My Blog Will Hit The Bigtime

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Thank you to all those who made it possible

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The Lost and Found of Comics' Innocence

It’s been a fruitful few days that has thrown up so much to think about. Life is good. I attended my first comics talk at the British Council on the 12^th, Woodrow Phoenix and Sarnath Banerjee. I read a valuable essay by art historian EH Gombrich. And I acquired my own copy of the invaluable work on comics by Scott McCloud. I will discuss each of these and more in individual posts. And, oh, I got new copies of Nagraj comics that I thought was gone for good. Quite a jackpot!

But I wish to start with the most important of these, my meeting with two very important figures in the contemporary comics world – Woodrow Phoenix and Sarnath Banerjee. I was already familiar with Banerjee’s work and managed to get him to sign my copies of his books, Corridor and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers. Phoenix was a revelation for me, I am sorry to say that I wasn’t aware of his work before that day.

I was late by half an hour, and yet enough was thrown up to make this a very productive event for me, indeed. The most important question thrown up was when Phoenix mentioned the tendency for today’s so called graphic novelists and (their readers) to disregard the culture of children’s comics. Why is there a tendency for writers-artists to move away from the children’s form towards more mature definitions? It is children’s comics that create the language and vocabulary in the minds of new readers and keep rejuvenating the medium for new generations of readers. That is true indeed. There is always a tendency to move away from childhood in all aspects of life. That is why comics have suffered versus the literature of written texts, and now even within this medium there seems the (unavoidable?) shift to more serious texts in order to be taken seriously. Is that really such a good thing?

I also liked Phoenix’s example of television to explain the meaning of comics as a medium. I reconstruct it for those of you who might want to know: Imagine if television only showed sports. Eventually people would think that all that a television is is a sports show, nothing more. And to take it further, eventually people would think television is something which is nothing but a sports show, while a magazine might be the way to know about books. The problem is that when we restrict the diversification of something, it comes to be known as whatever it is limited to. So comics is not just an Archie story, nor is it only meant for a certain demographic of readers, as was the general feeling. And nor is it a genre of entertainment but a medium, a form.

I just pray that more such events happen in Delhi soon. I promise to keep all of you informed of any such through this blog, and expect the same in return. An hour spent with figures actually working in the field is priceless.

No Funny Business, This – Spiegelman’s take on humour

Who’d have thought laughter had such scope for theorizing. “But theorize or perish”, as all foolhardy people say.

So that’s how it is with Art Spiegelman. When you reach his stage of penetration and possession of one’s art, then you try and add to the art’s longevity by adding to its understanding. When you’ve taught your dog all the tricks, then you are left with nothing but to sit and talk to it.

Before I go into the specific interest I have in something he has to say, let me first advise you to read a book of his called ‘Breakdowns’. It is now available in India, and surprisingly cheap at that (Rs 499, distributed by Penguin India) (believe me that’s cheap, and original, printed price is ₤20, or Rs 1600) (and it’s a large hardcover).

The book, trippy ride through S’s hammering, blasting, and piercing of the medium of comics, or ‘sequential art’. Reading this book is like watching a Bunuel movie, nothing is as we expect it to be. So the same frame is repeated with minor/major variations just to experience a range of reactions to essentially the same framework: different ways of seeing/saying the same thing.

But the section that is most enlightening is a graphic lecture “Cracking Jokes: A brief enquiry into various aspects of humour”. It is an enquiry into the definition and application of joke theory. And the most significant point he makes is that jokes, however refined, is a form of aggression. Do you agree?

I am swayed to, as jokes always have a punchline, do they not? Somebody gets punched. “Some buddy a gonna get-a hurt real bad.” What we have is a ‘skilful balance between aggression and affection” S slips into some Freudian sections, that are hard to accept and yet hard to accept, I will leave it at the “iski toh kat gayi” response to a joke at someone’s expense, and you fill in the blanks with Freud.

The other thing that he achieves, apart form the joke’s malignant nature, is the joke’s inherent technique that requires mastery which is invisible behind its delivery, and is yet a specialization. An art (pun not intended, but welcome). Jokes aren’t thoughtless words, casually spoken, but deliberate steps, paces, and a final jump that either crosses the bar or falls flat.

I leave you with this quote by another comics artist/theorist, Scott McCloud: "Comics is a powerful idea, but an idea that's been squandered, ignored and misunderstood for generations. No art form has lived in a smaller box than comics for the last hundred years. It's time for comics to finally grow up and find the art beneath the craft."

Battered Ol' Betty

I don’t think I can ever blame Indian stories (in movies, TV serials etc) of being overly dramatic and emotion-laden, any longer.

This reaction, or rather revelation, comes after I have read the latest of the Archie Marries Veronica series (Archie #601), which is part 2 of 6. And things are surely getting messy.

In ways this episode is taking Archie and his friends on an interesting adventure, something of an experiment where the Archie universe is being governed by rules of the real world. Time, as we know it, is actually progressing for them as it does for us.

So what we have is a group of batchmates graduating school, suitably anxious about life at work or in college, and again about life after graduating college. Jobs, career, responsibilities, shifting cities, shifting friends and the biggest whopper of all – marriage.

But with this paradigm shift is a shift towards real life dejection, pressure and bitter letdowns. So while marriage is everybody’s reason to celebrate we have obvious concern for Betty, and the whole marriage has a doomed to fail sense about it, which is not what the Archie universe usually deals with. Point to note is that Archie proposes to Veronica, not for a lifetime’s love or passion, but out of a sense of requited responsibility that he feels he must prove to himself as he gets older. And as days lead up to the big day, he is markedly blasé and almost funereal about the impending occasion.

