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Comics are a kind of cyborg, which is why it is odd that nobody seems to care much how they're put together. In the normal course of things, if you were walking down the street and saw a guy with a toaster where his head should be, you'd say, "Gee, how the hell did
that happen?" Unless you were a comics fan, in which case you'd probably just pop some wonder bread in the slot and break out the butter.
What I'm saying is that comics are always a weird hybrid of text and words, bunged together idiosyncratically by individuals or committees. And thus, it's weird that comicdom as a medium is so uninterested in process. Yes, of course, hardcore fans know what kind of pens or Bristol boards are being used by their idols, or whether Stan Lee wrote the dialogue before or after Jack Kirby drew the pictures. And for connoisseurs, the flow and width of the line becomes a visible mark of the artist at work. But for most readers, and in the normal course of things, process is treated as a subsidiary pleasure. It's rarely foregrounded as essential to the conception, aesthetics, or marketing of a finished piece. Pop music has entire genres, from punk rock to electronica, which are about fetishizing their own means of creation. In contrast, comics seem overwhelmingly devoted to the gag, or the super-hero slugfest, or the meaningful moment of autobiographical poignance — to the end-product.
Admittedly, there are some comics creators who make process an important part of their work. They just, by and large, don't call themselves "comics creators". Graham Rawle, for example, is usually thought of as an artist, an illustrator, or a book designer. A lot of what he does, though, looks suspiciously like cartooning, albeit of an idiosyncratic sort.:
That's from Rawle's most famous series, "Lost Consonants," which ran in the
Guardian for years. Each image is based on a common saying from which Rawle has removed a single consonant. He then creates collages based on the altered text.
Obviously, these differ from a lot of what you'd see on the funnies page in that they're photo collages rather than illustrations. But it seems to me that the real way in which Rawle's work is unlike, say,
The Far Side, is in its emphasis on process. The joke is inseparable from how you get to the joke. It's funny because it's ingenious. Moreover, that ingenuity unifies the text and the image; both are cobbled together out of mismatched bits. It's fuddy-duddy bricolage, and imagining the absent-minded professor wading through discarded clichés and moldering magazines is a large part of the appeal.
Initially, visual artist Ernesto Caivano seems to have nothing at all in common with Rawle. Where Rawle is clunky, Caivano is sublime; where Rawle happily chugs about in pop-culture detritus, Caivano soars gracefully through a private, pristine dream:
Caivano: Rope, Blooms, and a False Phallus, 2004
Yet for all the differences, Caivano's work, like Rawle's, is all about its own manufacture. Most of Caivano's recent drawings illustrate a story by the author titled
After the Woods. The story involves a man and a woman separated for vast stretches of time, trying to reunite in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. It includes numerous fantastic animals, including bird-like creatures called Philapores, who fly through dust, water and matter rather than through the air.
Caivano: Philapores Navigate the Log and Code, 2003
After the Woods is not completed, and doesn't really even seem intended to be completable. Caivano illustrates it out of order, varying representational scenes and abstract bits. In Rawle's work, process is foregrounded because it is so visible. Caivano's process, on the contrary, is foregrounded because it is hidden. Since you don't know exactly what the story is, or how Caivano fits image and text together, the act of creation becomes paradoxically more central, just as you are more likely to think about vision when you're driving through a fog. The private mythology lends the images a fey resonance — they point back, insistently, to the act of creation as a secret. They make you think about process as mystery.
I'm not saying that all comics artists should be like Rawle or Caivano. In fact, I have reservations about both of them. I wish Rawle's collages paid more attention to composition, balance, and aesthetics in general; I wish Caivano's master-narrative wasn't trying quite so hard for genius outsider-art cred. But I appreciate the way that both of them let how they make their art influence what that art is, and vice versa. It's something I could stand to see more of in comics.
Image credits:
Lost Consonants #799 ©2005 Graham Rawle
Lost Consonants #770 ©2002 Graham Rawle
Rope, Blooms, and a False Phallus ©2004 Ernesto Caviano
Philapores Navigate the Log and Code ©2003 Ernesto Caviano
Noah Berlatsky writes regularly for The Comics Journal, The Chicago Reader, and his own blog, The Hooded Utilitarian. He's also an artist of sorts.
A Pundit in Every Panopticon is ©2010 Noah Berlatsky
