The Week in Review (a.k.a. the feature formerly known as Picks of the Week).

Over at Hooded Utilitarian this week, there’s been an interesting discussion of Orientalism in comics, prompted by the publication of Craig Thompson’s mammoth graphic novel Habibi. It’s an interesting issue and one that warrants attention like Nadim Damluji gave it here, but several HU writers’ sensitivity to offensive material — mostly racist or xenophobic in nature, but to an extent also sexism — is turning a bit predictable. There’s a tendency there to conflate ethics and aesthetics, which is threatening to make a contentious and thought-provoking site something it never was: boring.

One of the sad consequences of this is that the good tends to get more attention than the better. Ng Suat Tong wrote an intelligent, but rather strongly-worded piece on Habibi, which irked cartoonist Eddie Campbell so that he raised the issue of decency in criticism on his blog. I understand and sympathize with this reaction, but don’t really agree with it — sometimes harsh language is the right way to go for a critic, although I’m not sure it was in this case. Anyway, this is my very long-winded way of calling attention to Suat’s other, and far superior recent piece at HU, an essay on Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions — one of the most interesting comics releases this year. So far it has netted all of four comments, and presumably far fewer readers, than the one on Habibi. I wish people would pay more attention to this kind of writing, even if it doesn’t push the hot buttons in the same way.

All right, with that out of the way, here’s some other interesting stuff I came across this week:

“Dear Matthias,

David Mazzucchelli”

As I answered, to the contrary: I’m very happy to receive such a corrective. When I first saw “Daddy and the Pie”, it immediately struck me that it must have served as inspiration for “Big Man”, not the least because Mazzucchelli had channeled the older master so beautifully in Batman: Year One. I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence, but of course it could.

Thanks, David!

Grundpræmissen i KBLs kronik er, citat: “Det er manuskriptet, og ikke som mange vist tror, tegningerne, der afgør om en tegneserie er virkelig god”

Denne herligt skråsikre påstand er naturligvis fjollet (og det ved KBL vel nok, jeg formoder klart vi har med polemik at gøre, men alligevel). Det giver som bekendt kun ringe mening at opdele en kunstform i forskellige formalistiske kategorier, for derefter at måle og veje dem mod hinanden. Det er en frisk betragtning, som i al sin reducerende vælde har noget forførende over sig : men hvordan man end vender og drejer den, er det desværre en ubrugelig betragtning. Vil man snakke om de ting, skal det gøres specifikt, der skal et værk på bordet.

KBL nævner så faktisk en række – meget væsenforskellige – danske tegneserier: Palle Schmidts Den blodrøde konkubine (der så vidt jeg ved faktisk hedder Blodets konkubine), Allan Haverholms Sortmund, Anders Walters Solas og min egen Kom hjem som eksempler på tegneserier, der “ikke for alvor er slået igennem [fordi] det danske tegneseriemiljø simpelthen mangler en superforfatter eller to“. Kom hjem er imidlertid det eneste værk, KBL diskuterer bare en smule: det roses for at være “pisseflot og (interessant nok) også vanvittigt godt fortalt“, men det er ikke skrevet “godt nok, og derfor bliver plottet for sludrende, karaktererne for flade og dialogen for uskrap [der menes vel ‘uskarp’?]”.

I en kronik, der går til angreb på bestemte tendenser, er det lidt ærgerligt, at der ikke leveres bedre analyse således at påståede problemer er klart identificerede, så de fremstår troværdigt. Ikke fordi KBL ikke har ret i at der mangler gode forfattere i Danmark, mere fordi det desværre kun give ringe mening at slå fx Sortmund og Solas over samme læst.

Jeg gør mig ingen illusioner om min egen tegneserie Kom hjem, og prøver konstant at identificere og arbejde med egne svage sider (og der er mange!) – men sæt nu, at det var intenderet fra min side, at “plottet [er] sludrende“, sæt nu jeg bevidst har arbejdet med en bestemt form for stilisering af figurernes fremtræden og så videre? Sæt nu at det netop ikke har været min intention at lave en fortælling, der river læseren med på den måde en Hollywood-film eller en Alan Moore-tegneserie gør – hvad så?

Jo, så kan Kom hjem stadig være mislykket alt det, det skal være. Men ikke efter de præmisser der opstilles. Doven kritik i kategorien “Rock-koncerten var dårlig, fordi de ikke spillede hip-hop” er og bliver… doven kritik. Det skal ikke lyde som et surt opstød, der er bare ikke så mange måder at sige det på…

Da jeg havde læst KBLs kronik kom jeg i tanke om Umberto Ecos meget morsomme essay Beklager at måtte afslå (konsulentudtalelser til forlaget), hvori en fiktiv forlagskonsulent i en fiktiv forlagsverden skal bedømme Kafkas Processen, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Odysseen, Bibelen m. fl., hvor pointen hele tiden er, at de ikke kan antages til udgivelse, fordi de bryder med almindelige konventioner, og ikke fungerer på underholdningsromanens præmisser.

Den underliggende agenda hos KBL er tydeligvis en meget bestemt opfattelse af hvad, der gør en god tegneserie – det er “historien”, den del af værket, som forfatteren står for. Og hvad er det, kunne man så spørge? Det står en smule uklart, men KBL nævner Alan Moore, Frank Miller og Neil Gaiman som “de største stjerner på tegneseriehimlen i de senere år“. Senere nævnes i flæng René Goscinny, Greg og Steven T. Seagle som gode eksempler på folk, der leverer varen. Det tætteste KBL egentlig kommer på et kvalitetsparameter er hvilke tegneserier, “Hollywood går på rov i“.

Dermed bringer KBL et virkeligt kedeligt og udynamisk tegneseriesyn på banen, men et tegneseriesyn han desværre ikke er alene med. Misforstå mig ikke; jeg har ikke det fjerneste mod underholdningstegneserier, der forsøger at håndhæve de samme kvaliteter som Hollywood-mainstream (og dog…), men jeg synes det er særdeles problematisk at arbejde for en opløsning af auteur-ideen, som i disse år har været fuldstændig og aldeles afgørende for den vitalitet der præger det, vi kalder tegneseriens nye guldalder. I min verden er det ikke overraskende David B., Chris Ware, David Mazzucchelli, Marjane Satrapi, Charles Burns, Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Daniel Clowes, Joe Sacco, Robert Crumb, Anke Feuchtenberger og mange flere, der står som de “største stjerner på tegneseriehimlen de senere år“, endda ret entydigt. Jeg gentager gerne: det er den fløj, og ikke Neil Gaiman/Frank Miller-likes, der har stået for den rigdom, der har reetableret tegneserien som en stærk, tidssvarende kunst- og udtryksform.

Problemet med KBLs kronik er altså KBLs tegneseriesyn, som er fikseret på en en meget bestemt type tegneserielitteratur. Noget værre er det, at KBL tilsyneladende er ubevidst om dette forhold, siden der ikke gøres anstrengelser på at skelne mellem æbler og pærer. De nævnte danske tegneserier fortjener garanteret en masse kritik, men helst en stærkere, skarpere og mere præcis.

Men netop fordi det er mit indtryk, at KBL ikke er alene med dete tegneseriesyn, er det omvendt vigtigt at lytte. Jeg fornemmer klart en uvilje fra visse dele af tegneseriekulturen mod tegneserier, der i et eller andet omfang arbejder kunstnerisk med sin form, og som følge deraf også udfordrer læseren med sin form. Jeg synes det er et ærgerligt og noget forarmet forhold at have til tegneserier – eller film og litteratur, for den sags skyld. Jeg finder selv stor fornøjelse i Grant Morrisons mainstreamtitler eller Ed Brubakers ditto-krimier, men hvorfor dog stoppe der, når verden er så meget større?

Men har KBL ikke ret i, at der ikke produceres tegneserier a la Neil Gaiman i Danmark? Og har han muligvis ikke også ret i, at det er beklageligt? KBLs argument om hvad der slår igennem og hvad der ikke gør, er godt nok ikke meget bevendt i denne diskussion, da både Neil Gaiman og Alan Moore mig bekendt aldrig har slået stort igennem i Danmark (Interpresses satsning med Watchmen/Vogterne var så vidt jeg ved nærmest en katastrofe, selvom den blev udgivet i de glade 80ere) – men det ville da helt klart være dejligt om tegneserien havde sine egne hitmagere, sin egen Rowlings, Marklund eller Peter Jackson, hvem det nu kunne være. At prioritere manuskript på en kommende tegneserieuddannelse er tilsvarende noget, der kun kan komme gode ting ud af : men jeg ser ingen grund til at forsøge at påvirke kommende tegneseriefortællere i retning mod team-produktion, hvis det nu ikke er der, de føler sig hjemme. Som en Frank Miller-figur siger i slutningen af Sin City-skrønen Family Values: “It’s a great, big, wide world out there, gentlemen. There’s all kinds of families in it“…

Corto is not meant to be a realistic character — he’s an engine for our imagination. Pratt’s genius in those stories, and I mean right up to the very end — or at least until the penultimate Corto book, Elvetiche (the last, MU, is coasting a bit) — is to engage our taste for adventure in unexpected, almost dreamlike ways.

