THOUGHT BALLOONISTS

Abstract Comics

Crossover alert!

Madinkbeard’s smart-as-hell Derik Badman and my fellow Balloonist Craig Fischer have just posted a dialogic post, a veritable conversation in writing, regarding Abstract Comics, the anthology of non-narrative(?) comics edited by Andrei Molotiu and recently published by Fantagraphics: surely one of the loveliest and most psychoactive comics collections of 2009. Check it out! Derik and Craig’s back-and-forth addresses Abstract Comics from a variety of angles, offering a provocative, prismatic and very personal take on what will surely be remembered as a monumental book.

I came to the party late, so I’m posting my own review of Abstract Comics here on TB, in hopes that Craig and/or Derik will comment. In turn, I plan to comment on their post. You’ll see that I’ve cited and linked to them in several spots below, while they have done the same in their post. We’re hoping to get you to bounce back and forth between our sites! So, again, check 'em out!

Here we go...

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Abstract Comics. Edited by Andrei Molotiu. Fantagraphics, 2009. $39.99. 232 pages.

I was struck by how enticing this book is, as an object. Its whole design, by Fantagraphics stalwart Jacob Covey, resonates beautifully with what it contains. I liked the way its paratexts, for instance its bewildering page numbers, are done up in geometric symbols à la Wingdings:

As Derik says, "oh-so annoying abstract markings." Sure,they run the risk of being a distracting gimmick, but I like them because they defamiliarize typographic and design conventions so as to draw attention to the way books -- not just this one but all books -- are artfully constructed. I grant that it’s strange to see the entire Introduction printed in this hermetic code, but thankfully there’s a parallel English text printed in red (rather Biblical, eh?) running underneath. I actually worked out the code!

Besides this gimmick, certain other motifs -- I’m thinking of geometrical devices and color patterns -- are used throughout, though subtly enough, I’d say, so as not to obtrude into the visual space of the comics themselves. The covers, for example, imply a sequence: reddish tones up front (from comics by Alexey Sokolin and Warren Craghead) contrast with blues and grays on the back (from John Hankiewicz and Gary Panter), as if to suggest that the subject matter of the book will blueshift toward us as we read; the colors of the endpapers shift accordingly. That sort of designing intelligence is in evidence all over, which, to me, makes Abstract Comics very appealing. Consider too how the graphic dividing of the title word, CO/MI/CS, into three successive “panels” -- a trick repeated throughout -- not only brands the book but implicitly stresses the very idea of sequential form which, for Molotiu, constitutes the core of comics when all narrative considerations are stripped away. All this, from my POV, is smart and lovely and fun to page through.

Pigeonholes (a follow-up), featuring Isaac Cates

 

My “introduction” to Brian Chippendale’s Maggots (was it as far back as May 12?) was really an introduction to a way of thinking about the relationship between orthodox and experimental (or avant-garde) comics. This post inspired some interesting back-and-forth in our comments section, thanks to our friend Isaac Cates (who supplied the diagrams here, thanks).

Isaac is, among other things, an outstanding comics scholar and teacher and the co-creator, with Mike Wenthe, of Satisfactory Comics, both the minicomix series and the blog. Isaac and Mike's latest issue (which I played a very small role in helping to shape) has been the subject of a series of fascinating behind-the-scenes posts at their site:

(and you should definitely follow the links if you want to know more, and want a chance to read a clever, funny, formally inventive comic in a disarming format).

Isaac and I have taken the liberty of reformatting and expanding our comments into a proper post, here, in hopes of turning the spotlight on our discussion. First, by way of recap:

Maggots: a sort of introduction

Okay, we’re building up to something here, but let me come at it the long way around, by way of analogy:

Scholar and teacher Paul Wells, in a very useful book titled Understanding Animation (1998), posits three approaches to the art of animation:

1. Orthodox animation: This would be mainstream narrative animation as practiced in most animated features and TV shows -- animation in the manner of Disney, of course, and also Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, the Cartoon Network, and so on. At the time Wells wrote his book, orthodox animation was, essentially, cel animation, but today the category would include the dominant Pixar/Dreamworks/Blue Sky CG approach to animated features. (I gather a revised edition of Wells is due this fall.)

2. Experimental animation: This would consist of animated works far outside of, or at odds with, traditional narrative approaches, works whose narratives are fragmentary or nonlinear as well as works that are not narrative at all but based on other aesthetic principles. I think here of avant-garde animation by Oskar Fischinger, Harry Smith, and Norman McLaren. This would also include, presumably, the recent move toward digital animation by some working not in film or TV but in the fine arts field.

Whereas orthodox animation leans toward the figural, experimental animation leans toward the abstract; whereas the core of orthodox animation is narrative, “[t]he bias of experimental animation is aesthetic and non-narrative” (43). Rather than narrative form, experimental animation veers toward interpretive form; rather than favoring paraphrase-able “content,” experimental animation privileges the very materiality of the art work itself. Obviously, then, experimental animation is non-commercial in nature, based on the assertion of artistic autonomy, and often distributed / exhibited by non-traditional means. It is typically auteurist if not avant-gardist in outlook.

3. Developmental animation: An unfortunate choice of term, perhaps, since the word developmental so often implies remedial, but what Wells has in mind is something else entirely: “a mode of expression combining or selecting elements of both [orthodox and experimental] approaches, representing the aesthetic and philosophical tension between the two apparent extremes” (35). Developmental animation may cleave to traditional aspects of animation, but it also seeks to refresh the tradition with innovative new approaches. It draws on but also “resist[s] or redefine[s]” the vocabulary of orthodox animation (51). In other words, developmental animation is unorthodox or contra-mainstream in some sense -- say in terms of technique, style, or ideology -- but is nonetheless fundamentally narrative. To borrow a phrase from Ann Miller’s recent book Reading Bande Dessinée (a phrase viciously ripped from context, I confess), developmental animation seeks “not to abolish narration but to diversify narrative strategies” (46).