The Function of Style The problem with style is that it's almost never a choice. You rarely get the idea when reading a work that the artist chose a particular method of expression for the sake of the actual pages at hand. Even in the great cases when the artist did, if the choice was right, hopefully the reader never stops to notice. For the purposes of this diatribe (and simply because a body can only carry so many things with him up onto a soapbox and still keep his balance) I'm drawing a circle around essentially three categories of style in comics, Iconic, Photographic, and Descriptive. When I get done defining each, the astute reader will no doubt call to mind works which fall into none of these categories or have parts of each. To this, all I can say is that the world is a wondrously complicated place. Sometimes a writer or artist must simplify the world to be able to make any reasonable statements at all. Reasonable statement number one: An artistic style should be chosen intentionally for a story as one that will best suit the material at hand. If, as an artist, you're approaching every story the same, it's either Hobson's choice, or you're drawing exactly the same kinds ofstories over and over again. bOring. Wanting to be the kind of artist who makes choices about style intentionally, I did a little thinkingabout what I had to choose from and here is what I came up with.
ICONIC
Leci n'est pas une pipe. Magritte's paradox. This is not a pipe. They're all just lines on paper. But it is a pipe. Within the context,
we accept it for the sake of the story. In the same way, we accept that
the characters are people, or we wouldn't care. The perspective here is
one in which the writer/artist knows that for a comic to function
effectively, all that's necessary is that we as readers understand the
symbols. That is, if we can read the image for what it is intended to
represent, then it has served it's function in the story to carry
meaning from one place in the plot to the next. An image is recognizable
as the same representation from one context to the next so that we get
new understanding out of the differences of circumstance. The art
supplies only minimal information allowing the readers to fill in the
richness from their own experience. A minimalist image of a Doghouse
allows the reader to bring to it all their own history and understanding
of one, much as the word Doghouse does itself. An Iconic style
operates on a paneled page much the same as a sentence, relying on the
juxtaposition, in the case of images this is montage-theory, to serve up
the whole meaning.
Montage Theory, as defined by Sergei Eisenstein, reads that uninflected
images sitting next to one another will yield meaning because the human
mind tries to make sense of the images as a progression. It follows that
this method of storytelling involved the reader more intimately because
the story only really takes place in the mind of the reader and requires
some effort on the readers part for it to transpire. It's also
reasonable to think that the reader might have more invested in the
story if it is they who are making it happen by their inferences from
the images, and that they might relate better as well.
Some, like Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, argue that the
simplification of images, of the protagonist especially, produces a
Masking effect and allows the reader to see themselves in the image.
By making a picture if a character less realistic, the theory goes, the
character is that much less Unlike the reader, putting up less of a
barrier to identification. The idea that if who the character is
matters less, what they say will matter more is all well and good when
you're maybe dealing with educational comics but falls on its face when
the material at hand is a story.
If readers see themselves in Charlie Brown, it has a lot less to do
with what Charlie does or does not look like and much more with how he
seems to respond emotionally to the world around him. That is what
readers relate to. The argument that an Iconic style has a greater
potential for eliciting an emotional punch because it helps the reader
relate by way of its visual simplicity, misses the point of how this
happens.
De-specifying the image, making it more general and less particular,
gives up the power the image itself has to deliver emotional impact. If
symbols were that much better at it, a cartoon holocaust-museum would
have more dramatic effect than the photographic, realistic and specific
one we have. When a reader is really convinced of the wholeness of a
character, they relate in a basic human level: an understanding that
the universal truths of pain and love, hunger, loneliness and mortality
are shared. Charlie Brown will never starve, will never bleed to death,
and if he did it might be funny.
I'm not saying there is no place in the world for cartoons or that they
don't carry enough emotional impact. I am a humble admirer of the work
of Jeff Smith, George Price, Charles Schultz, George Harriman, Bill
Watterson and a host of others. But the argument that an Iconic style
has a greater potential for emotional punch because it helps the reader
relate, misses the point. The elements we relate to are in the emotional
content, which an iconic style can dilute.