By taking such a consistently original approach to the adventure genre, luring us with his charm and wit, then circumventing our expectations — both through plot and in his poetic sequences of picture narration — he achieves a kind of ambiguity of feeling, a slightly melancholy suggestion of those far reaches of our imagination that we can only access in flashes of inspiration, and only rarely if ever on a voluntary basis. With Pratt, adventure and romance are issues of our subconscious, essential embodiments of our aspirations.

The discussion evolved and came to include such hallowed cartoonists as Töpffer, Herriman, Hergé, Kirby, Schulz, Franquin, and Goscinny/Uderzo — the whole herd of ‘holy cows’ as Domingos would put it. Go read it, but before you do, I want to correct myself on this assessment of the manichean aspects of the classic Tintin story, The Blue Lotus:

Yes, The Blue Lotus [is] pretty manichean when it comes to who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, but [this is] really incidental to what makes [it] great… The Blue Lotus is an unforgettably visualised, ideal portrayal of friendship and universality that eventually stretches across most of Hergé’s oeuvre, informing it at its core.

Upon further thought, the manichean aspects of this and other Tintin stories are not incidental to what makes them great. Tintin is an ideal projection of a universalist, moral world view anchored in scoutism, which had been a formative influence upon Hergé in his youth. Tintin is emphatically about the good in us, which is why Tintin — the embodiment of this ideal — fights villains of unambiguous moral turpitude. Hergé makes use of this archetypical conflict of good versus evil to promulgate an ethos of humanity, equality and brotherhood without ever becoming moralising. Later in his career, he moved away from this approach, and it is telling that the first story to eschew the manichean is Tintin in Tibet, whose origins — both in terms of plot and theme — lay in The Blue Lotus.

As these things tend to do, the discussion was ended up a rather sprawling affair touching on aspects of the Franco-Belgian tradition, as well as how the term might be applied to Japanese comics. We hope you’ll enjoy, or at least take away something of interest from this. And, in any case, do let me know what you think about these issues!

Hello Matthias,
It’s interesting to note that the question of the “graphic novel” is not limited to the English-speaking world, as its actual existence and possible definition were discussed at the third Université d’Eté de la Bande Dessinée last July. The problem lies in the fact that, like the term “bande dessinée” in French, it covers both a publishing format and a narrative project. To this, you have to add the fact that the perception of comic art (for lack of a better word) and its subsequent definition is very much dependent on the past experience of the reader himself — which lets him decide what enters in his notion of the medium, and what does not.

Maus has always been a good example of this: given to read to someone only exposed to the most mainstream stuff, the usual reaction is, “this is not a comic book.” The rejection being not about the medium itself (because it is obvious that the book is indeed using the same medium, with panels and speech bubbles and text and cartoons), but about the notion of what the medium could represent, as support for a narrative project. The founders of L’Association understood this well, and decided right away that to display the difference in subject matter of their books, they had to also express this difference in the publishing format. But by doing this, they in turn established a new reference, tying project and format, building a new “mythology” as Barthes would see it (see this essay on a similar subject). Subsequently, the big publishers have jumped on this bandwagon, copying the format, hoping that the content will follow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but this muddles the picture, as suddenly you have to sort through the good and the bad books, having lost the clear distinction initially provided by the format.

Back to the “graphic novel” itself. In my understanding, the term describes a narrative project with somewhat literary ambitions that can be, at times, linked to a more-or-less specific publishing format. That’s fairly vague and includes a fairly dubious component (the “somewhat literary ambitions”) for which your mileage may vary, bringing me back to my introduction: if your past experience with comics only includes superhero comic books, then you will perceive Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or Busiek’s Marvels to express these ambitions perfectly well; but if your past experience of comics is based on the output of, say, D+Q and Fantagraphics, then those two books will have trouble qualifying.

It may seem obvious, but a lot of the acerbic debates animating the blogosphere are rooted in this simple, basic difference of outlook and perception of the medium as a whole — the “whole” being, in this case, a very subjective notion that’s often just taken for granted.

Hi Xavier,
Thanks a lot for your email. Those are good points. But unlike Campbell, I’m kind of hoping that the myth is still malleable enough to be reclaimed from all the bullshit marketing and actually be employed in a somewhat useful way. Maybe I’m naïve, but I really find it quite interesting to retroactively attempt to apply it to certain kinds of comics produced since the birth of the medium in its modern incarnation, sometime in the early 19th Century. By charting the development of this trend, rather marginal through most of the 20th Century, one may discover interesting things about the comics as part of modern culture.

As to your identification of some kind of ‘literary ambition’ in this narrative project, I would tend towards adding an artistic one that searches for workable idioms beyond the traditions of cartooning, but obviously thinking outside the box visually doesn’t necessarily make a graphic novel. If it did, Mort Cinder would certainly replace Perramus as my Breccia pick for the list, for example. But that comic, for all its greatness, is simply too mired in traditional genre tropes associated with adventure comics, and is serial in a way that doesn’t harmonise with the term as I conceive of it. I guess my point is that the term is so tied to the commercial considerations at play, even in Eisner’s use of it, to be fully workable once one inspects the seams. Maybe Campbell is right in his pessimism, after all.

Urgh, does that Lanfeust “manga” ever look like a deplorable piece of shit.

Best,

Matthias

Matthias,
While you have a point with the fact that the “ambition” of the narrative project should be both literary and artistic, I’m wondering if it could just be a case of “either/or” — and in rare cases, “and.” Or maybe it just depends on how you manage to twist the argument. Watchmen, for instance, is not particularly striking in terms of cartooning, although Dave Gibbons somewhat middle-of-the-road comic book style is interesting in light of its post-modern approach towards super-heroes. Therefore I’m not sure the ability of “searching for workable idioms beyond the traditions of cartooning” is so much of a requirement, or maybe I’m looking at it from too much of a draughtsmanship angle. Which leads me to think that maybe, my positioning of a “literary ambition” and yours of an “artistic” one might be better described as “narrative ambition” of a kind that would attempts something different and more worthwhile than the common fare. [Which brings me to the subtitle/tagline of du9, “l’autre bande dessinée”, expressing in a way the difficulty of rounding up something that is, by essence, disruptive and exploratory, and therefore quite impossible to define.]

Is it sufficient to define a “graphic novel”? Not really, because more than a few daily strips do fit in there (Krazy Kat, Peanuts, etc.), indicating that the idea behind the concept of “graphic novel” is also one of a format — more or less self-contained, spanning at least a certain number of pages…

Again, my impression is that the “graphic novel” concept is one of disruption of generally accepted notions of what a comic book should be, and therefore is very dependant on the local context. Some general trends do emerge though — a preference for real-life inspiration (as opposed to the adventure/fiction approach of the mainstream), the affirmation of the author as an artist with a vision/project, the rejection of the commonly accepted “good drawing” styles… with none of these elements being compulsory or sufficient.

Of course, Eddie Campbell further complicates things by adding the “worth reading” comment. “Worth reading,” but how, for whom, in what context? The early attempts of Töpffer and Doré are interesting from their historical value, but might not be as relevant as some more contemporary pieces. Likewise, post-modern takes on superheroes will only mean something to people with at least a basic knowledge of the reference material, making it abstruse to the other readers. Personally, I believe more in setting up paths of discovery for potential readers, rather than creating absolute must-read lists that often overlook the knowledge needed to appreciate certain works. So, less than a few dozen graphic novels worth reading around for Mister Campbell? Well, we can call him either very lucky or very unfortunate. Very lucky, because he has so much yet to discover — or very unfortunate, because he hasn’t encountered those other books yet…
Cheers,
Xavier

Hi Xavier,
Right. My point about ‘artistic ambition’ is naturally inseparable from whatever storytelling concerns at play in a given graphic novel. The reason I brought it in is to accommodate such things as Yuichi Yokoyama’s New Engineering, Mat Brinkman’s Teratoid Heights or Brian Chippendale’s Ninja that one would be hard pressed to describe as ‘literary,’ but nonetheless implicitly lay claim to the term, which would be poorer without them.

I agree that the term almost inavoidably carries connotations of format. It makes little sense to me to describe an ongoing strip that ran daily for fifty years as a graphic novel, even if its storytelling ambitions are similar to what we are talking about. Similarly, I find it problematic to apply the term to serialised genre works such as Tintin in Tibet or Franquin’s Idées noires, even if both exhibit ambitions that carry them beyond pure entertainment. It’s a bit of a grey area, but to me the self-contained status of the work is an important factor.

