Bad Drawing in Comics
It seems one of the peculiar traits comics has maintatined is its love/hate relationship with bad drawing. Sure, there have been stellar illustrators in the comics world, but for every Windsor McCay and Harold Foster there are hundreds of artists of the Scott Adams, Kim Casali, Cathy Guisewite ilk, whose work defies any category of aesthetic appreciation and yet have hordes of devoted fans. I must admit my initial aversion to bad drawing in comics is often overcome by the power of the narrative. I become affected by the action and words to such an extent that the bad drawing becomes something that tugs at my perception and I laugh and are amazed by the truth of the comic and the terrible tension it maintains with its awkward existence. Chris Onstad’s Achewood is a classic example of the sort of bad drawing that defies belief. The characters only vaguely resemble some real thing, in this case clumsy stuffed animals, but they carry within their absurd condition something deeply human. I do not identify with their actions or sympathize with their conflicts, rather it is the smallness and trivial nature of the drawing that sums up a pathetic situation that I can only wonder at.
Wizard World
I made a suprize visit to Wizard world yesterday in Chicago. Though the throng of attendees were in no way suprized to see yet another middle aged man rifing through piles of comics, it was a suprize for me as I had only learned of the convention that morning while reading the local paper at a hotel near O’Hare that I happened to be staying at. I made a few hasty calls to change my morning plans and drove to the Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. I have been researching comics for several years now and never before have I attended a convention where people dress up as their favorite corporate logo and wait in long lines to fawn over aging celebrities such as the original Lois from the 1950s Superman TV series. Wizard World was a colorful event in a huge hall with enough room to land a jumbo jet. it was daunting though not unexpected to see the noisy eyecatching video games, mountains of action figures, endless stores of yellowed comics. However I made my way to the long back tables to look for the work of the lesser known artists and it was there I found a few real treats. I was very pleased to rediscover a comic I had originally found at Isotope comics in SF and thereby was able to complete my collection of Ouija Interviews by Sarah Becan. I was also taken by buzz comics by Corinne Mucha and Return Me to the Sea by Sam Sharpe. Later I picked up some discounted copies of older more mainstream comics, such as Frédéric Boilet’s Yukiko’s Spinich, Frank Miller’s Ronin, and Marc Bell’s Shrimpy and Paul. On the whole it was great to find these treasures but it was also a little disconcerting to see so much similarity. I am not the only one who has bemoaned the vaccuum that constitutes genre diversity in American comics, but it seemed an absurd condition blown all out of proportion in the mega-Chum Bucket convention. It seems the industry has learned nothing in the last two decades and continues to pump out garbage that appeals to the easiest coustomer: young white men. There were some manga, though suprizingly little considering its growing popularity, nothing from Europe, very little that constituted comics for and by women. The whole adolescent collecting mania that seemed to self perpetuate the delusion that there really are devoted readers seems unchecked.
The One That Got Away
Last Memorial Weekend I attended with my wife and family a conference at the Maharishi University on creativity and Transcendental Meditation billed as “Catching the Big Fish,” titled after a book by the Keynote speaker David Lynch. It seemed like an interesting pairing and I must admit I was perversely drawn to the possibility of seeing the David Lynch, especially if he were to hold forth on the subject of creativity. My wife, Jenna, a long time practitioner of TM was also intrigued and we shared one seat at the conference trading opportunities to attend sessions and swim with our boys at the hotel pool. The conference was really a celebrity media event with film cameras everywhere that seemed to function only to intimidate attendees and create the aura of newsworthiness, as if every moment needed to be captured for posterity. I actually found it easier to watch the conference on the giant flanking rear projection screens as they seemed to offer a more satisfying experience than the people seated in front of me who, slightly bored, reiterated sound bites to the attendees’ questions. Lynch did not give any talk at all instead used his sessions to answer questions from the audience while he let fly his pearls of wisdom.
My sarcasm betrays my deep disappointment as the questions were far more interesting than the answers, which seldom offered any real personal insight, often obfuscated details, and frequently avoided critical issues. In the first question to Lynch a woman asked about how it was possible for everyone to make use of their ideas, some ideas might contradict the needs of other ideas, and that perhaps not everyone can find a way to cook and eat the fish they catch. Lynch punted on this rather than concede the truth of the matter–that material needs do limit ideal creation–he insisted ideas will find a way into being when they are fully understood and beautiful. Prior to this conference I was greatly impressed by Lynch’s evident creative resourcefulness, especially when he directed a short film using a simple Lumier Brother’s style camera for the documentary Lumiere & Company (1995). His film was a brilliant and complex narrative that challenged what was possible within the narrow technical means of a single focus hand crank camera. At the conference he contented himself to talk like a spiritual guru on a high mountain that must make every utterance universally applicable to all questions. The result was a wash of platitudes and empty advice that was no better than his skimpy self-help book on the same topic. After one session with Lynch I decided skip the other two planned events with him as it was clearly more rewarding to do my fishing at the hotel pool with my kids.
