The Belgian reporter Tintin — the creation of Herge — has charmed children and adults worldwide for decades, from the first adventure in 1929, to his final complete one in 1976. For French cartoonist’s 100th birthday, three volumes of adventures that had never been released in the United States beyond some limited edition, small press hardcovers were announced for release. In the end, the controversial “Tintin in the Congo” has not made it to release amidst charges of racism and a rather ill-advised embrace of the sort of colonialism that has been happily relegated to history. The two titles that have been presented are exciting for their historical significance, for their revelations of the artistic process, and for their simple enjoyment.
Plain and simple, Tintin is the way that so many of us learned to read graphic novels and accept them as part of the realm of literature — they were not open-ended, seat of your pants superhero monthlies, but self-contained, fully-realized adventure books that could be found in any library alongside the classics and contemporaries of the prose world. In fact, Tintin books were the exception — there just weren’t any acceptable graphic novels for anyone in America and their release here pioneered a form that has been embraced wholeheartedly by such ventures as LIttle Lit, and at least partially by the phenomenons of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Hugo Cabret.” These books might not be as successful without Herge and Tintin to pave the way.
What these new release have done is create book-ends to the adventure series, revealing where Tintin came from and showing where he ended up. Much like his readers, Tintin’s adventures begin from a more facile world view — politics and societies slowly unfold through the decades of intrigue and by the time Herge conceived of “Alph Art,” the audience is able to look at something like “Land of the Soviets” as one would a naive kid — charming, filled with bravado, but with so much to learn about the world.
Almost everything is primitive about “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets,” from the lack of nuance in its politics to the spare and clunky, black and white art. Herge redrew all the earlier adventures except this one, and it works as a document to the way his hand moved on the page prior to his trademarked style, which has cast a net on so much comics work in the world. Hardly as tight as any of the later adventures, the book has Tintin going on a loose journey of discovery to Soviet Russia, essentially amounting to an extended chase scene that allows Herge to create satire around the Soviet system and its claims of being a successful and superior way of governance. On one hand, this means the story plays into propaganda of a certain stripe — on the other, years after the bohemian glamor of American communist groups and the instant sympathy created by the witch hunts in the 1950s, it’s easy to see that Herge was not far-off in his lampoons of the country. And old style anti-Soviet satire makes for some nostalgically pleasing cartoons — it seems so far away from the terrorist-fearing, security state we currently live in.
On the other end of the scale, “Tintin and Alph-Art” is an unfinished adventure that Herge began working on in the late 70s, but died in 1983 before it was anywhere near completed. In this new edition, the story is presented as a script, embellished by reproductions of Herge’s unfinished page layouts and various sketches. The script leaves off before the end, but is followed by pages of development sketches and notes that show how Herge arrived at the story he did begin producing.
Strangely, this is a compelling volume and as a script, the story is entirely delightful. The adventure involves the world of contemporary art — ripe for satire despite Herge’s apparent embrace of the form — and a link with the usual litany of international crime, this time revolving around art forgery and new age swindles — there’s one great mystical character who wields electro-magnetic energy on his new age followers. The fact that Herge’s passing left Tintin in a cliffhanger couldn’t be more fortuitous or symbolic — Tintin stories are compilations of cliff hangers, they are one perpetual cliff hanger, and it’s a fitting tribute by the gods of coincidence that its at a cliffhanger that he leaves us. To boot, the circumstances of the cliffhanger itself, in which Tintin might be united with a piece of art and put on display in a museum forever, is such a perfect summation of the character’s fate in literary and cartooning history that, in some ways, “Alph-Art” takes on a Dennis Potter style quality with in mine, the character leaping from the pages and actually being preserved in our world through art.
The downside of these volumes is that they are works that can be only really be recommended to fans — but that really shouldn’t dissuade anyone from thinking it’s too late to become fans. They are around to be enjoyed after you’ve introduced yourself to the other 22 books in the series. There’s bound to be plenty of opportunity — Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson have announced their joint venture, a trilogy of Tintin films, which is sure to unleash a bombast of interest and product in the boy reporter from Belgium. Do yourself a favor and get a head start before the movies obscure your view of the real Tintin, as presented by Herge.
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 11:07 pm by John. Add a comment
Featuring Cabaret Dance Music, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Payolas, France Gall, Malcolm Lockyer, The Sweet, Advertising, Menster Phip and the Phipsters, The Fleshtones, Annette Funicello, Madness, Sarah Vaughan, Art
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Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:07 pm by John. 1 comment
In terms of coffee table art books, this is a good-sized miracle, offering not only some pretty pictures to glance at, but something entirely unexpected — a sweeping perspective of the way human beings qualify their world by compiling the small examples of the same throughout world history in chronological order.
There are several effects to this framing device. One obvious one is that the reader can follow the flow of human thought as ex-pressed through art — the same goes for technology and its applications, social history and a summation of religious and philosophical thought through the centuries. More importantly, the book demonstrates how each small moment of art is part of larger march — how art history itself is perhaps the grandest bit of collage art ever, made up of little components that are no less important than the whole.