Regarding your comment about best-of lists, I would tend to agree, but my point is exactly that applying the term ‘graphic novel’ to a given set of approaches within comics is actually a great way of setting up “paths of discovery for potential readers,” plus it may contribute to our understanding of the medium as a cultural phenomenon.

Matthias,
Pondering the need for something to be self-contained, I think it somewhat falls back to the ambitions of the project we were referring to earlier. In the case of a serialized work, it would depend on the importance given to the constraints of the episodic aspect (which are usually imposed on the author) as compared to the project itself. In that regard, Black Hole is definitely a graphic novel despite having been serialized over close to ten years. Tintin au Tibet might have been published as a whole, but its place within a set series of “adventures” (a format in itself) sort of disqualifies it. Regarding the Idées noires, I would prefer to pose it as a question of cohesion, in the sense that the “novel” aspect implies a project explored across a larger scope.

These considerations bring me to another issue I have with best-of lists — not because I’m fundamentally opposed to them (they are indeed great places to discover new things and explore new directions, provided you recognize enough names on the list to know what you are getting into), but because suddenly deciding for this or that reason that some great work of “bande dessinée” as a whole shouldn’t be included in a specific category, well, that is unfortunate. Unless you are among specialists, and the context is well defined and explained, possibly listing what has been left out and why.

Maybe that would be an interesting way of elaborating your list: things that have been considered and then left out, not because of lack of quality or interest, but simply because they do not fit with a specific aspect of the “graphic novel” definition…
X.

Xavier,
It’s true that cohesion seems like a good criterion, and it works most of the time, but it becomes a problem when one is dealing with short story cartoonists, above all Crumb, whom I singled out in my short text as impossible to fit in, except as a collaborator with Harvey Pekar. There simply isn’t a coherent book that adequately represents his towering importance for comics with the kind of ambition we’re talking about. And even if there were, it wouldn’t really be true to his work to call it a graphic novel. This is partly because he is rounded from the episodic school of humour cartooning that he read growing up (Barks, Stanley, Mad, etc.).

What to do with short stories? I’ve listed works by Jim Woodring and Shinichi Abe, for example, that can’t really be described as graphic novels, collecting as they do short comics published in different places over the span of a number of years. In this, they’re different from A Contract with God, which was conceived as a book from the outset, despite consisting of four short stories. But they still fit the profile of what I see as a coherent artistic project that works well as self-contained books. The list would be poorer for leaving them out. On the other hand, much the same can be said for Idées noires, which pretty much undermines that argument.

I guess one has to invoke historical circumstance in this instance. Krazy Kat, Peanuts, Tintin and Franquin’s work all represent deeply original, personal artistic visions, but not graphic novels because the term is defined in opposition to the formats, genres and idioms they were created within. We’re back to format, and — beyond that — cultural context. I still think it works, despite the obvious problems.

As to why it is interesting to mine this particular “tendency” in comics history, and to thereby leave out so many other worthy works, it is because it calls attention to a certain way of thinking about comics as an art form that can encompass larger stories and broader range of topics and do it in naturalistic and even realistic form. Although it has taken more than a century for this conception of the medium to start becoming commonplace, discovering earlier examples of this approach from earlier times can be a small revelation. To seek out artists whose work hasn’t traditionally been regarded as comics — eg. Masereel, Ernst, Salomon — and others whose cartooning has largely been forgotten — eg. Doré, Milt Gross — and to reappraise them in the light of the contemporary ‘graphic novel movement.’

For the longest time, it was a road not taken. But it was there all the time, and a fortunate few found it.

Matthias,
I must confess I have read only a few books from Crumb, but I see what you mean — and the same may apply to most of the output of Abe Shinichi, Tsuge Yoshiharu or Tatsumi Yoshihiro, for that matter. We fall into a situation where the narrative project is larger than a single piece, and where a multifaceted approach seems best fit to achieve those ambitions.

Yet, reading Un gentil garçon, a definite coherence emerges — helped by the editorial notes bringing some light onto Abe’s autofictional project. And even if some elements appear elsewhere in his works (I’m thinking of some stories in Paradis), this piece can be seen as sufficiently autonomous to be considered as a “graphic novel.”

Of course, this brings us back to the original reason why you would want to select bona fide graphic novels, rather than extending the field to comics with a narrative ambition that rises above the fray, without consideration made to cohesion, autonomy and manageable length. Should we favour the result, considering the format in which this ambition is expressed, or should we focus on this ambition itself, and therefore consider that we are exploring a work-in-progress?

No answer there on my part, but this is definitely a interesting topic…
X.

Xavier,
The last question is an important one. I guess it boils down to the format actually being rather essential, because choosing it in itself implies certain ideas about what kind of work is being attempted. Historically this has, at least, given a strong contextual difference to the final result. Think Masereel vs. Krazy Kat, for example. The former unapologetically created novel-like narratives, aimed at an audience that appreciated contemporary currents in art, while the latter certainly incorporated visual ideas from modernist art and was in turn appreciated by intellectuals and artists, but at the same time unfolded within the parameters of the funny animal strip cartoon. There’s a difference in intent and tradition, even if the ambitions are similar in significant ways.

Regarding Crumb, one could perhaps imagine an anthology that imposed a kind of ‘intention’ or ‘direction’ on disparate short strips and thus created a ‘graphic novel’ as does Un Gentil garçon with Abe. But I don’t think it would work — the shortform, classically conceived strip is essential to his work (the existing compilations, Carload of Comix, Mr. Natural, etc. certainly don’t). He may have been an innovator and an iconoclast, but he remains a traditionalist. With Abe, I sense there is more of a unified ‘literary’ direction to his work, which fits the profile better. But I only know what little of his work has been translated into French, so I may be entirely mistaken. What are your thoughts on applying this quintessentially Western term, ‘graphic novel’, to the Japanese comics tradition?

m

Matthias,
With the Japanese comics tradition, the problem is that it seems to have evolved in reverse — maybe not exactly, but sort of. During the first half of the 20th Century, two formats coexisted: on one hand, episodic instalments in magazines (monthly, starting in 1914 with Kôdansha’s Shônen Club, then weekly starting in 1958), which were later collected in tankôbon format; on the other hand, the akahon format emerged in postwar in Osaka : small books (usually under 200 pages) focusing on self-contained stories. Tezuka’s seminar Shin-Takarajima was published in the latter format, as well as most of his early works in this period: Jungle Tatei was his first work to be published in episodic instalments starting in November 1950.

As episodic content took over (again) as the dominant form over after 1958, the kashibonya system (rental libraries) survived until the early 60s, and from this emerged the gekiga scene. Garo started publication in 1963, with Shirato Sampei’s Kamui-den as its centrepiece, and with a resolute opposition to the dominant chara-manga format initiated by Tezuka. Tezuka himself tried to counter Garo with his own COM, which ran from 1967 to 1973. Both magazines were targeting an adult audience with more serious works than the usual, child-oriented production. And this meant that the authors published in those books sometimes used classical literary forms adapted to the manga medium.

I’m far from a specialist in Japanese literature, but in her article on Tsuge published in The Comics Journal, Béatrice Maréchal writes: “It shares similar characteristics with a literary genre called I-novels, which was regarded as a very prestigious literary genre (as opposed to mere entertainment). […] Not everything in this story comes from Tsuge’s life experiences, but for critics and historians, here was an I-comic, and with time Tsuge would become the main figure of this new genre.” Similarly, Hanawa Kazuichi’s Keimusho no Naka is reminiscent of a specific, classical form of journal used in Japanese literature, the name of which unfortunately escapes me at the moment.

Regarding the production of the alternative scene in Japan, serialized in Garo and AX, for instance, I’d say that most of it is close to the “graphic novel” ambition as we’ve discussed it so far, except for works that are obviously too long to fit in our definition. Kamui-den, at fifteen 500-page volumes or so clearly does not qualify, while I feel that Abe’s “Yasahii Hito,” [parts of which is collected in the French Un gentil garçon] serialized under that very title in Garo in a few instalments before being collected, definitely falls in the category. It might be a little more complicated for Tsuge, as even if his work consists mostly of short stories (Mugen no Hito [L’Homme sans talent] being an exception), they are usually part of larger “arc”, but I’m not sure those “arcs” represent the intentionality we seem to have put at the centre of our conception of the “graphic novel.”

There are some more clear-cut examples though — Matsumoto Taiyô’s GoGo Monster, for instance, published as a single volume, or Shiriagari Kotobuki’s YajiKita or Jacaranda, are all obviously graphic novels according to our criteria. In contrast, heavily episodic series do not qualify under these, even if their run was cut short for various editorial reasons: the underlying publishing structure is obviously a no-go for “graphic novel” ambitions.