Sometimes diluting that content is a necessary choice to make a charged
subject more approachable. There is a level at which a story can be too
emotionally intense. Where the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs with its
depiction of a nuclear-war England would not have been helped by a lot
of individually charged images. The simplicity of the pics as they were
reflected the minds of the characters involved. The story wasn't about
those people specifically, not about the transformation of the mind of
an individual, so it wouldn't have been to any advantage to describe
them in greater specifics. Maus by Art Spiegelman would never have won a
Pulitzer prize if the death camps had been shown in graphic detail. We
agreed to believe anyway and rewarded him for not rubbing the whole
truth in our faces.
Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan is a case where strict use of Icons
doesn't take away from the material at all. The emotional content is
entirely delivered by the plot and the juxtaposition of images. It's
already so heavily charged that to add to it with inflected, descriptive
images would completely throw it over the top of readability. A
live-action Jimmy Corrigan movie would drive people from the theater
into the streets in search if a bus to throw themselves in front of.
Ware's material, like the best of Iconic styles, makes use of the
mechanics of the medium, action and inferred response, the montage
theory, where the meaning is put together in the mind of the readers
rather than for them on the page itself. The theory goes that this
involves the reader more directly, and I believe it does. A distinction
should be made, though, between the method for imparting meaning, and
the delivery of emotional content.
PHOTOGRAPHIC
Images are powerful. The majority of how we negotiate our day comes out
of how we see. The draughtsmanship of artists like Alex Ross and Tim
Bradstreet is just amazing. It makes us feel like we're seeing elements
of reality on the page. Yes, it's eye-candy but LOOK at it, it's
beautiful! The problem is, not all beauty is compelling.
I personally have mixed feelings about the use of photos. To my mind, if
an artist is going to use them, it's best done in the same manner as
some writers: to inform the mind before addressing the page, referencing
the feeling rather than a visual structure. At least guys like Ross and
Bradstreet and others take their own pics. Photography is without
question an art of its own.
Unlike the Iconic styles in comics, a Photographic one can and often
does put a vast amount of emotional content in the image itself. The
emotional content isn't in the circumstances of the story as much, but
in each dramatically lighted, inflected image, and in the text.
Photographic work tends to be really text-dependent for telling the
story because the emotional content is in the image itself rather than
an Iconic montage sequence.
The thing about most photographic work is that it's such a waste. An
artist's job in many ways is to make the decisions that narrow the focus
of an image to give the reader exactly what is pertinent to the content
of the story. In a case where light through a glass bottle is rendered
with the same care (even greater) as the image of a character's face,
the reader can't help but come to the conclusion, even subconsciously,
that the one is more important than the other. In fact, such artists are
especially proud of the rigorous draughtsmanship that is technically
much harder to master, regardless of how relevant it is to the content.
But, damn, it sells well and small wonder, it's fun to look at. But is
it worth reading?
As an artist, Photographic work also strikes me as an appalling waste
in terms of labor-to-consumption ratio. Some of the painted
photo-realistic work takes days to produce a page that will be read and
flipped past in just moments. The artist has the hope that the more time
they spend, the more likely a reader is to stop and appreciate the panel
s/he spent all afternoon on. The problem with that is, if they do, it
completely messes up the rhythm and pacing which is intrinsic to
controlling how a page or sequence is read.
The other reason it can be such a waste is that all that beautiful
rendering has no bearing on whether it is effective storytelling or not.
The most striking and arresting image, the one that really makes the
reader stop and say, wow, look at that, has nothing whatever to do
with the mechanics of what makes a comic page read effectively. So, the
value system behind a Photographic style can be one that is completely
disconnected with readability and the proper focus of the art on the
content rather than on itself.
DESCRIPTIVE
Reasonable question #1, if both the Iconic and Photographic styles
dilute the delivery of the material they're communicating, is there
another approach that might not?
