A Funny Thing Happened To Me On The Way Here ...

Humour and absurdity, both leading to laughter, are often used by writers to disrobe many of the human race’s inmost prejudices and zones of discomfort. It happens all around us, where even in our conversations we resort to a joke or witticism to covertly refer to something that either we are uncomfortable with, or that we feel the other will take offence to. Usually it is more the latter.

So it is in writing that writers like Johnathan Swift (or John Dryden, or Samuel Beckett or G.V. Desani) use humour to outline man’s tendency to often take light things too seriously, or conversely, serious things too lightly. Some writers eventually hit upon the comics medium as one of the most potent forms of expression for non-mainstream views and expressions.

Over the past half-century, comic books have become more mature and more hard-hitting than anything we’ve ever seen. The medium has picked up issues like the Holocaust and Iran’s cultural revolution, teenage drug-abuse and military occupation. In India, extremism and unrest in Kashmir has become a 'hot' topic.

There seems to be something about a medium, that is visually piercing and stereotypically perceived as juvenile, that plays a double whammy of sorts for writer-artists with a vision to express something atypical. It seems to find a middle ground between taking something seriously or lightly, that is just to see it as a personal vision.

The only way to understand why a children’s medium suddenly takes on the terrifying aspect of the ‘graphic novel’ is that somehow the child-like way of telling a story is intense and cuts out all the subtexts, notes, strings, orientation, and left-right and gets to the heart of the matter which is surprising and informative, like stories of ghosts whispered into each others ears when we were five.

The first ‘graphic novel’ that plunged me into a world of such abnormalities was a terrific work by Art Speigelman, ‘Maus’. It is a memoir of the Second World War as told by the author’s father and is made fantastical by the use of animal imagery, like if it were an epic fairy tale. A must read. Another discovery was the enchanting ‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi who’s blunt and bare tale of growing up during a great cultural shift in her native Iran is something no one may have bothered to read in word form, for it is the story of a million anonymous others, but here told differently and glaringly.

The trend has such momentum that a giant comics publishing house like DC has it’s own imprint called Vertigo that encourages what would formerly have been underground comics, to make a mark in the mainstream, because the mainstream in comics is much more inclusive that any other medium right now.

That last point alone should be reason enough for the comics blitzkrieg to be given due notice as a medium that has come-of-age. And it is also for readers to note, that while they may never have noticed it, but even familiar comics like Tintin are actually formed by contemporary events from around the world as much as by the need to entertain children.

For, children are smarter than they may seem.

That was bound to happen …

There is something from one of my two previous posts that raised some skepticism. Can there be a sacred bond between the reader of a comic book and the comic book hero? Isn’t that carrying it just a little bit into the “Yeah, right” zone?

I completely agree.

But then again we aren’t dealing with a regular Joe kind of life here are we? We are talking about life-and-death situations around every corner, about choosing between which loved one will live and which has to die, between which girl to date and which girl to be best friends with. These are choices that we’d normally have to make once in our life, at the most.

So when you get transported into the comic book world (and you do, you see it all happening in motion, not as single panels) you become part of an adrenalin-rushing, deciding-on-the-spot kind of world where your hero is getting into kinds of trouble you would never want to on your own. But by being in this world, reading this comic book, you are in a way right alongside him/her as all the adventure unfolds. You are an invisible presence in their world. Taking one of my favourite action heroes, Spiderman, let me explain how it works, at least in my mind.

In the books, or in the 2nd movie, he is reviled by many, including his own aunt, as a menace. Many people hate him, don’t know who he is or why he indulges in such wanton, paranormal activity. Peter Parker (the boy behind the mask) is limp with helplessness faced with detractors who he cannot defy, loved ones he cannot confide in and an identity that he cannot bear to keep or afford to disown.

But guess what?

I know that. I have been there with him through his every trouble, when the spider bit him, when his uncle died, when his aunt maligned him and so on. And each time I have suffered for him for I see his pain and understand it. I am privy to it all, something that his aunt, best friend, girlfriend are not. And I want to catch him each time he falls or to reassure him each time he fights alone.

I know that that sounds unbelievably corny, but that’s how I feel when I am reading the books. Of course I am spelling it out here, where it may just take a second to go through all these feelings. But that’s just the way the bond works. For when I am a reader, I am in their world and not the other way around.

It is a similar situation with all other comics, and that certainly is the purpose of all good art as well. You must be able, if you allow yourself, to get lost in it. There is a sense of sharing a great outdoors scene with Vincent van Gogh when you see his ‘Starry Night’ just as there is a sigh of relief when you see Archie choose to spend an evening with Betty rather than Veronica.