Thinking about all this discussion (and having tried to explain what we were exchanging about to the Love of my Life), I guess we more or less fall back on intentionality/self-awareness of the author in producing something that would satisfy some literary/artistic ambitions, for lack of a better word.
Xavier

Xavier,
That’s fascinating. My impression was also that this kind of thing very much started with gekiga, and for real with Tsuge’s watakushi-manga or ‘i-manga.’ But surely there are precedents, also pre-Tezuka?

The term as used in the West is inextricably linked to the modern distinctions of high and low art, and by extension elite and mass culture. Since comics have generally been unabashedly low art, almost to the bone marrow — and they have been extremely good at it — it makes sense that what is basically an artificial designation emerges to identify a type of comic that diverges into the higher cultural sphere. My question regarding the Japanese tradition would concern the differences between Japanese differentiation of high and low and that in the West.

I might be totally wrong, but it also seems to me that there’s less of a tradition, now, for this kind of comic in the otherwise much more diverse comics market, than there is in the West. Something I sense has to do with, as you say, industry conditions but probably also the aforementioned diversity of industrial comics as compared to the very homogenous ones of the West. Does that make sense?

m

Matthias,
Well, I think that the high art/low art opposition is something that is very Western in essence. Comics as a medium have struggled (in the US and in France) to receive cultural recognition, and has been met strong and outspoken detractors — Wertham comes to mind, but also somebody like Alain Finkelkraut in France. Japan has never had anything like that in relation to manga. There have been a few campaigns organized by the Japanese branch of the PTA in the 50s (like the “Campaign to Banish Bad Reading Matter”), but those fell on deaf ears. Manga were so popular that readers and publishers alike didn’t bother.

The arrest in 1989 of serial killer Miyazaki Tsutomu, who had raped and dismembered four pre-pubescent girls, tarnished manga’s image: Miyazaki’s apartment hosted a huge collection of anime, slasher movies and manga, and suddenly the media started worrying about all this. Yet, as the case evolved, it came to light that Miyazaki was a deeply troubled youth in a non-supportive family environment, and focus shifted towards the alienation felt by the otaku crowd, and not manga or anime per se. In the Shûkan Post, psychologist Okonoki Keigo then wrote: “The danger of a whole generation of youth who do no even experience primary two or three way relationship between themselves and their mother and father, and who cannot make the transition from a fantasy world of videos and manga to reality, is now extreme.”

This was followed by another attempt to ban comics in 1990 with “The Association to Protect Children from Comics,” which was backed by right-wing political groups, “But the total number of signatures they collected in their famous campaign [in 1990] is only equal to five one-hundredths of a percent of the population of Japan.” (as described here). While manga continued to be regarded as something positive, the otaku subculture caused some concern during over the following years, and it is only very recently (with the worldwide revalorization of nerd culture) that Akihabara has once again become a cool place to go. The Densha Otoko story in its numerous versions is a good example of the evolution of the perception of the less socially-favoured. Also note the buzz around the possibility that Aso Tarô, a manga fan, might become prime minister, or the fact that Japan has fully embraced the concept of “Japanese Gross National Cool” and the idea of a Soft Power, with manga and animation at the core of this cultural expansion.

Back to low and high art. The wide acceptance of manga as a valid entertainment form makes it harder to have a radical stance (like JC Menu’s in France, for instance) towards the medium and its potentialities. Moreover, the big publishers have put forward a wide range of publications, varying both in terms of target and circulation, that try and tap any available niche — including the more literary/ artistically ambitious: see Kôdansha’s Morning or Shôgakkan’s Ikki for this kind of experimental stuff. Both of course have accordingly low print runs (413.000 and 16.000 in 2007, respectively).

One thing that can be very frustrating, when discussing with Japanese author, is that very few seem to express any kind of active opinion regarding the medium and what they are trying to achieve with it. All the interviews I’ve seen or conducted, even with artists that do not fall into the mould (Shiriagari Kotobuki comes to mind, but also Tori Miki, Kaneko Atsushi or Mizuno Junko) end up with rather bland comments like “well, I do this because I like it.” I’m not saying they do not have an ambition or a project (usually, digging further yields at least some more information), but compared to what we expect of artists in the West, they are reluctant to express it.

I remember Frédéric Boilet introducing his “Manifeste de la nouvelle manga” in Tokyo, with Yamada Naito as the only Japanese author present, along with among Fabrice Neaud and David B. While Boilet was very outspoken regarding his relation to art (vs. work for hire, basically), and how he did not want to yield to editorial constraints, Yamada Naito’s reaction was typical: she didn’t agree with everything in the manifest, she had not been consulted about it in the first place anyway, and she didn’t quite adhere to all this, leading to an awkward moment. The divide was clear.

We have talked much about ambition, intentionality and the like, but this discussion about manga leads me to wonder: how much of this intentionality is real (something that would require a good knowledge of each author), and how much is perceived afterwards? And does one have a graphic novel, if the cohesion and autonomy only appear in retrospect?
Xavier

Xavier,
Thanks for going into detail on this. I’m wondering though: even if comics haven’t been stigmatised to the same extent in Japan, it still seems to me significant that only in the 60s, and especially the 70s — ie. simultaneously with the US and Europe — did more naturalistic, personal or even ‘literary’ comics emerge. So while perhaps not ‘low’ culture in the same way as in the West, comics were — and largely remain — pop culture there as well. In this sense, I guess the graphic novel as we’ve been defining the term works well enough in a Japanese context, at least for our purposes (I’m sure the Japanese are utterly indifferent).

Regarding intent, I don’t think it matters. Only the final result does. And in any case, if these mangaka claim to not have thought much about these issues, surely it is more a reflection of cultural differences in how we talk about art and such, than most of them simply not reflecting on it. I mean, the work of Tatsumi, Tsuge, Abe or Maruo all seems pretty deliberate and uncompromising in the way it’s executed. They may not all intellectualise their own creative process, but something is surely going on.

m

Matthias,
Indeed, it seems that while there have been “proto-graphic novels” and some very early pioneers before WWII in Japan, the realization that the medium could support expression of literary/artistic character emerged in the 60s and blossomed in the 70s — the same as in the US and Europe. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this period was also a golden age for the low art end of comics, with Marvel thriving in the US, a lot of weeklies for boys in France and Belgium, and the manga weeklies expanding in Japan.

(And I agree on your point on “intent” — there is something going on, no matter how intentional it might be. I used to say that the book that the author produces and the book that the reader discovers are often two separate entities)

Another thing about Japan, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned in the course of this conversation (esprit de l’escalier, quand tu nous tiens…). While the opposition between low and high art does not seem to be prominent in the history of manga, there is, however, the deep rivalry that has existed between Tokyo and Osaka. Prior to the Meiji restoration, Osaka was the “first city” in Japan, something that changed when Tokyo became the capital, and Osaka second. The tension between the keeper of the tradition (Osaka) and the cultural upstart (Tokyo), between the modern urbanite (Tokyo) and the provincial (Osaka), seems to have been reflected in the manga industry too: on the one hand, the big publishers with their weekly magazines that Tezuka (himself from Osaka) embraced and helped develop; and on the other, the akahon-kashibonya artists that were thriving in and around Osaka.

So building on this opposition, it’s no surprise that the Garo crowd, coming from the latter, opted to take the cultural higher ground, opposed to what they felt was low art — Tezuka’s story-manga, stemming from Tokyo. A good example of this is Tezuka’s own attempts at imitating the gekiga, of trying to emulate their style and ambition. That is, low vs. high art, not as an arts hierarchy, but as expression of regional/cultural opposition.

Xavier

Images from Frans Masereel’s Mon livre d’heures, Hector Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia’s Mort Cinder, Mat Brinkman’s Teratoid Heights, Franquin’s Idées noires, R. Crumb’s “Cubist Bebop Comix”, Shin’ichi Abe’s Yasashii hitoand Yoshiharu Tsuge’s Muno no hito.

Also, my post on the groupkill syndrome amongst current Marvel heroes has set off a debate on the issue and its motivations in Secret Invasion over here, while the blogger Rich provides commentary and some continuity context.

Thomas Betzwieser (Universität Bayreuth), Body and Gesture in 18th-Century German Melodrama: then 160 “Passionate” Engravings to Peter von Winter’s Lenardo und Blandine (1779).

