their stories in Europe without acknowledging Oesterheld's co-authorship.

I'm saying this not as some sort of gossip (Buenos Aires Babylon, or something...). I'm saying this because comics critics in Europe never acknowledge Hugo Pratt's debt to Oesterheld's writing mastery. If their excuse is ignorance because they never saw the writer's name in Sgt. Kirk, Ticonderoga, Ernie Pike, it's a weak one because critics should know what they're talking about.

Franco Fossati in the Spanish mag Bang! # 9 (1973), for instance, is clearly operating in bad faith: in an article about Hugo Pratt, Oesterheld's name appears once, in a list, among many other names (talking about Ernie Pike - the name comes from American war correspondent Ernie Pyle, the face is Oesterheld's - he says that Pratt "was inspired by a friend's face to create Pike's"). Fortunately Spaniard editors read Argentinian mag Dibujantes # 21 and added a note or two restoring the truth.

Closer to us in time it's not possible to feign ignorance: there's simply too much information circling around and Héctor Germán Oesterheld is the creator of adults' comics in the restrict field (the comics milieu, I mean). Not that he intended to do so. In his mag Hora Cero Semanal's cover, he stated: "Historietas para mayores de 14 años" (comics for people over 14 years old). What happened was that he worked a lot. Some of his stories are just average, but when they're good, they're very good. Here's what Oesterheld wrote on Hora Cero Semanal # 1's back cover (September 4, 1957; my translation):

"LET'S DEFEND COMICS

There are bad comics when they're badly done only.

Denying comics all together, condemning them as a whole, is as irrational as denying cinema all together because there are bad films. Or condemning literature because there are bad books.

There are, unfortunately in a huge ratio, lots of bad comics. But these don't disqualify the good ones. On the contrary, by comparison, they should underline their quality.

We believe that our comics are good comics. By good comics we mean strong comics, comics that are stout and cheerful at the same time, violent and human. Comics that grab the reader with fair, reliable, means. Comics that baffle the reader because they're new, because they're original, because they're modern, they belong to the present day, they may even belong to the future.

FRONTERA and HORA CERO are proof enough of what we're saying: the readers know it because they chose our stuff.

With HORA CERO SEMANAL we believe that we've outdone ourselves: we are sure that we assembled quality comics in a way that's hardly repeatable.

It's with legitimate publishers' pride that we bring to you HORA CERO SEMANAL knowing that it is a new valuable addition to our magazines which, turning their backs to cheaper, inferior, imported stuff, open their pages to Argentinian stuff. Said stuff (someone has to say it sometime) conquered, without protection or help of any kind, a dignified place among the best stuff done in the world.

To the readers, to the publishers of good comics, our sincerest regards.

EDITORIAL FRONTERA"

I don't suppose that Dominique Petifaux is ignorant when he makes this outrageous allegation in Casterman's tome 1 of the series, 2003 (I may be wrong though; my translation): "Silence is a very important theme in Ernie Pike. When we know those long mute sequences in Hugo Pratt's oeuvre, it's easy to guess that those panels without words were created by the draughtsman who wanted to counterbalance the beautiful, but long dialogues - and sometimes useless captions - written by the scriptwriter. If the silence after Mozart is still Mozart, silence after Oesterheld is Pratt." To be fair, he wrote the word "guess" somewhere in his diatribe. But guess work is incredibly unprofessional for a so-called critic. The truth is that Hugo Pratt is a sacred cow and Oesterheld is no one outside of Argentina. Videla's thugs killed this great master, European critics killed his memory and usurped his rightful place in comics history.

Image:

Sgt. Kirk page written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Hugo Pratt. Where are those long dialogues and useless captions? By the way: even the name "Corto" (yes, as in "Corto Maltese)" was used first in Sgt. Kirk by Oesterheld.

