Soft Images for a Hard Subject

Art's take on a difficult history

Art has always been a medium for communication, a medium of communication for things that we as human beings have a hard time communicating with one another. Politically charged ideas, tough subjects that no one dare speak of, or subjects that if spoken of directly are not welcome in normal communication. There are just some things in this world that we are not very comfortable speaking about, and art gives us a way of putting subjects out there that we would otherwise keep to ourselves. 

Art Spiegelman's Maus, is one such piece of art that is supercharged with tough subjects and dare we say controversial ideas, that are difficult to talk about. The Holocaust is a regrettable period in global history that is for many a very difficult subject to discuss. Spiegelman writes about it, as many have done, but in the context of a comic. Maus uses animals to express various nationalities, such as the German cats, Jewish mice and Polish pigs. They each have their own symbolism, like the very obvious ca-hunt-mice, but also deeper ones like the fact that the Jews are mice to signify their treatment as a pest or vermin. Besides their literary significance however, the fact that the book is a comic, and the characters are portrayed as animals automatically makes the books for a much wider target audience. People of all ages can be interested in such a story and learn about the holocaust without having to sit through a painful history book (especially us visual learners). The fact that it is told as a biography within a biography also makes it more interesting, relatable and serves as a mood refresher so that the entire book is not about the tragedies of the holocaust. 

All these qualities make Maus a very interesting, fun and greatly educational read for almost all if not all demographics. 

On a personal note, Maus made me think about the painful history of my home country Peru. Peru has a history of internal turmoil between the government a small internal terrorist guerrilla groups. These groups target government officials almost randomly to express their discontent with the government. My family had a very close encounter with one of these terrorist attacks because my grandmother's brother was major of our valley years ago. He was killed by a guerrilla group along with his young son in their home. I have heard the story of how this happened dozens of times ever since I was little and could tune into adult conversations. As a child I remember imaging the story unfolding much like the images in Maus where the bad guys and the good guys were not flesh and blood humans but figments of my childish imagination, aliens, monsters, and animals. As I grew older and came to understand the depth of the story and the implications of it these images turned into realistic graphic portrayals of what had actually happened. Maus does both, by portraying the characters of the Holocaust as animals, yet making the images express the horrors that did happen and are very real to many.

Maus expresses its ideas in a flawless and elegant manner that manages to make the reader see and feel the events without imposing a graphic narrative or visuals making it a true work of art.

This s**t is Real Life

Occurrences of Calvin and Hobbes

After reading a few strips of Calvin and Hobbes I came to realize and greatly appreciate how relatable the stories are. Calvin and his "stuffed animal" tiger friend Hobbes engage in interesting situations of every day life and give them a humorous twist. Calvin is a very small child, yet his voice in the comics is a little above his age level (his vocabulary is also of an older and well read person). Him and Hobbes act like children, but sometimes like a pair of best 30-somethign-year-old-friends.

They are about every day life situations with a twist and sometimes things that we wish we could to in real life happen as if they were incredibly normal. The characters, like Calvin's mom and dad also act almost intuitively speaking their minds on every subject, bringing a level of honesty to the strip that makes it very engaging and relatable.

Another interesting thing about the comic series is that they are very similar in purpose to today's "memes." They are short snip bits of every dar life and they express what we may be feeling in some situations but never actually say like when Calvin daydreams about whoever is speaking to him as a space alien that he is battling. I can see a meme that says "that moment when you're getting yelled at and you space out." I can see this being the origin of those pop-culture icons we know today and it is very interesting to see how they were made and distributed before.

Wait what...?

comics for dirty geezers and classy ladies

When I started to read the Tits and Clits comics I did not realize they were authored by women. They seemed pretty scandalous at first. I thought, who could be the intended audience? but after settling into the theme and getting over the fact that they were explicitly sexual, I came to realize they were fairly real stories that could be entertaining and even comical in a clean way. By real I mean they were not like the Young Romance comics where the women were objectified and the scenarios were pretty ridiculous at times (evidence of the minds of the male authors behind them). These comics, as explicit as they are, seem more real than the Young Romance comics, they are about things that aren't talked about and that if they were talked about they would probably not be talked about seriously. My first year of college I attended Simmons College in Boston, an all women's school. There I learned that talking about certain subjects can be serious and carefree in an all-female environment. Seeing that the authors of these comics are all female, it made sense to me how they have a genuine voice without judgement or condescendence. It was almost refreshing to see this subject matter presented in comic form, in such a simple and carefree way. Even though at first glance they might seem crazy and overly sexual, the stories can potentially be relatable and fairly entertaining to many readers of all genders and sexual orientations.

Design and Type

words are pictures too

As a graphic designer and typography fan, I thoroughly appreciated Will Eisner's comic book layout and his incorporation of type, not only as a medium for communicating his story verbally, but as an element of design in itself. Comics are characteristic stories that use images, drawn pictures, to make up their narrative. The words are (not always present) there to help the narrative, not necessarily as a visual element (although it becomes one by default). Also, they are known for their "comic strip" layout, with the sequential artwork laid out within straight panels. Although the panels are indeed used as elements of design, and have a significant impact on the movement of the story, I have come to see them as a motionless grid that keeps me from exploring the page. 

The works of Will Eisner that I looked at this week, step away from this grid and play with beautiful composition that makes each page have a life of its own. 

One work in particular, Contract with God, is a masterpiece in itself. It does not only break the grid, but incorporates typography into the narrative as a visual element. In this work, Will Eisner is not only a comic book artist and writer, but a graphic designer. As one, I greatly appreciate the care that Eisner places into his work. The separation of thought/word bubbles and images in traditional comics is slightly irksome to my designer eye, and Eisner raises the bar incorporating the text into the compiles images without a grid.

Caught in a Bad Romance

The male gaze writing for the female gaze

Simon and Kirby's romance comic series Young Romance is an interesting look back to a time when the gender gap was abysmal. The stories are meant to appeal to the young female audience, one that was not and maybe has never been a very big part of the comic book/comic strip world. Keeping in mind that back in those years it may not have been as uncommon as today to see a fairly young girl (in her late teens) to be involved with an older man (in his thirties) the stories are still very objectifying of women. They were thought up and written out by men, probably older men whose fantasies and sexual ideals are clearly evident in the comics as opposed to the ideals of the audience they were directed toward.

It was interesting to see the extent of the comic series and how it was fairly successful despite its shallow nature. All that aside, I was very intently reading the stories, almost getting wrapped up in them like an intense soap opera. It was probably because of the shock factor, everything about the comic that I found preposterous like the age of the men and the carelessness of the women that kept me interested and kept me asking: what craziness will happen next? I feel that this is because of my latin background that I find confounding soap stories entertaining, but I also find interesting the fact that these were a serious part of pop-culture in their time. I do wonder if the women reading these decades ago were entertained by them for the same reasons I was or because they played into those male-gaze centered ideals that are so clearly displayed in the comics; if they believed that this was laughably entertaining, or if they believed in the stories and the ideas they communicated because of the society they lived in.