Colloquium. The Story of Sequential Art // Oshin Vipra Sagar
Preface This colloquium paper is an attempt to reflect my thoughts on stories, and telling thereof using visual sequential art as the media. It also briefly discusses my understanding of the art form and its parallel evolution over time, in dispersed locations on the face of Earth, sometimes citing a few examples to illustrate the point, and at other times quoting the exemplars of the field to suggest the influence they had on ideas and perceptions of the followers, here mostly being the comic book readers and artists. The paper also towards the end opines on the current surge of graphic novels in the popular yet not so mainstream readership, India being the context. Following is the sequenced outline of this colloquium, yet the subsections can be read on their own, irrespective of the order; coherence being subject to the familiarity of the readers with the media of sequential art. 1.
The Inception 1.0 The Need To Tell Stories 1.1 In Early History 1.2 Medieval Make-believe
2.
In The Modern Sense 2.0 Sequential Art, the Term 2.1 Modern Comics, an Introduction 2.1.1 Manga 2.1.2 Franco-Belgian Comics 2.1.3 American Comics
3.
The Graphic Novels 3.0 Graphic Novels 3.1 Criticism of the Neologism
4.
End Note.
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1.0
The Need to Tell Stories We’ve been telling stories for centuries, long before we could even write them down, and stories have been crucial to our evolution. Anthropologists tell us that storytelling is central to human existence. That it’s common to every known culture. Renowned writer Philip Pullman once said:
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After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
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But besides becoming a tool serving the needs of emotional and intellectual gratification, “the art of narration may have emerged as an evolutionary adaptation”, says Margaret Atwood,
a Canadian poet, novelist and an essayist. She illustrates how it assisted survival of the species, “If I can tell you that right over there in that river was where the crocodile ate Uncle George, you won’t necessarily test that in your own life by going over there and getting eaten by the crocodile.” Story originated as a method of bringing us together to share specific information that might be lifesaving. One might wonder, that the information maybe stated plain if it was for survival alone, shorter the better, no? No. Consider this, one Neanderthal warns another not to eat certain berries by sharing the tragic story of what happened to the last guy who ate them. Because a story involves both information and emotions, it’s more engaging — and therefore more memorable — than simply telling someone, “Those berries are poisonous.” Stories enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future, and prepare for it, thereby increasing the odds of our survival.
The Inception
1.1
In Early History Storytelling predates writing, with the earliest forms of storytelling usually being oral combined with gestures / expressions, and more significantly plus of which we have record, visual (sequential) art. Sequential art predates comics by millennia. Archaeologists have unearthed evidences of visual representations used for storytelling in various ancient cultures. Some of the earliest examples are the cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, pre-Columbian American picture manuscripts, scroll paintings, which were recurrent media of artistic expression, and even tapestries. Greek artists used to use friezes and vases as media to tell stories — an art form now called sequential sculpture. Rome’s Trajan’s Column, completed in 113 AD, is an early surviving example of a narrative told through the use of sequential pictures done in relief.
Sequential depiction on Trajan’s Column
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1.2
Medieval Makebelieve
Title : Paradise by Lucas Carnach In the foreground: Prohibition of God to Adam and Eve, in the middle ground: Creation of Adam, the Fall, Discovery of the Fall, the Expulsion from Paradise.
Paintings may also be considered to have been a common ground for sequential art. For instance, in Lucas Cranach’s Paradise different scenes of the Biblical story are shown in the same painting: on the front, God is admonishing the couple for their sin; in the background to the right are shown the earlier scenes of Adam’s creation, of their being tempted to eat the forbidden fruit; and on the left is the later scene of their expulsion from Paradise. The medieval art whether be in the Western world or the Eastern, grew out of the artistic heritage of the ruling empire in the region and the iconographic traditions of the religious institutions say church in the West or the less structured sects / groups in the East. The art sought to create a world of make-believe. The representations were religious stories either from the religious texts, or passed over oral traditions in some parts of the world.