The juxtapositions also give a clear understanding of the evolution of cultures around the world in a fashion I’ve never seen as clearly. Christian-themed paintings from 15th-century Europe sit side-by-side with serene nature scenes on silk from China and gold warrior figurines from Mexico. An official government portraiture of Lenin in 1924 is just a few pages before the similar realism utilized in “American Gothic.” Though centuries apart, there is direct line between Warhol’s “Marilyn Diptych” in 1962 and the second item in the book, “Venus of Wilendorf,” a small faceless figurine with pendulous breasts from Austria of 25,000 B.C. — both address the objectification of women in vivid terms.
The best part of the book is the way it opens doorways to new artwork you might not have appreciated in other venues. Familiar religious icons from the 12th century take on an exotic beauty when placed with objects from Asia and Africa. William Blake’s work takes on an appropriate mythological mysticism when seen next to images of Vishnu and stylized Korean landscapes. Chinese artist Qi Baishi’s minimalist ink work lives in proximity of Jackson Pollack and connections grow between them with repeated views. Indian women smoke hookas next to British aristocrats and their Arabian horses. The Indian painting “The Dying Inayat Khan” from 1618, depicting a dying opium addict, is seen as the next step from Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes” — both stunning in their depictions of the dark side, one through a frank lens, the other through a dramatic one.
Driven home by the book is the fact that multi-culturalism is straw man, held up by social conservatives who can’t see the clear picture — as the human animal spanning we planet, all cultures are just one. Take a journey through 30,000 of human creativity to see that culture as a living thing that hasn’t stopped growing.
DC Comics, though famed for their character Wonder Woman, does not have a good reputation for its treatment of female characters — they can often come off as little more than battling breasts ready to fall victim to some dramatic misogyny. Given this fact, it was certainly a surprise when the company launched Minx Books, an imprint of graphic novels aimed directly at the teenage girl market. Comic books are not often the realm of girls, but markets have proven over recent years that girls do like the sequential form and are willing to pick up graphic novels and Japanese Manga collection. Certainly some independent comic books have also appealed to female readers, though a portion of them are probably too mature for a high schooler to make the purchase.
The line’s debut title is “The Plain Janes,” written by young adult novelist Cecil Castellucci and drawn by Jim Rugg and as a stab at the teen chick lit genre, it more than succeeds, managing to mix up message with playfulness in an energetic mélange.
Our heroine Jane is growing up n Metro City, where a terrorist attack — it’s a bombing more akin to those in Europe or Israel than to our own experience with 9-11 — sends her to the hospital and convinces her parents they need to move to the suburbs. However, Jane has brought with her not only a pining to return to her urban home, but an emotional connection to a man who was injured in the bombing with her — an artist in a coma who she visits everyday and whose sketchbook she vows to complete.
Once in the sleepy burbs of Kent Waters and enrolled safely in Buzz Aldrin High School, Jane continues to write the comatose “John Doe” letters, while trying to figure out exactly where she fits into this new world she has entered.
That’s where Jane, an actress, Jayne, a scholar, and Polly Jayne, an athelete, come in — all sitting at the same outcast table that our Jane chooses to take a seat at.
From there, the Janes enter into a conspiracy that is bound to annoy the grown-ups in Kent Waters — a campaign of art terrorism under the acronym P.L.A.I.N., which means People Loving Art in Neighborhoods, that has them decorating public property — or defacing it, depending on your outlook.
“The Plain Janes” tackles all the topics that the readers the title is aimed to will probably be grappling with at the time they read it — typical ideas like the meaning of friendship, the hierarchy of social groups, how to negotiate love, the beauty of oddballs, the acceptance of those who are different and those who are the same. It also addresses some subjects that may foretell more than they reflect the lives of their audience — the nature of art, how it is fueled by pain, the place of the artist in society, how fads happen, the movement of crowds.
The story skirts on darkness, without succumbing to it. By casting disgruntled kids in the roles of “art terrorists,” the book examines the other side, the phantom bombers who lurk through the story without ever being seen. They, too, have a point to be made, one that should be understood in order to solve the problem of their strikes, even if they are making their point in the worst way possible. There is a line between the bombers and the Janes, and in daring to draw it, Castellucci has put on paper the road we all go down, where the scenery begins as black and white, but morphs into varied shades of gray. It cuts straight to the core of so many of the issues in America, from the obvious terrorist paranoia to the unhinged explosions of rage and horror within our schools.
More than anything, however, “The Plain Janes” is a happy treatise on the idea that creativity fuels change and community and the lack of it creates stagnation, unchanging pools of suburban neighborhoods that are inhabited by kids who once had dreams before they choked on the stillness.
“The Plain Janes” presents the desires of kids as motivating and positive and reveal the ways in which even the kindest actions of adults can sometimes be limiting. At the same time, it shows the value not only of rebellion, but of the opportunity to rebel at all — it illustrates that there might always need to be a wall to tear down in order to keep life interesting. Oppression should be embraced and knocked down with inventiveness and just the right sort of whimsy — and rebellion might exact a price that is worth paying.
“The Plain Janes” might be aimed at girls, but it’s there to be enjoyed by boys, as well. Any on-the-ball guy will tell you that there are few things better than cool girls that are equals and “The Plain Janes” is full of those — as is life, if you just open your eyes and your mind.
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 11:34 pm by John. Add a comment
