The Expressionism of Rob Liefeld

Since the first day of class students have asked me when they were going to draw comics. Every time I've told them that this is an English class, not an Art class, and that our focus is on reading. But yesterday I gave the students pages with nine panel grids of empty panels (lovingly hand drawn) and assigned them to draw a comic that explains how to do something, using at least one moment-to-moment transition, one subject-to-subject transition, and one action-to-action transition (see Understanding Comics chapter 3 for more details on panel transitions.) The results were pretty entertaining, ranging from "How to Make a Sandwich" to "How to Assassinate Someone."

I hope that drawing their own comics gave the students a little more insight into how many choices a cartoonist has to make, from drawing a character, to composing a panel, to making the panel transitions work, to pacing the narrative, to composing a page, and so on and so on. It's harder than it looks.

My goal now is to get them to pay attention to the art. I've known plenty of comics fans who focus solely on the story and, unless the art is terrible, don't really care what it looks like. To them the art is just a system for delivering important updates about the life of Batman. But comics is a visual medium, and if you ignore the art you're missing the point. 

Today we talked a little bit about Impressionism and Expressionism (only a little, because my knowledge of art history is much weaker than my knowledge of comics trivia) and then read chapter 5 of Understanding Comics. Chapter 5 is about how cartoonists can express emotions through their drawing styles and appeal to different senses.

There's a great page in Chapter 5 that shows samples of different cartoonists' work and explains how their different use of line conveys different emotions. McCloud writes something to the effect that Rob Liefeld's jagged scratchy lines strike a chord with adolescent readers. He wrote that back in the 90's, when Liefeld was at the peak of his popularity (drawing comics like X-Force, pictured below). While reading that page today, one of the boys in my class pointed to the Liefeld panel and said, "I like that one best!" Apparently McCloud was right, and the appeal of Rob Liefeld's art to teenage boys is timeless.

Amidst the Jivas

It's midterm week! Time to make sure all the grades are in the computer. Some of my students will be happy with their midterm report cards, and some will be significantly less happy. But the grades are fair, so don't feel too sorry for those unhappy folks. And it's just midterms; it's not like it's a real quarter grade.

Yesterday the students read "Frank and the Truth About Plenitude" and wrote about it.

The floaty things are called jivas.

Loving Wife was right; most high school students are not crazy about Jim Woodring's surreal wordless stories. As I always say, though, you don't have to like it to write about it.

I'm hoping they like Batman: Year One more.

Some Days You're Frustrated . . .

. . . and then some days a kid asks if he can borrow a graphic novel for the weekend, just because, you know, he wants to read it. And that makes everything better.

That Certain Wistful Quality

Some days I despair.

And some days I neglect to update the blog. But, here I am!

As promised, my class read some Peanuts comics and then "The Girl From Superman's Past." That's the story about Superman's college sweetheart Lori Lemaris, remember? I mentioned it the other day, but I didn't say what made Lori different from Superman's other love interests like Lois Lane and Lana Lang (notice a pattern?) because I didn't want to spoil the surprise revelation at the end of the story. The story is from 1958, though, and it has been followed up on many times, and if you do a Google image search for Lori Lemaris, you'll see her shocking secret immediately. Probably everyone who cares already knows. But, on the off chance you'd like to find out for yourself, this is your 1958 Spoiler Warning. Secrets below!

(You already saw the picture anyway, didn't you?)

That's right, Lori is a mermaid. After the Comics Code Authority came into being in the fifties, comics could no longer fall back on sex or violence as selling points. And since superhero stories are basically about heroes beating up on criminals, what do you do when you have to cut back on the violence? You have to get creative. Superman stories from this period are like fairytales. Mermaids, square planets, flying dogs . . . anything was possible.

