Deva Zan, by Yoshitaka Amano

Deva Zan is a graphic novel about an ancient Buddhist god, who embarks on a quest, traveling through various alternate dimensions in order to restore his memories and prevent the world from succumbing to Ku, or chaos. The book is composed in the same style Amano employed in Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters, with full or double-page illustrations accompanied by short prose passages, more like an illustrated storybook than a traditional comic. It is, as far as I know, the first original work by illustrious illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, which might explain why it feels so juvenile and amateurish. The plot reads something like a cross between Stephen King's The Dark Tower and a rejected Final Fantasy script. I'm inclined to think that at least part of the problem comes from translation difficulties, but that excuse can only go so far.

At one point while writing this blog post, I had planned to say something to the effect that Deva Zan felt more like a rough outline for a movie than a fully-finished literary work in its own right. And then, after a little bit of research, I discovered that that's pretty much exactly what it is. Deva Zan was first revealed to the world as the first project from Amano's newly formed film company, Studio Devaloka. They had a trailer and everything:

The movie was first set to be released in 2012, and its current fate is anybody's guess. But at some point in 2013, Amano apparently decided to bundle up a bunch of the concept illustrations he'd done for the movie, and publish it in a book. The result is a hefty tome full of gorgeous illustrations, juxtaposed with blocks of text that are as awkward to read as Star Wars: The Novelization of the Movie.

But perhaps I'm being unfair. Deva Zan is just one of those comics where the story is meant to be in service to the art, instead of the other way round. And by all accounts the art is gorgeous. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend my time than in sifting through a 300-page collection of Amano illustrations, though I still sometimes have trouble parsing his bizarre blend of fine-art sensibilities and wide-eyed androgynous manga men. Given that Amano played such a big role in developing what's now known as the stereotypical anime look, it seems disingenuous to suggest that his art looks too cliche. But I can't help my own perceptions; It's 2015, and what might once have been an innovative and signature style, now just reminds me of crappy drawings scrawled in the backs of history notebooks by angsty teenagers who just discovered Bleach.

Jean "Moebius" Giraud's Heavy Metal comics

"Are you confused? Well why not? This was written by a Frenchman..."

The most impressive thing to me about Moebius is how he is consistently able to do so much with so little, telling complete and thought-provoking stories in as few as two pages. At their best, these stories are a perfectly timed snapshot of a vast universe with a rich and textured history, our brief glimpse of which leaves us with more questions than answers, begging to know more...

And at their worst, they are incomprehensible conglomerations of non sequitur imagery, held together only by the implicit affirmation that the creator must have had some idea of what he was doing, even if nobody else does. And yet, even in these cases I can't help but admire Moebius for his whimsical drawings and charming blend of surrealist fantasy.

Another thing I admire is how easily he appears to be able to jump between different visual styles to suit the tone of the story, finding the perfect point on the spectrum between detailed realism and iconic cartoons. But somehow, no matter what style he settles on, it is still always distinctly Moebius.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm a fan.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

I'd just like to start by saying that I think drawing yourself masturbating must be a really weird experience. This is the second comic I've written about for this blog where the author has done that. (the first being *Blankets*)

Anyway, I'd previously been aware of the name Alison Bechdel in reference to the Bechdel Test, but this was my first experience actually reading any of her work. In preparation for reading this, I also read some Dykes to Watch Out For, since that seems to be the thing she is best known for, and that honestly did not get my hopes up for Fun Home. It just seems to me that the conceit of having a bunch of lesbians with nothing better to do than sit around talking about being lesbians is not particularly compelling. Nor does it seem to really send a message of "Gays are People too" when it's apparently impossible to be gay without also being a radical political activist. Or maybe I just can't relate to the struggles of the Pre-2000-Era gay community.

Homosexuality is a major theme in Fun Home as well, but treats it as just one aspect of its title characters, rather than the singular defining trait. The fact that Alison and her father are gay is not 'meaningful' in its own right, but in the ways in which it affects their interpersonal relationships. And this gets at the heart of what makes Fun Home such a powerful read: It's such a deeply personal story, and told by Bechdel in such a relatable way, that I feel like I really know these characters.

