Function follows form(at)

Before continuing with the series of outcomes assessments, I wanted to take a break to address a topic related to the last post, that of comics format and how it relates to narrative.

The last exercise concerned a rather outré format for comics narrative, that of slotted cards which could be connected in different ways. While it proved to be a useful heuristic for developing character and story, the format didn't reveal itself as especially useful for constructing narrative in a deliberate way.

It happened that at the same time I was considering that format, mainstream comics were presenting themselves in a new format as well: DC Comics began publishing a weekly, near-broadsheet-sized periodical called Wednesday Comics. Looking like nothing more than an old-school newspaper Sunday funnies section, the comic provides fifteen separate one-page stories in a 12" by 18" page format - roughly twice the dimensions of a standard comic.

The most obvious effect of this format is its nostalgic value. The very physicality of the item resonates with indolence and innocence and echoes of time past. A few of the creators play with this, calling out to comic strip conventions. Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred run messages directed at the reader in a slot underneath the main Metamorpho story, and Adam and Joe Kubert use a slightly smaller space for portraits of the cast at the bottom the Easy Co. strip; both of these approaches evoke similar practices that were common in the heyday of the the newspaper strip.

What is significant is that these practices are only possible because of the characteristics of the printed artifact itself. If we reduced these strips to standard comic book size, even though the aspect ratio would be nearly perfect, the absolute (not relative) size of the ancillary material would be reduced beyond usefulness, or even in some cases legibility, coming to resemble something more like Sergio Aragones's marginals in Mad magazine than an integral part of the main strip. This explains why these features have all but disappeared from traditional comic strips; the very structural possibilities of the narrative are determined by its ultimate format. The large-scale page format of Wednesday Comics offers up additional possibilities, which different contributors take advantage of in different ways.

Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook, with Kamandi, and Paul Pope, with Strange Adventures, use this oversize canvas to present artwork that, because of the strength of its composition or the intricacy of its detail, probably wouldn't work nearly as well on a smaller scale.

Two consecutive Allred strips comprised a single panel; the size of the panel was large enough that repeated figures were clearly read as existing in different moments as well as at a different points, moving through both time and space in an expansive landscape. This effect would be much more difficult to carry off on a standard-sized splash page.

Karl Kerschl et al present a multi-layered narrative. Under the banner of The Flash, one sequence showcases the Flash himself, and the other belongs to Iris West, the woman in his life; each is separately sub-titled. You might be able to have this effect in a standard comic by separating each thread on its own facing page, but the horizontal orientation of the strips and their proximity on the same leaf creates a much more intimate connection between the two strands.

The rest of the strips seem to have taken standard comic book technique and simply enlarged the page. While the bigger size gives us a better look at the linework and adds some power to the figures, in these cases it seems like an utilization of the potential of the format. The strips are perceived differently, but are not, it seems, intentionally different.

The oversize format has the ability to affect not just the presentation, but the very structural possibilities of the comic narrative. To draw this conclusion into sharp relief, let's take a look at a completely different format. Here's a short video illustrating how the comic Atomic Robo appears on a GooglePhone:



On a screen that is somewhere around 3" x 2", the narrative possibilities are limited, to say the least. One panel at a time is the norm: off the table are expansive page layouts, dual story threads, broad landscapes presented in single panel, and all that. The comic in the video was originally presented in a standard comic book; it was edited to fit the phone format, and its narrative flow was greatly changed in the process. I can't even begin to imagine attempting to present something like Paul Pope's intricate page layouts on the phone; Kamandi's panels would be so small as to be unreadable; and the Flash series would have to offer up one narrative at a time. Comics over the phone may be a viable option in the future, but they will likely contain stories written especially for the format, whose narrative structures play to the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of the format.

This awareness of form is just another layer of complexity in understanding how we apprehend comics narrative; we have ongoing discussions on the difference between reading a serialized narrative published periodically and reading the same narrative collected in one volume ("waiting for the trade"); the questions of format lay themselves over that, to wit: What would a collected album of Wednesday Comics look like -- all the Kamandi, all the Flash, all the Metamorpho, and so on? Wouldn't it be a huge book, however it were edited? Would the physicality of holding such a tome change your interaction with the stories? And from a different take: can you imagine reading a graphic novel on a phone?