The German melodrama with its specific mixture of spoken text and music has been principally designed for famous (female) actors. In the history of the early German melodrama, Peter von Winter’s Lenardo und Blandine (Munich 1779) merits attention, since it has been enriched by ‘additional’ material by the librettist Joseph Franz von Goetz. The poet not only provided esthetical reflections on acting, but he furthermore published in 1783 a series of 160 engravings illustrating Winter’s melodrama scene by scene. There is hardly any other theatrical performance in late 18th century which is documented so perfectly through iconographical sources. This collection of illustrations has to be investigated by different question, in order to determine the ‘status’ of this source: (1) the relationship between these illustrations and performance(s), and (2) the function of the collection, possibly as a model for acting. These questions have already been raised by research in regard to the eloquence of body in late-18th-century Germany. However, one of the most important issues remained untouched so far, i.e. the interaction of music and gesture. In contrast to other iconographic sources of musical theater, in this case the artist/illustrator is identical with the producer, since Goetz himself guided the rehearsals of Lenardo und Blandine in 1782. Therefore, it seems obvious that his illustrations are reflecting the musical rhetoric in the same way as they are mirroring the text. The high quantity of the illustrations producing very dense (sometimes “film-like”) sequences of pictures, permits a closer look on the subtle correspondance between the rhetoric of the body and those of the music.

Additionally, there’re mentions of the play in this book about German opera and this essay by Walter Scott. Also, here’s the Wiki on the author of the original version of Leonardo und Blandine, Gottfried August Bürger. The mid-19th-century painting above showing Leonardo and Blandine is by Wilhelm Lokhart.

I følge Bluhm tiltrak festivalen i denne omgang i området af 3.000 betalende gæster, mens break even var 1.200. Det må siges at være en succes, og den opfattelse deles da også med langt de fleste Bunkeren har snakket med. Således fx. Johnnie McCoy, nybagt chefredaktør på Carlsen: “Komiks.dk i Vanløse var en positiv oplevelse! Kulturhuset var en fin ramme om et ret imponerende program. Jeg havde frygtet konkurrencen fra det fine vejr, men uden at kende besøgstallet, var det mit indtryk at messen var ganske velbesøgt — man tør jo ikke tænke på, hvilke tumultagtige kø-scener, vi kunne have været vidne til, havde det være rigtig messe-vejr. Og det bestyrker bare den relative optimisme, vi har tilladt os selv at nære i nyere tid angående tegneseriens fremtid efter en lang periode med nedgang.”

Tegneren Mårdøn Smet, der denne gang repræsenterede sin tegnestue Over Floden med en særskilt stand, deler det positive indtryk: “Som standholder, og dermed vandbærer, er det så som så hvad man får set af sådan en festival, men den store direkte og ærlige interesse for mediet som de besøgende bringer med sig slår mig hver gang. Man bliver bare glad, og den oplevelse tager man med sig tilbage til den tavse verden bag tegnebordet — med det forfængelige håb, at man får set noget mere af alt det spændende der foregår næste gang.”

Gæstegate
Ikke desto mindre har der været mislyde. Tegneren Thierry Capezzone (HC Andersen Jr.) postede tirsdag et indlæg på Seriejournalen, hvor han klagede over at en del af de internationale gæster havde følt sig utilstrækkeligt behandlet af festivalen. Capezzone uddyber sine anker overfor Bunkeren: “Princippet i år var, at lade forlag og forhandlere invitere en væsentlig del af de internationale gæster, en god ide, der på papiret en fin måde at skaffe sig en bredt udvalg af gæster på trods af festivalens begrænsede budget… Men her var det største problem kommunikationen mellem de inviterede og festivalen, for selvom de ikke var inviteret af festivalen burde disse gæster være blevet informeret om denne ordning af festivalledelsen. De fleste af dem, fx. Achdé, Mézières, Guarnido og Dany var ikke blevet underrettet om dette koncept.”

Han fortsætter: “Desværre negligerede Komiks.dk fuldstændigt deres fransk-belgiske gæster. I den tro, at deres værter tog sig af dem, tænkte de ikke engang på at give disse gæster lidt vand at drikke mens de sad og signerede i varmen, og om søndagen efter festivalen blev de inviterede overladt til sig selv og måtte selv klare deres aftensmad… Guarnido og hans kone blev anbragt i et hotel, hvor deres senge ikke kunne anbringes ved siden, men kun i forlængelse af hinanden, og han måtte derfor sove med sin kones fødder i ansigtet — det er en skandale!!!”

Bluhm er ked af denne kritik: “Først vil jeg sige, at både jeg og de andre i arrangørgruppen er virkelig sårede over den her kritik, som ikke engang er blevet rettet til os først, men lagt ud på et offentligt forum før vi hørte noget som helst om den. Jeg snakkede med Thierry om søndagen, da vi var ved at lukke ned, og der sagde han intet om alt dette. Vi sagde farvel og tak til hinanden på venskabelig vis, så jeg finder det overraskende pludselig at se de her ting fremført på Seriejournalen.”

I sit officielle svar på kritikken, postet på Seriejournalen samme dag som Capezzones indlæg, skriver han videre: “Vi kan simpelthen ikke håndtere ALLE opgaver og synes derfor det er alle tiders, at forlagene går ind og bakker op og selv står for deres gæster. Vi regner selvfølgelig med, at forlagene tager sig af deres egne gæster hele vejen igennem festivalen. Achdé og Dany var ikke Komiks.dks gæster, så hvis de er utilfredse, må de tage det op med deres forlag eller butikker. […] Det skal også siges, at vi har sørget for løbende at snakke med vores gæster, og at ingen af disse på noget tidspunkt har brokket sig over noget til os. Der var nogle kritikpunkter fra de andre forlags gæster, men der ledte vi dem hen til forlagene, hvor det efterfølgende blev afklaret. Endelig skal det nævnes, at vi i indbydelsen til festivalen mailede alle detaljer til gæsterne på forhånd, så de var helt klar over, hvad vi stod for, og hvad de selv skulle betalte.”

Adspurgt om de konkrete problemer, Capezzone nævner i forhold til to af festivalens egne gæster, Mézières og Guarnido, siger Bluhm: “Vi korresponderede med Mézières dagen efter festivalen og han skrev direkte til os, at han — selvom han synes visse ting måske kunne være gjort lidt anderledes : intet havde at udsætte på sit besøg og at han fandt det helt naturligt at der forekommer mindre fodfejl, når festivalen er så ung som vores. […] Mht. Guarnido ville vi da hellere end gerne have gjort noget ved problemet, ligesom i 2006 da vi flyttede en gæst der var utilfreds med sit hotel, men vi hørte altså ikke noget om det under festivalen. […] Angående søndag eftermiddag, var det med vilje at vi ikke arrangerede noget for gæsterne. Deres program havde været omfattende både fredag og lørdag og vi regnede med at de måske kunne bruge lidt fritid, hvilket flere af dem også på forhånd havde anmodet os om. […] Desuden blev alle tilbudt at blive fulgt til lufthavnen, når de skulle hjem igen. Men alle mente godt, at de selv kunne finde ud af at tage metroen. Det er jo både nemt og hurtigt.”

Butikken og forlaget Faraos Cigarer, havde i år samarbejdet med Capezzone om at invitere to udenlandske gæster, Alessandro Barbucci og Barbara Canepa, og havde endvidere sponsoreret flybiletten til tegneren Dany, der tilfældigvis skulle til Danmark i anden sammenhæng. Indehaver Sivert Ibbo ærgrer sig over kontroversen: “Jeg tror desværre, der er tale om en række kedelige misforståelser mellem folk af meget forskelligt temperament og nationalitet. Thierry gjorde i 2004 et stort stykke arbejde og brugte sit enorme netværk til at få mange store europæiske tegneseriekunstnere til at takke ja til at være gæster på Komiks.dk 2004. Thierry følte dengang som nu et meget stort ansvar for at disse mange prominente gæster skulle føle sig godt tilpas på festivalen […Det] medførte at han kom i direkte konfrontation med den daværende festivalledelse, der pga. af arbejdspres og en meget stram økonomi — den ene havde i eget navn oprettet en betydelig kassekredit for at dække festivalens likviditetsmangel — overreagerede i et par situationer. Disse konfrontationer førte til at Thierry tog fra festivalen i vrede og dette betød faktisk at Thierry ikke ville have noget at gøre med Komiks.dk i 2006. Francois Schuiten og Benoit Peeters var som de eneste gæster repræsentanter for den europæiske kontinentale tegneserieskole, de 2 blev i sidste øjeblik inviteret af Faraos Cigarer, således at festivalen ikke blev en ren angelsaksisk begivenhed.”

“Thierry er blandt andet blevet overtalt af undertegnede til at bruge sine mange forbindelser i forbindelse med Komiks.dk 2008 […] Han har for Faraos Cigarer været en vedholdende og uvurderlig hjælp i forbindelse med Barbucci og Canepas besøg […] Jeg tror ikke at Thierry har følt at hans indsats blev påskønnet nok, en del af påskønnelsen er jo også at de udenlandske gæster er tilfredse under hele deres besøg!”