In the West, the painting in the
domes of the churches and illuminated manuscripts were Biblical - glorified the God, sought to feed people the only explanations that the Church approved of, such as creation of the world; also there were paintings that illustrated what would happen to people if their deeds deem them fit for hell. Because none have seen heaven or hell, the paintings fed the mass, later to be the universal ideas of the ethereal beauty of heaven – the abode of God and the angels; and the fire in hell, the plight of wrongdoers sent to hell - who go through a sequence of barbaric tortures.
Meanwhile in the East, for
example in India, the sequential art was found in the cave paintings of Ajanta, Ellora and the likes that depicted events from Buddha’s life or the stories of Bodhisatva;, from Rajasthan the Phad paintings told stories of Pabu Ji and Devnarayan Ji (folk deities of the region), and Kaavads, a closeted shrine, depicted stories from Mahabharta and Ramayana; the Pichhwais from Gujarat depicted stories of Krishna and so did Pattachitras from West Bengal. Though they all represented different themes, certainly not the unanimous voice of any authoritarian religious institution like the Church, yet all of these also had somewhat religious themes running through them.
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The humanity in general had caught fancy of the divine, and delved into such themes more often than not.
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A Kaavad from Rajasthan.
A Phad painting from Rajasthan.
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2.0
Sequential Art, the Term The term “sequential art” was coined in 1985 by comic-book artist Will Eisner in his book Comics and Sequential Art. Sequential art (also visual narrative, graphic narrative, pictorial narrative, graphic literature, or narrative illustration) is an art form that uses images deployed in sequence for graphic storytelling or to convey information. The best-known example of sequential art is comics, especially comic books and comic strips, which are a printed arrangement of art and speech balloons. The term is also broadly applied to other media, such as film, animation or storyboards. Scott McCloud notes in Understanding Comics, “You might say that before it’s projected, film is just a very very very very slow comic!” Wow! And you think the first caveman to draw a story had any clue he was pioneering an art form and a field of study?
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You might say that before it’s projected, film is just a very very very very slow comic!
In the Modern Sense
2.1
Modern Comics, an Introduction Comics is a medium used to express ideas by images, often but not necessarily combined with other visual information. Comics frequently takes the form of sequences of image panels often juxtaposed with textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia to indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. Size and arrangement of panels contribute to narrative pacing. Cartooning and similar forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; fumetti is a form which uses photographic images. Although in present times one can see plethora of styles, each one different from another. Common forms of comics include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as digests, graphic novels, comic albums, and tankobon
have become increasingly common, and online webcomics have proliferated in the 21st century. The history of comics has followed different paths in different cultures. Scholars have posited a pre-history as far back as the Lascaux cave paintings. By the mid-20th century, comics flourished particularly in the United States, western Europe (especially in France and Belgium), and Japan. The history of European comics is often traced to Rodolphe TÜpffer’s cartoon strips of the 1830s, and became popular following the success in the 1930s of strips and books such as The Adventures of Tintin. American comics emerged as a mass medium in the early 20th century with the advent of newspaper comic strips; magazine-style comic books followed in the 1930s, in which the superhero genre became prominent after Superman appeared in 1938. Histories of Japanese comics and cartooning (manga) propose origins as early as the 12th century.
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2.1.1
Manga Etymologically, the word “manga” is composed of two kanji, man meaning “whimsical or impromptu” and ga meaning “pictures”. Manga are comics created in Japan or by creators in the Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century. However, the word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of works such as Santo Kyoden’s picturebook Shiji no yukikai in 1798, and the celebrated Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834) containing assorted drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous printmaking artist of the Edo period, Hokusai. (Remember the iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa? Well Hokusai was the creator of that print!)