And all of this highlights once again the difference between prose literature and graphic literature. With any form of prose, whether short story, novel, memoir, or whatever, the ultimate format - hardback, paperback, e-book - matters little. In effective pose, the little marks on the page disappear from our conscious ken and we live the story in our imaginations. Not so with comics; we don't want the marks on the page or the screen to ever disappear; we want to linger over them and savor them and appreciate them and their details, the physical traces of the artist, what French analyst Phillipe Marion called graphiation. And so, questions of format, trivial to the prose writer, become critical considerations for the comics creator.

Outcomes assessment #5

This is the fifth in a series of analyses of exercises and activities from the Graphic Novel Intensive class at PNCA.

Number 1 is here.
Number 2 is here.
Number 3 is here.
Number 4 is here.
Number 6 is here.
Number 7 is here.

Dan's exercise in the narrative environment: (In-class, day three)

Dan led the class in a short discussion of "environment" in comics and how it affects the delivery of narrative. By environment, he referred both to the created material and psychological world of the told story and to the physicality of the comics artifact itself - whether it was small or large, on paper or a computer screen or the wall of the building. He was asserting that there was influence exchanged between these categories, and that the nature of one could affect choices for the other.

The discussion was followed by slide-show survey of visual narrative and communication, from the Lascaux Caves, through the Sistine Chapel and the illustrated poems of William Blake, up to Topffler and McKay and Herriman and Siegel & Shuster. The inquiry was less concerned with a McCloudian legitimization of proto-comics and more with increasing awareness of how the actual presentation of an illustrated story affected its narrative and its own environmental reality. That the cave painting in Lascaux could only be seen after an arduous journey to a particular place is as significant to a viewers apprehension of them as the size of broadsheet newspapers at the beginning of the last century was to readers of Little Nemo. And in both cases, the form of the art affected what content the creators could and would choose to present.

We followed this with an exercise in the interplay of artifact and narrative structure. Using as a model a European set of laminated images, we each created some interlocking cards; each one contained three panels to a side, and each side comprised some sort of simple narrative. We were given ninety minutes to design, pencil, and ink the cards. I chose a monster movie theme, and created these tableaux, not really narratives, but more like tropes:

Card 1, front: Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Scientist, Frankenstein's Monster

Card 1, back: Rasputin, Golem, Nosy Photographer

Card 2, front: Wolfman, Vampire Bat, Priest

Card 2, rear: Quasimodo, Scared Bobby-soxer, Vulture

Card 3, front: Intrepid Girl Reporter, Sea Creature, Hunter

Card 3, rear: Angel, Wall (I was getting tired), Devil

After we had finished our cards, we assembled them and critiqued each other's work. Here's a little video of how the project actually works:

Some of the projects were astonishing. One woman created cards showing the peaceful narrative of a bunny and a separate narrative of a snake. When the cards interlocked, there was an immediate sense of threat and menace created, even though the images had not been designed specifically to interact. I think my own efforts suggest different narratives without making them explicit, almost like a dial-a-story device.

And I think that's where the nut of this exercise lay. It goes without saying that the sequencing of the panels was the determinant of the narrative; it was also clear that the physical configuration of the panels moved control of the narrative to the viewer/reader, since he or she could re-arrange the cards, and allowed for multi-layered narrative, since when viewing one sequence, another sequence might also be in view, even if obliquely. But it was just as clear that beyond a minimal number of panels, it would be impossible for a creator to design the cards in such a manner as to influence in any more than a general way the narratives created by the re-arrangement of the cards. There are just too many permutations; the decision tree gets so dense so quickly that we couldn't see any way to keep the narrative sequences from being anything more than random. While it was a fascinating art form, there seemed to be little chance of it being used to create a deliberate narrative.

