“I think Milt (Caniff) studied the movies. I didn’t…” -Roy Crane<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite the\u00a0beautiful cartooning (and obvious historical importance) of Milt Caniff’s\u00a0Terry and the Pirates<\/i>, I have to admit I’ll always bear it a grudge.\u00a0It\u2019s the strip that seems to have firmly and permanently cut off the formal\/visual development of comics as its own unique medium and solidified the visual language of comics we have today–a visual language that\u2019s largely derived from film.<\/p>\n
I guess I shouldn\u2019t be surprised that pretty much any critical discussion of the artwork in modern comics is now couched in film terminology–what \u201cshots\u201d the artist chose, what \u201ccamera angles.\u201d Here\u2019s the thing, though: comics aren\u2019t made with a camera. They\u2019re drawings.*<\/b> And when we talk about and think about comics using film terminology, we\u2019re not only confining ourselves to only engaging with certain aspects of the medium, but (for those of us who make<\/i> comics) we\u2019re confining ourselves to only telling stories in certain ways.<\/p>\n
What follows are some fairly random and disordered thoughts I\u2019ve had over the last few years spurred by my own personal ruminations and by some Twitter conversations I\u2019ve had on the subject. Is it possible I\u2019m completely wrong? Maybe. Will people ever stop talking about \u201ccamera angles\u201d when discussing comics? Probably not.<\/p>\n But here goes:<\/p>\n The Big Point\u2122: Language matters<\/b> – The way you talk about a subject affects the way you think about it. And the way you think about it affects the way you engage with it. If you\u2019re a cartoonist and you\u2019re thinking about \u201ccamera angles\u201d you\u2019ve already taken one of comics\u2019 most interesting, powerful, and unique capabilities off the table: its graphical and diagramatic abilities.<\/p>\n If most comics ape the visual language of film, why <\/b>not<\/i><\/b> use film terminology?<\/b> – OK, fair point. But I think this bypasses\u00a0more important concerns: why<\/i> are most comics aping the visual language of film, and is this the healthiest state of affairs for the medium? It\u2019s vicious circle. We use filmic terminology\u00a0to discuss comics because they employ filmic visual language…\u00a0and comics\u00a0employ filmic visual language because that\u2019s how we think and talk about comics. Any situation that limits the available tools to think about and create comics is not an optimal situation.<\/p>\n Well how the heck <\/b>else<\/i><\/b> would you make comics?!<\/b> (part 1) – Before the formal language of comics got inexorably mixed up with the language of film, comics got along just fine. Look at pre-WWII newspaper comics. Often these strips were staged with the characters\u2019 full bodies visible in most of the\u00a0panels–and viewed directly head-on from eye level. I love the amazing clarity and straightforwardness of strips like this:<\/p>\n A lot of later newspaper comics adopted these straightforward ways of staging, either because of tradition or as a response to the shrinking size of the comics page. I think there\u2019s a reason you can hand the average non-comics reading adult a Peanuts<\/i> collection and they can engage with it readily, but that same person would likely find the most recent issue of Spawn<\/i> impenetrable.<\/p>\n In fact, I think this type of staging is comics’ most natural<\/em> (for lack of a better term) mode, which is maybe part of the reason these sorts of comics communicate so clearly. I teach comics classes for kids and almost to a person, this is how kids will stage a comics story–eye level full body views of the characters, no “camera angles”:<\/p>\n On the other hand, though, pre-film influence comics were developing their own unique formal language. My mind boggles at the amazing formal \u201ctoolkit\u201d we might have at our disposal today if comics like these\u00a0had been the primary influencing force on comics\u2019 visual language rather that film:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well how the heck <\/b>else<\/i><\/b> would you make comics?!<\/b> (part 2) – Some of the most highly lauded recent comics and graphic novels have been from creators who are either deliberately or just naturally not using filmic visual language. What \u201cshots\u201d are these? What \u201ccamera angle\u201d is being employed?<\/p>\n The recent \u201cpizza dog\u201d issue of Hawkeye<\/i> employed a bunch of\u00a0Chris Ware-esque formalistic\/diagramatic devices and apparently it just blew people’s minds. Why are these sorts of formal devices employed so rarely?<\/p>\n But comics and film have so much in common!<\/b> – I hear this all the time, but when I press the issue the response I usually get is, \u201cThey\u2019re both visual narrative\u2026 and, uh\u2026\u201d Notwithstanding the fact that neither film nor comics are necessarily narrative in nature, this is just about the only<\/i> thing that I can think of that the two media have in common. Everything else–physical scale, shared vs. private experience, drawings vs. actual pictures of things, multiple static images vs. illusion of motion, the way time is controlled\/experienced, etc.–seems to me to be radically<\/i> different. They\u2019re different things and we should think about and discuss them differently.<\/p>\n Comics is a mish-mash. Why not borrow terms from other forms of art?<\/b> – I\u2019d be totally fine with borrowing terms from other forms<\/i> (plural) of art, but in point of fact we\u2019re taking terminology and concepts from one<\/i> form of art: film. I\u2019d love to see applicable terminology from graphic design, theater, poetry, information design, etc. being used to discuss comics. Talking about cadence, balance, line quality, rhythm, unity, repetition, staging, composition, blocking, etc. all make a heck of a lot more sense applied to comics than talking about a \u201ccamera.\u201d<\/p>\n Film\u2019s visual language is as close as it gets to mimicking naturalistic sight. Why not use that language and its terminology?<\/b> – First, this presupposes that mimicking naturalistic sight is the end visual goal of comics. It isn\u2019t. We\u2019ve got cameras for that. Even if it were, the language of film is very, very different than the way we perceive the world around us. We don\u2019t experience the world with \u201ccuts\u201d or in any sort of discrete bordered visual field.<\/p>\n More important to comics-making, though, is that a lot of film\u2019s visual language is arbitrary (is cutting off the figure at the waist intrinsically different that cutting it off at the thigh? The former is an established shot in film; the latter is to be avoided in film) and a lot of it is driven by concerns unrelated to effective visual communication–concerns like budget and technology. For a perfect example of how this can affect comics negatively, see the section on \u201cLocation Staging\u201d in this great Jesse Hamm post on Moebius<\/a>. These are exactly the sorts of things that have seeped into the visual language of comics to its detriment.<\/p>\n![\"modern_cartoonist\"](\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2014\/05\/modern_cartoonist.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n