Archie...Archie Andrews, where are you?

It has been a source of surprise to me to see how little this comics magazine is ever discussed along with other high art comics. It is as popular among Indian readers as readers in its native land. So many of us have grown up with it and it has influenced our thinking in so many ways.

Archie Comics Digest Magazines.

Why have Archie comics been overlooked as one of the colossus of the comics medium? Like Agatha Christie is to novels, I am almost certain that these magazines sold more than any of the more famous of the medium. And particularly for us in India, I feel that they have been crucial to moulding us into receptacles of the language of comics.

The visual medium came to me before I could understand the words and stories. I didn’t read them, but yet I read them through their unique visual language. These old tattered issues, probably bought second hand, worth their weight in gold to a pip like me, were addictive. Stories upon stories about absolutely lovable characters, with names that were alien (for the longest time I called Reggie with a ‘g’ as in ‘guy’ and not a ‘g’ as in ‘rage’) but with lives that we understood every part of and dilemmas we could foresee and yet waited for.

I was lucky enough, recently, to find some issues of the Archie Americana series, that I’d always seen advertised in the mags, but since I didn’t live in the US or Canada, was barred from ordering. These are collections of vintage stories that have been collected decade-wise as, as the name implies, cultural memorabilia of the American 20th century.

These are great collections since, for one, each story is like a history lesson in the development of the Archie family, and secondly, they are journeys in culture. Each decade is distinct, each have different illustrators and different outfits and different languages and different hairstyles and different pop phenomena and on and on.

And what I realized is that like everything else America does, these comics have influenced us. Do not ask me to justify such a statement, but when I watch a movie (American) about two people (Americans) speaking, and understand why one finds it funny when the other uses the slang “Neat” to describe someone attractive (“It went out at the turn of the century I think”). It isn’t important, but it’s there.

So hula hoops, and beatniks and pencil skirts and puffy hair, these are all collected as representative iconography of the decade as depicted in that decade’s volume. Archie comics, being a regular publication magazine, had enough inspiration from the times and incorporated them all into the teenage lives of the characters. But they also adapted these more so than the daily comic strips, which remained isolated from the outside world, and whose clothes or furniture never changed. And if you think that this is just philandering to foreign cultures, please look at Indian movies of the same eras and see the closeness of cultural influences in the cinema and the comics. People doing the twist to music played on LP’s can be a page from one story. Stories of our parents’ times of hippies in cities can be from another. Archie comics were just my portal to understanding this.

The whole jingbang of cultural melees has a lot to do with their popular depictions that travel across the globe, easily palatable. It is a testament to the power of the comics medium that a trade magazine, with no pretensions of being cultural markers, is one of the greatest ambassadors of the American Dream/Way to those who have little, if ever, actually otherwise thought about it.

Peachy keen, I say.

Tonight's Feature Presentation is ...

What is it that makes for poor screen adaptations of books, in general, and comic books, in particular?

I have watched bits and pieces of some comic book based movies over the last few days, and though this sentiment arose in me, yet the answer wasn’t as immediate. The films that formed a part of this survey were ‘Watchmen’, ‘The Spirit’, ‘The Hulk II’ and ‘The Fantastic Four II’.

The first was good, but missing something. The second was just an aberration of the original into the director’s schema. The third and forth were simply Hollywood money-spinners. But none of them appealed to me and I was left with a feeling that somewhere the original cartoons were several notches higher. Another two such cases are ‘Transformers’ and the soon to arrive ‘GI Joe’. Let me admit, that I am keeping a very flexible line between comics and cartoons, it’s like how movies have a director of photography.

Apart from the plain fact that most movie directors cannot share the writer’s vision of the comic/cartoon (and honestly, book adaptations of movies are as weak) there was another realization that was more critical.

Adaptations of characters that are too ‘unreal’ or ‘cartoony’ are doomed to fail. Ta dah!

Compare what works and what doesn’t – Batman, and the Hulk. Batman has always been rooted in the human world, and the recent movies have gone all out to promote that fact, and have the audiences hooked. But the Hulk is now a total CGI disaster, and that just doesn’t click. Even the Bat’s nemesis the Joker has been given a reality check, with runny makeup instead of para-natural pallor and verdant hues. He’s like some manic-depressive John Dillinger. But the Silver Surfer looks like a shop window mannequin and Galactus seems a joke. And it is not that the CGI was bad, or the make up was poor. Like idioms of one language are often untranslatable into another, such is with the comics/cartoons medium and films.

Another obvious reason, and one that is linked with this, is that the differing reality concepts of the two worlds means that even actors often cannot convincingly portray their roles. So within the first ten minutes of the Watchmen movie you have the Comedian being pound to a pulp, pausing to utter: “It’s a joke. It’s all just a joke.” And in those circumstances, I couldn’t agree more.

But this is fatalistic, is it not. Does this mean that no comic/cartoon can ever be made into a movie? Are the twain never to meet? No, not at all. There are so many examples of movies that have done exceedingly well, not just at the box office but also as faithful adaptations. ‘Spiderman’. ‘Sin City’. ‘300’. ‘X-Men’. But, what makes these click? Honestly, if I knew, I’d be a rich man. But to the best of my knowledge these are movies that reconcile themselves with some notions of reality as we know it, and this in turn makes the portrayal more convincing and acceptable. Somewhere the directors have understood the original, with respect, and have spun a story that uses the powers of both media. Some changes have been made for the better, like the story of Spiderman’s origin in the movie, and of his web slinging ability (the former is made more plausible and the latter less so). But somehow the changes lock into place with little clicking sounds and the machine rolls.

But, one thing’s for damn sure, directors and producers, please go easy on the unnecessary CGI.

Enter Sandman

Speaking of brothers and sisters (on today’s day), I though it would be nice to take a look at a recent family of brothers and sisters that has permeated into the collective comics consciousness like a tour de force. Although they aren’t very widely known here yet, but many might still have heard of the series in which they appear.

Sandman.

I was introduced to this comic by friends who were lucky enough to study a short course on comics, and the unanimously accepted importance of this series was enough reason to plunge in. And I saw its face, and I am a believer.

Written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by many excellent artists, it is a series that has won more awards than any other, and has elevated the potential of the medium several notches. It mixes mythology with horror, thrills with philosophy, and innocent belief with the greatest questions about life and death. And it’s a page-turner.

The central character is, of course, Morpheus, the Lord of the Dreaming, or the Sandman in popular legend. He is one of the seven Endless ones (mythology) who are beyond time, beyond fate, greater even than Gods. And I love the alliterative names – Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium (in reducing order of age), and they are represented as brothers and sisters, each with a beautiful personality.

That this is a series that needs to be carefully peeled, patiently uncovered and thoughtfully understood is a given. Its total length far exceeds any novel and its scope in vast. It originally begun as a monthly magazine running from 1989 to 1996, and has been compiled into a 10 volume set by Vertigo. It is available in India, but at great cost. Initially it was more of a horror generic, like the Tales from the Crypt. But in the writer’s mind it started to grow into an epic. Individual stories started to interlink, characters started to repeat, stories began to be revisited. In a way it is fortunate to find the compiled editions, because it would otherwise not have been possible for one to follow through all of it.

One wonders how to tackle such a vast story as the Sandman’s. It is bigger than even 10 posts, surely. But as and when I discover something I must share, I will. But until then suggestions on what to write about are invited.