På spørgsmålet om det ikke er problematisk, at Capezzone fremfører sin kritik offentligt før han forelægger den festivalen, siger Ibbo “Jo, det er da problematisk og ærgerligt, men det er jo den slags der sker, når situationen bliver lidt for ophedet.” På samme spørgsmål svarer Capezzone: “Første gang der var Komiks.dk [i 2004, red.] var det allerede nok, men jeg troede de her problemer ville blive løst og fejlene rettet af den ny ledelse [Komiks.dk 2008 var under anden ledelse end de forgående, red.] , men nu, hvor der igen sker fejl, er det for meget. Der bliver nødt til at være en, der ytrer offentligt hvad de andre siger og det er mig!!! Og det er det, fordi jeg er træt af igen og igen at høre den samme kritik, fordi jeg er træt af at alle de udenlandske gæster kommer til mig og brokker sig, og fordi jeg er træt af at de tror at jeg, som deres ven, har ansvar for de her ting.”

Alle synes enige i, at det er ærgerligt for Komiks.dk, hvis der er nogen der føler sig utilfredse. Som Capezzone siger: “Det er i sig selv stort, at festivalen findes. Der har været fejl og den plages stadig af begynderproblemer, men de frivillige var smilende og gjorde et stort stykke arbejde; de gjorde hvad de kunne når man henvendte sig til dem med spørgsmål. Programmet var OK og der var blevet gjort meget ud af udstillinger, konkurrencer og workshops. […] Det er imidlertid meget vigtigt at festivalen, når den inviterer udenlandske gæster, har kontrol med om de har det godt. Det er festivalens omdømme der er på spil… […] Jeg er fortsat villig til at arbejde på at få store navne som Derib, Moebius, Jodorowsky og Tardi til Danmark, men det er afgørende at der er en sikkerhed for at de ikke bliver efterladt alene på fortovet søndag eftermiddag!!”

Bluhm selv siger: “Det er ikke sådan at vi bilder os ind, at vi har begået en perfekt festival, der er mange ting der kunne gøres bedre. Men den måde kritikken bliver fremført på, der ærgrer os, især da langt de fleste af vores gæster meldte meget positivt tilbage både under og efter festivalen. Vi har nu taget kontakt til dem alle sammen for at høre hvad de synes og sikre os, at tingene er i orden.”

Næste gang?
Noget andet der er helt essentielt for Komiks.dk skal lykkes er, at der er en gruppe mennesker, der er villige til at arrangere festivalen igen. Som Ibbo siger: “Vi er overordentlig tilfredse med festivalens forløb og glade for at folk knokler for at få festivalen op at stå. Der er så mange rundt omkring, der er enormt gode til at kritisere men dårlige til at være konstruktive og i øvrigt ikke kunne drømme om at involvere sig i arrangementet. Der er en hård kerne i Komiks.dk, der har brugt al deres fritid de seneste måneder og nogle feriedage i dagene op tilfestivalen for at stable det her arrangement på benene, og endnu flere der virkelig har brændt for det her. Jeg er virkelig ked af, at de så skal igennem en bølge af brokhoveder. Jeg synes det er en væsentlig pointe. Kredit til de her mennesker.”

“Vi bliver nødt til at behandle dem bedre, for de gør en kæmpe indsats. Jeg synes f.eks. det er pinligt, så lang tid de etablerede forlag har været om at tro på Komiks.dk, og at se hvor lidt flere af dem fortsat involverer sig. Det samme gælder flere af butikkerne, som heller ikke yder meget mere end et minimum. Vi bliver nødt til at være bedre. Der skal løftes i flok, hvis det skal kunne lade sig gøre. Ellers er jeg meget bange for at der ikke bliver en festival igen.” Bluhm udtrykker noget meget parallelt: “Hvis det her skal holdes igen, skal der en holdningsændring til fra butikkerne og forlagene. Det gælder bestemt ikke dem alle, men nogen af dem.”

Han vil meget nødigt svare på, om der bliver en festival til: “Der var overskud, så på den front er der ingen problemer, men spørgsmålet er om der står en arrangørgruppe og tilpas med frivillige klar i 2010. Jeg er glad, men jeg tror lidt den følelse vi har er den samme som når man har løbet et maraton. Det har været superhårdt og jeg er stolt af resultatet, men det har altså betydet ofre i forhold til arbejde og familie. Jeg beklager mig ikke og jeg fortryder på ingen måde, men spørgsmålet er: vil jeg gøre det igen?”

Det synes helt klart, at det danske tegneseriefolk ville savne festivalen, hvis den forsvandt. Den er som indledningsvis nævnt blevet et pejlemærke i den danske tegneseriekultur, for slet ikke at tale om det vigtige samlingspunkt den udgør for både branche, fans og alment interesserede. Som Smet udtrykker det:

“Som manifestation af hvad danske tegneserier er var hele arrangementet bundsympatisk og meget afslørende. Den hjemlige andedam har altid været en glad flok amatører, på godt og ondt, der uegalt stritter i alle retninger, og derfor gør det lidt svært at snakke om hvad det der danske egentlig er for noget. På en god dag dødsforagtende hævdelse af sin ukrænkelige suverænitet, hvor stort, småt eller bare vanvittigt det så ellers må synes i det enkeltstående tilfælde, og på en dårlig uhumske fedterier der mest af alt minder om tyske dåseserier, bare dårligere. Man ser mange enlige svaler, som slet ikke ville være værst, hvis ikke de var så enlige. Følgeskab i en nær sagt hvilken som helst retning ville give noget mere power, og ville måske få de enkelte udøvere til at komme lidt op på tæerne i den hellige konkurrences navn.”

Læs også: “Komiks.dk 2008 — Et blik tilbage, og frem” & “Re: Danmark hægtet af III: Komiks.dk”. Rackhams reportager fra Komiks.dk 2004 og 2006. Metabunkerens billeder fra Komiks.dk 2008. Fotos af Peter Kielland og Ole Comoll, der signerer i Over Flodens stand, af Thierry Capezzone ogHenrik Rehr, af Mads Bluhm og af Mårdøn Smet, taget af Matthias Wivel & Henry Sørensen.

Although I appreciate the time and effort you put into your review, there are two critical problems with your thesis: 1) You basically assume that previous transfers were personally supervised by Ridley Scott (they were not) and 2) that the colorspace you’re seeing in various frame grabs and seen on a computer monitor match what would you see in a properly calibrated theater (home or theatrical.) They do not.

The Final Cut represents the very first time you’re seeing the film the way the director intended. Like it or not, it’s what he (not the “restorers” or anyone else) wanted, nor was it somehow updated to look fashionable. It’s simply the way the filmmaker wants his film to look. That’s why we left the other versions alone despite the new HD transfers, even if they don’t represent Ridley’s intended grading for the film, so that they would be historically preserved as they were.

I also don’t think there’s much value in directly comparing new frame grabs with old ones, aside from archival curiosity. Color-timing is meant to help create moods throughout the film at 24 frames a second, and to coldly dissect the grading on a static shot-by-shot basis deprives it of its intended effect…and that’s made even worse by the mismatching colorspaces of a computer and a calibrated screen or projection system.

Charles, thanks so much for your reply!

First, allow me to pay my most sincere compliments on the Final Cut, Dangerous Days and the Blade Runner home video set. Great work.

I am fully aware that the colour-grading was done according to the director’s wishes — something I also state in my review — but still find it markedly different than the earlier versions, which to me appear much closer in colour to each other. It therefore seems obvious to me that the new colour-grading is an aesthetic choice made specifically for the Final Cut.

My further point is that, while it is clearly the prerogative of the director to do as he pleases in this situation (I wouldn’t want to see a Final Cut in which he didn’t), Ridley Scott of 2007 is not Ridley Scott of 1982. His aesthetic sensibility and preferences have naturally changed and evolved, and this is what I see in this new version of Blade Runner, which in its colouristic sensibility looks more like, say, Kingdom of Heaven, than, for example, Legend. In other words, a film of the 2000s rather than the 1980s.

Additionally, I find it hard to believe that Scott would have graded the images like this in 1981-82, if he — as you say — had supervised the process more closely back then. And in any case, the film was made back then and is a product of that age. The look of the original release, which to my eyes is preserved rather closely, though not fully, even in the Director’s Cut, is the look that has been so influential on subsequent filmmakers, game designers, graphic artists, etc. To change that to the extent it’s been done is to change something much more fundamental than correcting continuity gaffes or substituting a new shot of the dove.

I think this is a pity, but of course still highly appreciate the work Ridley Scott and yourself have done on the restoration as a whole.

It’s strange, because once the first frame grabs started coming out, even I was taken aback by how green they appeared. So we checked with Warners and the authoring facility, and then looked at it again on the big screen and on properly calibrated monitors and it didn’t look that green or “blue steel” at all. In fact, every time I see The Final Cut on the big screen, I pay special attention to Holden VKing Leon, because those frame grabs were ridiculously green. And sure enough, each and every time, it looks exactly how it’s supposed to look, and nowhere near that green at all.

