Cartoon Museum

This week, our class met at the Cartoon Museum on Russell Street. The Cartoon Museum is a small space dedicated to showcasing British cartoons and artists. It is one of the few, if not the only museum in London that is dedicated to preserving British cartoons.

The ground floor exhibit was entirely dedicated to showing work titled ‘The Estate of Martin Honeysett’; he was a British Cartoonist, and his work appeared in Punch, and in several newspapers in Britain. He was one of “the greatest gag cartoonists Britain has produced” (Pyne, 2015). There was quite a large range of work of his spread out along the ground floor, commemorating his reign over comics in Britain till his death in January 2015.

One of the pieces I enjoyed was from when Honeysett was invited to Japan, and subsequently made a series of drawings during his stay there. One particular drawing that caught my eye was titled ‘Cherry Blossom’:

Cherry Blossom (Honeysett, undated):
‘The arrival of the cherry blossom is celebrated throughout Japan.

The piece stood out to me because of the stark and real contrast that is shown between two classes of citizen, and the ‘celebration’-so to speak- is an extension of your class. To me, this piece made it too easy for me to relate to what I have experienced in Pakistan. You see a wild difference of class in broad daylight, for example you will see upper-class families dining in an outdoor restaurant, and they will almost definitely be ‘harassed’ by a street beggar at their dining table.The nonchalance of those who lead relatively comfortable lives in comparison to the kind of pained expression on those who do not is striking.

On the upstairs floor of the Cartoon Museum, we were given a short but informative talk by curator of the gallery and a dear friend of our tutor Penn, Steve Marchant. He showed us a page from what is probably the most well-celebrated comics to ever be released, Watchmen (1986). This superhero story has a complex storyline written by Alan Moore, and arguably some of the best drawings by Dave Gibbons. It takes place in 1985, during the cold war, and shows a beautiful, emotional and dense take on nature through the story of a group of washed-up superheroes. Book critic Lev Grossman says about Watchmen, “Gibbons and Moore deployed about a dozen fugually interwoven plots and an intricate system of echoing visual motifs.” (Grossman, 2009).

We were shown a particular page from the comic book which showed Dave Gibbon’s drawing process, and were explained how a single page has to go through many different processes like storyboarding, sketching, ink lining, and several attempts of colouring before the artist can be satisfied with the final results.

An original sketch of Rorschach, a character from Watchmen

Comix Creatrix

Comix are distinguishable from Comics in the fact that they are intended for a mature audience. The content involved in making Comix is much more sexual, promiscuous or political in nature. The term was just a respelling of the word Comics, and got their start in 1960’s, where specific titles such as Zap Comix, which was published by R. Crumb in 1968.

This week, we met at Central Saint Martins, where we paid a visit to The House of Illustration, which is located right next to the school. The current exhibition was of Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics.

The exhibition was interesting given the struggle many female graphic artists (or just female artists in general) face when trying to make their name in the industry: being overshadowed by the more well-known male artists. Just being in the space shed more light on and brought a more real-time realization of the male dominated world we live in, not just in art, but in sports, politics, literature and just general lifestyles. This also highlighted the progress women graphic artists are making in their field, with many artists making their name with a whole different range of art styles and stories.

The interesting part I realised was the range of different works I saw from all the different artists on display at the exhibition, with almost every type of story under their belt. Philippa Rice for example, is a multi-talented artist who, in her book ‘Soppy‘ (2014) wonderfully illustrates the everyday quiet moments of import that occur in a relationship. She takes the ‘mundane’ dwellings of everyday life and makes it look alive and animated.

An illustration from Soppy

What stood out the most to me in the exhibition was the artwork dedicated to victims of abuse, harassment and social/cultural norms women are expected to live by and at the same time oppressed by. Becoming Unbecoming was a graphic narrative we had mentioned briefly in class, but seeing it at Comix Creatrix pushed me more towards reading it.

Kaveri Gopalakrishnan is another female illustrator, who quite hilariously outlines some of the struggles women (especially in India) have to face due to the large male-dominated society. She also illustrated habits some women have to adopt just to avoid sexual harassment.

Kaveri Gopalakrishnan: ‘Apocalyptic Scenarios of Modern Decline’ (2016)

Kaveri Gopalakrishnan: ‘Before You Step Out’ (2015)

As a female artist, seeing the work of all the 100 women in the gallery was quite inspiring to see. For decades, the world of comic books has been dominated by male artists, and for the most part still is, but brings to realisation that the attention is shifting and so many female artists are now having their time in the limelight.

Taking a deeper look into comic books

We had a lecture by Dr. Monalesia Earle, who is a lecturer/teacher at Birkbeck, University of London. A very enthusiastic lecturer with a certain flair for explaining comics, she seemed to have a lot of experience on the subject matter, which proved to make for a very pleasant class. In the class, the main subject of her lecture was about ‘Interstitial Spaces in Comics and Graphic Narratives’.

She compared the visual grammar involved in comic books, and made us question how similar it was to  literary fiction. We discussed how the language in a novel might be more descriptive so that our imagination paints a picture of the story, whereas in a comic book, elements such as the composition of the drawings, emotions, panel layouts etc. paints a more vivid picture for readers. In that sense, we went on further to talking about whether novels could be adapted into graphic novels, or even graphic novels into movies.

Though there have been many successful adaptations from novels to graphic narratives, (The Metamorphasis by Kafka, Farenheight 451 by Bradbury etc) and even graphic narratives to movies (Persepolis by Satrapi, V for Vendetta by Lloyd), the risk of possibly ruining the author/illustrator’s intentions is very high.
Art Spiegelman for example was asked if he would like his comic Maus (1980) to be adapted into a movie, which he declined. In an interview, when he was asked why, he states, “I don’t think it would work,” and continues on to explain, “…to me, Maus found it’s proper form and it took me thirteen years to give it that form. I’m not interested especially in seeing that diminished.” (Joseph Witek, 2007)

Monalesia went on to explaining grammar you would find typically any time you look in a comic book: panels, speech balloons, captions, and gutters. The Lexicon of Comicana (1980) was a book she referenced to help when understanding the grammar behind a normal comic book page.

Talking about speech bubbles, we were shown a few slides showcasing a variety of bubbles.
(Left: dashed lines, grayed out colour and small text/big balloons show whispering)
(Top right: Radio balloons) (Bottom Right: Telepathic balloons)

Monalesia referenced Scott McCloud’s take on Gutters in comic books. She explained how gutters were spaces made to help with the imagination of the readers. The gutter has a relationship with the content in the panels. As seen below, he perfectly illustrates how people can create a relationship between two images in the gutter:

Scott McCloud talking about gutters in his book Understanding Comics (1993)

It is important to note that the contents that make up the inside of comic books count for much more than just the storyline. Everything from the composition and layout of the pages, the flexibility in design of panel structures, the descriptions in captions and sound effects all add to the mood of the story.