"Stripped"

So, I watched the comic strip documentary, "Stripped" on Netflix last night. It wasn't my first viewing; I'd seen the debut of the film at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Festival back in Fall of 2013. As with my first time around, I enjoyed the film and its breezy pace and  the chance to see a number of cartoonists in their studios, talking comics. "Stripped" stands pretty much alone in that it's a film devoted to the world of the comic strip, as opposed to  the much more high profile world of comic books, comic cons, super-heroes and the like.
 Strange, the turn of history; what had once been the pinnacle of comics art and aspiration, the syndicated comic strip, has been marginalized to the point of near extinction, debased and devalued by both its beneficiary (the newspaper) and its public.  Few of the cartoonists featured in the film are widely known, at least outside the world of comics, and many speak of working their day job for years before the strip paid well enough that they could afford to live off of it; whereas in their heyday (as the film notes), strip cartoonists, like authors, were celebrities making oodles of money.
The case may be made, that newspapers themselves led the devolution of the comic strip as a cultural touchstone , as in the years following WWII, they progressively shrank the comics pages size and influence down to nothing;  filling the Sunday "Comics Section" with ads and circulars and more ads and circulars, interspersed with a comic once in a while. In its glory days, a Sunday comics section might be as large as 17" x 24" and 32 pages. Today it's lucky to have three pages amidst all the drek.  What kid is going to be excited about reading the local supermarket circular on a Sunday morning?*

So, among cartoonists at least, hopes were riding high that "Stripped" might do for comic strip  cartooning what "20 feet from Stardom" did for backup singers. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, as "Stripped" opted for sound-bites over interviews, and lighthearted rather than in-depth. It is enjoyable enough--but as the filmmakers opted for jaunty and entertaining, they sacrificed a sense of investment and urgency. The film lacks passion--and more importantly, a strong, compelling central character (such as Darlene Love in "20 ft.") whose work, story and charisma holds our attention. Either the filmmakers never found such a figure, or they didn't trust their material enough to let that figure emerge.

The last quarter of the film is devoted to the monumental changes that have been overtaking the industry and the art-form since the late 1990's, as newspapers downsize or disappear, let staff cartoonists go and comic strips dwindle. It's a compelling story, but somehow its drama eludes the filmmakers; bracketing the discussion as they do with bad pseudo video-game imagery-- ostensibly to connect the death of newspapers with the rise of digital media. The effect is to trivialize both the economic and cultural impact of this painful transition, in truth a transition emblematic of a larger cultural shift from one media model to another, one generation to another. There's a lot of drama in that story, but it's not to be found in this film-which again, chooses lighthearted sound bites over substance.
The rise of the webcomic is championed, through the stories of  the highly successful strips Penny Arcade and PVP, as some kind of redemptive economic model and corrective to the power of corporate media. But that model was out-of-date five or six years before the film debuted, as in the wake of Penny Arcade and others, countless cartooning hopefuls (look no further!) have flooded the web with their material, t-shirts, coffee mugs and "Donate Now" buttons. 
In the end, the film is a mixed bag. As a cartoonist, and as a fan of comic strips, I enjoy seeing any media attention devoted to this venerable art form, and I did enjoy this film, in the way one enjoys low-fat desserts. Yet I'm still waiting for the film that will tell the story of strips with the same kind of passion and commitment  Ken Burns brought to "Jazz".   Often touted as the other "original American art form", the story of the comic strip, its rise and fall, and the colorful characters who populate that story both on and off the page, is still waiting for its moment "On Stage". 

Postscript:  This isn't the post I was going to write. There were other elements of the film I wanted to touch on, little things that got me thinking about one thing or another.   So-part II on Stripped will be along, sooner or later!

* the decline of the syndicated comic strip is a result of lots of things, not the least of which is the proliferation of terrific graphic novels and comic books--but for the sake of brevity--I'll leave that discussion for another day!

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

 My birthday passed by a few weeks ago, and one of the nicest presents was  Peanuts Every Sunday by Charles Schulz; vol.2: 1956-1960, from Fantagraphics. A confessed Peanuts freak, I immediately dove into the book at the neglect of everything else. This isn't so unusual, except I own the collected Peanuts volumes that span these years, and having read these strips many times over, you'd think I'd not be so eager to re-read such familiar material. But, of course, that's not the case with Peanuts. One of the wonders of the strip is that with multiple readings, it just gets better. And with Peanuts Every Sunday, the focus on the Sunday strips( in color) allows for a different rhythm than that of the complete collections.
 The Sunday strips, read alone, are somehow altogether lighter, not in tone, per se--but in execution. Schulz has room to breathe in the Sundays. The luxury of added space allows for his exquisitely understated cartooning to come to the fore-particularly in extended sequences of wonderfully realized slapstick comedy. 