I'm starting to think that comics are a particularly effective medium for autobiography. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because the visual medium allows us a more intimate view of the author's perspective through their drawings; but, unlike with film and animation, which usually take several people working together to produce, the individuality of the story is not lost in the process of creation.

That said, there are some stylistic elements in Fun Home that I can't help but be puzzled at. Bechdel possesses a Brobdingnagian propensity for baroque vocabulary, which sporadically obfuscates the otherwise candorous nature of her intended message. It reminds me of Scott McCloud's parable of the writer and artist, who keep working at mastering their individual craft until they find themselves on opposite ends of a creative gulf, and end up having to work their way back towards each other. The constant literary references can be similarly daunting. I enjoy a good analogy as much as the next guy, but when Bechdel starts comparing her own life to three different classic works in the same chapter, it can get a bit hard to keep up.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the nonlinear approach it takes to telling the story. Events are not told in chronological order; rather, each chapter tells a new story that adds up to the greater whole, like adding pieces to a puzzle one by one until you can finally see the bigger picture. A chapter may cover several years, or just one weekend. It strikes me as a clever way to approach an autobiographical story, as our own lives are rarely as neat and tidy as a typical work of fiction.

Maus, by Art Spiegelman

There are a lot of factors to consider when looking at the use of caricature and stereotyping in Maus. On the surface it seems to be a pretty harmless visual device, stemming from a simple and compelling metaphor: Nazis and Jews as Cats and Mice, respectively. In this aspect, at least, I think the metaphor is working as intended. It highlights the powerlessness that the Jews would have felt, and even the particular manner of stylization highlights this effect: the Jew-mice all have rounded edges and non-threatening wide eyes, while the Cat-zis are all sharp and pointy and nasty.

But is it a good idea to be depicting the Jews all as an easily identifiable, ethnically distinct, and arguable inferior species, when that's exactly what the Nazis were doing in the first place? Is drawing Jews as a collective Race of Victims an insult to those who struggled through the holocaust, or is Spiegelman simply showing a group of people united against hardship? For that matter, is it fair to draw all Germans as snarling monstrous cats, even those who may themselves have been opposed to the war and the holocaust?

The issue only gets hairier when you factor in the Poles, French and Americans. If the choices of Cats and Mice for Germans and Jews carry deliberate connotations, It's natural to expect that the other animals would as well. But searching for deeper meaning, or hidden offense, where none was intended, may ultimately just be detracting from the overall impact of the novel. Maus doesn't seem like the kind of story that's trying to hide anything with a lot of complex literary layers; all the major themes are right there on the surface. Several chapters feature the author himself explicitly talking about his own desires and concerns about the book.

To me, the issue ultimately boils down to whether Maus would have been as successful had the characters all simply been drawn as humans (successful as a story overall, not in the sense of critically or financially successful). Of course, this is a question that is impossible to answer with any certainty. I know that the intrigue and novelty of a holocaust story about mice was part of what got me to pick up the book the first time I read it. And all of the usual considerations about caricature in comics apply here as well of course; although they could just as easily apply to stylized human characters. And then there's the possibility to consider that using cartoon mice may have caused some readers to write the book off as frivolous, childish, or insulting. Then again, maybe that's part of the point: to surprise people who don't normally read comics. I know a lot of my own family members who've read Maus, but wouldn't be caught dead reading a Superman comic.

All this talking in circles is basically my way of saying that I don't have a fucking clue what any of it "means". All I can say for sure is that I enjoyed the book, I think it treated the historical stuff respectfully, and that it told a more personal and compelling story than most of the other holocaust accounts that I've read (not that I've read all that many).