What is of the essence is that you believe, in your mind, that it’s you and him/her against the world. And that is a special bond.

The Back of Beyond, or, What’s a Hero Without a Past?

The beginning-middle-end structure has often been disregarded in fiction to explore events in a more unfettered and unpredictable manner. Like life, fiction has developed 20-20 hindsight, where events can be understood clearly only once they have occurred.

I’m not making myself clear am I? Let’s go to the beginning (note the point I just made).

I was watching a movie recently that showed the origin of one of the most famous comic book heroes of all time. This got me thinking about the crucial comic book trope of the back-story, or the story of how it all began, how our man became how he is today, what drives him, what makes him so different? It may sound like it is driven by an irrestible curiosity, but in my experience as a long-time reader of comic books I feel it is more about familiarity, an emotional bond between the reader and the character that makes us want to know more and more about him/her (more on this bond in a later post).

Few of us have taken to comic books at a late stage in our lives, and most of us have grown up with our comic book heroes. As children we have read the slim, periodical magazines with rapt attention, devouring with our eyes all the stories about Batman, Donald Duck, Superman and Archie. This bond is almost sacred, though we may not realize it as such, and such must have been the reaction in audiences even half a century ago when the ‘golden era’ of comic books introduced audiences to crimefighters whose entire identity was wrapped in mystery. There was an eagerness to get closer to the hero they worshipped, meaning that writers had to take readers back to the very origins of the men behind the masks like a peepshow.

Oh, and did we love it when they did.

It was lapped hungrily. The back story brought us closer to our heroes than ever before. We became like childhood friends and nothing beats that feeling. These origins became crucial to the point that they have been rehashed many times over, ad infinitum, often ad nauseum. Yet it is those characters that managed a strong back-story, thanks to some unabashedly genius writer, that have sustained themselves in public memory more than others. In a sense they have grown into a life of their own and writers-illustrators just feed the growing ego of the character.

So you have Spiderman, whose quandary of wanting a normal teenage life versus fighting his holy crusade against crime keeps taking us back to the story of Uncle Ben and his dictum that “With great power must come great responsibility”.
Superman is the last son of Krypton, both the unshakable force and immovable power and he too is a man compelled by his childhood as the last remaining survivor of one race who will always fight to defend the other that adopted him.
Wolverine too has his origin, something that is slightly different in the latest movie, as compared the version that I knew. In the world of mutants, Wolverine was actually not a mutant by birth, but a scientific military experiment. A soldier he was, not a mutant and cannot also find himself at ease with the mutants whom he has to now familiarize himself with. This conflict brands him as the unknown soldier, mysterious at the best of times and always haunted by nightmares even he cannot understand.

A task well begun is half done they say, and one can add that it is never too late to be ‘well begun’. The origins of Wolverine, Spiderman, Superman and scores of others are like the first day of the rest of their lives as one keeps revisiting those to understand motivations better, and allows for endless combinations of dilemmas and conflicts.

The Pleasures of a Mature ‘Juvenile’ Art Form

It is very often that I find myself a perpetrator of a curious habit; once a month, to be precise. You see, every month I visit a magazine stall and buy the new issue of Tinkle magazine, a comic magazine that all of us are familiar with but that’s relegated to recycle bins once we cross the age of 16. My dilemma is that I’m 24, and I still buy and immediately devour my Tinkle magazine.
I always fear condemnation by my peers, but at the same time I am proud of being honest about my love for comic books, something that I feel is natural to people of all ages.

Born out of this is a love for comic books of all shapes and sizes, genres and periods, a greater understanding of the medium and a thirst for more works that that will blow my mind. After all, all comic books, as indeed also all cartoons, have been the creations of mature, healthy and otherwise mentally balanced adults. Why not?

All too often the final result is brushed aside as a frivolous run at something entertaining, sometimes wholesome and sometimes vulgar. No self-respecting, evolved individual should waste time on such pursuits. Absolutely juvenile.

But then this is the same criticism that has come to plague all art forms for decades. It is something that seems to me to be a plight of our modern times that we question everything that is without obvious benefits even as we try to evaluate our result-driven lives. It was the twentieth century that elicited the proclamation that art could, and should, be just for art’s sake. In a qualified manner I tend to agree with this.

We question such things as unbeneficial and overlook the tremendous developments made in this form over the last century and the immense level of maturity it has achieved. It is necessary therefore to open one’s eyes to the finer details of the comic book medium without prejudice. I do not say that all must read comic books, just as all needn’t own artworks. But a visit to the museum once in a while is nice to see what greatness lies even on two dimensional canvases on walls, though they don’t cure cancer or make glossier lip colour.

All those interested may follow me, and to all others a good day.