 

Whether it's Linus and Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Kite eating tree, or Snoopy and Lucy dancing, Schulz's cartooning is filled with life revealed through antic, comic movement. The situations are simplicity itself, and the laughs are in the renderings as much as in the characters responses. 

The years covered by this volume(1956-60) show Schulz just hitting his stride; you can literally see him climb to the lofty peak of comic strip greatness in these pages. It's an enthralling journey.

The weekend my wife gave me this book, I happened to have hit a bit of a roadblock in my writing for "Jetpack Jr." Something in the strips I'd done that weekend wasn't working. I took a break and read a few strips from this book. A comic strip master class, Schulz's deft hand instantly opened my eyes to what was wrong with what I'd been writing--and illuminated a different pathway. The next day, fueled by the Sunday strips herein, I set about re-writing with a much clearer mind.
 I've read these strips countless times, yet they never cease to reveal something new to me, both as a reader and as a cartoonist.  That such unstudied(yet exquisite) simplicity might mask a well of thought and feeling so deep as to seem infinite is its miracle; Charles Schulz' legacy, his gift to us; a gift that forever keeps on giving.

*thanks, honey-for this wonderful book!

Behind the Curtain

I've always found an artist's process interesting; several years ago there was a great book out on various cartoonists called In the Studio(Todd Hignite; Yale University Press; ©2006). It featured a number of my favorite contemporary cartoonists; Crumb, Seth, Jaime Hernandez. It was both informative and entertaining and I devoured it. I think I read it in a night or two.

Jetpack Jr. ink on vellum; ink & blue pencil on Canson Art Board

Recently, I revised my process to better accommodate the digital work I do in Photoshop, while retaining the hard-copy paper original. It's old skool, I know--but I'm loathe to let go of the original, not so much for tradition's sake, but I prefer being able to conceive of the work in real space--it helps me with scale, proportion(panel to panel-as much as figures within the panels) and most importantly, rhythm; the rhythm of the images and the words together across the strip. I like being able to judge the flow of the entirety in real space. What can I say?  I'm old!

I start with the sketchbook--in my case just a little composition notebook(the kind you used in third or fourth grade) and a tape recorder. I tape ideas and notes while driving on my long commute back and forth to work--and listen to them later--sped up so I sound like I've inhaled helium. It's more interesting listening to yourself that way.
Anyway-after I've loosely blocked it out in the notebook--and written and re-written the text, the next step is to work the strip out in blueline(w/non-photo blue pencil) on 11" x 17" Canson Art Board.  Initially, I keep things really loose, blocking out the text first, after which I begin to work out the figures. I may draw and re-draw several times before pulling something that I can live with out from the tangle of lines.  


Previously to "Jetpack", I'd been going over the blueline in 3B or 4B pencil--then scanning the pencils as text at 600dpi. The result was increasingly disappointing to me, and needed a lot of clean-up.
It also made the coloring I do in Photoshop unnecessarily difficult.  

I've changed the process to better accommodate the work I do in Photoshop and to make life a little easier--and hopefully a little speedier( as juggling a full-time job and a comic strip doesn't leave a lot of time).

In the new process, I separate the figures and the backgrounds into two physical layers-as in traditional cel animation. I work the backgrounds on the Canson Art board in ink(Pentel fine-line markers) over the blueline--and then, with the markers, I trace the blueline figures and text  onto translucent vellum. The vellum has a beautiful surface for the markers' ink--and the process eliminates the clean-up I'd spent so much time doing before. After some erasing on the art-board layer, I scan the pages just as before.

Jetpack Jr. on vellum. from the April 26. 2015 strip on GoComics.

Once in Photoshop, I work on each layer separately and bring them together at the end-just as in cel animation. Of course I make any necessary color adjustments at that point. Sometimes I'll finish coloring the figures and lay them over the background before I've colored the ground. That way I can mold the background colors to suit the figures. I turn the figure layer on and off as I need before merging the two in the final.

Obviously,  I'm mimicking the process of working in Photoshop layers but in vellum and board. Still, it's working great for me--and while I know it's easy to do working on a Cintiq, Wacom or Surface Pro tablet--for now, anyway--I prefer having an original hard copy--and it's giving me a lot of freedom in coloring that I didn't have before.