What's a Comics Fake? - Coda

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Images:

1. a "Mort Cinder" page (by two South American greats: Argentinian writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Uruguaian artist Alberto Breccia) as it was published in Misterix magazine # 749 (March 22, 1963); verdict: genuine;

2. the same page as it was reprinted in Mort Cinder (Colihue edition, 1997): the logo disappeared and, in order to fill the blank, a "brilliant" editor decided to blow up a detail from the page's first panel; verdict: fake;

3. said page as reprinted in Mort Cinder's Planeta DeAgostini's edition (2002): the logo remained, but it's a different one; the hand lettering was substituted by computer fonts (god knows why); verdict: fake;

4. another "Mort Cinder" page as printed in Misterix # 719 (August 24, 1962): verdict: genuine;

5. the same page as it was reprinted in the aforementioned Colihue edition: many reprints disrespect page layouts (don't let me start on colors), this is just one example among thousands; notice also how the editor butchered panel two (editors also used to pay hacks in order for them to add details in drawings if the panel was too small to fit the new hyperframe); the last "panel" is another blow up; verdict: fake.

What's a Comics Fake?

In Languages of Art (1976 [1968]) Nelson Goodman states: "Let us speak of a work of art as autographic if and only if the distinction between original and forgery of it is significant; or better, if and only if even the most exact duplication of it does not thereby count as genuine." (113) [...] "an art seems to be allographic just insofar as it is amenable to notation" [...] "Amenability to notation depends upon a precedent practice that develops only if works of the art in question are commonly either ephemeral or not producible by one person." (121, 122)

Thus: painting and sculpture are autographic (one-stage, perennial, not amenable to notation), music and literature are allographic (two-stage, ephemeral - the former, I mean -, amenable to notation).

What about comics, then?...

Reading Goodman's book a bit too fast, people tend to say (comparing comics to literature) that comics are allographic. See, here, line 44, if I'm not mistaken (I'll discuss Carrier's book at another occasion):

http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/by_brandl/carrier.html

(Does all this seem to be going in a "discussing the sex of angels" kind of direction, again? Maybe, but, please, bear with me, I'm heading someplace, I promise...)

That said, autographic arts are fakeable, allographic arts aren't: "There is no such thing as a forgery of Gray's Elegy. Any accurate copy of the text of a poem or novel is as much the original work as any other." (114)

Does Nelson Goodman speak about comics in his book? Of course not: no philosopher, or any other thinker, for that matter, even remotely remembers that comics do exist (they may cite culinary or puppetry, but comics are never mentioned). He scrutinized printmaking though: "The etcher [...] makes a plate from which impressions are then taken on paper. These prints are the end-products; and although they may differ appreciably from one another, all are instances of the original work. But even the most exact copy produced otherwise than by printing from that plate counts not as an original but as an imitation or forgery." [...] "not all one-stage arts are autographic and not all autographic arts are one-stage." (114, 115)

This means that comics, instead of being allographic (unfakeable), being reproduced from original art, are, like printmaking, a two-stage autographic art form. Words in comics (lettering), being part of the original art (even if they're a notation), are, in my humble opinion, autographic too. (If you don't agree, you may say with Nelson Goodman: "The architect's papers are a curious mixture." (218); for you, then, comics are a curious mixture...)

Anyway, besides lettering, there's no doubt that comics and printmaking aren't exactly the same art forms (even if the former may be reproduced using the latter; It also seems to me that printmaking is a technique: the real art form is drawing - or photography...). Comics are rarely printed in the exact same size as the original art; if comics are autographic which is the right published size, then?, the first one, ever? Are Peter Maresca's Little Nemo books the real deal being all the other editions just fakes?, it doesn't matter because huge or small they all came from the same original piece of art? And what about a repro of a repro?, are comics an n-stage art form or is the first edition the only authentic one? What about translations?, are these faked comics too? What about the cover?, does a reprint have to duplicate it (even if the publisher is a different one, with a different logo)? What about the printing technique?, do old genuine comics have to be reprinted using old machinery?

I think that the drawing, original color (when it exists), page layout, lettering, are autographic features; print size doesn't matter, comics are an n-stage art form and translations are faked comics (traduttore tradittore and all that...) albeit acceptable ones. Other elements, covers included, are paratextual. Newer printing techniques are OK if they photographically reproduce the images, but they cease do be kosher if they alter or renew the original work. (I don't intend to answer these questions in a definitive way, though; arbitrariness rears its ugly head again?)