Santo Kyoden’s Shiji no youkikai, 1798. They have a long and complex prehistory in earlier Japanese art. Albeit, the modern manga is said to have originated in the Occupation (1945– 1952) and post-Occupation years (1952–early 1960s), while a previously militaristic and ultra-nationalist Japan rebuilt its political and economic infrastructure. Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. One view emphasizes events occurring during and after the U.S. Occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan
by the U.S. soldiers) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney). The other view, represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art.
are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.
Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity certainly occurred in the post-war period, involving manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa (Sazaesan). Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere, and so does Sazaesan. Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic innovations. In Tezuka’s “cinematographic” technique, the panels
Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy
Machiko Hasegawa’s Sazae-san
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Hasegawa’s focus on daily life and on women’s experience also came to characterize later shojo manga. Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shonen manga aimed at boys and shojo manga aimed at girls. In 1969 a group of female manga artists who later became known as Magnificent 24s made their shojo manga debut. Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw shojo for a readership of girls and young women. In the following decades (1975– present), shojo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres. Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and “Ladies Comics”. Modern shojo romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization. Unlike shonen manga, women are not irrelevant peripheral characters in shojo. But gradually,
the role of women in shonen manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include girls or women surround the hero, or even themselves being groups of heavily armed female warriors.
2.1.2
Franco-Belgian Comics The francophone Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer produced comic strips beginning in 1827, and published theories behind the form. Cartoons appeared widely in newspapers and magazines from the 19th century. The success of Zig et Puce in 1925 popularized the use of speech balloons in European comics, after which Franco-Belgian comics began to dominate. The Adventures of Tintin, with its signature clear line style, was first serialized in newspaper comics supplements beginning in 1929, and became an icon of Franco-Belgian comics. Soon following the success of Le Journal de Mickey (1934–44), dedicated comics magazines and full-colour comic albums became the primary outlet for comics in the mid-20th century. In the 1960s, the term bandes dessinées (“drawn strips”) came into wide use in French to denote the medium. Significantly, the Frenchlanguage term contains no indication of subject-matter, unlike the American
terms “comics” and “funnies”, which imply an art form not to be taken seriously. Comics began to attract public and academic attention as an artform and became to be distinguished as le neuvième art (literally, “the ninth art”). Relative to the respective size of their populations, the innumerable authors in France and Belgium publish a high volume of comic books.A group including René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo founded the magazine Pilote in 1959 to give artists greater freedom over their work. Goscinny and Uderzo’s The Adventures of Asterix appeared in it and went on to become the best-selling French-language comics series. Also in 1960, the satirical and taboobreaking Hara-Kiri defied censorship laws in the countercultural spirit that led to the May 1968 events of youth unrest. Frustration with censorship and editorial interference led to a group of Pilote cartoonists to found the adults-only L’Écho des savanes in 1972. Adult-
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oriented and experimental comics flourished in the 1970s, such as in the experimental science fiction of Mœbius and others in Métal hurlant, even mainstream publishers took to publishing prestige-format adult comics. From the 1980s, mainstream sensibilities were reasserted and serialization became less common as the number of comics magazines decreased and many comics began to be published directly as albums. Smaller publishers such as L’Association that published longer works in non-traditional formats by auteur-istic creators also became common. Since the 1990s, mergers resulted in fewer large publishers, while smaller publishers proliferated. Sales overall continued to grow despite the trend towards a shrinking print market.
Top: René Goscinny, the creator of Asterix. Bottom: Panels from Asterix.
2.1.3
American Comics American comics developed out of such magazines as Puck, Judge, and Life. The success of illustrated humour supplements in the New York World and later the New York American, particularly Outcault’s The Yellow Kid, led to the development of newspaper comic strips. Between 1896 and 1901 cartoonists experimented with sequentiality, movement, and speech balloons. Shorter, black-and-white daily strips began to appear early in the 20th century, and became established in newspapers after the success in 1907 of Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff. Thereafter, Sunday strips were full-page, and often in colour. Although comics has some origins in 18th century Japan and 1830s Europe, comic books were first popularized in the United States during the 1930s. The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies, was released in the United States in 1933 and was a reprinting of earlier newspaper humor comic strips, which had established many of the story-telling devices used in
comics. Humour strips predominated at first, and in the 1920s and 1930s strips with continuing stories in genres such as adventure and drama also started becoming popular.