Underground Comix: Zap Comix

It took me a while to get into what I interpreted to be the spirit of underground comics. I'm afraid I've been spoiled by modern sensibilities and internet culture, where there's nothing left that's truly shocking, and censorship is a purely academic concept (well, not really, but that's a whole other discussion). Anyway, from that perspective, it seemed as if these comics didn't really have much to offer me: In general, none of them are particularly funny, sexy, or well-drawn. I also got the distinct impression that these comics weren't really intended to be read sober, which might have been another barrier to my properly appreciating them.

I just didn't "get it", until I finally started to relate it to my own (far tamer) experiences with rebellion and counter-culture: sitting in the back row of the classroom with my friends, sniggering into our textbooks as we passed doodles back and forth of dicks and boobs and non-sequitur cartoons that we thought were absolutely hilarious. I remembered what it felt like to do things just because we weren't allowed to.

These artists aren't trying to push some new-age philosophy, or stand up against oppression, or even fight for freedom of speech and press. They aren't making these comics for anyone but themselves and each-other. They're acting out because they're trapped in a world they don't belong, and they're all just sharing in the big joke that is society. Society, man!

Blankets, by Craig Thompson

This book is an excellent example of what Scott McCloud talks about in regards to caricature in comics. Certainly the simplified portrayal of the protagonist does help me to empathize with him, and fall into his experiences as he describes them, but I think that there's more going on in Blankets than just that. By keeping his drawings stylized, Thompson allows himself the freedom to move seamlessly back and forth between reality, fantasy, and somewhere in between. Rather than trying to pretend that he's reflecting the world and events as they really happened, his drawings are depicting his memories as he perceives them. The very world around his characters changes to reflect Craig's emotional state. Sometimes it's an obvious symbolic representation, as when Raina's car is shown literally driving off the edge of the world, but sometimes it's more subtle. Simply the weight of the line used or the emphasis of the shadows can alter our perception of the story.

The warping effect of memory is even brought up during the last chapter of the book, in the story about the cave that Craig and Phil found as children - which of course is also alluding to Socrates' Allegory of the Cave, that Thompson brought up earlier. And all of these visual and literary devices emphasize the larger overall themes of the book, about how our experiences shape us, and how our memory of a thing can be more powerful or meaningful than the thing itself. While it's natural to categorize any given panel in Blankets as either depicting reality, or depicting a surreal dream-state, the whole point is that there is no real distinction. Every drawing is showing the moment as he remembers it.

EC Comics: Crime Illustrated No.1

The first thing that you notice about this publication is how desperately they are trying to avoid the label of "comics". Comics at this point have apparently already become characterized as a childish pastime, to such a degree that this magazine would rather refer to itself as "PICTO-FICTION: a new form of Adult Entertainment!" This seems especially odd to me, as I don't normally think of mystery pulps as being a highly respectable literary form in their own right.

On the other hand, the stories themselves are in a different format than what we commonly think of as "comics" today. The text itself is in fact enough to tell the stories on their own, and were probably written that way before someone decided to commission some illustrations for them. In this way they more resemble an illustrated short story than a true comic. There are no word balloons, and dialogue is simply written in the body text and indicated with quotations. There are few, if any, examples of actions or story events that carry from panel to panel; that is to say, the pictures never really tell any part of the story that the words aren't. Seeing the expressions of characters can help to add emotional weight to the events, but they aren't adding anything new. So maybe the publishers simply decided not to call it a comic because they didn't think it was one.

While it is interesting to see this sort of "proto-comic", it sort of pains me to think what could have been done with a little more care for the possibilities that comics afford, especially in the case of the Murder Mystery story. Classic mystery stories are meant to engage the reader by providing a puzzle that the reader could potentially solve, even before the protagonist does, if they're observant. By adding illustrations, the artist could leave visually clues for the savvy reader to discover, that might not even be acknowledged in the text. Of course, this particular mystery story, "Fall Guy for Murder", isn't really meant to be read in that way anyway. But the point still stands. Even showing a silhouette of the figure behind the curtain before the final revelation could have added to the overall effect of the story.