All of the above autographic characteristics of comics have been subverted by publishers. Their lack of respect for the artists' work (artists were many times viewed as just hacks) or the readers' right to buy the real thing put the comics industry in the dubious honor of being the hugest purveyor of faked goods on the face of the earth.

Images:

Graham Rawle is a UK writer who did Woman's World (2005) using around fourty thousand collaged mag fragments: autographic literature?: the book's cover; two interior pages; the artist at work.

PS Graham's website: http://www.grahamrawle.com/

PPS Some generalizations above about intellectuals and publishers are slightly exaggerated for comic effect...

Jacques Callot's Les Miseres et les malheurs de la guerre - Coda

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Images:

1. self-portrait as a war correspondent in The Siege of Breda (1628. detail; a couple of "miseres de la guerre" can already be seen in the background);

2. The Fair at Imprunetta near Florence, Italy (1622);

3. A humorous caprice (c. 1617);

4. scene # 4 of Les Miseres: "Their brutal spirit prompts them to thefts in the wayside inn, which they cover with the fine name of booty. These disturbers of the peace deliberately quarrel in order to avoid paying their host, and even steal his pots and pans. When they have been properly primed with food and drink, they become prone to help themselves to other people's property.";

5. scene # 11: "These damned, infamous robbers, hanging like miserable fruit from the tree, prove in the end that horrible crime and evil purpose is itself an instrument of shame and vengeance, and that it is the destiny of vicious men to undergo sooner or later divine justice." (a similar scene happened in Kirscheidt a year later, in 1634; the Swedish army hanged the population);

6. scene # 17: "When the soldiers have committed so much damage, their enemies the peasants finally ambush them and kill them, stripping them to their shirts. Thus they revenge themselves on these miserable men for their lost property, for which the soldiers alone are to blame." (All translations: David Kunzle.)

Jacques Callot's Les Miseres et les malheurs de la guerre

The year: 1633. The Thirty Years War was raging on. Jacques Callot was the right man to report it.
One of the first reporter-artists (if not the first one) Jacques Callot did many engraving cycles. The first one was Thirty Views of Rome, done a couple of years after he arrived in said city. Many more reportages would follow (Caprices of Various Figures, 1617, The Gypsies, 1621, Gobbi [Hunchbacks: these were Callot's shot at caricature drawing], 1622, The Siege of Breda, 1628). The latter is an impressive cycle of six huge prints recounting the events in a double-tiered strip. Other sieges would follow (Isle of Ré and La Rochelle, 1629 - 31).

Here's a site dedicated to Jacques Callot:

http://www.jacquescallot.com/

Baroque art was protean enough to favor sequentiality. If we add Caravaggio's Realism to the mix we get Jacques Callot's great Les Miseres et les malheurs de la guerre. Callot's drawings were incredibly complex, his lines were supple. His biggest prints, like The Fair at Imprunetta (1622) deny Scott McCloud's assertion that "there's no such thing as a sequence of one!" (Understanding Comics, 20). If the viewer gets lost in all the little, and yet, perfectly clear details, time and space are abolished as separate entities.
Callot's version of war in Les Miseres is not the usual glorification of the winners (in that case it would have been a mediocre piece of propaganda). The exception is the last scene, in which king Louis is incensed. Known once as La vita del soldato Callot narrates the enlistment of the troops and the battle but also what happened afterwards, when mercenaries plundered the war-ravaged region. Civilians were murdereded and raped, but Callot also shows us how they get their revenge killing the brutal soldiers. Punishment abounds: by hanging (Callot's most famous image is "The Hangman's Tree"), by firing-squad, by fire, with a wheel. After the war is over, maimed beggars seek help in front of an hospital. Some "children of the god Mars" even die in the streets. In the end, the true villain is war. Or, what's the same thing, the hubris and greed of a few...

You may see the Miseres, here (repros are far from great though):

http://www.jacquescallot.com/miseres.html

Image:

from the Various Figures series (c. 1617): Callot shows an Italian peddler selling his prints.