Yellow Kids’s words appear on his shirt.
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The term comic book derives from American comic books once being a compilation of comic strips of a humorous tone; however, this practice was replaced by featuring stories of all genres, usually not humorous in tone. Although initial periodic comic books were a compilation of reprinting newspaper comic strips; by the end of the 30’s, original content began to dominate. The success in 1938 of Action Comics and its lead hero Superman marked the beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books, in which the superhero genre was prominent. The popularity of superhero comic books declined following World War II, while comic book sales continued to increase as other genres proliferated, such as romance, westerns, crime, horror, and humour.Following a sales peak in the early 1950s, the content of comic books (particularly crime and horror) was subjected to scrutiny from parent groups and government agencies, which culminated in Senate hearings that led to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority selfcensoring body. The Code has been blamed for stunting the growth of American comics and maintaining its low status in American society for much of the remainder of the century. Superheroes re-established themselves as the most prominent comic book genre by the early 1960s.
Then began to emerge certain comics that would challenge the Code and readers with their content in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, published and distributed independently of the established comics industry, many comics emerged that reflected the youth counterculture and drug culture of the time, what became known as underground comix. Many had an uninhibited, often irreverent style; their frank depictions of nudity, sex, profanity, and politics had no parallel outside their precursors, the pornographic and even more obscure “Tijuana bibles�. Underground comics were almost never sold at newsstands, but rather in youthoriented outlets like record stores, as well as by mail order. The Adventures of Jesus has been credited as the first underground comic. The underground gave birth to the alternative comics movement in the 1980s and its mature, often experimental content in nonsuperhero genres. Comics in the US has had a lowbrow reputation stemming from its roots in mass culture; cultural elites sometimes saw popular culture as threatening to culture and society. In the latter half of the 20th century, popular culture won greater acceptance, and the lines between high and low culture began to blur. Yet comics continued to be stigmatized, as the medium was seen as entertainment for children, illiterates.
The graphic novel—book-length comics—began to gain attention after Will Eisner popularized the term with his book A Contract with God (1978). The term became widely known with the public after the commercial success of Maus, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns in the mid-1980s. In the 21st century graphic novels became established in mainstream bookstores and libraries.
Top Right and Bottom Right: Panel artworks from Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Left: The cover of A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories by Eisner.
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3.0
Graphic Novels In 1964, Richard Kyle coined the term “graphic novel” to distinguish newly translated European works from genre-driven subject matter common in American comics. Precursors of the form existed by the 1920s, which saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition by Belgian Frans Masereel, American Lynd Ward and others, including Stan Lee. In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digestsized, adult-oriented “picture novel” It Rhymes with Lust, a 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer “Drake Waller” (Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin, touted as “an original full-length novel” on its cover. In 1971, writer-artist Gil Kane and collaborators devised the paperback “comics novel” Blackmark. Will Eisner popularized the term “graphic novel” when he used it on the cover of the paperback edition of his work A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories in 1978. Many graphic novels emphasize drama, adventure, striking visuals, politics, character development, or romance over laugh-out-loud comedy. Presently ‘graphic novels’ have become
a part of the popular culture, and the term a contemporary jargon for narrative works in the form of sequential art, traditionally synonymous with comics in the past century. Although it may deserve to be distinguished on some grounds, yet, arguably, many of the flagbearers of the medium frown at the neologism, and find it redundant, and pretentious. While the supporters of the term argue on reasonable grounds such as whether the content be fiction, non-fiction, history, fantasy, or anything in-between; generally if they are lengthsome, stand-alone stories with more complex plots, they should be called graphic novels. And neologism is progress. It helps to classsify the ocean of work that exists world over. Personally I see no harm in the neologism, rather I deem it fit. It doesn’t matter. It is said, well, what’s in a name? But if you see, up close, you will see there’s a lot, actually!
