Had fun turning the back background into leaking ink. I’ve always considered the nuts and bolts of drawn books — panel borders, lettering, yada yada — to be part of the fun. I didn’t read comics growing up — one of my first publishers said I re-invented the art-form on my own — so I don’t often pay attention to the conventions of the form, unless it’s a specific, humurous reference.
Too often the form has relied on violence to make a point or even conclude an argument. I can’t read Will Eisner’s “Spirit” series because the main character solves all his problems by hitting somebody, even changing their minds or recruiting them with abuse. It wasn’t until I read his “Life In Comics” and saw the amount of violence in his own family that I realized the drawn book series was sublimating a family history. As much as I loved the rest of the book, I couldn’t keep it in the house, because of the one scene where an artist hits another artist. The notes explain that the actual situation wasn’t about a difference of opinion about art or dreams but about what one man said about a woman to another man. That makes sense — but using violence to control an artist — I think we’ve seen enough of THAT in history to reject it.
As a woman, I was born into a combat zone. Thank you very much, but to me violence s anything but R & R. I have to have my game face on outside my own house, and if I want to relax, it’s not going to be by watching blood.
Okay, except in CSI or The Closer. I’m as much a ghoul as anybody when science and the gory mix it up.
Eisner used his art to tell stories well, but these stories have that explicit “violence as control” mentality that is hinted at in a lot of superhero comics. It’s one of the reasons I’m such a fan of the Peach.
I agree they’re great stories, and they make it very clear how violence is passed along in a family and/or a society. But they don’t offer any solutions. I’m not saying they should — that’s not the point. But it’s one of the reasons I don’t follow superheroes. Ultimately, violence is the only real solution in that genre. When I was a block watch coordinator in Bremerton, we had a word for kids: “bullet magnets.” We emphasized the use of anything but guns for protection, because bullets just seem to head right for women and kids, no matter whom they’re intended for. Maybe it’s like mosquitoes — hunting a different carbon dioxide level (tongue-in-cheek comment, of course).
Once, at the San Diego Comicon, I stopped to examine a well-done diorama of WWII battle scene — a village destroyed by war. There were lots of dead soldiers but not one dead woman or child, or civilian male or animal. I said, “This is good, but it’s incomplete. Where are the dead civilians?” The builder looked at me blankly.
Come to think of it, one of the stories in Life In Pictures does offer an artist using compromise to keep the warriors away. It’s shown being passed on in the family, in at least one place. But compared to the use of violence as a cure or a conversion, it barely surfaces.