Ana Hatherly's O Escritor - Coda

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1. in the inside / outside game language is here outside the writer: as Roland Barthes put it in The Death of the Author: "For him [Stéphane Mallarmé], for us too, it is language which speaks, not the author;"

2. society creates meaning: "the prepotency of knowledge, knowledge that's multiple blindness;" (Ana Hatherly);

3. the writer's loneliness (original art): "(the writer who cries tears of ink)" (Ana Hatherly);

4. graffiti inspired painting, 2001: "My work begins with writing - I am a writer who drifts into the visual arts through experimenting with the word... My work also begins with painting - I am a painter who drifts towards literature through an awareness of the ties that unite all the arts, particularly in our society." (Ana Hatherly; translation Mick Greer; other Ana Hatherly quotes, my translation.)

Ana Hatherly's O Escritor

Here's how Ana Hatherly presented O Escritor [The Writer], a difficult visual text, to it's readers (my translation):

"O Escritor is a narrative in 27 phases. Each image is a pictogram, a photogram frozen on the page whose meaning is set in movement by reading. Reading is always multiple because, to the illusion of seeing, we add the illusion of reading. All pictograms are also cryptograms.

The history of imagination is also the history of imagination's vocabulary which implies what Coleridge called "the voluntary suspension of disbelief."

Between the author and the reader an accompliceship is created: possessed by a common code they decode each other.

That's how they institutionalize themselves.

The author and the reader are systematic explorers - the author presents the paths' map and the reader walks along them, but his wandering is freely conditioned.

The author creates the path of the experiment and walks ahead first, but when he publishes it, he betrays it, he changes it, that's how the experiment surpasses him.

It's at that instant that it acquires the value of a document because, referring to him, it also refers to itself: the publication is the summation of a series of acts, which, in themselves, also refer to a multitude of coexistences. If, to the author, the publication is the final phase, to the work it's the first one. So, the publication of his experience is as documental as the interpretation that the readers will perform.

O Escritor simultaneously documents a path and its petrification in the text, the way in which text gains autonomy, the way in which the former disappears into the latter: the way in which the writer substitutes talking for writing, his higher, more ambiguous, voice.

That's how different degrees of text legibility turn into a challenge to the construction of meaning.

The reader becomes a witness who testifies, acting in that historical process.

O Escritor, done between 1967 and 1972, may be particularly idiosyncratic of a difficult phase in which some Portuguese writers of the authoress' generation suffered discouragement and disbelief. Revolt and repulsion compelled them to continue, but, at the same time, mined their work. In that regard, it's also a necessary representation of a prolonged state of repression.

A. H., January, 1975."

The "prolonged state of repression" Ana Hatherly talks about is the Fascist régime that existed in Portugal from 1926 to 1974. It's interesting how this text is already influenced by post-structuralism: author and reader are possessed by the code instead of possessing it. On the other hand there's also present a major 20th century theme that Derrida inherited from modernism: the impossibility of communication.

Ana Hatherly wrote another text in which, contradicting a bit the above statement, she explains the book (adding that hers is just one of many possible readings). It would be fastidious to transcribe it here though. Let's just say that her themes are: the text and the writer; the fight between the writer and institutionalized culture (repression, as she put it above).

The last text in O Escritor (my translation):

"words fall on the writer's face like curtains of water that close over the horrified face of the poet the poet is inside in the inside or else he's outside the symbol falls over the uncovered face the face of discovery I sit down in my little glass box that is the page that isolates me and exposes me the words of the poet appear go up go down above all they are born exasperating the slowness of my hand writing all this unreadable because I write the act of writing the experience of expressing it without expressing I mean trying a thousand writings descend from where they descend they spring from unreadability laws on one side laws on another side everywhere there are laws to transgress."

Image:

O Escritor's last page: Caslon Neoclassical typography symbolizes the institutionalization of culture. This is highly appropriate because Neoclassicism is one the state's preferred architectural styles. In the end Ana Hatherly fights a conundrum (a lost fight): either she accepts the norm or she falls into incommunication. There's no meaning outside commonly accepted rules. There's no meaning outside the system.