The Iconic approach is much more effective at the mechanics of panel to
panel storytelling. The Photographic understands the emotional impact of
the single image. The best perspective, then, might be one that uses the
best of both and maybe focuses on delivering an emotional punch from
multiple angles. That is what it's all about after all, compelling work,
emotional impact, telling a story. If you want to make people think, be
a journalist, write a letter to the editor, maybe an essay.
"Every artist who has the gift of generalizing forms...accenting their
logic without depriving them of their living reality...communicates to
us the thrill he himself felt before the immortal verities."
Auguste Rodin
Verities, veritas: Truth. The Holy Grail.
In Descriptive work the images are not strictly symbols nor are they
carefully studied renderings of the visual world. These images and pages
are inherently evocative of the emotional tenor of the subject. There is
a sense that the artist discovered or invented exactly the right lines
as they were being put to paper. The images are often exaggerated,
sometimes subtile, but always elicit a response. The lines are
expressive, you can feel the movement, the life in them.
In the fine arts it's clearly seen in work by Egon Schiele, Degas and
Rodin. Classical Chinese and Japanese brushwork is filled with it. You
can hear it in the best Jazz. The most ideal is the material that is
made up on the spot but comes out feeling planned. Spontaneous
deliberateness. In comics it is most readily seen in Mazzuccelli and
Seinkeiwicz, Tony Salmons and in Pope when he's not drawing people. In
truth you can find it in work by almost any artist, if you ask of what
work s/he is most proud. Look at the panels and pages they point out:
the lines are alive. The marks aren't stock answers to file-questions,
each are all new. Descriptive work is often more visually balanced (or
intentionally out of balance) because the artist, consciously or not, is
especially sensitive to and makes use of visual tension. Descriptive
also helps compensate in comics for the lack of sound and motion by
using visual energy, a static kineticism. The reader can feel, from the
movement in the lines, a movement in the figures. There is an expressive
quality indicative of the nature of things the artist is trying to get
across.
By expressiveness in the Descriptive style, I don't mean an abandonment
of realism. It is an embracing of realism in a sense that it is about a
more whole reality, a visual depiction of not only the physical world
but the emotional world as well.
Any artist can draw dirt. Dirt on a figures clothing lets us know he's
dirty and that's enough for the mechanical function of the story.
Instead, how about drawing it in a way that lets us smell it? How about
an image where we know by looking that the figure can smell himself and
how he feels about it? Okay. Yes. Montage Theory suggests that we might
certainly get it from a sequence better. Rather than telling, showing
with uninflected images how the world reacts to a body's soil and smell.
That's nice, that's really flawless if that is what the story is about.
(Some stories are based on less.) But if the story is about something
else, though, then the Descriptive might just add a richness, a
wholeness to the narrative that a Photographic depiction can't supply
and an Iconic montage sequence might take panels and panels to deliver
when it would be a tangent besides.
Descriptive style doesn't work for every kind of story. As stated
above, some kinds of material lend themselves to other kinds of styles.
They key is in appraising the kind of story you're telling and choosing
a style or combination of approaches that will best suit the material at
hand.
As an ending caveat, and in the hope of heading off the
over-intellectual who have actually read this far and are armoring up
(is there even one of you?) It needs be said that while I can recognize
all this stuff, and over-simplify an artists entire published life for
the sake of substantiating my own arguments, I'm rarely able to
actualize my stated aesthetics in the reality of the lines I put on my
own pages.
In my own defense, I can only say that it's hard as hell. Other artists
will recognize what I mean when I say that all this only works when it
is happening, when the Zen of the mind and body flows out of the
fingertips in a way that later I can look at my own stuff and say, "Wow,
how did I do that?" Almost never happens. One part of one panel in
fifty, in a good stretch.
My favorite readers are the ones who know by looking just which ones
those are, and tell me I really need to be doing it more like that. Yep,
thanks.