But again, this is the first time Ridley’s had total control over Blade Runner. That just doesn’t go for the cut, or the digital fixes, or the sound…it also goes for the color-timing. So, to me, all of these comparison to past versions don’t make a whole lot of sense since he didn’t have total control over those past versions. And believe me, I was almost slavishly against any form of revisionism or modernization of the film. I never once heard Ridley or anyone say, “Let’s make it more contemporary.” It was always, “This is the way it was supposed to look.”

I guess it wouldn’t be Blade Runner without at least a little controversy.

Heh, you’re right about that. Thanks again for commenting.

Any possibility that we might be able to squeeze some additional information out of you re: the thought process behind the Final Cut? As evidenced by my review, I’m particularly interested in the thoughts that went into adapting the “foreshadowing” inserts of Roy and retaining the two different versions of Leon’s “Tell you about my mother” line…

Well, those two shots still foreshadow what’s to come. The close-up on Roy’s hand has barely been changed — We just had Imageworks add a little abstract neon reflection to the frame. As for the close-up on Roy’s face, we had to remove Tyrell’s thumb anyway, and since it was always a case of stealing shots and not intentional foreshadowing, Ridley wanted it to be more smoothly integrated into the film, which it now is. But the framing and action within the shot is virtually the same, so on perhaps a slightly more subconscious level, it still harkens forward.

[Re: Leon’s line] …basically, I tried matching the two lines, but doing so kind of ruined whichever of the two moments were changed. If you use the harder “I’ll tell you about my mother!” in the first scene, it telegraphs to the audience that Leon is about to act and diminishes the surprise of the gunshot. Plus, Brion James’ performance is so mellow at that point, it would look like a bad foreign dub to use the other line. If you use the softer “Lemme tell you about my mother…” during Deckard’s playback in his sedan, it ruins the build-up to the gunshot echoing in the tunnel, now that we already know Holden’s fate. Of the two, I found the latter change to be the least offensive, but again, this falls under what I would call the Greedo Rule*, which is that if Ridley had wanted the lines to match back in 1982, he easily could have. It was a deliberate choice. And changing it would have undermined the film’s reliance on false or implanted memories as a theme.

* By the way, in the final stages of polishing The Final Cut, a lot of very minor last minute tweaks were made as Ridley was working with the colorists. So there might be some tiny changes that break that rule, but none of the big fixes could have been done in 1982, especially given the difficult circumstances surrounding the making of Blade Runner.

For the entire discussion, including a generous sampling of comparative screencaps, go to the BladeZone forum.

Vi har fra Komiks.dks side fulgt den omfattende debat, som er opblomstret på henholdsvis metabunker.dk og Seriejournalen.dk som følge af en række artikler i magasinet Strip!

Komiks.dks vision er at vise alle facetter af tegneseriekulturen, både det kommercielle og vidtfavnende samt avantgarden og det mere nicheprægede. Vi ønsker at afspejle alle aspekter af kunstformen og vise, at tegneserier spænder lige fra underholdende striber og hæfter til tankevækkende fortællinger, grafiske romaner og skæve kunstneriske rammebrydere. Men hvis man forstår “vision” som en målsætning om at presse tegneserien i en bestemt retning, så er det ikke vores bord.

Vi lægger stor vægt på vores aktiviteter ved festivalen. Udbuddet skal netop afspejle alle tegneseriens mange facetter. Der vil så vidt muligt være noget for alle aldre, indenfor alle genrer og for alle interesser. Gæstelistens sammensætning afspejler også denne vision. Vi har til festivalen i 2008 gjort meget for at få en bred spredning internationalt, genremæssigt og aktivitetsmæssigt.

Mads Bluhm
Formand for Komiks.dk 2008

—

Kære Mads,

Mange tak for din mail! Jeg formoder din indledende undren skyldes linjen “Tegneseriefestivalen Komiks.dk er et positivt initiativ, men også her synes man i overvejende grad at mangle visioner for, hvad det er man vil opnå” i vores Strip!-indlæg, Danmark hægtet af. Jeg skal prøve at uddybe, men lad mig indledningsvis sige at gæstelisten for den kommende festival er imponerende – skønt programmet endnu ikke er offentliggjort, tyder alt på at I i hvert fald har muligheden for at flikke den hidtil mest spændende og bredtfavnende festival sammen. Jeg er fuld af respekt for det store, tunge og besværlige arbejde du og dine medsammensvorne har bedrevet, og allerede overbevist om at Komiks.dk 2008 bliver forrygende.

Så er det på plads. Den kritik, vi anførte i Strip!, retter sig som nævnt mod festivalens identitet eller profil. Jeg ikke bare sympatiserer med forestillingen om Komiks.dk som en bredt anlagt festival, jeg er helt enig. Men der er mange måder at lave en bredt anlagt festival på, der er mange spørgsmål, man som arrangør kan stille sig selv. Svarene på disse spørgsmål (og de beslutninger, de foranlediger) er afgørende for profilen. Når det er sagt, er jeg naturligvis helt på det rene med at der er langt fra at undfange den rette plan, til at føre den ud i livet – og da særligt i noget så logistisk udfordrende som at stable en festival på benene.

Men lad mig give et konkret eksempel: Lad os sige at man træffer en beslutning om at fransk-belgisk mainstream skal repræsenteres – hvem og hvad skal man så have fat i? Det afhænger naturligvis af de kritierier eller normer, man opstiller. Skal det være navne, der var store en gang, men gået noget i glemmebogen i dag? Eller skal det være navne, der er behørigt repræsenteret på dansk? Eller tegnere, som fortsat er aktive? Og så videre. Jeg kan jo se på programmet at I meget forståeligt gerne vil repræsentere fransk-belgisk mainstream. Pt. tæller listen med repræsentanter herfra Achdé (ny Lucky Luke-tegner), Alessandro Barbucci og Barbara Canepa (W.I.T.C.H og Sky Doll), Dany (Oliver og Colombine), David B. (hvis mainstreamtegneserier hører til den nye franske mainstream, der endnu ikke er repræsenteret i Danmark – her er han mere kendt for sin graphic novel Det store onde), Mézières og Christin (Linda og Valentin) og Juanjo Guarnido (Blacksad).

Og her er det, at jeg bliver lidt forvirret – jeg har svært ved at se en rød tråd i disse navne. Misforstå mig ikke, alle gæster vil sikkert blive værdsat af en større eller mindre skare (jeg vil dog sige at et par af gæsterne peger i så få retninger, at jeg har vankeligt ved at få øje på relevansen af deres tilstedeværelse – uanset hvilke briller jeg kigger med), men sammenhængen synes jeg er svær at få øje på. Disse navne står – indenfor den fransk-belgiske mainstream – for nogle vidt forskellige værdier i forhold til aktualitet, dansk repræsentation, popularitet, kvalitet og så videre. Til dette kan man jo så bare indvende: “Ja, men dét er netop visionen og profilen”. Men for mig står der måske et lovligt utydeligt billede tilbage af blandet landhandel på den lidt vilkårlige facon.

Lad mig give et eksempel på det, jeg forstår ved identitet og profil. Den netop overståede NATfilm-festival er med sine 19 år på bagen naturligvis en urimelig størrelse at sammenligne med: budgettet er større, mange flere frivillige, årelang erfaring, kæmpestort netværk, etc. etc. – men alligevel (man kan jo ligeså godt være dristig): her var (!) en festival, hvis identitet og brand langt overgår det ikke supervisionære program (der i mange år reelt har gentaget sig selv: “Asian Tigers”, “Sound and Vision”, “American Independents” og sådan er det hele vejen igennem). Alligevel fornemmer man en spændende, forholdsvis udfordrende og skæv signatur, sat af filmelskere, med blikket rettet mod den store verden – tilsat masser filmfaglig integritet.

Man har valgt børnefamilierne fra (engang var det jo en NAT-film festival), og det hjælper naturligvis på at skærpe profilen. Man er i overvejende grad nok også ude efter folk, der enten er selvbevidste storbyboere, har gymnasiebaggrund eller tilsvarende, og hægter også her nogle segmenter fra. Alligevel fremstår NATfilm som relativ bredt anlagt, og er som bekendt meget populær.

Jeg mener naturligvis ikke at Komiks.dk skal efterligne NATfilm – der er masser af centrale forskelle på en filmfestival og en for tegneserier, og Komiks.dk skal jo derudover helst være sin egen. Men min pointe er, at jeg meget stærkt fornemmer NATfilms profil, men ikke Komiks.dk’s. Igen – jeg får som sædvanlig alle på nakken, men lidt helgarding dæmmer forhåbentlig op for de værste misforståelser – Komiks.dk’s gæsteliste er bestemt alsidig, og der er bestemt flere navne, som jeg (helt personligt) synes er spændende og relevante ud fra almindelige kosensuskriterier. Jeg har bare ikke en “fornemmelse” af hjertet bag festivalen.