The Graphic Novels
3.1
Criticism of the Neologism According to some of the most acclaimed comic book artist, (whose works to have been called graphic novels) don’t approve of the term much, rather detest it. They argue, since comics are sequential visual art, usually with text, that are often told in a series of rectangular panels; graphic novels are, simply defined, book-length comics. Whether they tell a single, continuous narrative from first page to last; or they are anthologies or collections of shorter stories or individual comic strips; they should still be called comic books is what some artists say. Despite the name, not all comics are funny, and over the bygone decades that has become clear to readers of the format. Their arguments are sound too, and I would leave it at that. Of the quotes to follow, only the first quote from Jeff Smith seems less prejudiced against the term, graphic novels. While Daniel’s quote just cannot be ignored, it is right in the face of it, it is so logically funny!
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‘graphic novel’… I don’t
like that name. It’s trying too hard. It is a comic book. But there is a difference. And the difference is, a graphic novel is a novel in the sense that there is a beginning, a middle and an end.
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~ Jeff Smith, creator of Bone
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I hate this term graphic a garbage man a ‘sanitation novel. It is a term
publishing houses have
engineer’ – and second because a graphic novel is
created for the bourgeois so in fact the very first thing they wouldn’t be ashamed
it is ashamed to admit : a
of buying comics… I am
comic book, rather than a
not a graphic novelist. I am
comic pamphlet or comic
a cartoonist, and I make
magazine.
comics and I am happy about it.
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~ Marjane Satrapi, creator of The Complete Persepolis and Embroideries
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~ Daniel Raburn
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That pompous phrase
(graphic novels) ….. It is a marketing term… that I had I snicker at the
never had any sympathy
neologism; first for its
with. The term ‘comic’ does
insecure pretension – the
just as well for me… It was
literary equivalent of calling thought up by some idiot in
the marketing department of DC. The problem is that ‘graphic novel’ just came to mean expensive comic book and so what you’d get – people like DC Comics or Marvel Comics – because ‘graphic novels’ were getting some attention, they’d stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover, and simply call it ‘The She-Hulk Graphic Novel...
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~ Alan Moore, authtor of Watchmen, and the unparalleled, V for Vendetta
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What’s in a name? Just tell stories, however you like, write’em, draw’em, film’em and call them what you like.
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4.0
End Note. For centuries art was commissioned and therefore careful in its representation. And then over the years, all restraints broke loose with the Underground comic scene coming into the American picture and somewhat parallel emergence in France, and elsewhere during the late 60’s and early 70’s, echoing the countercultural spirit of the time, such was the era. Years of artistic struggle led to slow acceptance of the radically new ideas into the society. Now rather than stories being fed by the established power structures and institutions that were holding the society; the stories even sought to propagate ideas that bring them power down, like V does in V for Vendetta. Long considered low-brow, the comic books have become hugely popular the world over, so much so that now it has also become an area of scholarly research and study, known as Comics studies. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop culture texts, scholars in fields such as semiotics, composition studies and cultural studies are now re-considering comics and graphic novels as complex texts deserving of serious scholarly study. Also, I would have liked to discuss the current surge of graphic novels in India, and the works by Indian artists that are creating a wave – brilliantly using the tool of perzine or personal narratives to tell greater issues of a larger group, a lot of times pressing socio-economic issues; but I will have to conclude this colloquium as I have already exceeded my word limit by enormity.
References //
Why We Tell Stories - Margaret Atwood. Big Think. n.d. Web. 15 June 2016 The Kaavad Storytelling of Rajasthan - Nina Sabnani. IDC -IIT Bombay. July 2009. Web. 20 June 2016. Sequential Art. Wikipedia. n.d. Web. 18 June 2016. Comics – Comic book – Graphic novel – Definition, History, Criticism of the term. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016