In this story Clark Kent goes to a football game at his alma mater, becomes nostalgic, and thinks back to his college days. He remembers the day he met Lori and how he fell in love with her. They dated for awhile, and finally he decided to give up on being Superman so he could marry her. He was shocked, then, when she turned him down. Ultimately it turned out that she couldn't marry him because she was, you know, a mermaid, and she had to go back home to her people under the sea. At the end of the story, sitting next to Lois on the bleachers, Clark is still wistful and nostalgic. Many of the best Superman stories from this time have a sad quality to them, a sense of Superman feeling alone in the world.

Don't we all feel that way, sometimes?

Reading Pictures GO!

Today: No school!

Tomorrow: I begin Unit 2 of Creative Reading. And, in a rare instance of Things Going According to Plan, I'm also beginning Unit 2 of Senior English, but that's outside the scope of this blog.

Unit 2 is supposed to go like this:
Reading Pictures (weeks 4 – 6)
*Understanding Comics chapters 5-9
*The continuing history of American comics (comic books to graphic novels)
*Comparing and contrasting different art styles
*Analyzing & evaluating longer comics

I now know from experience that the plan to read five chapters of Understanding Comics in three weeks is completely unrealistic. The main thing is to read the chapter about different art styles expressing different moods, since one of the goals in Unit 2 is to focus more on the art.

 I also need to decide which "longer comics" we'll be reading. Based on the syllabus, our candidates are:
"Frank and the Truth About Plenitude", by Jim Woodring
“A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, by Neil Gaiman and Kelley Jones
“This Man, This Monster!”, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
“The Girl in Superman’s Past!”, by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring

In case you're wondering, the girl in Superman's past is his college sweetheart Lori Lemaris. Man, I love that story.

Speaking of Superman, I need to be careful not to bias the class too much toward comic books over comic strips. I'm going to incorporate this Onion AV Club article about the history of the American comic strip and some Peanuts strips to provide balance.

"It's Merkel. Something about a giant bat. Chicken will keep."

Guess what I found waiting for me on the porch when I got home . . . a package from Amazon. I love packages from Amazon! And guess what was inside. No guess? Okay, it was two copies of this:

Now that I have enough copies of Understanding Comics, I have turned my attention to accumulating copies of Batman Year One. The Cincinnati Public Library system can only get me 5 or 6 copies. This weekend I'm going to visit some used bookstores to see if I can turn any up. Now I have a start, though, thanks to this mysterious benefactor (you may not have intended to be mysterious, but your name was not included). Thank you benefactor! Also, let me know who you are.

If you haven't read Year One, check it out. You may have heard that this Frank Miller fellow is crazy and that his writing is nearly incoherent, and that's true, but back in the eighties he was very, very good.

In other news we had our first test today. I haven't graded them, so for now I'm going to assume that it went well.

Stardust Has No Weakness

Yesterday I bought a copy of the brand new Justice League #1. Today I took it in and showed it to my students as an example of a modern comic book. Some of them seemed to find it interesting, which is good, because DC's whole goal here is to appeal to new readers. I found Justice League #1 pretty boring, but I'm in my late thirties and I've read about a million comics, so I'm not the target demographic. And I'm not a huge Jim Lee fan . . . but the kids like Jim Lee, right?

(In my day, a single issue of a comic would give you a ton of story. And if a comic was called Justice League, it would have the Justice League in it. But, again, not the target demographic. I hope this does well for DC.)

I've mentioned the writing assignment I gave, where students have to analyze that Stardust story. Part of the assignment is to compare Stardust to Superman. Today the class brainstormed similarities and differences. Here's what they came up with.

Similarities:
Superman and Stardust are both aliens
They are both superhumanly strong
They both fight crime
They both wear colorful costumes

Differences:
Superman has a love interest, Stardust doesn't
Superman has a secret identity, Stardust doesn't
Stardust has mind control powers, Superman doesn't
Superman lives on Earth, Stardust lives on his private star
Superman saves people, Stardust comes in after people have been killed and punishes the evil-doers
Superman takes criminals to jail, Stardust kills and/or tortures them
Superman has a weakness of kryptonite, Stardust has no weakness

I thought those were good points. Stardust is like Superman with the relatable human part stripped out, left as just a terrifying creature from beyond.