Et andet eksempel: Roskildefestivalen har også en stærk profil. Den kører altid med en lille håndfuld kæmpenavne – navne, der har været store i lang tid, men som stadig er aktuelle. Dernæst en noget længere og lidt mere broget vifte af mellemstore navne, som optimalt balancerer fint mellem popularitet og musikalsk integritet. Dernæst en kæmpe underskov af nye, sære, eksperimenterende, interessante, internationale, progressive, ukonventionelle navne – som vel at mærke ikke er mere obskure, end at mange af dem slår igennem året efter. Man kører med andre ord nogle (hæderlige og ærværdige) kæmpenavne, noget i midten, og så et stort felt, hvor festivalen gør sig enormt umage med at have antennerne ude i forhold til det nye og nyskabende. Heri består en – i mine øjne – meget fornem kvalitet. Igen tror jeg de fleste bare moderat musikinteresserede har en nogenlunde lignende opfattelse af Roskilde Festival. Alsidighed, bredde (men ikke ’tilfældige’ kæmpenavne) og så en stor portion integritet i form af blikket for morgendagens musik.

Komiks.dk skal selvfølgelig heller ikke være Roskilde Festival. Men jeg tror ikke det ville være spildt at studere hhv. NATfilms og Roskildes koncepter nøjere, ligesom bestyrelsen helt klart kunne overveje at besøge næste års Angoulême-festival, ikke mindst for at hente inspiration og knytte netværker. Jeg tror det internationale udsyn (ikke mindst mod Japan) er afgørende for at videreudvikle festivalen. De vigtigste udviklinger i tegneseriemediet sker ikke i Danmark, og er kun i nogen grad kommet danske læsere for øje. Der er brug at skubbe denne udvikling i et højere gear, og det behøver Komiks. dk ikke vente på at andre gør – festivalen har selv en unik mulighed for at spille en aktiv rolle i videreudviklingen af den danske tegneseriekultur.

Men hvilken udvikling vil man? Det er det, jeg har en anelse svært ved at se. I iveren for at dække så mange facetter af tegneseriekulturen som muligt, bliver profilen “blandet landhandel”, ikke just skarp. Der er i mine øjne ingen vej uden om politik: ved fx at sige at man ikke ønsker en politisk agenda for tegneserifestivalen, får man indirekte en passiv politisk agenda, som i virkeligheden i meget høj grad afspejler et (problematisk) politisk valg. Jeg efterlyser en større analytisk bevidsthed om tegneseriekulturens tilstand netop nu, som fundament for en fremadrettet festival, funderet i passende valg og – ikke mindst – fravalg.

Men lad mig gentage: det ER en flot gæsteliste, og selvom japanerne ikke er kendte navne her til lands, repræsenterer de et uhyre fremadrettet signal, som råder bod på de to forrige festivalers småkatastrofale negligering af manga. Jeg er helt sikker på at det bliver en fantastisk festival, og stiller mig som sagt gerne til rådighed i paneldiskusioner eller foredragssammenhæng.

Keep it up!

Kh Thomas

Foto: Metabaronen

Det er til sidstnævnte jeg her lige ville knytte en kommentar. Jeg vil antage at den tavshed garneret med personlige fornærmelser, Bestyreren har mødt vores kritik med betyder at samme var på sin plads og er taget til efterretning. I stedet vil jeg kigge på noget mere generelt og i sidste ende væsentligt. Lad os tage et eksempel. En bruger skriver:

“Hvad Rackham angår, rammer Carsten Søndergaard i mine øjne hovedet på sømmet, når han i sin glimrende Strip!-artikel beskriver Thorhauge og Wivels gøren og laden med udgangspunkt i tegneseriens mange fanboy-fraktioner. D’herrer er lidt simpelt sagt højt begavede indie-fanboys – med alt, hvad det indebærer af smittende og fint formidlet entusiasme for de artefakter, der falder indenfor rammerne af deres personlige definition af god smag, men også med et væld af “blinde vinkler”, de ikke virker ret reflekterede omkring. At de insisterer på at begrunde deres lejrs æstetiske og værdimæssige idealer i hensynet til selveste tegneseriens fremtid reflekterer i mine øjne en selvhøjtidelighed, der er en anelse uklædelig …”

Vi takker for roserne, men ærgres over den desværre hyppigt forekommende misforståelse dette indlæg blot er et eksempel blandt mange på. Vi er ikke “indie”-nogetsomhelst. Vi har aldrig skrevet, at det smalle, eksperimenterende eller avantgardistiske er bedre end det bredt appellerende. Ej heller har vi skrevet at nyt er bedre end gammelt. Det er falske dikotomier, der desværre bliver hevet op af hatten hver gang vi ytrer os i den hjemlige debat.

Det er altid nemmere at nedskyde et synspunkt, hvis man reducerer det til en karikatur, som alle kan se grundlæggende ikke holder.

Vores kritik af ting som Seriejournalens “ærlige, men utidige tilbedelse af tegneserier fra fortiden” handler ikke om, at alt det gamle er noget lort — vi elsker klassikerne, og det burde også være åbenbart for enhver der ulejligede sig med rent faktisk at kaste et blik på vores virke. Det, vores kritik handler om, er den drengeklubagtige nostalgidyrkelse, der præger så stor en del af tegneseriedebatten i Danmark, såvel som internationalt. Den keder os.

Den idiotiske “kunst vs. mainstream”-opstilling finder vi ikke alene uinteressant, men meningsløs. Hele vores virke har netop koncentreret sig om at udviske grænserne mellem det såkaldt smalle og det såkaldt brede, mellem høj- og lavkultur. Metabunkeren er en videreførelse af den tanke. Ud af tegneserieghettoen, ind i kulturen som sådan.

At nogle kan være kommet på andre tanker skyldes så vidt jeg kan se, at vi i vores formidlingsindsats har koncentreret os mest om de manifestationer af tegneserien, selv samme individer lader til at have haft mindst berøring med — det nye, det anderledes og det såkaldt smalle. Det er blandt andet på grund af deres begrænsede udbredelse, at vi ofte prioriterer disse højt. Vi er ikke mod “mainstream,” vi er stærkt interesserede i den. Det er svært at interessere sig for tegneseriens historie, hvis ikke man sætter pris på dens historie som massemedie. De to ting hænger uløseligt sammen.

Det vi kritiserer er illusionen om, at fortidens modeller for massekommunikation er passende nutidige modeller for den levende tegneserie. Det traditionelle albumformat rykker ikke i dag og de traditionelle mainstreamgenrer er i stigende grad insulære og blodfattige. Tingene har ændret sig, men det betyder ikke at der ikke stadig er en mainstream og at denne ikke er interessant. Det, vi kalder “de nye tegneserier”, er et stykke ad vejen et bud på en ny mainstream — tegneserier der henvender sig til et voksende, bredere publikum i et bredere kulturkredsløb. Og de asiatiske tegneseriers indtog i Vesten er selvsagt et fænomen vi interesserer os meget for.

Hvilket leder mig til den besynderlige beskyldning om, at vi “begrunder [vores] æstetiske og værdimæssige idealer i et hensyn til tegneseriens fremtid.” Nej, den herre: når det kommer til disse idealer, er vi faktisk flintrende ligeglade med “tegneseriens fremtid” som sådan. Vi mener at mediet har en masse at byde på, men i sidste ende handler det om kvalitet, mediet uanset. Hvis noget er godt, er vi uinteresserede i om det vil bære mediet som sådan ind i en ny guldalder.

Vi mener endvidere selv, at vi orienterer os væsentligt bredere end den typiske fanboy og at vores arbejde viser dette. Vi er ligeglade med om et givent “artefakt” henvender sig til få eller mange, eller om det er gammelt eller nyt. Det vi interesserer os for er kvalitet. En subjektiv størrelse, javist, men ikke desto mindre en størrelse vi finder afgørende af italesætte.

Vores klare interesse for bredere tendenser og udviklingstegn indenfor tegneserieverdenen er derimod primært informeret af en tilsvarende bredere interesse for de kulturelle kredsløb i vores samfund. Det kan naturligvis ikke undgås, at vores ideer om kvalitet påvirker denne, men de er ikke hovedsagen og kan som nævnt under ingen omstændigheder reduceres til åndssvage neologismer som “indy.”

Der er givetvis “blinde vinkler” i vores arbejde — det er jo umuligt at være lige opmærksom på alt — men vi skulle mene, at vi gør en væsentlig indsats for at undgå dem. Da vi i sagens natur ikke kan se dem, er vi imidlertid meget interesserede i at blive oplyste. Så kom friske, men gør det venligst på et reflekteret grundlag.

Andre indlæg i debatten: Re: Danmark hægtet af, Analyse af Seriejournalens nyhedsdækning, Allan Haverholms kritik af indlægget og Seriejournalen.