The point of the exercise, however, was to explore the connection between the actual physical environment a comic inhabits and the narrative world its story inhabits, and that goal was certainly met. While this particular comics format might not lend itself to many purposes, it put one in mind of the different formats commonly used for comics - golden age size books, modern age books, old size strips, new size strips, digests, treasuries - and the possibilities of new and different forms - webcomics, murals, and who knows what. These considerations push the envelope around the position often expressed (by Ellen Forney and Art Spiegelman, for sure) that in comics, the product of the art is the finished "published" work. That product could be a lot of things.

Outcomes assessement #1

Last week I attended the Graphic Novel Intensive class at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. Perhaps because I am currently working on the program review committee at my own college, I thought I would explore the class through what we would call the "key assessments" -- the primary assignments that illustrate the focus of the instruction. (During the trip home, I posted a more impressionistic response, which can be found under Four-Color Ma in the sidebar.)

Here's the class webpage, here's the syllabus and here's one bit of background: the class met from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm each day, with a working lunch at noon and a presentation from a guest professional at 4:15. Ellen Forney, Seattle cartoon diva and part-time instructor at the Cornish College of the Arts, taught the morning sessions from Monday through Thursday, and Dan Duford, Portland artist and PNCA staff instructor, taught the afternoon sessions and facilitated the all-day workshops on Friday and Saturday.

Frankly, most of the students felt that we were taking two separate classes; the class activities and learning sequence didn't demonstrate a lot of coordination between the two instructors or their respective content. Each section was useful and valuable, but I think there were some futile attempts to reconcile the mornings and afternoons before we all gave in and just accepted each on its own terms. Whether this disconnect was a bug or a feature is unknown.

I'll post an analysis of one major assignment each Friday.

Dan's first exercise in narrative structure: (In-class, day one.) After some class discussion on the narrative potential of sequential images and how comics present shifts in voice and time, the class was given this task: on five separate small cards or slips of paper, illustrate five significant moments from your life. We had 20 minutes. I eventually chose bungee-jumping, filming an episode of my TV show, visiting Stonehenge, bicycling in The Netherlands, and getting shot at chasing a shoplifter, and made my little stand-alone panels.



Then we were told to write down on a slip of paper five important moments from history, to exchange slips with someone else, and to similarly illustrate the new moments. We had another 20 minutes. The list I got from my classmate read: JFK assassinated, Antoinette beheaded, Archduke shot, Sputnik launched, and Indo-Pak partition. These images were in some ways more of a challenge, but in other ways easier to express:


Once we had ten panels, as it were, we put them together as we chose - randomly, chronologically, arbitrarily, whatever - and posted them on the wall to make a single ten-panel strip. I put each set in chronological order and then alternated them, and it looked like this:


We then looked to see what narratives arose from the juxtapositions of the diverse images - did the thread of a story manifest in the sequence of images? In the case of my images, the comments from the students crowded around eventually coalesced into a reading of some kind of spy story, a globe-trotting assassin telling all in a memoir.

The point of the exercise was to experiment with ways that narrative is delivered by sequential art. The results seemed to be less about developing techniques to apply to storytelling and more about coming to better understand how an audience responds to a sequence like this - what kind of order we try to impose on the images to have it make sense. A sensitivity to this is, of course, useful to any cartoonist, so while the activity was not directly about methods, the ideas that arose certainly inform them.

Secondarily, the activity became about how fast an illustration "reads" - that is, how quickly it communicates its content. In the case of my panels, for example, the "road trip on bike through Holland" read instantly, as did "Sputnik being launched." While this was not the primary focus of the exercise, our review of each other's work was instructive regarding use of common and effective symbols, such as employing car fenders and a high hat to set the early 20th century time frame of the Sarajevo panel.

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This is the first in a series of analyses of exercises and activities from the Graphic Novel Intensive class at PNCA.

Number 2 is here.
Number 3 is here.
Number 4 is here.
Number 5 is here.
Number 6 is here.
Number 7 is here.