Once the marriage is concluded he settles into life as the Lodge scion, working hard as VP of Lodge Enterprises and coming home to his palatial house and glamourous wife. Of course, before all this there is a single panel honeymoon scene, where we are outside closed doors with lots of pink hearts exploding. The most eerie Archie panel yet. After a year they are also pregnant.

Maybe everything else is just life and both the readers and characters are trying to get used to it. But where this comic has unnecessarily hit below the belt is with Betty. Betty is in New York City now, working, independent, everybody’s best friend. Yet she is demolished to a weak, withering lady in mourning who has been rejected by her white knight and is just trying her best to live up to her goody image. Please, Lord, give her some teeth and let her not pull her punches. I mean enough is enough with the receiving end of the most famous, exploitative love triangle in 20th century history. The icing on the cake is Archie’s sensitive walk with Betty where he is trying to explain her importance to him (emphasis all from the comic book):
“Betty…you were my first friend when I moved to Riverdale. We were kids.”
“I’ll never forget that day. I thought you were funny. And very cute.”
“And whenever we dated, I had the greatest time. But…but…”
“Veronica came along. I know, Archie…”
“No, Betty. When I finally grew up, I realized I loved you unlike any other girl! You were…are…to me, the sister I never had!”
““Sister”?”
And so on.

I haven’t seen a more poorly imaginative, unsatisfying, egocentric, androcentric line in a long, long time.

I hope that the rest of the 4 issues remaining in this sextet story will redeem the direction it is taking. The reason behind creating it eludes me. Is it a move to wrapping up the series, or is it a move to making it more mature for today’s more mature readers? Or is it just to boost sales? For the most contrived part of this whole exercise is that none of this is presented as actual events. The writers have worked all of this into the premise of a reading-the-future plot. These events are occurring as Archie takes a walk up (not down) memory lane. So maybe it will all end as one big joke.

Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.

The Way to a Nation's Heart

Chicken With Plums is the newest work by Marjane Satrapi that I have read. She is best known for Persepolis which is in turn best known for being a movie, rather than a graphic autobiography.

If I were to try and put my finger on what aspect of Marjane Satrapi’s work is her greatest achievement, it is that she has made the most alien of cultures the most warm and inviting place. It is one of the greatest banes of our times that we are simultaneously expanding horizons while shrinking perceptions meaning we are probably as bad or worse than preceding generations when it comes to knowing neighbouring cultures.

India and Persia (or Iran, which is where she comes from and where she writes about) are joined at the hip in many ways, more than just playing Prince of Persia. Yet I feel I know so little of the country, and am guilty of holding the same stereotyped images of countries in the middle-East as anyone else. This is where Marjane Satrapi comes through with a metaphoric serving of chicken with plums for her readers.

What do I mean by that?

Have you ever eaten chicken with plums? I haven’t. But now I know that somewhere in the world there exists such a dish and that is loved by many. I also know that just as there is a chance it will not appeal to my taste buds, there is a chance that it might. The important thing is to know that some people like it, just as they like cigarettes and music, low cut dresses and celebrities, and teenage crushes and, well, you get the picture.

The idea of literature is to share. Simple. We don’t write to conceal but to reveal. And the idea of reading is to understand. We don’t read to just not let what is being said enter our brain and mind and soul. This is why it is important to read a book like this. Learn about Naseer Ali Khan and his wife and children. About Iran’s cultural revolution. And about Marjane Satrapi who is the greatest myth-busting, a-stereotypical comic book creator that I have come across.

And try chicken with plums someday. If I try it before you I will tell you how it is.

Will he? Won't he?

600 issues doesn’t really sound like a lot. I mean it’s been around since the 1940’s, so that makes it quite meager. Though actually these 600 are just the big, A4 size, thin ones, and doesn’t include the digests, double digests, spin-offs etc.

Confused? Don’t be. I’m talking again about the newest Archie comics.

Actually I am writing this just fresh off reading a new issue and didn’t waste any time around it. It has gotten me a little excited because it is issue # 600. The number isn’t the significant part. The fact that this is part 1 of 6 of ‘The Proposal – Archie Marries Veronica’, is.

It is funny, but it goes to prove what I wrote in my last post. That one cannot get these comics out of sight or out of mind. I hadn’t bought one for years and years, only indulging on mangy used copies that I got for a much lower price. But the hype around this latest twist has found me as I found this in a book store today and had to pick it up (thankfully it isn’t very expensive).

I would say it was somewhere in the 1990’s that Archie sent tumbling downhill with the illustration and story both suffering, and prices skyrocketing. But despite all of this, I can’t imagine any other comic books making it to Indian daily newspapers, as these did when recently one read about the comic book news of the decade – Archie gets engaged to Veronica.

I read how this has caused outpouring of consent and dissent from readers and ho this marks the biggest step (forward or backward, I do not know) in the comics that have seen generations of readers. The moot point is that it hides the question “What next” within this occurrence. In one panel Mrs. Andrews does herself say, “Archie, my very own Peter Pan! Even a boy who doesn’t want to grow up has to face reality!” Could we be any more fatalistic?

The creators have not kept all their eggs in one basket and this is a clever 6 part series, which no doubt will keep space for change according to reader responses. Moreover the entire story is unfolding as a dream-like sequence and maybe we will all just wake up to a money-spinner.

But, whatever it is, I know that though I wasn’t looking out for this (probably because we still don’t get movie/book releases in India as soon as the international release) but when I spotted it I knew there was no two ways about buying it. The problem is that now I am caught up, I am part of this unfolding saga-to-be, but the next part will only be out on stands on September 28, meaning there will not be a quick release. I am trapped once again (the other instance being with Bone, more on which on a later post).

Who do I choose between Betty and Veronica? Hard to say. Betty’s the natural choice, but now Veronica’s the underdog. Either way, it ain’t over till it’s over.

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.